"Alan Dean Foster - Impossible Places" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

places…


Whatthehell. I mean, I know I was wired. Too many white crosses, too long on the road. But a guy’s
gotta make a living, and everybody else does it. Everybody who runs alone, anyway. You got a partner,
you don’t have to rely on stimulants. You half a married team, that’s even better. But you own, operate,
and drive your own rig, you gotta compete somehow. That means always making sure you finish your run
on time, especially if you’re hauling perishables. Oh sure, they bring their own problems with ’em, but I’d
rather run cucumbers than cordite any day.
Elaine (that’s my missus), she worries about me all the time. No more so than any trucker’s wife, I
guess. Goes with the territory. I try to hide the pills from her, but she knows I pop the stuff. I make good
money, though. Better’n most independents. Least I’m not stuck in some stuffy little office listening to
some scrawny bald-headed dude chew my ass day after day for misfiling some damn piece of paper.
Elaine and I had a burning ceremony two years ago. Mortgage officer from the bank brought over the
paper personal and stayed for the burgers and beer. Now there’s a bank that understands. Holds the
paper on our house, too. One of these days we’ll have another ceremony and burn that sucker, too.
So I own my rig free and clear now. Worked plenty hard for it. I’m sure as hell not ready to retire.
Not so long as I can work for myself. Besides which I got two kids in college and a third thinking about
it. Yep, me. The big guy with the green baseball cap and the beard you keep seein’ in your rearview
mirrors. Sometimes I can’t believe it myself.
So what if I use the crosses sometimes to keep going? So what if my eyesight’s not twenty-twenty
every hour of every day? Sure my safety record’s not perfect, but it’s a damnsight better than that of
most of these young honchos who think they can drive San Diego–Miami nonstop. Half their trucks end
up as scrap, and so do half of them.
I know when I’m getting shaky, when it’s time to lay off the little white mothers.
Anyway, like I was gonna tell you, I don’t usually stop in Lee Vining. It’s just a flyspot on the atlas,
not even a real truck stop there. Too far north of Mammoth to be fashionable and too far south of Tahoe
to be worth a sidetrip for the gamblers. A bunch of overinsulated mobile homes not much bigger than the
woodpiles stacked outside ’em. Some log homes, some rock. Six gas stations, five restaurants, and one
little mountain grocery. Imagine: a market with a porch and chairs. Lee Vining just kind of clings to the
east slope of the Sierra Nevada. Wouldn’t surprise anyone if the whole shebang up and slid into Mono
Lake some hard winter. The whole town. The market sells more salmon eggs than salmon. Damn fine
trout country, though, and a great place to take kids hiking.
Friendly, too. Small-town mountain people always are, no matter what part of the country you’re
haulin’ through. They live nearer nature than the rest of us, and it keeps ’em respectful of their humanity.
The bigger the country, the bigger the hearts. Smarter than you’d think, too.
Like I was saying, I don’t usually stop there. Bridgeport’s cheaper for diesel. But I’d just driven
nonstop up from L.A. with a quick load of lettuce, tomatoes, and other produce for the casinos at Reno,
and I was running on empty. Not Slewfoot: she was near full. I topped off her tanks in Bishop.
Slewfoot’s my rig, lest you think I was cheatin’ on Elaine. I don’t go in for that, no matter what you see in
those cheap Hollywood films. Most truckers ain’t that good-lookin’, and neither are the gals you meet
along the highway. Most of them are married, anyway.
Since diesel got so expensive I’m pretty careful about where I fill up. Slewfoot’s a big Peterbilt, black
with yellow-and-red striping, and she can get mighty thirsty.
So I was the one running on empty, and with all those crosses floating around in my gut, not to mention
my head, I needed about fourteen cups of coffee and something to eat. It was starting to get evening and
I like to push the light, but after thirty years plus on the road I know when to stop. Eat now, let the
crosses settle some, drive later. Live longer.
It was just after Thanksgiving. The tourists were long gone from the mountains. So were the fishermen,
since the high-country lakes were already frozen. Ten feet of snow on the ground (yeah, feet), but I’d left