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.