by Gail Sattler
He’d suggested to Gwen that, rather than crawling straight into the bunk, she ride for awhile and wind down. Even though she was exhausted from her first long stint of driving alone, she took his advice and was now sitting beside him staring out the side window in silence.
“I see you brought a sleeping bag and your own pillow.”
She nodded but didn’t turn her head. “Yes. I was supposed to get the top bunk, and I didn’t want to use Jeff’s personal stuff.”
He’d noticed exactly what she brought, since he had helped carry everything from the side of the road into his cab. Besides the sleeping bag and pillow, she had exactly one duffel bag, her purse, and a camera. He didn’t know a woman could travel without half a dozen suitcases. He’d carried more bags of food from Chad’s fridge than Gwen’s personal effects.
“I guess by now Chad is back home and everyone knows what happened. Do you want to e-mail your family and tell them everything is okay?” At least he hoped everything was okay. She’d been so quiet he didn’t know what she was thinking, and he didn’t know why it mattered to him what she thought. Gwen was just another driver, and this was just another job, and very soon it would all be over. Life would be back to normal and he would be alone in his truck once again.
She turned her head. “That’s a great idea! I’d forgotten you could do that.”
“The laptop is in the lower compartment, on the same side as the fridge.”
He didn’t want to interrupt, nor did he want to intrude. She focused all her attention on the computer while she typed, then turned it off.
“I’m going to sleep now. Is it okay if I tuck this under the seat? I’ll sleep better knowing you won’t have to crawl under the bunk to pull it back out again.”
Lionel sighed. “I guess this is one of those things that we knew would come up when we talked yesterday.” He waited for her to respond, but she didn’t. “We’re probably going to have some awkward moments since we’re going to be in close quarters for a long time. I want to be sure we respect each other’s privacy and personal space. If you ever want some time alone when we’re moving, just go to the back and close the curtain, and don’t worry about hurting my feelings or anything like that. I don’t want to invade your privacy, and that includes going underneath the bunk if you’re on top of it, sleeping or not. I trust you’d have the same courtesy for me. If that curtain is closed, it stays closed unless there’s an emergency.”
He glanced quickly at her, then returned his attention to the road.
“That sounds good. I think I’m going to go to sleep now. The bunk is easy to take down, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it works on a hydraulic mechanism. Just undo the clips. They’re easy to figure out. See how it’s done?”
“Yes, I can figure it out. Thanks.”
The bunk thumped slightly as it settled into place. The curtain slid closed, and the rasp of the Velcro announced the finality of the separation.
He had wanted to say good night or something but couldn’t figure out exactly what to say. Now he’d missed his chance.
Lionel reached for the CD player, but his hand froze before he touched the play button. The heavy curtain was an excellent sound barrier, but he didn’t know how effective it would be against the music. Often he heard music through the walls of his apartment when he was trying to sleep. Since he kept such an irregular schedule, he didn’t have the right to ask his neighbors to turn their music down, especially during the day when most people were at work. They probably weren’t even aware when he was home, since he was there so seldom. He suspected that, despite the claims of the salesman as to the soundproofing quality of the curtain, it still wasn’t as good a sound barrier as a wall. He tried to recall if he’d heard music in the background when Gwen was driving and he was sleeping. He hadn’t heard a thing, but he didn’t know if that was because she had had it on so quiet or if he’d slept that heavily. Somehow he doubted she’d put the music on at all.
He made a mental note to test exactly at what volume they could have the music playing when driving so as not to disturb whoever was sleeping at the time. He felt guilty now knowing that Gwen had driven most of the night in the boring silence.
Since Lionel had agreed to not touch the curtain once it had been closed, he left the music off, leaving him with only his thoughts for company.
On any trip, he did a lot of thinking while he drove, sometimes about important things, sometimes not. This time he could think only of Gwen. He wasn’t sure he liked that.
For the past few years he hadn’t thought much about women. After his experience with Sharon, he knew he would never get married, and because of his unpredictable schedule, he seldom dated. Except for the few times he wanted a little female companionship, there was no point.
Now he had no choice but to spend days and days with a woman he’d just barely met. Nothing would have adequately prepared him for this. The only consolation was that Gwen couldn’t have foreseen this happening either and was equally caught off guard.
All was silent from behind, making him wonder if she was sleeping well. He didn’t know if he would be able to hear the slight creaking of the bunk when she moved, but since he heard nothing, he assumed she was sleeping soundly.
Lionel frowned and focused his attention on the road. The only thing that should concern him was that she be well rested in order to drive safely.
He thought back to their previous conversations. In that short space of time, he’d seen many sides of Chad’s niece. She had an easy sense of humor, yet there was nothing funny about the way she confronted those morons who had all but accused her of being a truck stop lizard. She had demonstrated a confidence and strength of character he didn’t see often in a man or woman. She had shared her faith in the strangest way he’d ever seen, but he had a feeling that, one day, her words would come back to at least one person in that room, and the firmness of her conviction could make a difference.
Even though she had only taken up driving a truck on a dare, she showed no lack of respect for the profession. Instead, she treated him as an equal, despite the differences in education level between her years of university to obtain her teaching degree and his minimal pass in high school. He had judged her unfairly, assuming that because she was a woman, she couldn’t do the job.
He was wrong. The woman had moxie. She wasn’t a bad driver either. She was also adapting well to life on the road.
He continued to drive in quiet, checking his watch more often than he ever had before, wondering how long she needed to sleep. Finally, after six hours and forty-seven minutes of driving alone, the rasp of the Velcro sounded behind him.
“Hi,” he said, knowing he was smiling much more than he should have been. “Sleep well?” A sign ahead indicated a rest stop coming up, so he began to slow down.
She smiled back as she slid into the seat and buckled her seatbelt. He forced his attention to the road.
“Yes, I did. I must have been more tired than I thought. I didn’t hear a thing. That bunk is much softer than I figured it would be. I was out like a light. It sure feels strange to be waking up at this time. I feel like eating breakfast, but it’s nearly supper time.”
“Most truck stops have bacon and eggs on the menu ‘round the clock.”
She scrunched up her nose, which on a woman should have been cute, but when Gwen did it, she only looked miffed at his suggestion. “That’s too greasy. I like something more healthy for breakfast.”
“Don’t start that again.”
Gwen laughed but didn’t comment.
Lionel pulled into the stop without being asked. Her little smile as she ran out of the truck for the amenities building did something funny in his stomach, but he passed it off as not having eaten for awhile. When she returned, he was already digging into the fridge.
“Let’s eat now,” he said. “I think I’m hungry too.”
Lionel made coffee while Gwen carried the bag of sandwiches to the picnic table. When she didn’t
comment on the lack of tableware he considered teasing her about it, but when they stopped to pray, he no longer felt like fooling around.
They ate in silence, and Lionel didn’t miss the conversation. He felt comfortable with Gwen, more comfortable than he’d felt with anyone in many, many years. They didn’t need to fill the silence with meaningless words.
They both chose the same moment to stand, clean up the mess, and return to the truck. Lionel drove only as far as the next truck stop, where they fueled. When they were done, they went inside the restaurant for a cup of coffee. The sun was setting, and from here they would be driving most of the night without stopping, except to switch drivers.
Lionel sat back, cradling the cup in his palms as Gwen pulled a scrap of paper out of her pocket then plopped her purse on the table. She pulled out a calculator, a ruler, a pencil, and her driving logbook, then started writing. She checked back and forth from the paper to the logbook, drawing little dots and making notes in the logbook. She then used the ruler to draw perfectly straight lines joining the dots.
He finally couldn’t stand it. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t look up as she pressed one finger on the page and dutifully added up all her figures. “I’m doing my logbook.”
“With a ruler and a calculator?”
She still didn’t look up. “I strive for accuracy,” she mumbled as she wrote down the total, then began to add the next column.
He peeked over at the volumes of notes she’d made, then shook his head. “You don’t need to write all that stuff down. They don’t need to know exactly how much time it took to fuel, how long it took you to eat, what you dreamed about, or anything else I’d rather not discuss. All you need to have in there are your driving hours, the hours you’ve worked but weren’t driving, off-duty hours, and time sleeping. Four things. That’s all they need to know.”
“I want to do this. Like a journal.”
He opened his mouth to protest but snapped it shut again. Teachers probably did stuff like that all the time, so it was probably second nature for her. Out on the road she would soon see such detail was unnecessary.
She pulled a separate piece of paper out of the back of her logbook, also scribbled with notes. “So up until now, you’ve driven eight hours and fifteen minutes, and I’ve driven nine and a half in this twenty-four-hour period.”
“You’ve figured out my driving time in your logbook?”
“This is pretty calculated, you know. It’s not as easy as driving a total of twenty hours, leaving a window of four hours that the truck doesn’t move. It’s different when you have to figure that once each of us has driven ten hours, we have to rest for eight in between. We can’t have an overlap where there won’t be an eight-hour break between the last time someone drove with the other having enough driving hours to fill the break. If that happens, the truck can’t move.”
She added a few more numbers to the paper. “So if you drive one and three-quarter hours tonight, that ends your legal allotment for the day. I have half an hour left, but that will bring us to midnight, where I can start on the next twenty-four-hour period, so I can keep driving. I’ve had my eight-hour break, and you haven’t.”
Lionel shook his head and stared at her. He hadn’t ever gone into such detail. He’d never needed to.
She frowned and started to draw a table on the same page. “I figure I can draw up a schedule so we can actually get twenty hours of driving between the two of us in each twenty-four-hour period, including the eight-hour breaks between, fueling the truck once a day like you said, and eating and personal time, and do it quite comfortably.”
“You’re drafting up a schedule?”
She slid the paper across the table and pointed to a chart with that day’s date and the times written down until that moment. “We can stay here in the restaurant for another half hour.” She snapped the book shut, laid her pencil down, and smiled ear to ear. “So that means we can relax and have dessert. I’m having a piece of that peach pie in the front case. With ice cream.”
Lionel didn’t comment. He’d never relaxed on schedule before. He ordered a chocolate donut.
Chapter 5
Gwen settled into the passenger seat and clicked on her seatbelt. Lionel hadn’t seemed too impressed with her attempts at making a schedule. But it was the only way she knew to accomplish the maximum allowable driving time while they had such a critical load. She would have thought that since a trucker had to live by a schedule, he’d be used to such things. Apparently not.
He didn’t speak until they’d reached highway speed, and then his voice startled her. “I’ve been thinking.”
Gwen cringed. She should have felt this coming. They hadn’t even spent one day together and already it wasn’t going to work. She stiffened her back and turned to look at him as he drove. She could see his profile in the lights of the dash. Out of nowhere the thought struck her what a handsome man he was. Not only that, but he’d been helpful and considerate. Every nice thing Uncle Chad had said about him was right. She quickly erased those thoughts from her mind as she cleared her throat. “Yes?”
“When I drive at night I usually have the music or the radio on, or even in the daytime when there’s no one to talk to. It helps fight the boredom of the long stretches. The curtain is supposed to be really soundproof. We should test it with the music and see if we can have it on without disturbing each other.”
Gwen blinked. “Uh … sure …” She glanced behind her at the bunk. Since they had known Lionel would be the next one to have a sleep, they had tucked her sleeping bag underneath, and his blankets and pillow were piled in the corner of the bunk, ready for him. She didn’t want to go there.
Gwen mentally kicked herself. If she was scared of getting in the same area as a pile of blankets, she had to have a screw loose. Without another word, she climbed into the bunk, flicked on the small light, closed the curtain, and listened.
His muffled voice drifted through the curtain. “Can you hear that?”
The constant hum of the motor was louder than the music, because she couldn’t hear a thing. “No!” she called back.
She waited a few seconds and he called out again. “How about now?”
This time she could actually hear it. It was still soft enough that it wouldn’t keep her awake. “You can make it louder. It’s still okay.”
This time she could almost make out the words, and that would disturb her. However, she didn’t want to be unrealistic. If this arrangement was going to work, she couldn’t infringe too much on his routine, and that included the volume at which he played his music.
Gwen glanced at the pile of blankets in the corner of the bunk.
She tended to sleep completely bundled up and liked to have the corner of her blanket or, in this case, sleeping bag tucked under her chin and over her ears, no matter what time of year. Because of that, she’d always had difficulty sleeping in the summer heat. Despite the summer heat, she couldn’t sleep with her ears uncovered. She didn’t know why she did it, but she couldn’t remember ever sleeping any other way. A completely unexpected bonus of her temporary summer job was that the truck was air-conditioned, so she found sleeping comfortable. She’d slept better last night in the truck than she had in the past month at home.
The only way to know if the music would disturb her would be to lie down as if she were about to really sleep.
Very slowly she unfolded Lionel’s blanket. She wasn’t going to wrap herself in his personal blanket, but she did lie down and pull just the corner of it over under her chin and over her cheek and ear, as if she were going to go to sleep.
She could still hear the music, but it would never prevent her from falling asleep. Gwen closed her eyes and snuggled her face into the fuzzy fabric and tried to imagine that she was really ready to fall asleep. It wasn’t difficult. The blanket was thick and soft, not what she figured a man’s blanket would be. Besides the soothing feel of the blanket against her face, it held a faint, spic
y, male fragrance.
Gwen smiled. She liked this fragrance, and it was familiar to her, even though she couldn’t remember from where. At first she considered that she might have dated a man who wore the same thing. She inhaled it again, then sat up with a start as she realized what it was. She’d smelled this scent from her brother’s sleeping bag when she’d borrowed it. Garrett was a very basic kind of guy, not into cologne or other trappings. What she was smelling wasn’t cologne, it was deodorant.
She pushed the blanket away and hurriedly folded it up as she called through the curtain. “That’s fine. If I was lying down to sleep, that wouldn’t bother me at all.”
Once everything was neatly back in the corner, she parted the curtain and slid back into the passenger seat, grateful that, in the dark, he couldn’t see the blush she knew was on her cheeks.
“I had that on volume level eleven. Are you sure that wouldn’t bother you?”
Heat spread into her cheeks even more as she nodded quickly. “Positive.”
“As long as you’re sure.”
Gwen turned her head, studying whatever was out the window, even though it was pitch black and she couldn’t see a thing. “I’m sure.”
They continued to chat about nothing in particular until Lionel’s allowable driving time was up. He pulled into the next rest area, but instead of just switching drivers, they decided to go for a walk and stretch their legs.
The rest area was deserted. The moon was almost full, so even with no artificial lighting except for the lights shining from the window of the amenities building, the picnic area was not in total blackout.
Gwen tapped Lionel on the arm. “Want to jog around?”
His little grin made crinkles appear in the corners of his eyes. “Do better than that. Race ya.” He took off laughing and without saying, “Go.”
Years of competing with Garrett had conditioned Gwen to shift into high gear instantly. Lionel hadn’t gone far before she bolted after him.
