HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

Evan stopped for coffee and a snack before the final run over the pass. He parked his Kenworth among the other tractor trailers and crunched through the gravel of the huge parking area breathing in the fresh, cold air to wake himself for the final run home to Cindy and the kids.

Walking into the café he asked, “Anyone just come down off the hill?” he asked.

Three truckers advised, “Careful, man, it’s slippery up there with a light dusting of snow,” and they began recounting their crossing from the coast.

“Need chains yet?” he asked ordering coffee from the crispy, uniformed, waitress.  She was dressed in the yellow trimmed with brown logo of this particular chain diner.

He moved back to the three truckers with his pie and coffee, sitting in the creamy, yellow plastic booth next to them.  He nodded and turned his head toward the fill up, “They have anything for sale here, I want to try to get home tonight,” he said.

The man with a beard nodded, no, “Not since the chain took over,” he complained.

The young one who was smoking said, “They don’t even like you to park for more than an hour or so, no place to sleep until the other side.”

The big ruddy looking man commented, “Ya think they’d accommodate the truckers, we’re their bread and butter.”

“You wouldn’t have anything would you?” he asked them.

“They shook their heads and the ruddy one said, “Used them up crossing the pass.”

Someone put money in the juke box and an old Patsy Cline increased the noise level.  Evan sat back and ate his apple pie and had a refill of coffee.  Hell, I’ll chance it, he thought, I can stay awake. The men’s john was connected to the station and smelled like urine and vomit but Evan threw cold water on his face and climbed back into his rig.

 He cracked the window and chewed some dentyne  to keep himself awake.  He loved the vacuum rush when he closed the cab and the sound of creaking leather as he positioned himself behind the wheel. She’d still look new in twenty years he vowed.

He hit snow about two miles up the road and was happy that his new Kenworth held the road so well without trailers.  He should be home in three hours.  Glad he knew the road he relaxed and thought about how well everything was going.  He and Cindy had big time equity in the home they held on to despite the tempting market a few years ago.  Cindy had wanted one of those big new places with the high entry hall and split levels but he stood firm and now with so many losing their homes she saw the wisdom of his decision.

They had saved their money instead and invested in the Kenworth.  The kids loved riding in it and even Cindy had taken a spin around the neighborhood the first week they owned it.  Evan treated the tractor like a thoroughbred champion.  He never knew his mother but his paw owned a junk yard where Evan grew up and by the time he was a teenager he could put most anything mechanical together. At school he had been that ‘junkyard kid’ and Nell was their junkyard dog and Paw was his junkyard dad.  Owning something new was so sweet. 

He loved his kids and was proud of how they were doing in school.  Anytime he went to the school with them he wore a nice suit, no junk yard names for his kids.  And Cindy was beautiful, an army brat and all she wanted was a place to call home for the rest of her life and Evan.  She was a sexy little thing and it always scared him when she was pregnant so after number four they had gone and had his tubes tied.  Four was plenty.  Their house wasn’t fancy but they had a nice yard with a kitchen garden and a great patio for neighborhood barbecues.  He’d built a guestroom in the back for his in-laws on holidays and other occasional guests.  He was a happy man.

Evan woke in the cab of his tractor trailer bouncing down the side of a rocky ravine and was unconscious again before the tractor came to rest on a rocky creek bed.   After the crash all was quiet except for the occasional pop and snap of metal as the wreck settled in to its new distorted shape.

An hour later there was a flashlight shining over the side of the freeway where the guard rail had been crushed by heavy metal smashing through it.  The officer, shivering in the increasing snowfall called in the accident on his radio, “We’re losing visibility rapidly here as the snow fall increases,” he warned.

The paramedics and tow truck arrived but soon they couldn’t even see from one side of the road to the other and the officer kept adding flares to the road to slow traffic.  They were about to give up until morning when a shattering noise broke the peace of the quietly falling snow.  From below came the blast of a diesel horn signaling that someone was alive in the wreck below.

After several bungled attempts to reach the man they finally had to call in a volunteer search and rescue team to try and reach the trucker. They started down to the truck the next morning at first light with slippery dripping snow all around slowing the rescue.  The path of the rig was clear even through the new snow so that they didn’t anticipate trouble finding it.  Another team was following the creek bed in from below and they still heard the horn occasionally though less and less often as time wore on.

Earlier when he was stronger Evan had tried to find his mobile phone in the cab to call Cindy and tell her where his newest insurance policy was but he gave up in the dark.

They hadn’t heard the horn for hours now and they held their breath as they approached the wreckage.

“Don’t know how anyone could survive this,” the team leader said.

They used a torch to cut into the truck buried on its side in the snow.

“Driver, this is a rescue team, are you alright in there?”

They heard a muffled sound and hurried to cut the metal and pull the man from the wreck to administer first aid.  Within half an hour they had him out of the wreck and getting an IV and oxygen along with treatment for hypothermia.  They would carry him along the creek bed to a place where a chopper could land and air taxi him to the nearest hospital.

The medic looked up, “Touch and go,” he said, “Don’t know if he’ll last to the hospital.”

The man moaned, “Cindy...my kids,” and then fell back and just moaned semi-conscious and in pain.

They called the highway patrolman on the road above and relayed the truckers I.D. info to the highway patrol and said the trucker mentioned a Cindy and his kids.  The officer followed protocol and determined the nearest hospital and an officer was dispatched to the address on the driver’s license.

Cindy was trying to be a good hostess to her parents but she was frantic with worry.  Evan always called if he was going to be very late and the kids all kept asking where daddy was more often than they asked when Santa would get there.  When the patrolman arrived it was almost a relief to have the reality there to deal with.

“Can you come with us Mrs. Claymore?” the patrolman asked.

Her mom was at the door with her, “Go honey, we’ll watch the kids,” she urged.

Cindy grabbed a few things and went with the officers.  They warned her that things didn’t look good and she walked into the hospital, small and all alone.  Needing Evan’s arm around her and his steady, warm, patience, she stopped at the chapel and prayed and then took the elevator to his room in the I.C.U. 

She sat with him for two days and the second afternoon she dozed off and woke when he squeezed her hand.

She started crying and kissing him but he said, “The rigs gone, Cindy, what will we do?” he asked.

She was furious, “Who gives a crap, Evan, as long as we’re together with the kids?”  She was so mad she would have hit him if he weren’t so hurt and defenseless.

He smiled to himself, they’d make it.  Somehow they would make it.  He pulled her close and tried not to flinch when it hurt badly.  He had some healing to do.

“Tell me about the kids,” he said. Then he said, “I love you, Cindy.”

She melted and told him how worried she’d been and how the kids kept asking for him and Evan drifted off listening to her talk about their family.

(C) September 2013 Karen MacEanruig