The Long Haul

After 41 years of too much Wildhorse tobacco, too many what’s-her-names from where’s-that-towns, and never meeting a single person more loyal or honest than the Doberman Pinschers named Kallie he’d had over the years, Jerry Bell was pulling his Kenworth into the parking lot of the truck shop for the last time. “Retirement”, Jerry always used to say, “is just the last step before the grave”, yet here he was, living up to what he always swore he would not.

It was January in North Dakota, which is typically all you have to tell someone not from North Dakota before their eyes widen and they ask you how you can “stand the cold up there”. The lot was pitch dark, except for a flickering light above the entrance to the shop and a half dozen lamp posts around the perimeter of the property, casting a sleepy orange glow over the trucks, trailers, and storage containers parked along the chain-link fence. In between each piece of equipment was a small mound of crisp, white snow, in almost perfectly-shaped domes. It had been fiercely cold that week, but the week prior had gifted the community with a short and welcomed warm spell. This meant weather conditions were ideal for making these once fluffy piles of snow in between the equipment form an icy, shiny crust over them, like a hard candy shell over puffs of powdered sugar.

Jerry backed his Kenworth into the last open stall of the shop, shifted into park, listened for the familiar ‘whoosh’ of the air brakes, and turned off the engine at precisely 5:58pm. This routine was second-nature, of course, and he knew exactly when and where to hit the brakes before smashing the attached trailer into the tool chests along the back wall of the garage.

Kallie the Fourth had been asleep for hours, curled into mass of both black and graying fur and Jerry’s old red flannel jacket on the seat next to him. Jerry reached out his oven mitt-sized hands and scratched the top of Kallie’s head between her thin, pointy ears. She whined a bit, sighed, and fell back asleep. She couldn’t be bothered to open her eyes. Jerry chuckled softly, feeling the usual pull of the hairs in his curly beard spread across his face as his smile widened and he shook his head. Lazy, lovable girl.

Jerry reached for the leather work gloves sitting on top of the dashboard and pulled them on, with a slight bit of resistance thanks to the collection of turquoise stone rings adorning every finger. He collected these over the years, each of them with a story of their own to tell on how they were acquired. Jerry spent long hours rolling down the highway with his hands rested on the steering wheel, gazing at the landscape in front of him through the spaces between his bejeweled fingers.

Jerry planted his boots down one at a time onto the hard, concrete floor as he stepped out of the truck, but didn’t bother to close the door behind him. Kallie would eventually stir from her slumber and make her way out for a snack. The usual routine. The shop was fairly dark as well. The fluorescent light panels above the work benches were on, as well as the shop lights hanging from the ceiling 14 feet overhead. A quick scan of the shop proved Jerry was alone, which was unusual, but welcomed. Jerry didn't want a dramatic shindig over his last day at work. He was more of a ride-off-into-the-sunset kind of fella. Even Alice, the first-in/last-out-for-the-day office manager with a temper like a sack full of hornets, had made her way home for the day. ‘Good’, Jerry thought. Even if she wasn’t waddling around the shop hollering about the supervisors’ inability to fill out a proper timecard or inventing new strings of curse words to describe Accounting, Alice was at least leaving passive aggressive notes on the shop refrigerator (“Clean this thing out! I’m not your mother!” is a favorite of Jerry’s). You’d think the wiry red hair growing out of her head were flames.

As he began to make his way toward the back of the truck to inspect the trailer, Jerry heard a faint, but familiar sound come from the front of the truck. It was the click of the driver’s side door closing. While it wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities that the door could close on its own, the stillness of the shop made it a slim one. And he highly doubted Kallie, as smart as she is, suddenly learned how to shut doors. And why would she? If she wasn’t napping, she was definitely going to emerge soon for food.

Curiosity itching at the edge of his unkempt brow, Jerry decided to investigate. As he pivoted on his boot heel to face the front of the truck, he noticed the driver’s side door was, in fact, closed. ‘Odd. I was right’, he thought, feeling the faintest touch of satisfaction in knowing he knew this truck’s quirks and sounds so well. He approached the driver’s side door and stepped up onto the first step to peer inside the window. He squinted through the faintly tinted glass and noticed Kallie was gone. Only his crumpled-up flannel jacket was left in the space where she’d been sleeping soundly. Jerry quickly grasped the chrome handle and flung the door open. He looked between the seats and back into the sleeping cab of the truck – no Kallie. He called to her – “Kallie! Kallie Girl!” No answer. Because he hadn’t been listening closely before, Jerry fell silent to see if he could hear her moving around the shop. Her claws clicking against the concrete floor were unmistakable. All he could hear now was the white noise hum of the fluorescent lights along the back wall.

Perplexed, Jerry slid out of the cab, climbed back out of the truck, and decided to not close the door behind him. Just in case. ‘Just in case what?’ Jerry thought. Before he could answer his own question, Jerry began searching the shop, calling Kallie as he went along. This was not typical Kallie behavior. Maybe when she was a puppy, but at almost nine years old? No. Kallie was pretty predictable. Reliable.

Jerry moved through the shop, approaching the other trucks and trailers parked parallel to his. Without much effort, he could see underneath the trailers. No Kallie, and still quiet. Just the hum of the fluorescent lights and, now, his own breath, getting more labored as he moved quickly through the shop.

After checking the offices, the break room, and locker rooms without luck, Jerry began to panic. He’d checked the far side of the shop opposite of where he’d parked, and had made his way back to the Kenworth. He leaned an elbow against the attached trailer and pulled his blue Teamsters handkerchief from the pocket of his shirt to wipe away the beads of sweat that had formed on his cheeks. He was winded, exhausted, but most of all, confused. How did she get out of the truck and close the door behind her? Did the door close itself? Had she bumped it just right in that it swung itself shut? No – the door was latched shut. That takes force. After all, this is a Kenworth, not a Prius.

In the midst of his rambling thoughts, Jerry’s eye caught the faintest glimmer of bright light through the small window in the shop door, which was directly across the shop from where he stood. After 41 years of coming to this same shop, night after night, a man notices the little things that seem out of place. Jerry knew the only lights outside of the shop were dull and orange. You know the kind. There were no roads facing that direction – only an open field that belonged to a soybean farmer. And at this time of night in the dead of winter, no one was out gallivanting in an open field.

Jerry stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket and made his way toward the door. The glow from the shop lights 14 feet overhead was just enough for him to find the doorknob to pull the door open. He stepped outside and immediately felt the dry, frigid blast of North Dakota winter air hit his cheeks. The wind had picked up and stung his eyes as he strained to peer through the dim lights of the lot. Tears were forming at the corners of his wrinkled eyes, freezing and making it even more difficult to see. Jerry called out to Kallie. “Kallie Girl! Where are you!? Come here, girl!” Now, he could hear just the wind in his ears, through the cap that covered them, but barely protected them from the bite of the air around him. Until he saw the bright light again. This time, it was lower to the ground, and closer to the shop than it seemed it was before. And then Jerry heard a familiar whine. ‘Kallie’, he thought. He called to her again. “Kallie! I hear you, girl! Where you at?” The wind was blowing snow across the ground from the open soybean field across from the shop. The gate in the chain-link fence surrounding the shop was now swaying eerily and creaking in the gusts of wind that pushed through it. Amongst the symphony of sounds, Jerry heard Kallie’s whine again. This time closer.

Jerry was approaching an empty trailer parked on the lot, in the direction of the bright light he’d seen and from where he thought he heard Kallie’s cries. One of the trailer doors was unlatched and flopping angrily in the flurries of wind. Jerry grabbed the trailer door to close it, but before he could get a grasp on it, the door swung open in a gust of wind and, inside, sat a large box. It was an almost perfectly symmetrical cube. It had no writing or logos on it, no indication of what was inside, and it was wrapped haphazardly in a pale brown paper. The trailer itself was otherwise empty, and likely had been for several weeks. Jerry stepped into the trailer and approached the box. His boots clapped heavily on the floor of the trailer, the steel toe within them making the sound echo harshly off the walls of the confined space. Jerry approached the box and knelt down slowly to one knee to inspect it further. He could still hear the howl of the wind outside, the creaking of the gate, and the sound of his breath getting heavier as he laid a well-adorned hand on the box. He heard Kallie’s bark. Was it real, or was he straining so hard to hear her that he was only hearing what he wanted to? Kallie barked again, then whined. Jerry called to her. He turned around to face the door of the trailer, expecting to see her. The bright light he’d seen through the shop window, and then again across the lot, glimmered again. A gust of wind engulfed the door of the trailer and slammed it shut. Jerry called out to Kallie. Nothing.