FanStory.com - Truckin, Ch 14by Wayne Fowler

In the last part, Thurmon learned that his company was being proactive with respect to Clyde’s campaign. He also learned that his kids were praying for him.

Chapter 14

In the privacy of a secluded campsite, Clyde used a cheap Walmart drill and a set of totally inadequate wrenches to reposition his ray gun, aiming it sideways to the right, and propping it up to fire through the bed cover. Making room for the bell-shaped nozzle which concentrated and directed the energy, the design creating impulse blasts. He hoped to be able to zap truckers while remaining in the passing lane, keeping them guessing, and keeping escorts in the lurch. It had been weeks since a white F-150 had lain waste to a truck, and then it was always a frontal attack, the front of the big rig from the back of a too-close pick-up. And his white truck was now gray. A trucker wrestling his choking rig could probably guess which passing vehicle had done him in, but unable to talk to his escort, Clyde could be long gone and exiting the freeway, exits far more frequent in the East. An added benefit was that he was not worried as much about being identified, he didn’t have to get the guilty trucker so isolated. All he needed was room to run and keep from being bottled up, or boxed in.

Clyde was ecstatic. He didn’t know whether his adjustment worked better, or any worse, only that it worked, putting truckers on the side of the road. What Clyde did know was that many more of the trailers bore what appeared to be new signage: How’s my driving? For real! Call 555-543-4567. Also, the lettering made it much clearer how to identify the truck.

Having to get off I-95, he headed for I-70, figuring to end in Washington state one way or another. Laying on a worn-out mattress in a motel room that stank of cigarettes, he realized that he hadn’t come across a miscreant since South Carolina, four states back. Not even a Xarious truck had aggrieved him. Laying there, his hands under his head bolstering the uselessly flat pillow, he decided that his task may be complete, mission accomplished, as former president George W Bush had so prematurely boasted. If he could get to the Pacific Ocean in Washington, and then back home again without having to put anyone down, he would dismantle his gun and send his campaign. “Humph,” he grunted aloud as if in confirmation, his head making a visible nod. He stuffed one of the cheese-cracker sandwiches that he and Jane Ann enjoyed on hikes and chewed with an aggression that sealed his resolve.

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Heading west, Clyde angled his way up to I-90, not because he had to after stopping trucks, his normal reason for changing highways being escape. He hadn’t zapped any, but simply because that was his chosen route, something he wasn’t used to. He knew that he was letting the small stuff slide, not quite as petty as he might have been in his angrier days. He was also more aware that truckers universally took longer to pull back to the right after passing than they had a few decades ago. Maybe it had to do with headlights always on, or something. Truckers in the past used to flash their lights when the passing truck had cleared. Now the passing trucks took a couple hundred yards to pull back over, a couple seconds longer than Clyde liked, but not the end of the world.

Clyde made it to the coast, riding the ferry across the bay to Olympic National Park, a bucket list item for him and Jane Ann. He hiked a short distance on one of the rainforest trails in her honor, pointing things out to her along the way. He thought of the many photo and poem albums they’d assembled during their years together, vowing to linger in them when he got home.

Clyde drove the coast south, aiming to please Jane Ann with all the fabulous sights. He even stopped to take pictures with his phone, planning to make some new pages of the crashing waves that reminded him so much of the trip he and Jane Ann made to the famous seventeen-mile drive through the Pebble Beach Golf Course area. Clyde’s eyes teared up several times in those few days.

While driving US Highway 101, a major north/south route through California, the one he remembered as the main corridor before the construction of I-5 when he lived in San Jose, a lifetime ago, traffic came to a stop, obviously an accident ahead. He double-checked to see that the passenger window was down an inch to hide the gun barrel hole, and also checked that the license plate cover was properly stored, the lever in the upright position. The .22 had been broken down and stored in a sports bag for weeks. He made certain that the ray gun apparatus was not visible.

After a little over an hour, his lane finally began to move. Eventually, he made it past the wreck, a Xarious truck and two small cars. Clyde couldn’t stifle his tears, pinching his lips to quench a sob, sobs that he’d held back these many months since Jane Ann’s passing. Driving by, he noticed another wrecked car in the ditch to the right. A man was leaning back against the driver’s door, his arms hiding his eyes. In his rearview mirror he saw a Trooper talking to … Santa Claus.

Clyde braked as hard as he dared, pulling onto the road’s shoulder. He calmly exited his truck, his .22 in hand.

Santa Claus without the red suit or spectacles, his beard a dirty gray instead of shining white, a baseball cap instead of a red, fur-lined and ribbed hat, a shocked look in his eyes as Clyde envisioned himself double-tapping him in his throat, not trusting the .22 to pierce either his skull, or his massive, barrel chest. After an instant pause, Clyde imagined himself leaning on the pick-up bed, pounding a second double-tap on top of the first before Santa began to fall. The Trooper would look all about and finally spot Clyde’s F-150 racing south.

Instead, an instant before squeezing the trigger, Clyde saw that Santa Claus was in handcuffs, arrested. Clyde lowered his rifle, but not before being noticed by another Trooper.

“Hey!”

Clyde knew that the yell was aimed at himself. As quickly as he could, he hopped back into his truck. Using the ditch, he cleared the area, spinning, careening, and throwing dirt and gravel as he raced away.

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Thurmond’s eyes were faucets, quickly soaking his cheeks and shirt front. He felt like wailing. Coughing to clear his throat, he forgot to use his turn signal before moving onto the shoulder of the highway, but remembered his flashers once over. There was nothing wrong with the rig, it was a foreboding sense of despair. “Oh God!” he bellowed aloud. “Reach down, into his soul, Lord Jesus. Talk to him, Lord.”

Thurmon immediately felt relief in his spirit, a release of the burden. Among the vehicles passing before he could return to cruising speed was a gray F150. Thurmon didn’t even notice as he worked through the gears.

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“Gray Ford pickup. Southbound 101!” The Trooper, his collar microphone to his mouth, ran to his vehicle, which was blocked sufficiently that he had to make a four-point maneuver, bumping two other vehicles to get free. Lights and siren blazing and blaring, he was able to clear the traffic that Clyde couldn’t.

Having lived in the general vicinity some decades past, Clyde had an idea of where he was, and where he wanted to go. Things had changed considerably, but the main roads were all still there. Highway 101 had a lot more traffic signals than before. Somehow, driving to make Steve McQueen, were he still alive, proud, Clyde made it to Highway 152 headed east. If the roads were clear, he figured he could get hidden. They weren’t. There were no cops in sight yet, but he assumed that every person on a cell phone was calling 911. Ahead, he saw a dirt road heading up into the hills, not exactly mountains, but foothills that would work. As he climbed, he could see two cop SUVs on a side road that was sure to intersect with his further ahead. Then he saw flashing blue lights from behind. Another dirt road turned off to the right. He took it at a slide, nearly over-correcting. Around a series of hairpin curves, he saw that he was on a dam road, a reservoir built since he’d moved out of California some fifty years past.

The trailing Trooper rounded the last curve behind him. Clyde realized that he’d hesitated at the top of the knoll, the road he was on going either to a parking area to the left, or over the dam on the right. He chose the right. The dirt road became concrete on top of the dam, short pipe fencing on both sides, the reservoir on the right, and the river continuing to the left. There was a cement shack in the middle of the dam. Clyde assumed it was the entry to the service elevator down to several hydro generators. Once on the dam, Clyde punched the accelerator. He was only going about forty but felt a lot faster when the door to the shack opened and a uniformed man stepped out and into his path, attempting to wave him to a stop. By the time Clyde’s decision-making process kicked in, stopping before hitting the man was not an option. He could cut right as he attempted to stop and slide into the shack, cut left, and hope the pipe fencing would stop him and not hit the man, or he could hit the gas and let the guy take his chances, more than likely run over him. Clyde chose the river to the left, not time enough to touch his brakes before finding himself upside-down and then crashing onto the two-hundred-foot dam face, the pick-up sliding down into the churning river where the water jettisoned from the tubes after spinning the turbines.

Coming to a stop in about five feet of rushing water, Clyde realized that he was unharmed, but merely pinned in the crushed cab, which was fast filling with water, all the window glass broken out. The passenger side not quite as smashed as the driver’s, Clyde squirmed his way over the console, and out from under the steering wheel. Severely cutting his back as he, still underwater, wriggled out the window, his torso cleared, only his rump keeping him from escape, Clyde guessed that his mouth and nose were mere inches from the surface, where finally, unable to hold his breath a second longer, his head about to burst, he saw what every bit appeared to be Jane Ann in the glowing sunlight just above the water’s surface. Calling her name, he gulped lungs full of water and died.

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“Well, there you have it, the Turnpike Terrorist is no more,” Judy said, closing her PBS News Hour show with a fade-to-black. She wouldn’t honor him, the criminal that he was, but neither would she revile him.

The nation was well aware of the changes he wrought on America’s highways.

*** (Another chapter will be posted in a few days.)