Well, note to self: Bone up on aircraft specs and jargon next time I have a flying scene. Other than that, it was a very energetic, vivid scene...until the pit bull went and bit a kitten.
I'm in the middle of my second novel, which treats of Cuba and the fictional autobio of a grown up Elian-like character, but the old bastard took ill and left his brother in charge, completely wrecking my plans. Now I'm redrafting all sixteen chapters that I had so far, in order to do something with this new state of affairs.
To celebrate the arrival of my cover art, which I then immediately sent back with comment, here's a new excerpt--one for which I did consult with a truck driver:
Chapter 16: Is at Hand
Page 158
The truck screeched to a halt. Bill woke up inside the trailer, where he slept seated on the floor, army fashion, shoulder-to-shoulder with thirty-five assorted Amazons, Occoneechee, Boy Scouts, Queer Americans, black militants and an assortment of other ethnic separatists.
Weapons were stacked alongside the other wall, the better to discourage shoot-outs among members of this strange band. Bill groped his way towards the loading entrance in the back of the trailer, first stepping on a few toes and waking some sleepers on the one side, then toppling the
rifles on the other. At length, he found it, lifted up the door, and climbed down. Still half asleep, he zigzagged his way to the cab.
“My shift? What’s up?” he inquired drowsily as he climbed into the passenger side. Then he looked ahead and exclaimed, “Sheeeyiiiiit,” when he saw the backed-up traffic.
“Union’s in retreat, damn their souls,” explained Fred. “Just got word over the CB from further up the line.”
“Sheeeeyiiiiiiiit!” Bill repeated. “Can’t those assholes do anything right? So what do you propose?”
Fred took the map out and read it carefully. “Gotta take her south and then west. Ain’t nothin’ else to do. We’ll have to turn off 501 for 642, then take 832 due west. Maybe we can start going north again on 29, ’fore we hit Chatham. Long as you’re here, take over. I’m going aft for
some Z’s.”
“You a navy man?” Bill asked.
“What’s it to you?” Fred demanded, suspicious.
“You just said ‘aft,’ like we was on a gawldern boat, is all.”
“What’s it to you?” Fred repeated as he put on the emergency brakes,
climbed down from the driver’s seat, and slammed the door behind him.
Bill shrugged, scooted over and put his foot on the brake, releasing the emergencies and holding her steady.
This was the first time Bill had run at night in a great while. His weekly delivery to Fort Bragg was strictly a there-and-back-again, eight-hour affair. Had he ever been a man with a house, delivering goods to an army base once a week during a civil war? That Bill Wescott seemed like a
separate person he once knew. He would not have recognized him now if someone had introduced him to his old self. But he still had his old habits, favorite expressions, and trucking experiences. The line of cars stretched on forever, a red, glowing snake with no end, never moving,
never tiring. The right lane, ordinarily reserved for northbound traffic, was now the exclusive property of a column of Union troops. The northern horizon was silent. No artillery-fire rumbled up ahead. No airplanes and ’copters flew low to harry the retreating forces. Bill put on the radio. The battle raged somewhere miles away. The news said the rebels were advancing to cut off the capital, and Bill gathered that the retreating forces were looking for a way east and north, so as to support Washington against its would-be besiegers. Must be some sort of rebel formation around Lynchburg, blocking the more direct route. The line
moved a little. Bill released the brake briefly, and the rig lurched forward ten feet. He brought his foot down again, stopping the trailer first and then the cabin. A neat maneuver he had performed thousands of times over
the years, and now had to repeat again and again and again and again and again, until his legs cramped and his feet squirmed inside their boots. No wonder Hampton had been so eager to be relieved. Bill’s head ached, his arms throbbed, and it seemed this would never end, that he would stay
stuck in traffic forever. As the Kingston Trio sang over the radio, “Did he ever return? No, he never returned, and his fate is still unknown…At least ‘poor Charlie’ had someone else do the driving,” Bill chuckled ruefully.
Crawling forward ten feet at a time, trailer brake, cabin brake, idle, accelerate, trailer brake, cabin brake, idle, etc., towards dawn Bill finally made his exit and turned onto it. All the balled-up, excruciating tension and fatigue suddenly flew out the window in one glorious, free-at-last moment, like a flock of geese headed south, as he came off the exit ramp and sped up to seventy, seeing his way clear. He passed another eighteen-wheeler, and made the universal sign of the Teamsters, a clenched fist stuck out the open window, moving up and down. The driver in the other truck honked his greeting, and Bill responded by
joyously leaning on the horn, shouting a rebel yell over the CB, celebrating his hard-won liberty to the open road, to the rose-colored East peeling back the night, and to the rumbling monster that surrounded him, indispensable linchpin of modern life; the big-rig truck. He controlled the T800, full-sized long-haul trailer and all, barreling along now at a base speed of sixty-five miles per hour, feeling the tonnage beneath, around, and behind him vibrate and fight his hold, the rig striving to simply obey the laws of physics and drift down the path of least resistance, to find a concrete highway divider to destroy itself upon. But all its struggles were in vain, because Bill had the wheel, and the monster was his to command. After two hours of uninhibited, unobstructed trucking, he knew the huge Kenworth’s every nuance and quirk. It
became his friend, and slowly turned into an extension of his own will; the poem for which no better words existed than the constant roar of engine and wheels, the world running backwards and behind him, only the cars
and trucks ahead remaining stationary, one with him in their fellowhunger for miles.