Hugh was too busy dealing with the guy on his side to do anything about Jenny’s problem because, as the guy on Hugh’s side was unable to open the door, or break the window, he had pulled out a pistol and was making threatening gestures with it to Hugh.
Hugh made a split-second decision, and hit the down-window button for his side. As soon as it lowered enough, he shot his arm through the opening and punched the guy in the face with all the murderous rage that was in him.
The shock and awe of Hugh’s assault was enough to dislodge the guy’s grip on the mirror mount. In his panic to keep himself from falling, he dropped his gun, and grabbed for the top edge of the partially open window. He caught it with both hands, and desperately hung on.
Hugh then hit the up-window button.
What happened next was gruesome. The window quickly rose, and mangled the guy’s eight fingers against the top window frame. The edge of the window glass crushed his fingers so severely they were nearly severed. The man’s face on the other side of the glass was only inches from Hugh’s, and it was contorted in an agony of pain.
See ya later, Hugh said to himself as he lowered the window slightly, which released the guy’s trapped fingers. He dropped off to the pavement, screaming like a girl the whole time.
It was then that Hugh saw the car that was following them with another two guys inside it. He watched in his side-view mirror as they stopped to pick up their fallen buddy, and then the car sped up to come alongside the escaping truck.
“Jenny! We can’t stop, or these guys will be all over us!” he shouted, hoping that she could hear him through her screaming and frantic fighting off of the guy outside her window.
“You’ve got to do something for me … right now!”
“What?!” she screamed at him, near panic.
“We’ve got to do a hot seat swap, so I can get over there and bust the guy who’s hanging on outside your window!”
“What’s a hot seat swap!” she screamed at him.
“I don’t have time to explain the details,” he yelled. “Just get over here as best you can, sit in my seat and keep this truck rolling!” he shouted back at her.
“Are you out of your mind?” she screamed again, her voice rising to a higher pitch.
“No, honey, you can do it. Now, come on! We don’t have much time before he figures out a way to come through your window.”
As Hugh was saying that, he was already leaving his seat while still holding onto the steering wheel in order to keep the truck pointed down the road.
“Hurry up! We’re slowing down too much.”
Jenny took less than a second to gather her courage, then slid over in front of Hugh, and into his driver’s seat. Once Hugh knew that she had control of the steering wheel he let go, and slid over into her passenger seat.
“Keep your foot on the accelerator, and don’t stop for anything,” he yelled to her.
Hugh stabbed at the passenger-side down-window button to lower it further, hoping for a replay of what he had done just a minute ago with the other guy.
The hijacker who was hanging on had seen what had happened to his buddy, and he wasn’t having any of it. He leaned far back, while keeping a tenacious grasp on the side-mirror mount.
Hugh and the guy traded blows, tussling together, one inside the cab, the other hanging on outside the cab. Fortunately for Hugh, this guy didn’t have a weapon to bring to the fight.
“Hugh! We’re coming to a stop sign!” Jenny screamed.
“Blow it off! Keep going! Don’t stop!” Hugh yelled back at her, hoping beyond reason that they would make it safely through the intersection without crashing.
With Hugh’s attention distracted by his exchange with Jenny, the guy who he was grappling with had a chance to catch Hugh in a choke-hold with his left arm. Almost immobilized, but not completely, Hugh then got real angry.
Alright, this ends right now!
He reached down to his right side, and snagged his assisted-opening Gerber that he kept clipped to his pants pocket.
With a practiced single motion, he one-handedly flipped the four-and-a-half-inch knife blade open as he simultaneously raised his right arm. He buried the knife all the way to the length of the blade into his assailant’s right eye socket.
As this was happening, Hugh was vaguely aware of hearing horns honking and tires screeching. All he cared about was that the truck was still moving.
The wounded attacker’s scream was followed quickly by him releasing his hold on Hugh’s throat with his left arm, and on the mirror mount with his right. Hugh managed to keep ahold of his knife, now covered with blood and eyeball liquid, as the man fell away from the speeding truck. He landed by the side of the road in a rolling, tumbling, disorderly pile of flailing, twisting limbs.
Hugh looked into the side-view mirror, and saw the car that was following them pull over to pick up their seriously damaged buddy.
“They’re stopping,” Hugh exclaimed, almost out of breath from the choking. “They aren’t going to chase us. They’ve had enough,” he added, gasping for breath. Then he sat back in the passenger seat, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes to try to recover himself.
The sound of Jenny’s near-panicked voice broke his reverie. “Do you notice who’s driving this thing!” she shouted at him. “How about if you get your ass back here and take over!” In her agitation, Jenny was losing control of the truck, and they were mere moments from going off the road.
Hugh reached over, grabbed the steering wheel and immediately brought the truck under control. Then he motioned for Jenny to slide out behind him and into her own seat, while he settled back into his driver’s seat.
They were in their proper places, and Hugh had the truck going the proper speed, safely down the road.
“How the hell did that happen?” Hugh demanded, angrily firing a lot of questions Jenny’s way. “How did your uncle know where we were? Especially on this alternate road. How could you have told him? Why would you tell him? How could you have known about this alternate route?”
“Hugh, Hugh, Hugh, slow down,” Jenny pleaded, her pained expression showing her surprise at Hugh’s anger at her. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Hugh replied angrily. “It was what it was, just like before. How did you do it? And, why?”
Then, beginning to sob, Jenny answered, “Hugh, that wasn’t my uncle. I don’t know any of those guys.”
“What?” Hugh asked, trying to process what she had told him. And then it dawned on him. “You mean that had nothing to do with you, or your uncle?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Jenny replied between sobs. “I swear I had nothing to do with this, and I have no idea who those guys were.”
Hugh thought for a minute about that. This is unbelievable!
Then he said, “Jenny, I’m sorry. It’s just that having you as a rider has been one disaster after another. You’re some kind of a hijacker magnet. I just assumed …”
He looked over at Jenny, and saw that he had deeply wounded her with that last statement. She just stared outside the windshield, her red-rimmed eyes glistening with tears.
“I’m sorry,” was all he could think to say again.
They were both silent then—Jenny lost in her thoughts, and Hugh concentrating on his driving.
He steered the truck back onto the highway, where it was just a short hop to Carson City. Once through the town, and headed south on 395 again, Hugh chanced a glance over in Jenny’s direction. He could see that she had composed herself.
“Alright, Jenny. Let’s talk about what happened,” Hugh said in a calmer, softer voice than he had done before.
Jenny didn’t say anything.
“Jenny?” Hugh prodded.
“You called me honey,” Jenny said.
“No, I don’t think so. There was a lot of excitement. You probably heard me wrong.”
“I didn’t hear you wrong, Hugh. You said, ‘No, honey, you can
do it.’ You might not remember, but I sure do.”
Who can figure women, Hugh thought. They don’t miss a thing.
Then he said, “Look, Jenny. I don’t know what I said, or why I said it. But, it’s not important right now. OK?”
“Sure. No problem,” Jenny replied icily, as she crossed her arms and stared out the passenger-side window. It was a pose very reminiscent of when she had first climbed into his truck as a “male” hitchhiker.
“Jenny. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I’m just all worked up over this whole hijacking thing.”
Jenny nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“Well,” Hugh said, trying to keep a conversation going. “That, for what it’s worth, was a hot seat swap.”
“I kinda figured,” Jenny replied. “But why did we have to do that? Couldn’t you have just stopped the truck to fight that guy off?”
“No,” Hugh replied. “If I had stopped, those other guys would have been all over my truck, pulling my airlines, and keeping me from being able to drive away. We would have been sitting ducks then.”
“OK, I understand.” Jenny said.
“But you did real good,” Hugh told her. “Nobody could have done it any better. In fact, I was quite nervous the first time James sprung that on me. I can tell you about it if you like.”
“Sure,” Jenny said.
“It was my first day on the truck with James after he had picked me up as a hitchhiker. We’d already been on the road for awhile that day, so I needed to find a restroom.”
“What’s that got to do with a hot seat swap?” Jenny asked.
“You’ll see,” Hugh replied.
Chapter Thirteen
15 years ago – Shortly after getting the ride with James.
“Um, James,” Hugh said. “You got any plans for a restroom break anytime soon?” Hugh had been in the truck for awhile already, and he had not had use of a facility for a couple of hours before getting picked up.
“You’ve got a couple of options,” James said. “We can pull over at a truck stop or rest area, or you can use a jug while I keep driving.”
“Jug?” Hugh enquired.
“Yeah, it’s something I keep handy for impromptu breaks when it isn’t convenient to pull over at a truck stop or rest area. I won’t let you use mine ... trucker rules ... but I always keep a spare in case mine gets full and I need to go before I get a chance to empty it.”
“When are you figuring on the next stop?” Hugh asked.
“That’ll be the big truck stop at Wheeler Ridge just over the Grapevine,” James answered, “about three hours from now, assuming we don’t get stuck in commute traffic,” he finished, anticipating Hugh’s next question.
Hugh thought about it, and then opted for the jug, since he had the feeling that James didn’t want to stop anytime soon.
“How’s it work?” Hugh asked.
“Look in the bottom cabinet directly behind your seat,” James said. “You’ll find an empty Clorox bottle there. You just unscrew the cap and do what comes natural. Make sure you screw the cap back on real tight afterward. Lesson learned, believe me.”
Hugh did as James said. Standing up in the sleeper, he unscrewed the cap and, while holding the jug with one hand, got ready to do his business. Just as he was ready to relieve himself James tapped the brake, and Hugh lost his balance, falling against his seat back.
“Sorry,” James said.
Hugh got set again. And, again, just as he was ready to let go, James tapped the brake and, again, Hugh and jug went flying.
“Sorry,” James said with a barely concealed smile.
“OK, I get it,” Hugh said. “Funny. Trucker joke. Now, you better let me go, or you’re going to have a mess in your truck.”
Hugh completed his business, capped the jug—tightly—put it back in the cabinet, and sat back down.
“Hey, Hugh,” James said, “I gotta use my jug too. You wanna do me a favor?”
Hugh didn’t say anything, his imagination running through all the possible options of exactly what James could be asking him to do. None of the ideas appealed to him very much.
Laughing at the expression on Hugh’s face, James said, “You seem like a capable kind of guy. I’m just thinking we could do a hot seat swap. I gotta piss pretty bad, so let’s do it.”
“What do you mean?” Hugh asked.
“Basically, I set the cruise control and jump out of the driver’s seat while you jump in. You drive while I piss. Then we do it again, in reverse.”
“You’re kidding!” Hugh exclaimed.
“Nope. It’s done all the time. Now get ready.”
James set the cruise, slid his seat back all the way, tilted the steering wheel up, and turned sideways in his seat... all the while keeping an eye on the road, and maintaining steering control.
“OK, when I climb out, the last thing I’ll let go of will be the steering wheel,” James said. “I’ll move toward the back, and you come around in front of me. Be sure to grab the steering wheel just as I’m letting go. Then you slide into the seat. Oh, and don’t lean on the steering wheel or use it to balance yourself when you are sliding in. Be sure to watch the road. OK? Ready?”
“Go,” Hugh said, wondering how he managed to get himself involved with this madness.
They made the switch, Hugh relieved that it went exactly like James said it would. Hugh found himself sitting in the driver’s seat piloting a seventy-five-foot-long big rig and trailer combination weighing nearly eighty-thousand pounds at sixty-two miles an hour down a crowded California freeway.
“Don’t even think it,” James warned from the sleeper as he found his jug, and got set to do his business.
Hugh knew what James was warning him about, but tapping the brake was the furthest thought from his mind at the moment.
What was going through his mind just then was far, far more exhilarating. What Hugh discovered is that he absolutely loved the feeling of driving this truck. He checked his side mirrors—three on the driver’s side, four on the passenger side—and was amazed at the visibility all that reflective glass gave him. He felt a power in his seat and through the steering wheel that had a size to match his own physical size.
But then reality intruded on his thoughts, and he realized he had no idea what to do if he had to do anything more than keep the truck in his lane at a steady, cruise-controlled speed.
What if he had to pass someone? What if someone cut in front of him and suddenly slowed down? What if he had to swerve suddenly to avoid something blocking his lane? What if he had a blowout in one of the eighteen tires? He had no idea how to shift gears in this thing. And there was a bewildering array of switches, gauges and dials staring at him from the dashboard. He needed to learn a whole lot more about this truck driving business.
“Uh, James,” Hugh said. “Maybe you ought to get back here and take it over again.”
They made the switch again safely, and Hugh dropped back into his passenger seat energized, but humbled, from the experience.
James was silent for awhile, giving Hugh a chance to collect his thoughts.
“So, what did we learn from this experience?” James asked, after a few minutes had passed.
Hugh had to think about it. Of course he had driven many different kinds of vehicles, never had a ticket, and never been in an accident. He considered himself a competent driver. He had been a combat Marine, for crying out loud. But, this was something else.
Driving this huge truck was familiar in a generic kind of sense. But it was so unfamiliar in quite another sense.
“I think it’s the feeling of the size, and all that weight behind you,” Hugh verbalized, “knowing that one very small driving error could send tons of truck and cargo crashing down around your ears. Also, another two things.”
“OK,” James said.
“One, I am beginning to have the most profound respect for what you guys go through out here. And, two, I want to do it again.”
“Well, he
re’s the thing,” James said. “You need to know that I took quite a risk picking up a hitchhiker in the first place. But I took an enormous risk turning the driver’s seat over to you, switching horses in mid-stream, so-to-speak, with an inexperienced driver.”
“OK,” Hugh said, thinking he hadn’t done so bad.
“My point is that I saw something in you, in your character—even as you were standing beside the road with your thumb in the air—that made me want to give you a chance. Maybe I saw a little of myself in you at that age... I don’t know.”
“Thanks,” Hugh said.
“Another point I’d like to make is that you were lucky you got picked up by me. I have a lot more freedom to do things like that because I’m what’s known as an owner-operator. I drive for a freight company, but I own this truck. If I had been a company driver I would have been forbidden to pick up a hitchhiker. And what we did with the seats would have been an immediate firing offense.”
“I appreciate it even more now,” Hugh said.
“You should,” James remarked, “because if you had crashed my truck and gotten me killed I would have figured out a way to come back and put an extremely unpleasant end to your life.”
Hugh didn’t say anything. Watching James, he waited for the smile to come that would indicate that he was joking.
No smile. Not joking. Then, feeling reckless, Hugh said with an edge of temper, “You could give it your best shot, Pal. I can handle myself.”
Now James did smile. Hugh couldn’t decipher just what meaning was behind that enigmatic expression. But it did serve to help cool his own temper somewhat.
Silence then ensued for awhile as the miles of pavement rolled under their eighteen-wheeler. They traversed the Los Angeles basin, and headed up the hill over the infamous Grapevine.
“Marines?” James broke into Hugh’s silent reverie.
“Where?” Hugh asked, looking around outside the windshield.
“You,” James explained. “You were in the Marines?”
“Just got out,” Hugh said.
“Figured as much.”
Crimson Highway Page 11