Truck Stop Curiosities
Having loaded his Peterbilt 579 in Terre Haute, Jake drove two hours east to the Richmond truck stop. He bolted awake from a fitful sleep two hours later, fingers and undershirt stained with chocolate and a replay of Hannity on his TV.
He’d taken a long piss in his urinal bottle earlier. Failing to get back to sleep, he decided to get out and empty it and get some air while he was at it. He was pouring his piss into a drainage grate when he heard a faint scream from somewhere in the lot. At first, he thought he’d imagined it or confused the sound of some bird for something human. But then he heard it again, low but blood curdling.
He crept and bobbed in between the rigs, trying to tune his ears to the sounds coming from them. More than two dozen trucks were settled in for the night and Jake heard unique noises from each as he passed. There were a couple of loud cell phone calls. Several had the engines running, probably for heat. Mostly, there were droning televisions — action flicks and late-night news. He thought he heard a couple banging in a Freightliner and lost a minute lingering nearby, trying to confirm the sounds which became indistinguishable from the noise of the highway nearby.
Then that scream again, and he thought he spotted the source. It was a Mack Pinnacle, long and gray with an aluminum trailer, suspiciously parked away from the lot. He crept up to its rear which had a door, not a liftgate. The door had an uneven bumper sticker that read “Clark’s Curiosities Sandusky OH.” Jake read the words at least three times, then pressed his ear to the trailer.
He peered back at the other trucks and the lanes between them and found that no one had approached. Then he heard it again, clear this time, a piercing cry that made his heart jump and his round belly quiver. Definitely a child. Jake had been reading for years online about child trafficking and how it had grown out of control.
“Hey,” he called softly. “You in there?”
He didn’t get a response. The trailer became eerily quiet, but he heard movement that couldn’t be coming from one child. It sounded like simultaneous tumbles of perhaps two or more children. A sudden quiet made him suspect the assailant was upon them. The thought of this made Jake back away from the trailer, stumbling in panic. He sensed that he’d come upon one of the interstate child sex trafficking rings that he’d read about online.
Sensing time was of the essence, he came as close to sprinting as a man of his girth could as he returned to his truck to get his Glock.
Jake didn’t mess with handguns coming up. They were common enough and he was pretty sure his pops had one, or even two. He just didn’t take interest in them, probably because his old man did. Growing up with his mama and only seeing pops on a rare weekend where Jake would sit watching TV as the old man got drunk, he came to despise everything about his father.
Shotguns were a different story. His maternal grandpa and uncle, both named Eddy, taught him to shoot fowl and deer and he always thought it was a good time. And he never even thought about a Glock until another night at a travel center in Ohio.
He had just settled into a booth at the food court, having mixed and matched a meal of Chipotle burrito, McDonalds’s fries, and a pasta salad from a Ronzio Pizza. Eating at these chains at truck stop food courts was once one of the perks of the job for Jake. It became less and less satisfying with each day, to the point where assembling these little combinations seemed necessary just to stave off madness.
On that night, that was exactly what Jake was trying to do.
“Shit,” he heard someone say, “I should’ve done something like that.”
He turned to find the source of the voice that was scratchy and mellow. It belonged to a black man sitting at the table next to him, grinning wide and eyeballing Jake’s mishmash of food.
The man was about Jake’s age, approaching fifty. But he was thin and dressed too well for a trucker, which the handheld CB on his tray proudly announced that he was. He wore clean dark jeans and a turtleneck. On the back of his chair hung a crisp wool coat. Jake, his mouth already full of burrito, a little sour cream in his moustache, mustered a smile.
The man continued, “I always have such a hard time deciding… and it’s just the same shit all the time. I need to mix it up.” Then he looked down in disgust at his own tray which held two slices of pepperoni pizza.
Jake swallowed excitedly. “I know. That’s why I started ordering this way,” his voice sounded twangy now, after hearing the black stranger. “You wanna know my favorite?”
“What’s that?” the man asked, finding a way to make his smile even wider.
“You know the one near Youngstown, with the Panera and Popeyes?”
The man nodded with feverous recognition.
“I like to get a Panera sandwich and some red beans and rice from Popeyes… fuck that whole bread or chips thing.”
“Mmm!” his counterpart had his eyes closed now and was rubbing his tummy, conveying his imagined ecstasy at this pairing.
“Try that out next time you’re passing through!” Jake was laughing and simultaneously shoving a few fries into his mouth, feeling more than comfortable with his new companion.
“Mind if I join you?” the man asked, lifting his tray a little to show he was ready to move.
“Come on over,” Jake waived enthusiastically and worked on some more burrito as the man neatly moved his jacket and tray to his new place.
“I’m Dell,” he said and held a fist over the table, which Jake awkwardly knocked his own fist into.
“Jake,” he spat back between mouthfuls.
The two men spoke loud and traded details of their lives and times on the road. Dell was from Chicago’s south side, it turned out, drove a Prostar with a flatbed tow, and hauled cars all about the Midwest.
Jake rarely had dining companions, especially not black ones from the south side of Chicago. He wasn’t no racist, but a biographical detail like that would normally put him on guard. But there he was, chowing down on a burrito and listening to Dell whose time on the road didn’t sound too different from his own. He was neater than Jake, spoke a lot about taking care of his truck, especially the sleeper section.
“It needs to be smelling nice for when I have lady friends over,” Dell had grinned, a little pizza in his mouth with his tone sharply turning low and conspiratorial.
“Where you meeting ladies?” Jake nearly shouted, then got a little red with embarrassment. He had little experience with women but didn’t need to be announcing it to half of Indiana.
“You ain’t on GetTrucked?” Dell asked.
Jake, who was scraping bottom in his fry cup, looked at him with genuine astonishment.
“Gimme yo phone,” Dell demanded, beckoning with one hand, and starting on his second slice of pizza with the other.
Jake handed over his phone and soon was looking through the profiles of nearby women interested in meeting up with truckers. Many were truckers too. None of them were what Jake would call pretty. But who was he to judge — balding with an unkempt goatee and a bulging belly under embarrassing man tits. He’d be lucky to roll about with any of these women.
“But you gotta keep it wrapped up if you know what I’m saying,” Dell said.
Jake nodded because he did know what he was saying. He’d once bought an eight pack of Trojans at a stop in Virginia because he thought he had a chance with a waitress there. All eight were still in a cubby in his sleeper.
“Speaking of protection, how are you defending yo self from jackers?” Dell leaned in, his eyes shining. Jake found himself agreeing to buy from his new friend before he’d even realized something was for sale.
Jake was sweating by the time he got back to his truck, quite the feat for winter in northern Indiana. He went straight to his sleeper to fetch the semiautomatic pistol Dell had sold him. It was kept in a gun safe under his bed.
His hands were too wet with perspiration on his first attempt at the finger pad on the Identilock. He dried his fingertips on his blanket and successfully detached it.
He fumbled with the magazine of hollow points and the Gemtech suppressor but got them both attached.
He paused a long time to consider the laser sight, still in its Truglo box. He hadn’t even had a chance to practice attaching the sight, but he might need it given that he also hadn’t been to the range. Dell had said he would meet up with him sometime and they’d shoot but Jake hadn’t been able to get in contact with him since that night.
Sitting there with the safe, the Glock, the sight, he found himself breathing hard and reconsidering the whole mission. Maybe he should just call 9–1–1 and work up the nerve to finally hook up on GetTrucked.
“Don’t be a pussy,” he scolded himself. “Let’s do this.”
Jake stood and tossed the Truglo box back in the safe and closed it. He knew it would probably be close quarters combat if it came to that. Hell, if I can’t hit a target a few feet away with children’s lives at stake, what’s the point of living anyway? He grabbed his tactical vest and put it on over his windbreaker and slipped the Glock into the vest’s pocket but kept his hand on the grip.
Back outside, the aluminum trailer of that Mack truck seemed a mile away and Jake’s heart pounded as he approached. He calmed himself with a mental dry run. He saw himself shooting the lock, then crashing through the door. This kind of thing always worked in the movies.
He would move in quickly, shooting any grown man once he judged they were far enough from a child.
If there was a grown woman — women get up to all kinds of evil these days too — he’d tell her to “freeze” and then fatally engage if they moved.
Approaching the Mack, he could make out sounds and multiple distinct voices coming from inside. They weren’t speaking in words but just making noises of different pitches. He heard another short high scream, a low groan, and what sounded like clicking.
Ready though he was to shoot the lock, there was no lock on the door. He decided the tormentor had to be inside the trailer. Some folks left the back unlocked but Jake couldn’t imagine that someone trafficking in kids would, unless they were inside.
He could just wait for them to exit, but…Those sounds. What could this monster be doing to those kids while I fret? He breathed deep, threw the door open, and dove inside, thrusting the Glock forwards.
It took Jake more time to process what he saw inside than he’d ever care to admit.
There was a man there, in a pen on the far end of the trailer. A naked, fully erect man that quickly grew flaccid. He held his hands in the air and wore earbuds. His pants were at his bare feet which stood in hay.
He was muttering something repeatedly — “Don’t shoot man.”
Now Jake had imagined himself shooting any man he saw. But he couldn’t even conceive of shooting. In fact, part of him forgot he was holding a gun.
Near the naked man was a stool holding a bottle of Astroglide and a tablet which was the main source of light in the trailer. Pornography played that couldn’t be heard by Jake.
The goat — a nanny — was the thing that Jake just couldn’t wrap his head around. She was silent, standing in front of the man chewing some hay at her feet.
“Where’s the kids?” Jake asked though he was already certain that there weren’t any children in the trailer.
“They’re right there, man,” the naked man gestured to the other pen, which was closer to Jake.
Inside the pen was a pair of young goats. One, which was laying sleepily in the hay, opened its mouth wide and let loose a scream that could easily be confused for a young child. But the other was a fresh new horror to behold. It sat in the hay making a low moan and a clicking sound simultaneously, each sound coming from a separate mouth that sat at the end of a separate face.
Jake put the Glock back into his vest and looked back at the pervert. He concentrated on the man’s face to avoid looking at his limp dick.
“Freaky, ain’t it?” the man said, and Jake couldn’t believe any of it. “Take whichever you want, man, but I don’t know how you can make it out of here with it.”
It was all too much for Jake. “This is unnatural!” he scolded, feeling his chest pound harder now. “Unnatural!” He backed out of the trailer and closed the door behind him.
Back in his Peterbilt, Jake considered doing some night driving to get away from the whole scene. He knew the other man was too humiliated to come after him. But he wanted to flee. He hated himself for it but couldn’t help it being true.
He removed the Glock, took off the vest, detached the magazine and suppressor, and started to put these things away in the safe with the laser sight and Identilock. He looked down at all the gear that he’d traded two thousand dollars cash for with the man he thought was the only friend he’d made in the past ten years.
Jake grabbed his phone and opened the GetTrucked app to find there were no matches still. Then he looked through a crop of new women who met his requirements — any age, any body type, any relationship sought. After looking at a few of their smiling faces and, giving them a thumbs up, tossed the phone on the bed and rolled onto the mattress as well.
He thought about going back…about throwing the door to that Mack Pinnacle’s trailer open and putting that two-headed goat out of its misery.
What kind of fate was this?
Clicking and moaning at the same time through what could only be a short life. Being a “curiosity” for gawking travelers of the highways.
What did those two faces see?
Did they see from two sets of eyes at once or one wide view of the ugliness around it? Or did they stare out and see nothing?
With his face hot and wet, Jake reached for the gun, wondering if the mother’s suffering warranted his mercy as well.
