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Jimmy Mcfarlane lit another cigarette and shivered in the phone booth. His jean jacket wasn’t made for this cold.
The truck stop was busy at 3 am. Rigs parked all over the place, some refeulling, some arriving and some leaving for the border a few miles north.
A big highway ran all the way from Montreal to Florida. Warmth and sunshine.
The phone rang.
Jimmy fumbled the receiver with cold fingers.
“Yeah?”
“Ok. He should be getting there now. He’ll park at the back of the lot, as far away from the buildings as possible. Got everything?”
“Yeah” Jimmy’s eyes fell to the hockey bag at his feet. Dexedrine, plates, cards.
“OK. Call me from Florida”
“Ok ... in a few days”
Jimmy was already looking into the phosphorescent glare. The rigs glistened under the freezing light of the parking lot. Exhaust fumes rose straight up in white clouds.
He picked up his bag, flicked his smoke into the night, walked down the middle of the parked 18 wheelers. He kept walking past the line of idling trucks to the one parked at the other end of the lot. Lots of drivers do it. Park away from the noise to sleep.
He wasn’t supposed to see the other driver.
A shadow moving in the other direction flashed by. The guy only had to drive it from the border. They didn’t trust him to do the checks. Second nature a year ago. But they got him out of the county slam and asked him to drive a truck to Florida so maybe wanting complete trust was a little too much to expect.
He used the key in his jeans pocket to unlock the door to the Tri Star, climbed into the welcome warmth. Country music playing soft in the background, he threw his bag on the passenger seat and looked over the dash in front of him.
The coloured lights were a relief from the bright illumination of the parking lot.
After a minute of enjoying the comfort he jumped out to do a quick circle check on the truck. The other guy wasn’t driving it to Florida. The rig was probably fine but it never hurt to do a quick visual circle check.
He settled into the driver’s seat after he had adjusted it to lean back further than it was. The last driver must have been a hunchback if he sat like that.
Everything seemed to be good according to the gauges in front of him. He smiled, flipped off the brakes, shifted into low and pulled away.
Staying to the outside of the lot, close to the fence, he checked his mirrors and got his first feel for the rig. It had been eight months, six of it in the county jail.
He stopped to adjust each wing mirror carefully. The mirrors were his eyes.
He pulled into the exit and shifted up till he was moving into the freeway, space given to him by two other trucks whose drivers pulled out to let him in.
Steve Earle sang about drivin down the Eastern seabord as he stopped his signal and settled in.
He was singing along, just at the part that went “you think I’m happy, you’re right, six days on the road and...” when he felt the steel of the gun on his neck.
The scariest time came just then as she moved from the bunk to the passenger seat, landed on the hockey bag and threw it on the floor. The gun in her hand waved wildly the whole time and she grunted as she spoke.
“Just keep ‘er steady, man. I know your story. You’re an excon and this load is illegal”
He kept it steady and didn’t show any emotion outwardly but he felt the adrenalin rush which made him sneeze.
A big, clear snot bubble expanded from his nose. It caught them both by surprise.
She pointed the revolver upward as her eyes searched the dash.
Below it she saw a roll of paper towels and some window cleaner in a rack.
She handed him the roll and suppressed a grin.
“Thanks, uh” he wiped his nose and glanced at the revolver which was pointing at him again.