Despite the fact that I was dog-tired, I had a terrible time getting to sleep. Hours went by and I was still restless, so I eventually crawled out of the sleeper berth and took my seat behind the wheel for a while.
The crowd of tractors seemed to have thinned out a bit, and every ten minutes or so a switch-truck would bring a trailer down the long gravel road and drop it. A man in a jumpsuit would wake up yet another driver and send him, or her, along their way.
There was something strange about the trailers when they came out of the building in the distance... almost creepy, really. Every time the big bay door of the place rolled up, a thick white vapor came pouring out -- like that fog that comes off of dry ice when you put it in water.
After a second or two, the switch-truck would come blasting out of the haze, then the door would roll back down just as quickly as it had opened. The wagons continued to put off the fog even after the switcher had dropped them, and they almost seemed to glow a little bit. Not glow like my little blue Jesus -- it was just a subtle effect, though it seemed entirely unnatural.
Seeing as this was some sort of military operation, I thought maybe they were hitting the damned things with x-rays or something like that to check them out before they loaded them. Either that or they cleaned them out with some space-age lasers or something. Whatever it was, it was strange... I was fixing to get real worked up if my trailer looked all jacked up like that.
My throat was starting to hurt because I was smoking like a chimney; guess I was just anxious to get rolling. The sky was pitch black at this point, even the stars being choked out by the smog blowing up from Los Angeles. The storm that I expected never came; that's too bad, because the sound of falling rain always helps me get to sleep.
Eventually I leaned over the wheel and nodded off for a couple of winks, but it wasn't much at all. My slumber was interrupted by a maddened pounding on my door. I probably never would've known that I had fallen asleep at all, if not for the trail of slobber running between my mouth and the dash when I sat up to see what was happening.
To my great relief, my trailer was in the lot looking to be in one piece. The switcher who had dropped it was standing on my running boards, wearing a goofy smile that startled the hell out of me. As I rolled down my window, he handed me a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee. Nice touch...
"Wake up, sleeping beauty!" He said with a feigned cheerfulness. "Coffee's on the house - better drink it quick, because I need you off the lot within fifteen minutes. Cream and sugar?"
"No, I take it black."
He jumped down off my truck and walked back to his machine, shouting paperwork's in the doc-box. The coffee smelled really good and I was in need of a caffeine booster, so I drank it up.
It wasn't the best coffee I've ever had, but it wasn't bad. I think it was the cheap instant stuff, though, because there were granules of some sort in the bottom of the cup. One chunk was pretty large, getting lodged in my throat for a second on the way down.
Choking it back, I got out of my truck and took a lap around my wagon to be sure they hadn't busted it up any. As promised, it was in perfect condition. No scuffs, dings or bites taken out of the sides or my tires.
There was a massive bolt through the handle-locks on the back door. Shippers generally seal loads to be sure that nobody tampers with the cargo. The idea is that they put something through the handles that has to be broken in order to open them. Whatever they use has a number on it, which is recorded on the delivery papers. If the numbers don't match, the receiver knows that somebody was tinkering with the load.
The freight I deal with usually has just little plastic zip-ties with numbers on them -- maybe thin metal ones if it's a USDA inspected load of meat or something. I carried a set of tin snips in the cab to cut them once they had been verified against the paperwork by the receiver, but there was no way in Hell I was gonna get this big ol' thing they used off my rig by myself. This was a serious seal -- these guys wanted to make damn sure nobody went nosing around in there.
The trailer was glowing a bit like the others, and smoking just as much as I had been. It seemed harmless, though, so I didn't waste any time in hooking up and wrestling that damned landing gear back into place... within about ten minutes I was good to go.
Before I left, I retrieved the paperwork from the aluminum box on the front of the trailer. It was pretty lame, really; just had the address of the receiver and listed the contents as 39,900lbs - Frozen Ice. I guess maybe they have such a thing as un-frozen ice in California -- that's city folk for you.
While I was up in that area of the rig, I decided to check out the innards of the reefer to see how things were going. It almost looked like they had replaced the belts in it, as they all seemed tight and weren't flopping around anymore. That would be unheard of though, so I chalked it up to my imagination and climbed back into the cab.
As always, I pulled against the trailer with the truck in low gear before I released its brakes, just to be sure that I was firmly hooked up. The tractor shuddered when I did -- this was a heavy load.
There was that satisfying sound of air when I pushed in the brake valves and freed the beast of its chains, ready to haul off towards home. I threw it into fourth gear - like I always do to get rolling - and let off the clutch nice and slow (I'm gentle on my clutches because they cost so much to adjust). When I stepped on the throttle, I expected to get going... but instead, I stalled the god damn truck.
If you're not a truck driver, you have no idea how embarrassing it is to stall your truck. It's kind of the equivalent of going to fart and shitting your pants... everybody gets a good chuckle out of you when you do it. Only rookies and idiots stall their damned trucks... I hadn't done it in ten years, until this night; had hoped to never have it happen again. Looking around and praying nobody was watching, I pitched the stick back to neutral and fired up my engine once again.
Not wanting a repeat performance, I dumped into third gear this time. I took it even slower than I had before, and it's a good thing I did. Even with the extra torque, the truck still shuddered and hesitated.
I pushed the clutch back in and let off the gas to keep the engine from petering out again. That's when I knew that my load weighed considerably more than thirty-nine thousand pounds the papers claimed it did.
My big ol' Cummins is capable of putting out four hundred twenty-five horsepower - it could pull God down off a cloud if I could get a rope around him. I've never had a problem getting a load of legal weight up and moving. Believe it or not, I had to use first to make her roll. I don't think I've ever had Big Red in first gear.
This facility was off a rather desolate stretch of highway, so I got to try out all twelve remaining gears in short order. The truck didn't mind getting up to that sixty-five MPH mark, but it took a looooonnng time to get her there. If I so much as twitched and let my foot come off that accelerator for a split second, my express ride slowed down immediately.
There was a scale-houses on the interstate between me and Arizona, not to mention probably sixty along the route to Florida. I wasn't about to waste as much time as it would've taken to dodge every one of them, so I decided I'd have to make a pit stop to weigh the boat myself in case the written weight was as misleading as I thought it was.
There are rules about how much your truck can weigh, just like there are about how long you can drive at a time. A weigh-station (scale-house or chicken coop, in trucker talk) is basically a Department Of Transportation outpost where they try to find reasons to cut tickets to drivers. When they're open, every truck on the road has to pass through, driving over scale pads in the pavement. If you weigh more than you should, or for some reason the guy operating the scale decides he wants to give you a hard time, you get a signal to pull off. Once you're back behind the coop, they can inspect your truck and paperwork for an excuse to fine you. In my experience, they usually find one -- no matter how ridiculous it might be.
/> In the case of my rig (and most 18-wheelers on the road, for that matter), the overall weight limit is eighty-thousand pounds. The front axle (or the steer) can't come in at any more than twelve thousand, then the set of two axles (or tandems) at the rear of the tractor and the set at the rear of the trailer can't be any more than thirty-four thousand each. So long as the total is under eighty, you can adjust the weight on each axle by sliding them forward or back on the truck, shifting the overall distribution.
As it happens, my gross weight with this load came in at closer to ninety-thousand, just as I'd suspected. I was illegal... if I dared to cross a scale, I'd get a hefty ticket on the spot... and there was nothing that I could do about it. This really pissed me off.
I called Sunspot to tell them that I was returning to the shipper to make them take off some of the load.
"I'm sorry." The woman I talked to explained. Oddly enough, it sounded like the same woman I spoke with earlier in the day. Usually there are different shifts -- I figured the woman on duty at three am would be someone different than the one that had been on at noon, but apparently I was mistaken. "It won't be possible to remove any of the load."
"Sounds like you're shit out of luck." I answered. "There's no way I can get this load across the country like this."
After putting me on hold for about fifteen minutes, the woman returned. She said that she had looked into some over-weight permits that would get me passed the scales. I had heard of that before, but never had to deal with it.
"That's fine." I said. "But what about all the extra wear and tear it's gonna put on my engine and suspension? What about the extra fuel it's gonna burn?"
"Would another thousand cover it?" She asked.
Bonus! I didn't expect that much -- I was fishing for a few hundred. I sure as hell wasn't gonna turn it down, though.
She told me to hang out at the truck stop for a while and wait for a new round of faxes. It took an hour or so, but eventually the permits came through. I slapped one of the papers in the windshield, as the instructions said to do, and set off once again.
My nerves were shot regardless when I drove through the first weigh-station, but I got a green light and rolled on by like it was just another day. Not a bad gig -- things were shaping up okay after all.
I was feeling good when the sun started to rise, so I kept on trucking. The glowing of my trailer had faded during the night, and there wasn't any more frosty air coming off it than was usual with a frozen load. The bitch was definitely heavy, that much I can't deny... but Big Red was a ballsy girl and she took it in stride.
I-10 took me all the way into Arizona before I started feeling really tired. Passing just south of Phoenix, I realized I was gonna need to stop for a break, so I figured I'd shut it down for a couple of hours.
I had hit a little construction traffic, so the three-hundred and sixty miles I'd traveled had taken me just over seven hours. It was almost one in the afternoon when I hit the Iron Skillet inside of a T.A. Travel Center and had a nice big Country Fried Steak. A full stomach drug me even further down into the depths of exhaustion, so I kicked off the clothes and tucked myself in for a nice nap.
Sleep was bliss; if you've never pushed yourself really hard for an extraordinarily long period of time you must try it; if only to see how good it feels when you finally close the book for the day. The depth of my snooze was so incredible that I had perhaps the most vivid dream I've ever experienced in my life.
Nightmares are things I don't often have, but when they do occur, they're usually pretty stellar. This one was no exception. At first, it seemed like any regular mundane dream.
I woke up back at the house I used to live in when I was married to Sammy's mother. No, she wasn't there -- though that would've made for a pretty miserable nightmare too. The whole place smelled like blueberry pancakes; those are my favorite, and my boy loves them just as much as I do.
Getting out of bed was tough, every joint in my body screaming in protest. That happened a lot back when I used to drink like a fish when I was in my hometown. Based on the taste of the burps I was letting loose, I decided that the night before had been spent with Miller Lite and a few Jaeger Bombs.
Stumbling out of the room, I realized that Janet was over and was the reason my place smelled like breakfast. She had a hell of a spread laid out; bacon, sausage links, hash browns, scrambled eggs and, of course, a huge stack of blueberry pancakes complete with a jug of genuine maple syrup. She was wiping down the counter when I caught her eye. As usual, she greeted me with a huge smile. Her face really showed her age; she had lived hard in her prime, and she paid the price with her looks.
"Good mornin', Sunshine!" She beamed, her crow's feet accentuating her sparkling blue eyes. Her bleach-blonde hair was cemented in its trademark pompadour and seemed unphased by all of the work she must've done to put this feast together.
"Howdy, darlin'!" I returned through a yawn. "What are you doing here this morning?"
"I was in the neighborhood." She replied as she pulled a batch of croissants from the oven. "So I figured I'd surprise my two favorite guys with a little breakfast."
"Little? You've got everything but the biscuits and gravy made up!"
"Do y'all want some biscuits and gravy to go with it?" She asked, entirely willing to whip some up if I so desired.
"No, Misses Jan." I chuckled. "This'll do just fine, thank you very much."
"Don't mention it. It's the least I could do to help y'all celebrate this special day!"
"Special day?" My mind started racing, wondering what event I was forgetting about this time. I looked around for clues, but there weren't any that I could detect. This was a dream, after all, how the hell was I supposed to know when it was taking place? Try as I might, I couldn't figure it out, so I went ahead and put myself out on that line. "What's special about today?"
Janet made that oh my God face, like she couldn't believe her ears, and covered her mouth with her bling-enhanced hand. Being my accountant paid well, I guess -- or maybe she had some real clients that helped subsidize her excess.
"You forgot?" She whispered, looking around to be sure no one else was listening. "Today is Sammy's first communion!"
"Oh." I replied plainly, trying to sneak my hand into the croissants only to be slapped away by the chef. My ex and I weren't really the religious types back then. Actually, we were quite the opposite. I didn't find The Lord until the suicide scare after my divorce was finalized, and even now it's really just a comfort thing. I haven't seen the inside of a church in quite a while. I pretended I was excited, though, because obviously Janet thought it was a pretty big deal.
I heard a door close down the hall and saw Sammy coming out, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He looked to be about the age he was now -- not the toddler he was when I was with his mother.
His Transformers pajamas were a little snug; just like in the picture of him that I have on the dash board which his mother sent to me recently. My boy looked exhausted and was staggering just as badly as I had been when my hangover carried me out to the kitchen. I pulled the stool next to me at the counter out for him and smiled, tapping the seat like you would to invite your dog to come sit with you. He climbed up and sat, still trying to wrestle some crumbs of the sandman's magic crud off his face.
"Good morning, little man!" Janet greeted him. "I made you some of your favorite pancakes for this special day!"
"Thanks, m’am." He said with perfect manners; just as we had taught him.
"Hey champ." I said. "Did you sleep well?"
"Not really." He replied. "This strange light kept me up." He finally cleared his eyes and looked up at me, which is when I realized that they were entirely blood-shot.
"Oh my God!" I exclaimed. "Do your eyes hurt, pal?"
"No." He explained. "But it feels like I've got rocks in my throat, and my mouth stings a little."
"Open up - let
me have a look."
Sammy did just as I asked, and I was horrified at what I saw. As soon as he opened his mouth, a deluge of blood came pouring out onto my lap.
"Jesus, Sammy!" I cried out as I reached for paper towel.
No matter how much of it I soaked up, more came pumping out. There didn't seem to be any cuts that I could see, but something was clearly way wrong. His breath was hot on my face as I tried to examine him, and it was foul as well.
People have told me that they smelled death around relatives before they passed away... I've never had a chance to catch a whiff of it, but I imagine that it smells just like Sammy's mouth did at that moment.
"Hold still, baby!" I ordered him in panic.
He and Janet both seemed unphased by what was going on, which was boggling my mind because Janet is the biggest worry-wart I've ever met.
"It's okay, dad!" He insisted. "Just leave it alone!"
Stunned, I stopped wiping him and let him close up, red still oozing out between his lips. Janet forked a couple of pancakes onto a plate and set it down on the counter in front of him. He let the blood rain down on them like it was syrup or something, then took his fork and started eating them -- like it was the normal thing to do.
Instinct made me jump up out of the stool and back away until I was flat against the wall. Without a word, Janet tore a piece of pancake off his plate and dabbed it in the fluid. Watching her eat it made me feel sick, but she seemed to be loving it.
"What the hell?" I gasped. "Sammy, what's going on?"
He and Janet glared up at me like I was an alien or something, then went right back to eating their breakfast. I looked them over really well and realized there was much more than met the eye going on here.
These people looked like my son and best friend; they even sounded and smelled like them, but they weren't the people I knew and loved. Physically they were, but on the inside, they were something else all together.
It was a horrifying notion... someone or something foreign was in my son -- posing as him. I wondered if Sammy was still in there at all, or if he'd been wiped out somehow. Looking at him harder I knew; my son was dead. This imposter had killed him and taken over his body. My boy was gone... I would never be able to see him again.
I woke up with a start in a cold sweat, my mattress and bedspread soaked through and through. Catching a shower before I left the truck stop was among my plans anyway, but now there was simply no choice.
Chapter 7