The Journey Back

by Priscilla Cummings

  I had barely enough light to see under there, but I knew what I was doing. I went directly to the starter location, just under the cab, and found the two wires I needed: the large positive cable that runs to the truck battery, and the smaller wire that hooked up to the ignition system. Using the screwdriver, I crossed those two wires, hoping they would spark and fire up the engine. I tried, but no luck. Nothing. Disappointed, I finished chewing, then swallowed the chunk of candy in my mouth and tried again. This time, it worked like a champ and that old Kenworth roared to life. Made my heart jump it was so loud!

  Still hunched over, I backed out with the screwdriver in my hand and climbed up into the driver’s seat in the cab. The truck’s engine was vibrating like crazy and blowing black smoke into the air through the silver smokestacks on either side of the cab. The truck was making a beep noise, too, because the air pressure was low and you needed to build up some pressure in order to release the brakes. The brakes all run by air on those big rigs.

  Nervous, I tossed the screwdriver onto the console and sat in the seat, trying to calm my nerves by getting comfortable. I moved the seat up a little, adjusted the mirrors, and kept checking, too, to see if that trucker was coming back. When the beeping stopped, I pushed in the two circular disks on the front dash that released—to a huge burst of sound— the two parking brakes, one for the trailer and one for the tractor. I bit my lip so hard it bled a little—I could taste it—then carefully pushed down the clutch with my left foot and threw the stick shift into reverse. With my hands clenched on the steering wheel, I glanced in the rearview mirror to be sure I had room—those trucks take a lot of room when they turn—but everything looked clear, with plenty of space. So I pressed my right foot down on the accelerator and backed that big baby out of the narrow parking place like a damned pro.

  Even though it was a ten-speed truck—not a fifteen or an eighteen like the newer ones—I knew I’d go through several gears pretty fast. First gear, then second, third, fourth, and fifth. The truck was rumbling something fierce, still blowing smoke and groaning with each gear change, but that’s what they did, those trucks. They made a ton of noise, but you got used to it pretty quick.

  I wasn’t but a couple hundred yards down the exit ramp when I needed to throw the splitter so I could get the truck into sixth gear. I simply reached down to a button on the gearshift and with two fingers pulled it up. Instantly, the gears shifted and I was in sixth with no problem. By the time I pulled out onto the highway, I was launched into seventh gear with a great big smile on my face.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  MILE MARKER 72

  Out on the highway, I got that truck rolling. In hardly no time I was in ninth gear and cruising along at fifty-five miles an hour. Seemed a little fast, though, so I eased up and downshifted once, but mostly for practice. Boy, I was really in trouble now, I thought. Breaking out of prison and then stealing a truck. I smiled when I thought about it, yeah, but it wasn’t ’cause I was evil or anything. I hadn’t hurt anyone so I figured I might as well enjoy the ride.

  On the console, I noticed two things I’d passed over earlier: a pack of gum and a red Southern States cap. I didn’t want anyone to look in my window and realize it was a kid driving, so I slapped the cap on my head right away. Then I took a piece of gum, unwrapped it with one hand, and pushed it into my mouth.

  Weren’t too many cars on the road so I took my time and kept glancing at the dashboard to familiarize myself with it again. It was a dizzying array of dials and gauges. Some I could remember what they were, like the air pressure gauges. They were important ’cause, like I said, those brakes run on air and you needed to know what kind of pressure you had. I also knew about the rpm, the revolutions per minute, that the motor was making. The faster you went, the higher the rpm. You had to keep an eye on that ’cause you could burn things up if the rpm got too high.

  I checked out the fuel gauge, too, to see how much gas I had. One tank was full, the other about half. Each tank carried about 120 gallons. When gas gets as high as four dollars a gallon, it must cost pretty near a thousand dollars just to fill up the rig. No question I had plenty of gas to get me a good distance, but I was thinking I’d go just until I got to a city, or a small town, where I could park the truck and take off again. By then, the state police and everybody else would surely be on to all this.

  In fact, why didn’t I check that out? Reaching up over the rearview mirror, I flipped on the CB radio and turned to Channel 19, the truckers’ channel. As a kid, riding with my dad, I loved listening to those guys chatter back and forth.

  First thing I heard on Channel 19 made me tense up: “Hey, there, westbound, there’s a smokey ahead of you with radar . . .” A smokey—that’s a cop—and he had speed radar out. I didn’t know if that message was for me or not. Quite frankly, I didn’t know if I was headed east or west, which was pretty important. But I didn’t have a clue about the lay of the land out there in western Maryland, and even if there was a frickin’ GPS in the cab, I wouldn’t have known how to use it. But just in case it was me headed toward that smokey, I eased up on the accelerator so I wasn’t exceeding the speed limit, which I guessed was fifty-five or sixty miles an hour.

  For a long time I chewed that gum hard and focused on driving that big rig. I finally saw a big sign that said I was headed east, toward Frederick and Baltimore. Yes! I hissed to myself. That’s the direction I wanted: east. I have to say, I was really enjoying that ride. I even thought that if I didn’t become a Marine, that maybe one day I’d be a trucker instead ’cause I liked driving and I could be my own boss. You have to be sixteen to get a Class B license to drive a truck, but that was only two years away for me. I even started wondering what I was hauling in that trailer behind me, and whether it might be some kind of food, and if there was any way I could get inside to take a look.

  I was going up and down some big hills and seeing lots of pretty, open countryside with fields and stuff. I come to a town once, but I was going too fast and blew right by the exit ramp so I just kept driving. I had to downshift some to slow her down and take some mean twists and turns through that town. Almost sideswiped a guy in a station wagon and nearly rammed into a bus that was going too slow. But all in all, I did pretty good. And let me tell you, driving that truck through traffic was better a hundred times over than any video game I ever played in my life.

  Once I got outside of town on the open highway, I opened up and put some miles on that odometer. More big hills, then a mountain—Polish Mountain it was called. I wondered if that was some kind of a joke, only the sign for it looked legit. I dropped down to sixth gear and kept to the right lane, pulling twenty to twenty-five miles per hour up the entire incline. I cruised down the other side in the same gear, but with the brakes on, too. Easy, I thought. I could do just about anything with this truck. The problem would be police after me as soon as that trucker got done eating his biscuits.

  When I spotted a police car traveling west, I got nervous and pushed my foot down on the accelerator. Then another mountain come up. Again, I pulled into the far right lane to go slower, and kept checking the rearview mirror.

  Something about the mountain seemed familiar and when I got to the top—the Kenworth was really groaning by then—I realized it was Sideling Hill with the big cliffs and the colorful rock layers. I remembered that prison van driver talking about the marine fossils and I couldn’t help but turn my head to take a look. Sure enough, I could see that black stripe in the rock, and it made me wonder all over again how in the world this mountaintop could have been under the ocean. Seemed so upside down, I thought. Just like my life! I still held this against my mother: the fact that when I was only eight, nine years old, I was taking care of my brother almost all the time. Then, when my baby sister was born, I took care of ’em both, like I was their dad or something. I mean, I was fixing meals and changing diapers and putting those kids to bed—e
verything. And I was just a kid myself! The only times I got a break from it was when I was in school, or working with my dad, or when I snuck out to be with my friends.

  Boy, I realized then that I should not have let my mind wander like that because I was already starting down the other side of Sideling Hill way too fast. I slammed on the brakes and hoped I didn’t jackknife, but nothing happened. The truck kept picking up more and more speed.

  Then I smelled burning rubber. My brakes were heatin’ up. If the brakes got too hot they’d fry themselves—even catch fire!

  I glanced at the temperature gauge for the rear axle and could see it was already over 200, which meant trouble with a capital T. I sat up straight, my heart thumping high in my chest and the palms of my hands sweating. I checked out the rpm to see if I could downshift to slow the truck, but I was already closing in on 2000. Think about this: a truck just idling is 800 rpm; out on the highway it’s around 1600. So when you get up to 2000 rpm or more you are going way too fast to downshift. You’re redline! In other words, your ass is in the danger zone. BIG TIME!

  Faster and faster I went. My hands were gripped on the steering wheel so tight I didn’t think I’d ever get ’em pried off. Both my feet were pressed down on the brake and I was praying, too—which for me was just pressing my lips together and hardly breathing—’cause by then I could smell smoke. And where there’s smoke there’s fire, right? My brakes were definitely burning!

  My heart beat triple time but I was blanked out on what to do. I remembered my dad saying that in an emergency he’d run the truck off the road and up an incline and let it fall over. But the only incline I saw was the one I was flying down. Both sides of the road simply dropped off.

  So how would I stop? Would the truck launch into the air like a rocket and crash? Should I take it over the side so I didn’t kill nobody else? What?!

  I tried pumping the brakes, lifting both my feet and slamming them back down, but that didn’t do squat. What else could I do? My eyes stretched wide as I stared at the road and the end of my life coming up fast and furious on the black pavement in front of me. In the opposite lane up ahead, two cars were slowly climbing the hill. Would they call someone? The police? Or 911? Could they tell I was in trouble? Did they even notice me?!

  Probably not. To every driver I passed, I was probably just another annoying trucker, the guy they hated getting stuck behind. I was a blip out of the corner of their eyes, a big truck rumbling down Sideling Hill on Highway 68. Why should they take notice? Why bother if you’re cruising along in your spiffy, big SUV, listening to music or chatting it up on your cell phone?

  And you know what? That reminded me of something. Not that I dwelled on it ’cause my life was like hanging in the balance at that time. But I had this flash feeling that I’d been there before. Later, I realized why that not-being-noticed, invisible feeling seemed familiar. It’s because I have been in a million everyday places in my life—like the Food Lion or Wawa, or the gas station with Mom, or even at school shooting the breeze with my friends—and I must’ve seemed like a perfectly normal kid. A kid buying milk, pumping gas, laughing at a joke—when all the time what people saw was a shell, the outside of a kid who was totally different inside ’cause he was holding stuff back to cover up the fact that he lived with a grizzly bear at home.

  Even my best friends didn’t know about my other life. I did my best to hide it, which is why they hardly ever came over to my house. True, I was embarrassed that we didn’t have a flush toilet that worked, that we had to use an outhouse. But more important, I didn’t want them to see my mom and dad screaming at each other, or me, getting my arm yanked out of my shoulder or my head pushed into the wall. I don’t know when I figured it out, but it finally dawned on me one day how it wasn’t normal for parents to beat on their kids the way my dad did to me. And I didn’t want my friends to find out about it ’cause I was afraid it would scare them off, and I didn’t want to lose them.

  The word RUNAWAY flashed by.

  I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to run away from home. Only I didn’t ’cause of LeeAnn and Hank. Mom, too. And Grampa! I was always afraid my father would get mad at Grampa for helping us, and that he’d hurt him, too.

  RUNAWAY TRUCK.

  Hey! Did anyone care that I was about to die?

  RUNAWAY TRUCK RAMP.

  Okay! Okay! Yes! The sign said a runaway truck ramp was coming up. One quarter of a mile. Un-frickin’-believable! That was exactly what I needed! A gift from heaven if there ever was one!

  I came around a bend at seventy, eighty—maybe a hundred miles an hour, I don’t know, I didn’t want to look—and the rpm had hit 2100. The smell of burning rubber was everywhere and I knew fire was eating up the brakes—maybe even the rear axle! If oil leaked out of the oil seal near the brakes, it would fuel the fire even more.

  At mile marker 72—some things you never forget—the runaway truck ramp come into view. I gritted my teeth and turned the steering wheel slightly to the right. Let me tell you, the truck shot down that ramp like a bat out of hell. At the far end, I could see how the ramp went uphill. I held tight to the steering wheel and the truck stayed smack in the middle of the ramp, following the decline of the mountain. But soon, like maybe three hundred feet, the entire rig sank into the thick bed of pea gravel like a bowling ball rolled into a hole full of cotton. Amazing, but that tractor-trailer truck came to a complete stop in just a few seconds. Then, with a shudder and a quick jolt forward, it stalled out.

  I blew the air out of my cheeks and sat there, my eyes fixed straight ahead and my hands still glued to the steering wheel. But not for long. When I got my wits back I sucked in my breath and got out of there fast. I didn’t even turn around to see how much of the truck was on fire. I simply reached back into the sleeper to grab the blanket and yank the trucker’s gray jacket off a hook, then I kicked open the door, spit out my gum, and took off.

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  THE WRONG WAY

  Blanket under one arm, jacket under the other, I sprinted downhill and across a field. I whipped off the trucker’s red hat so it didn’t draw attention and just kept running. Only once did I shoot a quick glance back. I didn’t see anyone or anything except for that big old truck sunk down in pea gravel with smoke curling out of its rear end.

  After thirty, forty minutes I was out of breath and slowed to a walk as I rounded a cow pasture. A couple of black-and-white Holsteins stopped grazing to look at me. But I picked up the pace again and kept jogging down this long hill toward the woods. When I came out the other side of those trees, I saw an amazing scene that stopped me: a wide river cut through the countryside with a little stream running parallel to it. A well-worn path ran in between. What the heck?

  No one was around so I walked over a little bridge that crossed the smaller stream and came to stand on the path. I was confused by it. I mean I could tell from the hard-packed dirt and gravel that the path got a lot of use. And not only walked on, but, as I soon found out, biked on, too. I had to duck into some bushes quick when a couple people on bikes came along. I stayed hidden after that, and walked close to the path, but not on it. Occasionally, more bikers came and each time I ducked into the bushes, or kneeled down behind a rock. I moved this way the entire afternoon until evening closed in. That’s when I stumbled on another interesting sight: a long tunnel that carried the path through a hill.

  At dusk, when I didn’t think any more bikers would be riding by, I entered that tunnel. It was dark as the ace of spades in there—I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face—so it’s a good thing they had a wooden railing ’cause I sure didn’t want to fall into the murky stream that run by the path. I kept one hand on the railing, the other arm in front of me. Surrounded by darkness, every little crunch my footsteps made echoed. I could hear water dripping off the old brick walls, and it was so cool and damp I got goos
e bumps. Creepy. But I saw enough bikers go into that tunnel that I knew it had to empty out somewhere.

  When I finally came out the other side it felt good to have some light, even if it was the dim light of dusk. I spotted a couple picnic tables and outdoor grills, plus a map covered in plastic and nailed up on a board. The map said I was at a campground in Paw Paw (how’s that for a name?), West Virginia. West Virginia? I was going the wrong way for sure! Although this also meant the police might not be hunting for me there.

  I found out the name Paw Paw came from some kind of local fruit. Then I learned that I had just walked through the Paw Paw Tunnel, which was part of the C&O Canal towpath on the Potomac River. Huh. Canal towpath. I had no idea. None! An old black-and-white picture showed some mules pulling a barge along the canal. Guess this is how they moved cargo and stuff before there were railroads and trucks.

  I studied the map and could see that the towpath went all the way from Cumberland, Maryland, in the west, to Washington, D.C., in the east. I was disappointed I’d lost so much ground going the wrong way. But if I turned around, I could now follow the towpath all the way to D.C., then find my way east, to the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

  Suddenly, I heard noise—the sound of breaking sticks and voices. Then I smelled smoke. Not burning rubber this time, but a good smoky smell, like a campfire. Quickly, I crouched and pushed my way under some bushes near a big tree. I pulled the brown blanket up over my head and shoulders and while I sat there, smelling that campfire and waiting for night to come on, I realized how hungry, thirsty, and tired I was. But mostly hungry.

  It was Sunday, so back at Cliffside they probably would have eaten already. Dinner was early—5:15 every day. A lot of the boys complained about the food, but I didn’t think it was half bad. I remember our first meal exactly: a cheesesteak sub with potato wedges, catsup, carrot sticks, and banana cream pie. I thought it was pretty darn good for prison food, especially compared to what I might have had at home, which most likely would have been a peanut butter sandwich, if there was any bread, or a bowl of cereal. Sometimes, me and the kids, all we had for dinner was them little Goldfish crackers.