Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
It was empowering in some ways, being a girl in a man’s world, earning money.
But it hadn’t been the… best of times for a woman in that world either.
Sure, in more recent times, a lot of women had taken up trucking. Back then, though, you only came across a few here and there.
I had never understood when I was younger why they’d all been older and harsher, brash, hardened, like life had been dealing blow after blow, and they needed to get tough enough not to be hurt by them.
The thing was, that was exactly what the life had done to them.
There were plenty of good, understanding, encouraging truckers.
But there were plenty of sexist, chauvinistic, perverted ones too.
And when I had the body of a woman and seemed to be operating my own rig, I was no longer anyone’s beloved ‘road daughter.’ I was more of a conquest for the shadier truckers to try to conquer.
I learned to carry knives. Bats if I was just running into a bathroom at a stop, or checking the truck, or getting fuel.
Even being that careful, though, there were a couple of close calls.
Once, it was a trio of guys at a rest stop. Not truckers at all, just local bad characters.
I could still feel the way fear had snaked around my throat, making my stomach drop, could still smell their cheap cigarettes and beer, as they backed me up against a wall.
See, you could have all the eye-gougers and knives you want, but when you were small and alone and outnumbered, you didn’t really stand a chance.
“Babe…” Voss said, pulling me back to the present.
“It didn’t get… as far as it could have,” I told him.
Not because they had any sudden crisis of conscience, or because I gained super strength, or because anyone acted as a Good Samaritan.
The attendant was just sneaking out back for a smoke, spooked them, and they ran off.
“But that was the first of, I don’t know, ten such situations over the course of a few years.”
“Christ,” Voss said, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Those were some rough years.”
I was eighteen when we finally stopped long enough for me to, legally, get my CDL.
“That coincided with my father’s first trip to detox. We were kind of stalled there for a while, so I took advantage of it. Got my license. Took a self-defense class or two. Started all of this,” I told him, waving at my tattoos.
“I’m assuming he didn’t stay on the wagon?”
“People rarely do the first time,” I said, shrugging.
There were years of trauma to unpack when it came to my father’s addiction, and the things I’d endured because of it, but I’d long since gotten over the bitterness I’d felt when I was younger.
See, the thing was, my mother had been right when I was a little girl.
My father did love me.
When he wasn’t drunk, he was always looking for ways to make the life on the road fun. Taking me to all the local attractions, giving me a lifetime of memories.
I saw every single beach from coast-to-coast.
Camped in the woods, learning to make fires and playing in streams.
I hit up every amusement park, rode every ride and ate enough cotton candy to make me sick.
He treated my ideas like they weren’t that of a child. He taught me how to interact with adults and people from all different walks of life.
He’d loved me.
When he could.
It wasn’t his fault that he was sick.
“But at least, the next time he relapsed, I was able to legally take over.”
I wasn’t constantly worried that someone was going to pull me over, arrest me, impound the rig.
But the more I did, the less my father felt like he needed to, the worse his addiction got.
“What was the last straw?” Voss asked. “Made you come to Navesink Bank?”
“It was a couple of things, I guess, but all in one night,” I admitted.
First, it was the night I’d been trying to find my father, going from bar to bar in a shitty area. When a big, hulking guy had taken advantage of my distraction, had beaten the shit out of me, and nearly gotten all my clothes off before my drunk-ass father came stumbling out of the bar.
He yelled.
The guy turned.
Then started going at my dad instead of me.
I managed to get myself dressed, grabbed my bat, and slammed it into the guy until he stopped attacking, until he was on the ground.
For all I knew, I killed the guy.
I just dragged my father back to the truck, sobbing the whole way.
As I was driving away from that whole situation, nerves jangling, aching from all the places I’d been hit, feeling his slimy touch all over my skin, my father started vomiting. Breathing weird. Then seizing.
“Overdosing?” Voss asked.
“Yeah.”
It was difficult, but not impossible, for a lifelong drinker to get alcohol poisoning.