Smoke & Mirrors

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I had come to Falmouth on Cape Cod to attend a surprise party for a close friend who was turning forty.
His name was Michael, a dear friend and an almost carbon copy of Albert Brooks from ‘Defending your life’, curly hair and all.
The party went off without a hitch and while it was great to see my friend, I realized he was one of the only people at the party that I knew.
I thought it would be a ‘class reunion’ of sorts, which it was not.
That surprised me.
The party finally broke up around nine and was moved to a local bar where I was sure two things would happen: (1) someone was going to lose several articles of clothing and (2) Mikey, the birthday boy, would, at some point during the remainder of the evening, cough up a splash monkey disgusting enough to beat the band.
I had no intention of sticking around to mop up after that one.
I told him I would go, and I did.
My wife Julia was pregnant and several days overdue.
My first mistake was going.
Bad decision on my part but hindsight is, well, you know.

It was raining and I was soaking wet by the time I got to my car and after fumbling with my keys for what seemed like forever (while getting even wetter) I opened the door and fell into the seat, pissed off.
I slammed the door closed thinking it would make me feel better only to realize that a sizeable piece of my new London Fog rain coat was still outside the car.
Son-of-a-bitch, I thought, feeling my blood pressure rise to near stroke level while opening the door yet again to retrieve the rest of my coat; which now had a very greasy and well defined seven inch crease as if to showcase my obvious stupidity.
That’s what you get for being in such a damn hurry, said that little voice inside my head.
A part of me was prepared to verbally assault the inner voice, but regaining my composure, I placed the key in the ignition.

Click.

There’s no sound in the world like the sound of silence from an automobile you need to start, especially when you have to be anywhere other than where you are.
Click, again… son of…a…bitch. (slamming the dashboard)
I managed to flag down a passerby-who I think was not at all jazzed with the idea of helping me-and directed him into the empty parking lot where my all too silent olive green Chevy Impala sat deader than a Mesozoic era fossil.
After a quick jump-start (and a fervent thank you), I was off to locate the nearest gas station / men’s room hoping to fill my tank and empty my soon to be bursting bladder.

I found a local gas station destined to fulfill my simple wants and desires.
The name on the sign told me all I needed to know:
Gas and Go…my kind of place.
I gassed up and went, before asking the easiest way to get to Route 28, which would eventually take me to the Bourne Bridge.
After talking with the gas station attendant I walked back towards the rest rooms where I’d first spotted the pay phones during my mad dash to relief central.
I wanted to make sure my wife, Julie was doing all right.
She was pregnant, and as I said several days overdue and not entirely thrilled with the idea of me coming to Cape Cod in the first place.
This was our first baby and we wanted everything to be right.
Julia had read so many books on the subject that I began calling her
Mrs. Spock.
It was about 9pm when I dialed the apartment expecting to hear Julia’s sleepy voice but the voice on the other end of the line turned out to be her best friend Mary.
This was not a good sign, I thought, as the circus image of me high diving into a waiting bucket of lukewarm shit came to mind.

“Mary… It’s Henry. What’s going on up there? Where’s Julia?”
I said, trying to sound as composed as possible.

“Her water broke at seven thirty, Henry. Where the hell are you? She is really pissed, you know. She said your timing sucks. She’s already at the hospital.”
Mary was serious as the evening news, which made me all the more nervous.

“Listen, I’m on my way… honest. I should be there in…. about ninety minutes…give or take.” I said, trying hard to sound confident.

“Ninety minutes, huh? Have you been listening to the radio, you clown?”
I could hear her drumming her fingers on the table near the phone.

“That’s Mr.Clown to you and no, the radio hasn’t worked since last summer… Why?” I asked, getting irritated with her Gestapo-like tone of voice.

“Snow, Henry… and we’re not talking inches here, we’re talking feet.
You should hit it on 495 somewhere around Holliston,”
She paused, “It’s like another planet around here, Henry. Julie’s okay but she’s really upset you’re not here. She asked me to stay at the apartment because she knew you’d be calling. Where are you right now?”

“Obviously not where I want to be. Shit. The roads are that bad, huh? How long has it been snowing? It’s just raining down here.” I said, trying not to sound too upset.

“Since three this afternoon. Right about the time you left. Enough talking, get the hell going or you’re going to miss everything. I’ll call Jules and tell her I talked to you… that you’re all right. Watch yourself, okay? It’s nasty out there.”

“I’ll be fine. Promise. Tell her I’ll be there even if I have to steal some damn snowshoes.”

Things get weird

I hung up the phone and looked out at the falling rain wondering just how much snow it would take to stop me from getting home.
New England snowstorms are a force to be reckoned with.
Don’t matter if you drive a monster 4×4, storms can render them useless.
Forty-five minutes later, I entered a surrealistic, alien landscape, the likes of which I’d never seen in all my years in New England.
I crossed the rain/snow line and muttered, oh shit, and made the sign of the cross; something I hadn’t done in years, and began my journey into a winter hurricane that would take no prisoners and hold every single driver accountable for their actions as well as their mistakes.
I’d already made plenty that night.
Mary was right. This was a different planet.
The snow was falling at such a fast rate of speed that visibility couldn’t have been more than thirty feet.
No Indy 500 driving tonight, I thought, silently praying the Impala would stay within the steadily shrinking boundaries of I-495.
I cursed myself for taking the chance with Julia being overdue thinking that she wouldn’t go into labor without me there, so much for that stupid idea.
As I drove, my mind restless, I caught sight of the ass end of a car half buried into a huge snowdrift off to my right and another to my left.
Taking my eyes off the road for a split second, I tried to see if anyone was in or around the car.
It was then that the carnival ride from hell began.
The tires on the Impala were as bare as newborn baby seals and gave up trying to hold a road that no longer existed anyway.
I spun out of control and flew off the road into a shallow gully that divided the highway waiting to gobble up anyone silly enough to do what I’d just done.
The drivers door slammed into a small but sturdy enough tree to render it inoperable.
No airbags deployed (thank God) but the idiot lights on the dash were all glowing red as I foolishly tried to restart the car.
It made a soft ‘click’ sound and the dashboard faded to black.
Great job asshole, I thought.

I sat inside the car listening to Old Man Winter tingle his ice blue fingers on the roof and knew I’d come to one of those many crossroads in life.
I needed to make a decision to stay or to go and to stay, as crazy as it sounds, would have driven me insane.
I crawled out of the passenger door and the snow came up to my knees.
I stepped out of the car to look around at the swirling flakes now stinging my face like arctic bees from the North Pole, and thought, awesome.
I am so screwed.
The silence outside the car was louder than anything I could have imagined and I wondered just what the hell was happening here.
There were no lights or cars anywhere, just an empty highway that looked more like a deserted ski slope in the dead of winter than a well traveled interstate.
I began trudging through the knee-deep snow like some well-trained mountaineer thinking I was capable of winning this fight against the elements when the thought of exposure tiptoed across my mind.
I didn’t want to be found frozen solid with my skin the shade of a robin’s egg.
That I actually entertained such a thought was something else altogether.
I was fortunate enough to have gloves and a decent winter jacket in my car: if twenty-five years in New England had taught me anything it was the meaning of the phrase-be prepared.
But was I?
Unfortunately, my feet were freezing into size 10 ½ skating rinks, my Doc Martens stuffed to the gills with snow.
The basic plan here was to just keep going one frozen foot at a time as long as both feet would cooperate.
Hello, Frostbite! Where ya been?!?
And I was doing just that when a wide fan of white light spread out behind me.
Doing an about face, I saw two large fuzzy headlights far off in the distance.
Too high up to be a car, I thought, as a massive 18-wheeler thundered down the straight stretch of highway leaving billowing ghosts of the storm in its wake.
As it drew closer, it had the appearance of some magical floating city, Oz, perhaps, strewn with amber lights, winter candles glowing behind gossamer white draperies.
If I wasn’t so damn cold, in my right mind it would have appeared almost
EdwardHopper-esque.
My body and mind wanted rescue; the part inside that we rarely let total strangers see, until we reach that level of desperation requiring immediate need.
My cynical side said, be careful, you have no idea who the driver might be.
If he stops.
We all make choices in our lives, some are good and some turn around and stamp on your foot, gluing you to the floor if only to make you aware of your actions.
Tonight there was too much proof that I’d made at least several terrible decisions.
Please, Henry, enough of the bad choices.
I thought again of Oz, wishing for just a moment that I possessed a shimmering pair of red Doc Martens that I could just click and go home, but in my mind the red shoes began to melt, turning into shoes befitting a circus clown.
In Mary’s eyes, that night I was the biggest of clowns.
Guilty as charged.
If I didn’t get out of this frigid weather soon I would undoubtedly have the frozen red nose to complete the costume.

I saw the high beams flicker on as the truck approached.
He sees me, I thought, as I began waving my arms in a help-me-I’m-drowning-here fashion, as if to ensure my ride back into the real world of people, places and things.
And maybe a bit of warmth.
I wasn’t welcome here in this inimical crystal graveyard and wanted out.
At that moment, any out would do.
I heard the shushing of the brakes and prayed that the truck wouldn’t jackknife.

The window in the cab rolled down.
“Whatcha doin’ walkin’ around outside on a night like this ya clown? Git your ass up here!”

Even a complete stranger knew I was a clown. Go figure.

Texas, I thought, maybe Alabama or Kentucky.
Either way, with a drawl thicker than cold maple syrup, I knew I was talking to an original good ‘ole boy.

“Car broke down,” I yelled back, “I need some serious help.”
The roar of the Peterbilt’s engine was easily competing with howling voice of the storm making me wonder if he could even hear me.

He leaned out the window with his hands cupped around his mouth, and yelled again “Come on up, ‘ya damn fool ‘fore ‘ya get your ass whooped. Come on around and climb up!”

I walked around the front of the truck noticing the enormous engine grille caked with ice, the warm breath of the engine melting any snowflake within range.
The indigo smoke from a lit cigar drifted out the open window of the cab reminding me of my grandfather.
With no idea who this guy was, I was taking a leap of faith hoping it wouldn’t end leaving me worse off than when I started.
As I climbed up and reached for the door handle, I thought of Julia and felt the fears of doubt stop by for a little visit.
It was the first time I’d thought of her since this whole ordeal had started.
I looked up at the dark grey sky and mumbled, “I’m comin’, Jules,” before sliding into the warmth of the dimly lit cab.

Charlie

His name was Charlie Hartmann, a cigar-smoking castaway from the early sixties, replete with ponytail and all. He was originally from Lubbock, Texas and damn proud of the fact that he was quite possibly the only driver crazy enough to be on the road tonight.
I’d had my own ideas of the way truckers looked but Charlie looked like none of them.
He had high cheekbones that accentuated a smile as big as the state he called home and I couldn’t help but immediately feel comfortable sitting next to him-ponytail and all.
He was a familiar stranger, one that everyone meets at some point during his or her journey through life.
He was a talker and it wasn’t long before I realized that fate wasn’t always the death sentence I’d made it out to be.
No one will ever believe this, I thought, staring out the windows of the cab at a winter storm that seemed to be a few snowflakes shy of a total whiteout.
Charlie seemed unfazed by the magnitude of the storm, his confidence totally intact.
I asked him where he was coming from and more importantly where he was going when he launched into several stories I felt he’d been waiting to tell anyone patient enough to listen.
Hell, I was a captive audience and if listening to him could ultimately bring me closer to Julie, then bring ‘em on.

Charlie had been a truck driver for most of his fifty-eight years on the planet.
He felt fortunate to have been able to see a good portion of the country and still get paid damn well for doing it. He was still single, although he claimed to have at least one girl waiting for him at every stop-he winked and added, sometimes two.
He had a set route that took him from coast to coast every six to eight weeks, leaving him little time to call any place home sweet home for too long; a modest condo in southern Vermont was about all he could handle. He said it had that homey ‘feel’ and that was about as good as it got.
He would have been on his way there had it not been for the phone call from his sister-in-law in Buffalo.
He was asked to call the office once or twice a day, if only to pick up an updated list of roads currently under construction but Charlie sometimes had personal messages as well.

“Let’s just say I’m a goin’ west young man. Gotta make it to Buffalo by the mornin’.
Got a call from Louise, my brother’s ball ‘n chain… seems he’s dyin’ and might not see tomorrow.
Damn cancer’s got ‘em loaded up good with them tumors,” Charlie shifted the truck into gear and glanced at me,
“Company policy says I can’t never pick nobody up. But tonight I’m makin’ the rules, so if you’re goin’ west, this train’s leavin’-you’re welcome to ride along but I gotta warn ya, it’s gonna be one helluva bumpy ride. But I’ve driven through worse.”

“Mass Pike…. Exit 11…if you can get me there, you got some company. By the way, the name’s Henry.” I said with all the bravado I could muster.

Charlie looked at me and nodded once, “Pleased to meet cha, Henry. Now let’s see if I can’t find that damn turnpike,” he laughed, as he began inching the truck forward onto an unknown black diamond trail that looked nothing like the Interstate 495 that I remembered.

He offered me a Patron cigar (his favorite), which I reluctantly accepted, and asked, “You ever ride a mechanical bull, Hank? Well, this is about as close as you’re gonna get.”
Then he laughed like a department store Santa Claus.
I pulled the seat belt securely across my chest and mentally prepared myself for the ride of my life.

the Ride

Charlie asked me about my life and what I was doing driving, conditions being what they were. I explained that I had come from the Cape after attending a birthday party for a good friend and had been caught off guard by the winter storm.
I told him about Julie and the baby, how this was our first child and how badly I’d screwed up by going to the Cape.

“Hank, my boy, you can’t go and beat yourself up for things you ain’t got no control over. Take tonight for instance. I drive in this stuff all the time. You don’t see me fussin’ and fightin’ now do ya?”
He watched me trying to suck air, unsuccessfully through the uncut end of the cigar. I must have sprouted the ears of a jackass because he let out a guttural har, har, har, realizing he was riding with a neophyte cigar smoker.
“Don’t smoke many cigars, eh, Hank?”
He laughed again handing me a cigar cutter, “Just snip off the end and fire it up.
Smoke it slow now or you’ll get the heaves something fierce.”

The view from the cab was spectacular, albeit scary. I decided not to ask Charlie how safe the truck was in weather like this knowing it was possible that the answer might be one I didn’t want to hear.
I wondered what would make a person take on a job that required driving thousands upon thousands of miles a year. It seemed so temporary in some ways while it seemed almost too perfect in others; whether it was midnight or noon there were two constants: you and the never ending road. Charlie summed it up perfectly with his overabundance of ‘country philosophy’.

“I’m just runnin’ on faith and diesel fuel here, Hank…” he paused, “though sometimes I think it’s heavier on the faith part, you understand. Sometimes you don’t feel like driving another inch, but you do just because that’s part of the job; you deliver whatever it is that you’re carrying and move on. You carry that weight. That make any sense?”

The truck swayed and shimmied from left to right, zigged and zagged back and forth as Charlie talked away, fearless, while I continued digging my now blue fingernails deep into the spongy armrest that was attached to the door. It seemed that at any moment a gust of wind might slam into the seventy-foot trailer and topple the truck as easily as a feather floating into a house of cards. I asked Charlie if he’d driven through storms like this one, he told me had.
His answer didn’t surprise me at all.

“Aw…shit Hank…come on now. Ain’t no storm I ain’t made it through, tonight being no exception. See, acceptance is everything. It’s when you start fightin’ it that you get into trouble.
Let me tell you a little story. Hang on there, son.”

The ticking sound of the truck’s directional brought my attention back to the road as the shamrock green Mass Pike sign came into view, a recognizable and welcome sight during a storm that had clandestinely stolen any and all familiarities. With the help of this midnight cowboy, I was closing in on Exit 11 mile by the snowy mile. A part of me seemed to be thriving off the enormity of the snowstorm and I started to ‘accept’ the situation, as Charlie put it.

“You the religious type, Hank?” Charlie said, his face turning serious.

“Not especially, why?” I asked, glancing down at my watch. It was 10:45pm and getting later real fast.
I was waiting for Charlie to tell me he was a twice-removed distant cousin of Pat Robertson and would I consider buying an ounce or two of his very own homemade snake oil when he launched into an honest to goodness story of a night in the life of a trucker.

Jesus in the Headlights

“Well, ya see… strange things happen all the time on the road.
Nights, ‘specially. But some nights can be worse than others. You with me?” He glanced at me quickly and continued, “It’s three in the mornin’ and I’m driving on Route 70 outside of Colby, Kansas,” He paused and laughed, “Can’t even remember where I was headed. Someplace in Colorado… Don’t matter anyhow. I’m minding my own business ya see… followin’ another semi, listenin’ to a country station that’s playin non-stop Charlie Pride tunes when all of a sudden-BAM!”
Charlie’s hand struck the dashboard. It was there that I noticed a miniature statue of the Virgin Mary destined to live a life of eternal vigilance watching over him. He continued.

“I swear on the bible, the semi in front of me jackknifes and rolls off the road into some godforsaken gully! Now, this all happens in a span of maybe several seconds- but it seems longer…‘ya know how time slows down sometimes in those situations. And then I look back at the highway and say, holy shit! There, in the middle of the highway is some naked guy. He’s barefoot, walking real methodical-like, toe to toe, with his hands stretched out like he’s nailed to some invisible crucifix or somethin’ just beggin’ for salvation. But the strangest of all were his crystal blue
eyes-starin’ at me dead on like a scarecrow from Kansas, alone in a field of corn.
I still see those eyes some nights, I really do.
Man, it scared the bejesus outta me.”

I looked at Charlie, who was suddenly quiet and laughed, “Well… what happened? You can’t just tell a story like that and leave me hanging. Did you hit him or what?”

The tip of Charlie’s cigar glowed like a firefly before he exhaled a plume of blue smoke into the cabin and said, “No… well, not exactly. Actually, I don’t know just what happened. All I know is that he should have gone splat all over the grille of the truck but he didn’t. He showed up in my rear views for about ten seconds before the night swallowed him up. It was like he vanished or somethin’. There are some nights I wonder if he was there at all, seein’ it was three in the mornin’ and all. I notified the authorities that a truck had jackknifed ten miles west of Colby on Route 70 then drove until I saw the first truck stop in Colorado. I heard a few days later that they scraped a body off the road. Details were sketchy but I assumed it was him.”

“Maybe he finally found eternal salvation, huh?” I asked, surprised at my own riposte.

“Funny how life works out sometimes, ain’t it?” Charlie said, knowing the phrase was just one of the unwritten worldly truths right up there with life sucks then you die, or was it-life sucks then you get cancer and then maybe you die, unless you live in Buffalo and get suffocated by 30″ of heavy snow, the last part being a personal addendum to Charlie’s most recent dilemma.

Goodbye

Charlie slowed the truck down and eased over to the breakdown lane of the Pike as the off ramp to Exit 11 came into view. We saw few signs of life just a lone car going east towards Boston doing about twenty miles an hour. The snow was unceasing; coming down faster than mankind could clean it up.
Mother Nature was running low on mercy as well still leaving me several miles from the hospital. My long, strange ride had come to an end. Charlie stopped the truck and stuck out his hand.

“You got a son or daughter waitin’ there Hank. Now, go on, get outta here.” He smiled, as he reached into a black box sitting on the floor of the cab. He took out a handful of cigars and handed them to me saying, “Here. Take ‘em. I got more. Gotta hand out cigars for a new one.”

I said thank you for the ride (and saving my sorry ass) and tried to give him some money, which he vehemently declined, saying it was all in a day’s work. I slid out of the warm, dark cab of the truck and plunged back into the gelid world below when I heard Charlie’s last words to me, “Thanks for the company, buddy…and as my Mama used to say; May the good Lord be gracious and take a likin’ to ‘ya!”

I watched him pull away when I noticed Ghost Delivery Freight written on the side of the truck in large boldface letters: Ghost Delivery, I thought, laughing to myself, I never even asked him what he was carrying. Nothing about the moment struck me as religious; no beams of heavenly light, no choir of angelic voices and no reason for me to believe anything miraculous had just happened. But it did.
The world was still spinning and Charlie had just completed another successful delivery.
The lights lining the turnpike slashed strange shadows onto the unplowed off ramp, as I lumbered through the snowstorm towards the dimly lit tollbooths.
Liberty Heights was a bar located at the end of the exit.
Maybe I could get a ride to the hospital there.
Or at least some snowshoes.
Closer, I thought, pulling the collar of my coat higher as the winds cried out like a newborn baby.