Earlier…

Drake Menda twisted the key into the guts of the rusted lock. It crunched more than clicked, but it opened. He shouldered his way in from the cold, and that was when the smell hit him — the pungent aroma of sweaty socks and… 

Drake sniffed the air. Pickles?

He switched on the lights and confirmed what he already knew: This place was an absolute shit hole. The carpet was worn and stained, and the mix-match of furniture looked like something from IKEA’s customer returns section, not that he cared. The room had heat. That was more than he could say for his big rig. Its heat had been on the fritz since he left home. 

Drake looked behind him one last time before closing the door. His eighteen-wheeler took up about five of Birchbee Motel’s parking spaces. The cab was white, but the motel’s flood lights cast it in a fitting shade of tooth-decay yellow. He despised that truck just like he despised Luck Lady Trucking for making him drive it all these years. It should have been put out to pasture long ago. 

Well, “change is a comin'”, as Drake’s mom used to say before Alzheimer’s took her mind and then her life. Luck Lady Trucking was in for one helluva surprise. That reminded him, he should call Gus.

Drake shed his knapsack, coat and shoes before making the call. Gus picked up on the third ring, but there was no “hello.” All Drake heard was the loud growl of an engine. “Gus?”

“Drake!” Gus yelled over the sound. “How they hanging, buddy?”

“Um… good, I guess.” Drake spoke louder too. He could picture his voice cutting through the thin, flower-papered walls to the rooms on either side, though he was pretty sure they were empty. “You driving?”

“Yeah. Just south of Reno,” Gus replied. “You?”

“Stopped in Aurora. Done for the night.”

“It’s only seven-thirty! I thought you said Luck Lady was a bunch of slave drivers.”

Drake knew where Gus was going with this. “I’ve been on the road for twelve hours,” Drake replied. “They expect me to do sixteen.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t they gonna give you shit for stopping?”

Honestly, Drake was surprised they hadn’t called already. For as cheap as Luck Lady was, they spared no expense when it came to keeping track of their drivers. Mounted on every truck’s dashboard (big brother on a stick, as most truckers called it) was a slim, black box that fed all sorts of data to the operations department — min/max speed, idle time, a count of ‘severe’ accelerations and decelerations, so forth and so on. It also told them where they could find Drake’s truck at any moment. “Let ’em,” Drake said. “I got news.”

“What news?”

Drake held the cell phone between his ear and shoulder while he knelt down to unzip the larger compartment of his knapsack. There was a red notebook inside he’d need for later, but right now he was more interested in the folded printout sticking out of it. “I got my Hazmat’s back,” Drake said, pulling the paper free. He threw the notebook to the bed, then unfolded the paper. He found the section labeled ‘RESULTS:’ at the bottom. A swell of pride warmed his chest. “And I aced the fucker.” 

He read the scores of the different sections to Gus, who replied with an impressed whistle.

“So if I’m right about this,” Drake continued, “I’ll be able to give Luck Lady the middle finger sooner than later.”

There was a hesitation on Gus’s end, one Drake didn’t like. “Gus?”

“Yeah. I mean it still might take some time before it all goes through, but yeah.”

“Can you let your boss know about the test at least? See if we can get the ball rolling?”

Gus sighed. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“It’s just… I can’t keep pushing, ya know? My boss doesn’t–“

“I’ve jumped through every fucking hoop Continental Shipping’s thrown my way,” Drake snapped. “And it’s been nearly a month since I heard a goddamn thing. Maybe he SHOULD be pushed.”

The ensuing silence on Gus’s end was like a splash of cold water. Once again, Drake had gone too far, heated up too fast. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just I have to get out of this rut.”

“It’s okay,” Gus said.

“This job’s killing me.”

“I know. Drake, listen. It’ll come. Just be patient. Do you know it took me three months to get in?”

“Yeah, you already told me.”

“Three,” Gus repeated as if he hadn’t heard Drake’s reply. “And even after I got the tests back, I still had to wait another two weeks for the damn background check to clear. But I waited it out, and I got the job, and I sure as shit didn’t ace the Hazmats, if you catch my drift. You have nothing to worry about.”

But Drake had stopped listening. His brain was stuck on something new Gus had added this time, something that gutted him. Everything he’d gone through — the interviews, the tests on Hazmats and driver safety — wasn’t worth a damn. He’d never get that job, not after Continental Shipping completed their background check and read about what he’d done.

“Shit!” Gus exclaimed, pulling Drake back from the worst memory of his life. “I missed the weigh-in. I gotta go. Look, I’ll give it one more try, okay? Maybe I’ll call Rhonda after I’m done. Rhonda’s in HR, and I think she’s sweet on me. Maybe she can help.”

Drake told him thanks because what else could he say? After he hung up, he set his cell phone on the dresser next to the television and spent God knew how long staring out the window. He could only see his own ragged reflection but imagined the big rig staring back at him from the cold, its grill bent into a rusted, pointy smile. “It’s you and me, good buddy,” that grin said. “Always will be.”

Maybe it was true, and maybe it was what he deserved. He tongued the inside of his lower lip and winced. He must have bitten down at some point during his conversation with Gus. He didn’t remember doing it, but that didn’t surprise him. He never remembered, not until after the fact, when it was too late to do anything about it. It was the same with his temper. By the time he realized he’d lost it, the damage had already been done.

Drake massaged his eyes, applying pressure to the bridge of his nose until the blip of nausea passed. The nausea, but not the guilt. Never the guilt. Just like he deserved the shitty job at Luck Lady, Drake deserved every bit of hatred his daughter had for him. God, how he wished he could take it all back. He wished it more than anything.

Somewhere outside, a bell chimed. Drake counted eight in all before it quit. Eight o’clock and Gus still hadn’t called him back. Drake felt too defeated to care. There was only one sure thing left for him tonight, and it wasn’t celebration.

He picked up the red notebook from the bed and sat in its place. He still needed to write about the events of the day. It was his nightly promise to himself, one he’d kept faithfully for years no matter how shitty the news. Tonight was no exception. His original plan for tonight was writing about his last official run with Luck Lady Trucking and how the job at Continental was a sure thing, but that was before he knew about the background check. Now it seemed as if tonight’s entry would carry the same theme as so many others: Regret.

Drake let out a loud breath. He couldn’t bring himself to write, not now. Now, he just needed to clear his head. He put on his shoes and coat and left the motel room, but not before giving the door a frame-rattling slam. 

Room 165’s new silence barely had a chance to settle before his cell phone rang from beside the television.

#

The wind howled, blowing snow into Drake’s face and down the front of his coat. He had no scarf, no hat. All he could do against the onslaught was keep his head down. Still, Drake favored this over staying put at the motel, waiting for Gus’s bad news or dwelling on the past he could never hope to change. 

Within fifteen minutes of setting out, his feet were already numb. He kicked snow off his shoes at the closest fire hydrant and looked around. A few scattered houses contoured the winding sidewalk. Wind or no, they all looked so peaceful — blanketed in snow, their interior lights glowing. A Christmas card if he ever saw one. 

He bundled up as another whip of wind smacked against him. He used to live in a nice neighborhood like this, with tall trees and spacious front yards. The colonial just to his right, with its white vinyl siding and black shutters, reminded Drake of the house he and his family had shared. 

The colonial was one of the few houses with no lights on inside. Tire tracks led out from the driveway and into the street. Drake imagined a happy family enjoying a night out together — a late dinner. A movie. Bowling. The images left him colder than the snow ever could.

He was staring at the tread marks when he heard what sounded like the snap of metal coming from somewhere behind the colonial. Drake turned his attention towards the sound but didn’t hear it again. He stilled his breathing and listened. There was the tittering of branches in the wind and, in the distance, the scraping of a metal plow against asphalt. Nothing else. Nothing closer. Nothing like that out-of-place snap of metal. Maybe it was just the plow and a trick of the snow’s acoustics. That had to be it.

He’d settled on that conclusion when a shaft of light pierced the darkness of one of the colonial’s downstairs rooms — a flashlight’s beam coming from somewhere inside. It darted around for a few moments before the room went dark again.

What the hell?

The first thing to cross his mind was he was witnessing a robbery-in-progress. Drake got curious. He crouched down and took a few steps closer towards the nearest window. At about the same time, headlights crested the hill at the top of the street, coming in his direction.