“Sorry,” James said.
Hugh got set again. And, again, just as he was ready to let go, James tapped the brake and, again, Hugh and jug went flying.
“Sorry,” James said with a barely concealed smile.
“OK, I get it,” Hugh said. “Funny. Trucker joke. Now, you better let me go, or you’re going to have a mess in your truck.”
Hugh completed his business, capped the jug—tightly—put it back in the cabinet, and sat back down.
“Hey, Hugh,” James said, “I gotta use my jug too. You wanna do me a favor?”
Hugh didn’t say anything, his imagination running through all the possible options of exactly what James could be asking him to do. None of the ideas appealed to him very much.
Laughing at the expression on Hugh’s face, James said, “You seem like a capable kind of guy. I’m just thinking we could do a hot seat swap. I gotta piss pretty bad, so let’s do it.”
“What do you mean?” Hugh asked.
“Basically, I set the cruise control and jump out of the driver’s seat while you jump in. You drive while I piss. Then we do it again, in reverse.”
“You’re kidding!” Hugh exclaimed.
“Nope. It’s done all the time. Now get ready.”
James set the cruise, slid his seat back all the way, tilted the steering wheel up, and turned sideways in his seat... all the while keeping an eye on the road, and maintaining steering control.
“OK, when I climb out, the last thing I’ll let go of will be the steering wheel,” James said. “I’ll move toward the back, and you come around in front of me. Be sure to grab the steering wheel just as I’m letting go. Then you slide into the seat. Oh, and don’t lean on the steering wheel or use it to balance yourself when you are sliding in. Be sure to watch the road. OK? Ready?”
“Go,” Hugh said, wondering how he managed to get himself involved with this madness.
They made the switch, Hugh relieved that it went exactly like James said it would. Hugh found himself sitting in the driver’s seat piloting a seventy-five-foot-long big rig and trailer combination weighing nearly eighty-thousand pounds at sixty-two miles an hour down a crowded California freeway.
“Don’t even think it,” James warned from the sleeper as he found his jug, and got set to do his business.
Hugh knew what James was warning him about, but tapping the brake was the furthest thought from his mind at the moment.
What was going through his mind just then was far, far more exhilarating. What Hugh discovered is that he absolutely loved the feeling of driving this truck. He checked his side mirrors—three on the driver’s side, four on the passenger side—and was amazed at the visibility all that reflective glass gave him. He felt a power in his seat and through the steering wheel that had a size to match his own physical size.
But then reality intruded on his thoughts, and he realized he had no idea what to do if he had to do anything more than keep the truck in his lane at a steady, cruise-controlled speed.
What if he had to pass someone? What if someone cut in front of him and suddenly slowed down? What if he had to swerve suddenly to avoid something blocking his lane? What if he had a blowout in one of the eighteen tires? He had no idea how to shift gears in this thing. And there was a bewildering array of switches, gauges and dials staring at him from the dashboard. He needed to learn a whole lot more about this truck driving business.
“Uh, James,” Hugh said. “Maybe you ought to get back here and take it over again.”
They made the switch again safely, and Hugh dropped back into his passenger seat energized, but humbled, from the experience.
James was silent for awhile, giving Hugh a chance to collect his thoughts.
“So, what did we learn from this experience?” James asked, after a few minutes had passed.
Hugh had to think about it. Of course he had driven many different kinds of vehicles, never had a ticket, and never been in an accident. He considered himself a competent driver. He had been a combat Marine, for crying out loud. But, this was something else.
Driving this huge truck was familiar in a generic kind of sense. But it was so unfamiliar in quite another sense.
“I think it’s the feeling of the size, and all that weight behind you,” Hugh verbalized, “knowing that one very small driving error could send tons of truck and cargo crashing down around your ears. Also, another two things.”
“OK,” James said.
“One, I am beginning to have the most profound respect for what you guys go through out here. And, two, I want to do it again.”
“Well, here’s the thing,” James said. “You need to know that I took quite a risk picking up a hitchhiker in the first place. But I took an enormous risk turning the driver’s seat over to you, switching horses in mid-stream, so-to-speak, with an inexperienced driver.”
“OK,” Hugh said, thinking he hadn’t done so bad.
“My point is that I saw something in you, in your character—even as you were standing beside the road with your thumb in the air—that made me want to give you a chance. Maybe I saw a little of myself in you at that age... I don’t know.”
“Thanks,” Hugh said.
“Another point I’d like to make is that you were lucky you got picked up by me. I have a lot more freedom to do things like that because I’m what’s known as an owner-operator. I drive for a freight company, but I own this truck. If I had been a company driver I would have been forbidden to pick up a hitchhiker.
