Speaker 1: The red numbers on the dashboard clock tick past two
thirteen a m. I'm sitting in my cab behind an
empty Denny's Light's humming overhead, the only real glow for
twenty miles in any direction. The recorder on my dash
is life. It's little red led blink, steady, listening for
anything I decide to say. The radio is turned down low,
catching drips of music and static from a country in
music station somewhere east. Sometimes that sound grounds me, But
tonight it's a hollow comfort outside. A winter wind flicks
flex of gray against the glass. Low continues through the winter.
A sea shadowed figures millioneer, the island of bright safety,
where the diesel rigs huddle like cattle against the night.
That's where the world draws. In exs at seventeen, if
you stand beyond the circle of halogen lights, he might
as well not exist at all. I don't usually do
these logs in the open, but tonight demands an exception.
At our slams up front for a second, everyone goes
del I thumb the recorder half out of habit sean
a Holt Shift three hundred sixty three, Lane six, Exit
seventeen Log at two fifteen eight m. The usual faces
are gathered out on the bleafed up red nodding with
the simmering restlessness. Grace arms cross under her apron, pretending
not to watch. Jesse uniform wet up to the shins,
pushing a yellow mup bucket. But the focus is a
cap park cricket alongside the gas island, Big Mike's Kenworth
white cap with faded, scripped spotlights up top, one busted
blinker looping through its own Morse code. Mike is conspicuously
not part of this crowd. His truck's engine is left idling,
a rolling cough, then smooth, then cough again. Headlights facing nothing,
thor hanging wide, every indicator that someone just stepped out,
maybe to grab a coffee, maybe to smoke. There's a
thermos on the running board. His cap is spun off
and a small brain swam of steam flits above it.
That tea's too fresh for a long absence. Nobody wants
to be the first to step closer. There is an
odd hush. This isn't panic, but Nurse Carrod under the ropes,
I recognize it, the kind that comes after seeing a
car on the shoulder with its hazard lights, blinking window
rolled half way down. Instinct urages caution, but red never
good at patience. Mutters could be a prank, too loud,
like he needs to hear himself freezing. Jesse keeps moving
his mop pinenda circles, never speaking, gaze fixed at the drain,
as if afraid to meet any one's eyes. I catch
his reflection, watching us all passively in the store front window.
Frace looks right past me, thumb marking her place in
one of her tattered Roman's paperbacks. She's staring at Mike's cap,
but would step toward it. Someone tries the obvious Mike pitch,
louder than necessary. Only the wind answers, what's the hold up?
Someone asks behind me, trying for board, but not succeeding.
No one jooks, not even quietly. I slide out of
my seat, boots scraping down the steps. The cold is
sharper than it should be. I hesitate at the edge
of the light, half expecting Mike to reappear out of
the dark, looping his belt, embarrass he worried any one.
It doesn't happen. Instead, there is a feeling like the
entire scene holds its breath. Usually there are options. He
step in, check for keys, call a name, hear the
gruff comeback. But tonight the air is heavy with something unacknowledged.
The routine is broken, and that care is weight. Jesse
is the only one who doesn't bother, pretending this is normal.
He pushes his mop close to the curb and stops,
arms hanging. I think about asking him, but he's never
volunteered much more than a grunt in older years. I've
stopped here. His stillness to night is the loudest thing
in the lot. I circle the chemera. The door swings
wider in the breeze. Mike's coat dangles from the seat
inside radio on thermos, still half full, sitting vulnerable and misplaced.
Nothing about the cap suggests hates papers neatly stat lord
Brook open to the right date one of Mike's battle
bulkup's tossed in the dash. Gray slides up behind the
counter door and calls out, you're looking for Mike, Like
she already expects the answer. The wind yanks her words
for itself. Yes, I answer, voice disappearing in the wind.
She shrugs, not coal, just resigned. No One surprised. The
usual crew is holding back nobody crowding the scene, but
no one's leaving Aida. There's a kind of fixed attention
in their face. This is a thick awareness riding underneath,
not confusion, something more like recognition. I lean in, turning
my head so the others would hear he ever, just
walk off, leave her running. Grace only shakes her head,
staring at the steam from the thermos as if it's
got the answer. Jesse pushes past us, his mop bumping
awkwardly against my boot, and mutters not to night. Then,
as he passes, he adds, more quietly, shouldn't be anyone surprised.
For a moment, the entire rest stop feels stage lit.
The sharp cold, the hum and rattle of engines, the
unblinking ring of lights keeping whatever is outside at bay.
All the truck is clustered, yet no one steps forward.
I press the recorder in my pocket, mostly for myself.
I want there to be a record of this, if
only so I can play back later and remind myself
it really happened. I'll find out what happened to Mike.
I whisper. The words sound offensive, like a promise to myself.
More than anyone listening. The wind picks up, and in
its howl, I fancy I hear something else far off,
an engine or a cryo. May be just the land
itself answering back. It's that kind of night. People voundish
on highways all the time. I've always believed you can
track any mystery back to something stupid or simple, a misturn,
a rivalry, the day stumble, But to night. Eggs at
seventeen seems carved out of the usual order, holding a
silence I can't quite ignore. That's what I try to
tell the recorder as I get back in my car.
Something's wrong out here. I'm going to keep looking. The
cab warm slowly, I stare into the dark outside the
circle of safety, turning the keys over and over in
my gloved hands, and somehow tell myself that Mike is
out the summer, waiting for someone to come looking, or
maybe trap to just past where these lights give out.
I have to know the difference. In the daylight, this
life always feels less haunted. The fields outside Eggs at
seventeen scrub out as featureless as a snow drifting could
be Kansas or Iowa, or any of a dozen states.
They promise more than the offer. I'd drive mostly knights,
switching out day for sleep, ordered in slices behind the
CAB's seat. You develop ritchels, two mugs of coffee before
the sun's missed, an iro of muscle ache to wage
against the stretch most days, to solve into white lines,
and AM radio with the drone of tires and the
beat at rind despatch messages if there's a code to
running them, and west at night it's never written down.
Folks like to jerk the highway each time and spit
out old men with none left out here. Irregulars become
as much a part of the circuit as the mile
markers and dot stations. You know, faces from silhouettes, voices
from a single static blood ping on the sea. Bee
Grace's fixture at eggs of seventeen. She favors purple sweaters,
keeps the register moving, smiles only when it costs her nothing,
and reads cheap paperbacks like they're the missing element of
her DNA. Buy coffee, use the damn bathroom, and let
me finish my chapter, She'll say, all in a single breath.
If you're polite, she'll slip you an extra doughnut. Sometimes
that's all it takes to anchor a knight. Red's the
kind of driver who'd make a killing of storers, could
be sold by the pound. He walks the circuit cargo
to Omaha and back, always with a hat pulled down,
scarf from along a go chain bind or scraped tight
along his cheek. He's the one whole starden with what
if for a living, the same one over and over
without even a hint of irony. More than once he's
s nudged a table conversation with been here before, but
not like this. Some stops they loop you ever get
that de javus Dante the brand of gum in the
bathroom vending machine. He rarely buys the same coffee twice.
Jesse is the invisible kind of mid fifties, never missed
a shift, never as a fresh shirt soaks the floor,
whether it's nod or not. I've never heard a false
sentence from him in all my time, but I'm certain
he knows more about the night than any five truckers combined.
He is always mopping, never standing still, eyes that don't
blink so much as passover on boring night. We'd all crowd,
the cheap vinyl tables, swapping jokes and warnings, bad weather
in Illinois, waste stations, running hot, rare cop with a grudge,
who flaggy for a cracked reflector. Stores get traded like currency.
Most of them have remembered, all of them exaggerated. Still
there's comfort and repetition. I log it all for posterity,
call signs, stray CODs. What music made the ires pass easier?
Some part of me creates the predictability. Every four iyres
the same truck in the same norf lock, the same
loan musting that never seems to have a driver, the hovering,
or of those regulars you only know by their sea
beach hatter or their favorite kind of pie. The logic
of the road is simple, stay awake, trust the routines
play your role. Some truckers get existential read especially once
he told me. You ever feel trapped in a pattern
like time breaks at eggs at seventeen throws, you back
him with the same crowd night after night. He acts
like it's a joke, but his eyes don't laugh when
he says it. Most nights, there's nothing stranger than the
hum of tires and a miscoal from Despatch. Sometimes, though,
small things build a traveler who's never seen by daylight,
a lost iron, the low book forces on the seabed
that fade before you can answer. I keep notes of
private log for oddities, pages of nothing, punctuated by weird
coll signs, staticky warnings, the occasional sense of conversations already
happened before. I remember one particular night months ago when
I pulled in and found Red starring at the sky instead
of his phone. How come I always parks in the
same spot, even when it's open everywhere, He mused, like
he don't trust he's got a right to be anywhere else.
Mike just grunted and finished his sandwhich we all laughed.
That's how it usually goes until it doesn't. For me,
the road is equal pot's chronic boredom in sudden alarm,
you have to live half way between knows extreme or
you won't make it through. Boredom is a comfort. Alarm
means something has gone long, freight dumped, a col mist,
or maybe something more subtle than Midwest swallowing another secret.
There are stores about drivers who just fade. The circuit
loses a rake, a person a slice of life as
if it was never there. Usually the others fill in
the gap with an easy tail. He retired or she
took an early drop off, or a bad road easpan.
You know how it goes. Files closed, faces, quickly forgotten.
But lately more than one regular has vanished without any
explanation that halts. I'm no romantic about danger, but you
notice pathens if you run this road long enough, unexplained
static time networks square with the log books. Places that
look r on by daylight, as if night builds them
from scratch every dusk and dissolves them come down. Still,
you keep driving because you have to. We could stop
in too long while looking too closely, leazy places you
are not meant to be. Sometimes I think the Highwa's
biggest trick is convincing you nothing out of the ordinary
ever happens at all. But last night at Ekesit seventeen
wasn't just another of highway weirdness. It was the point
where routine broke and something else crept in, something I
still can't name. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe Michael walk in
tomorrow cursing a busted phone and a lost wallet, and
all of this will be another story to pass around.
The truck is table. The part of me may be
the wiser part knows better. The Midwest swallows more than
just memories out here. I can only hope it spits
us back out when it's done. By the end of
my shift the following week, the taste of worry still
hasn't faded. The circuit repeats two more nights of winter
Field's freight check point routine, and careful watching from Mike's
camoth that every gas stop up and down the line.
By the time I slide my rig up against the
pumpsed eggs at seventeen, again, my eyes are trained for
anything out of place. The first odd thing is that
Mike's rig hasn't moved. The second is in a marked tetruck,
idly nose to tail with it. No insignia, no license plates.
I can see, just squat bat of vickal paint, mottled
like storm clouds in a single eli destrobing amber behind
tinted glass. Inside, the mood is warped. The tables, usually
crowded with familiar faces, are half empty. Those present hunch
tight over the coffee, studiously avoiding mention of anything except
whither or traffic. I greet Red at the counter. He
only gives a thin humus, a smile. One shift, I ask,
trying to sound normal. He picks a crack MiG circuits thin.
Lately he doesn't elaborate. I scan the lot through the window,
try and spot something as simple as Doug's blue Peterbilt,
usually third in from the trash bins, always with an
orange dice hanging in the mirror. Red follows my gaze,
voice dropping low. The Doug's gone rig two. Nobody saw
him leave. Then, in a rare flicker of nervousness, we
don't ask Shauna. Grace slides him with a coffee pot,
filling my cup, lips pressed tight. Only when Red looks
away to Shilly Nin whispering, you see who's missing. It's
not just Mike and Doug. Others haven't checked in. No cops,
no chatter, no word, no mess. I take a breath,
security tape. She shakes her head. Once Curt failed static.
Then sawt of oz again. Somebody's lugging it though. Grace's
eyes flicked to Jesse, who continues mopping in his ceaseless orbit,
eyes on his own shoes. There's a brittle, paranoile, lacing
every action in the room, regular jokes go and said
handshake when they pass sugar orster coffee. You feel watch,
but not by any one person. Rather, there's a sense
the entire place is turning in on itsself. Later, as
I refill at the pumps, I see the tourred truck
driver drop something under my wipeer blade of folded dirty flier.
He moves away without acknowledging me. The flier reads in
blocky pen Watch the signs truss nobody Egsit seventeen isn't safe.
Beneath the messages a rough looping map of the interstate.
Little X's mark certain rest stops. One of them is
circled looped in red Exsit seventeen inside a corner grace
with the flare. She goes rugid, keeps her face neutral.
She'll let that alone. Shauna, free your own good. Who's
putting these out? She shakes her head. Don't know, don't ask.
Her voice is just a thread. They'll notice if you
keep poking around. I pocket the flyer out in the lot.
I passed Jesse, you've seen this, I ask. He does
not break stride, only glances sideways. His voice is so soft,
I almost miss it. You weren't supposed to see that.
Then he pushes through the automatic doors, leaving behind on
it a faint odor of bleach and something burnt. The
next view, I was dropped like stones into water. Conversations falter.
No one looks up from their food. Several regular rigs
disappear before and notice them go. I try not to
let its woog me, but every routine feels hollow. Now
the usual see Bee radio break around is a haze,
a static punctuated by bursts I can't quite make out.
I start to think I'm piecing to get a pattern's
voices that drop out the moment you say hello, Chunks
of dial love that don't belong to any driver I know,
No police chatter, no missing persons alert, nothing. At the
close of my window, I try dialing Mike's personal number,
rusty from lack of use. It rings and rings and rings,
no voicemail, no answer. It feels staged, as if the
ringing is the only pot left in tact forture. Other
drivers stop whispering about thinning out how they've seen the
same a Mark til truck at other stops. Always when
someone's vanished are due to leave. I hear about signage
too high, wags at signs that look slightly different or
give wrong distances. Rest stock markers where the color is
off by a shade. The kind of thing red gives
a hollow laugh says distance a chiff on you in
the dark. Don't trust what you see. Another flower turns up,
tucked into my CAB's mirror. Look for what moves The
forgotten rests on forgotten. There's another hand draw map, this
time with little hatches beside route numbers, and once bought
with a double circle around it. That night's sleep evades me.
The cab windows frost, the dieselok cileery hea to hops
and hiccups, blurring my view until the rest stop feels
like a snow globe you can't put down. I half
think I see figures by Mike's rigg well after closing,
but when I peer closer, is nothing but swells of
grit a moonshadow. By early morning, I've watched the security
tape myself, sure enough, the footage gaps right at the
moment mike' chemworth turns into the lot, a three minute
leavn He's just not there. I replay it until the
color is washed together. I don't want to admit I'm afraid,
but I've been through most kinds of trouble on the circuit, grease, fires, low, theft,
angry ex's with a hunting rifle. This is different. Whatever
is happening here hides and plain sight visible only in
what isn't there? The missing pieces. The next evening, as
the wind needles against the rigside panels, I scroll through
my dash and footage. I find a three minute gap
recorded at two seventeen a m. The same time I finished.
After that, everything returns to normal, except the world feels tilted,
like I'm a wrong answer in a quizen never agreed
to take sleep is a stranger Tonight, fifteen years later,
a small victory. I get a sliver of a clue.
I keep up an old sea Bee channel, hoping one
of the veterans would check in and found a reply.
Not when I expected, Belinda, anyone got a twenty on Mike?
That's my call, voice steady as I can manage crackle hesitation.
Then who's asking for Mike? I am SHAWNA exit seventeen
you still running for a long beat, Only wind noise
then through sheets of static. Don't say my name on
this channel again. I pause, caught between relief and fresh
banck Linda, what's happening at exit seventeen? People are vanishing,
Mike Doug, a handful of the old crowd. Nobody's seen them.
There's flyers showing up, Security tapes get lost in the
wrong night. Do you know anything? Linda gives a kind
of sigh. You need to stop. People are listening. If
forgetting the warnings, it's probably too late to back out.
They're watching you. My stomach titens Hoape, Trucker's staff, lots
of static, then not people, not exactly. The network runs deeper, operators,
Traveler's staff, all circles in the same pool. At every
few years, a rule shift. Some get picked, some come
back different, most don't come back at all. Mike's not dead?
Is he silent? Churches? Then a clip reply. If I
say anything more, I'll be gone again. Don't trust the staff,
don't trust the regulars Iffy push, You'll disappear too. A
lng pause, then her voice thinner breaking through static. It's
not just people missing now, the circuit's broken. Something's changing
the rules. With a burst of static. The line goes dead,
no click, no signough, just gone. I blink, staring at
the cow's ceiling. Linda was thought to be clean, dropped
off the circuit after retirement. Nobody had seen or heard
from her in months. I don't breathe for a moment.
Daph Her warn me off like that. It's a difference
between a rumor and a reckoning. Sunrise stains to world Violet.
I checked the lot bridge. Struck two based down from
mine the night before is gone. I know he was
right behind me in convey No sign of his rig,
No key's in the bin, and the last coffee cup
still steaming by the trash inside. Grace isn't behind the counter.
Jesse's mopping, working circles so tight he might wear a
hole in the floor, his shoulders tighter than usual. I
set my jar, my handshake as I pushed the recorder's
button again. Voice roll from lack of sleep. Last check in.
Maybe Linda's alive, behiding, Red's gone. The network isn't just
a rumor. I'm going to dig until I find the truth,
even if it costs me that promise. Lingers in the cap,
cold tight as a Daila turns raw and bright against
the frosted windshield. If Eggs at seventeen really is a
cross roads, it's made its pick, and I have made mine,
and I have made mine. The midpoint between making up
stories to pass the miles and taking the next breath
is thinner than I'd ever realized. I let the cab
idle for a good five minutes, half expecting red shrugged
silhouette to materialize in my mirrors, or lend his voice
to break in on the seabe with the correction a joke,
anything to bring back the rhythm of regular knights. Instead,
the radio refuses to tune, dumping me into an endless
feet of soft, sharp static, like a brush drag to cross,
and the lot outside is bleak less populated than it
should be For this ire just a motto of mechanics,
and the far off slap of shoes on frozen grit.
Rough shapes at the edge of vision resolve into nothing
every time, I, folks, even the silhouettes are wrong to
night close, pressed and hunched faces hidden under balcpsil lost
in the amber spill of the sodium lamps. I push
the door open, letting colder, bram my cheeks even after
the night inside the sleeper, my mind is too wide
to feel fatigue. Or maybe I'm just scared to admit it.
There's a psychology to these rural lemon IROs. The rolls
are simple. If you pretend everything is fine, most things
will remain so. If you ask too many questions, the
night answers back. I step into the fluorescent haze of
the rest station shop, boots squeaking as melting snow collects
critty crescents beneath my ste The bell over the door
is silent. The only warning Grace, if she's here at all,
gets of my presence. She's not at her usual seat,
and that makes me uneasy. Jesse slides out of the
men's room with his mop and toe, pausing just long
enough to look at me. You working late, Jess. I
try to phrase it light, but my tone betrays me.
He leans them up against the wall. Someone's always working late,
he says, voice flat. He doesn't ask how I am. Instead,
he fidgets at the cuffs of his jacket, peeling the
damp edge of his sleeve with thick, reddened fingers. For
an instant I catch all look in his eye's resignation
something practice, as if he's rehearsed ate for years and
finally it fits grace around. I press. He shrugs, diner shut.
Tell six, she's in back inventory. I let the logic
of that settle. Nobody does inventory at four thirty in
the morning if they don't want to avoid people. At
the Countess. It's a half filled ledger, a faded cover
torn at the spine, open to a page of rows
and slash numbers. It's only half completed. I drum my
finger against the laminatee trace in the pen lines. Something
about the notation is ought. Names highlighted with sticky tabs,
some crossed off, some knot. I slide the book closed,
Nervous under Jesse's gaze, A caffeine headache throbs behind my eyes.
So I duck into the diner hatch, expecting either confrontation
or Hollow's MolTalk. Gray stands by the industrial'spresso machine, her
hair in a loose braid, counting caps and avoiding the window.
She jumps slightly as I enter, hiding a slip of
paper behind her palm, then exhales and forces a smile.
Shouldn't you be catching sleep? I can sleep when it's light.
If I'm late to the next drop, dispatch'll clock me.
I lower my voice. Did ye see who took Red's rick?
She hesitates, glancing over her shoulder, as if weighing whether
the Jesse or some phantom might be listening. Nobody took it,
she murmurs. Finally, he just was thirt shift lock is
still clean. No note, She sighs. It's like a rotten tooth,
thunder the gum, that kind of absence. I take another
step in. You're inventorying drivers now. I nod at the ledger.
Bryce keeps him mouth a hard line. It's for lost prevention,
loss prevention. My skepticism is almost comical. But Grace doesn't laugh,
just looks long in level at me. Everybody keeps a
lost book around here. Now helps to remember who's gone
when they went Otherwise. She doesn't finish the sentence, just
strokes tiny. Defeated, I decide to push my luck. The
flier is fished from my pocket, unfolded and laid quietly
on the counter before her. He said, some one was
logging this. You know whose hand draws these maps. Her
eyes flick to the lines, then away put that away, Shanna,
She seems smaller in the fluorescent light, skin washed pair,
as if she bled herself into the fixtures. I don't
have names people who leave these sometimes staff, sometimes other drivers,
more often folks who've lost someone to think they have.
Our conversation draws a boundary around itself, carved out from
the bigger world. I look for the usual tension, a
familiar posture of people hide in their fears from each other.
But what I see in Grace is more like exhaustion.
I clear my throat Linda and the c B. She
told me there is a network at group covering up
these vanishings. Brace presses, trembling fingers to the countertop, gazed,
dropping to the faded lamnae. Her voice comes up, raspy,
full of all gravel. There's something there, always is, What
is it? I press, She snaps, suddenly intense, Stop, asking
show on for your own good. Stop. The edge catches
me off balance. I back down, holding in the next
question instead, I set my pump flat on the fake marble.
If nobody says anything, the lot's just going to get empty.
I won't let my Conrad be erased. Grace's mouthpincher's shut.
She looks at the clock, then up at me. I
hope you're right, she murmurs, then scoops. I put coffee
pots and stalks away, footprints squeaking against linoleum. I step
back outside, feeling the cold bite as much as before,
but now it seems to sink deeper, as if the
knight recognizes I've crossed some invisible line. My next stop
is a fuel island, where the memory of Mike's CHEMMI
sits like a bruise. The tow truck, still around, idling
knows to nose with its silent twin. I circle the cab,
daring the driver to open a window, to nod or
wave or even scall, so I can get a look
at his face. Instead, the glass eats every reflection, oeing
me only my own confusion multiplied upward. The vehicle is dull, utilitariant,
too new for this route, yet battered in a way
that suggests it's not meant to last. In a bid
to see nonchalant, I squat near the curb and tap
out a message on the cbe calling for anyone who's
cross takes at seventeen in a past hour. Only the
soft segmented hiss of carrier aways comes back, plus a
brief clicking buzz that doesn't fit any of the static
I know. I try again, this time swinging to Linda's
frequency risk, but it feels like that's all I have.
The radio comes alive, but not with Linda. Instead, I
get a jumble of voices, coded and brief, slipping between channels,
like water trickling through gravel. We bleed the signals Jesse,
Cobby it an extransit. Numbers don't mash if they are
changing again. I clamp down my finger on the transmit button,
the heat of my palm leaving a moist print. Is
anybody actually out there? I'm looking for Mike, for Read,
for anyone who isn't afraid to talk. The line breaks
for a second, then crackles out. But get back in
your cab, Shauna. I stand up fast, scanning a lot.
Jesse's face is visible again in the glass doors, half
mirrored and half reol giving away nothing. A nurse rises
in me to get up, dry yasts without stopping, let
someone else try to entangle this fraying section of highway,
but fear and stubborness keep me in place. I decide
I've had enough, of dancing in circles. I walk up
to Jesse as he leans against his mop in the vestibule.
I know what's happening, isn't right. You don't want to
be in the middle of it. Either are you going
to help or just keep mopping blood? I can't see.
Jesse doesn't WinCE. He stutters me, lid's half closed. You
want to know. His voice is nearly inaudible, but the
hush makes it more real. Here's what I know. Someone's
always missing. It's the same every year. Weeks of quiet,
then a run of bad nights. Never see who goes,
Just find the coat, their cup, their log wick opened,
yesterday's date. Staff says to call it in, make a
note forget. He sets the mop down. They tell us
what to see, not who to remember. As he turns,
the slant of the lights draws fat shadows beneath his eyes.
Jesse slides back toward the genitor's closet, but before he disappears,
he says, so low, I'm not sure if it's from
me at all. Keep your eyes in the side. They
don't change for nothing. His words thud around my head
as I turn them over. Signs the maps quiet adjustments.
I wander the lot while dumb pushes up in stubborn
streaks behind the far line of grain silos. The signage
at the states It always seemed routine. One blue and
white rest stop symbol, then a battered green mile marker
to day. The blue is wrung, subtly faded at the edges,
the background more gray than indigo. The logos roads I
tree replaced with what looks almost like a looping key.
I draw closer, scraping at the edge of paint. Something
is hidden below the top layer of spray of half
raised ladders, may be a cote. My heart picks up
on a hunch. I check the other direction on foot,
moving out past the short fence where trucks sometimes sneak
a smoke. Another sign, This one has a tiny mark
at the lower right, nearly invisible even in full daylight,
or jagged edged symbol, a sideways V with a cross
cut through it. Every sign within fifty yards of the
lot has something similar. I photograph them all with my phone,
storing each as evidence. My finger tips numb as I
swipe away road dust and condensation, then walk fast back
toward my rake. A new flier has appeared beneath my wiper.
This one is smaller, almost opposed it with only two
words trust, no signals underneath a rough rendering of a
Sebe radio surrounded by exclamation marks, drawn in dark blue
ink with shaky fingers. I pocket the flyer. There's a
new quality to the air now, electricity, as if every
idle secret is about to sleep from some one's mouth.
The regulars returning to the lots seem different. Two hunch tighter,
hands downed, and pockets voices low and short. I spend
the next hours in my cab, skyring my dash and
footage for more than the three minutes missing last night.
I go back a week, reviewing every approach to eggs
at seventeen every arrival and departure three times at three
different tires. The footage jumps first by a minute, in
eighteen seconds, another time nearly five. Sometimes objects in the
frame move subtly between what should be linear shots, a
pick of vanishes, a s dam by the pump switch's color,
lights that should be off or blazing, then gone again,
patterns not illusions that comes reluctant and stretched thin over
the flatlands. I feel a weight between my shoulder blades
as I climb into the dinah for what could pass
his dinner. The ritual has thinned, regulars missing. Even the
rowdy table near the window is half as loud as before.
Conversation dulls whenever I sit, I force myself to eat,
to comment in the pie, to trail my knife in
the syrupy mess, as if I am still just another
night holler. Avoiding the clock. Pray serves brittle as ever.
I try to catch Fred's eye if he were here,
but that realization sits on my tumb like a loss.
Back in the cab, exhaustion clamps over me. I recline
eyes open to the frostish glass and fight for sleep,
knowing how likely lose. When it comes. Is full of dreams, dense, circular,
the kind thatts bit you out exactly where he started.
Sometimes I see Jesse mopping endless black corridors, sometimes grace
stacking plates that blur into rows of bank faces, sometimes
mix Kenworth light stem radio flicking through stations that only
know my name. Somewhere between all this, the highway receives
from routine into something else, something tune to a frequency
and just beginning to hear before the sun breaches the
bones of the horizon. My radio kicks to life with
a squall of status. The sound shakes may awake so
violently I have to steady my hands before reaching for
the receiver. It's no coalsign, no familiar code, just the
snatch of a voice cut with static, barely human. They
see you, Shauna, get up to get it. The last
word is swamped in background rower, then silence, heavier and
denser than any I've ever felt on the road. I
turned the radio off, then on again. No signal, just myself, called,
and suddenly aware I may not be alone, even with
every trucker I know gone from the circuit. I rubbed
the fatigue from my neck, mouthgundry as old cardboard. At
the windshill, the Grimmadnite ritual continues, the silent ur truck
iidling in weight, the gas island bathed, the merciless Halogen
Jesse disappearing behind mob and bucket, Grace attending to her
ledger in a diner that's less than half lit. In
the space left by the missing the air seems to constrict,
as if the Midwest itself contracts, folding over the secret.
But now I see a shape from the edge of
the exit ramp. A pair of head lies paused where
the rest stop merges with the main highway card that
shouldn't be there at this IRA engine running. The silhouette
and side are moving a surge of determined and flipped
something in me. I tossed the log book on too,
the empty seat beside me, punch the record button and
talk into the dash day night. What difference does it make?
The rules are broken, and I'm going to find out
who's breaking them. I won't just drive through this like
everyone else. There's still a little time before dawn, enough
silence on the lot to move unoticed, enough hush in
the air to make inquiry a weapon. And clipping my
flask light, I duck from the cow boots, bitting through
wet grid, and head toward the odd car at the exit.
When I get close, the shapes inside resolve. Nobody behind
the wheel, just an open notebook and the passenger seat
and a coffee cup crusted over the note on the dash,
reads and pencil don't go looking as if left for
someone in a hurry were too desperate to listen. Every
muscle in my back draws tigh I closed the door
quietly and scanned the empty road, nothing but distance and
the certainty that I'm far from the only one playing
I detective in a game where the rules change minute
by minute. I make my way back adrenaline, turning my
hands cold, and take up position in my sleep or
open notebook in my lap. The first page genty but
for two names. Mike read Underneath, I write, if I
go missing, something took me. Let the record show I
was here and didn't walk away by choice. With the
new dawn, the horizon stains pink over a marching line
of silent rigs, half as many as before. Even the
Dennis seems dimmer, as if subtracting itself bit by bit
from the world. But I'm still here, lockbook open, penn steady, waiting.
It's my turn to drive the story forward. Frostshifts across
the inside of my windshield and raise of patterns, catching
what little light eaks through the law. The morning after
Red vanishes, I can't shake the scentse and trespass in
my own routine. Trucks cluster in a half assembly, at
least four empty slots where last week's regulars should sit.
No kemor no Peterbille, not even the battered old box
truck whose guy always spilled fries in the diesel lay.
The sense of absence is sharper, more deliberate. I let
the engine run whilst sleep fights with adrenaline and my
body insists in the mediculous sorting lob books, counting empty
coffee cups, flipping through last night's handritten rad notes for
the third time. I keep replaying Linda's warning, the way
the line snapped off like afraid cable. It tooks me
with a pressure I can't shake. The rules have changed,
and I'm on someone's watchless now. Jesse is already at there.
I spot him through the wiper streaks, face set tight,
mop in one hand, had a battered kin of blue
paint in the other. He's working the sign near the
on ramp, painting over something, a kind of choreographed avoidance
of the honest business of cleaning. I climb out boots
meeting ground with a dull crackle. Air burns the inside
of my nose from the cold. The diner is shuttered
for deep cleaning. A lie if I ever saw one.
Even the Dennis signed throws a glow at a warped angle.
Two bulbs burnt and humming like bad wiring. I wonder
the perimeter clipboard forgotten in the cab, every hair on
my neck, a live wire, a see bee spit static
in my pocket. My hand darts for it reflects more
than hope, but there's only the scratchy swish of channel debris.
I try Linda's frequency again, staying keyed up for lunder,
trying different intervals. She's gone back dark in the trucker's lounge,
a perfab cube that smells of old sweat and burn plastic.
I sat myself by the window. I count faces stop
plate numbers in my phone. My tally of regulars is
down by more than a third. No one looks up.
Conversation when it happens, is clipped until silence cl in again.
Movement up past the diesel islands catches my eye the
same toe track idling at an oblique angle for a tick.
I see a driver in profile, pale, unreadable, with a
thick jaw that never quite finishes its chewing motion. He
glances on me through his mirror, not really seeing, but
registering my presence all the same. The engine rattles, then
slips into quieter harm like its waiting for its cue. Enough,
I gather up a day's flyers, torn notes, my maps.
Back in my sleeper, surrounded by the evidence, I start
the slow work of comparison. Classes appear, every disappearance, every
mark sign, every night with lost video or radio skips,
the all can ground, a handful of rest stops, always
at night, always after at least one sign changes, sometimes shade,
sometimes code, sometimes placement. There is intent in the pattern.
My second trip out that morning, I prowled a lot
on foot at the far edge, I catch Jesse, no mop,
no paint now, just his hands jammed in his jacket,
staring at the wind tilted welcome sign. I fallen step
beside him. I saw you on the sign, ear layer.
I say it as easy as I can arrange my voice.
He doesn't blink. Sometimes things get covered up because it's
easier than having to repaint the whole thing. He's saying
more than he lets on. I flake my eyes down
a thin etching at the science corner, the sideways V
cross mark. It's only visible in certain angles of the
early light. What's it mean? I press? He tips his
head slightly, barely a nod he used to stand for
save transit. Now it just marks which dobs go quiet
for a while. I can't decide if he wants to
help or just erase himself from the blame. Inside the diner,
Grace appears. After I tap twice in the lock door.
She lets me in, reluctantly shutting it behind us with
a heavy click. You're pushing too hard, shaw not, she says,
voice scratchy thin around the edges. People who poke disappear
will come back wrong. Help me. Then, I insists you've
got a less I saw it. Who else is keeping track?
She says, pulling a twisted scrap of receipt from her
apron columns of name states what must be plate numbers,
cross hatch and rewritten. Some of the names are new
to me, others I know too well. This is just
the one sick of wrisk logging, she whispers. I copy
the fires when I can. Staffs to rest in the
lost and found, but if they catch meat, she doesn't finish. Instead,
she pushes the note towards me. You want to last
out here, Drop this before it's too late. When I
ask her who they are, she only shakes her head.
I starting to the kitchen. Some are staff, some are disregular,
paying off something old. Some are not like us at all.
I took the slip into my glove. The air is grinding,
tension forming bridges between gazes. When a deliver himent steps in,
someone new, face slack as glassy. I ask after his route,
try to draw him into small talk. He answers in monosyllables,
gaze fixed beyond me, then leaves his package in the
counter and drifts out without signing. The staff don't even
remark on it. I feel exposed to watch cataloged potentially
already written out of some one else's ledger. That afternoon,
I'll lay my findings out across the cab mattress twenty
nine rest stop names for cristrass of hand mark maps,
recordings of the laughter and background noise from a week
ago next to new heavy silences. I compare the your
timing's tape skips, dash cam jumps, and note they cluster
her tightly with the flyer's appearance, with weather shifts at
above all with the arrival and departure of that a
Marteau truck. I've got dates, signals, spicious routines, but no
proof any one ever goes missing outside of this closed circuit.
No media, no despatch calls, not even the online memorials
truckers usually make when one of their own is kill.
Panic is a present, gnawing animal, but nursia winds. I
can see now how the logic works. If nobody ever
pushes too hard, if regilars swallow the cost, the disruption
doesn't leak out. I secure my phone, back up the footage,
and pocket my best map. The longer I keep moving,
the more I convince myself I'm buying time. But time,
like the Midwest, isn't always honest about what it takes.
I forced the cab heater on and close my eyes,
listening for any trace of Linda's voice in the blank
roar of night. The only reply is the wind lifting
bunners of frost from the edge of the window and
blow that soft shoffin on the black up shape shifting
between the hoods of rigs, never quite coming close enough
to name. I know now I can't let this go.
The cost is rising, and I'm already on a list
I never signed up for. Something inside tells me not
to sleep at all. But exhaustion is inevitable even in dreams.
I circle the rest, stop chasing voices that skip and
blur at their edges, wake to the sense that some
one has entered and left without a trace. By the
third morning of counting, the circuit is a skeleton of
what it was. My reflection is gaunt in the mirror.
When I try to eat, I can't stomach the fruit.
Grace sneaks me a diet soda and a cold sandwich,
but her kindness is narrow to a pin. Just go,
she hisses as she presses it into my hand. Don't
make yourself another number. I drive out past the exit,
pull over under the top bridge and snap photos of
each sign in both directions. On the northbound side, I
catch Jesse with a fresh kin of spray, adding a
new mark quick as graffiti. When he sees me, he
drops the can and speeds back towards the lot fase,
emptied of anything like camaraderie. Back in the calf, I
study the mark signs It's always the same cross for you,
always covered then repainted, Always face toward the direction most
missing truckers last drove. I stare at the map so
long that when my phone buzzes, I nearly jump an
unknown caller block number. Hesitation passes, then as whip answer,
a burst of digital static. Then Linda's voice clear down.
But rush pressure. You got too close, didn't you? I
need answers, Linda, what is the network? Is it really
staff or something bigger? Her voice falters. They can use anyone.
It's easier with staff. They have the keys, the codes,
but the real power moves in the space between shifts.
Don't trust worth. You see a beat of silence. I whisper.
I have proof, signs, recordings, names. If I disappear, someone
will find it. Linda replies, almost ad. They're not scared
of evidence. They're scared of people who don't forget their rules.
When rattles my window, as she continues, you want the truth,
meet me outside Old Stop twenty two after dark. Come alone.
Don't mention this in the radio, and don't bring those maps.
They always listen. The lango is dead before I can answer.
I'm unable to sit still. The next ire is a
fever second guessing shit. I run just gun the rig
for Chicago and hope a city can swallow the weirdness
or keep pressing. Honor the silent promise to Mike and
red and whoever comes next. By sunful and driving a
ghost highway. Each restop I pass more suspect than the last.
Artificial signs lean at odd angles. Mileage is too short
for real geography, pittograms that shimmer if I stare at
them too long, Net piles him before I reach the
age of stop twenty two floodlights. The paved lot here
is abandoned, no rigs, no attendant, just a glimmer in
my mirrors every time I squint at the shadows. I
park behind an old coc coal truck engine idling in
case I need to bolt. Lynda the steps into view
from the Farsailles. Her figure smaller than I remember, but brisk.
Her park is zipped up to the chin in a
battered backack on one shoulder. Her face is drawn, cheeks
salt pale in the sodium vapor light. She walks up,
scanning the shadows as she speaks, you need to see
for yourself before it's too late. Come on, we skirt
the boundary fence away from prying cameras or motion sensors.
Behind a stack of pallettes, Linda drops her backpack and
pulls out a ragged folder thick with dogg eared notes
inside names hundreds, group by date, by incident, by rest stop.
Some are crossed out, a few circled and read. They
call it the network because it's everyone who keeps quiet
long enough, she whispers. When the rules change, people start
tracking each other, pic who stays, who goes. It's not supernatural.
It's mechanism, old, layered, ruthlessly maintained. Every so often the
operators choose. Sometimes people go missing. Sometimes they come back,
claiming to be the old selves. But nothing sticks. You've
seen the faces, the ones who survive. Don't you notice
how they never remember the ones who left? A chill
needles my robs A flipped through Linda's folder, matching lines
with names from Griss's scrap. Those overlap, Mike rare dug
others who disappeared years before. I point a set of plates.
But where do they take them? The field, the back roads?
Linda hesitates, then nods. The exit seventeen is just the portal.
They use it her truck to collect those marked for transit.
Where they go depends on what the staff mark those
v crosses their cos sunposts for collection. If your trucks
left the two lawn or you break a rule, ask
too many questions, try to help he get selective for crossing.
I feel the sick pulse of being included among the
dand selective for what. Sometimes they just vanish, Linda murmurs.
Sometimes the ones who come back are ron stiff, silent,
always watching. It's like something crawls inside and keeps the
circuit moving. Her face screws up. Lately there's less restraint.
The original net requanted only those who broke the rules.
Now it's anyone too curious, too loud, too stubborn, like you.
The weight of it almost falls me in half. Names
on a ledger, transformed prayer, and the whim of a
few and seen operators. As we skirt the fence, Linda
points out the signs, each esched with new symbols. That's
careful now, sometimes a crude painted X, sometimes old blue tape,
half peeled. If you find yourself boxed in by these,
don't stop. That's when they're watching. Her tone darkens a shade.
If they know you know you can't unsee the pattern,
they'll come for you. For me, That's why I've never
stopped long. I nod resolve darkening, even as fearer threatens
my pulse. What do I do? Linda presses a key
into my palmmerasted tagle skeleton key. If they catch you,
keep this hidden, only use it. I feel left alone
in the lot and the staff vanish fits the gray door.
You'll know which one. Never open it unless you have to,
Never tell any one you have it. As she darts
out of sight, her shadow alongates in the sodium player.
She's gone before I can thank her. I returned to
my cab and locked the doors, the key heavy in
my jacket. I barely sleep, waking to every engine backfire
and brush of wind in a cat's skin. Every traveler
who polls is too long at the door, becomes suspect
of Every staff glance is a measure of patience lost.
The next night, the tow truck is back park near
a new rig whose plates I don't know. I scam
for Jesse, for grays, but see only shapes floating behind
windows half present. I can't stay idle. I tuck Linda's
key inside my boot and throade my phone through my sleeve,
ready to record all last Jeane if I have to,
I wait for a shift in the rhythm. Any hint
of movement out of phase. Around midnight, as the lounge
jewels empty and even the vending machines were lower. I
hear voices brief coded crackling through the seebee A transit
tonight east lot ready at three hit a collection marked
confirms sign swalpole. I ready myself the regular's work as
gently boxed and by the tow truck, as if nobody
wants to make a scene. I see two shapes walk
out of the shadows. Staff jackets by their movements are
too smooth, too practice to be mere cleaners or desk clerks.
The diner lights blink off one by one. I circle
the lots, taking close to shadows, watching as the driver
of the box and rigs stepped out, face blank, steps
measured like a man reciting a memorized script. As the
staff usher him toward the toe, the radio chirrups again.
Proceed One figure flushes something a badge maybe, or just
an old business card. The man climbs wordlessly into the
passenger seat. The tow truck pulls out behind the pumps,
light kept low. Crawling toward the service row. I trail
them from a distance, risking curiosity. Balanced the road they
take is one. Nobody else uses a back access route,
the kind you'ed miss in daylight unless you knew to
look for it. The truck turns down a gravel tongue
and slits out of sight. My breath hitches, but I
drive slow, head lights off, every muscle bristling with dread.
When I crest the low rise, I see it at
the edge of the highwayslight bleed. There's a muddy clearing
once a gravel pad, now chewed up by weather, and
all tires abandoned, rigs former loose, half ering, basted and
half stripped, windows fogged so thick they reflect only moonlight.
In the center, a tight gathering, a half dozen staffers,
a few truckers I half recognize, and alone hooded figure
standing a little apart beside them, Mike's Kenworth. The cab
door is open, is bat a cap on the dash.
I slip close enough to hear ducking behind a stack
of tires. Phone at my thigh, thumb on the record.
The hooded's leader speaks, voice carrying in the brittle air.
Those who are chosen as cross for the road demands it.
It is our stewardship, our responsibility. The old patterns hold
only if we let them. A pair of staffers circle
the cab, checking lock, brooks, radios, GPS unit, stripping out memory.
A flucker of unease worms up my spine. One of
the glassy eye drivers joins them, reciting a list in
his soft, wooden voice. It's ritual, not bureaucracy. One Mike's
name is uttered. The leader lifts a hand, his time
is owed. The network accepts the offering. No record shall remain.
I watch frozen as they pass a battered lock, The
pages removed, torrent thrown into the portable fire pit. At
the clearings are a smell of burnt paper and old
leathers diffuses there at my feet, a stone slips. A
face turns. A woman, sharp featured lit by the parking
lot gleam. It's grace. Her mouth forms my name, just barely.
I realize I've pushed past every point of subtlety. They
spot me easily now and two step forward, arms out.
I back up, fumbling for Linda's key, But before I
can move, strong hands grip my arms. They hold me
toward the firepit. The hooded leader limit hole over the scene,
shoon a holt. The voice intones masculine, rough hewn with
the vowels of the upper Midwest. Here you have seen
what cannot be unseen. The newerk preserves the road. Do
you deny your place? My voice shakes, but I spit
up where the hell is mic in red tug anyone
left behind. A ripple of a niece travels the circle.
The leader gestures behind and to staff is produce about
a journal. My low book, pages thin and rewritten. We
do not erase. We cross over, some serve, some are released,
but all are remembered by the road, if not by
the world. A flash the leader holds may record a
thumb pressed hard on the delete switch a moment longer
than needed, then tosses it in the dirt. Cheers Shanna,
forget or join us and carry this on? Is for
the circuit's safety. All oats may when the highway was young.
If you resist, well, ask yourself where your memory? When
last time you saw Mike's cap? Did you lose time?
Did you remember why you pulled in? My mouth is
bone dry. I clutch at the key, willing my hands
to steady grace. As now bright and harsh halogen glow
steps closer. If you want to survive this, She breathes low.
Say you'll comply. You can run if you get the chance,
but you have to act like you've forgotten. The leader
addresses the odds. No trucker leaves unchanged. No memory persists
unless the circuit allows. We are the ones that keep
the road safe from what travels with you or what
you might become. Do you choose the old way hall?
Or must you be crossed too? Every face presses in
in a basin of cold night, under a sky the
color of a swollen bruise, surrounded by emptiness. I took
out the only words I can. I'll forget, I'll leave.
The leader studes me, then nods, as if grunting a
childhood wish. A drive. Don't look back the next time
you stop. Don't speak of this, not to any one,
especially not your lod book. The warmth in my limbs
returns in a wave, like a fever breaking. I'm guided,
washed back to my truck. Gray, silent Jesse a few
steps behind. The tow truck blocks the road out. Its
driver glares unreadable. The field darkens behind us, as if
a cuttain's drawn. I feel eyes boring holes from behind
the rigs my GPS green boots. As I start the
engine unit white directions, reset, all address history gone my recorder.
When I try to power it flashes a blank signal,
then cycles to factory settings. They've covered every angle Before
I turn onto the ramp. Jesse leans in, no longer
hiding a shake in his hands. If you valley living,
don't stop at any rest that bears the mark trust
nothing further. They are always watching. He presses my knuckles
until I not, then disappears again into the cold. The
rideway is water color white. The world blow to abstraction.
The radio skips every channel but brassy static. What's gone
doesn't return, what replaces it pretends to fit The next
days of all weeks, I don't track them, become an endless,
bullyinge of asphalt beneath ties, some mizes fractured by sleep
and deepening paranoia. I try, just once to hit a
different exit for fuels. Doth they stare through me? Conversation
winding backward or bleeding into silence Back in the circuit,
The stretch feels both lonelier and more artificial. No one
references Mike, nor Red, nor even the diner's best jokes.
Trucks fill in, unfamiliar but carrying the same numbers, as
if they're playing roles left behind. The few old phases
left turn away at my approach. Even Gray's, when caught
at a side stop, keeps her head down, never acknowledging me.
I replay my dack am on long runs, always searching
for skip minutes, misplaced riggs, wrong signs. Sometimes, when I
turn too quickly, I see a blue peat built and
horizon always vanishing the minute I make out a plate.
I try to pick up Linda on the sea bee,
but I only catch garbled bursts. One time, a voice
impossible to mistake, shaddows through, overwhelm, vastatic. Don't let them
see you, drive on overnight. The entrance to Egsitt seventeen brands,
new sign, new symbol, nothing bearing the old cross fee.
As I pass out of pure habit, I glance at
the field beyond the umps, there's nothing but fresh gravel,
as if the clearing never held anything at all. Sleep returns,
but it's thin, patchy, a lattice work of half remembered faces,
lost highways, the stench of burning love books. My phones
map at cant find my location for days at the stretch. Sometimes,
waking from a dream, I think I hear Mike's voice
in the wind or sea read at a turn off
with no Wiggs a sign. I double my logging, redundant
Coby's notes, recording myself each night. Yet in the morning
the new stinchers are always gone, swallowed by the either
or wipe from the hardware, replaced only with silence and
time stumps that don't square with any reality. I know
the names of the loss fade subtly, like stains scrubbed away,
But I force myself to remember Mike's drawl, Grayce's worried eyes,
the whelander tucked her hands and her sleeves were nervous. Still,
each mile makes those recollections feel more like our facts
crawled up from some one else's life. Sometimes I catch
myself fearing awake in the cab well, twitching into focus.
I was missing no matter how tightly I clutched the wheel,
how many times I mark my progress, there's always a
section of highway that dissolves beneath the rig. I feel
watched index were remembered only in the margins. It's not
just me. The whole circuit's thinner patch air, as if
reality itself runs low here, renetting around its gaps. Even
the coal feels different now, a deeper kind of chill,
unconnected to season, woven into whatever bargain keeps the rest
of us moving, still, pretending not to see the vanish
shapes in the mirror. One morning, pausing at a shoulder
to check a loose strap, a spot of flier under
my wiper. I haven't stopped anywhere near Exit seventeen since
that night. The first thing I see is the same
looping map, the fixes and corrections growing denser, but now
a red X marks a new location, right over where
I should be at the bottom. Someone is scribbled in
a different pen. Sometimes the ones left behind are chosen
for something worse. I crumble the flyer, but keep it.
I can't say why. As I pull back onto the highway,
my radio hisses and pops. A band of static rise
into an old, impossible frequency. A voice, low and familiar
reads through the noise. You can't leave the road. There's
no inflection, but I know it's Mike. I clutch the
cea bee, but the signal fuses to silence, cut so clean,
I think I imagined it. I click the lock to
record a note, but the memory slips away as soon
as I begin to speak. The owner sounds. Left is
the hum off wheels and the blank horizon. My hands
steady on the wheel, light shivers over the asphalt, and
the world as always rolls forward, a featureless, silent waiting.
I keep driving, somewhere between the weight of miles and
the chill that won't leave the cap. I realize I'm
tapping out a pattern, and the wheel unconsciously echoing the
side where his veal in, the silent warning, the map
under my wiper, the new ex the handwriting jagget is
a heartbeat. I haven't thrown it away, though, I keep
telling myself to Each night's drive and falls like a
tape loop. Reach a truck stop, Scan for marks, void
signage with the rasures or fresh paint, Keep heads down,
speak little. I try to kick the habit of lingering
at any exit for more than fifteen minutes. Even then,
faces flick past the windows, shady and blurred. Sometimes I
think I'm seeing double two versions of the same rake,
one faded, one too bright. Under the sodium fixtures, my
log books, now doubled in quantity, rarely match I scratch
notes on slips in my boots and the backs over
seats anything my hand unsfined. In the morning, the ridden
words are gone, now re arranged page is crumpled, as
if smoothed and tucked by another's hand. Sometimes a whole
rout drops away. One night there is a field outside Peoria.
The next it's a mall, the next a notion of
unlet frost. I've started adjusting only what I can feel
under my fingers. Smart devices stop sinking, I mail want them,
drive of dash can skips, simple photos and voice nippets
to a peel box. I don't intend to jack. Then
on a runney spound highway, twenty four buckles in my mirror,
mile markers out of sequence, My stomach flips the trall
men losing time over and over means my thoughts run
in anxious ruts, never quite circling a plan. Still, my
body keeps choosing forward. Sometimes late I see the tow
truck pulled over in the distance. Its lights don't blink
any more. They burne with a steady intensity, blue as
a glacier, never flickering. I stay wide, sneaking past on
the shoulder, but I know it marks me. The new
faces at the diner keep their voices low overrey Gills
watch by reflection in the window glass, frowning as if
they almost remember, almost recognize, but something always stops. Short
grayces know where I can find her. On the road
east of Jolliet. The radius bursts with the start of
a soalm, But the lyrics are wrong, raw melody, wrong voice,
familiar only in that it's narrating my week. Road eats
road rigg EAT's rig. The wheel turns, the signal fades.
I turn the volume down, but the cap vibrates, as
if the speakers were inside my own chest. At another
rest stop, I can't say how far from Eggs at seventeen,
but the stations are the same. I see Jesse painting
out one of the old cross marks. He finishes, glances
at me, and for the brief a second, the mask's
slips panic desperation. Then he's wiping the smile back, leaving
the brush behind and vanishing under the awning, which shoulders hunched.
If the network wants me out, they have odd ways
of showing it. I feel less like a target and
more like a paroled convicted, free to move, not free
to speak. Track, but not questioned unless I slow. I
check my phone steps every few hours. It always reads
the same number. Sometimes my reflection in the cab window
moves half a second behind me. The next evening stretches
into something worse than routine and accident. Clogs are two lane,
and I'm stranded just outside a newer rest enclave. To
kill the engine would be to make myself vulnerable. I
keep the rig running, stirring out of the shapes, moving
between pump's faces, sharp in reflection but indistinct in life.
A man in a driver's jacket circles my cab twice.
In the mirror. His muff forms you see me that,
but no sound comes out. I blink, and his eyes
are empty, black as struck tires. He moves on, stops
by the toe, leans to confer with the driver, who
looks my way and tips a hand in a gesture
of final warning acknowledgment. I grip the wheel so hard
my knuckles loosen, then stiffen again. Head Lights sweep past
my own face floats in the glass, and for a
moment I think I see Mike's cap on my head,
lends jacket on my seat, voices on the seabee brick
with a short digital scream, then revert to silence. The
pressure mounts. If I don't do something, some active step,
I'll be washed out entirely. But I have no destination
except motion, and no method accepts scrutiny. That night, hunch
in a trucker's lounge, with the machine silent and the
windows too dark, I angle my phone's camera at every
entry in wait, I see a shadow approach a woman
bress familiarly gray, sits cross, folds her arms and doesn't
touch the table top. Why are you here, she mutters,
eyes darting, because no one else feels real any more.
Because I still remember Mike and you, I remind her.
She swallows. I tried to do what they ask. I
try to forget. It's not enough. The ones who left,
they are not the ones I see behind the glass
any more. We're all changed by now. I slide the
ex mark fire across. They say, sometimes what's left is worse.
She hesitates before answering, the fear deepening the lines at
her mouth. Each year, some one comes back different. The
road keeps us until it doesn't. I keep a record,
but it's never safe. Not here. A shape passes behind
her in the glass. Jessee, peering in half, deranged, like
he's caught between two coats. He meets my gaze, then vanishes.
Will you help me, I ask, not knowing what help
means any more. Is there any way to break this?
Brice shakes her head to spare heavy. They own the
road shun. All we can do is keep moving or
her eyes water slightly, or maybe make one last stand.
A tremor runs through the floor. The PA system chines
mechanical of voice, paging a name I don't know. I
realize the staff behind the counter stare directly at Grace.
She goes pale and stands. If I don't see you again,
keep the receipts they roll you have. She disappears, shoes
squeaking softly. I glance at my phone. It's rebuted to
its welcome screen. There's nothing left to collect. Accept mystery
and the cold comfort that, even as reality rewrites itself,
some soborgn trace of memory survives When the next flier appears,
tucked in my coat pocket while I sleep in the
locked cow. Though I check the doors twice, I study
it carefully, layer upon layer of rut lines more circles,
more notes in three different hands. A next where I
am now at the bottom. If you find the great door,
ease the key ev but I look for it everywhere.
That instant, the radial flickers stadek. Then tron feels open.
This is your last chance. It's Mike's voice. I joled awake,
realize the passenger seat is empty. The lord becusque. I
start the engine, drive a circuit compelled by a force
that may be hope, may be exhaustion, tracking back on itself,
the rude a hedgehind's just enough to suggest possibility. At
the first exit, I keep both hands tight to the wheel,
slowing as I scan for a door. Ash gray somewhere
between the diner and the faw pumps a shudder. My
foot hovers the side server shed is open, a door
I've never seen before, standing ajar, the skeleton, key heavy
in my boot, now colder than the rest of my body.
I park open a cat step down, each motion, deliberate
half outs at myself. The lot is dead quite no
sound but the ticking of cooling engines, not even wind.
The key fits the lock in a gray door. It turns.
The hinge has grown and admit me to a space.
I count map wide, too tall for the profob inside
our walls of receipts, of flyers, driver's hats hung on pegs.
A log book sits on an alto like shelf, page
open to a name I almost recognized. Saw crossed out
from the dark behind me, a presence. You want to
know that the leader's voice flat with authority and fatigue.
Turn around, I obey. He stands in the pulled half light.
Neither will coming nor threatening, just factual. Nobody leaves the
circuit unaltered. Those who persist carve out of duty. You're
here because you try to break the pattern? Will you
keep trying? My chestakes with the pressure of all the
names I should not cannot forget. If I give this up,
it just goes on. He nods, But with you it changes,
maybe not for better. For a split second, I consider
running instead, I ask what happens now? He stepped aside?
The door out shows the highway empty and open. You drive.
Leave the records in here. You'll remember even when others don't.
The temptation to sit among the hats to catalog every
lost soul is nearly overwhelming. Yet another urge urges me
out on to the road again. I back out, slowly,
forcing my memory to imprint this the room, the log book,
what I count en to. My hands splay over the keys,
feeling the ridges of metal, one last reassurance. The world
still spars. The night pulls me in. The truck warms up,
the engine, blurring, regret and resolve. I drive, unsure whether
I'm part of the pattern or a brief aberration. Before
the circuit resets, no one overtakes me, No one lags behind.
Somewhere on the edge of the bent. The voice on
the radio starts up again, gentle and unheard. It's your mile, Shona.
I let the head lights chase the darkness until morning.
I know I'll love the night's events. But when I
check again, the entry is gone, replaced by a blank
time stamp, and my own silencetare reflected in the screen.
As long as I'm rolling, part of me survives, As
long as the circuit circles, there is a record somewhere
in the miles. Even if no one else remembers or
dares to ask. And if the day comes when I
slow for a stop and nothing looks back, and no hats,
no signs no, faces on no, I've finally driven clear.
But for now the road rolls on beneath me, featureless
and endless, and my own memory, however fraried, remains the
only thing truly mine. Then the world turns slowly bright,
just enough for the worst doubts to retreat just a little.
I don't know how long I'll hold on to this ferry,
to this fleeting hard one, knowing strung alawn in the circuit,
through cold rain and hum of endless ties. But as
long as the rig moves forward, the record, in some form,
moves with me.