Jason
So I’m driving down the road, and the way the moon shines through the distortion of my bug-splattered window turns the pavement into water, and I am somehow managing to drive across, like Jesus when he greeted the sailors, or maybe my truck is like Jesus and I’m just an apostle clinging desperately to it as it slides so carelessly across the surface of this river. Road, I mean. My eyelids droop, though I can’t seem to tell whether it’s exhaustion that’s making them close or just a strong case of gravity. I’m pondering this thought at great length, and all the while my eyelids are closing further, and I am only jolted out of this train of thought when my Jesus-truck happens to slam into something very solid. I have just enough presence of mind to step on the breaks, and my wheels screech like some angry banshee before halting obediently. I open the cab door and hop out, noticing absently that it indeed is solid concrete, not water.
In front of my truck, bathed by the eerie glow of my almost-dead headlights, is a small man, sprawled naked on the pavement. My first thought is to prod him with my booted toe, which I do, and he makes a little noise like a pigeon before sitting up. He is an ugly little bean of a man, squat and indignant. He blinks up at me, seems to focus his squinty eyes, then leaps up with a tiny screech and disappears into the bush on the side of the road with much rustling and squealing. I suddenly have the strong urge to reach into the truck, pull out my rifle and pursue the strange little man – his head and shoulders some grotesque trophy on my living room wall: Yeah, I caught the beast on Highway 12, insane little bugger, I was doing him a favour, really, ending his misery…What’s that? Oh, yes, I’m a terrific shot – but I think better of it. People-hunting would not exactly look good on a criminal record, and I would never get another trucking job. That is, if I were caught.
So I return to my seat, pull the air horn just for fun, and set off again. My truck trundles along, swift as a fat bear chasing a honey-swathed child.
I arrive at Pete’s U-Rent Warehouse at precisely 3:47 in the ay-em. A couple of emaciated boys with bags under their eyes traipse out from a hole in the side of the building, stray dogs searching for a spare scrap. I have scraps for them, alright. I honk good-naturedly; pull up, my tires squealing. The boys flock desperately towards the cargo hold at the back of my eighteen-wheeler, and I oblige them by hopping out of my rumbling truck and unlocking the back. They pile in like eager maggots, and just as quickly they’re back out, coolers full of various human organs clutched in their bony grasps. I nod to them, and they shuffle back to the warehouse with my goods. Their father, Pete, appears, grinning ear to ear, and shakes my hand with a handful of cash. I count it twice, tip my hat and climb back into my seat. Twelve seconds later, I’m back on the road, quickly gaining speed. Another day, another dollar.
Tiko
They call them ‘les Mauvais Herbes’. Like, we call them weeds and we attach negative connotations, but the French are so definite! Les Mauvais Herbes: the Bad Grasses. This coming from the folk who talk about cats blacks and carry long bread under one arm.
They’re only bad because there’s lots of them, but what the French don’t know is that they’re beneficial. That’s why I’m here, on the road. Did you know that some of the best weeds grow along the side of the highway? Well they do, and I intend on finding and documenting them.
I can’t stop, no way, but I have maps and I make a little mark for what I see growing, names I make up because I never had the books to learn the real ones.
Purpleleaves, Goldencrown, Pinkladies, Gravelcrawler, Little-Clump-Of-Sunshine – yeah, I’m not so creative but I care, I think that’s all that matters.
Right now it’s night and I can’t see my plants but I know they’re there, I know. My favourite is when I see them growing out of cracks in the pavement, like a big how-dee-do to the industrial world. They know their place and damn if I don’t wake up one day and the whole city’s a jungle. Nature has its plan, that’s what I always say.
The moon is bright – she knows where she’s going. I’ve been following her two, three hours, but it’ll start getting lighter out soon because of the time of year. This truck isn’t my normal one, this one is a little musty and it stalled once, but I’ve got a sprig of, well I call it the Big Pink but someone told me it’s called Fireweed, on the dashboard and that makes me pretty happy. It gets really big by the fences and I can always see it from my truck, night or day. It grows nearer to the mountains.
I’m thinking as I’m driving, both hands on the wheel like I always do, I’m thinking that this is temporary. Like I’m going to stop this one day and find me a wife, hopefully some other job. Or maybe I’ll just go live in the forest somewhere by myself with my plants, living off the land like the old-days settlers.
Just like I said, that moon is fading, the sky’s getting a little brighter. I always like it when the sun comes out because I can stop worrying about all my little ditch-herbs, waiting for their light. I mean, I know they’re perfectly safe because they’ve been doing this since the beginning of time – I guess maybe it’s like sleeping – but I still like day better because, well at least I can see them.
Bill
40 below; this is only my second winter out here on the Mackenzie River, the Highway of Ice. I heard some guys – they do this every year – saying that the season’s getting shorter up here. Global warming or whatever, you know? It’s bad for the folks on the other side of the river because that means they’ve got a few months where the ice is too thin for trucks but too thick for boats. They depend on us.
I’m off any normal road map. Hell, I don’t even know where I am, everything’s white, I’m just following the guy in front of me, my seatbelt off (like they tell us to), free foot poking at the sealed bag of dry clothes on the floor. That’s what safety is out here, no constraints and a little backup. If I was to go through the ice, I’d have a couple seconds before the water-pressure got too strong to open the door, and then I’d be a goner. Or so they tell me.
I’m making thirty thousand and it’s only two-months work. I think that’s pretty good, even if I’ve never been good with numbers. Last year I did it for the thrill – well, the money too, but that’s besides the point. I found out it’s not that thrilling, just bloody cold, bloody slow, and bloody dangerous. They say they haven’t lost any men in years, but that’s because of the precautions, not the ice obeying. The ice can do whatever the hell it wants to do. It can crack, it can split, it can melt, and pretty soon you’re at the bottom of the river. That knowledge is what turns thrill into fear. So this year I’m doing it for Kim, and I’m doing it for Amanda. They’re out there on the road somewhere, because Kim doesn’t stand down for anything. My baby girl and that woman who birthed her, they’re driving all alone on some one-lane highway. I can’t call her my wife, because she isn’t that, and I can’t call her my girlfriend because I don’t think she’d like it. I’ll do whatever it takes to be able to call her one or the other.
The raven flaps lazily beside my window, wheeling around to keep to my twenty miles per hour, cawing sometimes but mostly he’s silent. He’s waiting for bits of my sandwich, an apple core, but he looks as if he wants my eyes.
I shiver under my five layers of clothing and turn up the heat, turn up the music. Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat, cheesy 80s dance tune but it’s so smooth.
Run away turn away run away turn away run away
A little hypnotic, but my foot, the one near my extra clothes, taps irregularly.
Run away turn away run away turn away run away
I don’t have anything for you, I say to the raven, and he croaks indignantly. He knows there’s something in the paper bag under my shirt, where I’m keeping it from freezing. I think about Kim and how she’s pretty – not the prettiest girl I’ve seen but good enough for me. Maybe too good for me, with her strong will and stronger arms. Maybe the worst is knowing she doesn’t think the same way about me. I’ve gone and made her mine anyway, it seems.
Git, I say to the raven, and this time his croak is mocking. He’s making me uncomfortable. They're always good at that, ravens.
The chains dig into the ice, dragging the semi and me along with it. I reach to tighten the window, find it’s as tight as it goes. The raven’s gone, dipped behind my cab to harass the rest of the caravan. If I can just make it across, I’ll have some food and then we’ll turn around, go home before this ice melts from under us. I open my window a crack and press my lips to it, spit quickly and pull my face into my collar, tucking my lips between my teeth to warm them. In that moment where I pull away I see my spit freeze as it drops, imagine it shattering on the ice-road.
Run away turn away run away turn away run away
That whiny voice is staring to sound like a good idea. I take my hands off the wheel for a second to breathe hot air onto my fingers. The moisture from my breath clings to my skin and only makes it colder when I return my hands. You can’t win in a place like this, where it’s dark all day and there’s nothing but ice and ravens, trucks and dead caribou.
When I hear the first crack I stop breathing but my heart pounds hard. It’s a deep, terrible sound you can feel in your stomach. The second crack drives one hand to the door – I’m ready to jump if I have to. Then a jagged, sawing sound and my front end plunges into the blue water, I’m sinking so fast and I never had a chance. Those few seconds I had to open the door are long gone. And they never told us what to do if we missed them. I’m sinking so fast and I never had a chance.
Run away turn away run away turn away run away
I think about Amanda and I slam my crowbar into the glass, gasp for
air as the unimaginably cold water dumps itself onto me, fills the entire cab so quickly that I barely remember to squeeze through the window. Once I’m out, my limbs don’t work. I’m struggling so hard but all I see is Kim and Amanda, Kim holding her like she doesn’t know what to do with her, that angry helpless look on her face. I think I’m in too deep for anything now, there’s such a place where there is no hope. That’s a sad note to die on, I think, but then again I am dying, I can’t lie, I’m dying and I can’t move and maybe they’ll send my paycheck to my girls.
It’s sort of funny that, when I’ve got a baby and a baby’s momma and my own momma and approximately fifty-five more years I could have lived, my last thought before I let go is of my hound-dog, Joe.
