Crimson Highway by David Wickenhauser (brene brown rising strong TXT) 📗

curtains so he could turn on his interior lights, and still have some privacy from outside observers.

Then he pulled a couple of frozen dinners out of his freezer to heat up in the microwave oven.

After dinner, he gathered their trash. He had completely forgotten about James in all the excitement of the day. He knew that James was long gone by now, and they couldn’t hook up, but he wanted to let him know all that had happened. So, he needed to make a phone call in private.

“I’ll take the trash out,” he told Jenny, grabbing his cell phone. “I’ll walk you to the women’s restroom in the driver’s lounge, and then wait for you outside.”

He put on the yellow, reflective safety vest that all drivers are required to wear while at the terminal, and gave her a spare one to put on. Then he led her to the driver’s lounge, where he swiped his CommData card that unlocked the main door for them.

When he saw that Jenny had made it to the women’s facility, and had gone inside, he dialed James’ number on his cell phone. He tapped around on the phone’s screen until he found James’ name in his contacts list, and tapped his name to dial the call.

He didn’t have the wireless headset with him because he didn’t want to be too obvious about it.

After several rings with no answer, Hugh knew that James probably had his phone off for the night. He sent him a quick text to let him know that he was at Salt Lake City, and that he would be headed for Reno the next morning.

Jenny came out just as he finished.

“I just need to go in real quick,” he told her. “Wait for me here.”

After finishing in the men’s restroom, Hugh walked Jenny back to the truck.

“We’d better turn in,” he said, once they were there. “We’ll be getting a fairly early start tomorrow. You know the routine by now.”

Jenny nodded, and climbed up into the upper bunk. She didn’t have anything to say to him, so he offered nothing back in return.

With the lights off, and everybody settled down, Hugh lay in his bunk appreciating that he finally had time to think about what had happened over the past couple of days.

The main thing that concerned him right now was what to do about this complicated creature that had been so violently thrust into his life. What to do about her? he wondered. He didn't even know what to think about her. What a beautiful, but complex, piece of work she is.

Hugh thought, hoped, that the next couple of days would play themselves out, and offer a natural solution to the dilemma of what to do with someone he couldn’t trust to stay with him. But, at the same time, she was someone he couldn’t in all conscience toss out onto the highway to fend for herself.

As usually happened, sleep overtook him rather quickly, and he was out for the night.

A bird-chirp tone on his Qualcomm awakened him right at dawn. It was a message from his dispatcher telling him that the relay load was in the yard, and available for him to hook up.

Hugh sat up in his bunk, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and made a silent resolution that this was going to be a good day.

 “Up and at ’em, Jenny. Daylight’s awastin’,” he yelled in the direction of the top bunk.

He heard Jenny stirring and, like the other day, he made a pretense of needing to do something in the front of the cab in order to give her the chance to climb down from the bunk, and get herself into order.

They took care of business in the terminal driver’s lounge—walking there and back with no conversation between them. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, Hugh had to admit that the awkwardness was understandable. Both of them had to figure out what to do about this situation. And, they had to do it fairly quickly. So, there was a lot of pressure on both of them, and stress between them.

By 7 am, they were sitting down with a quick bowl of cereal for breakfast. It was not the comfy arrangement of their first night together, sitting side-by-side on his bunk. Hugh sat on his bunk, using his pullout tray as a table, as usual. Jenny, however, chose to hold her bowl in her lap while sitting in her passenger seat.

 “I’ll clean up a bit here, and then go look for our loaded trailer,” he told her when they had both finished with their cereal. He was amused at how easily the “our” came to his lips in talking about what they were going to do today, like they were a team.

Jenny nodded, and busied herself puttering around, arranging her own few things for the day’s journey.

Hugh ducked out of the truck for a few minutes to scout out his next load. When he returned, he cranked up the engine and headed over to the loaded-trailer lot.

“There it is,” he said, while he turned his truck sharply in front of the trailer and backed up to it. He aimed the fifth-wheel on his truck under the trailer’s front apron and engaged the locking jaws around the trailer’s king pin. He felt and heard the satisfying, solid connection.

As a final test, he tried to pull the truck away from the trailer. But, the trailer’s parking brakes and lowered landing gear prevented the truck from budging. “Good,” he said.

He glanced over at Jenny, and noticed she appeared to have a spark of interest in what he had just done.

 “That’s called the tug test,” he explained. “Sometimes, even though we think we’ve got a solid hookup, we really didn’t get a good lock on the king pin from the jaws. So