I'm getting out of the truck. There's other stuff I need to do with my life.

I always knew you wouldn't stay forever, you say.

But I got to be able to come back. It will be like not seeing your best friend, not seeing the sunrise a hundred different places.

You're not talking about missing me, you say.

Oh, I'll miss you.

Listen, someday we can get a little trailer and go where we want. We can choose, you say.

Day out, day in, that's how you get to know somebody. The sickness and in health thing.

What are you talking about?

Kneeling under the truck, chains, snow blowing sideways, midnight, Donners Pass. Crawling five miles per hour to Emigrant Gap.

We'll go to Yosemite, you say.

The only reason we went to Palo Duro Canyon is because they'd let us in.

We can go to Big Bend. You always wanted to go to Big Bend.

Devils Fork State Park, South Carolina. The rhodedendrum forest with the stream. Climbing up to that giant granite cap of flat rock where you could look across the hills forever like a Cherokee.

You had that ace bandage on your knee.

But I had to go because there was the chance.

The battlefield outside Chattanooga....

Yeah, right. How many times do you think I'd pick a battlefield?

I'm interested in the Civil War, you say.

The thing is, it's not so easy leaving a best-body behind. I'm not sure how I can do it.

We'll get a trailer you say again.

It won't be the same with us picking and choosing I answer.

Garrett Whatley, we met, 1973, at the state hospital where we worked. Before he died, he was a mental health worker and a heroin addict. Late night, on the phone, he explained his emotional adjustment was arrested by drugs. I'm still fourteen, he said.

It's the same with truck drivers.

There's this adolescent dream of freedom. No one telling you what to do. Open road. Your own rules.

Trucks are immobilizers and enablers.

You get in, you slam the door, start vibrating along with the engine. Scenery fills your brain to overflowing with pictures, no sound, no plot. Drive eighty miles an hour to random spots then turn around and start over. There's huge pay checks and they're spent just as fast on quick pleasure, motel rooms, restaurants and two hundred dollar oil changes. Tires cost a fortune. Most guys last two years, full tilt going in circles.

Ask yourself what drives long-time, long-haul truck drivers.

There's something arrested in them, I can guarantee it, Garret Whatley says. Something dormant, they never dealt with. It lying there like a white worm. Those drivers are the worst at making person to person connection, he says. And once you're shooting up the drug or you slam that Freightliner door shut, making a connection with another human being is impossible. All of a sudden: it's not your fault. There's nothing you can do about it. You've got a line of drug in your veins or the whole interstate highway system. Garret Whatley has a great laugh. Late at night, I pick up the phone but it's dead.

Before my Mom died she told me to stop truck driving. It's an escape for you she said. You're getting out of the habit of dealing with the real world. My mother could divine the truth.

Truck drivers drive through scales every day. It's the place they are in direct connection with the real world and they hate it. Their hands tighten on the wheel. All sorts of filth spews from their foul smelling mouths. They can tell you stories about the scale operators hours on end. One story is that if the driver pulls over to sleep at the far end of a closed scale, in the morning the DOT will make them back up and weigh.

You can't back up over a scale.

Everyday truck drivers slow down to two miles per hour. One axle at a time over the scale. Sometimes there's even a safety inspection. No one is figuring out that each time it's their own options getting weighted along with the load.

The sign reminds me of Twenty Mule Team Borax. Death Valley. Remember the TV show? It was in the 50s. You and I were young with a host of other kids born after the war. Classrooms were teaming. Twenty-five minutes for lunch. There was a microphone at the end of the gym, lunch tables came down out of the wall. Teachers in full skirts yelled at us from that microphone. Some kids hardly made it through the lunch line before we had to line up again. At home, new Tvs in big square boxes. The stations went off the air after midnight and stayed off untill morning. If someone forgot and left the TV on, it droned all night. In the morning the Star Spangled Banner played. Cowboys. We all watched cowboys in black and white. Death Valley was the scariest. Supporting actors were mutilated. Men wept and pleaded before they were buried up to their necks in anthills. Fifty years later, I live with the details. When my parents drove us to the West Coast in the 1958 Pontiac, blue with white top and side fin, we opened every window. We swelted. I watch for the line of mules pulling the wagons. Out of the corners of my eyes I catch movement. It is the mules. They are back there. Pulling, straining, no water, no hay. They are stumbling. We won't make it. Crossing California now on I-15, I stay inside the truck. I wait it out. I wear my darkest sunglasses. I pull my cap down. You sleep in the passenger seat. Your legs are crossed. Your mouth is open. So far, the air conditioner has not broke down ever on this stretch. I drink cup after cup of water.

The North Las Vegas Petro has been open a week at this point in time. You don't even believe it's really here, Tony. You make your mind up and that's the way. Like 11:00 am: I can't call now; they're at lunch. Like 12:30 pm: I can't call now; they're at lunch. Or how about: It's Saturday; she must be on the Cape. Even though you haven't seen her for six months and haven't called for weeks. Your reality is unflinching and not based on facts. It's hard to argue when there's no foundation. Arguements skitter any which way on a layer of wet ice. If you haven't stayed at a particular truck stop Tony, then that truck stop doesn't exist. In desperation I buy the truck stop book.

But it's the signs that steer us to the North Las Vegas truck stop.

We've been staying at the old TA up until now. It's crowded. Rows upon rows of trucks, all idling in a small lot. A one guy truck wash operation. Dust and grit in the air. Every pole has a print of a "college" girl named after a precious gem, posing on all fours staring back, wide eyed, at the camera. There's a motel that's missing some siding across the back road. Across the highway is a cheap casino, the one where the waitresses are middle aged or older and they slouch. The customers line up for the limited buffet and then clog up the penny slots.

What do we have to loose Tony?

You start to feel better when you realize the New Petro is the same exit as the raceway. Oh, that's a good omen. But here comes the truck stop sign, big and green and lit up. The place is almost empty, dark, flat asphalt. You pull straight in dead-center. There's a strip of gravel in front of us and then nothing but desert. We let Tip wander a few minutes. Maybe being North of Las Vegas the breeze smells fresher, not so many french fries in the air. You and I walk to the fuel island. There's one guy pumping diesal into his big red Englander. You wait outside with Tip. I walk in. It's clean, it shines. I head toward the coolers. I've been on a juice popsicle kick. Only about a third of the truck stops stock them. This place doesn't have them either. I peer through the freezer windows. I press my forehead against the cooler. Then, as soon as I open the door, the glass fogs. I take my time and let the air coat my face. I shut my eyes. Then, eyes open, I fish out two Hagan Das ice cream bars.

Outside we peel off the paper and toss it in the bin. The Englander driver says quiet night. We nod.

You and I follow after Tip and step into the desert.

There are only a few places we can pull off and be surrounded by land: the Sacramento mountains in New Mexico, the dirt roads that exit off the Interstate in West Texas, Highway 50 in Nevada. Highway 50, we share a wide spot with a mound of sand waiting for highway workers next winter. You shut the truck off then pull the chairs from under the belly box. We set up the tray table, put the bowl of dog food on the ground. The rice and black beans is hot in the pot. I make a mound of bowls, cups, spoons, salt, tabasco. The hot pot goes on the floor next to the clutch and the brake pedal. The coffee carafe now holds tea. I ease out my side, slide down to the ground. Cross in front of the silent grill, not even pinging, coated with bugs dry as petroglyphs. Truck rises a white wall behind our backs, we set food and utensils on the flormica table. I pour tea into metal cups. Everything settles but the wind and the sky. The wind skirts, picks up a funnel of sand and moves it to a farther stretch, while the grass ripples under its feet. The sky, it picks up a color and runs with it. Starts at the horizon, burnt yellow, and stretches that color fainter and fainter, mile on mile. We sit. We watch. We wait for the next ribbon of color like fireworks on Fourth of July. Tip the dog wanders to the edge of the gravel then lays down facing out, head up. From the back, one black ear, one gray. The wind runs fingers through his fur. No cars pass.

Las Vegas. After we deliver at Norstrom, we park at the downtown truck stop and walk. It's so early on The Strip, a few men in dress pants are still laying where the night finally shut them down, off to the side on the sidewalk. The small store owners are outside, in front of their windows picking up pieces of paper and getting ready to give out new ones.

The casinos don't hesitate. Sure, they drop a level or two. Soon a few gamblers will step out of their rooms. Air freshener, carpet cleaner. Ride the elevators down to the gaming floor.

You and I, out on the street, keep walking until we get to all the fountains. We walk straight into the Bellagio. I ask for a seat in smoking because it's a smaller area with booths. I pile my plate with grilled eggplant and asparagus, slices of cheese and fruit. We smile, click our glasses of champagne.

April

Somewhere it's snowing. Count on it.

The pass is closed, the pass is open. Chain up. Chains off. Wait: chains on.

If there is more than one night we actually bail out, off to the side of the Interstate, I've forgotten about it. I-80 Wyoming, the highway shut down around us. Once the wind cut out, it was silent and the morning was white washed crystal. Another driver hiked over from Eastbound looking for a cigarette.

Nevada we pull out into an abandoned fuel station with ten other trucks and hunker down for the night. The weather swirls on top of us.

In Michigan, we just pull the curtains. Seal ourselves in. Under the bunk is the stash of books.

The worst is Baker, Oregon. Ice and snow. I do not believe the weight of a truck will pull it backwards on ice until I see it. Down at the truck stops, trucks willy-nilly. Here-there-everywhere. This is where our engine starts on fire while we sleep. An alarm shrills. You almost jump up off the bunk with the extinguisher in hand. It's the only reason the damage isn't worse. Wiring. Burned. The affects dog us for years.

It's also Oregon, the east side of Cabbage where I stand in the window staring at the truck that misses the snow covered turn, hits the ditch and does a slow motion topsey turvey.

Boise Stage Stop. Snow howls sideways, sweeps in circles erasing the road. We make it in but then the parking lot is so iced over I want to crawl. And inside the electricity is out except for generators. A couple lights throwing shadows. Everyone keeps their coats and hats on. Cold food, hot coffee.

Everyday, somewhere it's still snowing.

Wyoming, the shape-shifter, not entirely anchored to the same bedrock. I stare at the map and the places we stop don't even show up.

Hoodoo Rocks, no. I see the territorial prison site, Medicine Bow National Forest. Elk Mountain always shows up no matter where you are in the state. No to Hoodoo Rocks.

Then, there's the Fort on the river. Fort Steel. The first time I walk down the road from the rest area, I walk and walk. The sun comes up and the temperature shifts. Numbness crawls back out of my fingers. The gate's closed. Another hour. Not today. Tip and I turn around. War paint, stripe faces, a herd of antelope, not there in the past minute, flow like a wave away from us.

Fourth of July, you drive the tractor all the way through the Fort Steel gates. The tiny cabins, soldiers' cabins, collect shadows, only the far corners cool in the bright sun. There is an old photo posted, soldiers and their families, wrapped in coats, mittens, scarves, ice skating in the midst of open territory. We each carry a handle on the habatchi, down to the river, fire it up. You and I walk in the cottonwoods where the sunlight pales and flickers. We jump in the river and swim upstream, float back down. The water, the color of iced tea.

Where's the rest area at Pine Bluff? With the trails out in back and the archeological site? It's the only place I've run into a rattle snake. The snake was so little. New Years Eve 2000, we pull the truck in and park in the inky dark. I light votive candles, set them on the dash I will forever name "the mantle." The public radio station drifts in and drifts out. We have those little bottles, white wine comes in a six pack, at least it's not peach, and tins of smoked clams. Snow flakes brush across the windsheild. The trucks sways with the wind. The radio plays a recording, the Queen of England makes a speech. Milenium holds itself above us and then we all carry on.

Big Springs Nebraska is the last place I want to stop. I know you like it. It's full of rock-star-truck-drivers that never turn their engines off. Rows and rows. You have to take stock, count lamp posts, to find your truck coming back from inside. The restaurant is Okay somedays. Other days the kids that wait know they are doing us a favor.

Here's the places we've stopped that I like: Rest areas, mile marker 195, 230, 315. Nebraaska has sprawling rest areas with odd big-block, pubic art. We've pulled into Fort Robinson, Tip and I suprised the antelope along the river. Ogallala, where we yelled about Garret Whatley's funeral, standing in the parking lot. There's a couple, I don't remember the towns, old 76s remodeled into old TAs, where the mechanics work as long as they can and then they shut down the shop until morning. We've stood in the wagon ruts at the state park with the sod houses. You and I have climbed hills in Nebraska that made us puff by the top.

I say we can make it to Odessa. You say probably not. Probably there won't be parking. I say let's try. You don't say anything.

Nebraska. It's the ground floor where the North Platte flows shallow right on top of a washed gravel bed. Walking across a field into a grove of cotton woods, my knees buckle at the sudden drumming of twenty pair of thick wings: wild turkeys. One sunset, I slow the truck, no lights ahead or behind on the whole interstate, so we can crawl past fifty Sandhill Cranes, gawky as ostrich, scarlet red caps. There really is a home extension woman on the public radio talking about tapioca. Sunrise deer bounce over round hay bales lined in a field as if it is a gym set up specifically for their entertainment.

We make it to Odessa, the Sapp Brothers, Red Neon, a coffee pot sign. Turning in, across the road is a series of ponds with picnic tables where Tip and I can nose. When you turn the truck off, miracle of miracles, not one other truck is idling. Nebraska fills up the space. Odessa, it's the kind of place where the buffet only has two choices, meat loaf and friend chicken and the neighbors come in to eat because there's homemade pie for desert.

Lake Michigan, I first see it from the Convention Center. I take you by the hand, Tip by the leash and we blunder down the road. A street light across traffic, an underpass. Really, only half a mile. Lake Michigan. It's cold. The wind is raw. A park with a trail, the grass still brown from winter. We stand on steps holding the lake back. The waves hit, the white spray leaps up and rains down. Water clear as the tap.

On the phone, my mother laughs. I say it's beautiful. I say there's a lighthouse.

Tony, you take me so many places along Lake Michigan. We stay at a truck stop in Benton Harbor, a mini Petro. We drop the trailer and go to Van Buren State Park. There are a lot of dead fish. Tip rolls in them. He smears dead fish on the white ruff of his neck. The only thing to do is lather with raspberry soap. Oh, Tip hates raspberry soap. The water comes from a pump.

More than once we drive across the bridge between Mackinaw City and St Ignacia. Camp out at that rest area. I pick my way between the rocks to the edge of Lake Huron. I jump in. Annoited.

On the phone, my mother says, yes, she and her sisters used to take one of the Model Ts and drive to Lake Huron. In the summer. No one needed a license. Father taught her how to change a tire and said come back Monday.

Once Tony, you and I drive right through Traverse City.

We had a cottage in Traverse City my mother says. Before Dad built the one Manistee. I remember walking with Mother and Dad. There was pink candy cotton.

Finally, we spend one whole day in Muskeegon. It's a small grocery store, the rest of the people are African American and then there's us. We get directions to the beach that's a dog park. For the whole day, we sit and we swim. Tip chases the waves. He chases the waves until he's weak with the chasing. He lies down a minute but jumps to all fours and dashes off to chase the waves. I say out loud the stories I grew up on.

Muskeegon, where my grandfather grew up. His father, a violin maker, died at a race track and his wife, Clara Birch, opened a boarding house. She had red hair. When she died she had no hair and her wig was sitting on a bed post. This grandfather of mine, the whole town pitched in to ship him off to Military School where he learned to polish his shoes and line them in absolute straightness. My mother chopped wood day after day outside the cottage in Manistee. Where my father came to visit from the University. He said: Barbara is so beautiful. My grandmother answered: Then wait until you see Harriet. My mother

I rub sunscreen on your back. The sun off Lake Michigan will burn you, Tony, even when it's cloudy.

The marshalling yard has gone up from $12 to $19. We're required to park in the marshalling yard. At least there's the tiny, concrete block box with running water two football fields away. We take the bike path along Lake Michigan in the evening before we go to sleep. You'll get up at five to check in.

Chicago has a big convention center. In my memory, seven trucks are parked, dwarfed on the floor and there's a ring of trucks backed into the loading docks. I pick my way between fork lifts that are speeding at capacity, horns blowing. Electric cables, thick as my arm, dangle down from five stories above, the close-end plugged into nail guns hammering and drills screwing. Men are yelling at each other. Crates taller than me are being loaded. I pick a spot on the horizon and head for the opposite wall center. When I reach there in one piece, there's a wide staircase down. It's a full flight but with the size of the building, it seems like a couple of steps. I turn right at the bottom. The restrooms are just a little ways. The noise from the floor is starting to hush and when I push through the door it stops. There are no other women. The fifty stalls are pristine. The sinks glow beneath the muted light off the mirrors. It is painted a deep red. It is silent, empty, clean. In my memory, I stand still in the center.

This Sunday morning is a miracle. You start the coffee before you check in. It is still dark. I pee in my pot and throw it between the trucks before lying back down. But you're back and they say to drive up to the docks. This morning, there is no six hour wait. No time to set up the lawn chairs infront of the truck grill. This morning, I don't even get up. I just lay under the down quilts and the pillows. After you back in, you set the air brakes with a hiss, and pour coffee for each of us. And then you even take the leash, take Tip, and walk him up and down the conrete.

The crates are ready. I lie on the bunk, Tip alongside, and bounce each time the fork lift enters the trailer, drops its crate and backs out. I can judge how the trailer is filling as the bounce gets softer towards the back of the trailer.

And then, you're back inside with a handful of papers signed off. Your starting the truck and Tip jumps onto the passenger seat with my jeans, navy sweatshirt, still folded on the back. He looks out the side window and then curves his black, white, gray neck to stare full in the face at you and smile as you knock the air brakes in with the heel of your palm.

I sit up in my corner in my oversize, gray, Vanliner tee shirt. I lean back against the padded gray flannel walls and drink coffee. I can just see out the windsheild. In the truck the real world has a meager connection but from the bunk there is no connection at all and right now I am safe.

Monroeville, Ohio, state highway 20. Columbia, I-80 and Bloomington, I-78, both in New Jersey. Places we seek out, return to, back the trailer into a parking space as if we are visiting friends. As if we are almost home. They are neighborhoods, houses that have been homes for a hundred, two hundred years. And there are rivers: the Huron, the Delaware, the Musconetcong.

Monroeville, people working on a patch of flowers, daffodils, tulips, in the front yard glance up. Hello. They smile. They are not worried; they know where they live. Swing sets show the first signs of rust. Bicycles lay tipped over on the lawn. Monroeville, we used to get there more when you had to pay to go 55mph on the Ohio Turnpike. Small towns on hwy 20 lit off fireworks when the Turnpike raised the speed limit.

Columbia, there's a walking bridge across the Deleware over to Pennsilvania. The first time we cross is at sunset. We stand in the middle of the bridge. The foreground glows in irredescent golds and greens while the background lifts in palisades of a humid summer haze. And of course there is the river far down below: spilled pot of India ink.

Bloomington. Behind the houses the back yard drops steeply and there's the river. The woods starts farther out. One spring, we sit on a log in the woods. It's only long enough to catch our breath but both of us crawling with ticks. I yelp. I swat. I pinch. Each one, black, hard shelled. Eight legs times ten thousand racing for our scalps. We run for the road and stand picking and throwing. A moment to gut them between finger nails. I flick them off your face. You swat them off my arms. We power walk back to the TA and grab clean clothes and the shower bag. Thank-God-In-Heaven there is no wait for the shower today.

Starting out, what we have in common: Dead ends.

You: Parental death and destruction, age twelve. Divorce. Mountains of quilt around children. Failed business. Broke, living in broken down truck. Not even having dreams.

Me: Parental unavailability. The last person to enter the family drama where all the characters change and disappear. Divorce. Mountains of quilt around children. Broke. The one person who believes in me is a heroin addict.

Laundry: The inseams of your jeans need to be lined up so the pant leg is creased down the middle. Your last girl friend from Connecticut insisted on this before she ran off with another truck driver. She had aspirations.

Do it yourself I say.

Me: Tony, you can't even imagine the aspirations that tower in my family. Better. Perfect. Never pronounce the letter "a" with a New Jersey accent. Always hold on to the hollow "a" of New England. There are more reasons to look down on everyone else than fingers and toes ten times over. Creases in jeans never enter in.

We stuff the laundry under the bunk. Laundry day, scoop it up, cram it into the red laundry bag along with the blue, flannel sheets. You put the strap over your shoulder. The bag bounces your butt all the way inside. I carry the shower bag with the computer bag over my shoulder.

My favorite: Little America Wyoming when the snow is coming down velvet curtains, sealing the rest of the continent off. Trucks idle but stay anchored, snow half way up the wheel wells.

Everything is coated with the smell of rotisserie chicken. The laundry room is tucked into the middle of the shower rooms. Mostly men do laundry except me. I push dirty clothes into the washing machines while you stand in line for a shower. And there's a miracle. You come back with a shower key and three giant white towels.

Little America has two sinks in each shower room.

While our laundry washes, I scrub my face with micro-beads then smooth a think layer of French cold cream on top. Tweeze stray facial hairs. Clip my fingernails. I start the bath tub water. You turn the shower on.

I walk out and switch the laundry to the dryer. The light through the window is hushed by the snow. The TV is loud in the background.

And that's it for the next half an hour. You and I are free floating. For this minute our world is pristine.

Since starting truck driving with you, the people close to me that died:

My mother. Florida, a jacket of humidity. Sitting side by side on lawn chairs in front of the porch. A half spoon of sugar in our tea.

My father's sister, Aunt Betty. Stockings rolled down from the top, bright red lipstick and eyes so blue. I remember I forgot the sparkle in my father's. Hush puppies in New Orleans.

My uncle Dick in Vermont. Vermont native, no where better than Vermont. Hair lanky brown hair burshing over his ears. Every night sitting at the lip of the garage smoking a cigar.

My brother-in-law, Tom Osowski. Tatoos and shorts in winter, sitting at the glass table in Cape Cod, smoking a cigarette and feeding Tip peanut butter pretzels.

My friend, Molly's partner Ralph. Towards the end he really didn't like me. Even the pancakes I made were bad. Stopping by in the truck in Arizona and Colorado. Ralph still liked Tony.

My best friend, Garrett Whatley. The last time I saw him, so strung out, I left and spent five days in Chaco Canyon in a rental car without a sleeping bag. Garrett Whatley, a voice on the phone passing through Albuquerque.

Stare out the windsheild of the truck. You see a long ways off. You hurtle through the present. Yesterday is hard to fasten down. Yesterday breaks up, water under the bridge, miles on the Interstate. Tomorrow is new collection of mile markers. Inside the truck everything is close against your eyes. There can be only partial glimpses. Coffee is set up for the morning. The coffee grinder, the beans, the coffee pot. Tony takes his clothes off and folds them on the driver's seat. Tony is so close I can choose to watch his shoulders, his back, as he stoops to kiss the dogs on the beds that take all the floor space. Only when he stands up can I see the smoothness of his thighs, the softness of age and late night belly. When he lies down, wirey and thin, flat against me, there is no extra room. I can not see him at all.

Bathrooms are important. Particular Europeans laugh at the signifigance and gold plated glory of American bathrooms. Fart jokes, poop jokes, matching blue towels with initials, coordinating colors, walk-in, step-down. Privacy. It never stops except in truck stops.

Give up ownership of bathrooms in truckstops. Walk in to the smell of human waste and laxitives first thing in the morning. Take your tooth brush out of your pocket and stand at the sink with a woman on each side and try to focus both eyes together at the mirror. Or don't. The face in the mirror, no shower in three days, has just been splash dabbed in Utah, in Kansas, in Illinois, with rest area water.

There are two women to the right. They push their hair this way and that. One pulls out the eleastic and reties her pony tail. They press lipstick to their mouths and check what they can of where their capris meet their blouses. They twitter like birds.

I sigh with relief as they walk out the door.

Even in the truck, dreams of spewed legs, explosions of blood, being hunted through a labyrinth of silence, track me down. Night, I stare down the shallow path of headlights. I change the six CDs. Finally I try to read sitting on the bunk with the single spot light but the book vibrates. Every night I give up.

I'll drive a couple hours you say.

It's the truck that gives me this one dream, just the one time. Fish. I don't remember the sense of being a fish but what I keep a sense of, even after this much time, is bending my spine, a flinch really. And there I am shooting through the gentle press of water. And there I am bending betwixt and between and the clear skin holds me.

And sometime during the truck years, the personal warfare dreams, show up less often.

After a couple more years, it never takes longer than an hour for you to pull over. Now though, you search for somewhere I can get out in the morning. An independent truck stop on a two lane, even an extra big rest area. You come to bed like its the first time. You say you like to wrap around as you slam up against me. I find my mouth, my knees sealed to the back wall. Breathing is restricted.

But in the morning, for a little while, I will have the whole country.

Nomads and Dates

The roadside cafe is art deco and aquamarine. They serve date shakes, date cream pie. I-8, we're closer to Mexico than Gila Bend or Yuma. Today it's not 120. But it's hot as an oven and too dry to sweat. Tony's sleeping in the bunk with the truck idling for the AC. If nothing else would drive me out, it would be the vibration. The vibration of the truck eats plastic. It eats everything eventually. And I have my dog. I have Tip who's on the lamb. Vicious Dog Propensity. He's a marble merle between a Chou and a Australian Sheperd. An ankle nipper. And Tip needs to get out. Even with the sun rays horizontal on the brown desert rocks, I need shade like my life depends on it. One more time I walk past the No Trepassing. Tip and I walk right under the dates. Pow: a living ceiling of fans spreads high over our heads. Not one weed grows in the thick sand between the palms. We saunter avenues. There is a whispering. Ditches of water bathe the roots of trees. Birds sing in the branches. Light hushes, twinkles behind the curtain of fronds. Tip and I, in the courtyard of an Oasis. I laugh out loud, but quietly.

In the morning, I will take Tony to the gift shop. Boxes of Medjool, Khadrawy, Halawi.

Tony is skeptical. Tony is from a fishing village on Cape Cod where the houses are white. Whales are gray. Only the lobster are red.

Dates are ancient. They contain magic.

Wal-Mart warehouses, if you miss your "appointment", the same for fifty other trucks, they make you sit for days. Prime, black block letters, white trailers, gives more miles than hours. Every hour is a diomond crusted handful of minutes and every minute is personally chiseled from gold. And that horrible dispatcher, the fat one that yells. Why don't you hang up? You listen to her howl about time, money, responsibility. Responsibility....

We drive all night after a three day trip. Then, stand in line waiting for a CB call to back in to the loading dock. Only you're asleep with your head on the wheel. I will my eyes open sitting in the passanger seat. The sun comes up. The sun moves around in the sky. Four hours listening for our truck number. Most guys are on their own.

There are no Wal-Marts in Seattle city limits. We hear stories. We shudder. We think of global labor and how to make corporations responsible. We don't even know what goes on in our own discount warehouses.

And yet, there's always a flip side to the coin. Wal-Mart makes big parking lots. Wal-Mart lets the Big Trucks in. The first times, by the cash registers, my purist sensibilities pressure me back outside into the heat of Dallas, the snow of Mishawaka.

Humility.

I look forward to Wal-Mart. I get my hands on watermelons, lettuce and grapes. I buy a chicken, carrots, mushrooms and potatoes.

Remember the Wal-Mart in Gallop? Wreaths of blood red chili peppers.

When I first take-up with you, you are only fits and starts. You suck tiny bottles of ginsing, down caffeine pills stacked at the counter for drivers. I am itchy from no shower in three days. Voice hoarse simply from exhaustion. In the sunrise you are gray. I keep you talking, whitle your stories, keep you in our lane. Finally demanding: pull over now, you put your head down on the wheel for fifteen minutes.

Now I am asking, why did I keep on? Nine and a half out of ten would say: Insanity. I am a nurse. Almost fifty. Don't drink, no drugs. Still smoking. Kids grown up. Two divorces down. A flotsam and jetsam. I am a person totally bereft of expectations. My major skill: surviving ridiculously bad situations without help.

This night, you park right off the break-down-lane. I always wake up first. There is nothing for me but to be silent and stare out the windsheild. This morning there are rocks. Jagged rocks, vomited, rejected from the core, piled by the way side. The sun is out. It is cold. I climb down from the truck and walk. I just walk down the road. Before I get back, five cars will pull over to ask if I need help.

What is it I never answer?

The soft underbelly of convention centers: cities carve them in their hearts then crown them with jeweled views. And then the trucks crawl through the fat filled arteries. Trucks migrate the tunnels, burrow under the flesh. Trucks drive straight through portals, onto the main floors, come to rest in the heart, the throne rooms of commerce.

Crazy.

But in the meantime, no one wants all these trucks and truck drivers in their city.

Trucks are diverted to the back corners, to marshaling yards. And the cities demand you pay to park in those too. Mostly there's a port-a-potty and a two day wait. San Diego. Savannah. New Orleans. Chicago, entire houses built under the roof in spring; here there's running water, candy machines in the marshaling yard. Across the road the park has a trail kissing the steps, the crystal water of Lake Michigan.

San Fransisco, China Basin. The bathroom is a magnet undermined by the homeless after sundown. Anise grows five feet tall. On one side there's an auto junk yard surrounded by razor wire. This side, nothing but the Bay, lights coming on off the Bay Bridge and dark skin men walking back with fishing poles. The Chineese restaurant has take-out and there's a bar on the corner where you and I get a beer. As it gets dark we hang the sun-shower between the truck and the trailer. You set your lawn chair looking out while I take all my clothes off, let the sprinkle run. I lather up to shave my legs. Tomorrow we'll pull the bicycles from the belly-boxes and pedal all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Pollard Flat, I-5 S, CA

You untie my wrist from the hand-hold when it's time to lie down in the bunk. The knife was serrated. I cut my left thumb slicing onions. It soaked red through the paper towels. The Pollard Flat's store in the truck stop is already closed. We heat water in the electric pot until uncomfortably warm. You step down out of the truck while I hand the pot out the door. I grab the steering wheel with my right hand and hop down. This is a dirt parking lot but even so trucks will always try to line up. We pulled in late so we're on the outside in the dark, face up to the pines. As you pour water over my thumb I listen for the Sacramento River down below. I can not hear it. Sky is murky with clouds. Back in the truck I wrap my thumb in paper towels and pull duct tape tight against it. With it tied up to the hand-hold the bleeding will stop. Later when you go to untie my wrist I see the slightest flinch of hesitation.

In the morning we will walk down the steep one lane road to where the railroad tracks cross the river before we drive across Lake Shasta.

There is jubilation getting through Grants Pass and over the Siskiyous. We blink our eyes randomly, we blink away the burning, sprinkle in a few more blinks as if blinking is nothing more than handful of sage or crushed grass thrown nonchalantly into the brew. The snowflakes rise up, once again against the pot lid of sky. Just above our heads, darkness. And then we start down. It's in the coming down, the truck bending over the crest, wet rooster tails, the jake brakes, the whole pot boils over. Not a few flakes, it's a half ton spew. Head to foot yellow slickers, lamps that light whole stadiums, leaning forwardd into a gale, men stop every vehicle. The interstate is closed. The interstate is closed. We only look out the window, you in your seat, me in mine. Through the soles of our feet, the sway of air in the seats, we touch the tracking of eighteen wheels. We keep our eyes wide open. Finally there is an exit and off the exit is a chaos of trucks where the snow has leveled the ditches and potholes and parking lines are the memory of a joke. The truck turns off. We stretch out on the bunk, layers of down. In the morning. the sun seeps across the sky.

This is the last time we throw sticks for the dogs, I drop you off at the truck. This is the last time you leave. Things have changed. We used to head out together, listening to music, no cell phone and the belief that computers are harmful. Then the days of dial-up in turn to Park and View with the metal turtles in the truck stop parking lots. You'd walk from turtle to turtle with a Park and View phone trying to find one that survived being driven over by 80,000 pounds. Then that turned into wireless and wireless cards and free wireless at Iowa Rest Areas. Your cell phone turned into a Blackberry. Idle Air sprouted up in truck stops with the metal framework and tubes a foot in diameter to bring heat, air conditioning, and internet, movies. Idle Air was going to stop truck idling forever until they went broke.

Now it's goats. You say you're going to keep TPTruck LLC and I ask, can you rename it TPTruckFarm LLC? Why not? You're going to be a thoroughbred and goat rancher Tony.

California Rest Areas

Donner Pass, up by Soda Springs, that rest area is the exception. Ten out of ten. If there's another rest area in the whole country that hooks up to a national hiking trail system, I haven't stopped there. Donner Pass. We plan our route around how to make a stop during day light hours. Just walk out back, either 80 east or west, and keep walking. More than once we've walked across the rocks, though the pines and stopped at the lake. It's California, even in this new century. Take your clothes off and dive in. Otherwise, I give California rest areas a 5.5 overall. Usually there's no where to walk out of them. Not like Texas that backs them up to secondary roads. Not like Iowa that puts some little paths twirling over a hump of a hill and not like Tennesee that doesn't fix the breaks in the fence with lady's slippers waggling just on the other side. But California still has ghosts, dusty, trying to unwedge from cars early in the morning. Heads covered with fists of tangled hair. Their faces are pasty and underbaked. They splash water against their eyes and look like they've been traveling, searching, for weeks on end. Late at night trucks spill into the parking areas like tin cans packed on over stocked shelves. Tony and I pull in, turn off the truck, push the screens into the open windows. We throw most the covers off and settle in. In the dark, headlights twist over our heads.