One of the things I've noticed during my road trips over the years is the tendency one has to keep running into the same people at rest stops and restaurants along the way.  There's always a portion of the trip where you start recognizing certain cars and their drivers because, at least for a while, you're all traveling in the same direction, so it only makes sense that you're going to see each other during stops.  It's an at-best tenuous connection to another human being because, even if you recognize each other, you rarely speak.  But sometimes that silent fellow-traveler acknowledgment is all the road can offer, and as long as you can find a familiar face or car along the way, you feel like you're on the right track.  It's not quite as lonely.

So I was looking for the little blonde girl and her family.

The waitress returned with my coffee (each customer got a pot all to themselves), took my order, then said, "Muriel said to tell you that she's gonna fix your meal herself because Cletus asked her to.  You must be special to rate Muriel getting behind that grille."

I looked over to the counter where a large and quite attractive woman in her early fifties gave me a big wave and an even bigger smile; she looked enough like Edna from the motel to be her younger sister—which, when I thought about it, made sense; a lot of truck stops/restaurant/motels like this were family businesses in Ohio, why should it be any different here?

I returned Muriel's wave and poured my first cup of coffee.

It was exquisite, with a hint of hickory that curled up inside me like a favorite pet by the hearth in winter.  Restaurants and trendoid coffee houses in Ohio would charge you four bucks a cup (no free refills) for stuff this good.  Once more I found myself being glad that car trouble had landed me here.  Sometimes it's easy to forget that there are still genuinely friendly places in this world.

I looked around a little more, soaking up some local flavor by reading the notices and fliers pinned to the bulletin boards that hung on the walls seemingly every six feet:  the one nearest me had ads for babysitters, 15%-off coupons for dinner at "Bubba's Catfish Shack," used car and motorcycles for sale, a sewing machine repair service, AA contact information, stop-smoking clinics… and a couple of missing children posters.  One of them was old and faded, torn at the corners, but the other looked more recent.

I stared.

Something about the newer flier seemed strange to me but I couldn't figure out what.  I finally got up and walked over to the board, excusing myself as I accidentally bumped into a young man in a tan shirt, then folded aside the dry-cleaner's advertisement that half-obscured the face on the poster.

A few years ago, the news department of a television station in Columbus (in their ongoing quest to always give viewers something to worry over or feel bad about) came up with the bright idea of doing an experiment to see just how many people actually pay attention to posters of missing children.  They took a photograph of the Programming Director's seven-year-old daughter and made up over one hundred Have You Seen Me? posters, then taped, stapled, and thumbtacked them at high-traffic locations in various shopping malls throughout the city.  They left the posters there for three days and then, over the course of the weekend, had the PD's little girl sit on a bench somewhere inside the mall they were targeting that day (they hit five malls before the story aired on Monday's six p.m. broadcast).  There were two hidden cameras; one was directed on the little girl at all times, while the other—a small spy-cam disguised as a snap-clasp on the outside of a female reporter's purse—wandered the mall getting video of people looking at the poster as they entered (at least two posters were taped on the doors at each entrance); these happy shoppers would then proceed to walk right past the same little girl whose photograph they had just seen (she was even wearing the same clothes and hair style as in the picture).  Five malls in three days, over a hundred posters, thousands of people looking at her face and then passing her, and only one person recognized her.  Sometimes we're such a dandy species you don't know whether to boogie your socks off or climb a clock-tower with a rifle strapped across your back.

The poster I was now staring at had a clear and very recent photograph of the little blonde girl I had seen three times today.

My first thought was not, My God, I've found her!—not even close; it was this:  A silver Airstream trailer with tape covering its windows would be an ideal place to conceal video and sound recording equipment if you were a news crew repeating the Columbus stunt.  If I for one second had any doubt that this was some kind of staged news exploit, it was quickly put to rest by the information under her picture:  her name was Denise Harker, she was six years old, and came from Fort Wayne, Indiana; she'd been missing for five months, and had last been seen guess where?

The very truck stop restaurant in which I now stood.

Understand something:  I am not by nature a man who believes in meaningful coincidence; self-respect does not allow me the luxury of embracing the concept of a clockwork universe or a grand unification theory or even something as banal, insulting, and simple-minded as fate; for me, claiming something as "coincidence," be it meaningful or not, is the last desperate gasp of the rationalist before surrendering to the weight and knowledge of chaos; I can't even take shelter in the leaky cave of determinism because I suspect that disorder is already hiding there in the shadows.  In short, peddle coincidence somewhere else, I'm not buying.

I dropped the dry-cleaner's ad back in place, shook my head, and returned to my booth.  I finished my coffee, poured a fresh cup, and was just raising it to my mouth when a small but insistent gothic bell started sounding in my head.

What if it isn't a stunt?

But what if it is?

But what if it isn't?

What if—

Shit, shit, shit.

I wandered over to another bulletin board, trying to look as nonchalant as possible while riffling through the ads and fliers, looking for another poster with her face on it.

This is stupid, it's a stunt.  It has to be.

Uh-huh.

But what if it isn't?

Shut up, why don't you?

I'm just saying…

I found her poster soon enough.

See there, Holmes?  A stunt.

Be quiet, Watson, and do consider:  What if it isn't?

What if it is?  This grows quickly wearisome...

When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Personally, Holmes, I always thought that particular platitude was a big, steamy load.

I rubbed my forehead, sighed, and did my best to examine the room without being too obvious about it.  The first time around, something didn't seem right; on the second scan, I realized what it was:  nowhere in this restaurant did I see a State Trooper, Highway Patrol officer, cop, or even security guard.  Still, I kept looking.

On the third pass I accidentally made eye contact with a mean-looking, tattooed biker-type, then decided to have one more cup of coffee and think things over before I either made a fool out of myself or had the biker ask me for a date.  I was halfway back to my booth when

(seriously, how can you be sure?)

I turned around and walked to the far end of the counter where another bulletin board hung.  This time the poster was tacked over the ads, in plain view.

I pretended to read a flier for a fish fry sponsored by a local church while debating what to do.  If it was a stunt, I'd be calling them on it (and what are the odds this is for real? I asked myself, then told me to put a cork in it); if it wasn't a stunt, then some anguished family was going to be very relieved and happy come dinnertime tonight.