Long Haul
A war, a road, and a choice.
Maxwell Flanagan steps out of the cabin under the cold light of the flickering fluorescent lights at 1:04 am, somewhere in the nowhere that is between northern Georgia and the bottom of South Carolina. He runs the company card through the terminal via his wristwatch and stares at the numbers calculated against the nine dollars it costs to buy a gallon of diesel, the dancing digits on the faded LCD screen is the last papercut against his soul for the day. As he watches, he rolls through what is left for him to do.
Park. Shower. Bed.
That’s how he speaks to himself. More like a dog command than a conscious thought. He follows his own orders to the letter.
In the sleeper cabin of the Mack, he hits the foam mattress and closes his eyes, dreading what comes next.
He is standing on the edge of the pit, an open burning mouth that leads to the gates of Hell. Randall is standing on the other side of the red, hot ring, his dark skin shining in the firelight, his eyes aglow like a wild animal’s. It terrifies Max, reminding him of the lions you see on National Geographic hunting in the dark savannah.
“And you thought the days were hot, didn’t you, Max?”
Maxwell looks down, and he knows he’s in the uniform, back again. Back in Iraq.
Max wants to plead with Randall to step away from the pit. To scream at him to step back.
Don’t you know what will happen? Don’t you know this is what kills you? This fire won’t stop till you’re a shriveled husk. Till you wither away. Away.
That’s what he would say. If he could speak. But the dream never lets him. He’s trapped to stand by the pit with the knowledge of what is coming for Randall. His friends. Just one. Just one of many. His friends, gone for so, so long.
The alarm whips through the dark sleeper before dawn to the sounds of Guns N’ Roses screaming Paradise City at full blast, and Max sits up in the cabin with a sudden gasp, the panic his only companion in the darkness.
Take me down to the paradise city, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty!
He fumbles to turn the phone alarm off; his hands are shaking like leaves in the wind.
Oh won’t you please take me ho-oome. Yeah, yea—
He fat-fingers the screen into silence and crumples down into a heap on the sleeper floor, his body taut like a spring about to pop. He starts to see pinpricks of light in the dark.
Breathe. Breathe man. You’re okay.
The rhythms and practices that the VA shrink taught him seem far away, distant, but he doubts they would be of much use because this one, this one is bad. He fumbles for a duffel bag stashed under his mattress and finds an old prescription, popping the pill under his tongue and waiting.
Slowly, the tightening coil around his shoulder and chest ratchets down a few notches, and he can find his breath. The pills help, but he’s down to his last two.
He stands up, pulls on a t-shirt, and puts on his overalls before shuffling back towards the Love’s for a piss and a cup of coffee. He moves slowly, giving himself enough of an onramp into normality as he can manage.
He approaches the counter, where a young woman with deep red hair stands behind the counter. She smiles at him as he approaches.
He can’t stand this shit.
“Is that everything, darling?”
“Yep,” one-word answers are all he’ll give to these smoke and mirrors.
“Sure, I can’t get you something else? Donut, smokes?”
“Just the coffee. Please.”
She pulls up the total, and Maxwell pays from his wristwatch.
“Yes, sir. Thanks for visiting Maxwell.”
Max walks out as the girl with red hair shifts into a new form, behind the counter. This time, it’s with a tall, handsome Italian man who greets the next customer with a loud, playful, on the edge of flirtatious manner.
“Bella- welcome, welcome,” it sing-song calls.
Max sighs and shuffles back to the Mack.
After inspecting his trailer and Mack and putting a new ledger in his log, Max is back on the road, the air of the cool southern morning flowing through his open windshield. He will enjoy this moment because he knows that in a few hours, the morning will burn with the heat-soaked humidity, but for now, it’s cool and lonely out on I-85. There are only a few cars out on the highway on this stretch of road between Georgia and Gaffney, and for that, he’s grateful, enjoying the feeling of the coffee in his veins and the air-ride suspension of his seat absorbing the rattle of the road as he shifts into the South Carolina interstate.
For posterity’s sake, he leaves his CB turned on for channel 19, but there are fewer and fewer calls that come from it nowadays.
He’s got fourteen hours of straight driving from here to Boston, but he knows he will lose an hour at least before he can snake through DC. He settles in for a long stretch of road, mentally planning his day around the milestones that organize his life every single day he’s on the road.
Two hours before I call Carrie.
Four hours before Outliers.
Eight hours before a break, another coffee, and then Frankl.
“You could start Frankl now, you know,” he verbally says to himself.
Why not?
He flicks open the audiobook, lets the narrator pick up where he left off, and takes a sip of coffee.
“The ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning.”
The narrator continues, and the truck moves. The start of a good day, all things considered.
“Hello?”
The small mousey voice fills the speakers of the truck, cute and petite but curled up in a country twang. He loves this about Carrie. She always answers like he could be a robo-call or the tax man, and not the same call he makes every single day at 8:00 am.
“Good morning, darling, how’d you sleep?”
“Charlie was sick again last night, but he gave me about five hours, so good. Where are you?”
“Just crossed by the Gaffney butt-peach.”
“It’s Boston this time, right?”
“Yeah, Boston. Then I’ll pick up another load to take to Charlotte, then home.”
“Did you hear the news?”
“No, I haven’t, honey. Been listening to my audiobooks this morning.”
“You…” she pauses, as if trying to find the right words. “Turn it on this morning, when you get a chance.”
“What happened?” Max’s voice cuts, fear building between his shoulders.
She clicks her mouth and sighs. Max does not like this. Does not like this at all.
“They are getting us back into Iraq, Max. Boswell just sent a truth out over the nets.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me…”
The pause fills the cabin, and Max just watches the road ahead when he starts to see pinpricks streak across his vision.
Shit. Need to pull over.
“Honey, can I call you back? I want to hear this for myself.”
“Be careful, Max.”
“I will, and take Charlie to the clinic today. Put his bill against my benefit credits, okay? He needs to get back to school.”
“You sure?”
“I’m not using it. Get Charlie what he needs and get him back to school.”
“Alright.” She pauses. “Thank you, Max.”
“Love you, darling,” Max says, blinking against the swirl that is crossing the road now. “I gotta go.”
“Love you, too. Call me later.”
“I will.”
The truck pulls off to the side of the road, and Max throws on his caution lights. He sits there, watching the traffic fly by him, and he wills himself to find his breath. Memories of Dr. Jackson hover in the darkness of his closed eyes.
“When you have an episode, where do you feel it, Max?”
“I usually don’t feel anything. Not at first. But I see it. I see it coming in my vision.”
“The pinpricks?”
“Yeah. Like stars in my eyes.”
“Okay, let’s practice what to do when that happens, okay? Would you be willing to practice with me?”
Max feels himself nod his head.
“Take a breath and hold it. “
Dr. Jackson breathes with him. “Now release it.”
Max feels the breath rushing from his body.
“Now let’s do it again. Let’s just pay attention to the breath, and lets slow ourselves down, okay?”
“Okay, doc.”
After 20 minutes, the kiosk on the truck’s console dings. Max is back in his body, aware, and touches the screen.
“Everything okay, Maxwell? You’ve been stalled for twenty-three minutes?”
It’s hard for Max to tell whether this voice is a real person or a facsimile from the logistics contractor. It’s hard to tell what is real nowadays.
“I’m fine. Just needed a minute.”
“Were you sick, Maxwell?”
“I just needed. A minute.” He glances at the log plan for the haul ahead. “I can still make the time. I’m okay, okay?”
“Okay, Maxwell. See you in Boston.”
The road rolls underneath the Mack once more, and Max feels the temptation to turn on the news, but he keeps the speakers in the cabin silent. He pulls a pack of nabs from his console, those Lance crackers colored like road cones. He holds them in his mouth, allowing their salty, peanut-buttery flavor to melt, savoring them.
He’s past Greensboro now and has felt good the remainder of the morning, rolling up 85. There have been no calls on the CB, nor from the logistics console. The road looks clear, and he knows that Outliers is on.
He flicks on the AM band on his radio and turns the knob, keeping his eyes on the road. The hollowed-out echo of the AM pitch fills his cabin.
The voice of none other than Jose Clash fills the speakers, his deep voice making love to the microphone.
Greetings, fellow travelers. No matter where you are, or where you are at, there is always a home for you here on Outliers, where the weird, unexplained, and unexpected are always expected. We’ve got the phone lines open today. If you’ve got a story, a tall tale, or just need to get something off your chest, then this line is open for you.
Max smiles, gripping the wheel, letting the last nab dissolve in his mouth. He rolls down the window slightly and watches the rolling hills of the North Carolina piedmont flatten out as the road bends eastward.
Clash breaks in, “My dear listeners, I’ve got someone on the line who’s got quite a tale, this one from the roads of the southeast, and of course, we don’t count Florida in that mix, no man, no. You’re live on line two, my friend.”
A crackly, tin-foiled voice cuts over the feed, “Hi, there, Jose. My name is Clarence, and I’m heading down I-40 through this morning, just crossing into Virginia.”
“What you got for us, Clarence?” Jose cuts in. “From the sounds of the call, it sounds like you’re pulling a rig, am I right?”
“Yessir, pulling down a load of steel beams from Michigan.”
Jose cuts in, “Wonderful, you heard it here first, folks, Union trading open and free. God bless the Union!”
Max rolls his eyes. “Get on with the story, Jose!”
“That’s right, God bless the Union,” Clarence adds.
“Okay, Clarence, you’ve got a million people on this dial waiting for you to tell us what you saw. A mysterious stranger who roams the interstates of the Union?”
“Yes, Jose. You know, there aren’t many of us left, traditional truckers who still own their trucks and keep the lifeblood of this country moving on our roads, but I’m one of the few. My daddy was a trucker, and I am too, and I’m blessed to say my rig is paid for, so I can cut under many of the prices of the automated haulers on the roads today.”
“That’s great to hear, thank you for your service – go on.”
“Well, as you might expect, the interstate gets very lonely for us, and there haven’t been many of my brothers sharing the road with us these past ten years. There will always be some who want humans to do the hauling, but man…the well is drying up, Jose, you know?”
“For you and everybody else, my brother.”
“Well, I ain’t heard any automated radio hosts yet, Jose.”
Jose laughs, “This isn’t about me, Clarence. So you said you saw a hitchhiker?”
“Thank you,” Max says, drumming his fingers on the wheel.
“Yes, that’s right,” Clarence continues. “The first hitchhiker I’ve seen in about five years.”
“Tell us about him,” Jose encourages.
“I saw him a month ago, sticking his thumb out, hitching off the side of I-26, over in Tennessee. I did what I’ve always done for those in need: I pulled over. I opened the passenger side of my rig and looked at this man, if you can call him that.”
“Now wait, why do you say that, Clarence? What do you mean?”
“I mean what I’m saying, Jose, there was something about this…this person…that was not…”
“Not human?”
“Not…human. That’s what I’m saying. His face. His face was like what you would say was…an approximation of what a human face would look like. Close, but not quite right. Something off in his eyes. Like cat eyes.”
“So what did you do?”
“I did what I always do, I asked him where he was going. He told me, ‘Anywhere, but South is nice.’”
“So you let him in your truck?”
“I did, and Jose, it’s a miracle I’m still alive, because he told me all about my life, things I’ve never told a single soul. And then he told me scared me so bad that I thought I might crash my rig, right then and there. I could not resist sharing this with you and the Outliers listening today.”
“What did he say? Tell us what this stranger tell you?”
“He told me that the Union would be at war again soon, and that this one would push us to the brink. He said that every able-bodied man, regardless of age, would be called up to fight. He said that both drones and men would be integrated into combat for one last time.”
“War with who, Clarence? Who is the Union fighting?”
“You already know the answer,” Clarence whispers, his voice cutting through the hollowing AM frequency.
Max feels the pit of his stomach fill with bile, and works to flip off the radio station. The sound of the rig moving over the interstate is the only thing that he listens to for a few hours.
At some point, Max feels another presence. Travis sits in the passenger side of the cabin, looking at Max for a long time. Max does his best not to acknowledge this phantom, who still wears his combat fatigues from the early 2000s.
“You know you shouldn’t be listening to that stuff, Maxy. Not good for you.” Travis rolls down the passenger window a crack and flicks out his Zippo as the smell of a Marlboro Red crackles over Max’s senses.
Maxy. He always called him Maxy.
“You’re not there, Travis. You’re not there,” Max repeats, whispering.
“You sure about that?” Max can hear Travis take in another big drag and slowly release it into the rushing air.
“You need to be easier on yourself, Maxy. You’ve been going a long, long time. You’ve done your share of fighting. No more for you, do you hear me?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Max shoots back. “You’re not.”
Max hazards a quick glance at the phantom in the passenger side, giving in to the fact that he’s gone completely off his rocker. The side of Travis’s face is concave, an open, rotted maw of a wound, speckled with ash and Iraqi sand.
“Maxy, today was always going to be a hard day. Worse when Biden shut down operations twenty years ago, and worse than the fifteen years that dragged on in Iran. So many men lost. So much blood spilled, and for what? But today, Boswell is opening it back up for business. I’m here to tell you to stay out of it.”
Max’s hands are shaking, and he’s struggling to find his breath, but manages to give off one chuckle.
“Man, I’m not good for them, and you know it. I’m too old. I’m damaged goods. They won’t even try to take me back.”
“And I’m here to tell you they will. You do whatever it takes to stay out of it. Do you hear me?”
Max lets out a sigh, his hands shaking. “I hear you, Travis.”
Max glances back over to the passenger seat. It’s empty again when he crosses into Virginia.
It’s 10:45 pm when Max pulls into a Flying J just outside of Boston after delivering the cargo. He stands, again at the fuel station, watching the diesel numbers dance across the LCD screen.
He calls Carrie.
“Hello?”
“Made it safely to Boston, babe. How’s Charlie?”
There is a long pause. “He’s had two seizures again today. The clinic was able to give me a week’s worth of medicine, but that’s all your benefit would cover. They said we’d have to wait till next month before…”
“Next month? No, no that can’t be right. I…”
Carrie sighs, and her voice lilts into a sob over the phone speaker, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Max. I know he’s not your son, but you’ve been so good to us and it -”
“Honey, don’t you worry. I’ll find some more work. If we have to pay for his medicine, we will. The benefit will help cover some, and we will just have to make it work to get what he needs.”
There is a long pause.
“Max, you and I both know that there is no way we can do that. There isn’t any way we can make this work for him, not as things stand now.”
Max shakes his head, “No. We will find a way. Let’s talk about this tomorrow evening. When I’m back home.”
Another long pause.
“Are you okay, darling?” Max asks, his voice piercing through the darkness.
A sigh. “No, but it’s not about me. Just get home safe. It will be better with you here tomorrow.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. I love you, darling.”
“Love you too.”
The speaker clicks, and Max stands, the diesel digits still dancing. The final total is $1,935.23.
Shit.
Max’s tired brain begins to bark commands at him.
Park. Shower. Bed.
As he goes in to take a shower, the smell of something acrid overwhelms him in the gas station. A memory within the sensation, something from his past. An odor that haunts him.
He stands, holding his towel and toiletries under the beaming fluorescent lights, scanning the aisles filled with junk food, and the flickering digital attendant who, again, takes on the guise of a young and beautiful redhead. Then he hears something.
The sing-song jingle of the slot machine, musically scaling up and down a melodious ladder that attracts gamblers to its song like Sirens on the rocks, rings out into the Flying J. Max hears what can only be slot numbers spinning to find their final place.
Clunk.
Cherry.
Clunk.
Bar.
Clunk.
7.
“Never could stand sevens,” whispers a man seated at the sixth machine, his black cowboy boots shining like ebony in the green burning hue of the buzzing lights. His boots are in complete contrast to the rest of his garb, white Levis and a denim shirt, with an ornate turquoise bolo cinched high up to the throat, so tight it should be choking the bastard. He holds a clove cigarette that issues out a snaking tendril of smoke up that collects under his white, wide-brimmed cowboy hat. He pulls the bar on the machine, and the avalanche of sounds again begins to fly.
“It only takes one of these to hit, don’t you know it, son?” he calls out to Max, throwing a sidelong glance over to him, his eyes flashing for a microsecond before hiding back behind their dark shades.
“Lady Luck is a terrible temptress, but let’s see what she’ll bring me this evening. The world is cruel. I could use a pick-me-up.”
Clunk.
Double Bar.
Clunk.
Triple Bar.
Clunk.
Double Bar. Bingo.
“The only bars I like to see,” the stranger says, laughing, and the sound of coins falling into the drum erupts in the place. Max hasn’t seen coins in over a decade, and he swallows.
Something isn’t right.
“You look confused, Maxwell,” the man calls, turning around on his stool, holding the dirty clove to his mouth, its glow reflected in the dark black holes of his eyes. “Like you ain’t ever seen me, before. Don’t you know who I am?” He glances at the slot machine. “Sit down next to me and spin the wheel. See what you could win. I’ve got them warmed up for you now.”
The smell Max caught when he entered is all over him now, clouding around him like a leaded blanket. He glances down at the black boots on the white cowboys and watches them as they begin to melt, filling the tiles of the Flying J with deep inky pools of midnight. The pools keep growing, pouring from this man, this monster, who seems to walk over the water in his dark cowboy boots.
Except it’s not water. It’s oil.
Oil.
That was the smell. The smell of Iraq. The smell of the oil fields.
“I’ll pass, thanks,” Max barely manages to whisper.
“You will pass, that’s right,” the stranger smiles, flashing dagger teeth. “But you need to be careful out there, Max. The world is cruel, and you’ve got so many needs. Spin the wheel, why don’t you? Spin and see what Fate can hand you, if you just grab it by the horns…”
He pulls the lever again, but Max doesn’t wait. He turns and runs out, back into the darkness, as the man by the slot machines begins to cackle in a laughter that makes him want to seize with fear. Sprinting from the store, he throws himself into the Mack truck and roars its engine back to life. In minutes, he is back on the interstate.
He doesn’t stop driving for a long time.
That night, he drives over fifty miles before finding a rest stop to pull over to. He locks the cabin and walks back into the sleeper, his hands still shaking with a terror that he cannot explain. It’s like he’s coming undone, his mind’s moorings are melting away.
Find your breath, Max.
Find it.
In and out.
In.
and.
Out.
He digs under his mattress to find the nearly empty pill bottle and fishes out his next-to-last pill, allowing it to melt under his tongue.
In.
and…
Sometime during the night, he hears someone moaning outside the sleeper cabin. The rush of panic fires through him like lightning as he awakens from a dreamless sleep, straining his ears in the darkness.
The moan erupts once more through the darkness, and Max stares outside the window, unable to see anything.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
He fumbles in his supply trunk and fishes out a heavy, metal-encased flashlight. He pulls up his overalls and slips on his boots, quietly stepping out of the safety of the truck into the cool darkness.
“Augh! Oh God… oh God.”
Max starts running to the sound, the compulsion to hurry setting in almost instinctively. His light cuts through the darkness and finds the man, lying face up on the concrete, gasping in pain.
“Help me…help.” The man whispers, his eyes wide.
A jagged wound beats crimson out on the ground from the man’s side, and his hands and feet scraped up to hell.
“What happened?” Max calls.
The man can barely speak, as he grips his side. “Two…two. They stole my car. My home. All I had in it.”
Max reaches for his phone, “I’m going to call an ambulance.”
The man holds out his hand. “No…no need. I…don’t have…”
“You don’t have benefits?”
He shakes his head violently through the loud fish-faced gasps for air.
“Just…just…stay… please.”
“There’s got to be something I can do!” Panic floods through Max’s body. “There’s got to be something I can do for you?!”
The man grabs Max’s hand with his wounded palms and pulls him to the ground.
“Just stay…with me…please. Don’t…let me…”
Max nods his head and holds the man’s hand, squatting down by his side, where a river of crimson still pours. Max holds his hand as he looks to the east, watching the grey oncoming morning lighten the sky.
“Thank you,” the stranger whispers. The man’s body seizes up with a jerk, lets out a gasp, and then is gone.
Max doesn’t know how long he stayed by his side, but the sun had completely risen when he dialed the police. A highway patrolman comes, his blue lights blazing, and stands over the body of the dead stranger as if it were only a piece of roadkill.
“So you’re telling me he was murdered by two thieves who took his car?”
“That’s all he could say before he passed.”
“And he had no credits? Poor bastard. We’re seeing more and more of this these days.”
“I know,” Max whispers, wiping the man’s blood from his hand onto his overalls.
After the officer takes Max’s information and the coroner is called, Max walks into the rest area like a dead man. He stares at himself in the mirror and splashes his face in the restroom sink. He thinks about when he was a kid, and he accidentally touched the electric fence in the cow pen behind his house. The connection brought with it the boom of the electric kick, followed by another, followed by another. The sobs are like that, and he can’t seem to get it together to stop them. They just keep rolling through him like that cow fence.
Somehow, he shuffles back into the truck through bleary, tired eyes, cranks the engine on, and hears the throttle of the rig. He catches the time, and as if by muscle memory, programs in the address for the next pickup, fifty miles further away from where he should have been.
Can you really do this today?
He buries the thought and puts the rig in gear.
Anxious and sick to his stomach, he flicks on the radio, and he scans the dial. On every channel, the same thing is playing.
“My fellow Americans,” a deep masculine voice resonates over the Mack’s speakers. “It is with deep solemnity that I call upon you today. After months of intelligence reports and cyber reconnaissance missions, it has come to my and the Joint Chiefs’ attention that the country of Iraq has developed a sentient superintelligence that is a direct threat to the Union’s safety and its sovereignty. This intelligence is so advanced that allowing it to build strength and go unchecked poses a direct existential threat to the people and corporations that make up our Union. I have issued a declaration of hostilities against Iraq, and at this moment, a large-scale drone campaign is underway over its capital city, Baghdad. In addition, I am calling on all Americans to consider my proclamation of the voluntary draft. For those who volunteer, full benefits for them and their designees will be bestowed upon them upon signing, ensuring security for each man and woman and their families should they choose to volunteer for our nation’s defense. There is no greater price that we can pay than the lives of our citizens, and we owe you and your families all that the Union can afford. Over the weeks to come, there will be more sacrifices that must be made, and I will…
Max flips the radio off. He drives, following the verbal directions from the logistics kiosk to the warehouse. He waits silently as the crew loads up the pallets and looks out at the window. The sun slowly rolls over him, and he finds himself on the road, heading down 85 once more, back down to the south. His mind is clear.
There never was any other choice, was there?
Keeping his eyes on the road, he speaks to his phone, asking it to find and dial a number. The dial tone buzzes through the speakers, and the line clicks open.
“This is the Union National Recruiter. Sergeant Adams speaking.”
“Yes, I’m calling regarding Boswell’s call for volunteers. I’d like to enlist. Again.”