Mark Maynard teaches fiction at Truckee Meadows Community College where he is also the Fiction Editor for The Meadow, an annual literary journal. Mark’s fiction has appeared in Shelf Life and The Duck and Herring Pocket Field Guide and his poetry has appeared in the Wild Things Tall Grass anthology.

Deadheading

The manufactured landscape of the Outpost Truckstop parking lot held dozens of aluminum arroyos that throbbed with the staccato pings of a hundred diesel engines. The motors held back the freezing night, the drivers cocooned against the cold, lulled to sleep by idling engines burning the fuel that cut into their livelihood as they slept.

There was a space in the third row of the lot. It was room enough for two trucks, but Billy Donovan was not able to maneuver as precisely as most drivers. He always hunted for the biggest spot he could find – his truck always parked at odd angles to the rest of the rigs, the trailer often slightly blocking one of the lanes leading to the diesel pumps. Parking stripes were often disregarded.

He clutched the table-flat steering wheel with both hands and cranked the machine into a jack-knifed turn as the metallic purple Peterbilt pulled to a stop. Many drivers kept their trucks as clean and detailed as they could, but Billy’s truck was a garish, gleaming machine that he washed at least twice a week. The trailer captured the attention of highway drivers with its airbrushed mural of a wagon train crossing Donner Summit on the left side and a sunset over the Truckee Meadows on the other. Billy had seen many cars swerve in his review mirrors, their drivers slowly pulling alongside and gawking at the details on his rolling vistas.

Billy could tell that the truck wasn’t straight in the spot, but he was hungry and tired of sitting in one place without moving around.

A great hiss shot from below the cab, the brakes exhaling compressed air and locking the wheels in place. Snow had just started to fall in large flakes and a dizzying pattern of cold dander appeared within the headlight beams; each crystal spun in its own vortex before disappearing again into the darkness at the edge of the cones of illumination.

Billy spoke aloud so that he would not forget any of his parking procedures.

“Lights off! Shift to neutral! Set parking brake! Logbook!” His thick lips glistened with spittle. He grunted and tugged to release the tension of the seat belt across his massive girth, pulling on the nylon strap until there was enough slack for him to release the buckle. He grabbed a spiral-bound black book from between the two seats. For many drivers the logbook was an afterthought at the end of a late night – for others it was a work of fiction that taxed the limits of its author’s creativity. For Billy, it was a difficult but honest undertaking. To fill it out required both physical dexterity and a basic grasp of math. He had neither.

Each page was divided into a twenty-four hour grid with four rows of hours: Off Duty, Driving, Sleeper Berth and On Duty (Not Driving). With a small plastic ruler, Billy tried to draw a straight horizontal line across the rows according to the hours he drove, slept, loaded and spent off duty. He cursed several times as his sausage fingers struggled to hold the pencil and draw a straight line, and he had to use a thick pink gum eraser several times. He finished his entry – four hours driving, eight off duty, four on duty (not driving), and eight in the sleeper – and zipped the book back into its nylon case. He opened the door of his cab and enjoyed the shock of cold air. He left the motor idling and climbed down onto the step mounted squarely across the top of his left fuel tank – one of a pair of giant chrome saddlebags that protruded like silver outriggers on either side of the cab. As he took the last step toward the ground, his body jerked when his large silver-plated belt buckle snagged on the top of the aluminum step. He kicked his legs, unable to find purchase on anything solid, and felt a sharp pain in his gut as his massive weight pressed down on the saucer-sized buckle that stabbed into layers of soft fat. He had to lift himself up by the grab bar next to the door and reach along his soft underbelly until he was able to release himself with more cussing and grunting. Already the moisture in his scruffy salt-and-pepper beard was beginning to freeze.

As he walked alongside his truck and then down the massive rows of other rigs lined up in parallel lines, Billy could now see his footprints in the light dusting of snow on the blacktop. He stopped in the narrow space between a car carrier and a flatbed and lay on his back on the hard, cool pavement. He waved his arms and legs in a horizontal jumping jack. He closed his puffy, thick-lidded eyes and focused on the feeling of snow landing on his thick, outstretched tongue. After several minutes, he stood to admire his black angel flanked in white. It made him think of Anise for a moment and he smiled.

Billy noticed that steam was coming out of his mouth. He pushed as much air out of his belly as he could and watched as dragon puffs of smoke shot into the sky, backlight by the yellow parking lot lights. Soon it hurt to breathe the cold air, and he continued on his way to the coffee shop.

As he crossed the lot, Billy was greeted by several of the regulars as they headed in and out of the shop and café. He had as many different pet names as there were drivers that knew him.

“Good evening, Champ.”

“Howdy, Cowboy.”

“How’s it goin’ Wild Bill?”

“How’s your peter built, Billy?”

That one always made him laugh. He knew that it had something to do with both his truck and his pecker. He didn’t get why it was funny, but the guys always chuckled so he laughed along with them. Many of these drivers had let Billy spend time behind the wheels of their own rigs in the parking lot. They’d adopted the middle-aged, newly orphaned, retarded guy several years ago and had been collectively determined to help him pass his written and practical tests so that he could get his CDL. He bought his rig with his mother’s life insurance payout and had it delivered to the gravel overflow lot where it sat in the guarded compound until he could legally drive it. The truckers, the security guards, maintenance men, coffee shop waitresses, and store employees loved having Billy around. He inspected their tires and tie-downs, and was always willing to help strap down a load, hold a flashlight, or turn a wrench. He was a surrogate child for many long-haulers who didn’t see their own sons and daughters for weeks at a time. They’d pay him a little cash to clean out their cabs after a long run, and he was the resident source of information when it came to the nearby Palomino Ranch brothel, a favorite stopover for several of the road-weary men.

Jean was pouring coffee for another late-night customer at the lunch counter when she saw Billy waddle in the door, grab the scattered sections of a newspaper from the hostess stand, and head to his favorite booth by the window.

“Billy! I’ve missed you, sweetheart.”

“Hi Jean. I’m hungry.” Billy plopped onto the vinyl seat and pushed the formica table away from his girth.

“I’ll go tell the cook to put your meal right on.” Jean walked over with the silver carafe in her right hand and flipped over the ceramic white mug in front of Billy, only filling it halfway. He grabbed the ribbed cylinder of sugar and began dumping a cascade into the coffee. Even at arm’s length Jean could smell him – a funk of sour cabbage, rancid meat, and wet dog, all suspended in the sweat of a day laborer. She held a long breath to let a retching feeling pass and silently counted as he emptied five – this never varied – of the little corrugated plastic containers of half-and-half into the coffee and whisked it with his spoon.

“I’ll get your order in honey. How was your drive?”

“Good. I’m tired. And hungry.”

“I’m movin’ as fast as this old lady can.” She smiled and shuffled back into the kitchen and wrote out his ticket: scrambled eggs with cheese, side of bacon, side of ham, side of sausage, two buttermilk biscuits with gravy, hash browns, bowl of Fruit Loops, and a large glass of whole milk. The enormous man had an appetite to match, and he always ate breakfast in the coffee shop regardless of the time of day.

Billy sorted through the sections of the Reno Gazette Journal he’d grabbed on the way in and restacked them in his order of preference. Comics, Sports, TV Week, and then the glossy full color advertisements for Wal Mart, Kohl’s, Target, and his favorite, the Outdoor Superstore.

He was halfway through the funnies when Jean set his meal before him. The thin knobs of her wrist bones showed the strain of carrying his overloaded plates. He tossed the sections in a crumpled pile on the peach upholstered banquette next to him and began dowsing his plate in salt, pepper, Tabasco, and a thick layer of ketchup.

It took Billy fifteen minutes of determined labor to clean his plate. Once done, he left a ten and a five on the table and grabbed the newspaper, carrying it in front of him like a cafeteria tray. Jean caught him on the way out the door.

“Bye Billy! Don’t forget to hit the showers, sweetheart.”

She held out a handful of brass tokens for the drivers’ showers and waited for him to set the paper on an empty table near the door. He held out his hand and she pressed the worthless discs into his meaty palm. He looked at the coins and then stuffed them into the pocket of his pants that already bulged with change, fuel receipts, keyrings, his cell phone, and his St. Christopher medal.

“It’s not Thursday, Jean.”

“No, Billy, it’s only Monday, but an extra shower never hurt anybody!”

“Yeah. Right. Night Jean.”

Billy felt the night bite his cheeks as he opened the door of the coffee shop and stepped out into the fluorescent night of the truck stop. The snow had stopped and the temperature had dropped. The passing storm clouds glowed orange in the city lights as they blew east toward the Palomino Ranch. The few regulars in the lot tonight greeted him on his way back out to the lot and his idling truck which was as warm as he’d left it.

He stripped to his filthy white underpants, put his favorite Patsy Cline “lullabies” in to the overhead CD changer, and climbed under a soiled Sponge Bob Squarepants comforter in the lower bunk of his sleeper, a small bedroom centered behind the two front captain’s chairs in the cab of the Peterbilt. This was Billy’s home. It was all that he needed. He slept on the large mattress and there was a smaller upper berth that folded flat against the carpeted wall above him although he’d never had any overnight guests. He kept inviting Anise, and she had promised that they could do it in his sleeper on one of his next visits, but they hadn’t yet. The stock sleeper in a semi is the size of an office cubicle. Billy had started tricking his out and couldn’t stop. There were tubes of LED lighting that snaked around the interior that pulsed from red to blue to green and back in an endless rainbow cycle of light that would not be out of place in a garish limo hauling teenagers to prom. The walls were quilted velvet with brass nail heads anchoring the fabric. He had a 12-volt microwave, mini-refrigerator, and a DVD/TV combo mounted on a swivel bracket to the sidewall where he could watch it while laying on his mattress. He’d spent so much on aftermarket parts for his truck that the lawyer overseeing the trust set up by the insurance company had to cap Billy’s monthly allowance for home improvements.

He dimmed the tube lights, sang along to his favorite song (he’d been called “crazy” since he was a boy and he liked to pretend she sang it just for him) and fell asleep, lulled by the vibration of his idling engine and the sweet Shenandoah twang of Patsy Cline.

Billy awoke to the rumble of the trucks on either side of him hitting the road. The sound of compressed air and the revving horsepower had become his alarm clock. Most drivers set out early after just enough sleeper time (some of it dubiously fabricated, their hours spent driving entered as sleeping or resting, the departure and arrival times changed to mask speeding) to satisfy the required hours should their logbooks be scrutinized at the next truck scale. Billy tried to start his day early, but rarely drove before lunch. He hated to drive hungry and he never had far to go. Snow was falling again; it was starting to stick to the ground outside his cab.

After his usual midday breakfast, Billy returned to his truck and grabbed his notebook, a pen, and the Billy Club. He tucked the notebook in the breast pocket of his XXXL pearl button western shirt and slipped the leather thong of the tapered wooden club over his right wrist. He began with the tires on his own truck and empty trailer, whacking each one with the club to see if there was any gummy give or telltale thunk of a flat.

Satisfied, he moved through the lot that was now enveloped in a knee-deep mist for the melting snow on the warming blacktop. He checked the tires on every truck still remaining in the lot. Anytime he found a flat (or a loose chain binder, ripped tarp, broken light, shifting load or any other potential trouble for a fellow driver) he wrote a description of the cab, the name of the trucking company, and the DOT number of the truck in his notebook and then headed into the shop to make his daily report. Billy’s routine saved the drivers thousands of dollars every month in “fix-it” tickets that were often written at truck scales for burned out lights, loose air lines, and poorly adjusted brakes. He also increased the service profit for the truck shop every month, ensuring that worn tires and other bad parts were replaced at the Outpost and not further west in Sacramento or east in Winnemucca or Salt Lake City. For his efforts, driver and the shop foreman would often slip Billy a ten or sometimes even a twenty-dollar bill.

Billy had almost worked his way through the half-empty lot when he spotted a truck he hadn’t seen before idling at the far end. It was an older Kenworth reefer from Alabama. As he was checking the tires on the driver’s side of the trailer, he heard the door fly open and saw a slim man jump off the top of the gas tank wearing only a scowl, a pair of flannel boxer shorts, and a pair of worn cowboy boots. The man glared at Billy.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” As the driver shouted over the compressor he looked up and down. “You fucking RETARD! Get the hell away from my truck.” The driver grabbed the end of the Billy Club and yanked. The leather thong dug into Billy’s skin, then snapped. The driver raised the smooth black wood high overhead to emphasize his anger and control of the situation. “If I catch you near my truck again, I’m gonna…”

Billy Donovan was fairly nimble for an obese, mentally retarded man wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots, and he was deceptively strong. Before the driver could sidestep his lunge, Billy was on top of him on the wet asphalt and already had his club back in hand. It only took one blow for Billy to knock the man unconscious.

Billy watched the thin, almost naked driver for a moment. He’d sprawled spread-eagled onto the pavement, coming to rest on his back. The steam rising off the asphalt made him look magic, like he was swimming in clouds. His skinny chest was breathing, stretching the skin taut over his visible ribcage, but he wasn’t moving or making a sound. The thin man’s square jaw was bristled grey and remained still. Satisfied the man would no longer bother him, Billy finished checking the reefer truck and found one of the inner tires on the right hand side of the trailer was flat. Billy scribbled in his notebook, stepped over the prone driver and finished checking the three other remaining trucks in the lot, then headed into the shop.

It was a weekday, and John the shop foreman was behind the service desk.

“Morning Bill. Give me a second to help this gentleman and I’ll go over your report with you,” he said as he took paperwork from a driver at the counter. Billy sat on a vinyl chair and thumbed through a huge aftermarket parts catalog propped on a stand on the countertop. When the other driver walked out the door of the shop, he flipped open his notebook and slid the day’s dog-eared page of notes across to John.

There were six flats or low tires in the lot, a load that looked like it had shifted, and a loose tarp on a hay wagon. Billy finished up his report.

“And there’s a guy laying on the ground next to his truck and it has a flat too. His truck is a green Kenworth. His truck is from Alabama.”

“Did you say he’s laying on the ground?”

“Yup.”

“Did he look hurt?”

“Not before I hit him.”

“You punched a driver?”

“I hit him with the Billy Club.”

“Jesus Billy! Take me to him. Now!”

Billy led John out of the shop and pointed across the lot. The two headed toward the Kenworth. The driver had come to and was on his hands and knees trying to regain his senses. He shivered in the cold air. Billy and John approached him.

“Get the hell away you goddamn retard!” he yelled at Billy. When he raised his head to speak he looked like a dog barking.

“Easy man,” John purred in the same voice he used to soothe irate customers at the counter in the shop, “Billy – go back to your truck and wait for me there.”

“But…but…”

“Billy, go to your truck and wait.” John squatted next to the man who remained on his exposed hands and knees in the snow.

“Okay.”

Billy knew that he was in trouble for hitting the man with his club. John was mad at him. He was worried that they might take his truck away and not let him drive anymore. That wasn’t fair because he lived in his truck and he wouldn’t let anybody take away his house. He climbed up into the driver’s seat and thought about what he could do. Several minutes later, he climbed down from the cab and walked to his trailer. He cranked down the landing gear. He unhooked the air lines from the back of the cab. He unlocked the kingpin on the fifth wheel. He gave everything one final look and climbed back into the driver’s seat. He started the engine, let it warm up and, as soon as the air pressure built up enough to release his brakes, he began to pull the long way out of the lot, in the opposite direction from where he knew the green Kenworth was parked so that he would not be seen escaping.

John opened the small oval porthole door of the stupefied driver’s Kenworth sleeper and grabbed a comforter, a wool blanket and a foam rubber pillow shaped like the bottom of an egg carton. The little guy sat cross-legged in the fresh snow and shivered. John could count his ribs through the sun-wrinkled turkey skin of his chest. His forearms were all sinew and tendon encased in scabby, bruised parchment. He had a tattoo of a galloping horse on his shoulder. John lay the comforter on the snowy asphalt and helped the man slide onto it. He then swaddled him in the blanket and placed the foam block beneath his head from which sprouted thick, stringy brown hair that badly needed to be cut. Billy had whacked him good with the club and it seemed obvious that the man had a slight concussion, but besides a swollen left eye and a killer headache, he thought the guy probably wasn’t too much worse off than when he woke up this morning.

Once the driver was able to get on his own feet, he slowly eased himself into his sleeper tugging on John and the chrome grab bar bolted to the side of his truck. He dressed in blue jeans and a down vest, and set a straw cowboy hat that was stained with a dark crown of sweat and hair gel atop his head.

John led him to the coffee shop, bought him breakfast and had the waitress bring a batch of ice cubes wrapped in a dingy dishtowel. His name was Fred Pollard and he held the lumpy frozen mass on his own swollen face, leaning into the rag with his eyes closed. Pollard was livid. He didn’t hold back about anything that’d happened. When he finished with his vulgarity-laced story, John knew he had some leverage because Pollard had raised the club over his head as if to strike Billy, even if he never intended to. In a quiet, calming voice, John laid out his bargain.

By the end of breakfast, Pollard had agreed not to report Billy to the Nevada Highway Patrol. John explained Billy’s special status with the regular crowd at the Outpost Truckstop and that they wouldn’t take kindly to an outsider getting him locked up or kicked off the road. John pointed out that an altercation between two drivers would guarantee an intense examination of each driver’s equipment, log book, driving record, bills of lading, load, sleeper, and a DOT drug test. He added that he was 100% sure that Billy’s tests and inspections would come back squeaky clean. The only thing Pollard asked for in return was a couple of free minor repairs in the shop – including the flat tire – and a personal apology from Billy.

Billy loved driving past downtown Reno on the freeway at night. Each building was garishly painted by colored lights that shone inward and upward, each casino tower like an onstage performer. It gave the six square blocks a bright rainbow hue enhanced further by day-bright entertainment marquees, neon trim, and architectural facades designed to draw as much attention to themselves as they could. This spectacle was beautiful as it rolled past the driver’s window at sixty-five miles an hour.

But in the white glare of an afternoon snowstorm, downtown looked drab. The bleached concrete of the unlit casinos through the curtain of ashy flakes made the buildings look like a row of immense bones. Billy rarely ventured into the downtown corridor – the narrow one-way streets and the haphazard clumps of drunken tourists scared him. His only joy driving downtown was to cross the Truckee River driving north on Lake Street, under the steel framework of the retired Reno arch long ago replaced by a bigger brighter version that straddled Virginia Street two blocks to the west.

He preferred the crowd at the truckstop. And the whorehouse. As Billy rolled up the hill out of Reno he noticed that the storm hung thick and dark gray up the Truckee River canyon. The electronic billboard on the Robb Drive overpass did not yet call for chains over the summit and the inspection station on the Nevada side was still not set up. As long as he got to Donner Summit before the snow piled up on the road, he would not have to pull over and chain up the cab. He made good time up the narrow canyon and didn’t have to stop at the scale because he was bobtailing it over the summit.

Billy sang “Truckin’” out loud whenever he was deadheading. The guys at the Outpost had explained that Deadheads were not the same thing as deadheading – but he really didn’t understand why.

Most guys hated to burn fuel without a paying load behind, but Billy loved to feel the truck speed up the mountain without the tug of a trailer. The swinging pull of towed goods always scared him a little bit, like a growling dog had latched onto the seat of his blue jeans. He rolled his tractor past the batch plant near the Donner Pass Road offramp and started the steep climb towards the summit. The spitting snow turned to large, uneven flakes that started to stick to the road, obliterating the lane lines as Billy shifted and accelerated up the winding ribbon of truck-worn, weather-pitted concrete.

John could see the corner of Billy’s empty trailer angled awkwardly in its extra-wide spot from his seat by the coffee house window. The snow had picked up in the last half hour and he decided that Pollard could use another pot of coffee and some Advil before they went out to confront Billy. It was agreed that John would talk to Billy first and then have him apologize to Pollard. Fred was headed westbound and wasn’t too keen on chaining up and driving in the snow anyway. He hoped to get started late in the afternoon after the storm had moved on to the east. He’d sped westward from the Dakotas with a load of frozen buffalo meat and wouldn’t be able to deliver it to Oakland until Monday anyway.

Pollard was in no rush to step away from a free meal, and after a breakfast that could almost rival a Billy Donovan feast, he was enjoying hot black coffee, a piece of fresh Boston Cream pie, and, most of all, the sympathetic attention of Claire, the nineteen-year-old waitress who worked weekday mornings while her mother watched her young child. It was another half-hour before John walked alongside Billy’s trailer and realized that the tractor was not attached.

“What do you mean he’s gone?” Fred Pollard was feeling the buzz of his eighth cup of coffee, and the pain reliever was losing its effect.

“Billy’s trailer was unhitched and he’s bobtailing around somewhere.”

“Let’s call out the troopers, they’ll find him.”

“No. There’s only two places that he could be headed – one’s eastbound the other west.”

“What’s westbound?”

“The Blue Canyon exit.”

“And east?”

“Palomino Ranch.”

“The whorehouse?”

“Yep.”

“Then let’s head eastbound friend.” Pollard smiled, revealing caffeine and nicotine yellowed teeth and a gap where a front incisor had long been missing, “I’m puttin’ this one on the retard’s tab.”

Billy could barely see ahead through the blowing snow as he drove past the summit sign and rest stop, and it didn’t improve at all on the downslope. A chain control had gone into effect several miles behind him and he saw only a few cars traveling west with him on the divided highway. As each one passed, it startled him–a pair of headlights slowly peeking out of the blizzard as dull yellow starbursts, then fading red back into the storm ahead. As the cars pulled alongside, he feared that he would see red flashing lights and hear a loudspeaker ordering him to pull over to be arrested for hurting the mean, skinny little driver. Or killing him. He had to creep along in the slow lane and watch for the guardrails and road markers in order to stay on the road. His hands clenched the wheel tightly. Driving in a Sierra snowstorm required a great deal of concentration – something that was immensely difficult for Billy. The snow streaking at his windshield reminded him of the Millennium Falcon’s jump into hyper drive, and it helped him to ignore the sick feeling in his belly – the fear about what might happen to him, to his truck, to his life. By the time he reached Blue Canyon there were a few inches of snow on the road.

Billy pulled off into the extra wide shoulder lane for trucks. About every tenth of a mile stood a porta-potty and Billy went past three of them until he found the right spot and pulled to the edge of the blacktop. This was where his mom had died.

Just ten feet from the widened shoulder was a gleaming white wooden cross with the misspelled name, Jack-ee Donavan, crudely handwritten in black Sharpie. A chrome Jesus was bolted on the front of the cross. Billy had found The Savior in a catalog on the counter of the chrome shop that normally sold skulls, longhorn cattle, and the silhouettes of nude women to trim out mud flaps.

“I don’t want the dead Jesus,” Billy said when he’d put in the order. “I want him happy with his arms out like when he parted the ocean.”

“I think that was Moses,” the man taking his order replied.

“No. It was Jesus.” Billy was mad that the man argued about his bible smarts.

“Hi Mom.” Billy knelt beside the little memorial and lightly stroked the top of the cross. “I think I’m in trouble.”

He kissed the top of the cross and then squatted cross-legged in the snow. After a few minutes, he felt the sting of cold through his insulated coveralls. By then he was completely dusted in snow and the canvas fabric was stiff with frost.

It was a twenty-minute drive from the Outpost Truckstop to the Palomino Ranch brothel in good weather. With the slick roads, it took John and Fred Pollard forty-five minutes in the one-ton utility truck that belonged to the shop. Pollard was dumbfounded that Billy owned his rig outright despite the fact that he rarely had a paying load, usually deadheading Interstate 80 between Reno and Sacramento, picking up the occasional short haul along the way. John told him about Billy’s mom’s accident and how she had died of a broken neck, her body cradled in the arms of the first person to arrive on scene – a trucker from Stockton who was hauling a shipping container to the Port of Oakland. When Billy received the proceeds of his mother’s life insurance policy and the first payment from a trust she had set up to care for him, he found his used rig for sale at the Peterbilt dealership and wrote a check for the truck he wasn’t even licensed to drive. The ongoing monthly checks paid for driver’s school, and were more than enough to cover food and diesel – with plenty left over for his love of chrome, lights, horns, and other needless accessories. It had taken Billy three years of trucking school and the help of the Outpost regulars before the fat man-child finally had his CDL.

“So why the hell does he drive back and forth over the same road.”

“He usually heads up to the little memorial he built for his mom.”

“So why are we coming out here then? Is Billy some kinda pussy hound?”

John laughed. “I guess you could say that. Truth is he’s got himself a girlfriend of sorts here. When something’s bothering him he sometimes comes out here to see her.”

“Does he pay her? I mean, do they…fuck?”

“Of course. Billy may be slow but he understands business well enough. Besides, she doesn’t charge him more than her average rate.”

“You’re kidding me? She doesn’t jack up her prices to sleep with that slobbering fat ass?”

“Easy Fred. Billy’s a friend to a lot of people. Myself included.”

“Right,” he laughed, “but he did knock the shit out of me. Maybe I’ll take his girl for a spin.”

They parked the truck in the large gravel lot and walked to the front door of the brothel through a small wrought iron gate. John rang the bell and pushed the heavy security door when the buzzer sounded. They walked into a dimly lit room with a bar on one end, a pool table in the center, and several plush couches at the other end. A woman in her early sixties greeted them from behind the bar.

“Hey Johnny! It’s nice to have some company. You and your friend want a beer?”

“No thanks Estelle. Billy been in today?”

“Nope, and I wasn’t expecting him. Anise’s next shift ain’t til next week.”

“Alright. Thanks.”

“You boys leavin’ so soon?”

John looked at Pollard and raised his eyebrows. Pollard smiled and nodded to Estelle, “I think we better wait out this weather before we get back on the road.”

“I guess I’ll take that beer then Estelle.” John walked over to the bar and made himself comfortable knowing that Pollard would be at least an hour.

Billy knew that the road was slippery and white in either direction, and he didn’t want to get in more trouble for not having chains on when he was supposed to. He had a microwave lasagna in his little fridge and a stack of his favorite DVDs. He decided to spend the night in the truck parking area and hope for the storm to end by morning so he could turn around and head back to the Outpost. He felt better after talking to his mom but he knew that he was still in trouble for cracking the man’s head. He couldn’t help himself when the little man started screaming “retard” at him and tried to hit him with his own club.

He left the engine idling to power the heater and his microwave. He zapped his dinner before stripping to his skivvies and climbing under his SpongeBob blanket. He put Patsy Cline on the stereo and pulled a small paper bag from under the mattress of his sleeper bed. This was the secret part of his nightly routine. In the bag was a stack of eight Polaroid photos that Anise had her friend Cheyenne take. His number one girl had posed just for Billy, and each shot got raunchier. The first showed the high-browed black girl in lacy red lingerie, and the final shot had her posed naked in Billy’s favorite position, on all fours, her face turned, smiling over her shoulder. Anise told him she liked to do it that way best because then Billy didn’t squish her like he did when he was on top. She called it doggy which made him laugh. He ended up liking it because it made his sticky white pee come faster than any other way they did it.

Billy pulled out his photos and put them on top of his mattress. He pulled his underpants off and stuffed them onto a small shelf above the bed. He looked back and forth at the different snapshots and quickly got himself off, lying face down to minimize the mess. Once he’d finished, he was very sleepy. He smiled at the smooth brown body still posing naked on the comforter next to him. He liked sleeping here at the parking area; it made him feel like his mom was sleeping in the room next door, just like when she was alive.

Fred Pollard was a little more flush than John had thought, and they didn’t end up leaving the Palomino until almost two hours later. By then, John had downed several beers at the bar and had lost $25 to Estelle on the pool table. The snow hadn’t let up and John decided that they should head back to the Outpost, let Pollard catch some sleeper time, and head up to Blue Canyon in the morning to find Billy. If they rode up tomorrow morning in Fred’s rig, he’d be halfway to Sacramento by eight o’clock. John could hitch a ride back with Billy.

John dropped Pollard off at his truck and headed to the shop to find out how the day had gone. By the time John finished his paperwork and headed home to sleep, Pollard was already pulling his truck out of the tire shop and back out into the lot to do the same.

The two men met for an early breakfast in the coffee shop and merged onto I-80 westbound about six-thirty. The road had recently been sanded, salted, and plowed to the pavement after having been closed during the night for several hours. They made fairly good time and Pollard appreciated having John along not only for company but because he also intimately knew this stretch of road. They reached the Blue Canyon parking area a little after nine, and Billy’s truck was covered in a foot of snow and parked right where John had said it would be. A moonscape of wind-drifted snow obscured the truck’s hard lines, and the wheels had disappeared in wind-serried mounds.

John walked alone to the shining purple tractor and knocked on the door of the sleeper behind the driver’s door.

“Billy. Billy. Good morning. Billy, It’s John. Wake up buddy!”

John knocked several more times on Billy’s sleeper, then looked back at Pollard’s idling truck and shrugged. After a few more minutes, John opened the unlocked driver’s door.

The cab was enveloped in a thick atmosphere of warmth, the sweet voice of Patsy Cline and the mingled scents of lasagna and sour body odor. Snow had drifted against the vertical windshield and everything was cocooned in a dull grey-white glow. The curtain behind the two seats that separated the sleeper from the cab was closed, and John called Billy’s name once before opening it. He pulled the heavy blue velour aside. Billy lay face down, covering the entire mattress with his naked girth. John laughed at the absurd pink body sprawled across the sleeper. Mounds of fatty tissue gave way to gullies and foothills of rolled skin. The crack of Billy’s ass sprouted tufts of wiry hair, and his cheeks looked like a set of pimpled mud flaps. One arm rested under his torso, the hand obviously engaged with Billy’s dick, and the other clutched two square glossy pictures of Anise. A pile of several other photos was on the mattress nearby, resting on a small brown paper bag. John patted the massive shoulders and noticed that they were cold despite the stifling heat of the sleeper.

“Billy?”

It took John a moment to realize that Billy was not asleep.

“Billy. Billy! Wake up God Dammit!”

John looked at the massive naked body splayed in front of him. He knew that underneath the corpulence something had burst. A vessel or an artery. Or the overworked heart had just stopped.

He took the photos from Billy’s hand. He neatly placed the stack back in the paper bag and pulled the Sponge Bob blanket up over Billy’s head.

Pollard waited with John until the Highway Patrol arrived.

“Sorry about old Billy,” Pollard consoled John.

“Yup. It’s too damn bad. It’s a goddamn bad thing…He would’ve apologized you know.”

“Yeah. I feel bad about the whole thing.”

John could not think of anything to say to fill the long awkward pause. Finally, Pollard quietly mumbled, “well, see ya around John.”

John watched the Kenworth disappear down the road and returned to answering the patrolman’s questions about Billy. An hour later, the lawyers had been called and the coroner arrived to pick up the body, and John signed off as “next of kin” so that he could take charge of Billy when they were done with him. The coroner performed an autopsy because the death was “unattended,” and John was not surprised when the results revealed a massive heart attack brought on by obesity, untreated diabetes, and severely clogged arteries.

Many of the Outpost regulars pitched together with John and tried to lobby the state to put in a small, permanent rest area where the truck parking lane and porta-potties still stand, but no one seemed to be able to get the right approvals or find the money in the budget.

Instead, set back from the side of the road at the edge of a beautiful pine forest, there are now two large steel crosses that have replaced Jackie’s old wooden one. From the front of each one, an un-crucified Jesus blesses the westbound traffic, arms outstretched in gleaming chrome.