Road Test

by David Wickenhauser

“Going good. Something’s come up, Jenny.”

  “What is it?”

  “How quickly do you think you can make it over to Portland to join me in my truck?”

  “I can leave as soon as I can arrange a ride. Why?”

  “Charlie is going to begin riding with James, and I want you back on the truck with me.”

  “Whoa, that’s a story I want to hear!”

  “See if Roly can drive you over. I know it’s asking a lot, but I’m sure he’ll understand. I’ll text you the location where we’ll be parking tonight. It’s a large truck stop in north Portland. You should be able to get there in a little under seven hours. Even quicker, the way Roly drives.”

  “OK. It’s mid-morning now. It will take me a few minutes to leave here. But I should be there late evening.”

  “Good, honey. I can’t wait to see you. I’ve got other calls to make. Got to go. Bye.”

  Hugh pushed the button once to hang up, then pushed it again to make another call. “Call dispatch.”

  “Hey, Gloria.” Hugh got right to it as soon as she answered. “I need a favor. I need a load ASAP out of Portland in the morning to anywhere south on I-5. I need to be near Redding tomorrow night.”

  As Hugh expected, Gloria didn’t question or argue. Hugh was her favorite driver because he stayed on the road longer than any of her other drivers. He never complained, and he had helped her out of a bind many times when she had needed a driver on short notice.

  “That shouldn’t be a problem. That’s a high-volume corridor. I’m sure we can get you something. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Wow.” Hugh said, when all the phone calls were finished. They had hit Susanville while he was talking, and they were now on Highway 139 headed toward Klamath Falls, and then Portland.

  “I’m glad that’s all taken care of,” he said.

  Charlie had heard Hugh’s end of the conversations, so she had picked up on the gist of what’s supposed to happen the rest of today and tomorrow.

  “That sounds like a good plan,” Charlie said. “My being on the truck with James will draw them off of you, and James is more than capable of handling the thugs if they come after me.”

  “Speaking of thugs, maybe you should check in with them again,” Hugh said.

  “Good idea. What do I tell them?”

  Hugh thought for a minute.

  “I suppose we’re going to be good for another day of you saying there’s nothing to report. After that, we’ll have to come up with something to make them think you’ve got something on me.”

  Then he suggested: “Go into the sleeper, and speak softly into the phone. Tell them I can’t hear your phone call over the engine and road noise.”

  “Better yet, maybe I can text them,” Charlie suggested.

  “That’s a good idea. Do that.”

  When Charlie had finished sending the text, Hugh told her about the Susanville hijacking incident. Driving through the town a little while ago had reminded him of it.

  “It wasn’t one of my hijackings, but it was one involving Jenny’s uncle.”

  “Sounds interesting. I already know about all of their other hijackings, but I don’t remember a Susanville one.”

  “You wouldn’t. The police were never able to make the connection to Jenny’s uncle. But Jenny had told me about it.”

  He explained he had unknowingly played a part in the aftermath of the hijacking as he was coming south on Highway 395. It was late at night. It had been snowing, and the roads were icy, with snow piled up on the shoulder and in the ditches.

  He had come upon a truck and trailer flipped onto their sides spanning the width of the road. The cab was in the ditch on one side of the road, and the tail end of the trailer was in the ditch on the other side.

  Hugh said the accident must have just happened because he was first on the scene. He had gotten out to check on the driver, who he had found standing near his overturned cab talking on his phone.

  Eventually, law enforcement personnel had arrived, and a couple of tow trucks had come out of Susanville. Unfortunately, they were on the wrong side of the truck to pull it over onto its wheels, so they’d had to drive around the end of the truck into the snow-filled ditch.

  The first tow truck driver had tried, and had gotten stuck halfway around.

  “I was watching this from the warmth of my cab. Next thing I knew, the tow truck driver had come to my truck to ask me if I could pull him out of the ditch.”

  Hugh told Charlie he agreed to do it, of course. The tow truck driver hooked a cable up to Hugh’s tow hooks, and Hugh slowly backed up, pulling the tow truck onto pavement.

  Once on the right side of the flipped truck, the tow truck driver helped the other tow truck come across, and together they flipped the big rig onto its wheels.

  Hugh told Charlie it all took a lot of time, and he was out of hours. He couldn’t legally drive from there to find someplace to park. But a highway patrol officer wrote a note on his business card explaining the situation, and he drove on to Susanville to park at the Walmart he had told Charlie about earlier.

  “It wasn’t until long afterward, and I was telling Jenny the story like I am telling you, that I learned the truck had flipped while trying to fight off hijackers. Jenny told me it was her uncle and his gang of hijackers who had tried to pull that one off. They were never caught, so nobody but the hijackers and Jenny knew it was them who had done it.”

  “Hugh, that’s fascinating. I wish it had worked out for me to hear this during our first interview. What an interesting article that would have been.”

  “I’m sure, from your point of view,” Hugh replied. “But you can understand why Jenny and I don’t want to make some of these things public. We’re still off the record. Right?”

  “No problem. I don’t know if I even have a job anymore.”

  Hugh had been so wrapped up in his own situation it never occurred to him Charlie had been away from work all this time.

  “What is your status with your newspaper right now?” Hugh asked.

  “I had asked for some personal time off, and it was no problem,” she replied.

  “But if that old fossil of a managing editor ever found out what I’ve been doing, essentially selling my status as an investigative reporter to conspire with an attorney in his insurance scam, he’d fire me in a heartbeat.”

  “Ah, I hadn’t thought about that,” Hugh said.

  Hugh and Charlie both got a series of text messages that solidified their schedules for the next day. Hugh also heard an alert from his ELD that he had a message from dispatch. A safety feature of the ELD is that it locks messages from being read until the truck is parked, so Hugh looked for a wide shoulder to pull over onto.

  James’ text message to Hugh said he’ll be at the Indian casino tomorrow evening.

  Jenny’s text message to Hugh confirmed she’s on the road with Roly, and is expected to arrive at the Portland area truck stop sometime in the evening.

  William’s text message to Charlie said he was disappointed Charlie hadn’t reported anything interesting about the truck driver yet. The gist of the message was along the lines of, you’re not on a joy ride, remember the consequences of failure.

  Gloria’s message to Hugh on the ELD was a pre-load from Portland with a pick up mid-morning tomorrow to be delivered early in the morning two days from now at the Costco Distribution Center in Tracy, California.

  Hugh acknowledged the pre-load, then got back on the highway.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  California State Highway 139 became Oregon State Highway 39 as Hugh’s truck crossed the border from the one state into the other.

  Shortly afterward, rolling along about a dozen and a half miles into the agricultural land dotted sparsely with farm houses, Hugh spotted a rolled-over mini van in a ditch on the right side of the highway. Emergency lights strobed the scene, and Hugh saw rescue personnel working to free trapped occupants.

  “What’s that?” he asked. He p
ointed to a small figure sitting by herself way off the shoulder on the edge of a field.

  “It’s a little girl,” Charlie replied.

  Hugh hit the brakes and brought his truck to a stop behind the vehicles.

  He and Charlie jumped out and went to where the little girl was sitting all alone against a fence post. She looked to be about six years old. She was crying, and she looked terrified and confused by all that had happened.

  “Are you hurt?” Hugh asked her. She looked at Hugh with tear-filled eyes, and shook her head.

  Hugh knelt down next to her. His cursory examination revealed no major trauma, no blood. Seeing she was close to going into shock, Hugh took her in his arms and tried to soothe her with comforting words.

  “Your folks are going to be OK,” he said. “See? The nice people are working hard to take care of them.”

  Hugh whispered to Charlie, “Go find out.”

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” Hugh asked, wanting to distract her from what was happening around the overturned van.

  “Missy,” she said.

  “That’s such a pretty name. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No. But Mommy says I’m going to be a big sister pretty soon.”

  “That’s great. You’re going to love being a big sister.”

  When Charlie returned, she told Hugh the parents were being lifted out of the van now, and were expected to survive.

  “See, Missy? Everything will be fine,” Hugh said.

  Hugh continued to hold Missy, and he and Charlie stayed with her until more emergency personnel arrived. A female officer who had seen them came over and knelt down to tell Missy her parents were being put into the ambulance.

  “Would you like to ride in my cruiser to follow your mommy and daddy to the hospital?” she asked the little girl. “I’ll let you push the button that turns on the siren.”

  The little girl nodded a tearful yes.

  “What happened here?” Hugh asked the trooper.

  “I’m just now on the scene,” she replied. “But they tell me they found the little girl safe and uninjured in her car seat. They’d had to remove her first and get her safely away while they worked to get her parents out. And they had to do it quickly because of the danger of fire.”

  “Thank God for car seats,” Hugh said.

  “Amen to that,” the trooper replied.

  She started to take the girl from Hugh’s arms, but the little girl wouldn’t let go of her grip on Hugh. “It’s OK, honey,” Hugh said. “This nice lady is going to take you to be with your mommy and daddy.”

  Before she walked away with Missy the trooper thanked Hugh for stopping to help the little girl. “So many people would just drive on by,” she said.

  Hugh and Charlie were silent for a long time after getting back on the road.

  About a dozen miles farther along, they came to Klamath Falls and drove on through.

  “Let’s stop for lunch at the travel center north of town,” he said. “I need to take a break.”

  At their booth in the restaurant, Charlie said, “That’s really made you emotional.”

  “I know. I can’t explain it. I can’t just drive past someone in trouble.”

  “Don’t I know that to be the truth,” Charlie said, the irony not escaping her. “You do tend to collect damsels in distress.”

  Hugh smiled at that. But it was a fleeting smile because his thoughts dwelt on Missy, at what he hoped would be a happy future for her, and that she would indeed get to be a big sister. Traumatic accidents like what her mom went through were hard on a pregnancy.

  After their orders arrived, Hugh asked, “Do you believe in God, Charlie?”

  “Wow. Where did that come from?”

  “Doesn’t something like this make you think? Our lives always hang by a thread, and it can all get snuffed out in a heartbeat.”

  “Well, honestly, no. I don’t believe there is a God. Capital G.”

  “I think you know there is a God, but you deny his existence.”

  “No. I’m pretty sure I know what I know.”

  “I’ve been in combat, Charlie. And I can tell you for a fact that bullets kicking up dirt around a soldier’s feet tend to clear his mind of what he knows.” Hugh made air quotes around knows.

  “There are no atheists in foxholes bit,” Charlie said.

  “There are no atheists. Period. Only deniers.”

  Charlie said, “Let’s change the subject, please.”

  They finished their meal in silence.

  It was around six in the evening when Hugh pulled into the large truck stop in north Portland, which is located south of the huge Columbia River that defines the border between Oregon and Washington State.

  He backed into a spot, shut down, did his post-trip inspection, and logged off of the ELD for the day.

  “Are you OK if we wait to go eat until Jenny and Roly show up?” Hugh asked.

  “Sure, no problem. I’ll go in for a quick pit stop,” she replied.

  “I’ll go with you to make sure you don’t get lost.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can find the Women’s.”

  On their walk in, Charlie remarked to Hugh she now sees what he meant.

  “This place is huge!” she said.

  “Yeah, it’s kind of a Portland icon.”

  Hugh led her to her restroom, and then he used the Men’s.

  While waiting for Charlie to come out, he got a text from Jenny saying they were about a half an hour away. He texted back he couldn’t wait to see her.

  When Charlie came out, Hugh gave her a brief tour of some of the facility. It was too large to cover it all in the short time they had before they needed to be back at the truck.

  “This place has cleaned up considerably,” he told Charlie. “It used to have a reputation as a major lot lizard hangout. I’ve been here, and have seen them working their trade.”

  “There it is again – lot lizards,” Charlie said, obviously offended by Hugh’s characterization.

  Hugh had a feeling swapping Charlie for Jenny couldn’t be happening a moment too soon. The more time he spent with Charlie, the less he was liking her, and he’d never had a lot of liking for her in the first place.

  “Anyway, we need to get back to the truck. Jenny and Roly will be here any minute,” Hugh said.

  Hugh and Charlie had just gotten settled in the cab when Hugh spotted Roly’s F-150 cruising through the parking lot. When the pickup truck got closer, Hugh flashed his four-ways to draw their attention.

  Roly pulled in next to Hugh’s truck and Jenny jumped out to meet Hugh as he was climbing down from his cab. She launched herself into his arms, encircled his waist with her legs and kissed him all over his face.

  “I missed you so much!” she said.

  “Honey, you have no idea,” Hugh replied. “I can’t tell you how happy I am you are here.” He looked to make sure Charlie wasn’t within hearing distance. “And how glad I am to get that person off of my truck.”

  “Then I don’t need to be jealous?” Jenny asked.

  “Believe me. Not even for a microsecond.”

  Roly and Charlie had kept a respectful distance giving some privacy to Hugh and Jenny.

  Hugh turned to Charlie and introduced her to Roly. “You already know Jenny,” he said.

  “Happy to see you,” Charlie said. Jenny nodded.

  “Well, if everybody is agreeable, dinner at the restaurant is on me. And then I figure I can get Roly and Charlie rooms at the hotel here. It’s a nice hotel, and I can get a trucker’s discount.”

  Hugh told Roly to drive around and park in the passenger car lot while he and the girls walked to the restaurant.

  Conversation during dinner was mostly small talk. Hugh and Charlie were subdued, which Jenny picked up on, so she was somewhat subdued as well.

  Roly, as good-natured as always, carried most of the conversation; telling stories about the ranch, about getting his degree in law, and about his b
eing accepted into medical school.

  “That’s quite an accomplishment at your age,” Charlie said. “How old are you?”

  Roly said, “I’m twenty-four. But, I was homeschooled. You should meet our sister Mary. She’s eighteen, and is in her last year of college, getting her degree in architectural design.”

  “Homeschooled? I wrote an investigative series on the failure of homeschooling. Teachers had many stories of homeschooled kids coming back into the system who couldn’t read, and who were poorly socialized.”

  “I bet you didn’t dig deep enough to discover those were poorly homeschooled kids who probably would have been failures in the public school system as well,” Roly replied.

  “Well, no,” Charlie said.

  “And, I bet you didn’t report on the greater ratio of failures produced by the public school system compared to homeschooling, did you?”

  “No.”

  “How about academic achievement? Homeschooled kids’ test results on average blow public school kids’ test results out of the water,” Roly said.

  “Roly ...,” Hugh started to say.

  “One more thing. Do I look unsocialized to you?” Roly asked Charlie.

  Hugh chuckled. “Actually, Roly, you are being rude to our guest. Dial it down a notch. OK?”

  “I’m sorry,” Roly said sincerely to Charlie. “It’s a sore subject with me.”

  After dinner was taken care of, Hugh said he and Jenny would go to the hotel to book two rooms. He gave Roly his truck key, and Roly and Charlie walked to Hugh’s truck to collect the things she would need for her overnight stay at the hotel.

  The rooms taken care of, Hugh and Jenny sat in the hotel lounge to await the arrival of Roly and Charlie.

  When they came through the front entrance, Hugh handed each of them their room key, and told Roly he’d talk to him briefly in the morning, that he needed to make an early start because he had three morning deliveries.

  “Charlie, be ready to leave first thing,” he told her. She needed to ride with Hugh and Jenny down to Corning, where they would meet up with James.