Thumper narrowed his eyes to slits and gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles honkied up, as cars careened past like sleek elephants. Cars went faster nowadays, or maybe time itself was faster. The Jaguar was smooth as a lubed thumb, but lotta the other cars on the road rattled and roared like wraiths on a rampage, like they was finna collapse into a car-shaped pile of car parts. The sound of some squawky whiteboy on the radio pissed Thumper off like squawky whiteboys do, but he gotsta grope around on the dashboard to figure out how to turn it off.