by Nancy Cupp
Margret took a deep breath and put the truck into gear. She eased out onto the road, pleased with herself. “Great, but you’re going to have to go faster than first gear,” said Joyce with amusement.
“Oh—yeah, just getting used to this I guess.” Margret looked down at the gear-shift for the diagram printed on the knob, and by the time she was ready to shift they’d slowed nearly to a stop. She tried to find second gear but all she could get was grinding.
“You’ve slowed down too much. Just stop and start over.”
Margret started again and got to fourth, where she popped the clutch and stalled the engine. “I’m sorry, I can do this.”
“Just start again,” Joyce leaned her head back on the seat. I’m sorry Lucille, she thought.
Margret finally got a handle on her nerves and managed to get rolling down the highway. She lightly scratched a few gears, but at least they were rolling. She hadn’t realized how tense she was until Joyce reminded her to breathe.
“You’ll do all right. Everybody has to learn it some time, hell, I even scratch a gear once in a while. Turn left at the light.”
Margret was thrilled when her downshift actually worked, consequently, she forgot to flip the splitter down while she was stopped. When the light changed she killed the engine—three times. “What’s going on?”
“Your splitter is up. You’re in the high range of gears.”
“Aaauuggh. I’m never going to get this.” Margret fought the lump in her throat, determined not to lose it.
“You’ll be fine. Try not to over-think it. Take a right, and stop by the guard shack.”
Margret couldn’t find the gear when she tried to downshift, so she just coasted around the corner with the clutch in.
Joyce smiled, “Well, that worked. Pull your brakes and shut her down. I don’t like to get my idle time up.” Joyce grabbed her note book, “Come in and you can see how it goes when you check-in.”
Margret climbed out of the truck on what felt like rubber legs. Her hands were shaking, so she stuffed them in her pockets. She hung back listening to Joyce chat with the guard and then get down to business. Joyce nearly ran into her when she spun around to go back to the truck. “Sorry—dock thirteen. You up for backing into the dock?”
“Yeah—sure, a dock? I’m used to cones.”
Joyce rolled her eyes, hoping Margret didn’t see it. “Of course a dock—thirteen. These docks are wide open, there’s lots of room to maneuver. I’ll help you get set up.”
“Thirteen—my lucky number.”
Joyce explained how to turn at just the right spot to get lined up for the dock. Fortunately, dock twelve and fourteen were empty so there was no chance of hitting anybody. “Pull far enough forward so your trailer is straight behind you. You’re lucky, there isn’t always room. Now just sight the lines and back her up.”
“Simple as that huh?” Margret had to pull forward five or six times because the trailer would start to drift to one side or the other.
“You’re over steering. Make tiny corrections, you’re making this harder than it has to be.”
Margret sweated it out, working hard to crank the wheel, first one way then back to fix the mistake. She had to stop and think hard about which way to turn, getting confused because it took so long for the trailer to respond.
“You have to believe in what you are doing, trust that the adjustment you made will work.”
Her left leg was getting wobbly from using the clutch. When the trailer finally touched the dock, it was a little crooked, but it was in there.
“Great, now let’s get out and see how straight you are.” Joyce was out in a flash and around to the back of the trailer before Margret could make her rubber legs climb down the steps. “Not too bad, you could move it a little to the right, but this would do. Only one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“We forgot to open the doors. You’ll have to pull out so we can open them.”
“Oh for crying out loud,” Margret moaned.
“Don’t worry, its good practice.”
Margret managed to pull up so they could open the doors. She was already lined up so backing wasn’t much of a problem. She was starting to feel confident when she hit the dock a little too fast. The bang startled her, and her head snapped as the truck bounced forward off the pad. Joyce could hardly control her laughter when she saw the look on Margret’s face.
“You—you should see…” Joyce snorted, “you should see your face,” she waved her hand in front of her crinkled up nose, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not funny, but-I-can’t-stop…”
Margret recovered when she realized she hadn’t done any damage, and she was able to laugh it off when the truck was safely locked into the dock. She just wanted to relax while the truck was being loaded, but Joyce needed to show her how to enter information into the Zonar. When that was done, she explained the routing they’d take while programing the GPS navigation system.
“This is Garmin, she’s a little temperamental sometimes. I yell at her a lot when she takes me down a bad road. That’s why she has this necklace.” Joyce rearranged the faux pearls around the base of the GPS device. “We get along better when I bribe her a little.”
Now it was Margret’s turn to get the giggles.
“What? Hey, you gotta entertain yourself somehow out here. I know it’s silly, but it keeps me going. Do we have a green dock light yet?”
“It’s still red. Where’s the restroom around here?”
“There isn’t one for us. This place won’t let you inside the building.”
“They’ve gotta let you go. What else can you do?”
“Well, no they don’t. It’s expected you take care of it before you get here. But sometimes you get stuck for hours while they putz around in your trailer.”
“So then what?”
Joyce smiled, “Then you use the official, tried and true, desperate trucker method.”
“I can hardly wait—literally.”
Joyce showed Margret her supply of empty jars and bottles. “I’ll step out of the truck so you have some privacy, pull the curtain shut, and put the lid on tight please.”
“I had no idea it would be like this, the book didn’t cover…”
“You’ll get used to it. There’s lots of stuff you have to do to live on the road. Be sure to steady yourself, it can be a challenge when they’re still loading.”
“Great.”
When the dock light changed to green they went to sign their paper work. Margret tried to remember everything, but by the time Joyce was explaining how to move the tandems to balance the weight, she was befuddled. “I’ll never remember all this stuff.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re going to do this every day, you’ll get it.” Joyce sealed the trailer with a numbered plastic tag and a padlock. “Cargo theft is a big business, especially in the bigger cities.”
“They steal your load?”
“I guess so. Our company requires us to use a padlock, and they want us to set the anti-theft device in the truck anytime we leave it. I don’t worry about it too much, I’ve never had a problem.”
“What’s a load worth?”
“Depends on the load. A load of computers could be worth a million bucks—toilet paper, not so much. Are you ready to roll?”
“I guess.”
“Now that we have a load on you’ll need to shift a little differently. Every time the weight changes, the shifting changes, its like getting a different truck every time. We’ve got 32,000 pounds this time, not too bad, but a lot different from empty.”
“Perfect.”
“Come on, you can do it. We need to find a truck stop so we can weigh this thing, to be sure we’re legal.”
Margret was surprised, it seemed a little easier to find the gears. She could feel the heaviness of the load, but the truck seemed to ride smoother. At the truck stop, she was relieved when she didn’t have to back up to park.
> Joyce spent some time explaining how to adjust the trailer tandems so the weight would be evenly distributed, and legal. When they were done, they both got a hot dog and soda for lunch.
“These are pretty good,” said Margret, wiping a blob of mustard off her chin.
“Ha, the first one is. Wait until you’ve been eating them for a couple of years. I call ‘em dumpster dogs, ‘cause that’s where they ought to go.”
When they were ready, Margret chugged out of the parking lot and headed to the highway. “Where are we going anyway?”
“Carlisle, Pennsylvania, we’ll take I-94 across to Chicago, then US-30 to 71 and I-80 east until we jump on the Turnpike. You’ll like the Turnpike, lots of mountains and tunnels.”
“Mountains and tunnels?”
“Don’t worry, Lucille can handle ‘em.”
3
Bruce
Bruce sailed past the Kansas City Royals Stadium in his mom’s ’98 Chevy Malibu. His, now that she was dead. Hot air blasted in the open windows, and Snoop Dog screamed Gangsta Rap on the radio. His mop of dark brown hair whipped across his eyes while he wove through traffic, nodding to the beat.
He had a crap-load of stuff to do, but he felt free for the first time in a decade. It was him that held things together when his mom got cancer, him that figured out how to keep groceries in the house, and him that cleaned up when she puked after chemo.
His dad was gone too—drove his truck off the side of a mountain. Not that he’d ever been around to take care of stuff anyway. Bruce always got left behind because his brother, Arnold, was nine years older. Arnold got to learn the business, got to ride along, he even got to drive sometimes when his dad was tired. Arnold was with him when they went over—smashed the big Kenworth into sheet metal. The heavy crane they were hauling was probably still scrap at the bottom of the gully.
Bruce was on his way to the lawyer to settle his mom’s estate. The lease was up on their rental house so he let it go. Most of the furniture was still piled up on the curb waiting for the garbage haulers, everything else, stuffed in a storage shed. None of it was worth keeping, but Bruce needed time to sort things out. It would’ve helped if Arnold had been around, but he had a business to run.
☙
“Your mother split everything equally between you and your brother. It’s not a large estate, most of your father’s life insurance money was used to pay hospital bills for Arnold and then your mother.”
“How much?”
“Her health insurance hit its life-time maximum…”
“How much?”
“And she had a retirement account…”
“How much are we gonna get?”
“After the hospital gets paid…”
“Yo, what are we gonna get? I need ta know, Arnold’s gonna invest it for me in his business.”
“What business is that?”
“He said he’s got a trucking thing going—special loads, making more than Dad ever did working his ass off. He needs a little more capital, you know, getting things going.”
“Are you going to work for him?”
“I got my CDL so’s I can drive some—but just until the investment pays off. Arnold don’t drive much, his bum leg makes it hard to use the clutch.”
“I see. I would advise you not to put it all in one place. Keep some to live on until you find steady employment.”
“I got employment, working this business. Arnold’s got a place in Colorado and I’ll stay with him until this thing pays off, so—how much?”
“Fifty-thousand for each of you.”
“Whoa…”
“Like I said, the hospital had to be paid…”
“I ain’t never seen so much money.”
With the check in his pocket, Bruce headed west to Colorado. Everything he needed was already stuffed in the sagging trunk. He tried to smoke, but it just made him wheeze. He left the cigarette idling in the ashtray.
☙
When Bruce got to Aroya, Colorado, he followed the directions Arnold had given him. He almost turned back when the gravel road dove into a gulch, thinking he had somehow messed up the directions. Then he spotted a big quonset building with a tall pole and windsock. Arnold had said the place was an airplane hangar for a big ranch. The airport was long abandoned, but the hangar and windsock remained.
Bruce gunned the engine and did a couple of donuts in front of the doors to announce his arrival. Gravel spewed from the tires and rained against the rusted metal of the hangar, with a sound like machine gun fire. He waited in the car, revving the engine until he saw the creaky door start to move.
“You bastard, what the hell ya think you’re doing?”
When he heard his brother roar, he climbed out of the car, “Yo Bro, good to see you too.” Bruce approached his scowling brother cautiously, and ducked to miss getting decked by a left hook—but then found himself sprawled in the dirt, blind sided by a blow from the right.
Arnold yanked him to his feet, holding him in a choke hold for a moment before he let him loose. With a maniacal grin Arnold said, “Glad you made it in that old wreck, bring it inside, there’s lots of room.”
The corrugated metal pinged and popped as it heated in the afternoon sun. Once inside the cavernous structure, Arnold ushered him up some wooden steps into a small office built into a dusty loft. An air conditioner hummed on one wall, and a refrigerator occupied the other. There was a heavy oak desk with a broken office chair in the middle of the room. A musty couch and easy chair the only other furnishings. Large windows overlooked the floor below.
Arnold grabbed two beers out of the ’fridge and threw one to Bruce. “Did you get the check?”
“Yeah, put it in the account like you said.”
“How much do we get?”
“A hundred grand.”
“Each?”
“No, fifty thousand each.”
“Shit.”
“What—I thought that was pretty good.”
“The old man’s life insurance policy was half a million, what did she do, piss it all away?”
“She had cancer ya know—hospital bills.”
Arnold indicated the windows, “Check out my rig. The old man had good insurance on his truck. It paid for a new truck and I got her decked out and customized to my specs.”
Bruce looked down on the rig and motor home below. “Bitch’n paint job on her. W-9 Kenworth?” The truck was royal blue metal flake with flames extending onto the trailer. A devil with a pitch fork and an evil sneer appeared as a hologram in the flames. Dual chrome stacks gleamed behind the cab with the name ‘Supertruck’ across the back. The number was 666.
“Of course a Kenworth. That thing could pull the state of California up over the Rockies, and look good doing it. Wait ‘till you see inside.”
“What are we hauling with it?”
“This truck will only be used for my special cargo. You’ll be getting another truck for the high dollar runs I have set up.”
“You stay in the motor home?”
“Yeah, you can stay up here when you aren’t on the road.”
“Until we make those millions you mean.”
Bruce climbed up into the driver’s seat of Supertruck, Arnold on the other side. “Damn, she’s got everything. Leather, thirteen speed—twin sticks?”
“Yeah, cost me extra, but I wanted the old classic look like the old man always was talkin’ about.”
“Extra big sleeper, ‘fridge, TV, and what’s this gadget?” He pointed to a small screen mounted on the dash.
Arnold pressed a switch and it lit up. “It’s to keep track of your cargo.” He manipulated the controls and different views flicked across the monitor. The views looked like the inside of a motor home.
“That’s in the trailer? What gives?”
With a press of a button Arnold brought another view to the screen. Two women sat on easy chairs talking. “I can turn on the audio to hear what they’re saying.”
“Wait a min
ute—you got women back there? What the hell?”
“I told you it was special cargo. This is a pleasure palace, I take it to the truck stops and park it. The women never go out, so the cops don’t see ‘em. Guys come to me and pay me directly, do the deed in my truck—not theirs. That way you don’t have to worry about your ho skimming any money.”
“Oh hell no, I ain’t no damn pimp.”
Arnold flung his left arm out smacking his brother in the mouth. Blood oozed from the split lip. “Listen here you little prick, I don’t need you in this operation. I could get any driver to haul my heavy loads, this part’s mine anyway.”
“I want out. I’ll use my money to finish college.”
“What money?” Arnold said with a grin.
“The fifty grand…”
“Is in my account, under my control. Now—you want to hear about your part of the business?”
Bruce dabbed at his bloody lip, “Sure.”
“I have a contact with a company that needs some hazmat moved. They’re willing to pay half a million for each load successfully hauled and disposed of. He has ten of them.”
“Half a million on each run?”
“You in?”
“Disposed of where?”
“Here on this property. There’s a deep gully where we can bury it, I’ve got heavy equipment already lined up.”
“Your property won’t be worth nothin’ if you have hazmat on it.”
“That’s why it ain’t my property, I rented this space and I’ll be long gone before anybody suspects hazmat.”
“Where’s this other truck?”
“You’re gonna borrow one.”
“Borrow—you mean steal it?”
Arnold shrugged with a smirk, “Whatever you got to do bro.”
4
Life on the Road
Margret was starting to relax driving on the relatively flat freeway across Wisconsin. She’d been this way in a car before, so things were familiar. Joyce chatted about trucking, telling Margret what an important job it was. “Every thing at one time or another has been trucked from somewhere. Name anything.”