The Long Haul by Finn Murphy

Author:Finn Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

I was scheduled to meet the Joyce driver who was to train me in new procedures the day after Christmas at the Joyce warehouse in Oxford, Connecticut. The driver showed up late, looked drunk or drugged, and immediately got into an argument with Willie in the office. The discussion heated up, and when the driver came over Willie’s desk to make a particularly poignant point, Willie grabbed one of the Bantu spears off his wall (a gift from his sister, a UN aid specialist) and pinned him against a file cabinet with the tip of the spear at his throat. “Call nine-one-one!” Willie shouted. He held him there at spearpoint until the cops came and took the driver away.

Mike, another driver, showed up an hour or so later to load material for a big pack and load in Williamsburg, Virginia, to Las Vegas that would take two trailers. The driver for the second trailer didn’t show up (lots of drivers disappear after Christmas), so Willie reassigned me to Mike’s load. Willie told me that Mike was a good mover but had anger issues so I should be careful.

Mike was annoyed at being saddled with “a friend of the boss.” He made that clear from the moment he refused to shake my hand when we met. Mike’s one of those guys who lives out on the road because he can’t fit in anywhere else. He was wearing a T-shirt that said MY TWO BEST FRIENDS ARE CHARLIE AND JACK DANIEL’S, which told me just about everything I needed to know. Also traveling south with Mike were two Joyce movers, Nate and Carl. They were to spend the week in Williamsburg packing and loading, and then take the Greyhound back to Connecticut. Neither Nate nor Carl would ride with me in the Freightliner after I told them this would be my first road trip in years. They were sure I’d hit something or slide off the road.

My job was to follow Mike down with the second trailer, help him pack and load, then follow him to Las Vegas to unload. We headed out west on I-84 for the nine-hour slog to Williamsburg. Ironically, at the toll plaza near Newburgh, New York, a four-wheeler changing lanes banged into Mike’s trailer. The trailer wasn’t hurt, but the four-wheeler was. It took a couple of hours to get all the paperwork done. Mike was sure I had brought black magic to this whole trip. He told Nat and Carl to call me Jonah.

Mike had decided to take the western route to Harrisburg and then south on US 15 to the DC Beltway and down to Williamsburg from I-64 at Richmond. It’s not the route I would have picked. It was as if he wanted to test me, a seemingly green driver, to see if I could negotiate the Pennsylvania mountains in the ice and then drive the two-lane US 15 in the dark. But I drove carefully and slowly and arrived in Williamsburg about 5 a.

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