Big Time Truckin': True Trucking Stories
Dispatch 25: In Too Deep
by Kirk Gonnsen
I never thought it would have gone this far. I mean, who knows what rat bastard idea is going to get inside your head and screw you around. But this? This was mutiny of the worst kind. My own mind was trying to undo me. Turn me against myself and put me to ruin. To quit driving. To give this all up.
There I was. Hunched over in the back of my rig. Standing in the sleeper cab, pissing into an orange juice bottle that was already three-quarters of a litre full. The sour odour of urine wafting up. Mixing with the rank of my sweat socks that were drying out on the shelf. And then I saw it. My copy of Tolstoy's Resurrection lay on the bunk. Who was I fooling? Nobody. I didn't belong here in the middle of the truckstop with the fat men and dimwits. I was a goddamn scholar. A man of the mind. That's when my brain really did a number on me. A list of academic accomplishments flashed before me, followed by a flurry of new possibilities. To return to school life. But not as a student. No. I could be the glorious tutor. The TA with grit.
But still. I held fast. I knew what was really happening. I was being tricked by intellect. That fool's gold of ambition. Surely, I was stronger than that. I was a gambler, a woodsman, a man's man, a truck driver. I could last longer out here. I wasn't really looking for a better life. I had become afraid. Fear crept over me like a blast of arctic snow sliding off the cold water of Lake Huron. This was front page horror story fear. The bad weather. The moments of not knowing the way to go. Hearing voices on the CB but not being able to see the road for the blowing and drifting snow. Creeping past the jack-knifed rigs on the 402. The pictures of the 80 car pile-up on the 401. It rattled me. Then came the ultimate trick. A USA today snapshot article. "Truck crashes injure, kill thousands. In 2001 - 5,082 people killed and 131,000 people injured in crashes involving large trucks." Jesus. It's a war out here.
But what would I do without this life. Could I really sit still in some University library with a bunch of cocked up undergrads hanging on my every word. Doe-eyed sophomores with perky tits and lonely beds, licking up my poetry with their randy tongues. Tweed jackets and flavoured cigarillos. Wine and cheese. God man. That sounded good. And warm. I could almost feel the Grad lounge fireplace warming my aching hands as they held both liquor and youth
within their grasp.
But what about the thick thighed waitresses and the grease spittled tables? The torn and belly born conversations of the shipping woes? Another fear gripped me. How many more times can I sit here before I'm telling stories of lost wages and surviving blizzard conditions at 3 AM in Detroit? And not telling stories for this rag. Or the quest for wordy glory. But earnestly. How much longer can I remain here before I'm really one of them. A wheel-monkey. A road-slave. A Driver for life?
