Crimson Highway

by David Wickenhauser

  “The second call was their instructions for me to get you to stop to help with their flat tire by the side of the road.”

  “What about that whole episode with the state trooper?” Hugh asked.

  “My uncle’s idea. He’d had it all planned out by the time he met me at the travel plaza that evening outside the women’s restroom. I argued with him, and told him I wasn’t going to do it. That’s when he hit me, and threatened me with harming Jimmy. They were almost able to pull that one off.”

  “Yeah, except for the part where your uncle put a gun to your head. What was that all about?”

  She told Hugh that even though she knew that her uncle’s obsessive hatred of truck drivers had gotten worse over the years, she was surprised herself when he pulled that stunt.

  “I don’t know. I guess he really truly is going nuts over this,” she surmised.

  “I’m curious about something else,” Hugh said. “How many times have you done this?”

  “You are my first,” she answered. “I guess I’m not very good at it, huh.”

  “What about now? Where do you stand with all this?”

  “Hugh, I’m honestly confused. Torn. You know what I mean?”

  Hugh shook his head no.

  “It’s just that I’ve had a lifetime of hating the person who murdered my dad,” she said. “But, meeting you has shown me that at least some truck drivers can be decent guys who wouldn’t do something like that.”

  Hugh didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t the guy Jenny was thinking he was. Or, actually, ironically, he was exactly the guy who she had been thinking of all these years. He was torn, himself. What he did know was that he was going to have to deal with it sooner, rather than later.

  “Jenny, you have to decide. I’m not sure where to go with this myself. But, I can’t just drop you off here if your uncle really is nuts, and will harm you if he gets his hands on you again.”

  “On the other hand,” he went on, “I can’t keep you with me if every time my back is turned you are plotting with your uncle and his friends to hijack my truck. You see what I’m getting at?”

  “OK, Hugh. I’ll make you a promise. If I can stay with you awhile longer, I promise I won’t have any more contact with my uncle. You saw me turn off that cell phone.”

  “Alright. That will have to do for now,” Hugh responded. “In the meantime, how about if we call the cops and just lay it all out for them. Maybe they …”

  Jenny immediately stiffened at this suggestion, panic beginning to come over her. “No! Please! Not that! You don’t know what my uncle might do to my brother if he finds out I’ve snitched on him.”

  Hugh backed off. “OK. We’ll just play this one on our own for now. See what happens. Maybe they’ll give up.”

  Jenny looked skeptical, but she nodded her agreement.

  Darkness was now coming upon them, and Hugh’s stomach told him it was dinner time. He drew the curtains so he could turn on his interior lights, and still have some privacy from outside observers.

  Then he pulled a couple of frozen dinners out of his freezer to heat up in the microwave oven.

  After dinner, he gathered their trash. He had completely forgotten about James in all the excitement of the day. He knew that James was long gone by now, and they couldn’t hook up, but he wanted to let him know all that had happened. So, he needed to make a phone call in private.

  “I’ll take the trash out,” he told Jenny, grabbing his cell phone. “I’ll walk you to the women’s restroom in the driver’s lounge, and then wait for you outside.”

  He put on the yellow, reflective safety vest that all drivers are required to wear while at the terminal, and gave her a spare one to put on. Then he led her to the driver’s lounge, where he swiped his CommData card that unlocked the main door for them.

  When he saw that Jenny had made it to the women’s facility, and had gone inside, he dialed James’ number on his cell phone. He tapped around on the phone’s screen until he found James’ name in his contacts list, and tapped his name to dial the call.

  He didn’t have the wireless headset with him because he didn’t want to be too obvious about it.

  After several rings with no answer, Hugh knew that James probably had his phone off for the night. He sent him a quick text to let him know that he was at Salt Lake City, and that he would be headed for Reno the next morning.

  Jenny came out just as he finished.

  “I just need to go in real quick,” he told her. “Wait for me here.”

  After finishing in the men’s restroom, Hugh walked Jenny back to the truck.

  “We’d better turn in,” he said, once they were there. “We’ll be getting a fairly early start tomorrow. You know the routine by now.”

  Jenny nodded, and climbed up into the upper bunk. She didn’t have anything to say to him, so he offered nothing back in return.

  With the lights off, and everybody settled down, Hugh lay in his bunk appreciating that he finally had time to think about what had happened over the past couple of days.

  The main thing that concerned him right now was what to do about this complicated creature that had been so violently thrust into his life. What to do about her? he wondered. He didn't even know what to think about her. What a beautiful, but complex, piece of work she is.

  Hugh thought, hoped, that the next couple of days would play themselves out, and offer a natural solution to the dilemma of what to do with someone he couldn’t trust to stay with him. But, at the same time, she was someone he couldn’t in all conscience toss out onto the highway to fend for herself.

  As usually happened, sleep overtook him rather quickly, and he was out for the night.

  A bird-chirp tone on his Qualcomm awakened him right at dawn. It was a message from his dispatcher telling him that the relay load was in the yard, and available for him to hook up.

  Hugh sat up in his bunk, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and made a silent resolution that this was going to be a good day.

  “Up and at ’em, Jenny. Daylight’s awastin’,” he yelled in the direction of the top bunk.

  He heard Jenny stirring and, like the other day, he made a pretense of needing to do something in the front of the cab in order to give her the chance to climb down from the bunk, and get herself into order.

  They took care of business in the terminal driver’s lounge—walking there and back with no conversation between them. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, Hugh had to admit that the awkwardness was understandable. Both of them had to figure out what to do about this situation. And, they had to do it fairly quickly. So, there was a lot of pressure on both of them, and stress between them.

  By 7 am, they were sitting down with a quick bowl of cereal for breakfast. It was not the comfy arrangement of their first night together, sitting side-by-side on his bunk. Hugh sat on his bunk, using his pullout tray as a table, as usual. Jenny, however, chose to hold her bowl in her lap while sitting in her passenger seat.

  “I’ll clean up a bit here, and then go look for our loaded trailer,” he told her when they had both finished with their cereal. He was amused at how easily the “our” came to his lips in talking about what they were going to do today, like they were a team.

  Jenny nodded, and busied herself puttering around, arranging her own few things for the day’s journey.

  Hugh ducked out of the truck for a few minutes to scout out his next load. When he returned, he cranked up the engine and headed over to the loaded-trailer lot.

  “There it is,” he said, while he turned his truck sharply in front of the trailer and backed up to it. He aimed the fifth-wheel on his truck under the trailer’s front apron and engaged the locking jaws around the trailer’s king pin. He felt and heard the satisfying, solid connection.

  As a final test, he tried to pull the truck away from the trailer. But, the trailer’s parking brakes and lowered landing gear prevented the truck from budging. “Good,” he said.

  He glanced over a
t Jenny, and noticed she appeared to have a spark of interest in what he had just done.

  “That’s called the tug test,” he explained. “Sometimes, even though we think we’ve got a solid hookup, we really didn’t get a good lock on the king pin from the jaws. So we try to give the trailer a jerk to see if it disengages from the truck. It rarely does happen. Has never happened to me, in fact. But, we definitely wouldn’t want to head down the road with a trailer that could suddenly come unhooked.”

  Hugh started to do a quick pre-trip, but then had an idea.

  “Hey, Jenny, can you do me a favor?” he asked her.

  Jenny nodded, curiosity showing in her expression as to what she could do for him.

  “I like to start my day with a clean windshield and mirrors. Would you mind giving them a wipe for me?”

  Jenny nodded again, and Hugh showed her where he kept his spray bottle of window cleaner and rags. She then set herself to the task of doing a thorough job of cleaning all his glass. She looked like she was enjoying it.

  Hugh discovered that watching her do that job was a pleasant experience for him—on a couple of levels. He appreciated seeing her engage herself in something other than her own troubles, and he knew that it would be good for her to have something to do.

  But, he also had to admit that he enjoyed watching this young lady as she stretched her lean, fit, shapely body to reach all of the windshield area and mirrors.

  With all their chores completed, and both of them situated in their seats, Hugh punched in his Qualcomm macros, entered their destination into his GPS, and cranked up the diesel engine once again.

  They were finally on the highway headed west out of town when he heard, “Hugh?”

  He looked over at his rider, thinking that was the first word she had uttered all morning. She was looking right at him.

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks,” was all she said.

  “Thanks?” he replied.

  “Yes. Thanks for being such a decent guy,” she said. “And thanks for giving me a job to do.”

  “Oh, sure. No problem,” he said, unsure of where she was going with this.

  “No, really. It’s the first time since getting to ride with you that I felt like I was not just a leach … or worse,” she explained.

  Hugh looked at her, then nodded.

  “Besides, I hope you got a good look,” she teased.

  Hugh deeply reddened, and was extremely embarrassed that she had caught him looking at her while she was doing the cleaning job.

  “Well, I, uh … didn’t think you noticed,” he stammered.

  “Don’t worry about it. A girl always knows … and appreciates,” she said, smiling at him.

  This definitely removed a lot of the tension that had built up over the night and morning. It was good to see her smiling, and even flirting a bit.

  “So, where are we headed today?” she asked.

  “All they’ve got on the board for me today is dropping this load this evening in Reno, actually just outside Reno, and then it could be anywhere from there,” he replied. “It should be about a nine-hour drive, with a couple of stops and such. Straight across on 80. Nothing much exciting about it.”

  Leastwise, I hope so, he thought.

  “We won’t have a pickup until the next morning, so we’ll park for the night at a little truck stop I know of that’s near our delivery location.”

  “OK,” she said.

  The miles rolled under them. The atmosphere in the cab was a quiet one, but comfortable—much more comfortable than Hugh would have thought, given their tense evening and morning.

  Jenny, again, was the first to break the long period of silence. “Hugh?”

  “Yes, dear?” Hugh responded in a playful parody of a husband and wife having a conversation. He had the sudden thought, however, that she might not have thought of it as a joke.

  “That’s a good one,” Jenny said, laughing.

  Hugh was relieved by her response, and waited for her to go on.

  “I was just wondering if you had any more truck driving stories to tell,” she said.

  “I’ve got tons of them. You sure you want to hear another one?” Hugh asked her.

  “Yeah. How about how you learned to drive one of these things?”

  “That’s something I’ll never forget,” he said.

  “Tell it, please.”

  “Basically,” Hugh said. “I got thrown into the deep end of the pool. And it was either sink or swim.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s when I first got the ride with James,” Hugh started. “It was my second day on his truck, the morning after our big fi … well … it was the second day.”

  “When was that?” Jenny asked.

  “About fifteen years ago,” Hugh said.

  Chapter Nine

  Fifteen Years Ago - Second Day with James

  It was a beautiful morning to be on the road heading north on Interstate 5, the major freeway that runs up the West Coast linking Mexico with Canada. This west side highway bypasses all the major cities and towns in the southern portion of the Central Valley of California.

  From Wheeler Ridge almost to Stockton, it’s just two hundred fifty miles of farming and ranch country, punctuated by the occasional travel center and drivers’ services situated on the crossroads where connecting highways feed off to the east to join Highway 99, the major arterial highway that runs right up through the middle of the populous Central Valley.

  There were also a number of industrial parks and distribution center complexes along this route, where corporate planners take advantage of lower tax rates and government incentives to locate there.

  It was to one of these industrial park areas that James was heading right now. He knew of one that was closed and abandoned. It had acres and acres of pavement with nobody using it right now, and no obstructions. Perfect for what he had in mind.

  So, just as Hugh thought that he would be settling down for a good long run to Portland, he noticed James hitting his right turn signal to exit on the next offramp.

  “What’s up?” Hugh asked, wondering if James needed a jug break.

  “You’ll see,” James answered.

  James slowed the truck, working the gears in a series of expert down-shifts. At the end of the ramp he came to a stop, then turned right. Another right, and he was entering the abandoned industrial area.

  He stopped the truck on the edge of the parking lot, facing the vast, open, paved area before them. He placed the gearshift in neutral, yanked the parking brake knob, and then just sat there for a couple of minutes.

  He gave Hugh an enigmatic look, then placed the gearshift in third gear, released the brake, started off heading straight across the huge lot, accelerated some more, shifted, accelerated, shifted again, accelerated some more and shifted again.

  He reversed the process at the halfway point, slowed down, downshifted several times, and then brought the truck to a stop at the far end of the huge lot. He turned it around facing the empty expanse of pavement again.

  He shut down, yanked the parking brake knob, opened his door and stepped out.

  Hugh watched all this intently, with his curiosity growing with every moment.

  “Out,” James said to Hugh from outside the passenger side of the truck.

  Hugh wondered what was going on. Did he do something to offend James, and James wants him gone?

  Hugh opened the door, and stepped nervously out of the truck, tensed and ready for whatever James had in mind for him. He had been teasing James, calling him “old man,” but he actually had to admit he had doubts about whether he could take him after seeing him in action during the big Wheeler Ridge fight.

  And, besides, he now considered James a friend, and the last thing he wanted to do was fight his friend.

  Once Hugh was standing on the tarmac, James motioned for him to walk around the front of the truck. He then pointed at the driver’s side door and said, “Up.” James then walked back over t
o the other side, and climbed up into the passenger seat.

  “Relax, Hugh,” James said. “You look all tense.”

  “Oh, well, it’s nothing. I just thought … forget it,” he said.

  James reached into his pocket, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and laid it on the dashboard. “Here’s twenty that says you, with your cocky, smart aleck ‘old man’ attitude, can’t get it into sixth gear before getting to the other side of this lot. I know you’ve been watching me closely ever since getting into my truck. You’re a smart, capable kid. Let’s see what you can do. I’ll give you a hint to get going. Start out in third gear.”

  Easy, Hugh thought. Anybody can drive one of these things.

  Hugh turned the starter, making sure he had the clutch pushed in and the gearshift in neutral. He knew that much.

  He reviewed in his mind the sequence that he had seen James do many, many times, then he grabbed the gearshift knob and pulled the shift lever into what he hoped was third gear. Satisfied that he had it in the right gear, he slowly let out the clutch, pressing lightly on the accelerator pedal. The truck tried to lurch forward, but promptly stalled, killing the engine.

  “You break my drive shaft, Bud, and I’m going to rip it off and bounce it off your head,” James warned.

  This time Hugh didn’t return James’ threat with a threat of his own. He had enough to think about already.

  He put the gearshift back into neutral, pressed in the clutch, and cranked the engine again. Before Hugh could put the gearshift into third, James cut in, “What have you seen me do countless times before starting off?”

  Hugh thought about it, going over in his mind James’ actions in the driver’s seat. “Oh, yeah,” he said, and pushed in the red knob that released the tractor’s parking brake.

  He placed the gearshift in third gear, and again slowly released the clutch while gingerly applying pressure to the accelerator pedal. This time the truck moved forward. Hugh applied more pressure to the accelerator pedal. The truck wasn’t going very fast, but he saw the RPMs on the tachometer rising dangerously close to the red zone.