This will probably be a shorter story because other pieces scrape right up against the edges of it. Things pick up right after the end of the final Miss Rockaway Armada chapter and then lead into a train ride which after a lot of digging I figured out is briefly described in The Bus Chapter Five. Now that there’s so many of these I occasionally get the feeling that I’m repeating myself or perched on the edge of an incident I had described the opposite side of elsewhere.
Sometimes it can be hard to remember exactly where this happened because almost anything can remind me of something else and there’s little anecdote orphans all over the place. Before I got back into writing Rockaway stories I had ended up with some bits and bobs and even entire chapters that are Rockaway stories in everything but name.
This bit is going to be about my first time going down to New Orleans to experience Mardi Gras but just the hitchhiking part. This also worked out to be my first long distance ride on a freight train but Alexis wanted to catch a specific train that runs between Memphis and Metairie. To get from Saint Louis to Memphis we’d need to hitchhike.
I forget how many different rides it took us altogether but I just want to talk about one truck driver anyway. At this point I already had a handful of experiences hitchhiking with truck drivers but in a lot of ways they pretty much just run together. It got me thinking about how rarely I actually bother to provide complex visual descriptions of the characters in these stories but for truck drivers this is especially challenging for one particular reason.
They’re practically invisible.
Society doesn’t want to see them – we’re only interested in the products hidden away inside their trailers for which they represent a necessary inconvenience. You notice when your local store suddenly doesn’t have the thing you were looking for on the shelf but the person that needs to drive all night to get it there doesn’t cross your mind. Even as a hitchhiker your primary interest is something in whatever your destination city is no matter how much you love the little bits of color along the way.
The other thing about truck drivers is they’re kind of drained of color – especially if they’ve been doing it for a long time. Just like the faded upholstery in an old car they’re right there for every mile of highway and every hour of glaring sunlight even if they throw on a pair of BluBlockers sunglasses. Also even though long distance trucking is actually a very diverse profession I’ve only ended up in long rides with the white ones.
One of these did refer to himself as a “coon ass” in sloppily lettered stick and poke tattoos covering every inch of his exposed skin but besides that he didn’t look too different.
It makes sense. If they’re contract guys instead of owner operators the white guys are going to be a lot more comfortable flouting the company’s “no riders” rule as if it didn’t apply to them while their black and brown counterparts are going to be aware that a single slip up will mean their asses. Even if they are owner operators there are plenty of good reasons to feel less safe giving hitchers a ride.
It’s not so much what we might do to them as what we might accuse them of.
Back in 2000 a special cabinet started popping up in arcades called Sega 18 Wheeler. It was designed to mimic the cab and controls of a big diesel truck and if you picked the Japanese character you get a custom vehicle covered with flashy LEDs and cultural decorations around the windshield. Now that I live by Mount Shasta I constantly see Sikh truckers on the road who decorate their vehicles with special art for fallen comrades similar to tribute airbrushed t-shirts in the hood sphere.
One of those makes a good featured image for this chapter but unfortunately I’ve never had a chance to ride in something like that. It’s usually a monochrome Peterbilt with air ride and a dark wood like walnut for the switch panels. Those do have a cool look, and I always make sure to complement a driver on a sharp, well maintained ride, but if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.
Anyway it’s hard for me to remember exactly what the driver in this story looked like. He probably had a baseball cap that had grown to look like it was part of his head and denim pants worn down around his keys and wallet. A bit of a belly in front but completely flat in back – the usual result of truck stop food, little exercise and long hours trapped in a single seat. A beard going white and a sleeveless tee with an eagle or something on it.
You know what truck drivers look like.
The ride had been unremarkable enough. Maybe he was the driver who asked me to make sure not to brush my hair as he’d never be able to explain away a long black hair to his wife. Light hearted jokes like that. The fact that there were three of us hadn’t been a problem – there’s a lot of room in those cabs with attached bunk area in case you’ve never been in one. It was an overnight ride and the energy abruptly changed at the crack of dawn.
We’d smashed some decent miles but he’d just pulled into a lot to stretch his legs and brew some coffee. He pulled out a miniature three cup drip pot while happily chattering away about how great it worked and how he’d take regular Folger’s over the fancy stuff every time. He suddenly froze.
After what seemed like a quick internal debate he asked us if we’d seen a small Tupperware container of ground up beans. We told him we hadn’t and made an exaggerated show of shifting our bags and bedrolls to the side so he could see every inch of his bunk. There was no sign of the thing. He popped open a Coca-Cola from his mini fridge and took long drags from a Marlboro Light while staring vacantly into space:
“You know, it seems pretty weird that something could ride around in a truck for ten years and then just walk off one day!”
We didn’t say anything. What was there for us to say? A tense silence lasting the time it takes to smoke a single cigarette settled over the scene. At the end of it he shook himself with new determination. From the moment he’d stiffened up when his search came up empty he’d been purposefully avoiding our eyes but now he made sure to give each of us a meaningful stare:
“Whatever. I’m gonna step outside to take a piss. I’m sure it’ll be here when I get back!”
He was halfway out his door when his eye caught a mug full of loose change in his cupholder. He reached back in to grab it and held it close to his chest while shooting each of us a final glare. He closed the door behind him.
Finally we were free to talk among ourselves:
“What the fuck? This dude thinks we stole his coffee! We gotta get the fuck out of here!”
The situation was palpably absurd. What would we, who were on the road without electricity, do with a couple of dollars worth of unbrewed coffee? It wasn’t the instant kind and it’s not like you can just eat the stuff.
Still it hardly mattered. The sense of menace was real enough and his demeanor had clearly shifted to that of a rattlesnake. He was on the ugly side of sudden caffeine withdrawal and paranoia. We had no idea what weapons he had or what else he might blame us for if we didn’t slip away now. I was already reaching for the handle of the passenger door when the driver’s side one flew back open with the reassuring sound of lighthearted laughter:
“Man I suffer from CRS sometimes! Can’t remember shit! I was laid out in my bunk puffing a roach yesterday when the DOT guy came to the window! There’s a little hole that goes to my cargo containers (little spots for personal property that lock and are accessed from outside the truck) and when I dropped the roach in the coffee must have fallen with it!”
He never apologized for the accusations that he hadn’t quite directly made but the danger had clearly passed. The change mug returned to the cup holder. As the pot of coffee was brewing he eagerly wafted the rising hot air into his open nostrils:
“Oh man, the juice! If God made anything better he kept it for himself,,,”
I’ve heard a lot about truckers and harder stimulants and saw a lot of meth when I was homeless at a truck stop but never came across it hitchhiking. I didn’t need to. Plain old caffeine was plenty scary enough.
We rode a little farther with him. It wasn’t all the way to Memphis because we got to Memphis when Alexis ran up to an entire rugby team leaving an ampm. They were actually going the whole way to New Orleans for a game but we only wanted to ride as far as Memphis so we could do freight.
They took us all the way to the yard which was nice as it’s a bit out of the way.
They were about what you’d expect. Mostly talked about getting fucked up and partying but there were a couple of them broing down hard over Twentieth Century American Short Fiction:
“JD Salinger? Those are some good ass short stories! You read Hemingway bro?”
Probably just took a class or something.