by Jack Cady
May, being the oldest of the girls, stood beside Bessie. Mary and Molly hovered down to one end of the counter. The sheriff sat real quiet and thoughtful. He was a perfect picture of a country sheriff, middle-aged, brown from the sun, muscular and capable. If he hadn’t been a cop, he looked like somebody you’d like to know.
Finally, he said, "I’ll handle Jerry, and tell him to handle Ellis." He sighed, like this was more trouble than it was worth. "A’course, Ellis and his sidekickers are drunks, and you can’t ever be sure what a drunk is gonna do. ’Cause even the drunk don’t know what he’s gonna do."
"Arrest him," May said.
"And let him go," the sheriff said. "Just because we know he did it don’t mean much. Best I can do is threaten him." He stood, rubbed his hand through his hair like he was trying to chase a thought. "I’ll keep as close to it as I can."
"Tell those boys," Bessie said, "that’s it’s time to call it even. One cut, one window. I’ll cough up the fifteen bucks, and let it go." Out there on the road a downshift cracked, a tanker slowed, then the guy must have seen the sheriff’s car. He revved a shift and pushed it on down Dive Bomber Hill.
". . . little late, and Ellis would have blown up even if you’d paid up, right off." The sheriff stood. "I can’t tell you what to do, but it would be smart to hire a man to stay on the place . . . so Ellis don’t make more mistakes." He looked kindly toward Bessie, and then left.
Luke watched him go, while Jimbo and I watched Bessie. Luke whispered something to Mary that I didn’t catch. He had taken a seat nearest Mary, Jimbo beside him, and me beside Jimbo. Luke kind of scooched around in his seat. He put his hand on the counter. Mary touched his hand. I knew right then, that was the moment we lost him.
And so the deputy’s name was Jerry, and the drunk’s name was Ellis. It felt easier to hate their guts once they had names. Then I told myself that this would have happened, anyway. Luke was the kind of guy who, sooner or later, would leave the road. Truck gypsy blues. We’ve all had ’em. At one time or other we’ve all sworn we’d leave the road. Hardly anyone ever does. The road takes hold of a guy. But Luke . . . he might as well run a dinky restaurant . . . maybe better than running a hardware . . . he could keep up his lay preaching on weekends . . . maybe even get ordained . . . with a church . . . become respectable.
"A man?" Bessie said to her girls. "I never had but one man in my whole life, ’cause that was the only man I ever wanted. We’d not find anybody to come close to your pa."
"I have," Mary said. She kind of wiggled, which was sexy, but not what she meant. What she meant is that Luke was a goner, and happy about it. She touched Luke’s hand.
"A case of the hots ain’t proof." May didn’t believe it, even if May thought well of Luke. "You’re talkin’ about a truck driver, for hell’s sake . . ." Then she shut up quick, because Bessie didn’t allow cussing.
Bessie, real delicate, reached beneath the counter and pulled out this junky-looking 12-gauge double-barrel. She laid it longwise on the counter, the business end pointing away from everybody. I thought she was about to ask if Mary was in the family way. Then I thought nope, too delicate.
"You’ll be wanting this," she said to Luke.
I tried to save him from himself. "We got a schedule."
"I’m quits." Luke said it quiet. "My place is here. I’ll scout around and find a man to stay here until I can drop the rig. You guys go ahead."
"Leave it sit," I told him. "I’ll bring another driver from the big city. You’re done." I admit to being sore.
"Credit to you," Jimbo told Luke. "I never much held with preachers, but it’s a credit to you." He didn’t ask for his gun, because he hadn’t checked it, what with the sheriff having been there. Jimbo looked almost sentimental. He turned to Mary. "You’re a nice lady. My mom was a nice lady, and look what happened." He wrinkled his nose which had already been busted once. "Take a lesson, and good luck." He walked away.
"Could be," Bessie said real quiet, and still talking to her girls, "that your pa’s still around here somewhere."
Maybe I didn’t understand wanting a woman so bad you’d leave the road, but I did understand what Luke was thinking. In the south, in those days, a man was expected to defend his family with his life. If he had to kill somebody doing it, nobody complained. These days, if a man tries to rape your daughter, and you shoot him, you go to jail. If you’re a bad shot and the rapist lives, he gets counseling . . . I’ll tell a little story to show what I mean.
Back then, in one of the coal camps over in Knox county, a man got drunk and started beating his wife. She ran to her brother’s cabin. Her drunk husband followed her and started banging on the door. Her brother yelled through the door. He said, "John, I know you’re drunk, but I got a shotgun. If you come through that door I’ll cut you in half. You know I got to do it."
The drunk came through the door. The brother cut him in half. The coroner’s jury ruled that when that man came through that door, he committed suicide.
So I understood Luke, and I approved. It was just that it made a mess to have a truck stranded on Dive Bomber Hill. Jimbo and I rolled Louisville, phoned Knoxville, and Knoxville said "Leave it sit." They sent two guys in a car, one to pick up the truck.
Meanwhile, Jimbo and I got rerouted to Cincinnati, then back to Knoxville. A week had passed before we got back on Highway 25. By then we’d picked up a third guy, but the guy wasn’t gonna work out. His name was Sven, a hunky, and in spite of being Swede he had no Swedish steam. I put Jimbo in front, Sven in the middle in Luke’s old place, and I batted clean-up. A couple miles before Bessie’s we hit a delay.
The sheriff’s car and the deputy’s car sat on the berm, flashers twirling. A Chev station wagon, painted like an ambulance, sat with its doors open. It looked like men were scrambling up and down the hill. Somebody off the road. Nothin’ new. Happened all the time.
We got to Bessie’s at four a.m. with morning still on the backside of the hill. The parking lot lay empty as a bootlegger’s morals. Sven asked, "Why we stoppin’?" and I told him, because I wanted. We weren’t even inside, yet, when a North Carolina rig pulled in, and behind it a Conoco tanker. Things seemed almost normal. Everybody headed in for coffee.
The busted window had been fixed. The place smelled like morning, the way truckstops smell when one shift goes off, another comes on, and the day starts over. Luke sat at a table in one corner. Mary had the counter. Somebody was moving around back in the kitchen. Luke looked tired as a man can be, like a guy who’d been crossing Kansas at forty miles an hour.
Jimbo and I sat beside him, and I waved Sven off. He went to the counter. Nobody said anything about checking guns.
"Keep this up," I told Luke, "and you lose weight in your behind. What’s happening?"
"They won’t leave us alone," he told me. "Like flies on honey. Like the plagues of Egypt. I run that Ellis guy out of here at least once a day. Plus his buddies." He looked through the windows. "See what I mean?"
The deputy’s car rolled onto the lot, rolled right up to the front door, and stopped.
"Move away," Luke told me and Jimbo. "I’ll be needing room." He picked up that junky shotgun from where it lay at his feet. He didn’t even stand, just laid it across the table pointed at the door. When the deputy came in he saw the shotgun, and stopped.
"Right barrel has birdshot," Luke said quietly. "It probably won’t kill you but it’ll hurt. Left barrel has a slug. It won’t hurt much, because you’ll be dead before you hit the floor. Which one you want?"
The jukebox started wailing about some babe wearing blue velvet. Mary came around the counter and unplugged it. The deputy stood in the doorway and watched three drivers at the counter turn toward him.
"Go away, Jerry," Luke said. "If you have law business here send the sheriff."
"If," Jerry said, "you are the sonovabitch who is running folks off the road, it’ll take more than shotguns to save you." He turned away, and walked to his car.
"
I want no part of this," the Conoco driver said. He stood, and Sven stood right along with him. They left.
The deputy’s car pulled out slow and stopped before pulling onto the road. Something going on out there.
"Go see," I told Jimbo. He slid away.
"Tell me," I said to Mary, "’cause the gent with the gun is kind of groggy." I pointed at Luke.
"We’re not married yet," she said, like it was the only thing on her mind. She looked at Luke. "He’s gotta trust us to call him if stuff happens. He’s gotta get some sleep." She looked through the windows, out toward the parked rigs. "Trouble. Better look. Somebody’s about to go to Jesus."
I came out of my chair and was through the door before Luke could react. The deputy’s Mercury had already pulled away, but somebody was out there. When I got to the rigs Jimbo had his .45 pointed right at a farmer. Ugly pistol. Sven stood looking like he was about to wring his hands. The farmer gasped, tried to talk, and was too scared. He was built blocky as a farm wagon, and looked just about as smart. An old Chev pickup sat beside the road.
"Cuttin’ tires," Jimbo told me. He looked at Sven. "You’d better drive the east coast, pal. This road is too long and mean for you."
"Don’t shoot him," I told Jimbo. "Not yet." The farmer whimpered. He looked like only his overalls were holding him up.
"One of Ellis’s pals," Luke said. Luke arrived ten seconds behind me.
"I all the time ask the holy saints that I don’t gotta use this," Jimbo said about the pistol. "Keep him covered." The farmer cowered. Jimbo moved quick, climbed in his cab, and came back with a tire billy. "School days," he said, "education time." He swung the billy against the farmer’s left arm. We all heard the muffled crack as the bone shattered. The guy fell, rolled, and howled.
"You’ll notice I picked the left arm," Jimbo said to Sven. "He can still shift gears. Take a lesson."
"How many tires?"
"Three."
I figured fast. If we took the spares from all three rigs we could make it, but good Lord, the delay. The only thing worse than changing a tire is mounting chains when it snows. I figured an hour lost, maybe more. No shop. No air wrenches . . . tire on wheel, 150 pounds . . . block up the jack . . . hydraulic jack with an eight-inch throw.
Take a chance rolling with cut tires? Not if I’m running the show. Not if anyone sane is running the show.
"Put the hayseed in his truck," I told Sven. "Get useful." To the hayseed I said, "Tell your boy Ellis he’s done messing with this freight line. Next time the gun goes off."
The guy was hurting just awful, but you could tell he understood. Sven started his pickup for him, got him into it, and the guy weaved away headed for a doc. That’s when Jimbo heated up.
He stood along the roadside looking up the hill where we’d seen the ghost. I can still remember it, plain as day. Dawn just back of the hill, the road running blackish-silver, drawing a line across the world, and Jimbo standing there like he was forty feet tall; despite he was short and skinny and tough. He shook his fist at the top of the hill, and he yelled: "You frowzy-headed jack-leg-preachin’ old sonovabitch, you started this. If you’re any kind of man at all, end it."
I thought he’d gone nuts. We got busy, working, and while I’m working I’m thinking. And this is what I thought.
If, back when Ellis and his boys first showed up, the ghost had not been so hot to deliver a sermon, none of this would have happened. The Spanish guy would not have banged Ellis’s head against the door frame of the car, or laid a knife across his throat. It was obvious the ghost was the one who caused the Spaniard to do the ghost’s preaching, because the Spaniard claimed it wasn’t him. The sum of it was, I figured Jimbo was right.
And maybe somebody or something was running cars off the road. It seemed pretty clear that the ghost might be well intended, but he had screwed up royal.
Our dispatcher got the story, and told me not to let the boys stop at Bessie’s. He didn’t have to tell me, but management generally figures that drivers are stupid. Even Jimmy Hoffa once said, "Any damn fool can drive a truck. I was a warehouseman."
We made another turn, then Sven took a job driving for Greyhound. I think what happened was Sven had finally driven Highway 25 in daytime and saw what he’d been driving through at night. It scared him right down to his gizzard.
The company assigned a Frenchy-Indian guy named Tommy, and Tommy was gonna work out. He could move slick as water running. Plus he had a sense of humor. "Women are just so trouble," he’d say, "’cause they all so cute and they so many of them. Wonder guys ever get anything done."
Which was good, that sense of humor, because otherwise the scene went dark. We didn’t stop at Bessie’s anymore, but I couldn’t just forget Luke. In spite of being the marrying type, he was a friend. We’d put up a lot of miles together. What happened is, me and my guys would drop our rigs Friday evenings and not leave out again until ten PM Sunday. That’s when the road is as good as it ever gets. That gave me Friday nights for sleep, Saturday for myself, and also Sunday morning. I flogged a one-ton Diamond T pickup in those days. It was a tough little truck, pretty as a race horse, lots of low end torque, okay in the hills. I drove to Bessie’s.
When I parked beside the bunkhouse everything looked normal. A North Carolina straight-job with an attic sat next a Mack pulling a lowboy. A D6 Cat sat on the lowboy. An old Ford stake with hay racks, a farm truck, sat in front of the Mack. Farmers stopped at Bessie’s sometimes, and that was all right. Not all farmers were idiots. Just most.
When I got inside Luke looked lots better. At least he’d had some sleep. Bessie had the counter and she was jiving the farm guy about "he should come in Tuesday," what with Tuesday being "wide-pie day," "slice ’n-a-half." The guy looked smart enough, and didn’t smell like pigs. The guy chuggin’ the Mack looked more like a mechanic than a truck driver. The guy with the North Carolina job looked like he was sick of hauling furniture. From the kitchen I could hear Mary singing to herself.
"Outside," Luke said, "and I appreciate you’re here."
I followed him to the bunkhouse. The lock was off the door. The place seemed roomy and had been fixed up. Curtains at the window, a single bed and no cots. A table and a couple chairs. "Staying here until the wedding," he explained, and wasn’t embarrassed. "We’re looking for a place."
Preachers. Go figure. The guy was determined not to hop into the sack with Mary until after the wedding. At the same time, he was ready to chop up a deputy with a shotgun. Call me dumb, but somehow it contradicted.
"I don’t actually believe this myself," Luke told me, "except I have no choice. It seems that I have in-law problems."
"Bessie?"
"Bessie is fine," Luke told me. "The girls are giddy over the wedding. Big deal. Flower girls, long dresses, the whole business. It’s taking time." He pushed a curtain aside and looked onto the parking lot. "Someplace out there," he said, "my future father-in-law is a little too busy, and he won’t listen. One reason he won’t listen is because he’s only about as solid as smoke."
I wanted to laugh. Instead, I shut up and opened my ears.
"That guy who got run off the road, the second guy, is one of Ellis’s sidekicks. My problem is that he lived. He’s in the hospital and the docs say he isn’t crazy." Luke looked toward the top of Dive Bomber Hill. "The guy says that he braked too hard and spun off the hill because somebody was standing in the middle of the road. The guy says ‘Ghost,’ the docs say ‘shook up,’ and I say, ‘Lord protect me from my friends.’" Luke sat on the edge of the bed and talked like talking to himself. "So we got one sidekicker in the hospital, one with a broken arm, and Fatso dead. That means I’m down to two, Jerry and Ellis."
"Those guys who are busted up are going to heal." It seemed to me like the answer was for Bessie and girls to get out of town.
"Not for a while," Luke said, "and that boy in the hospital is a coward. Maybe a backshooter, but he can be handled." He sat, estimating. "The guy with the busted win
g is blaming Jerry. Bad blood between them, so he’s not a problem."
"The ghost?"
". . . was Bessie’s husband, the girls’ daddy. He had a little church plus this restaurant. He tried to stop two hot heads from killing each other, and ended up shot."
"Might have stayed out of it?"
"He couldn’t," Luke said. "The hot heads were in the parking lot, and his girls were in the restaurant. The girls were little more than kids at the time."
"Protecting his family."
"The problem is," Luke said, "he’s still doing it." He stood up, walked to the window, walked back across the room like a man pacing a jail cell. "I don’t know how this is going to end, but it will surely end badly."
It ended that same afternoon, except this kind of stuff never really ends. Makes no difference if it’s between men or management or unions, or even nations; once bad stuff happens it keeps bouncing like bullets off of armor plate. But, at least one ending came along toward evening. I wouldn’t have known Ellis from Adam’s off-ox, which was maybe a good thing. If I had known I might have prevented something.
Shadows lay real long across the road when I pulled away from Bessie’s. Summer heat had faded and in another couple hours ground mist would rise. It would be a slow road because it was the time of year when crops come in. The road fills with flatbed farm trucks carrying side-stakes and hayracks. They are mostly held together with baling wire.
A guy almost feels sorry for the farmers. These are poor farms. If a hill farmer owns eighty acres, forty will go straight up, and forty straight down. There are places that are still farmed with mules because a tractor would fall off the side of the hill. It’s said that men plant their corn with shotguns. Mostly, the farmers work narrow strips along bottoms and in hollows where streams always run.
And the farmers work hasty, like the devil is biting their heels, or at least they do in September. The last cut of hay comes in after the August thunderstorms. Farm crews work until daylight decays, then ride home in rattling hay trucks. The truck cabs hold three guys. If there are more than three men in the crew, they ride in back. You see them against a red sundown, tired silhouettes standing toward the front of the truck bed, holding onto the hay rack, and watching road. That’s the kind of truck that was holding up progress when I got near the top of Dive Bomber Hill.
