The first time I heard that somebody would pay a man to drive a truck, I stopped pushing mine across the carpet. I was on the rec room floor at Juniper House, steering a plastic semi around a chair leg, when a counselor asked Hank Miller whether he missed the road.
“Every day,” he said. He lowered himself into a chair, bracing on both arms, and rubbed the knees that had ended his years hauling freight in a Peterbilt. He ran our gym activities now, mostly from the sidelines.
“Where are you headed?” he asked me.
I had been driving in circles. I pointed toward the windows and said, “Out there.”
Juniper House stood near a busy road on the edge of Spokane. I grew up leaving basketball games to watch the semis pass our fence. Denise, a counselor, bought a new toy truck with her own money; although it belonged to the rec room, the other kids left it for me.
Hank sat beside me after supper with stories about switchbacks and truck stops. He knew commercial driving school cost more than I could save, and on my fifteenth birthday he offered something else: Sunday lessons in his red manual Ford F-150, at a friend’s ranch outside Cheney.
“Isn’t that illegal?” I asked.
“On a public road. We’re asking permission to use his tracks.”
Our first Sunday, I stalled three times before we cleared the barn. Johnny Cash kept singing from the cassette player while I sat gripping the wheel, afraid Hank would decide this had been a mistake.
He turned the music down. “I’m here all afternoon,” he said. “Find the clutch again.”
I asked whether he ought to get us past the barn first. He shook his head and kept his hands on his own knees. I turned the key, let the pedal rise until I felt the engine change, and held it there. The pickup moved a few feet. I wanted to look at Hank, but the fence was ahead of us, so I looked through the windshield instead.
We went back nearly every Sunday. He taught me to look beyond the hood and leave room for what I couldn’t see. One afternoon he kept me behind the wheel after I parked, smiling until I smiled back, while he took a photograph.
At eighteen I left Juniper House with a regular driver’s license, a duffel bag, and Hank’s number. Delivery work paid for my room, but not driving school; college was further beyond me. I finally enlisted in the Army, learned to handle heavy transport trucks, and came home hoping those years would count for something.
I completed the civilian commercial licensing requirements and carried my military record to freight interviews. One manager near the state line pushed it back across his desk.
“You like the scenery. What about the hours? Find a girl who doesn’t mind eating alone, if such a girl exists.”
“Where am I supposed to get commercial miles if nobody will hire me?”
He was already reaching for the phone. Outside, I slammed the pickup door and sat watching a parking receipt settle onto my boots.
That night I put three newspapers on a convenience-store counter. I’d tried the online listings and dispatch offices; now I was spending grocery money to read the same refusals in smaller print. A cashier named Erin counted the papers twice.
“You know two of these cover the same area?”
“Maybe one has something the other missed.”
She asked what I was looking for. I told her, intending to say truck driving and leave it there, but the manager’s words came out too. A customer needed cigarettes; I stepped aside, embarrassed, while she found his brand. When he left, she returned to my newspapers.
“Which places haven’t you called?”
“The ones that won’t hire me tomorrow.”
She waited. I took out my wallet and pretended not to notice.
“You’ve got it figured out, then,” she said.
“I didn’t ask you to fix it.”
“I wasn’t offering.” She moved the papers closer to me. “But you came in for these.”
For a moment I wanted to leave them. Beside the register lay a paperback, face down over a college course catalog. I asked whether she was in school, hoping to move the conversation somewhere I wasn’t failing.
“Saving for it. Reading the catalog is free.” She slid a receipt between the book’s pages. “My parents have a spare room, not spare tuition.”
The phone rang, and she had to explain that the store couldn’t hold a man’s lottery numbers for him. I opened a paper while I waited. There was a small freight company I’d skipped because the advertisement gave no details. I laid my coins on the counter.
I was short for three papers. Erin pointed to the two that duplicated each other, but I gathered my change instead. I could come back tomorrow; I had begun explaining that when she asked which listing I wanted to keep.
I looked at the advertisement under my thumb. She hadn’t offered to pay the difference or told me everything would work out. I put the other paper back on the rack and counted again. This time I had enough, with two coins left over for the parking meter outside the next office.
“I’ll call this one.”
“Okay,” she said, and rang up the papers. She didn’t congratulate me for something I hadn’t done yet.
The next morning I called. They had no opening, but I left my number instead of hanging up. When Erin asked the next night, I had an answer; she remembered the company and asked about the driving I’d done in the Army. I stayed until another customer needed the counter.
Erin Lawson had a different book every week. We traded stories between customers, then on walks home after her shifts. After a month, I asked her to dinner; she put her key back in her pocket and said, “An actual date?” We ate burgers overlooking the interstate, and I forgot to watch the trucks.
Meeting her parents was harder. Ray and Beth lived in Spokane Valley, and I spent supper worrying about what they must think of me. Ray found me afterward in the hallway, studying a school photograph of Erin, and asked what was wrong.
I told him I had no family and little to offer her. From the kitchen came the sound of Erin arguing with Beth about how much food we could carry home.
“She tells us you listen to her,” Ray said. “Keep doing that.”
They kept inviting me back. I learned where Beth put the coffee filters and stopped asking whether I could have another cup. By the time I’d saved for a plain ring, I could imagine a life that included their kitchen as clearly as I could imagine the highway.
I proposed beside the river; Erin said yes before I opened the box. Her parents held a backyard cookout, and we married that summer under a canopy in a park. People from Juniper House filled the folding chairs. Hank hugged me carefully because of his knees, and Denise took our picture.
A small company called Inland Ridge Freight hired me soon afterward. Its owner, Paul Bennett, checked my references and assigned me to an experienced driver. I carried the offer letter home without folding it and set it beside the pizza box on our kitchen table.
Erin waited until I’d told her about the trucks. Then she said she was pregnant.
I laughed, and she covered her mouth, laughing too. I reached across the table for her hand. The second bedroom still held unpacked boxes; I began telling her where a crib would fit, moving the salt shaker to make space for an imaginary door.
“There’s room,” she said. “We can move the boxes.”
I looked down at Paul’s letter. He’d described routes that could keep me away for days, and I hadn’t asked how easily a driver could come home early. I let go of Erin’s hand to turn the page over.
“I could keep doing deliveries. Stay close.”
“Daniel, you’ve just got the job.”
“I could tell him tomorrow.” I folded one corner, then flattened it against the table. Erin had stopped smiling, and I couldn’t tell whether she was frightened about the baby or about what I was saying.
She pulled the pizza box toward her and closed the lid. We had hardly eaten anything. I waited for her to say I was right, that we needed to be sensible now, but she kept looking at me.
“If I take it, I could be away when you need me.” I pushed the offer letter farther from the pizza box. “Is that really what you want?”
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