Conroy's Solution

CONROY'S SOLUTION

         The sporty green car whipped in front of Conroy with no turn signal or any indication that the driver had even seen the truck. Conroy twisted the steering wheel sharply to the left and stomped his brakes, narrowly avoiding the car.

         "It's gonna be one of them days, Boy," he said to the attentive black dog sitting in the passenger seat. "Am I expecting too much of people? Here I'm driving a tractor-trailer rig sixty-five feet long, fourteen feet high, with a loaded weight of forty tons, and I seem to be invisible!"

         Conroy shook his head in wonder and spat a stream of tobacco juice out the window. It spattered the windshield of the Buick behind him like an enormous, brown-gutted insect.


         Driving alone for many years he had developed the habit of talking to himself and thinking out loud. He had solved all the problems of the world while rumbling along the Interstate highways. Lonely work.

         Just that morning though, as he was leaving a truck stop, the bright-eyed, short-haired dog raced up and jumped into the truck when Conroy opened the door. The animal couldn't be coaxed out, though truth be known Conroy did not try very hard. "Come along, then, Boy. I'll tell you some tales."

         The dog was a good listener. "I drive the big rigs, 18-wheelers, the life-line of America," Conroy told the dog. "From Los Angeles to Beantown, then down to Atlanta and back to Shaky City. If it'll fit in my trailer, I'll haul it. Produce, dry goods, animal hides -- ripe and stinking and getting worse with every mile. A ten-pound can of coffee spread around the trailer floor is the only thing that will absorb that stench of death. But still, I do what I do 'cause I love it."

         Traffic was slowing ahead. Conroy pulled to a stop directly behind the green car that had cut him off earlier. He could see that it was a woman driving. An abundance of blonde hair flowed down over her shoulders. She impatiently inched close to the bumper of the car in front of her.

         "Look what her speeding got her, Boy. Nothing. We caught up without even trying," he said, smiling at the dog. "Anyhow, like I was saying...I love what I do. Most people can't understand the freedom of the road, the independence I enjoy. And the money's damn good if I ignore the blasted government regulations."

         Boy stretched, turned in a circle and flopped onto the seat. "Ain't supposed to drive over ten hours a day," Conroy continued. "At sixty-five miles an hour a man can't roll rubber over enough miles to make a buck. So I run three sets of log books and drive until I drop. The Department of Transportation ain't smart enough to catch me . . . so I drive. As fast and as far as I can. Trucking economics demand it. You don't drive, you go broke. Lose everything . . . even your truck." He shuddered involuntarily at the thought. Without his truck he would be nothing.

         Traffic loosened up a bit. The green car swerved into the right lane. A sea of red brake lights lit up behind it.

         Conroy caught a glimpse of the woman's profile. She was young and attractive, and probably felt invulnerable in her car. Not him. How many flimsy little cars had he seen on the road, crushed like a stomped-on beer can after an accident? Dozens? At least.

         The girl turned her head suddenly and saw him staring. She made a very un-ladylike hand gesture. He sighed. The dog cocked his head questioningly.

         "Lots of benefits to being on the road, beside the money. Good food, a pioneer's sense of freedom and lots of loose women. The drawbacks? Too much regulation, high road taxes, having to use public showers at the truck stops and not much chance of a home life," Conroy said. He scratched between the dog's ears.

         "Had me a wife, once. Old gal had trouble being faithful with me gone a month at a time. She finally up and sold everything we had in our little apartment and the Yugo I'd bought her on credit. Took off with another trucker. She ran up debts that came back on me. Nearly lost my truck 'cause of her."

         Conroy studied Boy as if measuring the dog's faithfulness and found him a good risk. "I tracked her and her boyfriend to Wyoming. There's a couple of lush green spots not far off the Interstate up near Casper where I put 'em. Seemed a proper solution to the problem, considering. Shouldn't have almost cost me my truck. That's my home and my livelihood. Even if she didn't know better, I can't believe the boyfriend didn't. Must have been a union man."

         Conroy pointed ahead. "There's that same little filly in the green car. She's swerving back and forth between lanes like she owned the highway. That's probably the worst part of living on the road, Boy, the morons. My twenty years and over two million miles on the road have taught me that people are down-right ignorant. I've seen it all. From up here in my cab I've seen couples making love, careening down the white line doing seventy. I've seen 'em driving with their elbows, eating a doughnut with one hand and balancing a cup of steaming coffee in the other. Brushing their teeth, for God's sake! Now it's even worse, thanks to car phones.

         "I see a driver in the fast lane doing forty-five, yakking on a telephone, and I wish I could somehow will the receiver to transform into a revolver. The idea of it going off in the driver's ear, decorating the upholstery with a bloody smear of brains, gives me a buzz. Then they'd have a reason for holding up traffic."

         Boy lifted one ear higher than the other. "Yeah, name it and I've seen it. Women in curlers letting their kids jump from the front to the back seat, with no thought of seat belts. Letting the kids press their round little mugs against the rear window and make faces at me behind them. They've never seen what a child-projectile looks like after smashing through a windshield at highway speeds, bouncing off the hood, skittering and flopping loosely along the black pavement, tiny body broken and scraped free of skin before being struck by the tires of a passing car. Bursting like an over-ripe melon. I've seen it. Too many times."

         Conroy rolled his head, loosening his neck and shoulders. The bones popped like small-arms' fire. The sun burned down onto his left forearm and elbow, resting on the open window frame. That arm was five shades darker than the rest of him. His faded T-shirt advertised a truck manufacturer: "Truckers never get too old for sex--they just get a new Peterbilt!" Conroy, however, would put his Kenworth up against any truck on the highways.

         A black Mustang appeared in his driver's side mirror. A few seconds later it sped up and passed him. Then, leaving plenty of room, it pulled into his lane. Good driver, Conroy thought. Not like those who cut in front of me, then hit their brakes. 80,000 pounds of mass moving at sixty miles an hour doesn't stop on a dime. "Hah! Cut 'em off and call 'em sardines, 'cause they'll be bloody mush in a ready-made metal coffin before my rig gets stopped, even if I do hit my brakes," he chuckled.

         And sometimes it just wasn't worth it. All truckers know it. It is cheaper to kill than to maim. "Insurance premiums go out of sight if a trucker hits a car carrying a family of five -- and one survives. The bleeding-heart juries and prancing, performing ambulance-chasers will see to it that the survivor is awarded a multi-million dollar settlement -- even if the accident wasn't the trucker's fault," Conroy preached. "But, take out the whole damn family and the insurance company can usually settle for about a million."

         Some days are better than others. Conroy was feeling good this warm, dry July morning. The coffee and truck stop breakfast he'd had earlier, high in cholesterol and calories, still stuck to his ribs. He had chased breakfast with three "whites" and a couple of "Black Beauties" from a small glass bottle he kept in his pocket. He could drive another eight hundred miles before coming down.

         Driving was slow but steady as he maneuvered along in the center lane amid heavy traffic just west of Dallas on Interstate 20. L. A. bound, his K-Whopper's engine was purring like a satisfied cat, and the traffic seemed smart, getting out of his way. Garth Brooks sang his heart out from the stereo. Something about a high school sweetheart. "Garth would make a good trucker -- lots of country in him," Conroy told the dog. Boy, however, had been lulled by the motion of the truck and was snoring loudly from his seat.

         Conroy glanced to his left as he drew even with a familiar sporty, green Toyota. Umm. Another bonus of being a trucker, riding higher than the cars below. Looking down into the car he saw the blonde's hips and legs. Her legs protruded from a short, blue skirt that inched higher and higher as she accelerated and braked, accelerated and braked. Fine looking legs, Conroy mused. He eased further away to the right, away from the woman's car, trying for a more complete view. There. Now he saw her upper torso and face.

         As he'd thought earlier, she was young, with golden hair. Pretty profile. Pert breasts. Real eye-pleaser.

         Then she began a ritual that made him grip the steering wheel hard and stiffen his arms as tense as bow-strings. Anger made his face grow hot. Make-up. She was putting on make-up while clipping along at fifty-five miles an hour in dangerous stop-and-go traffic. She steered with one shapely knee while gazing in a mirror on the back of her sun-visor.

         He watched as she applied lipstick, pouting her full lips sensuously -- then mascara -- oblivious to the traffic around her.

         Her right fender edged toward him.

         He considered giving her a blast of his air-horn. Scare the crap out of her, then decided she might lose control of the wheel. Instead, he watched mesmerized as she colored her eyebrows with an eyebrow pencil. He saw her startled look when her knee slipped off the steering wheel.

         In a heartbeat her little car swerved into Conroy's lane. Instead of trying to regain control of her vehicle, the girl mashed her brakes -- hard.

         Conroy's front bumper smashed against the green car's rear bumper, jolting it forward, away from him, but only for an instant. Then he hit her again.

         The girl's bumper and trunk crumpled beneath the steel behemoth. Then his tractor nosed over her rear seat, climbing higher, devouring the girl's car as Boy would devour a string of sausages.

         The aching squeal of metal sounded like the screams of the damned, tearing, rending. Then came twin explosions as her rear tires blew out, mashed down by the weight of the tractor as it flattened the car.

         Sparks danced from beneath the car as metal screeched and dragged on pavement, a grating sound, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

         Conroy stopped his rig with only inches to spare between the grill of his tractor and the back of the girl's seat. The roof of the car, though crushed flat in back, was only partially compressed over the driver's seat.

         The girl could be unharmed, he prayed, climbing down from his cab and snatching up his fire extinguisher. "Stay," Conroy ordered Boy, unnecessarily. The animal was shaking with fear, cowered into the corner of the seat and door.

         Conroy walked cautiously to the girl's open window, alert for any sign of smoke or fire. Gawking motorists streamed by on either side of the accident. "You okay, miss?" he asked, craning his neck to look inside the demolished vehicle.

         "Ungh. Oh, help . . . help me," the girl moaned.

         She turned her face toward him. He shuddered, re-swallowed part of his breakfast -- recalled fried eggs and tomato juice.

         Gelatinous, snot-like slime oozed down her flawless cheek. The wooden eyebrow pencil protruded two inches out of her rapidly emptying eye-socket. She pressed her head back, against the headrest, breathing heavily. Her remaining blue eye was wide with pain and disbelief.

         "My eye. Help me," she whimpered, seemingly unhurt except for that ruptured orb.

         Funny, all the disjointed things that can flash though your mind during an emergency. Conroy saw everything clearly, intuitively. The girl wore no wedding ring -- no husband or kids? Her low-cut blouse, spotted now with blood and gory membranous stuff, revealed full breasts and a deep valley of pale cleavage. I should make her comfortable until help arrives, he thought.

         Then reality crept into his brain and slapped him like a jilted lover. What is an eye worth to a good-looking young woman? I'll lose my truck, Conroy realized with a shudder.

         I'll lose my truck!

         He watched the traffic flow until a gap appeared between cars, then reached through the open window and took the end of the dangling eyebrow pencil between his permanently grease-stained thumb and forefinger.

         He closed his eyes. He held his breath.

         With a swift punch he slammed the wooden pencil with the palm of his hand, shoving and twisting it in and upward. Tissue and thin bone parted. Hot liquid spurted over his hand.

         Hesitantly, he looked at her then. She flopped in a spastic death dance as the miniature stake pierced her brain. Damn, she was cute, he lamented, backing away from the window. He wiped his bloodied hand on his well-worn jeans and staggered back to his truck to call the police on the C.B. radio.

         While he waited for the cops and an ambulance to arrive, he tried to comfort Boy. The dog had relieved himself, and the inside of the cab smelled of fear-laden urine. The girl's car had smelled the same.

         Conroy dragged Boy onto his lap and smoothed his stiff black coat. "I sure hope that girl would have understood, Boy.

         "Nothing personal.

         Just economics."

The End

DMM