The Truck
“See it, Billy?” I pointed through the windshield to the bridge.
Our six-year-old craned forward as far as his car seat allowed, his head cocked.
“See?” I said. “It’s right on the bridge. Driving across.”
“Don’t tease him,” my pregnant wife Priscilla poked a finger in my side.
“He’s six, is smart enough. Right, Billy?”
Billy sat up in his seat. “You betcha.”
“Oh, it’s gone now,” I said as I drove our blue Camry under the bridge, past the Reynolds Freightways facility, and headed south on Interstate Eighty-One to our favorite restaurant on the north edge of York, Pennsylvania.
Billy looked through the rear windshield then turned back around. “Dad, doesn’t work dis way.”
“I know. The sign’s on this side of the bridge. Have to be on the other side for it to look right.”
“Oh.” Billy slouched.
We were quiet until arriving at the restaurant.
***
On my way to take Billy to a birthday party days later in Camp Hill, north of York, we passed it again.
Billy observed the illusion, truck marquee appearing to be riding the bridge, silver trailer with the red letters RF overlapping. “Neat, Dad.” He sat back.
After the party as I drove him home, he looked at the sign. “Doesn’t work again,” he moaned then sat up and turned his head. “Oh, yeah, gotta look at it from dis side.” He was quiet. “There it is!” he finally said. “Ya see it, Dad?”
“Yeah,” I lied, kept my vision on the road and traffic.
“Ya know, I saw it drive across the bridge last time.”
“Ya did?” I played along. “Was it going fast?”
“Uh-huh. Real fast. Hit another car. Killed the riders.”
My smile went M.I.A., fingers slipping on the wheel. I stared in the rear-view mirror, searched for any clue on Billy’s face that suggested he was joking. He betrayed none. A horn behind me. I coasted back to my lane, managed several more peeks to the rear seat.
“You keep looking back here,” Billy finally said. “Stop looking at me.”
“Okay, big guy.” I did not look at him until almost to our point of interest. He only stared out the window.
The words “Serious accident” and “near Reynolds Freightway” on the news that night caused the spoon of ice cream in my hand to pause before entering my mouth. I watched footage: A small Saturn compressed into a slab of metal. The truck, with its red RF initials, had me gag. The reporter’s next sentence made my body chill:
“The driver of the Saturn was rushed to Pinnacle Hospital but was later pronounced dead. Truck driver escaped with minor injuries ..”
I watched Billy, who pushed his own toy truck—a Reynolds Freightways, no less—across carpet, blissfully unaware. I shook my head. A coincidence. My thoughts returned to the more pleasurable task of finishing dessert.
***
Not until I had to go that way again did I think of the accident. Though with me again, Billy said nothing, wrapped up in his DVD. I observed the illusion take shape, truck appearing to be on the bridge. It disappeared, hidden by the overpass before reappearing on the other side. Two cars drove on roadway above. No brakes screeched, no metal crumpled. They drove on unharmed, as did we.
***
The sign greeted us a few times over the next two weeks, Billy commenting (when he wasn’t watching a video or complaining about his sister touching him) on the faux tractor trailer. But no accidents.
“Dad, c’mere,’ Billy said from his bedroom on a Saturday.
“What is it, big guy?”
“Play with me.” His trucks were scattered about. He grabbed the one with the RF initials and rammed it into a yellow bulldozer, gave crashing sounds then hit the truck into a Mayflower moving van, pretended there was a huge fire as he tipped the van over. He did this to a few other trucks. So much so two-year-old Crystal, who’d crawled into the room unnoticed, cried.
“Okay, Billy, that’s enough,” I said. He kept going.
“Billy, stop it!” I picked up Crystal, caressed her, tried to convince myself all she needed was a change. Or food, though she didn’t give the usual cry suggesting either, this sound higher. Scarier.
Billy looked at me wide eyed, my tone catching his attention.
“Sorry.” I stood. “Let’s play Chutes and Ladders.”
We did, though halfway through, he became bored and reached for the multi-wheeled vehicle behind him.
“We’re not done with this game, c’mon,” I implored him. He obeyed until it was my turn, rolled the truck back then pushed it. It crashed into two others toys. A fire engine and a blue car I’d never seen. At least, as a toy. A blue Camry.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked, unaware of my tone until I looked at him, his expression like I’d grounded him for life. I relaxed, asked again, calmer.
“Had it.”
“How long?”
“Long time.” He patted a hand on my shoulder. “Need some time for yourself, Dad. A break from the rat race, a vacation at a spa.”
I chuckled. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Commercial. But you need a break. Big time.”
I laughed some more. We continued our game, even played trucks afterward. I cautioned myself I was becoming the overprotective parent I despised.
***
All was forgotten until the next time we drove by the overpass. I checked the back seat, Billy unaware, he focused on the scenery. Crystal sat quiet, eyelids half open. I sighed.
“There it is, Dad.”
His words gave me pause. I forced myself to speak calmly, evenly. “Like always. See? It’s on the bridge now.”
“Yep. And it’s gonna do some damage.”
“What?”
Billy’s words created a frigid line up my back.
“Gonna happen again.”
“What the hell—heck—are you talking about?”
“Gonna cause severe damage next time.” His voice sounded strangely adult like. Cold. “Blood. Death. Carnage.”
Crystal’s eyes opened at the unusual tone. She cried. Wailed.
“Damnit, Billy, stop that. It’s not funny.”
“Stop what?”
“That voice.”
“I’m speaking normal.”
I listened. His tone was back to its usual, higher pitch. Crystal still cried. If only Priscilla had come but she was too tired, it but a few weeks before her due date.
I sang to Crystal. She quieted at last.
“Just don’t do that anymore,” I told Billy. “You frightened her.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to.”
“Well, just don’t do that.”
“What-ever.”
“Billy, please.”
“Okay, Dad.” Billy reclined in his seat, silent.
***
“Ohmygod!” Priscilla said as I drove to her OB-GYN appointment at the end of that week. “It’s coming.” She groaned, heaved. “Ohmygod! Get me to a hospital!”
“We’re on our way,” I informed her, my veins like water in thirty-two-degree temperature though I’d been through this a few other times. “To York Hospital.”
“No. Pinnacle Hospital. It’s closer.”
I thought about the route we had to take, the bridge we’d pass. I looked at her. “York Hospital is where you always go. They have all your records and ..”
“They share that stuff. Go to Pinnacle Hospital damnit! We don’t have time!”
“But ..”
“Now!”
My hands went cold then numb. I pressed my foot on the accelerator, encouraged my wife as best I could remember from our Lamaze classes and previous experiences. Then I saw the sign. On the same exit we had to take.
“Slow down,” Priscilla said.
I kept going.
“Slow down, damnit, slow down, this is the exit. Did you fucking go dumb on me?”
“Shh, watch your language. The kids.”
“I don’t give a damn, just slow down. Get onto that exit.”
“Gonna do some damage,” Billy said.
His tone distracted me. I eyed him in the mirror. “What’s that?”
Then came that awful, harsh, grown up voice. “That truck. It’s gonna do some damage. And soon.”
Priscilla seemed to have forgotten her pain, it replaced by fear. The voice. Her son’s. She turned, each of her eyes seeming to grow as big as the outside clock at city hall.
“Going to do some damage.”
“Stop talking like that,” my wife said.
“Like what? I’m talking normal.” Billy’s voice had changed. Priscilla, blinked, gazed at him, her eyebrows like one. Her stomach thrusts soon reminded her of the current emergency. “Get off at this exit!” she demanded.
I increased my speed as I headed up the exit ramp. As soon as I turned the corner, about to cross over the bridge, a sight—and sound—made me forget why I was here, what to do, and how to drive.
The huge red cab, the logo with the overlapping RF letters, loomed larger and larger, seemed to grow taller than the Pocono Mountains. Its grille appeared to be able to swallow our car, each of its grates larger than our vehicle.
The truck pounded, thundered, road trembling, as if about to crumble. The vehicle hissed as though cursing me.
“Going to do some damage,” the backseat voice echoed, a deeper tone. Like one you’d hear on radio.
Crystal cried.
“Billy, stop that!” Priscilla yelled, took sharp inhalations and exhalations, then shouted at me. “Damnit, c’mon!” Priscilla said. “Faster!”
I pointed. “Don’t you see that?”
“Yes. The fucking road ahead. Faster! Now!”
The truck bore down. A sibilation of brakes.
I tried to push my foot down. It would not go. The tractor trailer shifted lanes. Further. Further. It crossed the double yellow line.
“Damnit, fucker, get out of my way. What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.
“What are you talking about?” Priscilla asked as Crystal cried louder, Billy too quiet.
“That.”
A bleating in front of me.
“That! That goddamned horn! He’s coming at us!”
“Who the hell are you talking about?” Priscilla said through clenched teeth. “There’s no one there.”
An air horn so loud my ear drums felt they’d burst.
“It’s coming right at us,” I yelled, hands going over each other as fingers latched onto the wheel, so tight I believed they’d break.
I swerved. Toward the guard rail. Passenger side to hit it first. Crystal’s side. And Priscilla’s.
“What the hell are you doing!” My wife clawed for the wheel, fingernails clicking off plastic. One stuck in the webbing of my hand between thumb and finger. I slid the hand away and cursed. Priscilla moved her hand into the open spot and shifted the wheel. The vehicle drifted. To the center. Where the truck was.
“What the hell are you doing?” About to seer the car away from the potential catastrophe, I pressed my eyes shut.
“What the hell are you doing?” Priscilla bellowed.
I lipped prayers, opened my eyes. What I saw made me close them and open them quickly. I repeated this. “What? Where did it go?”
“Where did what go?” my wife asked.
I checked over each shoulder then ahead of me, then my rear-view mirror. Side mirrors. I stared through the windshield. “Where did the truck go?”
“What truck?” Priscilla checked as I had. A pain in her stomach. She grunted, hand over her gut. “Get the fuck to the hospital!”
“Mommy,” Billy said. “Stop saying those bad words. We’re not a’sposed to say ‘em.”
“Mommy’s in a lot of pain right now,” she said and again yelled at me to go faster.
I was able to move my foot, jammed it onto the pedal. The car lurched before increasing speed. I gave a long look, in the rear-view mirror then the side one. No one else, nothing else, on the road. Not within my panorama. Only the truck marquee, the corner of it, our car parallel to it.
The rest of the trip I could not recall, other than Priscilla being rushed to the emergency room. After some time, she was released. False labor.
The drive home was quiet, my wife asleep, worn out from the high drama and disappointment. Billy, though awake, remained oddly reserved, said only one thing as the logo became visible.
“Did some damage. Almost.”
He said it so low, in his normal voice, I almost didn’t hear it. Then the words caught in my brain. I looked at him in the mirror. He did the same.
“Stop looking at me,” he said when I did not look away.
I glanced out the windshield as a car passed from the other direction. I kept going, only passed a glimpse in the side mirror. That vehicle became a speck in my vision.
Before refocusing on what lie ahead, I viewed Billy, his face no hint of fear or anxiety. I took us home.
***
“When is this going to end?” Priscilla moaned, the four of us again on our way to her ob-gyn.
I smiled. “Probably never. I’ll spend the rest of my life ferrying you back and forth, home to hospital, hospital to home, a never ceasing journey.”
A comedian you ain’t,” she said, her lips a straight line.
“Aren’t,” Billy corrected. “Ain’t is not a word.”
“Way to go, big guy,” I said. “You tell her.”
“Ain’t is not a word, Mom.”
We laughed. A sudden thrust had Priscilla’s smile doing a one eighty. She sat up, groaned, and shrieked.
I looked at her. “More false labor?”
She grunted. “This time it’s for real.”
“You’re sure?”
She pushed, cried out, panted. “Positive. Go to the hospital.”
“I’ll take the next exit and turn back to ..”
“Damnit, why do you keep doing that? Go to Pinnacle.”
“But honey, all your info—”
“I told you they share all that stuff through a data base.” She pushed harder. “Why are you so difficult? I’m having our baby. Go!”
The exit came upon us. As did the sign. The truck. It appeared to be riding on the bridge, a real eighteen-wheeler.
“There it is,” Billy said above his mom’s incantations and oaths.
I nodded, wished I was sweating as much as my wife, needed the heat, anything, to warm me up.
The truck seemed to grow in size though I knew (or thought I knew) it was only because we were closing in on the exit.
I was so intent on the truck, as if I could stare it out of existence, I barely heard Priscilla.
“The exit, damnit! You’re mising it! Get off! Now!”
Fortunately, I was already in the slow lane, decreased our speed. At the top of the exit, I braked, looked one way—away from the truck—then tried to gather my strength to check the other way. The left side of my head felt as if it was flush against a wall. I tried to turn it by pressing my right hand on my right cheek and pushing my face to the window. I glanced as far out of the corner of my left eye as I could. Nothing obstructed my vision.
“Go! What the hell are you waiting for?” Priscilla said between pushes and breaths.
I put pressure on the right-side pedal. The car entered the intersection. All clear. I turned the wheels. The automobile headed onto the road, toward the hospital.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re on our way. Be there any minute, we ..”
A shape on my side mirror prevented me from finishing. A large figure closed in on me. Red.
I checked again. And breathed. The red pick-up whizzed past. I smiled until Priscilla asked why I wasn’t driving as fast as that guy.
I obeyed her command. As the rectangular shape beneath my foot hit the floorboard, a voice from the back.
“Gonna do some damage.”
Billy repeated the sentence several times, his voice deepening each time.
“Stop that,” I said and looked at Priscilla, she wide eyed, I unsure if it was from the pregnancy or Billy. Or both. My eyes felt as wide as hers.
Billy ignored my demand. A pressure around my chest made it feel like I was Harry Houdini in the midst of a trick. It seemed a cold noose tightened around me.
“Go!” Priscilla screamed.
My foot went no further. The car did not seem to move. Billy recited his mantra. Priscilla shrieked as if dying.
I saw it. Straight ahead, baring down as if I was a Spaniard in a coliseum with a cape.
The red cab of the eighteen-wheeler appeared to be larger than any other, its wheels six feet tall, its back end going on and on, as far as my vision would take me.
“Goddamnit, go!” I heard Priscilla though her voice sounded like she was at the other end of a corridor.
The monster vehicle prowled toward us, Billy saying the phrase faster and faster, his voice deeper than James Earl Jones’.
“Go, go! What are you waiting for?!” Priscilla’s pleas sliced through me and though I felt paralyzed, our car rolled ahead, as if it was its own person. Or was being commanded. Its speed increased.
Billy’s chant. Priscilla’s cries. Crystal’s high pitched, constant squeals. My head felt as if between two crashing cymbals. I forced my foot down. It went no further. However, the car picked up speed, seemed to be drawn to the truck, which honked and flashed its lights, although no one seemed to be in the cab.
I managed to look where the marquee was. Or should have been. No truck on top of the pole.
Blinding head lights brought me back. The truck’s pace increased. So did my car’s. Like two gigantic beasts, enemies of each other, the vehicles charged, as if playing chicken.
Priscilla let out an unending scream, Billy’s phrase like one long, run-on sentence. I clutched the wheel. My hands slipped off. I grabbed the wheel again, squeezed hands so tight I didn’t think they’d ever be pried off. By me or the coroner. I pushed the wheel to the right. It was like trying to turn a steering column void of steering fluid. I grunted nearly as loud as Priscilla. The car kept going straight, needle above one hundred. To one hundred ten. Faster. The gauge cracked, needle frozen on the far right of the speedometer.
The red cab was three stories high, it but a few dozen feet away, its horn louder than tornado sirens, headlights brighter than the sun.
All four of us were opened-mouth. Priscilla, Crystal, and I screamed. Billy said his words like a doomed prophecy.
I rose off the seat, half stood, half crouched, and put my weight on the wheel, red cab so close I believed if not for the windshield I could have reached out and touched it.
I jumped. My head hit the roof. I gathered what I felt was all the universe’s energy and placed it on the wheel. A thump. The wheel moved clockwise. Our car drifted. Away from the truck. Was it enough?
The Reynolds Freightways was on top of us. Metal scoured metal. Sparks lit up my window, so large and bright I could not see out of it. A large blur of red behind the flames, followed by an even larger, longer blur of gray combined with some red, enough to realize through logic and sight, it would have formed the overlapping letters R and F, words Freightway underneath.
Sparks seemed to melt the window and enter our car.
I jumped again, once more hitting the roof, a splitting migraine the result. I denied the pain, pushed on the wheel. Our car slid over a few inches, a seemingly insignificant amount yet enough to cause the sparks to diminish. I gave another effort. Soon the back of the truck could be seen. A space between the vehicles. Then nothing at my side.
I watched in the side mirror. Sparks from the truck died out though the rig continued on. I sat back down, so much sweat on me, I gauged it weighed more than my body mass.
Priscilla’s cries made me realize another crisis remained unresolved. I put my foot to the gas. Nothing. I redoubled my efforts. The car took off. I was thrown into the driver’s seat, my feet rolling up on top of me. The car headed to the guardrail.
I squirmed, struggled to sit up then stabbed a foot to the brake. And hit the wrong pedal. Priscilla shouted, Crystal wailed, and Billy cried between stating his phrase.
I hit the brake pedal. The car slowed. I pressed harder. We came to a stop. I asked if everyone was all right.
“All right? What the fuck are you talking about? After what just happened?” Priscilla said.
“Okay. Is everyone alive?”
Priscilla acknowledged she was. I turned to Crystal. Her crying persisted but in a quieter tone. I faced Billy. He stared blankly.
“Yeah.” His voice sounded eeriely low. “Yeah, Dad.” His tone lightened, more like a child’s. “I think I’m okay.” He sounded like himself.
I slid back in my seat, exhaled, and sped to the hospital.
Somehow, Priscilla gave birth to a normal, healthy, seven-pound girl. We spent the next several days at the hospital, both because my wife was able to stay that long and also due to our frayed nerves.
With baby at Priscilla’s chest, we exited. As I neared our car, a female hospital employee pointed at my door, asked what happened.
I observed the charred door for the first time, too much in a hurry upon arrival to notice. I touched it. Rough. I opened the door and gave an uneasy chuckle. “Guess I parked it too close to the door frame of our garage and had been in such a hurry to bring Priscilla here, it created sparks when it rubbed the garage as I left.
“Oh,” the woman said dubiously and scurried away as if we were rats.
“Let’s get in,” I said.
We neared the bridge. My heart rate increased. Seeing it made me swallow. I observed it. Same as usual. Including on top, the truck there, as it’d been when I’d first showed Billy.
“There it is, son,” I said uneasily, hoped it’d quell any fears the boy might have, plus my own. Would he say anything about the accident? I hadn’t brought it up, everyone too excited about the new addition. I sucked in air.
“Yep, there it is,” he said.
I exhaled.
“Hey, Dad?”
I took in a breath, held it. “Yes?”
“It’s gonna ..”
My insides chilled, passageways blocked. I gasped, unable to cut him off, and turned.
“..rain,” he finished and looked at me. “Idn’t it?”
I retreated to my original position and studied the sky. “Sure looks it.”
“I hope it doesn’t,” Billy said with a long face. “Wanna go out and play.”
I sighed and smiled. “Soon as we get home, we’ll do that. All five of us.”
The End
The idea behind this story-There really used to be a truck marquee along I-83, north of York, Pa, where my grandfather lived. Whenever we visited him, my dad drove us to my grandmother's cemetery (she died when I was two) to visit her grave. And, of course, along the way, we passed the truck marquee (Consolidated Freightways, was the company. Unfortunately, they went out of business in the early 2000's, I found out later. I remember it still being there when I went to my grandfather's funeral in early 2000). Guess it was around that time or a few years later, I came up with the idea, thinking of how the truck marquee looked to actually be on the bridge and how, as I kid, I though that was pretty neat, almost looked real. So I create a spooky, ghost-like story around it.
“See it, Billy?” I pointed through the windshield to the bridge.
Our six-year-old craned forward as far as his car seat allowed, his head cocked.
“See?” I said. “It’s right on the bridge. Driving across.”
“Don’t tease him,” my pregnant wife Priscilla poked a finger in my side.
“He’s six, is smart enough. Right, Billy?”
Billy sat up in his seat. “You betcha.”
“Oh, it’s gone now,” I said as I drove our blue Camry under the bridge, past the Reynolds Freightways facility, and headed south on Interstate Eighty-One to our favorite restaurant on the north edge of York, Pennsylvania.
Billy looked through the rear windshield then turned back around. “Dad, doesn’t work dis way.”
“I know. The sign’s on this side of the bridge. Have to be on the other side for it to look right.”
“Oh.” Billy slouched.
We were quiet until arriving at the restaurant.
***
On my way to take Billy to a birthday party days later in Camp Hill, north of York, we passed it again.
Billy observed the illusion, truck marquee appearing to be riding the bridge, silver trailer with the red letters RF overlapping. “Neat, Dad.” He sat back.
After the party as I drove him home, he looked at the sign. “Doesn’t work again,” he moaned then sat up and turned his head. “Oh, yeah, gotta look at it from dis side.” He was quiet. “There it is!” he finally said. “Ya see it, Dad?”
“Yeah,” I lied, kept my vision on the road and traffic.
“Ya know, I saw it drive across the bridge last time.”
“Ya did?” I played along. “Was it going fast?”
“Uh-huh. Real fast. Hit another car. Killed the riders.”
My smile went M.I.A., fingers slipping on the wheel. I stared in the rear-view mirror, searched for any clue on Billy’s face that suggested he was joking. He betrayed none. A horn behind me. I coasted back to my lane, managed several more peeks to the rear seat.
“You keep looking back here,” Billy finally said. “Stop looking at me.”
“Okay, big guy.” I did not look at him until almost to our point of interest. He only stared out the window.
The words “Serious accident” and “near Reynolds Freightway” on the news that night caused the spoon of ice cream in my hand to pause before entering my mouth. I watched footage: A small Saturn compressed into a slab of metal. The truck, with its red RF initials, had me gag. The reporter’s next sentence made my body chill:
“The driver of the Saturn was rushed to Pinnacle Hospital but was later pronounced dead. Truck driver escaped with minor injuries ..”
I watched Billy, who pushed his own toy truck—a Reynolds Freightways, no less—across carpet, blissfully unaware. I shook my head. A coincidence. My thoughts returned to the more pleasurable task of finishing dessert.
***
Not until I had to go that way again did I think of the accident. Though with me again, Billy said nothing, wrapped up in his DVD. I observed the illusion take shape, truck appearing to be on the bridge. It disappeared, hidden by the overpass before reappearing on the other side. Two cars drove on roadway above. No brakes screeched, no metal crumpled. They drove on unharmed, as did we.
***
The sign greeted us a few times over the next two weeks, Billy commenting (when he wasn’t watching a video or complaining about his sister touching him) on the faux tractor trailer. But no accidents.
“Dad, c’mere,’ Billy said from his bedroom on a Saturday.
“What is it, big guy?”
“Play with me.” His trucks were scattered about. He grabbed the one with the RF initials and rammed it into a yellow bulldozer, gave crashing sounds then hit the truck into a Mayflower moving van, pretended there was a huge fire as he tipped the van over. He did this to a few other trucks. So much so two-year-old Crystal, who’d crawled into the room unnoticed, cried.
“Okay, Billy, that’s enough,” I said. He kept going.
“Billy, stop it!” I picked up Crystal, caressed her, tried to convince myself all she needed was a change. Or food, though she didn’t give the usual cry suggesting either, this sound higher. Scarier.
Billy looked at me wide eyed, my tone catching his attention.
“Sorry.” I stood. “Let’s play Chutes and Ladders.”
We did, though halfway through, he became bored and reached for the multi-wheeled vehicle behind him.
“We’re not done with this game, c’mon,” I implored him. He obeyed until it was my turn, rolled the truck back then pushed it. It crashed into two others toys. A fire engine and a blue car I’d never seen. At least, as a toy. A blue Camry.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked, unaware of my tone until I looked at him, his expression like I’d grounded him for life. I relaxed, asked again, calmer.
“Had it.”
“How long?”
“Long time.” He patted a hand on my shoulder. “Need some time for yourself, Dad. A break from the rat race, a vacation at a spa.”
I chuckled. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Commercial. But you need a break. Big time.”
I laughed some more. We continued our game, even played trucks afterward. I cautioned myself I was becoming the overprotective parent I despised.
***
All was forgotten until the next time we drove by the overpass. I checked the back seat, Billy unaware, he focused on the scenery. Crystal sat quiet, eyelids half open. I sighed.
“There it is, Dad.”
His words gave me pause. I forced myself to speak calmly, evenly. “Like always. See? It’s on the bridge now.”
“Yep. And it’s gonna do some damage.”
“What?”
Billy’s words created a frigid line up my back.
“Gonna happen again.”
“What the hell—heck—are you talking about?”
“Gonna cause severe damage next time.” His voice sounded strangely adult like. Cold. “Blood. Death. Carnage.”
Crystal’s eyes opened at the unusual tone. She cried. Wailed.
“Damnit, Billy, stop that. It’s not funny.”
“Stop what?”
“That voice.”
“I’m speaking normal.”
I listened. His tone was back to its usual, higher pitch. Crystal still cried. If only Priscilla had come but she was too tired, it but a few weeks before her due date.
I sang to Crystal. She quieted at last.
“Just don’t do that anymore,” I told Billy. “You frightened her.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to.”
“Well, just don’t do that.”
“What-ever.”
“Billy, please.”
“Okay, Dad.” Billy reclined in his seat, silent.
***
“Ohmygod!” Priscilla said as I drove to her OB-GYN appointment at the end of that week. “It’s coming.” She groaned, heaved. “Ohmygod! Get me to a hospital!”
“We’re on our way,” I informed her, my veins like water in thirty-two-degree temperature though I’d been through this a few other times. “To York Hospital.”
“No. Pinnacle Hospital. It’s closer.”
I thought about the route we had to take, the bridge we’d pass. I looked at her. “York Hospital is where you always go. They have all your records and ..”
“They share that stuff. Go to Pinnacle Hospital damnit! We don’t have time!”
“But ..”
“Now!”
My hands went cold then numb. I pressed my foot on the accelerator, encouraged my wife as best I could remember from our Lamaze classes and previous experiences. Then I saw the sign. On the same exit we had to take.
“Slow down,” Priscilla said.
I kept going.
“Slow down, damnit, slow down, this is the exit. Did you fucking go dumb on me?”
“Shh, watch your language. The kids.”
“I don’t give a damn, just slow down. Get onto that exit.”
“Gonna do some damage,” Billy said.
His tone distracted me. I eyed him in the mirror. “What’s that?”
Then came that awful, harsh, grown up voice. “That truck. It’s gonna do some damage. And soon.”
Priscilla seemed to have forgotten her pain, it replaced by fear. The voice. Her son’s. She turned, each of her eyes seeming to grow as big as the outside clock at city hall.
“Going to do some damage.”
“Stop talking like that,” my wife said.
“Like what? I’m talking normal.” Billy’s voice had changed. Priscilla, blinked, gazed at him, her eyebrows like one. Her stomach thrusts soon reminded her of the current emergency. “Get off at this exit!” she demanded.
I increased my speed as I headed up the exit ramp. As soon as I turned the corner, about to cross over the bridge, a sight—and sound—made me forget why I was here, what to do, and how to drive.
The huge red cab, the logo with the overlapping RF letters, loomed larger and larger, seemed to grow taller than the Pocono Mountains. Its grille appeared to be able to swallow our car, each of its grates larger than our vehicle.
The truck pounded, thundered, road trembling, as if about to crumble. The vehicle hissed as though cursing me.
“Going to do some damage,” the backseat voice echoed, a deeper tone. Like one you’d hear on radio.
Crystal cried.
“Billy, stop that!” Priscilla yelled, took sharp inhalations and exhalations, then shouted at me. “Damnit, c’mon!” Priscilla said. “Faster!”
I pointed. “Don’t you see that?”
“Yes. The fucking road ahead. Faster! Now!”
The truck bore down. A sibilation of brakes.
I tried to push my foot down. It would not go. The tractor trailer shifted lanes. Further. Further. It crossed the double yellow line.
“Damnit, fucker, get out of my way. What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.
“What are you talking about?” Priscilla asked as Crystal cried louder, Billy too quiet.
“That.”
A bleating in front of me.
“That! That goddamned horn! He’s coming at us!”
“Who the hell are you talking about?” Priscilla said through clenched teeth. “There’s no one there.”
An air horn so loud my ear drums felt they’d burst.
“It’s coming right at us,” I yelled, hands going over each other as fingers latched onto the wheel, so tight I believed they’d break.
I swerved. Toward the guard rail. Passenger side to hit it first. Crystal’s side. And Priscilla’s.
“What the hell are you doing!” My wife clawed for the wheel, fingernails clicking off plastic. One stuck in the webbing of my hand between thumb and finger. I slid the hand away and cursed. Priscilla moved her hand into the open spot and shifted the wheel. The vehicle drifted. To the center. Where the truck was.
“What the hell are you doing?” About to seer the car away from the potential catastrophe, I pressed my eyes shut.
“What the hell are you doing?” Priscilla bellowed.
I lipped prayers, opened my eyes. What I saw made me close them and open them quickly. I repeated this. “What? Where did it go?”
“Where did what go?” my wife asked.
I checked over each shoulder then ahead of me, then my rear-view mirror. Side mirrors. I stared through the windshield. “Where did the truck go?”
“What truck?” Priscilla checked as I had. A pain in her stomach. She grunted, hand over her gut. “Get the fuck to the hospital!”
“Mommy,” Billy said. “Stop saying those bad words. We’re not a’sposed to say ‘em.”
“Mommy’s in a lot of pain right now,” she said and again yelled at me to go faster.
I was able to move my foot, jammed it onto the pedal. The car lurched before increasing speed. I gave a long look, in the rear-view mirror then the side one. No one else, nothing else, on the road. Not within my panorama. Only the truck marquee, the corner of it, our car parallel to it.
The rest of the trip I could not recall, other than Priscilla being rushed to the emergency room. After some time, she was released. False labor.
The drive home was quiet, my wife asleep, worn out from the high drama and disappointment. Billy, though awake, remained oddly reserved, said only one thing as the logo became visible.
“Did some damage. Almost.”
He said it so low, in his normal voice, I almost didn’t hear it. Then the words caught in my brain. I looked at him in the mirror. He did the same.
“Stop looking at me,” he said when I did not look away.
I glanced out the windshield as a car passed from the other direction. I kept going, only passed a glimpse in the side mirror. That vehicle became a speck in my vision.
Before refocusing on what lie ahead, I viewed Billy, his face no hint of fear or anxiety. I took us home.
***
“When is this going to end?” Priscilla moaned, the four of us again on our way to her ob-gyn.
I smiled. “Probably never. I’ll spend the rest of my life ferrying you back and forth, home to hospital, hospital to home, a never ceasing journey.”
A comedian you ain’t,” she said, her lips a straight line.
“Aren’t,” Billy corrected. “Ain’t is not a word.”
“Way to go, big guy,” I said. “You tell her.”
“Ain’t is not a word, Mom.”
We laughed. A sudden thrust had Priscilla’s smile doing a one eighty. She sat up, groaned, and shrieked.
I looked at her. “More false labor?”
She grunted. “This time it’s for real.”
“You’re sure?”
She pushed, cried out, panted. “Positive. Go to the hospital.”
“I’ll take the next exit and turn back to ..”
“Damnit, why do you keep doing that? Go to Pinnacle.”
“But honey, all your info—”
“I told you they share all that stuff through a data base.” She pushed harder. “Why are you so difficult? I’m having our baby. Go!”
The exit came upon us. As did the sign. The truck. It appeared to be riding on the bridge, a real eighteen-wheeler.
“There it is,” Billy said above his mom’s incantations and oaths.
I nodded, wished I was sweating as much as my wife, needed the heat, anything, to warm me up.
The truck seemed to grow in size though I knew (or thought I knew) it was only because we were closing in on the exit.
I was so intent on the truck, as if I could stare it out of existence, I barely heard Priscilla.
“The exit, damnit! You’re mising it! Get off! Now!”
Fortunately, I was already in the slow lane, decreased our speed. At the top of the exit, I braked, looked one way—away from the truck—then tried to gather my strength to check the other way. The left side of my head felt as if it was flush against a wall. I tried to turn it by pressing my right hand on my right cheek and pushing my face to the window. I glanced as far out of the corner of my left eye as I could. Nothing obstructed my vision.
“Go! What the hell are you waiting for?” Priscilla said between pushes and breaths.
I put pressure on the right-side pedal. The car entered the intersection. All clear. I turned the wheels. The automobile headed onto the road, toward the hospital.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re on our way. Be there any minute, we ..”
A shape on my side mirror prevented me from finishing. A large figure closed in on me. Red.
I checked again. And breathed. The red pick-up whizzed past. I smiled until Priscilla asked why I wasn’t driving as fast as that guy.
I obeyed her command. As the rectangular shape beneath my foot hit the floorboard, a voice from the back.
“Gonna do some damage.”
Billy repeated the sentence several times, his voice deepening each time.
“Stop that,” I said and looked at Priscilla, she wide eyed, I unsure if it was from the pregnancy or Billy. Or both. My eyes felt as wide as hers.
Billy ignored my demand. A pressure around my chest made it feel like I was Harry Houdini in the midst of a trick. It seemed a cold noose tightened around me.
“Go!” Priscilla screamed.
My foot went no further. The car did not seem to move. Billy recited his mantra. Priscilla shrieked as if dying.
I saw it. Straight ahead, baring down as if I was a Spaniard in a coliseum with a cape.
The red cab of the eighteen-wheeler appeared to be larger than any other, its wheels six feet tall, its back end going on and on, as far as my vision would take me.
“Goddamnit, go!” I heard Priscilla though her voice sounded like she was at the other end of a corridor.
The monster vehicle prowled toward us, Billy saying the phrase faster and faster, his voice deeper than James Earl Jones’.
“Go, go! What are you waiting for?!” Priscilla’s pleas sliced through me and though I felt paralyzed, our car rolled ahead, as if it was its own person. Or was being commanded. Its speed increased.
Billy’s chant. Priscilla’s cries. Crystal’s high pitched, constant squeals. My head felt as if between two crashing cymbals. I forced my foot down. It went no further. However, the car picked up speed, seemed to be drawn to the truck, which honked and flashed its lights, although no one seemed to be in the cab.
I managed to look where the marquee was. Or should have been. No truck on top of the pole.
Blinding head lights brought me back. The truck’s pace increased. So did my car’s. Like two gigantic beasts, enemies of each other, the vehicles charged, as if playing chicken.
Priscilla let out an unending scream, Billy’s phrase like one long, run-on sentence. I clutched the wheel. My hands slipped off. I grabbed the wheel again, squeezed hands so tight I didn’t think they’d ever be pried off. By me or the coroner. I pushed the wheel to the right. It was like trying to turn a steering column void of steering fluid. I grunted nearly as loud as Priscilla. The car kept going straight, needle above one hundred. To one hundred ten. Faster. The gauge cracked, needle frozen on the far right of the speedometer.
The red cab was three stories high, it but a few dozen feet away, its horn louder than tornado sirens, headlights brighter than the sun.
All four of us were opened-mouth. Priscilla, Crystal, and I screamed. Billy said his words like a doomed prophecy.
I rose off the seat, half stood, half crouched, and put my weight on the wheel, red cab so close I believed if not for the windshield I could have reached out and touched it.
I jumped. My head hit the roof. I gathered what I felt was all the universe’s energy and placed it on the wheel. A thump. The wheel moved clockwise. Our car drifted. Away from the truck. Was it enough?
The Reynolds Freightways was on top of us. Metal scoured metal. Sparks lit up my window, so large and bright I could not see out of it. A large blur of red behind the flames, followed by an even larger, longer blur of gray combined with some red, enough to realize through logic and sight, it would have formed the overlapping letters R and F, words Freightway underneath.
Sparks seemed to melt the window and enter our car.
I jumped again, once more hitting the roof, a splitting migraine the result. I denied the pain, pushed on the wheel. Our car slid over a few inches, a seemingly insignificant amount yet enough to cause the sparks to diminish. I gave another effort. Soon the back of the truck could be seen. A space between the vehicles. Then nothing at my side.
I watched in the side mirror. Sparks from the truck died out though the rig continued on. I sat back down, so much sweat on me, I gauged it weighed more than my body mass.
Priscilla’s cries made me realize another crisis remained unresolved. I put my foot to the gas. Nothing. I redoubled my efforts. The car took off. I was thrown into the driver’s seat, my feet rolling up on top of me. The car headed to the guardrail.
I squirmed, struggled to sit up then stabbed a foot to the brake. And hit the wrong pedal. Priscilla shouted, Crystal wailed, and Billy cried between stating his phrase.
I hit the brake pedal. The car slowed. I pressed harder. We came to a stop. I asked if everyone was all right.
“All right? What the fuck are you talking about? After what just happened?” Priscilla said.
“Okay. Is everyone alive?”
Priscilla acknowledged she was. I turned to Crystal. Her crying persisted but in a quieter tone. I faced Billy. He stared blankly.
“Yeah.” His voice sounded eeriely low. “Yeah, Dad.” His tone lightened, more like a child’s. “I think I’m okay.” He sounded like himself.
I slid back in my seat, exhaled, and sped to the hospital.
Somehow, Priscilla gave birth to a normal, healthy, seven-pound girl. We spent the next several days at the hospital, both because my wife was able to stay that long and also due to our frayed nerves.
With baby at Priscilla’s chest, we exited. As I neared our car, a female hospital employee pointed at my door, asked what happened.
I observed the charred door for the first time, too much in a hurry upon arrival to notice. I touched it. Rough. I opened the door and gave an uneasy chuckle. “Guess I parked it too close to the door frame of our garage and had been in such a hurry to bring Priscilla here, it created sparks when it rubbed the garage as I left.
“Oh,” the woman said dubiously and scurried away as if we were rats.
“Let’s get in,” I said.
We neared the bridge. My heart rate increased. Seeing it made me swallow. I observed it. Same as usual. Including on top, the truck there, as it’d been when I’d first showed Billy.
“There it is, son,” I said uneasily, hoped it’d quell any fears the boy might have, plus my own. Would he say anything about the accident? I hadn’t brought it up, everyone too excited about the new addition. I sucked in air.
“Yep, there it is,” he said.
I exhaled.
“Hey, Dad?”
I took in a breath, held it. “Yes?”
“It’s gonna ..”
My insides chilled, passageways blocked. I gasped, unable to cut him off, and turned.
“..rain,” he finished and looked at me. “Idn’t it?”
I retreated to my original position and studied the sky. “Sure looks it.”
“I hope it doesn’t,” Billy said with a long face. “Wanna go out and play.”
I sighed and smiled. “Soon as we get home, we’ll do that. All five of us.”
The End
The idea behind this story-There really used to be a truck marquee along I-83, north of York, Pa, where my grandfather lived. Whenever we visited him, my dad drove us to my grandmother's cemetery (she died when I was two) to visit her grave. And, of course, along the way, we passed the truck marquee (Consolidated Freightways, was the company. Unfortunately, they went out of business in the early 2000's, I found out later. I remember it still being there when I went to my grandfather's funeral in early 2000). Guess it was around that time or a few years later, I came up with the idea, thinking of how the truck marquee looked to actually be on the bridge and how, as I kid, I though that was pretty neat, almost looked real. So I create a spooky, ghost-like story around it.