by Gail Sattler
Gwen leaned to whisper in Lionel’s ear. “There are only eight people here, including us, and I’m the only woman.”
He leaned back to whisper his reply. “I hope you didn’t expect any different. The most I’ve ever seen on Sunday morning is a dozen, and I do this a lot.”
She straightened and waited as the minister slipped a tape into the machine and hit the button.
If Lionel was used to such small gatherings, it would explain why he was so stiff at the Funks’ church, which she considered small compared to the large congregation that attended her church back home.
The sound of a few good old-time gospel songs filled the air, and the small gathering of people sang heartily. Gwen enjoyed hearing the low male voices, as back home the prominent voices she heard were female. It set a different mood to the worship time.
The minister preached an enthusiastic sermon on the miracles of Jesus, and although it was short, it was refreshing after a busy and long week on the road.
“… and go with God’s good wishes!”
Everyone stood. Three of the men immediately went outside and drove away, two of the other drivers stood outside and talked, and the same man who was there when they first arrived began talking to the minister again.
Gwen followed Lionel outside and stood next to the small building where the sun was bright and the summer breeze ruffled her hair. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard such a good evangelical message.”
“Yes. I gave my heart to Jesus at a service very similar to this.”
Without saying so, Gwen had a feeling it wasn’t long after his ex-fiancée had broken his heart. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to go through such heartache.
“Whenever I’m close to Fargo, I always stop in at that little chapel, or else the church run by the pastor who performs the services. He’s an ex-trucker turned minister, and he knows what it’s like to live like this.”
“That’s really nice.” Gwen smiled and rested her hand on Lionel’s arm. “It was a lovely service.”
“I don’t know if any of those truckers or the minister would appreciate you calling it lovely.”
“You know what I meant. So, now what?”
“We shuffle off to Buffalo, get a room for you when we get there, unload at seven A.M., and go to the terminal to see what kind of outbound load they’ve got for us. Then we’re on the road again.”
Chapter 14
Lionel stared at the gray building looming before him. After all these years, it was so familiar, even though it had been a month since he’d last seen it. At this moment he hated it. They were home. It was over.
He couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say, so he said nothing. They walked to the dispatch office in silence together. For the last time.
Burt took their trip sheets and logbooks. “Long time, no see, Lionel. If it isn’t the other half of our doubles team. Now that you’re back, Jeff is ready to drive again, so it looks like you came home just to be replaced.” Burt laughed at his own comment.
Lionel didn’t find Burt the least bit amusing. He noticed Gwen didn’t have anything to say either. Lionel emptied out his over-stuffed mail slot, and they turned and walked out.
He drove Gwen home and helped carry her personal belongings inside. Over the past month she’d accumulated much more than the one duffel bag, sleeping bag, and pillow he’d carried into his truck when he picked her up at the side of the road at Snoqualmie.
She told him to keep the barbecue, to consider it a belated birthday gift. He’d never received such a special gift in his life.
They stood in the open doorway.
Gwen studied the ground and shuffled her feet. “It feels strange to be home.”
“I know what you mean. It’s the same with me. After being gone a long time, it’s familiar, but it’s not.”
Silence hung in the air.
Gwen shuffled her feet again. “Strange as it sounds, the first thing I’m going to do is have a long, hot bath. With bubble bath.”
He smiled. “Same. Just with no bubbles.”
More silence hung between them.
Lionel grasped her hands and cleared his throat. “Can we continue seeing each other? I’d like to call you when I’m in town and take you out and stuff.”
“Yes, I’d like that.”
“So I guess this is it.”
Her sad little smile ripped him in two. If he had to say good-bye to the woman he loved, he was going to do it right. He threw his arms around her and kissed her with everything he had in him until the sound of someone walking by caused them to separate.
He stared into her beautiful brown eyes. Eyes that were starting to well up with tears.
He couldn’t watch her cry. Not like this.
“See you sometime,” he croaked out.
Before she could reply, he walked to the truck as quickly as his dignity would allow and drove home.
In an attempt to settle himself, he proceeded through what had always been his normal routine after getting back from a long trip, except that he’d never been gone for so long before. He listened to the messages on his answering machine, wiped a thick layer of dust from the television, and got his laundry started. He didn’t want to open the fridge. Even his cactus was dead.
He’d dropped Gwen off only a few hours ago, but already he felt the gaping void in his life.
He needed her in so many ways. She was attractive in all the ways a man found a woman attractive, but most of all, seeing each other at their best and their worst, in addition to falling in love with her, she’d become his best friend.
They had no future together. She was bound to her job as a teacher, working days and off weekends, and he was limited to the hours of his trips, leaving evenings and away all weekend.
He stared out into the night from his apartment’s balcony.
Across the inlet, the lights of downtown Vancouver glowed. He could see the pointy sail-shapes on the roof of the Canada Place convention center, lit brightly from below. High in the city, the Harbour Centre towered high above most of the other buildings, showing off the odd shape of the revolving restaurant on top, topped by the spire to make it even taller in the Vancouver skyline. The many office towers only showed about half their lights on, being a weeknight and already past midnight. To the right of downtown, Stanley Park was pitch black, but from the park, headlights of moving cars streaked over the Lion’s Gate Bridge in little white lines, which was the way he’d come home, into North Vancouver. From directly below him, honking horns and the roar of the odd car echoed upward from Marine Drive, even up to the twenty-fifth floor.
Lionel had always found peace in watching the city from a distance, keeping himself separate and untouched by the commotion of life below. Tonight it only made him feel lonely.
He slid the patio door closed behind him. In the quiet of his small kitchen, he began the last untouched chore—digging through what had accumulated in the company mail slot in his absence. He found the usual forms questioning his handwriting on a few log entries, fuel bills, and a warranty reminder. At the bottom of the pile, he found a tape.
Lionel picked it up. A Post-It note attached identified it as being from Gwen, put there when she’d just begun her second trip out, the day of Chad’s breakdown in Snoqualmie. On her first trip she’d promised him a tape of the sermon they’d talked about over the CB radio. Since she hadn’t expected to see him, she’d tucked it in his mail slot for when he got back.
The label identified the topic as “Friendship—God’s Way.”
He slipped the tape into his cassette player but couldn’t press the button to listen to it. Lionel knew it was going to describe someone he’d just left, someone he wanted to share his life with, but by the nature of their lifestyles they would seldom cross paths, until they drifted apart forever.
He didn’t listen to the tape. He crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling all night.
Gwen stared at the pile of books for the cou
rses she’d be teaching in the coming school year.
Very gently she touched her earrings. The earrings Lionel had given her in Topeka. She hadn’t taken them off since she’d been home.
She studied her class list for the coming year. As their teacher, she had always thought she would make an impact on all the young lives she touched. But now, looking at the names, even knowing that some might, one day, remember her fondly in years to come, in almost all cases she was just another ship that passed in the night. Once they left her classroom, she would never see them again.
Gwen fingered the earrings again. She hadn’t seen Lionel for nearly two weeks, the longest two weeks of her life. She’d received many E-mails, loaded with typing errors and apologies for them. Many he signed with his CB handle, The Lion King. They were all bittersweet. She didn’t want to read his words, she wanted to hear his voice. In person.
She’d made the biggest mistake of her life when she agreed to keep driving with him. While she’d enjoyed their time together, the love between them had blossomed in a way neither of them could have foreseen. Yet they never talked about it. They were both too aware that it couldn’t last. When he’d kissed her good-bye at the door two weeks ago, it was more than saying good-bye to the man she loved. She was also saying good-bye to her best friend. Ripping off her right arm couldn’t have hurt much more.
Gwen reached for the phone. She wasn’t doing herself any good by dwelling on it. Instead of getting herself even more depressed, Gwen needed to talk to someone, and the person who could best make her laugh was her friend Molly.
At the same second she touched the phone, the doorbell rang.
She opened it to see Lionel standing in the doorway, holding a single red rose. “I’ve missed you.”
Gwen’s throat clogged. She could barely choke the words out. “I’ve missed you too.”
She didn’t ask if he wanted to come in. She didn’t need to. Gwen put the rose in a glass of water, and they sat together on the couch.
Lionel grasped both her hands. “There’s something I have to tell you. I’m going to sell the truck.”
Gwen’s stomach knotted. Driving a truck was all he’d ever done. It was his life, and he loved it. If he’d just discovered a fatal medical condition that was forcing him to quit, she didn’t know what she would do. She struggled to speak past the tightness in her throat. “Why?”
“These last two weeks have been the worst of my life. I can’t do this anymore. Not without you.”
She couldn’t think of a thing to say. She opened her mouth to tell him that she had been miserable without him too, but he touched his index finger to her lips. “Please let me finish. I’ve thought a lot about this, and it’s not a decision I’ve made lightly.”
Gwen nodded and he lowered his finger.
“I can’t leave you for days and weeks at a time. These last two weeks have been … well, not good. I can’t live like that indefinitely.”
She opened her mouth to tell him she would never be unfaithful, but he spoke before she could say a word. “You promised you’d let me finish. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. You’re nothing like Sharon. I know you won’t find someone else while I’m gone. I don’t want to stop driving because I don’t trust you. It’s because I miss you too much, and driving just hasn’t been satisfying anymore without you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
His grip on her hands tightened. “I love you, Gwen. Until I find a buyer, I’ll still have to drive, but whenever I’m in town, I want to spend all the time we can together. I’ll do whatever I can to make this work. If that means quitting driving, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Gwen gulped. “Make this work?”
He shook his head. “I’m doing this all wrong. What I really came here to do was to ask if you’d marry me. If it’s too sudden, then we’ll date and stuff until you’re as sure as I am that this is God’s will for us, to love each other forever, to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. The whole package. I love you, Gwen. Will you marry me?”
Gwen’s vision blurred. “I love you too. And yes, I’ll marry you. Under one condition. Don’t sell the truck.”
His kiss was immediate and welcome. When his mouth released hers, he held her firmly in his arms, and she never wanted him to let go.
“I don’t care about the truck,” he mumbled into her hair.
“Well, I do,” she said. “I loved living on the road. But I don’t think it’s something I could do forever. Like when it’s time to have children. About a year driving together sounds good, though.”
He murmured her name and buried his face farther in her hair, but otherwise didn’t speak.
“I’ll take a leave of absence from teaching and drive with you. Uncle Chad says Burt is going to retire in about a year, and he heard Burt mention your name as a possibility for his replacement. Do you think you’d like that?”
He cupped her face in his hands. “Yes, I would. I’d love to drive with you again. But, before you step foot in that truck again, you need more than your Class-One license. You need a marriage license. And then we’ll run doubles again.”
Gwen grinned. “Really?”
Lionel nodded. “Really.”
“Does that mean I get my name painted on the door? You’ve got ‘The Lion King’ painted on the driver’s door.”
“After we get married, that will make you ‘The Lion Queen.’ How’s that?”
“Then that makes the truck ‘The Lions’ Den.’ And then we’ll be …”
Lionel grinned. “… On the road again.”
My Name
Is Mike
Chapter 1
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
My name is Mike, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi, Mike,” murmured the roomful of people.
Mike Flannigan cleared his throat and scanned the crowd. There were about fifty people in the room.
“This is my first AA meeting, and I’m not really an alcoholic. I’m only doing this because I don’t have a choice.”
Most people in the crowd smiled wryly.
Mike cleared his throat again, not having received the sympathy he thought he should have. “I was forced to be here by my probation officer.”
Mike stopped speaking and scowled at Bruce, expecting Bruce to lose his insipid grin. Instead, Bruce turned around to the crowd with a wide smile and waved. A number of the people in the crowd smiled and waved back, more nodded in understanding. Mike couldn’t believe it.
He’d seen from the previous two people who stood at the front that nothing was sacred here. Both of them, a man and a woman, had said some very personal things—private types of things that he wouldn’t say to his best friend. Yet they’d poured out their hearts to this roomful of people. While it was obvious many knew each other, he could tell many were also strangers or, at best, only casual acquaintances. He vowed he would never expose himself like that, and he certainly hadn’t expected the group to welcome Bruce.
“I’m only here because I got caught drinking and driving. I made a mistake, that was all.”
Mike hustled back to his chair. The crowd applauded gently, just as they had for the previous speakers. An older man rose and walked to the podium.
“My name is Claude, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi, Claude,” the crowd responded.
“I’m not going to give you my usual drunk-a-log tonight. Besides, most of you have heard it before.”
The crowd laughed.
“I’m going to tell you about my first meeting. I see we have a few first-timers here tonight, and it got me thinking. Maybe because I’m coming up to my seven-year cake.”
Everyone applauded.
Mike leaned to whisper to Bruce. “What’s a seven-year cake?”
Bruce leaned toward Mike and whispered back. “It’s the
anniversary of seven years without a drink. They bring a cake to the meeting, and everyone has a piece. It’s a small celebration.”
Seven years without a drink. Mike couldn’t remember the last time he’d been seven days without a drink. Maybe he did drink a little too much, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He just lost it for one night, and he got caught. That was the only reason he was here.
Claude continued. “I didn’t think I had a drinking problem. I was on the brink of losing my job. I stopped getting invitations from my family because I ruined every family gathering. The only friends I had left were drinking buddies, and their friendship depended on when my money ran out. Still, I couldn’t go a day without a drink. Then my wife left me because of what my drinking was doing to her and the kids. That’s what brought me to my first meeting. I had nowhere to go but up because the next step was straight to hell. Hitting bottom is a different place for each of us, but we all have one. For some it’s a job. For some it’s money. For some it’s personal. The thing that made me stop and take a look at myself was when Michelle left. That was the day I knew I had to change. It was hard, but nothing would have been harder than life in an empty apartment with only a bottle for company.”
Claude paused, and the crowd remained silent, respecting Claude as he fought with his memories. “You first-timers, think of today, your first meeting. Life gets better from here. Join a twelve-step group. Get in touch with your Higher Power. Go to meetings often, every day if you have to, and mark today on your calendar. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
The crowd burst into rounds of applause as Claude returned to his chair.
Mike clapped weakly. Claude seemed like a happy guy. He wondered if Claude had gotten back together with his wife.
Mike listened politely to what the remaining speakers had to say. When the hour was up, he aimed himself for the door. He didn’t care if Bruce was behind him or not. He would wait for Bruce in the parking lot. He almost made it out when Claude stopped him.