Crimson Highway

by David Wickenhauser

  He wasn’t sure last night that it would be that way today. He thought back to picking up his load in Victorville.

  There were some potential issues with weight.

  He was heavy.

  That was not a statement of his physical condition. He was trim and fit for his thirty-six years. His body mass index for his 6’2” frame was in the above average healthy range. Truck driving was not the completely sedentary occupation that many people thought it was. So, he appreciated that he had kept the agility and muscle tone that he had enjoyed as a young Marine.

  It was his truck and trailer combination that was heavy. It was right at 79,980 pounds, within 20 pounds of being just at the legal maximum 80,000 pounds.

  His load consisted of pallets of canned food. He had carefully watched the loading, knowing that canned food makes for a heavy load. It all depended on the skill of the loaders whether the fifty-three-foot enclosed trailer would be overweight.

  Government regulations limited trucks to maximum weights on each of the three sets of axles. Also, and more importantly, there was a maximum gross weight for the tractor and trailer combination that absolutely must not be exceeded.

  The loading had looked efficient and smart to him. Some loaders were good about that, others could care less and didn’t mind leaving drivers with illegal weights.

  He knew he’d be parking for the night before heading out in the morning to his delivery destination in southern Idaho two days from now, so he planned to stop at a nearby truck plaza. He scaled out as soon as he got there, and was satisfied that he was legal.

  So, there he was early the next day, doing what he loved to do—driving down the early-morning crimson-hued highway.

  He passed bedroom communities that eventually gave way to true desert as he continued up Highway 395.

  Next civilization of any kind was the crossroads with Highway 58 at Kramer Junction. This truck stop, ringed with tourist trap museums and shops as it was, was not one of Hugh’s favorite places. Noisy, crowded, hemmed in with a vast network of power lines overhead, this junction was one that Hugh liked to just drive on through without stopping.

  Once past the crossroads, he aimed his truck ever northward through the desert. He had to slow down to twenty-five miles an hour several times to go through the small, picturesque towns interspersed along the highway—towns that acted as gateways for those seeking recreation on the steep eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

  He was almost religious about observing the speed limits in these small towns because he knew that speeding tickets were a major source of income for these communities—and large trucks barreling through, scaring tourists, were particularly targeted by the local law.

  At Bishop, the largest of these towns, Hugh split off of Highway 395 onto Highway 6. As much as the route to this point was sparsely populated with towns, the almost six-hundred miles remaining of his journey up the eastern length of Nevada to southern Idaho was virtually devoid of civilization. Tonopah, Ely, and Wells were the only towns of note along the whole route.

  To Hugh, a devoted reader of Western novels, this route up Highway 6 was like a throwback to the old Western days.

  His stomach told him, more than the clock did, that it was time to pull over somewhere and have a brew and bite to eat. Nevada rest areas along this route were worthless to truckers because they were little more than a pull-out with picnic tables, with no space for trucks to park.

  So Hugh kept his eyes open for a wide spot in the road to pull over. About halfway to Tonopah he spotted one.

  As he had done countless times before, Hugh plugged in his hot pot to heat up water for his coffee. He fitted a filter into a coffee cone, poured in a good portion of coffee grounds that he had ground himself from coffee beans, and waited for the water to heat. In the meantime, he reached inside his fridge to take out sandwich fixings.

  All this was accomplished without having to get up from his seat on the bottom bunk of his condo sleeper. It was an efficient setup, but designed for only one person. And, Hugh was a big guy, so one of him was a crowd in this small space.

  When he saw steam rising from the hot pot, he interrupted his sandwich making to pour the near-boiling water through the grounds and into a large-size foam cup. He liked his coffee black and strong ... very strong.

  Hugh finished his lunch fairly quickly, and used his jug, there being no restroom facility anywhere nearby. He then pulled back onto the road. He had a long way to go before bedding down for the night.

  He knew he wouldn’t make it all the way to Burley, Idaho, on his available legal driving hours, so he’d have to find a place to park for the night—probably at Wells, Nevada.

  The next town Hugh would come to was Tonopah, and shortly after that was when he would have the encounter with the strange, obnoxious and enigmatic hitchhiker named Jenny.

  He had just finished telling Jenny that he was planning to drop her off in Burley.

  Hugh glanced over at her to see how she was taking that. “You OK with being dropped off in Burley?”

  She only shrugged.

  After a moment had passed, Jenny looked intently at him, making him feel uncomfortable. She appeared to be trying to gather the words to ask a question.

  Darn, she’s a pretty girl, Hugh noticed, not for the first time … uncomfortable with the thought.

  He was grateful that he had the need to keep the truck pointed straight down the road as an excuse to keep his face turned away from her intent gaze.

  Then the question came. “That story, the one with the overturned truck in the middle of the road? When did you say that was?”

  “It was fairly recently, a few months ago. Toward the end of winter.”

  Leaning forward in her seat, and turning her upper body toward him, giving him her full attention, she put her intent gaze on Hugh again. “Did you ever find out what happened? Why he went off the road?”

  “Nope, never did. It was just one more accident that I saw, and then I passed on. Been many, many like that.” He wondered now about her interest in that particular incident.

  “Just north of Susanville?”

  “Uh, yes.” Now his curiosity was definitely aroused. He couldn’t recall exactly, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned that Susanville was the name of the remote, northern California town in his story.

  “By the way, mister human, what are you hauling?”

  “Got a whole load of canned food.”

  Apparently, after that, she didn’t have any more questions for him. She sat back in her seat with her feet up on the dash, and stared out the windshield, seeming to withdraw into her own thoughts.

  “Be coming up to Ely pretty soon,” Hugh told her, wishing that she wasn't putting her feet all over his clean dash. “That’s where Highway 6, which is what we are on right now, meets with Highway 50, and where Highway 93 begins. We’ll continue north from there on 93 to Idaho.”

  Hugh had to laugh to himself because Highway 50 claimed to be the “loneliest road in America.” The road they had been on for the past couple of hours could have made that claim, too—most roads in Nevada could, for that matter.

  Hugh was certain the only reason that Ely had rated a truck stop was because of the confluence of these highways. No other reason, really, to speak of in this God-forsaken part of the state. He normally didn’t plan to stop there—but just drive on through if he still had legal hours left to drive.

  “Good, because I need to take a jug break,” she said, testily, almost angrily, as if blaming Hugh for her need to go.

  “That’s fine. We’ll stop at the truck stop there where you can use the restroom. As long as we have to stop, I’ll buy a little fuel, so you can get a shower credit.”

  “Are you accusing me of needing a shower?” she asked, baiting him for another fight.

  “Yes. Frankly, you are getting a bit ripe,” Hugh replied, stepping into it.

  Jenny remained silent after that, pressing back into her seat, arms
folded. She had a petulant look on her face, obviously smarting at his remark.

  She can sulk all she wants. He’d changed his mind about taking her all the way to Burley. He’d had his fill of her rotten attitude, so he had no intention of having her with him when he drove out of Ely. But, at least she’d get a shower out of it.

  He drove them through Ely to the truck stop at the other end of town. First thing he did was pull into the fuel island to buy 50 gallons of fuel. Then he drove around to the truck-park area, backed into a slot, and shut down the engine.

  “OK, little lady, time for you to get out. You can use the restroom and take a shower.”

  She didn’t budge from her seat, suspicion written all over her face like she knew he was going to leave without her as soon as she was out of sight.

  “Look, I’ll go in with you. I need to be the one who gets the shower ticket for you anyway.”

  “I’m not going to take a shower, and then get back into these filthy rags,” she threw back at Hugh.

  He couldn’t blame her for that. “Come on. I’ll take care of that for you, too.”

  They went into the truck plaza store together. He let her pick out a cheap pair of running sweats, a T-shirt and a couple of other items. He told her to grab a toothbrush and toothpaste, and anything else she needed in that department as well.

  Hugh paid for all of that, and showed his fuel receipt so he could get her shower ticket.

  There was nobody else waiting for a shower, so he pointed in the direction of the shower rooms. “Don’t forget to wash your hair!” he yelled to her as she walked in the direction he had pointed.

  “Yes, Mom!” she tossed sarcastically over her shoulder, embarrassed and angry that everyone in the travel plaza could hear him.

  He watched her open the door to the shower room and go inside.

  Satisfied that she would be awhile in the shower, Hugh quickly took care of some business of his own in the men’s restroom. When he came out, he bought a bag of chips and a soft drink. On his way out of the travel plaza he checked to make sure she hadn’t come out of the shower already.

  There was no sign of her, so he quickly walked back to the truck, unlocked the door, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Glancing over his shoulder to make sure he hadn’t been spotted by her, he pulled out of the truck stop and back onto the highway headed north. His conscience panged a bit at what he had just done, but he rationalized that at least he hadn’t left her at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

  He figured she could easily get a ride with someone else at this truck stop, especially once she was showered up, and wasn’t smelling so bad. He guessed that she would clean up fairly nicely. Despite her numerous issues, she was a darn pretty girl. Might be to someone’s liking, Hugh mused, sorry for the guy who'd be unlucky enough to pick her up.

  He noticed that her unpleasant scent lingered in the cab of the truck. He cracked open both windows a couple of inches to start some airflow that would carry the smell away. He certainly didn’t want to bed down for the night with that stale odor remaining.

  He began singing a tune that had just popped into his head at the relief of getting rid of that obnoxious girl. “Ding dong! The witch is gone. The wicked witch. The wicked witch! Ding dong! The wicked witch is gone.” He didn’t know the rest of the words, so he continued to just hum the tune.

  Then Hugh decided to give James a call. After all these years, he and James were still good friends. They talked several times a week.

  Putting on his cordless headset, he pushed the call button, and then spoke into the microphone in response to the canned command to do so. “Call James,” he ordered.

  He heard a series of tones as the phone obediently dialed the number for his friend from his contacts list. This is certainly different from the early days of trying to communicate while driving truck.

  “What’s up, kid?” James answered, recognizing Hugh’s number on his caller ID.

  “Hey, old man. Haven’t talked to you in awhile. Anything going on?”

  “No. Same ol’, same ol’. How about you?”

  “Had a pretty interesting day today. I picked up a hitchhiker.”

  “No kidding? Was she hot?”

  Hugh laughed at that. It was a standing joke between James and Hugh that all hitchhikers should be female and pretty. The thing is that neither of them had made a practice of picking up hitchhikers. Notwithstanding that Hugh had met James that way, they could together add up on one hand the number of people they had given rides to in their entire driving careers that now spanned a combined forty-five years.

  “You know what? Actually she was pretty hot,” Hugh answered. “But, oh wow, what a bitch. She had an attitude that wouldn’t quit. Plus, she was several days, or weeks, out from her last shower and having a clean change of clothes. I couldn’t wait to get rid of her.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  “I’m on 93, just out of Ely, headed for Burley.”

  “Leave her at that truck stop there?”

  “Yeah. She’ll be OK. It was strange, though. I picked her up between Tonopah and Ely on 6, out there in the middle of nowhere. She never did say what she was doing there, or where she was going.”

  “You’re probably better off without her. She could’a been trouble.”

  "Don't I know it," Hugh said, and then asked, “Hey, I was wondering something, You remember that truck rollover I told you about on 395 just north of Susanville?”

  “Yes, what about it?”

  “I mentioned it to Jenny. That’s her name. She seemed to have an inordinate amount of interest in the details about that accident.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It got me curious. Did you ever hear anything more about what happened? What caused the wreck?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” James replied. “They were talking about it in the driver’s lounge of that truck stop south of Redding.”

  “What were they saying?”

  “They said it was an attempted hijacking. A couple of guys by the side of the road. One faked an injury, and the truck driver stopped to help. They jumped him, and attempted to force him to drive them to Susanville where a couple more guys were supposed to join them and help hijack the truck.”

  “Wow! Déjà vu,” Hugh said, remembering his and James' hijacking experience.

  “Yeah. But the driver fought back, causing the truck to swerve off the road. After the truck slid to a stop on its side, the two hijackers ran away. You know the rest.”

  “Yes, I was there shortly after.”

  “And, here’s what’s interesting,” James said. “They would have got nothing for their efforts. The poor truck driver was hauling a load of pallets. That’s it. Just pallets.”

  “Interesting. So, there wasn’t a young girl involved in that?”

  “If there was, nobody said anything about it. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Listen, Hugh, be careful out there. Word around the drivers’ lounges is that there is a rash of hijackings going on right now in our part of the country.”

  When his long-time mentor called him “Hugh” instead of “kid” or “youngun” Hugh knew to take him seriously.

  “OK, James. By the way, where are you?”

  “I had a delivery in Salt Lake City, and I’m headed in the morning for Portland. I’ll be fairly close to you tomorrow as I go through southern Idaho.”

  “That’s cool. Maybe we can hook up. Talk to you later.”

  “Be careful now.”

  Hugh hung up his cordless headset on a hook he had glued to his dash for that purpose. He had read about long-term radio frequency exposure causing cancer. He didn’t know if that was true, but he wasn’t going to take any chances by wearing the headset for a prolonged period like a lot of other drivers did.

  He mulled over what James had told him about the Susanville accident.

  There was a possibility that there was more t
o Jenny than the fact that she was just an obnoxious bitch. But, it wasn’t his problem any more. She was out of his life, and he was leaving her far behind at the steady pace of sixty miles an hour.

  Suddenly, he had to force his attention back to his driving as imminent danger loomed ahead on the road. A large, jagged chunk of retread, called an “alligator” by truckers, lay across his lane. Instinctively, Hugh slammed on the brakes, because to swerve out of his lane into oncoming traffic on this two-lane road would almost certainly have caused an accident.

  He’s seen the damage that an alligator can do to the underside of a truck, ripping out airlines and tearing up other equipment. Those big chunks of tire weighed a whole lot more than people realized.

  As soon as he hit the brakes, everything in the sleeper went tumbling off of the upper and lower bunks, flying toward the front of the cab. Besides the usual bunk accouterments, however, this time he saw arms and legs in a tangle of old, dirty clothes fly past in his peripheral vision, accompanied by a scream.

  This whole mess finally came to rest against the front of the cab, wrapped around the gear shift lever.

  “Jenny!” Hugh yelled. “What on earth are you doing here?” He couldn’t do anything to help her because he was busy driving safely around the obstruction in the road.

  But Jenny wasn’t needing help. Angrily, she picked herself up and began beating Hugh over the head and shoulders, flailing at him with her fists.

  “Wicked witch!?” she screamed at him.

  “Bitch!?”

  “Couldn’t wait to get rid of me!?” she continued, still beating on Hugh, who was doing his best to duck and block her blows with one hand, while still trying to keep the truck on the road with the other.

  With Jenny still flailing at him, he finally got the truck under control, slowed down, and pulled over onto a wide spot on the shoulder. He jumped out of his driver’s seat, and clasped Jenny’s wrists in his own large, strong hands, pinning her arms to her sides.

  Like an insane person, she continued to struggle as Hugh forcibly set her down in the passenger seat.