Vanishing Point

‘…truck driving? I’ll you tell somethin’ bout truck drivin’, kid, ain’t nothing like it was. Nothin’ at all like it is now, kid. It used to be alright, before bloody 2000 and the referendum – used to be the kind of work that cleared your mind out. Like takin’ steel wool to your brain, truckin’ gets all the shit out of the cracks. Not anymore; too complicated. Used to be you just drove a truck, pointed it in one direction and go, y’knowwhatimean? No worries. You’d go from Melbourne to fuck knows where, really, but you’d know exactly where you were goin’ and why. No beating around the bush - just a truck…oh it didn’t matter what you were carrying kid. Nowadays you gotta be approved for certain loads. Approval from the bloody government. If you’re takin’ a buncha rubbish up to that great big dump in the gulf, you gotta have certifications, certificates, like bloody rocket science. Gotta go to uni just to drive a fucking truck. All the electronics and corrosives make it dangerous, it’s what they say. I can’t understand it. Fuckin’ people making too much rubbish; if you’d had told me they’d have built a goddamn landfill size of Tassie — nah, what was we talking about?…truckin’, right, so what they don’t tell you when you’re drivin’, going inland to the dump on the Wills and Bourke is the frigging West Australians, the whaddayacalledem… separationists? …separatists, that’s it, cheers Rob. The fuckin’ separatists, they’ll bomb your fuckin’ load if you’re too close to the no-go zone, shoot over the zone and say it was a “training exercise”. Chinese everywhere, a bloody war, everything’s fucked

— it wasn’t like this back then, used ta be better. It was you, the rig, the radio. That’s it. A simple job. Lots of movin’, you get a coupla prime movers and you’re makin good money. You don’t get used to stickin’ in one place; I still can’t get used to it myself actually. D’you get it too Rob? …Do you get stressed sittin’ round, doin’ fuck all?...well, no, no but I keep thinkin’ there’s something I’m ‘sposed to be doin’ and I ain’t doin’ it. I mean I never felt like this out on the road, only in the city...no no Rob, let me talk, I ain’t going all homo on you two but now but listen…don’t listen to him laughin’ kid, Rob’s gettin’ to be like me too, even if he don’t know it yet. Nah kid, cities make ya worry. Too much shit goin’ on. Used to worry when I was in the city: is me load too tall to go under this bridge? Too long to make it around this corner? Even if you know your rig back-ta-front, you’re still gettin’ worried and it was just bein’ round houses and cars — all this shit that gets under ya skin. I can’t stand it…nah, but see once you get out of the city, this other feeling gets in ya. The road’d just go off into the distance and that worry? Gone. You keep goin’ t’wards the horizon and that’s the beauty of it kid, because what’s beyond the horizon ‘cept more bloody horizon? …nothin’, as much nothin’ as you need, fixes you right up…

— So how long you been driving kid?...a year is nothing, Rob here’s been what, ten, fifteen years on it?...and even that’s nothin’ compared to some of the skeletons out there still driving…pardon? No, no, well I’m out of it now. Ya get old fast doing truckin’; late nights, long hauls but you’re young though so it won’t feel it like that til you’re where I am. Take your time, see the sights; you’ll meet tons of fellas on the road and at the stops. Don’t pass the stops up kid, it’s what I looked forward to. There was this one place outsida Freo called The Island and at when it got dark it looked like one…all this light and neon in the middle of pitch-fucking-darkness; see it from a mile away sometimes. It was all beachy with palm trees and Hawaiian shit – ten k’s from the beach mind you. Don’t know if it’s still there - the war and all that - but it used to be you’d park the truck, go in and grab yourself these fish and chips in newspaper. The cook, this wog called Mercino, he’d bring them out to you in the Herald and you’d be eating flake off the opinion bits and dippin’ chips in sauce on the faces of Taliban in the bloody Middle East. Now we’d have gone there for the food if we weren’t also goin’ there to see Long Jack. He’s this truck driver, real famous fella. Big tall bloke, built like a brick shithouse, used to drive the road trains out when the mines were just gettin’ started, back when BHP was still just a Broken Hill thing. He’d driven through some real blinders, took some bad loads, met some real fuckers on the roads and he had some stories all right. We could listen to him spin yarns all day; he’d seen it all. So he was famous but old, didn’t drive no more cause of his eyes and his knees and the shakes. So every time you were in the area, you’d go to The Island get some food and you’d speak with Long Jack, didn’t matter who you were or what not; he’d talk with ya. I’d never seen him walk in or leave – he was just there at the back booth in The Island, certain as anything. And he was a happy fucker, always smilin’ and laughin’, his little quiet fuckin’ chuckle he had

— but this one night, I think he didn’t seem right happy much. His eyes were lookin’ round, like he was lookin’ the way gangsters do in movies when they know someone is coming to…chkchk, kill em’, you know? He was like lookin’ out the front doors and windows at the trucks, the pumps and that, like he was waitin’ for someone. Shakin’ pretty bad too. Thought he might have had a stroke so asked him what was up with him and he snaps out of, says it ain’t nothin’ to worry bout. It was quiet, was me and three other truckies there - two of them still rookies like you, kid, but the third one I’d seen around the edges of Freo and there was Long Jack of course. So me and the truckies pull up chairs on him at the booth and start making chat, like makin’ friendly, havin’ a laugh and he starts tellin’ us this story ‘bout the time he was forced to play a game to save his own life

— His story goes like this: Long Jack’s drivin’ a ten tonner rig headin’ out from Coober Pedy and he picks up this cute little thing outta Port Augusta, girl by the name of Sophie, who just needs a ride to Adelaide or wherever he happens to be goin’. And he’s got charms this one, Long Jack, he makes the girls laugh and he’s tellin’ us about how’s he’s flirtin’ up a storm with this Sophie girl, tryin’ not to look at her tits while drivin’ the rig. So then when they stop over in this town, real quiet place that probably don’t exist anymore – separatists and that – he gets talking with this Russian guy called Markov, who’s a real shifty fucker. And he sees Long Jack’s rig outside and he goes what say we play a game for your rig? If I win, I take your rig, but if you win, I got money in a briefcase out back that I’m suppose’ to deliver. The game they played was Russian roulette, you know what that is? …Deer Hunter, that’s right - which he said is ironic because Markov, this guy, is Russian and here they are playing Russian roulette to win the rig. I don’t know why Long Jack said yes, he said Sophie made him do it. Not made him, ‘xactly, but like he felt if he didn’t do it, he’d spend the rest of the trip with this girl not confident in himself. He wouldn’t feel like a man.

— So he’s tellin’ us this story when I realise, halfway through all of this, that he’s making it up. Just a bloody pack of liess and now see I know this cause I’d heard enough of his stories to just know it; he’s got all his own details wrong. This Ruskie, Markov, is from another story he’s told and he’s changed him a bit but you can still tell… and the girl, the knock out busty hitchhiker Sophie, she was called Elka in another story and she was Swedish. This bet for the rig was ‘riginally poker, Texas hold’em, and there was no briefcase of money but they was bettin’ on another rig. D’you get it? What he did, he’s put together different stories to make a new one, mashed them together and I must’ve not been the only one who noticed cause this other driver looks at me and I look at him and we’ve both got this look of “You’re thinkin that too?” as we must both be regulars. It felt shifty too, the story was getting a bit…look, Long Jack’s stories were always fuckin crazy but this was a bit too much. Didn’t have any of the charm, couldn’t see yourself in the story either, you know? Even some of the rookies looked like they was humourin’ him by laughin’, they’d sniffed out the shit I reckon, figured this old fella was tellin’ a tall one. Long Jack finishes the story, talkin’ bout how this girl Sophie starts blowin’ him on the Princes Highway and we all laugh, me kind of doing it not-sure-like because now I’m certain this story didn’t happen on the account of the fact that nobody’s ever heard Long Jack ever talk about getting some…no, Rob, you wouldn’t get it. He never had to say it or prove it like this. So Long Jack is laughin’ but it’s like he’s forcin’ his laughs out, like he was tryin’ ta vomit or something…his eyes too wide, mouth too wide, clearly not actually laughin’ but trying to look like he was laughin’. And he was doin’ it loud, too loud, like he wanted everyone to hear he was there. A few drivers who’d come in for dinner during the story turned around sort of confused, some smilin’ at Long Jack as he keeps laughin’

— So then the night’s getting deep, I gotta get back in the rig to make it overnight to Broome or somewhere; we’ve all got places to be and rigs to drive and Long Jack goes to see us off. After all that story shit, that was a warnin’ for me that he wasn’t right in the head. He never saw no one off, he was always easy goin’…let the road look after ya, don’t let the door hit you on the way out sorta shit, you know? I get up high into the cab, high above the ground and start powerin’ the thing on, adjustin’ radios and I look over at him standin’ near the door, just next to the ice-box and firewood and you know what?…he’s small. He looks tiny – but Long Jack’s a big man I say to myself, a fuckin’ head-cracking giant, how’s he lookin’ so small? Why does he look like he’s bout to disappear? I was wonderin’ that, him all shrunken up, pushed down and in. One of the trucks pulls out back onto the highway, another starts off into Perth proper now and I’m gettin’ ready to pull out for Broome when I look back and I hate the fact I looked back – I shouldn’t have looked back like I did because I think of it a lot now, I think of it too much actually. He’s just standin’ there, next to the doors all small looking, and you can see him shakin’, looking around for something…I think he wanted to come with us but he knew he couldn’t. He’d kill himself; run the load off the road but he wanted it so badly, he was tearin’ himself up about it. He knows that he isn’t who he was anymore. It makes me real fuckin’ depressed you know – him lookin’ from the lights of the servo watchin’ us leave, him small and that and you could tell he wanted to come with you to get out of that like place and see what was goin’ on out there. Just see what was happenin’, what we were doin’. I looked at him in my rearview get even smaller before he just up and vanished on himself

—Kid, he was stuck there. Couldn’t move, couldn’t leave - like how guys get shipwrecked in movies…and I might not be makin’ sense but that I’m thinking that sometimes happens. You get shipwrecked and you stop moving. Everything’s a wreck, a mess now and you don’t have anythin’ to you, you know…and in the movies, those shipwrecked men; they get saved, come back to the rest of the world, right? But sometimes they don’t want to get saved…but I’m startin’ to think that the worst kinds of shipwrecks are the ones where ya don’t know how to save yourself. At least I keep thinkin’ that anyway…more and more at times.’

#depression #midlifecrisis #fictions #fiction #VanishingPoint #trucker #australian #retelling #men #australia #LifeOutofBalance #alternateworld