We left Williamsburg Saturday morning for points west. Nate and Carl both gave me their numbers and asked me to use them for labor when I was in Connecticut. They grabbed the bus and went home. I was supposed to follow Mike, but that unraveled in the first hour. Mike drove very fast, with his longnose Pete and his big Cat engine and his thirty years on the road. He left me in the dust well before Richmond. I called Mike from Spartanburg, South Carolina, in the early evening. He was already at the truckstop in Atlanta. He told me that when I got there I should stay at a motel he knew nearby that had truck parking and cheap rates.
I pulled into the motel parking lot after dark. It did have truck parking. It also had very dim lighting, and as I walked to the office I saw several women leaning against the second-floor balcony rails yelling greetings to me. I also saw several parked cars idling with men inside. The girls were working girls, and the guys in the cars were pimps. In the office was an Indian guy behind a thick glass partition. I asked him for a room with a trucker’s rate, and he asked me how long I wanted the room.
“One night, please,” I said.
“The whole night? That will be fifty dollars.”
I handed over my credit card, and he said, “Cash only.” I carefully forked out a fifty, taking care not to show my wad. There were girls in the lobby too. He handed me a key and showed me where the room was on a map under some Plexiglas on the counter. My room was at the back side of the building at the very end. I asked him if there wasn’t a front room near my truck, and he said, “Those are the trucker rate rooms.”
I grabbed my bag and walked into the dark. The girls on the balcony were asking me if I wanted a date. I was polite and said I was tired. There were three or four more cars on the back side with engines running. I walked all the way to the end and was just about to insert the key to my room when I saw the curtain move inside. Then I heard a car door slam behind me. I sprinted around the building and back to my truck. Nobody followed me. I drove across to the Days Inn that had a fenced-in yard and stayed there. The next day I called Willie and told him what happened. He laughed. “Mike sent you to that pussy patch? Drivers get killed there.”
“I know, Willie. I was about to get rolled. I’m glad you think this is funny.”
“Welcome back to the road, laddie. Things don’t change much. I’m glad you had the sense to take off.”
“Thanks, Willie. Things haven’t changed much, and I think your driver is trying to kill me.”
“Don’t get paranoid, laddie. You’ve only been out in the wild a couple days.”
Our first delivery was an extra stop at a mini-storage in Dallas, where Mr. Bean was dropping off one of the bedroom sets. This load was so full, we we were using the tailgate on Mike’s truck—a slideout on the back of a moving trailer that you can load a storage vault on. I met Mike at the mini-storage, and we emptied the vault. Then we had to take the vault off the tailgate, so Mike told me to loosen the straps holding it on until we got to the top one. I did that, and the empty vault was sitting on the tailgate with just one strap holding it. Mike grabbed the ladder and went up high on the driver side to loosen the last strap. I was on the other side, and he called me over. When I moved around to his side, the strap went slack and the vault tipped off the tailgate toward me. Fortunately, the front side of the vault had been taken off to remove the furniture. The vault fell over me, and I was trapped inside. Had the vault still had its fourth wall, I’d have been crushed like a cockroach. These vaults weigh about 600 pounds. Any corner could have caught me too, but I was lucky. I started banging on the sides of the vault and yelling. Mike got a guy from the office, and with a cargo bar they pried the vault over onto its side and let me out.
“What the fuck, Mike? You trying to kill me?”
“I can kill you anytime I want. The strap let loose.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you want. Take the clamps off the vault and leave the pieces here. We’re going.”
We dropped the other stop in Scottsdale and proceeded to Las Vegas. We unloaded Mr. Bean’s trailers the first day with a local crew for help, and the next day was to be the unpack day. Mike had locked up the trailer the night before himself. I saw him. On arrival the next morning he tossed me the trailer keys and told me to open the rear doors. Standard procedure when opening a trailer door is to stand a little left of center and open the door a few inches so you can peek inside to see if there are any cartons or furniture against the door. Since we had unloaded yesterday, I knew there was nothing against the door, so I opened it without peeking in. When I did, an eight-foot, 50-pound steel cargo bar crashed down onto the pavement. Had I been looking inside through the crack, as procedure dictated, the bar would have fallen on my head and crushed it like a melon. Someone had leaned the bar against the door just so to make it fall the right way. It was hard to believe it could have been an accident. I’m not sure if I was more frightened or angry.
I went into the house and found Mike. “You missed with the cargo bar, asshole.”
“Too bad,” he snapped back. “Time is on my side. I won’t miss forever.”
For some reason I still can’t fathom, I didn’t leave right then and there. I spent the whole day in the house unpacking cartons. I should have driven away when the cargo bar fell, but I wasn’t in my right mind. I distinctly remember going to pieces in Mr. Bean’s walk-in closet. I had fallen pretty far. Here I was fearing for my life and working as a day laborer for a nutcase who hated my guts and wanted me dead. I had brought myself to this sorry state without anyone’s help through an avalanche of poor decisions. I stayed in that closet for over an hour, carefully hanging up Mr. Bean’s Jack Victor suits and crying like a baby.
After the unpack was finished, I told Mike I was leaving and took off. I drove to the Wild Wild West casino, motel, and truckstop to unwind. I love that place for its easygoing sleaze. I was accosted at the door to the motel office by a young woman who asked if she could borrow my room to take a shower. I told her I didn’t have a room and wished her luck. When I came out with my room key, she was sitting in an idling car with a man in the driver’s seat. It looked to me like a Mickey and Mallory pair waiting to roll another trucker. The best thing to do out here is keep your head down and mind your own business.
After a shower, I went into the casino to grab a beer and play a few rounds of roulette. When I sat down I looked across at my fellow players, and lo and behold, there was driver Mike, lighting a Marlboro and scowling at the croupier. He hadn’t seen me yet. Time to go.
I knew Mike was loading in Salt Lake the day after next, and though I didn’t have an assignment, I knew where I was heading: Since Salt Lake is northeast of Vegas, my direction would be southwest. I packed my bag, quit the motel room, and hit the road toward Los Angeles. I was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the reaction began to take hold. My whole body started shaking, and I had to pull over and let it subside.
My training period was over, and I was still alive. It was time to start reassembling my life. There was no direction to go but up.
Chapter 8
HERE COME THE MOVERS