The Journey Back (3 page)

P
lunging my feet, boots and all, into the nearby stream I started running—hopping rocks, splashing between boulders, sometimes sinking in up to my knees. For hours I thrashed through that water. I figured it was my only chance to lose those tracking dogs.

Finally, I took a break to catch my breath. It was getting dark and I didn't hear the dogs anymore, just the sound of that stream moving around me and the pounding of my own heart in my ears. I was really whipped so I climbed up out of the water onto the bank. A fallen tree in a hemlock grove overlooking the stream caught my eye. I walked up the hill and practically collapsed under some of the branches. I decided it was a good place to stay overnight since I could be hidden and yet I could still see things coming my way. In the distance, I caught a glimpse of some traffic moving on a busy road and hoped it was that highway that brung me out to western Maryland.

After I rested up, I gathered a few loose boughs and wove them in and out between the branches of the fallen tree to make my shelter against the wind thicker. I also threw a few boughs underneath so I'd be a little bit off the ground and hopefully not get so cold.

When my so-called bed was ready, I unwrapped the sweatshirt from around my waist and pulled it on. It was a bit cool, just right if you ask me, but I knew it would get colder overnight. Out here in the mountains, even on the warmest days, it got downright cold at night. I sat down to take off my boots and, boy, what a stink. My socks weren't just wet and dirty, but bloody, too, on account of the blisters had popped. There wasn't time to dry anything, so I shook the socks out and put 'em back on.

My stomach was rumbling and I probably should've held off on the only food I had, but I got weak and gave in. I pulled the Cocoroos out of my pocket, tore open the box, and wolfed down the cereal in three handfuls before thinking anymore about it. Which was another one of my problems.
Stop and think first,
Mr. R. liked to say.
If I do this, then that will happen.
The ole if/then thinking. But that cereal was gone. Oh, well. Too late. I shrugged and stuffed the flattened cereal box back in my pocket so I didn't leave a trail. See? At least I wasn't completely stupid.

Boy, I felt like an animal curling up under those evergreen branches to sleep. And yeah, I guess I was a little scared. Not much, mind you, but a little. Noises in the night woke me a couple times. I worried 'cause I didn't have a weapon or anything. If a bear came along, I wasn't sure what I'd do. Plus it wasn't very comfortable. I turned on my side, but my arm didn't make a very soft pillow. And I got cold, especially my feet, which were still wet.

When the first soft light of dawn seeped through those hemlock boughs, I was ready to move again, even if I was starving hungry, sore all over from sleeping on those branches, and a little stiff from the cold and dampness in my feet. I rubbed my arms to get warm and trudged on through the woods, keeping that road in sight the whole time. When I saw a bunch of cars and trucks parked, I crept up closer and hid behind some bushes to get a better look. I saw gas pumps and a building and wondered if I'd stumbled across a rest area, or a restaurant of some kind. It was a nasty thought, but I wondered if there might be some garbage to look over.

When I inched up even closer, and could see down to the far side of the parking lot, I realized it was a truck stop because a whole row of big tractor-trailer rigs was lined up side by side. My brain started buzzin' then because I knew how to drive those trucks—even better than I could drive any car. We had a big rig parked behind my house for years when I was growing up. My dad hauled a lot of baled hay in it, down to Northern Virginia, up around Baltimore to fancy horse farms. He hauled watermelons and corn in the summer. And every once in a while he hooked up a “reefer”—one of those refrigerated trailers—down to the processing plant in Salisbury and took a bunch of frozen chicken up to Boston.

I went with my dad on a lot of those trips so I could help him unload. I was only eight, nine, ten years old at the time. It was a lot of work for a little kid, but I never minded a lot of work. I thought it was fun spending the night in the sleeper and chowin' down diner food—meat loaf and mashed potatoes, big pieces of lemon meringue pie, and something called chicken-fried steak. All of that food was better than anything we had at home 'cause my mother didn't like to cook much on account of her headaches.

Meeting other truckers was fun, too. They were pretty nice to me. I met a guy from Oklahoma once at a truck stop. He sat on the front bumper of his rig, leaned over, and whittled a piece of wood with his jackknife. His hands went fast, while the wood shavings fell and made a tiny mound on the ground between his feet. When he finished, he handed me a little hand-carved buffalo that's still on my bureau at home.

Mostly, I just liked being out there on the road with my dad. He wasn't real bad back then. I mean, he slapped me around some, sure. Seems like I could never do right by him. And he drank, too, but then he'd sleep it off before we drove long stretches, and those long stretches were downright pleasant. My dad was like a regular person then. We even told jokes and sang along with the radio. I remember thinking this is the way dads were: one day they're pissed off and slapping their kids around, the next day they're buying them root-beer floats and letting them skip school.

About the time I turned ten my dad taught me how to drive the truck. I was lucky I was tall for my age, 'cause I never would have been able to reach the brakes or push that clutch in. My dad said if he ever got “incapacitated” (which I took to mean drunk) I'd have to be the one to get us home. So I listened up and learned early. And I have to say, it was a ton of fun. I loved driving that big rig.

Squatting by the edge of the parking lot, I plucked a piece of grass and chewed the end of it. No doubt in my mind, I thought, if I could get inside one of those trucks, I could take it miles down the road and really put some distance between me and Cliffside.

I threw the grass away and tried to look kind of casual as I walked behind the building and over to the row of trucks. I sat down at a picnic table and—
unbelievable—
a big old Kenworth came rumbling in and stopped smack in front of me. I knew it was a Kenworth just from the way it looked: the shape of the hood, the windshield, the smokestacks, the location of the lights. But that grille bonnet proved it. Because there it was, big and silver: the Kenworth emblem, which looks like a shield with bars runnin' up and down and a circle in the middle with a big KW, the K over the W.

Vocabulary is not my thing, but I tried to think of the word:
predestined?
preordained?
Well, anyway, pre
-something!
My dad's rig was a Kenworth and I knew that truck inside and out. I turned my head away and dropped my jaw as in,
do you believe this?
But I stayed quiet until the trucker climbed down out of the cab. Hiking up his jeans and putting a cell phone to his ear, he started walking toward the restaurant. He limped on one leg, and over the crunch of gravel I heard him say, “I'm stoppin' to get somethin' to eat. This little place here off sixty-eight, they make great biscuits and sausage gravy . . .”

So he wasn't going in just to use the restroom or get a cup of coffee. He was going to sit down and eat great biscuits and gravy. Man, I would've liked to put away some of that breakfast, too. Just thinking about it made me drool, but this was my big chance and I didn't have a lot of time to waste.

As soon as that guy disappeared into the building, I walked up to his truck and looked it over. Of course no trucker would leave his keys in the ignition. But starting the truck wasn't the problem. So long as the truck was a diesel built before 1992—and it looked like it was—I knew I could hot-wire the thing from underneath. See, the old diesels were combustion engines, not electric like the new ones. You couldn't hot-wire a new truck like you could this one. Getting inside the truck was the challenge for me.

Okay. I saw right away that just behind the driver's door was the outside entrance to his sleeping compartment, and that underneath was a smaller door, which was his toolbox. (My dad used to stash a bottle of vodka in his toolbox.) I took a look around but didn't see a soul, so I opened the toolbox door and reached my arm way up inside and felt around. Sure enough, there was a lever that popped open the door above to the cab's sleeper. Only reason I knew about that lever was 'cause my dad was always losing his keys or leaving them inside the cab and this was how he broke into his own truck. For a second, I sort of spun halfway around and smiled. I couldn't believe how easy that was.

When the door popped open, I moved quickly, stepping up and throwing myself inside, right on the guy's bed. It was real comfy and had a soft brown blanket and a couple pillows. I was thinking I'd take that blanket with me when I left. Between the sleeper and the cab there was a little closet and I could see the trucker had two shirts hanging in there, along with a thick gray jacket. I'd take some of them clothes, too, I thought. Maybe, if I had time to rummage around, I'd find some dry socks.

No time to lose though.

I crawled through the sleeper into the cab and lowered myself down in the driver's seat. So far, so good, I thought, as I started throwing things around, trying to find the right tool to start the truck. On the console between the two front seats I found a jackknife and pushed that in my pocket. Found a Snickers bar, too—my favorite!—and tore into it right away, taking a huge bite. Next, I came across three folded dollars and change and stuffed that in my other pocket. All at once, I remembered the toolbox. I'd check that for what I needed, I thought, but suddenly what I needed was right smack in front of me on the console: a screwdriver.

After grabbing that screwdriver, I reached down to the left of the steering wheel, to pull a T-handle into the override position, which basically opened the fuel valve under the truck. And one more thing: I unlocked the driver's-side door.

Screwdriver in one hand, I shoved the rest of that candy bar into my mouth and slid out, partially closing the door so I could get back in fast. I cast another glance around, to be sure no one was watching me, then I bent over and crawled behind the huge front tires, beneath the truck.

I had barely enough light to see under there, but I knew what I was doing. I went directly to the starter location, just under the cab, and found the two wires I needed: the large positive cable that runs to the truck battery, and the smaller wire that hooked up to the ignition system. Using the screwdriver, I crossed those two wires, hoping they would spark and fire up the engine. I tried, but no luck. Nothing. Disappointed, I finished chewing, then swallowed the chunk of candy in my mouth and tried again. This time, it worked like a champ and that old Kenworth
roared
to life. Made my heart jump it was so loud!

Still hunched over, I backed out with the screwdriver in my hand and climbed up into the driver's seat in the cab. The truck's engine was vibrating like crazy and blowing black smoke into the air through the silver smokestacks on either side of the cab. The truck was making a beep noise, too, because the air pressure was low and you needed to build up some pressure in order to release the brakes. The brakes all run by air on those big rigs.

Nervous, I tossed the screwdriver onto the console and sat in the seat, trying to calm my nerves by getting comfortable. I moved the seat up a little, adjusted the mirrors, and kept checking, too, to see if that trucker was coming back. When the beeping stopped, I pushed in the two circular disks on the front dash that released—to a huge burst of sound— the two parking brakes, one for the trailer and one for the tractor. I bit my lip so hard it bled a little—I could taste it—then carefully pushed down the clutch with my left foot and threw the stick shift into reverse. With my hands clenched on the steering wheel, I glanced in the rearview mirror to be sure I had room—those trucks take a lot of room when they turn—but everything looked clear, with plenty of space. So I pressed my right foot down on the accelerator and backed that big baby out of the narrow parking place like a damned pro.

Even though it was a ten-speed truck—not a fifteen or an eighteen like the newer ones—I knew I'd go through several gears pretty fast. First gear, then second, third, fourth, and fifth. The truck was rumbling something fierce, still blowing smoke and groaning with each gear change, but that's what they did, those trucks. They made a ton of noise, but you got used to it pretty quick.

I wasn't but a couple hundred yards down the exit ramp when I needed to throw the splitter so I could get the truck into sixth gear. I simply reached down to a button on the gearshift and with two fingers pulled it up. Instantly, the gears shifted and I was in sixth with no problem. By the time I pulled out onto the highway, I was launched into seventh gear with a great big smile on my face.

O
ut on the highway, I got that truck rolling. In hardly no time I was in ninth gear and cruising along at fifty-five miles an hour. Seemed a little fast, though, so I eased up and downshifted once, but mostly for practice. Boy, I was really in trouble now, I thought. Breaking out of prison and then stealing a truck. I smiled when I thought about it, yeah, but it wasn't 'cause I was evil or anything. I hadn't
hurt
anyone so I figured I might as well enjoy the ride.

On the console, I noticed two things I'd passed over earlier: a pack of gum and a red Southern States cap. I didn't want anyone to look in my window and realize it was a kid driving, so I slapped the cap on my head right away. Then I took a piece of gum, unwrapped it with one hand, and pushed it into my mouth.

Weren't too many cars on the road so I took my time and kept glancing at the dashboard to familiarize myself with it again. It was a dizzying array of dials and gauges. Some I could remember what they were, like the air pressure gauges. They were important 'cause, like I said, those brakes run on air and you needed to know what kind of pressure you had. I also knew about the rpm, the revolutions per minute, that the motor was making. The faster you went, the higher the rpm. You had to keep an eye on that 'cause you could burn things up if the rpm got too high.

I checked out the fuel gauge, too, to see how much gas I had. One tank was full, the other about half. Each tank carried about 120 gallons. When gas gets as high as four dollars a gallon, it must cost pretty near a thousand dollars just to fill up the rig. No question I had plenty of gas to get me a good distance, but I was thinking I'd go just until I got to a city, or a small town, where I could park the truck and take off again. By then, the state police and everybody else would surely be on to all this.

In fact, why didn't I check that out? Reaching up over the rearview mirror, I flipped on the CB radio and turned to Channel 19, the truckers' channel. As a kid, riding with my dad, I loved listening to those guys chatter back and forth.

First thing I heard on Channel 19 made me tense up: “Hey, there, westbound, there's a smokey ahead of you with radar . . .” A smokey—that's a cop—and he had speed radar out. I didn't know if that message was for me or not. Quite frankly, I didn't know if I was headed east or west, which was pretty important. But I didn't have a clue about the lay of the land out there in western Maryland, and even if there was a frickin' GPS in the cab, I wouldn't have known how to use it. But just in case it
was
me headed toward that smokey, I eased up on the accelerator so I wasn't exceeding the speed limit, which I guessed was fifty-five or sixty miles an hour.

For a long time I chewed that gum hard and focused on driving that big rig. I finally saw a big sign that said I was headed east, toward Frederick and Baltimore.
Yes!
I hissed to myself. That's the direction I wanted: east. I have to say, I was really enjoying that ride. I even thought that if I didn't become a Marine, that maybe one day I'd be a trucker instead 'cause I liked driving and I could be my own boss. You have to be sixteen to get a Class B license to drive a truck, but that was only two years away for me. I even started wondering what I was hauling in that trailer behind me, and whether it might be some kind of food, and if there was any way I could get inside to take a look.

I was going up and down some big hills and seeing lots of pretty, open countryside with fields and stuff. I come to a town once, but I was going too fast and blew right by the exit ramp so I just kept driving. I had to downshift some to slow her down and take some mean twists and turns through that town. Almost sideswiped a guy in a station wagon and nearly rammed into a bus that was going too slow. But all in all, I did pretty good. And let me tell you, driving that truck through traffic was better a hundred times over than any video game I ever played in my life.

Once I got outside of town on the open highway, I opened up and put some miles on that odometer. More big hills, then a mountain—Polish Mountain it was called. I wondered if that was some kind of a joke, only the sign for it looked legit. I dropped down to sixth gear and kept to the right lane, pulling twenty to twenty-five miles per hour up the entire incline. I cruised down the other side in the same gear, but with the brakes on, too. Easy, I thought. I could do just about anything with this truck. The problem would be police after me as soon as that trucker got done eating his biscuits.

When I spotted a police car traveling west, I got nervous and pushed my foot down on the accelerator. Then another mountain come up. Again, I pulled into the far right lane to go slower, and kept checking the rearview mirror.

Something about the mountain seemed familiar and when I got to the top—the Kenworth was really groaning by then—I realized it was Sideling Hill with the big cliffs and the colorful rock layers. I remembered that prison van driver talking about the marine fossils and I couldn't help but turn my head to take a look. Sure enough, I could see that black stripe in the rock, and it made me wonder all over again how in the world this mountaintop could have been under the ocean. Seemed so upside down, I thought. Just like my life! I still held this against my mother: the fact that when I was only eight, nine years old, I was taking care of my brother almost all the time. Then, when my baby sister was born, I took care of 'em both, like I was their dad or something. I mean, I was fixing meals and changing diapers and putting those kids to bed—everything. And I was just a kid myself! The only times I got a break from it was when I was in school, or working with my dad, or when I snuck out to be with my friends.

Boy, I realized then that I should not have let my mind wander like that because I was already starting down the other side of Sideling Hill way too fast. I slammed on the brakes and hoped I didn't jackknife, but nothing happened. The truck kept picking up more and more speed.

Then I smelled burning rubber. My brakes were heatin' up. If the brakes got
too
hot they'd fry themselves—even catch fire!

I glanced at the temperature gauge for the rear axle and could see it was already over 200, which meant trouble with a capital
T
. I sat up straight, my heart thumping high in my chest and the palms of my hands sweating. I checked out the rpm to see if I could downshift to slow the truck, but I was already closing in on 2000. Think about this: a truck just idling is 800 rpm; out on the highway it's around 1600. So when you get up to 2000 rpm or more you are going way too fast to downshift. You're redline! In other words, your ass is in the danger zone. BIG TIME!

Faster and faster I went. My hands were gripped on the steering wheel so tight I didn't think I'd ever get 'em pried off. Both my feet were pressed down on the brake and I was praying, too—which for me was just pressing my lips together and hardly breathing—'cause by then I could smell smoke. And where there's smoke there's fire, right? My brakes were definitely burning!

My heart beat triple time but I was blanked out on what to do. I remembered my dad saying that in an emergency he'd run the truck off the road and up an incline and let it fall over. But the only incline I saw was the one I was flying down. Both sides of the road simply dropped off.

So how would I stop? Would the truck launch into the air like a rocket and crash? Should I take it over the side so I didn't kill nobody else? What?!

I tried pumping the brakes, lifting both my feet and slamming them back down, but that didn't do squat. What else could I do? My eyes stretched wide as I stared at the road and the end of my life coming up fast and furious on the black pavement in front of me. In the opposite lane up ahead, two cars were slowly climbing the hill. Would they call someone? The police? Or 911? Could they tell I was in trouble? Did they even
notice
me?!

Probably not. To every driver I passed, I was probably just another annoying trucker, the guy they hated getting stuck behind. I was a blip out of the corner of their eyes, a big truck rumbling down Sideling Hill on Highway 68. Why should they take notice? Why bother if you're cruising along in your spiffy, big SUV, listening to music or chatting it up on your cell phone?

And you know what? That reminded me of something. Not that I dwelled on it 'cause my life was like hanging in the balance at that time. But I had this flash feeling that I'd been there before. Later, I realized why that not-being-noticed, invisible feeling seemed familiar. It's because I have been in a million everyday places in my life—like the Food Lion or Wawa, or the gas station with Mom, or even at school shooting the breeze with my friends—and I must've seemed like a perfectly normal kid. A kid buying milk, pumping gas, laughing at a joke—when all the time what people saw was a shell, the outside of a kid who was totally different inside 'cause he was holding stuff back to cover up the fact that he lived with a grizzly bear at home.

Even my best friends didn't know about my other life. I did my best to hide it, which is why they hardly ever came over to my house. True, I was embarrassed that we didn't have a flush toilet that worked, that we had to use an outhouse. But more important, I didn't want them to see my mom and dad screaming at each other, or me, getting my arm yanked out of my shoulder or my head pushed into the wall. I don't know when I figured it out, but it finally dawned on me one day how it wasn't normal for parents to beat on their kids the way my dad did to me. And I didn't want my friends to find out about it 'cause I was afraid it would scare them off, and I didn't want to lose them.

The word
RUNAWAY
flashed by.

I can't tell you how many times I wanted to run away from home. Only I didn't 'cause of LeeAnn and Hank. Mom, too. And Grampa! I was always afraid my father would get mad at Grampa for helping us, and that he'd hurt him, too.

RUNAWAY
TRUCK.

Hey! Did anyone care that I was about to die?

RUNAWAY
TRUCK
RAMP.

Okay! Okay! Yes! The sign said a runaway truck ramp was coming up. One quarter of a mile. Un-frickin'-believable! That was exactly what I needed! A gift from heaven if there ever was one!

I came around a bend at seventy, eighty—maybe a hundred miles an hour, I don't know, I didn't want to look—and the rpm had hit 2100. The smell of burning rubber was everywhere and I knew fire was eating up the brakes—maybe even the rear axle! If oil leaked out of the oil seal near the brakes, it would fuel the fire even more.

At mile marker 72—some things you never forget—the runaway truck ramp come into view. I gritted my teeth and turned the steering wheel slightly to the right. Let me tell you, the truck shot down that ramp like a bat out of hell. At the far end, I could see how the ramp went uphill. I held tight to the steering wheel and the truck stayed smack in the middle of the ramp, following the decline of the mountain. But soon, like maybe three hundred feet, the entire rig sank into the thick bed of pea gravel like a bowling ball rolled into a hole full of cotton. Amazing, but that tractor-trailer truck came to a complete stop in just a few seconds. Then, with a shudder and a quick jolt forward, it stalled out.

I blew the air out of my cheeks and sat there, my eyes fixed straight ahead and my hands still glued to the steering wheel. But not for long. When I got my wits back I sucked in my breath and got out of there fast. I didn't even turn around to see how much of the truck was on fire. I simply reached back into the sleeper to grab the blanket and yank the trucker's gray jacket off a hook, then I kicked open the door, spit out my gum, and took off.