THE LITTLE GIRL IN fleece teddy bear pajamas sniffs and looks up at her father through long lashes. “But I don’t want you to go, Daddy.”
The man swipes a tear from her cheek with a calloused thumb and grins down at her from where he sits on the edge of her bed. “I know, pumpkin, but it’s my job. If I don’t do my job, who’s gonna buy all those gallons and gallons of Sugar O’s you eat every morning?”
She giggles and sniffs again.
He nods toward the golden retriever that’s laying on the rug beside her bed. “And who’s gonna buy all Sampson’s thousands of biscuits, huh? Are you gonna do that?”
She’s laughing now. “Ok, Daddy, ok.”
He leans in so she can hug his neck, her tears wetting the collar of his flannel shirt. “You go to sleep now, Jessie. I’ll be gone when you get up, but I’ll be back before you know it, I promise.”
“Ok, Daddy. And you won’t forget?”
He kisses her forehead and gently urges her to the pillow. “Have I ever forgotten before? When I get home, first thing I’ll do is help you put another pin in the map. And, if you’re really good for Mommy, I’ll bring you a present too.”
She claps twice, “Yay! I’ll be good.”
“But right now, you gotta go to sleep, ok? Goodnight, sweet pea.”
“Goodnight, Daddy. Love you.”
“Love you too, baby girl.”
She closes her eyes and he pushes a stray hair behind her ear, then rises, moves to the door, and closes it most of the way so he can still see a thin shaft of hallway light bathing her face. He smiles and tiptoes down the hall and then the stairs.
Bobby sits down next to his wife on the worn leather couch in their living room, heaving a sigh. “She’s a good girl.”
The TV is on, but muted, and Julie is in her bathrobe with her hair up in a messy bun. She hands him a beer and he takes it gratefully. “Is she all tucked in?” she says, resting her hand on his thigh.
“Yeah. We said our goodbyes.”
“How long are you thinking this time?”
“Depends. Might be some little stuff available on the route. Right now, all I’ve got in stone is a run out to Oklahoma City to pick up a load bound for Omaha, then from there to Sacramento. But I still have my bid in to that sporting goods factory in Boise. They need a monthly run down to Phoenix. If I can nail that down, I’ll be gone eleven or twelve days, most likely. If not, it’ll be a week from tomorrow, assuming nothing goes wrong with the truck and the weather cooperates.”
“You really think we need that Boise to Phoenix run every month?”
He takes a long pull on the beer. “I mean, ‘need’? Maybe not. We’re covering the bills alright, but what’s in Jessie’s college fund so far? About eight grand? Figure I oughta bring it in any which way I can, while I’m young enough to handle the miles. Don’t you?”
She sighs and leans in to plant a kiss on his cheek. “I guess,” she says, laying her head on his shoulder, “I just miss you when you’re gone so long. Jessie does too.”
“I know, babe. But we’ll talk every night. And you know, if anything goes wrong, I won’t sleep till I get back here, right? You just say the word.”
“I know.”
He finishes his beer in two more deep swallows, puts the empty bottle down, and shifts around so he’s grinning down at her. “So, how about we say our goodbyes now, huh?” He waggles his eyebrows and she laughs.
She stands, takes his hand, and leads him past the stairs to the bedroom.
It is just after five in the morning the following day.
Bobby takes the travel mug of coffee from her hand and kisses his wife goodbye. He ruffles the dog’s ears a final time, snugs the Bud Light cap a little lower on his forehead, and steps out into the frosty February morning, letting the screen door snick shut behind him. He trudges through six of what the weathermen said will be about eighteen inches of snow before it lets up the following morning. The Peterbilt 579 semi has been running for twenty minutes already, so when he steps up into the cab, it’s deliciously warm.
Julie is standing inside the open door, grasping her robe tight around her, blowing him a kiss. He pretends to catch it in the air and smiles back. She waves and closes the door and he buckles his seat belt. After checking his mirrors and gauges, he puts the truck in gear and glides away from the little house on Cherryview Lane, at pains to keep the big diesel engine as quiet as he can so he doesn’t wake the little angel in the upstairs bedroom.
By six o’clock, he is hurtling down I-90 at 75 miles per hour. The Montana Department of Transportation does a helluva job plowing when these pissant storms blow up, so he’s just sipping on coffee that’s already cooling, and singing along to an old Toby Keith CD he’s owned since high school.
The first two stages of the trip are quick and smooth. Once he’d outrun the storm, he’d made it to Denver and slept at a rest area just off the 470. Getting an early start the next day, he’d made Oklahoma City by eight in the evening. Ate a proper meal at a Howard Johnson’s and watched most of an old western on his phone before nodding off to the rumble of the idling Peterbilt.
The next morning, he was at his pickup location by eight. The warehouse crew was nice but slow and disorganized, so it was nearly eleven when he was finally headed up the I-35, north toward Omaha.
It is nearly seven in the evening when he arrives, but the crew at the box store swear they can have him unloaded before they change shifts, so he idly wanders the store waiting for the text from the unload supervisor. From tinny speakers, hung among the glaring fluorescents, Phil Collins warns a thousand retail zombies that there’s something in the air tonight, and Bobby agrees. He picks up a board game in one of the toy aisles and wonders if Jessie would enjoy it. He decides she wouldn’t and puts it back.
Stepping from the aisle, he nearly runs into a petite woman in the distinctive blue uniform of a store employee. “Sorry ma’am,” he says with a smile.
She smiles back, “Oh no, my fault,” and moves around him and on her way.
He follows her with his eyes, feeling his smile fade. Above, the drums finally kick in, echoing his footsteps.
A moment later, his phone buzzes and he stops, checks the screen, and turns back toward the rear loading dock.
There, he finds the supervisor watching a gangly teen struggling to latch the rear door of the trailer. Bobby nudges the kid out of the way with a grunt, jams the latch into place, and locks it. Without making eye contact or responding to the supervisor’s banal small talk, he scribbles his signature on the appropriate lines, takes his carbons, and heads back toward the cab. Another young guy is standing close to the truck, about ten feet from the front of the trailer, faced away with his ear to the sheet metal and rapping on it with his knuckle.
Bobby walks up behind him silently. “What the hell are you doing?” he says, his voice a rumbling whisper in the kid’s ear. The teen is so startled, he bangs the side of his head on the trailer wall and the sound echoes within like momentary thunder.
“Sorry, I was just—”
“Get out of my way and don’t ever touch my truck again.”
The kid’s Adam’s apple bobs twice before, “Yes sir.” He hurries off toward the safety of the store.
After grabbing a Big Mac and a Diet Coke for a late dinner, Bobby parks at the far end of the store’s sprawling asphalt acreage—a longstanding agreement with management—and collapses onto his bunk in the back of the sleeper cab and calls Julie to chat, as he does every night.
He thumbs through the dog-eared pages of a Stephen King novel he’d started reading about two years prior, his fingers leaving greasy smudges on the pages, but he struggles to concentrate and eventually tosses it onto the floor. Shoving the last bite of the burger into his mouth, he wipes his hands on his shirt and reaches for his phone. Fingering the screen for a few moments, he hits ‘Play’ and closes his eyes as the first brutal bars of Tonight in Flames by Cradle of Filth pummels the small space.
Bobby fades to peaceful slumber in its embrace.
Next comes a long three-day haul, west on the imitable I-80, across the cornfields and grasslands of Nebraska and Wyoming, the buttes and scrublands of Utah, the deserts and sudden mountains of Nevada, and the oddly alien forested hills of California, before finally bottoming out in Sacramento.
Driving nearly a thousand miles with nothing to distract him always makes Bobby itch, which is why, on the evening of the second day, at a truck stop outside Rawlins, Wyoming, he decides to blow off some steam.
The whore knocks on the door of his cab, as he knew she would—there are truck stops all over the country that actively keep prostitutes off the property, but most don’t, and he knows which are which—and Bobby rolls down his window.
She’s not dressed like they do on the dark streets of Manhattan or Detroit. No tight leather miniskirt or low-cut halter top. She’s in jeans, boots, and a hooded parka with thick fur surrounding her pretty face like a polar bear halo. She smiles up at him. “Hey, fella, where you in from?”
He sees no need to lie. “Started out in Bozeman, Montana, but currently on my way from Omaha to Sacramento.”
“You looking for some company, honey?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Sure, where you heading?”
“Wherever you wanna go, sugar.” And she walks around the front of the chugging cab to the passenger door. He glances quickly around the parking lot, seeing no one, unlocks the door, and she climbs up expertly. She’s done this before. Probably a thousand times.
She smiles. “Ooh, it’s nice and warm in here.” And she unzips her parka halfway. She’s wearing nothing underneath.
He takes a good long look, as she intended, and grins back at her. “Tell you what. I’m gonna clean up a little in the back, then we can see what it is you came to show me.”
“Sure, sugar. Whatever you want.”
He hops up and pulls aside the curtain that separates the cab from his sleeping area. A twin mattress, tiny fridge, some pantry space, and a few odds and ends. She’s whistling quietly up front. He yanks the covers around on the bed, making things neat, shoves some garbage aside and out of sight, swipes a cobweb from the corner of the cabinet.
“All set,” he calls.
She pushes through the curtain, and he sees she’s removed the parka. He takes in the full sight of her, taking his time. She grins and lets him. Then, she kneels without a word and begins fiddling with his belt. When she has it open, she turns her attention to the button and zipper as he pulls the belt off slowly.
She’s most of the way toward earning her fifty bucks when he slips the thick leather around her throat and yanks it tight. She comes up gagging, fear shining brightly in eyes growing duller by the moment. Veins bulge in her neck and forehead, spit runs from the corners of her mouth. She can’t make a sound, but a thick hiss comes from the maw of her mouth, which works open and shut like a grounded fish. Her hands are up, like she’s surrendering (don’t shoot!), long painted nails flashing in the dim light from beneath the cabinets. He wonders why she doesn’t try to claw his eyes out or grab at the belt or anything. Why she just kneels, frozen, as her brain starves and her life ebbs away.
She collapses a few moments later, her face landing back in his crotch, and he’s harder than ever. He grabs her beneath the arms and throws her onto the bed, then checks her pulse. Still there. Weak, but definitely there.
Then, he pulls a key off a hook on the wall and slips it into a keyhole that’s hidden behind the bottom flap of a Lynyrd Skynyrd poster in the center of the back wall. With a click, the hidden door unlocks, and he shuffles across the bed, pushes it open, and backs into the dark. After turning on the bright fluorescents in the room behind the sleeping quarters, he leans in, grabs the girl, pulls her into the room with him, and closes the door.
He lays her out on the stainless steel table—a piece of workmanship he’s particularly proud of, canted just slightly lower on the end where he lays her feet, for easy drainage and cleanup—and slips the leather collar around her throat, snugging and buckling it before giving the chain a good yank to ensure it’s still connected to the underside of the table. He does the same to her wrists and ankles. Then he uses a large Bowie knife to slice her jeans down the side from waist to ankle before neatly folding them and setting them aside.
Finally, as he notices her beginning to come around, Bobby opens a drawer behind him and begins carefully, lovingly removing a dozen tools—claw hammer, bolt cutters, power drill, and more—and lining them up on the counter within easy reach.
Then he looks back down, and when they meet each other’s gaze, he smiles as she screams.
A little while later, an old man in greasy coveralls passes by, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He hears the slightest hint of a scream and what might be someone’s fist beating on the inner wall of the truck’s sleeping cell. The man grins and nods, remembering the days—not all that long ago—when he could get it up enough to entertain a truck stop cutie. These days, not so much. But kudos to you, brother, he thinks, and moves on to his own truck.
The next day, Bobby is barreling down I-80 again, passing through a blip of a city called Winnemucca. Here, he turns off the main road onto Route 49, which quickly leaves the city proper and heads straight as an arrow into the desert wastes of rural Nevada.
After a full half hour of driving and seeing no people or vehicles anywhere, he slows to a crawl, pulls a steel lever on the floor beside his seat, and hears a metallic clunk from behind and below. Glancing at his mirror, he watches the tarp-wrapped bundle tumble to a stop in the middle of the westbound lane. The roar of the big diesel accelerating masks the whir and clang of the trapdoor rising back into place.
In Sacramento, the pickup went just as it should have, so CCR was playing loud and Bobby was smiling as he headed east on Route 50. He’s passing the southern tip of Lake Tahoe, just an hour shy of Reno, when he gets the call.
“Mister Garland?”
He turns the music down. “That’s me.”
“This is Mary Brenner from Action Sporting Goods.”
“Yes ma’am.” The truck speeds up a hair. It’s the call he’s been waiting for.
“I just wanted to let you know, Mister Garland, we decided to go a different direction with the Boise-to-Phoenix run. We encourage you to put in another bid next time we have a route open up.”
The truck slowed again. “I understand. And thanks for the call.” He presses END before she has a chance to respond. Behind him, a pint-sized SUV honks its horn and Bobby notices he’s cruising at forty miles per hour and slowing by the second. He steps on the gas and lumbers back up to speed.
As the SUV passes, Bobby flips off the oblivious driver. And, when it moves back in front of him a moment later, Bobby lays on the gas and then the air horn. Faster and faster. Now doing seventy, grinning at the panicked look in the eyes that keep darting at him in the guy’s sideview mirror. After about a mile of this the SUV veres off at an exit that Bobby is sure wasn’t planned, and he laughs to himself as he roars past and gives the horn one more long blast before leaving the asshole behind.
He pushes a few buttons on the stereo and the eerie opening notes of the theme from The Exorcist blare from speakers he’s turned up to the max. He listens to those same twenty notes repeating at top volume for six more hours—passing right through Winnemucca without a glance off to his left where, no doubt, a murder investigation was ramping up at this point—before pulling over and collapsing onto his bed just south of Twin Falls, Idaho.
At two o’clock in the morning, agitated and antsy, unable to sleep, Bobby gets up and gets dressed to walk outside. The cold air slaps his face as he steps from the rumbling cab, and he blows into his hands almost immediately. Stares up at the bone-white disk of the moon and wants to howl. But, as he’s gathering his breath, the static in his brain is hushed by a distant call.
“Hey mister?”
Bobby turns to see a small figure waving and hurrying toward him, clouds of vapor spilling from her mouth and floating over her shoulder as she shuffles as fast as she can in high-heel boots on the icy gravel. “Ma’am?”
“Oh, thank God you came,” she says.
As she gets close enough to catch the cast off glow of his headlights, he sees she’s a middle-aged blonde in jeans and a smart leather jacket, too thin for this weather. “Something wrong?”
“My car broke down about a mile up the road and there’s no signal,” she waves her worthless cellphone, “and I haven’t seen a single car since it happened. I was going to try to make it back to Hollister, but it’s slow going.” She made it to the corner of the cab and put her hands up to the warm hood. “Don’t suppose I could get a ride with you, just up to the nearest gas station or whatever.”
He smiles his best well, shucks ma’am smile, motions toward the passenger’s side, and says, “Hop on in.”
She thanks him effusively, moves to the door and tugs on the locked handle.
“Oh, sorry ‘bout that, ma’am,” Bobby says, moving around the cab now, “it sticks sometimes.” But, when he gets around the cab and she’s between him and the door, he grabs her throat in both hands and squeezes.
It happens so fast, and so unexpectedly, she doesn’t make a sound. Red face, bugging eyes, clawing nails, stamping feet, but not a sound from her mouth. And not a puff of vapor, either.
Ten minutes later, Bobby is trudging back up the dark grass slope that connects the two-lane road with the muddy drainage ditch alongside it. In the glare of the headlights, he looks at his hands and the front of his coat and pants. Satisfied, he moves to the driver’s door, clambers up the steps and into the warm cab, hits PLAY and pulls away as Chuck Berry calls to Maybelline.
He’s home seven hours later.
Jessie comes skipping out the front door before he even turns off the truck. “Daddy!”
He grabs her up to lift her over his head while she squeals with joy. Then he kisses her nose and gives her a hug. “You been good, Jelly Belly?”
“Yes, daddy.”
“Well in that case,” he says and gives her a conspiratorial wink while he puts her down in front of him. He fishes in a front pocket and pulls out a small silver ring set with what looks like an emerald. He uses a thumbnail to scrape off a tiny fleck of brown blood before dropping it in her hand. “That’s too big for you right now, but you keep it safe.”
“Wow, daddy, that’s beautiful.” She dashes back toward the door where Julie has just stepped out. “Mom, look!”
Bobby grabs his few things from the truck, heads up the walk and kisses Julie on the cheek as he steps past her. Inside, with the door closed, she wraps her arms around his neck and draws him down into a deeper hello.
Then, Jessie comes back from her room, a plastic container rattling in her hand. Thumbtacks. “Daddy, daddy! The pins!”
He chuckles and takes Julie’s hand before following Jessie into the hall and then up the stairs to her bedroom, where, on the far wall, hangs a map of the contiguous United States. The map is littered with green and red thumbtacks, mostly concentrated in the mid- to far-west, but a few stragglers along the eastern seaboard.
Jessie already has a red tack between her delicate fingers. “Where’s this one go, Daddy?”
“Rawlins, Wyoming,” he says. “You see it?”
She is studying the map, her tongue just peeking from the corner of her mouth, and shakes her head. He points to the general area, and a moment later she pushes the pin home. Then, she pulls out a green one and looks back up to him expectantly.
“Winnemucca, Nevada.”
She laughs at the name, and Bobby and Julie laugh with her. After a few moments, she locates Winnemucca and places the green pin. Then, she steps back to survey the whole map with a bright smile.
“Hey, pumpkin,” Bobby says, “don’t go away yet. There’s one more.”
Jessie’s eyes go wide and she pries open the tack container again. Julie raises an eyebrow and gives him a mock sneer that means she’s jealous of him. He grins back.
“Little Falls, Idaho.”
After a minute of Jessie hunting for the words, her nose an inch from the wall, he points to the area and she presses the red pin in. She looks up at him again.
“Put the green one there too,” he says, and avoids Julie’s shocked gaze while Jessie whitens her thumbnail, pushing the tack home.
Later, after Jessie has left the dinner table and as Julie and Bobby linger over their glass of wine, Julie says, “So what the hell happened in Little Falls?”
Bobby sighs and takes a swallow of the wine. “Not quite sure. I got that call from Boise and was just so angry, you know?”
She closes her hand over his.
“And I just pulled over to sleep, and I couldn’t, so I decided to take a walk. And not even a minute after I got out of the truck, here comes this woman just running down the shoulder waving and begging to get in the truck. No cell service, car broke down… it was like someone upstairs was blessing me. So, I just did it. Right there on the side of the road.”
She is silent for a moment, weighing her words. Finally, she shakes her head. “I can’t wait till Jessie starts first grade and I can join you again on the short runs, babe. You’re starting to slip up out there. I think you need me to keep you in line.”
He cups the back of her neck and draws her close. “You got that right, Missus Garland.” And he kisses her deeply.