FURNACE

by Muriel Gray

  Griffin snorted and wheeled around to look at him again. “Yeah? Well, that’s all you know.”

  Josh stroked the wheel with open palms and tried unsuccessfully to shift his attention from his own extraordinary sorrow to his passenger’s selfish and quite ordinary rebellious angst. He tried, but he failed, and the question that had been born on his tongue, to ask why she hated her home so much, was killed and replaced with one he really wanted an answer to.

  “How well you know the Nevins?”

  Griffin glared at him, annoyed that he was not catching the line she wanted to throw him. “Not that well. I see Alice’s man in town sometimes. He used to work for my dad.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Stuff. Handyman stuff, you know.”

  “He’s got a pretty neat house for a handyman.”

  She shrugged, then bit at a fingernail, watching him from the corner of her eyes. “Did Alice see it happen… you know…?”

  Josh was irritated but unsurprised by her dodging of his question. But then, why should a young girl know or care about the economic ratio of job to living standards? This was clearly a privileged young girl whose dad would pick her up in his car from a variety of expensive leisure pursuits, whose mom would surf the malls with her picking out clothes, who would run away from home for a while, and return triumphant and defiant to settle down with some wealthy neighbourhood boy whom she would always consider not good enough for her. Girls like Griffin thought of themselves as enigmatic and mysterious. Josh knew they were easier to read than one of Sim’s tabloids, and considerably less interesting. He bit his lip and remembered the shape Alice Nevin made with her mouth as her child had the life crushed out of it by rubber as unforgiving as stone.

  “Yeah. She saw it.”

  “Oh my God.”

  Josh was tired of this. He wanted to talk to Eddie, to another adult who shared his past, who knew Elizabeth and who could understand this nightmare without having the emotions spelled out on a billboard.

  “You want to go back there now and listen to some music?” Griffin looked at him, and for the first time it occurred to Josh that she was weighing up how safe it was to be in his company. He could see it in her eyes, which were narrower now, scanning his face for clues.

  “Sure.”

  She unclipped her belt, climbed back into the sleeper and fumbled around in her pack. After a few moments she found the sleeper cabin light, and Josh heard the hissing rhythmic buzz that was escaping from her headphones. A glance in the mirror confirmed that Griffin had settled herself on his bed as comfortably as a cat finding a patch of sunshine, the Walkman and one spare cassette clutched in her fist. He brought his shoulders up to his ears to release the tension that made them ache, then shifted down and stepped on the gas. Eddie was somewhere up ahead, and even the sight of his taillights would go a long way to help soothe the loneliness that had overwhelmed him once again.

  Jezebel responded to her master’s command, and as she roared southwards, the delicate spring grasses that her headlights picked out along the highway’s edge bent and swayed in her wake like fearful worshipers of some great, powerful beast.

  13

  John Pace flicked on his desk lamp and fingered the pile of mundane papers on his desk. He hated taking work home. In the kitchen he could hear his wife scolding the youngest boy and he ran a hand over his tired face in anticipation of his inevitable involvement.

  A bitch of a day. He was weary, sure, but more than that. He was afraid. He knew it would be sorted by now. Well, as good as. But what about his part? Did they think he’d messed up?

  He was a good policeman. He cared. But right now, as the commotion from the kitchen worked its way along the hall towards the closed door of his study, he knew that sometimes caring wasn’t the same as protecting. And despite the approaching raucous cries of his son, he loved him as he loved them all, and knew that he should have thought a whole lot harder about protection when he’d had the chance.

  The door burst open and the tear-stained face of a six-year-old boy squinted up at him.

  “It was my Spiderman, Daddy, and Noah took it.”

  “Well, I guess you just have to learn to share, don’t you, Ethan?”

  The little boy opened his mouth and let out a wail once more, turned and ran back to the kitchen, leaving Pace’s door wide open. He watched his wife’s arms reach out into the hall from the kitchen and scoop up the boy in a firm but loving embrace, and as he stood up and quietly pushed his own door to block the image, he closed his eyes and put a hand over his mouth.

  Sharing. Even if it could, if the world could somehow be made able to understand, Furnace would never share what it had. Never.

  By the time their two trucks peeled away from each other, Eddie Shanklin had already decided that he would drop his load quicker than a chilli diarrhoea, relocate his friend and shadow him up the interstate. Screw getting a decent load back north. They had talked for nearly four hours straight and Eddie knew Josh was in trouble. He wouldn’t be hard to find. The dispatcher who gave Josh his next load would tell Eddie where he was bound on the way back through Nashville and he’d take it from there. The most important thing was that Josh had someone to talk to. Sounded like he was going through it.

  When Jezebel had sneaked up on Eddie’s Kenworth, a half hour after they’d first made contact, Eddie had practically hugged himself that his buddy had tucked in at his tail. He was so ready to laugh, itching to drag out some of the running gags they’d shared for years and dust them off. But in the first hour, an hour in which Eddie had barely spoken except for the occasional “shitman!” or “no way!” it became clear to him that laughter was not on the menu.

  It had often struck him how much the dark interior of a moving truck was like a confessional box, but never more so than tonight. If Josh had said the things he’d told Eddie on the radio face to face, they would have both been embarrassed.

  There was a liberation of expression that outstripped even alcohol in the simple act of staring ahead, mesmerized by the darkness and the lights that pierced it, speaking into a small square of black plastic in your hand that had no eyes to accuse you.

  It broke Eddie up to think of Josh suffering like he was. Eddie liked Elizabeth. In fact, he liked her a lot. If Josh hadn’t gotten in there first, well, who knows what might have happened that day they’d met her, watched her hollering for some deadbeat boyfriend competing in a drag race near Cleveland.

  They’d followed her like beggars all day, finally charming her sufficiently with some terrible gags at the hot dog stall to read the doubt about her circumstances written in her eyes. She’d liked them both, and yeah, maybe it could have been Eddie who’d won. At least he liked to fool himself that way. But he knew the truth was that in any competition for women, Josh’s boyish white grin and his body that looked like it was worked out at a five-thousand-dollar-a-year health club instead of getting the way it was just by pulling on tarp ropes would knock Eddie out of the game before it started.

  Eddie made up for it with a wicked mouth and a preponderance for instant action in any situation that made even the most politically correct women recognize some unhealthy atavistic desire to be protected. And he had a woman that he wanted to protect right now.

  She was waiting for him in Indiana, with an emerald engagement ring on her finger so big Eddie thought it looked like she’d wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and got some spinach caught there. But she thought it was the best thing she’d seen, and she was going to be his wife.

  Looked like Elizabeth wasn’t so simple to please. Eddie hadn’t known what to say about the whole mess. About the accident with the kid, that could be dealt with. He understood. Happened sometimes, and you just had to ride with it. He’d heard worse, even though he reckoned Josh’s story about the woman he’d thought had pushed it was the damnedest shit, and most likely and tragically a sleep-at-the-wheel dream. He’d caught Josh’s tone, though, when he’d started to suggest it, and backe
d right off.

  If that’s what Josh said happened, then maybe it did. Who was he to say different? But about Josh’s own baby? That stank like old fish. Eddie wanted time to think some more, which was why he was going to shadow him. He could tell that even though Josh had said his hitcher was up the back listening to music, he’d been reluctant about some details, holding back just a little. Well, next time they talked she would be gone, and by then Eddie would have figured out what best to say.

  Yeah. He would think of something to say. It might not be right. But it would be something.

  The lights of Nashville were dismal through a drizzling rain that had started fifty miles back and hadn’t let up. Josh gazed at the orange and white twinkling pinpoints of light, watched vacantly as the rain on the windshield blurred them to ragged, ill-defined spheres until the wipers made them sharp again with a jerky half circuit. Despite the depressing effect the rain was having on the home of country music, Josh felt better just for having spoken to Eddie. Not healed, but relieved temporarily of the unspeakable loneliness that had overwhelmed him when Elizabeth refused to take his calls. Eddie had saved him for now. Otherwise, Nashville might have finished him off.

  The route to the downtown truck stop was a melancholy journey through tangled intersections lined with crummy billboards. Some music company had taken space above Josh’s exit to inform him that Ellis Freedman had a new album out called Lovin’.

  Ellis Freedman looked pretty pleased about it and pointed at Josh with a four-foot-long finger as he leant on a cherry red guitar. The rest of Nashville surrounding the billboard looked a little less pleased.

  As Josh pulled Jezebel up at the lights, halting them at the bottom of the exit ramp, he turned his head to look for the first time at his recumbent passenger. Griffin was lying with her back to him, arms huddled to her chest, the Walkman earphones knocked askew as she’d turned in her sleep. As he watched she began to stir, woken either by the first real absence of motion, or perhaps by the unconscious knowledge that eyes were roaming over her sleeping form. She arched her back, lifted her arms above her head and stretched with a feline fluidity. Josh watched until she sat up and turned sleepily to face him, rubbing her hands in her hair like she was washing it.

  “Where are we?”

  “Nashville. Nearly at the truck stop.”

  She blinked, crossed her legs and put her hands on her hips. “Shit. I must have been asleep for hours.”

  Josh continued to look at her until she unhooked the earphones from her neck and smiled. “I think those lights are trying to tell you something.”

  Josh looked ahead at the green light, threw the truck into gear and mined off. He’d barely reached fourth when Griffin climbed forward and took her seat with a satisfied bounce.

  “Did you talk to your friend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s important to talk sometimes, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “Josh?”

  He looked across at her, surprised at the intimacy that using his name bestowed on her voice.

  “Yeah?”

  Griffin was staring at her lap, fiddling with the white knots of cotton that protruded from her drawstring sweatshirt. “I’m really sorry I was so mean to you, you know, in the restaurant. Guess I was edgy about leaving town and everything. I didn’t know that… well, I mean, you’d had a rough time and I didn’t know…”

  “It’s okay. I was out of line.”

  Griffin nodded, brushed at her lap in an embarrassed way, then sat upright and rubbed at her head again. “Is this a real truck stop you’re heading for?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, I know some people say ‘truck stop’ and it’s, like, just a McDonald’s where there’s maybe a truck or two but mostly regular people in cars, families with kids and shit…”

  Josh laughed, turning to her with a wide grin that made her stop midsentence with the brilliance of it.

  “And you want a bunch of mean, hairy-assed truckers instead.”

  She returned his laugh. “Well, it’d just be kinda neat to say I’d been in one, you know?”

  Josh looked back out at the miserable night. “It’s a real truck stop. I think you might be disappointed.”

  “Can I get a bus from there or something?”

  Josh nodded. “Sure. But it’s three A.M. I ain’t lettin’ you go off by yourself until the town gets goin’ with normal folk.”

  He threw her a mischievous look.

  “It’s them I’m thinkin’ of. If there’s more of them about they can defend themselves.”

  Griffin tried to look offended, but she settled down into her seat with a half smile and said nothing.

  The downtown TA in Nashville was a big one. As they roared into the lot and drove slowly between row after row of growling trucks, Griffin sat forward and peered out the window with her hands on the dash. Everything was scaled up here. The parking bays were gigantic diagonal slashes on a prairie of asphalt, the trucks manoeuvring between them like grazing dinosaurs, and as Josh inched Jezebel forward searching for a space, the CB was busier than at any time on the road. Even through the closed windows of the cab, the noise of hundreds of idling diesel engines was tremendous, and Griffin stared at it all as though they had landed on Mars.

  “Wow!”

  “Yeah. Wow is right. Looks like all the good spaces are gone. Let me guess. Another night parked next to a reefer.”

  “What’s a reefer? Is it bad?”

  “It’s a refrigerated trailer, and the engine has to be kept on all night. Get the picture?”

  “Noisy.”

  “You get used to it. Think of the poor guy who’s haulin’ it.” Josh tutted a couple of times when what looked like a space turned out to be just a truck parked a few feet back from the other noses, until he spotted an empty bay, predictably between two reefers, did a job of backing up that he knew was impressing his passenger, and brought the rig to a halt with a hiss of the brakes.

  “Pass me the book.” He indicated the black folder, and this time it was passed without comment or protest.

  Josh scratched at his paperwork as Griffin waited silently beside him, staring out at the forest of trucks that glinted in the rain, reflecting what little light there was in the badly illuminated lot. Josh could tell she was nervous, and for the first time since their peculiar meeting he felt a pang of protectiveness for this inexperienced girl, on the run and most probably from some imagined family slight that would be repaired by a hasty homecoming the first time her trip got difficult.

  He spoke to her with his head down, still busy writing. “I’ll finish this and then we can get somethin’ to eat.”

  She perked up, but her voice was higher, indicating a certain nervousness. She was young, she’d never been in a truck stop before. She was a girl.

  “Sure. Great.”

  Josh scribbled a few more lines, fussed about with some bits of rogue paper, then snapped the book shut, passed it back to her and stood up.

  “Okay. Let’s hit the Hilton.”

  “There’s a Hilton here?”

  Josh looked at her, saw she was serious, shook his head and then laughed. She laughed too, although in her laughter there was a mix of embarrassment, anxiety and something else. It was the something else that stayed with Josh as he led her from the truck towards the restaurant, feeling her trotting at his heel as he walked along the line of trucks, unable to keep up with his stride.

  Josh was reading the weather page at the back of USA Today when Griffin spoke conspiratorially through a mouthful of potato. “Do they think I’m… you know?”

  He looked up at her, then across at the men she was indicating with a twitch of her head. Across the smoky restaurant, its air thick with the smell of grease and diesel, two bored truckers, identically bearded and dressed, their bellies pressing against the table as though they were protective air bags, sat in a booth gazing absently at Josh and Griffin. When Josh looked up, one of them nodded in ack
nowledgement and gazed gloomily down at his coffee. Josh looked back at Griffin.

  “Naw.”

  He got back to his paper. Griffin continued to chew and looked around her like a spy in a comedy movie. There wasn’t much to look at. She’d acted scared when she first came in, skirting too obviously around some young black drivers who were hanging around the entrance smoking, wearing long thick oilskins like firemen. They threw Griffin and Josh a long look that was interrupted and diffused by that look being returned by Josh. Griffin had stepped closer to Josh and stayed at his shoulder while he bought some stuff. For a few moments he’d hovered around a machine that sold telephone cards, looking like he was making up his mind about something, until finally, to Griffin’s relief, he’d made a decision, bought a twenty-dollar card followed by a newspaper, which he read as they walked into the restaurant. There were only a half dozen truckers eating, and far from being threatening, the scene was heartbreaking. The men looked eroded, worn down like river pebbles. None of them looked like bums—they were neat and relatively clean—but it looked like there had once been more to them all than this, that something bigger had been ground away, almost imperceptibly, until they were down to their last layer.

  There were phones in every booth by the wall but only one person was using them, a man sitting in the corner, his posture as upright as if he were a general taking a call from the president. Griffin watched him for a while as he spoke an occasional quiet word without any change in expression, until he hung up, curled a finger around his coffee mug and stared ahead. No one was laughing or even talking cheerfully. The only sounds of life came occasionally from the kitchen, when the diners looked up expectantly to see if the joke would spill out into the restaurant and involve them. When it didn’t they returned to their meals and the job of contemplating the road ahead, gazing out the dark, rain-stained windows.

  Griffin’s surveillance was broken by a waitress sauntering up to Josh’s elbow with a jug of coffee.

  “Need a top up, honey?”