Said To Contain

My drop in Mira Loma went off just as it should; no long delay at the dock, no problems with the product, not even an outlandish unloading fee to ruffle my feathers. I got in and out with time to spare, so I set course for Oceanside and went on my way.

  Things were going well for me; perhaps because of my new co-pilot -- glowing Jesus on the dash. I found that I liked the blue setting best; kind of mellowed the cab out a bit with its cool aura.

  I arrived at the designated pickup for my load home just after seven pm -- plenty early, just the way I like to do it. When I got there I was directed into a bullpen area where fifteen or twenty other trucks were already waiting.

  The lot was huge, so finding a spot to park wasn't a problem for once. There was a narrow gravel path leading out of the bullpen towards a massive building in the distance, presumably where they did all the loading. It was tall, wide and long -- but I didn't see any docks on the side that was visible. It looked a bit like a giant aircraft hanger perched on the shore of the undulating ocean beyond... not like any shipping facility I'd ever seen.

  The sky was growing dark and there were no lights in this area to be found. The grey was almost threatening, really -- thank God for my little blue messiah. A storm was brewing, that much was obvious. Clouds suffocated the twilight, reminding me of the opening scenes of a horror movie set in the deep dark woods near Crystal Lake. With any luck, I could stave off the appearance of Jason long enough to pick up my load and get on my way -- there were plenty of other truckers here to fulfill his appetite.

  I searched for a sign that might clue me in to exactly what I was gonna be hauling, but there didn't seem to be one. I couldn't tell if this was a fish processing facility, a produce terminal or just some little mushroom shack with a new crop of fungus bound for market.

  It's hard to believe that I'd forgotten to ask the woman at Sunspot what the commodity was -- with the ragged shape my reefer was in, that should've been my first question. I thought about getting out and asking some of the other truckers waiting, but I didn't want to risk looking stupid. I mean, who agrees to take a load without knowing what they're gonna be hauling?

  I've pulled some strange stuff in my time. Most people don't realize how much of what they buy has to travel on refrigerated trucks. Stuff like milk, meat and frozen foods are obvious, but these things make up just a small portion of the cargo that I move around from day to day.

  If you're a woman, you've probably got lipstick in your purse... ever see what happens to it when you leave it in a hot car for a couple of hours? It melts, right? That's exactly what it does in the back of a regular trailer in the summer heat, too.

  How about flowers? Did you know that the roses you got last Valentine's day had spent some time in the back of a truck just like mine? Well, they did -- and they made a hell of a mess back there, too. Plants are miserable to haul. My trailer has a slotted floor to let liquid drain out if something is leaking, and that potting soil loves to get in there and clog things up.

  The only thing I've found worse than pulling flowers is pulling pork bellies on slip sheets. A slip sheet, in case you aren't familiar with them, is essentially a piece of rigid plastic they line the floor of a trailer with when they're loading fresh meat. A lot of times they just plop the stuff right down on the sheets; no boxes, no bags, no wrappers -- nothing. It's all fine and dandy while it's cold, but after you unload the goods and turn the refrigeration unit off, it turns into the smelliest sauna you'd ever care to be in. I've spent hours trying to power wash the stench out of my box after loads of pork bellies... I don't know what it is about them, they just smell awful. That's where coffee comes in... a can of fresh grounds can drown out just about any stink.

  The moral of the story is; if it melts in the heat or is damaged by freezing in the cold, it moves on a refrigerated truck. Be it makeup, milk or body parts from the scene of a terrible disaster. Don't laugh -- they called reefer trailers to Ground Zero on 9/11... thought they would need to keep all the broken bodies cool until they could sort them all out. Most were cancelled, though, when they realized there just wasn't much left of the poor people that had died inside those buildings. Such a terrible tragedy...

  There was about an hour worth of paperwork that I'd allowed to pile up that I decided to finally do once I'd parked. My log book looked like the diagram of a football play, so I had to get that in order first of all. Truck drivers are required to document what they've done in fifteen minute increments. There are rules and regulations about how long you can drive and how much time you're supposed to spend resting as a result, and if a D.O.T. (Department Of Transportation) man catches you violating those rules, there is generally hell to pay (not to mention steep fines). There are, of course, ways to cheat the system, so to speak... it's kinda like working an algebra problem, though, so that's why it takes me so damned long to do.

  Once that was out of the way, I was free. Leaning my seat back, I tilted the steering wheel up so I could stretch out a bit. As always, I used my boot brush to clean off my leather shit-kickers before putting them up on the dash and sliding my hat down over my eyes.

  The guards at the gate had told me that someone from the building beyond would be checking in with me before long, so I didn't want to get in to the bunk and risk passing out cold. At this point I'd been going for nearly twenty-six hours (way longer than the law allows, by the way); I was definitely in need of some good beauty sleep.

  There would be plenty of time for that when I was back on Floridian soil, I figured -- though seeing my son for the first time in nearly a year would likely make it difficult even then. I turned on the radio to keep me awake while I waited, but I tuned in just in time for a news brief instead of a pounding southern jam.

  "In other news this hour," a newswoman started up in the typical matter-of-fact tone. "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced today that it's preparing to launch a series of prototypes of the new shuttlecraft from Kennedy Space Center early next week. These latest incarnations are the culmination of nearly a decade of research and redesign, touting many new safety features in the wake of the disaster that destroyed the Colombia in 2003. Several variations of the design will be tested over the course of several days, scientists carefully interpreting the data from each unmanned launch to gather as complete a picture as possible of how each unit performs. The capsule itself is several times larger than the original orbiter and was designed to allow the transportation of large components to the International Space Station. The first launch is slated to take place on Monday the third at ten am and is sure to be a thrilling spectacle. There will be ten runs in all over the course of four days, the experiment said to be costing the nation over twenty billion dollars."

  I made a mental note of the date and time, figuring it would be a lot of fun to take Sammy to see it go up. Living in Florida allowed me to catch a glimpse of launches in the past, and I always enjoyed the hell out of it. I'm a country boy at heart, but for all my simple ways I'm still enamored at the sight of a huge hunk of steel rising from the Earth on the back of a blazing inferno. Had life gone differently for me I might've liked to take a ride on that magic school bus -- but as it is, I can barely stand setting foot on a commercial airplane. The place for Randy Johnston is right here -- on the road with only eighteen bags of air between me and the ground.

  My cell phone rang while I was waiting, and to my delight I found that it was Sammy on the other end. He's a typical boy; doesn't much care for talking on the phone. I can count on one hand the number of times that it's been he who called me, so I was understandably excited. He sounded happy to talk to me this time too, which is even more rare.

  There was a bit of an agenda to his call; he asked if I had a Playstation at home which, of course, I don't. When he started listing all of the reasons he wanted me to get one for him, it became clear that I didn't have much choice. I tried to explain that I had planned a fun trip to a theme park f
or us, but he seemed more interested in being sure he could knock out a few rounds of some fighting game he's hooked on.

  The conversation was going well until I heard my ex-wife droning on in the background. In response to her prodding, he asked if I was sure that I would make it home in time to pick him up. I assured him he had nothing to worry about -- or should I say I assured his mother. Either way, the conversation didn't go much further than that. Making sure to remind me to pickup his system, he told me he loved me and hung up hastily to get back to whatever he was doing.

  While I had the phone on my mind, I decided to call Janet. I told her about the backhaul so that she could cram all the numbers and make a determination about my ability to replace the unit on my trailer. She said she was really busy and couldn't talk much, so that was pretty much it.

  Shortly after I got off the phone, I saw some action unfolding in the lot. A couple of black SUV's had driven up the gravel road from the building, and several men wearing dark-green jumpsuits and hardhats had sprung out and started knocking on the doors of some of the other trucks.

  They had clipboards and were busy taking notes of one sort or another while they spoke with the drivers. Rolling down my window a little, I lit up a Marlboro and tried to hear what was going on. The rumbling of all the idling trucks made it just about impossible. Some of the drivers started getting out of their cabs and disconnecting the air lines to their trailers, as if they were getting ready to drop them. This was apparently the case, as one started cranking the landing gear down while the question man was walking around his rig recording the serial and license plate numbers.

  It took about a half an hour for the crew to speak to all of the truckers that had arrived before me, but eventually my turn came up. A guy in the jumpsuit climbed up on my running boards, grabbing hold of my rearview mirror bracket and pulling it a bit more than I would've liked.

  "Good evening." He said firmly but kindly. "Name and company, please?"

  "Randy Johnston." I announced. "R.J.'s Cool Moves Transport." The man wrote everything down as I spoke, politely nodding to confirm that he'd heard me.

  "That's a Thermo-King unit, right?" He asked, pointing to my worn-down reefer. "What year?"

  "2008." I lied. He did a double take and leaned back to examine it closer, clearly realizing that I sliced a decade off of the machine's age. "New engine in it." I offered, though that was as tall a tale as my original claim.

  "Okay." He returned hesitantly. "Any pallets, bulkheads or blankets inside?"

  "Nope -- she's empty."

  "Perfect. Please set it to negative ten, fire it up and drop the trailer for me."

  "Negative ten?" I asked, a bit flabbergasted. Temperatures that low are usually reserved for ice cream, and I've never heard of anybody taking the risk of shipping ice cream clear across the country.

  "Yes sir." He confirmed.

  "What are y'all about to put on there?"

  "Ice blocks." He answered quickly. "Once you've dropped it, move your truck over to the eastern side of the lot and settle in for the night."

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute." I protested. "Drop it and settle in? You don't think I'm gonna let you move my trailer, do you?" I'm sure I sounded rather rude - but I'm not one for pointless pleasantries. Like many independent truckers, I love my equipment. This guy might as well have asked me to leave my little boy standing alone and go take a nap while they did whatever they would with him.

  "Yes I do." He returned just as firmly as he had spoken throughout.

  Putting on my tough-guy face, I did my best to come across as strong as I possibly could as I replied. "Well that's not gonna happen. This trailer doesn't move unless my truck is pulling it -- that's just the way it is."

  "I'm sorry then, sir." He said without blinking "If that's the bottom line, I'm afraid we won't be loading you this evening. I appreciate your concern about the trailer, no hard feelings. Please leave the lot, we've got quite a few more trucks coming in."

  Without another word, he jumped down off the truck and started walking away. You believe that? I've never seen anything like it in my life. Shippers play hardball every so often -- they're paying the bill, after all -- but I've never had one just tell me to get up off the property simply because I didn't want them fiddling with my trailer.

  "Whoa, whoa!" I called to him, trying to talk my fifty-five hundred bucks out of simply strolling away. Thankfully he stopped and turned back, but he didn't go so far as to return to my truck until I gave him a bit more. "Let's talk about this for a minute." I pled. "I apologize if I came across badly there, I just don't like the idea of handing my baby off to some part-time switcher."

  "We have a professional switcher on site, sir." He explained. "We're also fully insured. All we need to do is hook it up, pull it to the facility for loading, then pull we'll it right back."

  "Why can't I just pull it to the building for you?"

  "This is a restricted access site -- this is as close as I can let a civilian get to the facility."

  I looked back at the building on the horizon; just sitting there at the end of the gravel road. There were no fences, no guards, no barbed wire... nothing. This guy was telling me that he couldn't let me get any closer to the facility, yet for all intents and purposes, it looked like I could simply make a run for it and be there before anyone knew what happened.

  That's when I noticed the man hanging out of the tailgate of one of the SUV's... he was wearing a slightly different garb than the lot attendants. His outfit was distinct and foreboding -- a woodland camo pattern with a large star-spangled patch on his shoulder. In his clutches was what appeared to be an assault rifle. Apparently, I was dealing with the military.

  "If you scratch my trailer," I began, trying to be cordial while still being sure my sincerity was evident. "I'm not gonna be a very happy man."

  "Understood, sir." He replied. "If you'd like to proceed with the pickup, please start the unit and drop the box. We'll wake you up when the load is ready to roll."

  "About what time do you figure that will be?"

  "Hard to say, sir. We'll have departures throughout the night... just depends on when your number comes up and you get loaded. If you'll go ahead and do as I've asked, I'll just need to record some information from your trailer."

  The fact that I wasn't happy about it was no secret, but I got out of Big Red and started making preparations to drop my trailer for the first time in quite a while. This whole scene was a little uncomfortable for me, really, but the load was a perfect fit for my plans. Once I was loaded and rolling, none of this nonsense would make any difference to me and the business I was trying to press on with. Something about being watched by men with high powered weapons didn't ease my nerves any, so I was eager to put this place behind me.

  One thing was obvious; there was something more than twenty loads of blocked ice in that building at the end of the gravel road. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever paid nearly six g's to move frozen water from the west coast to the east... I wasn't sure exactly what I'd gotten myself in to, but in the end I figured it really didn't matter. There was a date to keep with my son -- I was going to be in Florida in time to keep it.

  If the landing gear of my trailer would support its weight once I pulled my truck from under it, that is... between the moaning of the steel as I cranked them down and the frail appearance of the aged welds, it seemed I needed to add that to my growing list of scheduled repairs as well.

  Chapter 5