A lightning storm shakes the man awake at 3am. He rolls out of bed and checks on his son. It's his 12th birthday. The summer the man was twelve, he loaded into his father's truck and spent a week riding the doghouse. Like all the years before, his father tells him his one rule; don't touch anything. They take off on their grand adventure. His father smokes while he drives, as usual, but when a breeze blows the ashes onto the twelve-year-old, he gets upset. He and his father argue over his smoking. At around 3am, his father pulls in to refuel, but rather than get out and check the tires like he normally would, the boy stays in the cab. His father goes inside to pay and use the bathroom, the boy seizes the opportunity to play with the radio. He announces himself, but the other truckers quickly realize it's a child and tell him to get off the channel. Another trucker called Midnight tells the boy to switch to a different frequency. When just the two of them are on the channel, Midnight threatens the boy. Midnight tells him he watches his dad, that they work the same routes, and asks if that's his address on the side of the truck. When he realizes that he must be parked at the same station, the boy looks around and sees a shadow smoking a cigarette in a cab nearby. The boy shuts off the radio in a panic. His father returns and asks if he touched anything, and the boy says nothing. Two weeks later, the boy gets a letter in the mail with a picture of his father asleep in his cab. The letter is anonymous, but leaves an ominous threat: "Remember, each engine has only so many miles in it." The boy burns the picture. His father dies seven years later in a truck trailer, but the boy can't help but think that he looks dead in the photo. The man returns to bed, and the storm passes.