General Fiction posted April 1, 2025

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A haunted man trying to run away from his life

Long Haul

by estory

There were times when I couldn't remember where I had come from, where I was supposed to go, and what it was that I had picked up and was supposed to deliver, at the end of those trucking routes. Then there was the phenomenon of seeming to be completely motionless in the vast landscape, even though I had the pedal to the metal and was driving the speed limit. I'd drive for hours past fenceless expanses of sagebrush and tumbleweed on some stretches; like Texas for example, without so much as a sign of civilization. There wasn't even an odd rock formation to mark the passage of space through time. You'd look out of the side window and look back, and then look out again a few moments later and you might as well have not moved.

At such times you'd turn on the radio but mostly all that was out on the airwaves were commercials. Advertisements trying to sell you auto insurance or life insurance, new cars or a miracle cure. The odd evangalist telling you the only way out is to give your life to Jesus. People on talk shows going on and on about how the liberals were ruining the schools and how the conservatives were bigots and racists, and how you had to somehow figure out whose side you were on.

And then there was the feeling that there was somebody out there following you.

Of course there were the exits. When you got off at an exit, you found yourself in some kind of oasis, a pit stop in Aboline, Chisolm, Topeka or Midland. You could look at the map and point to that name and see where you were in relation to the rest of the fifty states and their immeasurable interstate highway networks. You could sit still, for a time. You could think about what it was that you were trying to get away from, and what it was that you were trying to find.

There was that time when I was doing some long haul cross country and I was in Kansas somewhere. I can't remember exactly where. But all of a sudden, my dad was in the cab next to me, in the passenger seat, sitting there with his legs crossed, like he used to sit when he was watching tv back home. I couldn't remember how he had come on board.

"Say Bob," he says to me, "How's about you and me catching a Royals game this weekend?"

"I don't know, dad," I answered, "I was planning on going to the track with the boys Saturday."

"You're always doing something with the boys," he says to me, looking out of the passenger side window. "I'm not getting any younger, you know. I'm not going to be around forever. It would be nice to go to one more ballgame with you again, the way we used to in the old days."

"Maybe next Saturday," I said to him. "We kind of have this Saturday planned. Not everyone can take off at the same time. Some of the boys had to put in for days off."

My dad shrugged, still looking out of the window at the sagebrush and the tumbleweed. "Next Saturday they're out of town."

"Someday they'll be back in town," I said.

"Someday," he said sadly. "When someday comes, you'll be back on the road again. You're getting to be like that tumbleweed out there, son."

"That's not fair, dad," I said to him.

He looked back over at me. He was frowning. "There's nothing fair about life, son. You know that? It's not fair that you have changed. We used to do all kinds of things together. We used to go fishing. We used to go to Royals games together. You don't know how much I looked forward to them ballgames. I used to take you for rides on them cropdusters. I used to love watching your eyes light up on those rides. Now all you want to do is go to the track and play the horses and sit around in honky tonks and drink beer with those boys you call friends."

"You don't have to keep going on about my friends," I said, "They're my friends."

"Friends come and go," my dad said. "You only have one dad. And you only have so much time with him, you know? There's only so many fishing trips, so many ballgames, so many birthdays and Christmases. One of these days I could have a stroke. A heart attack."

When I looked back over to where he was sitting next to me in the cab, he was gone. It was like he had jumped out right then and there, in mid flight. I took a deep breath. Of course he did have that heart attack, a couple of years back. I never did go to a ballgame with him again. Never told him how much I used to love those ballgames in those days too. He died without hearing me tell him.

So I just keep on driving.

And then I pull up to this McDonald's drive thru window to get a burger meal, on the go. I mean, you always seem to be pulling up to McDonald's drive thru windows when you're on the road. You pull up to so many of them you can't tell one from the other; whether you're in Florida or New Jersey. The girls in these drive thru windows who hand you the bags of food all seem to look the same. Tired. Just going through the motions. Flashing you a smile and then saving another one for the next guy.

But this time I pull up to the window, and there's my ex, Jen, taking my bills and handing me the bag in exchange. And she's not smiling.

"What are you doing here?" I ask her.

"I might as well ask you the same question," she answers, frowning. "I waited for you for days. For days, Bob."

"There was a detour," I told her.

"You could have called," she said. "You could have let me know."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It's too late now. That's all I have to say. Here's your coke."

"But I'm on my way back now," I say.

"It's too late, Bob. I've moved on," she says.

"What do you mean, you've moved on?" I ask.

"What do you think, Bob? That I'd spend the rest of my life sitting around waiting for you to come back to me, while you drive around the country, with God only knows who?"

"It wasn't exactly like that," I try to explain.

"Listen," she says, "You've got to move. There's a line behind you. You're not the only guy in a truck on a line in McDonald's."

So she puts her head back in the drive thru window and I roll up the driver's side window and pull out. I wonder if she's found someone else, if she's dating the restaurant manager or something. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't taken that detour to Shelby, or if I would have called.

But that's life.

And you've got to keep on moving.

I get back on the interstate. It's night. The nights are the worst of all. At night, you really can't tell if the place you're on the way to is still out there, and you seem so far away from where you started that it might no longer exist. And you can't see the other cars or trucks on the road with you. At least in the daylight you can see people in their cars, and you know they can see you. They beep their horns at you, sometimes they wave, or at least give you the finger. Something to let you know you're there, that someone out there is thinking about you. But at night there's nothing. You might as well be the only person left after a holocaust or some kind of natural disaster. You might as well have not existed at all in the first place.

And that gets you thinking. You start asking yourself: What is this all about? Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing, here? and Where am I going and for what?

I pull off at an exit. It's exit 106E. At the end of the exit there's a light, and a sign pointing to Kansas City. It looks familiar, so I make the turn. I pass a shopping center I must have passed a hundred times before. I pass an old church I've never been inside. Then I come to this huge lot with a warehouse in it. I can drive it blindfolded. I turn around and back up to a loading dock. Suddenly there's this man banging on my door. I roll down the driver's side window. It's Fred, the dispatcher.

"Bob!" he yells up at me, "What are you doing back here? I just loaded you up with refrigerators, dishwashers and stoves. You're supposed to be on your way to a Walmart in St. Louis. What the hell are you doing back here? What the hell is the matter with you?"

I look down at him, standing there with his hands on his hips, that headset covering his ears like he has nothing else to do but listen to the instructions from the main office.

"I must have gotten confused between getting back home for something and making this delivery," I say to him.

"How the hell can you get confused like that in a day and an age when you've got instructions on GPS? Geez, do you realize how much time you're wasting? Time is money. You're costing us money. You better get with the program Bob, or I'll replace you."

I pull out and hit the road again. I drive for a whole day, trying to put as many miles between him and me as fast as I can. I keep thinking about how much I need this gig, until I'm too tired to think anymore.

The truck stops are like little pieces of paradise, little oasises in the desert, in times like that. There's places to eat, places to drink. There's girls. Rooms where you can spend the night in limbo. Sit still and lie still for a while in this world where things are always on the move, twenty-four seven, seven days a week.

I order a burger and fries, a cold bottle of beer, from this girl in a little skirt and tube top. I keep thinking, I've seen her somewhere before. I've seen her in a park, or sitting on a bench in a mall. Her hair is not dyed one those crazy colors, there is no make-up yet on her face. When she comes back with my food, she gives me this strange, knowing smile. I ask her where she's from.

"Don't you recognize me?" she says, with a laugh. "I'm Jerry's kid. From next door."

"The kid who used to ride the bike around in front of my house in the summertime?"

"That's me."

"It seems you were riding around on that bike just yesterday."

"Well, I've got a car, now."

"Really?"

"And I'm saving up for college."

"So you're working now, that it?"

"Pretty much."

"How long have you been working here?"

"A couple of months."

"A couple of months can turn into a couple of years," I say to her.

"It already feels like a couple of years. Let me know if you need anything."

I watch her sashay back into the kitchen. Then I see Jerry, sitting in a booth on the other side of the dining room. He's looking at me. He's shifting a toothpick around, back and forth, in his clamped up mouth. He looks like he's getting ready to get up and come over. So I pick up the

burger and fries and head into the bar. I content myself with watching a movie about crazy cheerleaders committing chain saw murders. Then I head up to my room.

In the middle of the night, there's a knock on my door. I lay stock still in the bed, not making a sound, holding my breath. Whoever's there knocks on the door again. Then, they try the knob. I don't get out of the bed. I just lay there in the dark, looking at the closed door, wondering what's on the other side of it. I lay there until I don't hear anything at the door anymore.

The next morning I'm on the road again. I'm in between here and there. The food and beer in the truck stop, the girl, my neighbor, the night spent alone in my room in the dark seem like distant memories. I'm glad of that, for a while. I turn on the radio and listen while someone plays a recording of 'Bye bye, Miss America Pie.' But then it's beginning to feel again like the route will never end, and I find myself longing for the sound of a voice, some kind of company, in the cab with me.

I see a hitchhiker on the shoulder and I slow down and pull over. I'm just hoping to find someone, anyone, to talk to. But when the door pops open, it's my old friend Gary, whom I haven't seen since high school. He's still wearing the same old denim jacket with the Grateful Dead logo sewn on the back. His hair is still down to his shoulders. He jumps into the seat next to me, swings the door shut, and plops his knapsack on the floor.

"Gary," I say, "What are you doing out here? Where are you off to?"

He doesn't look at me. Instead, he looks up the road out of the windshield and shrugs. "Where am I going? Same place I always seem to be going, Bob. No place."

"Well, what are you doing out here on the road then, looking for a ride? You must be heading someplace," I say.

He finally looks over at me, but his face is unpleasant. There's a scar on his chin. There's something about his eyes. "In all honesty," he says, "I've been looking for you."

I try to smile. "Looking for me? Why? What did I do?" I ask him.

"You were the one who got me going on weed," he said, staring at me. "You got me into that shit, you started selling it to me."

I squirmed in my seat. "That was a long time ago," I said to him, "We were just kids smoking joints, listening to music."

"Maybe that's what it was for you," he says to me. I notice that his hands are curled up into fist until his knuckles are white. "Maybe you could just quit yourself, just like that. It wasn't like that for me. After you split, I found another dealer. He turned me on to coke."

I swallowed hard, staring out of the window while I could feel his unpleasant eyes staring at me. "Well, I'm sorry about that," I tell him at last.

"Sorry?" he says, sitting up in his seat, "Is that all you can say? You were the one who got me going down that road. Some road. I lost my job. I got arrested. I did a year. When I got out of the joint, I couldn't find work. Nobody would hire me. So I ended up going right back to the blow. I stole money from my parents and they kicked me out. They still don't talk to me."

I stare at the double yellow lines in the road. "Geez," I say softly, "I didn't know."

"I tried calling you," he continued. "Nobody else wanted anything to do with me, so you were the only one I could think of that might feel sorry for me, that might help me out. But you never called me back, man. That's messed up, man."

"To tell the truth," I tried to say, "I didn't know what you would be calling me about, after all that time. I didn't know."

"Yeah," he said, turning away again, "You didn't know. You didn't care. You got me down that road, and when I tried to get off, you blew me off. I ended up getting arrested again and they put me in a program. I'm still stuck in this shit job flipping burgers in a fast food place. I'm still in a boarding house. I can't get anywhere."

I looked at him, with his old denim jacket, with his long hair and old sneakers. I found myself wishing I had called him back. But all I could say to him there was: "So where are you off to now?"

"Just pull over and let me out, man," he snapped, grabbing his knapsack. "I just wanted you to know how much you screwed up my life. Pull over here."

So I pull over onto the shoulder and come to a stop. He opens the door and jumps out, without another word. The kid I used to plan all those cool camping trips with when we were kids. There's nothing left to do but step on the gas and drive away.

I drive for hours and hours. I change over on a cloverleaf to another interstate. Then, I change again. Anything to get lost in the system, where maybe nobody will find me.

I wish that I could leave behind all of those screwed up faces, all those shattered moments. But sometimes it seems to me that everyplace I pass is haunted. Somewhere out there, I keep thinking, is another city. Another neighborhood, another unexlored skyline. In it there is another job, a different job maybe, as a train conductor or as an English teacher. There's a beautiful, lonely girl who's been wandering around there for years, waiting for me. I think of what it might be like to drive those streets, have breakfast in one those coffee shops, play with my kids in a playground there.

But I can't think of the name of that city. I can't for the life of me think of what state it is in, where it might be at all. None of the skylines that loom one after the other over the horizon ahead of me in the windshield seem to be it. None of the names on the exit signs seem to fit.

So I just keep on driving.

I drive over a bridge. It might be the Golden Gate, it might be the Verrazzano Narrows. I can hear the tires whine. Then I can't hear them anymore. I get this feeling that I'm not connected to the road. I can see the lights of the city below me, but the traffic is gone. It's like I'm on an extension to heaven. There is no loading dock out there with people I've screwed over standing on it. There's no deadline to meet, nobody to disappoint. I start thinking to myself how nice it would be to live without those deadlines and loading docks, those disappointed people.

Then I start thinking of what it would be like if the bridge suddenly collapsed underneath me. How long would it take for the rig to fall through the air, with all the steel beams and the concrete slabs around me, before it hit the water somewher in the darkness down there? Would my name be mentioned in the casualties? Would there be something about me and my life in the newspaper articles? How many people would pick up that paper, read about me in the article, and say to themselves: 'Poor Bob. I never knew he spent all those years out on the road, driving those trucks full of all the stuff we ordered. Wonder who's going to the funeral.'

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In some ways, life is like this long haul on the interstate, where we try to fulfill our obligations, try to get somewhere we have always dreamed of. But we are also in some ways like this truck driver, haunted with memories of people we have let down, things we didn't say, mistakes that we made. In the end, we can't find the right exits, and we end up wondering what we accomplished here, whether anyone will remember us, will find something to celebrate about us, something enduring about us. There are dream scenes in this story, in keeping with the dream theme of this collection; the father who appears in the passenger seat out of nowhere, the abandoned wife in the McDonald's drive thru window, the girl next door and her father who show up in the truck stop, the old friend out hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere. The truck driver tries to drive away from them, but again and again they still show up, like ghosts of his past, to remind him of what went wrong in his life, until the road on the bridge over the water falls away underneath him and leaves him wondering what the world will think of him. estory

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A haunted man trying to run away from his life

Long Haul

by estory

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