FanStory.com - Truckin, Ch 6by Wayne Fowler

In the last part we met a trucker named Thurmon who’d been sidelined by a front tire shot from Clyde. Thurmon is a conscientious driver who’s mistake one day cost him a tire and wheel by Clyde’s gun. We got a glimpse of trucking from a driver’s POV. Here, we pick back up with Clyde.

Chapter 6

Blue lights, gaining hard. Clyde had seen Troopers on a chase before. Always before, though, he’d been cruising at his normal six to eight miles an hour over the limit, whatever the traffic would bear and not make him draw unwanted attention. He didn’t want to match speeds exactly because that would limit his experience, his opportunities to see as many trucks in action as possible. But at the same time, he didn’t want to race ahead, even if below the speeds that Troopers might be looking for. He didn’t want to zoom up to trucks that were going to change lanes and cause them to cut him off when doing so would be unfairly influenced by his own speed. No, he wanted bad truckers to bury themselves, not be unreasonably trapped in a predicament.

Clyde was already in the right lane, but he braked to get out of cruise control just to allow the cop to see his compliance. Ordinarily, to get out of cruise control, he’d press the cancel button, saving brake wear. But this time he wanted the Trooper to see his brake lights. It’d been about twenty minutes since he’d stopped a trucker, about twenty-five, or thirty miles. “The cop could be after him, he feared.” The rifle already broken down, he casually tucked the rifle parts as close to the right seat as possible, wishing he could turn the broken-down parts ninety degrees and hide them. Close examination would reveal some sort of silliness over his license plate, but he hoped that once the cop read the tag from inside his patrol car, he would ignore it, concentrating on his task at hand. Clyde prepared to be pulled over – “Yeah, Officer, on my way to visit family.”

Zoom. Undulating in a tone-changing Doppler effect as he whizzed past, Clyde began to breathe, not realizing he’d been holding his breath. He took the next exit, ambling his way to the next freeway north, I-80. He allowed reprieves to every violator he saw that entire day, hating to let one of them off the hook, no matter how egregious his violation.

+++

Clyde was becoming increasingly lonely. He missed Jane Ann. Convinced that she would go along with his scheme, he was equally certain that she would not condone the degree he’d taken it. Two or three, maybe, but then her conscience would dig in. There was no way that she would have tolerated carrying a vendetta as far as he had, no matter who had been hurt. But she wasn’t here. She was dead, thanks to Xarious Trucking. Being alone was catching up with him, though. Maybe he should buy himself a Mr. Wilson, a volleyball ala Tom Hanks in Cast Away, he laughed to himself. No, an accomplice would be nothing but trouble, far too risky. There would never be anyone he could trust not to talk. Or want to go into restaurants, or want to take other unnecessary risks, like talking to people, or shooting into doors or windows as exclamation points. No, he was the only person he could trust.

He didn’t care for the Malibu he traded for once he’d knocked out and then replaced the passenger window of his Taurus to eliminate questions. The Malibu didn’t have the power that he thought he might one day need. And he never could get used to where the windshield wiper control was, always accidentally tripping it, feeling the fool, wondering if he’d drawn attention to himself. Noticing that the most common vehicle out there, especially in the west, was the white Ford F-150 pickup truck, he wondered whether that would draw attention, or not. And what it might do to his trajectory, the angle from the passenger window to truck tires. And then his visibility. Sitting higher, would truckers get better views of him? But he could add hard hats to his disguise ensemble. He would stick with the Malibu and think about it. He also had to think about what configuration might best facilitate a ray gun, should he ever get one figured out. A jammer is maybe what it would be called.

+++

    I’m the great pretender – ooo-oo-oo-oo-ooo
    Pretending that I’m doing well
    My need is such, I pretend too much
    I’m lonely but no one can tell

It was the The Platters song from 1959. Clyde wiped his eyes and cheeks with his hands, looking to see if it was safe to pull over. He and Jane Ann, though married later in life, had 50s, 60s, and 70s music in common. They were both full-on boomers, born only a few years after the end of World War II.

Clyde had Sirius radio tuned to the sixties channel to ward off drowsiness. He and Jane Ann often tuned to the fifties, sixties, and occasionally the seventies channels, reliving the golden years of fabulous music. He would occasionally slip in classic country: George Jones, Merle Haggard, and the like. And sometimes real oldies like Jimmie Rogers, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Williams when he felt bold. Once in a blue moon, we would sprinkle in gospel quartet-style music, the stuff of Dottie Rambo and Bill Gaither.

He was concentrating on whether he was a pretender, pretending to be a vigilante, avenging Jane Ann and protecting the innocent driving world, or merely on a terroristic vendetta journey, no better than marauding scalp hunters. Then came Brian Hyland’s Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini and Clyde snapped out of his funk. He’d never seen Jane Ann in a bikini, but had a good imagination.

+++

The paint sufficiently dry, and his supply of .22 shells replenished from a box of 500 that he’d made before his first safari, he was ready to get right back on the horse, so to speak. He wouldn’t need the bullets with his ray gun operational, but like the good Boy Scout that he’d been … He plugged his phone into a charger, preparing it for his trip. It rang immediately.

“Hey, pop!”

“Well, hello, Son. Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“’Cause your phone’s never on. You should call me if you leave it off.”

“Oh, I know. It’s just that without Jane Ann …”

“Yeah, but we still love you.”

“Thank you, Son.”

“We were hoping you’d get up to see us before now. Whatcha been doing? Not sitting home moping around, I hope. Watching movies all day.”

“Oh, no. I’ve been doing some reading, I guess. Spent a lot of time on an electric project out in the garage.”

“Yeah, what’re you making?”

“A mess, mostly. I can wire black-to-black, but you know, electrical stuff not exactly my forte.”

“Hey, you hear about the Turnpike Terrorist? I think about you and your war on truckers every time I see it on the news. They have a name for it now – brake-checking. That’s not you is it?” His chuckle told Clyde that he was at least half joking, not really suspicious.

“Yeah, well, yeah, I heard about that. Mom and I were satisfied to put ‘em in Truckers’ Prison.”

They talked for a couple minutes about the grandkids, said their goodbyes and best wishes, and hung up. Clyde wondered whether his son, Rick, or his daughter, Corine, would turn him in if they truly suspected him, recalling that the Una-bomber had been outed by his brother.

His pick-up fueled, his provisions restocked, Clyde headed to Florida, determined to go event-free. Before stopping for the night, he’d been sorry on three different occasions that he’d pledged, having to satisfy himself with merely assigning bad drivers to his and Jane Ann’s Truckers’ Prison.

The next day held no such promise, wasting a trucker who’d committed his crime in Alabama but was in Florida sitting on the side of the road with no functioning cell phone, radio, or truck, the engine brain-smoking.

This brought Clyde to a dilemma, there was no realistic east-west freeway to the south, but he really would like to hammer at least one more in Florida.

One more and he’d get to Highway 98, the beach highway, then over to I-75 and do a little northbound hunting. One thing for sure, he didn’t dare cross Pensacola Bay on the I-10 bridge, or for that matter, the Mobile Bay bridge on I-10 heading back west: sure-fire traps, both of them. Side roads, I-75, get one more, and then get outta Dodge, as they say.