WE PASS WITHIN a mile of where the old man lies dying. There has been a storm. The worst storm in 30 years. Rain again and much wind, rocks to run around on mountain passes and the snow level drops, cold. In midmorning, in the south: clearing, and at the boat yard big clouds at the end of the storm.
Sam says, I'm here about that diesel engine. We find a man to shake his hand. He takes us out to a big tin warehouse where the engine is, shrouded in a heavy green tarpaulin.
A fork lift comes billowing thick smoke across the length of the warehouse, a big yellow crab on a beach. Sam ties rope cinches around the engine housing. The lift comes in and I back the truck underneath it. The tonnage comes down off-balance and the truck lists badly. The lift-man does it again, wants to take his lunch, wants us to hurry. The engine comes down a second time and the overload springs compress as if they are made of paper.
How far do you have to haul this engine in that old Dodge three-quarter ton?
550 miles.
We take it easy, and on the downgrade of the Grapevine into the valley sail past diesels buring out trying to slow down and too heavy to do it right. It makes us feel good in the day to know others have trouble, too. It's a bond we share: sneering, independence, brotherhood, trucking.
On the flat of the highway through the valley we can cruise. When the sun goes down off the highway, just past Coalinga, we refuel, checking oil and water, air and lights.
Twenty miles out, in the dark, the truck suddenly begins to vibrate crazily and swerve over the road. Sam is on his belly underneath the rear and, raising it with the one-and-one-half-ton capacity hydraulic jack. He crawls out and says, I can only raise it so far, and he looks at the canvas-covered two tons of diesel engine sitting deep in the bed of the Dodge three-quarter ton. I crawl on the wet pavement belly down underneath the tonnage and manage to raise the truck and engine another inch, but it is still not enough. Every time a big truck rolls in a rush by through the dark, the roadway entire shakes on the land and the truck shivers on the jack.
It won't kill you, he says.
I pull myself out.
If it falls on you. It won't kill you.
It'll kill you enough.
We need some 4x4s or some 2x4s.
Do you want me to go?
No. You stay here with your engine.
Just this side of an overpass sits a fenced and night-lighted compound of tin buildings, isolated out here, the only buildings beside roadside service modules we have seen.
Listen, Sam. I'll see if I can find some 4x4s or some 2x4s over by those buildings there.
It's raining again, running over the wet valley topsoil, the mud sticking to my boots under the night we've blown out on I-5, 30 miles to the south of Los Banos. I run along the road toward the overpass, then break across the wet clay shoulder toward the buildings and the lights. A dog barks out in the valley night, the distant lights of Los Banos unblinking stars, no closer, still impossible miles away.
Wow wow wow the dark dog barks. No more rain. Wow wow wow.
These will do fine.
You are not kidding it is fine.
You ever use this spare?
Help me with this thing.
It takes both of us underneath the rear end to raise the weight.
Sure I've used it.
Yeah? When?
Six months ago.
Wow wow wow.
When the weight comes down, the tire flattens out.
Sam can't believe it, is genuinely flabbergasted.
This don't mean it ain't a good tire. We get some air in there, I bet she'll hold. Can't ever be sure about something until you try it. There are houses to the northwest of the overpass with electric lights in the windows. There must be a telephone there. Wow wow wow in the night.
The light under the sign is dark. A light on a pole shows a telephone. The mud is very thick here. The cafe is closed. Someone's thrown boards across the puddles. We run across the boards to the telephone.
Do you see how easy it is?
Not yet.
Sam has no dimes, can't wait, jams a quarter in the slot, can't get a dialtone.
Haw. You should have used a dime. Now we'll have to go to one of these houses and ask for help.
Who lives out here?
Another dog, watching the first house, not barking, not growling, shies away from us, its tail tucked tightly around its balls.
You have to watch out for dogs like that.
I knock on the door of the first house. Two brown women are inside, one of them comes to the door. The room is bare, bare electric light bulbs, sleeping cots and a framed, full-color Jesus lithograph on the wall.
Excuse it please but my friend and I have had a little road trouble about two miles from here, a blow-out, and we need to use a telephone to call for help.
Como? Un telefono?
We don't got no telefono here.
There is one at the cafe.
Well, you see, that telephone is unfortunately out of order. It's no working, y'see. Does anyone around here have a telephone we can use to call for help?
She says, again, There is no telefono here except for at the cafe. You can use the telefono at the cafe. She closes the door.
The soaked dog with the tucked tail slinks around the corner of the house. What we do now?
Try another one of these houses. There's got to be a phone around here.
In the second house we try, through the glass in the door we can see a young man with a moustache asleep under a bright electric glare. Jesus alive and napping in California.
It is a racist slave camp and we are the fascist plunderers with our compromised mobility and our boots in the mud, vulnerable, waking and asking our slaves for charity, the danger of the truth surfaces. The wind is blowing now, hustling souls through eucalyptus trees. Hurry. To tell you.
We approach a third house, but the lights go off just before we get there. They know we're here. They're watching us.
Hey, Sam says, do you think these people are afraid of us?
Chills you just to think about it.
A man in the fourth house holds a child and does not speak English. His son, standing next to him at the door, is translating. What my papa means is, there is no telefono here. The is a telefono at the cafe.
No. You do not understand. The telephone at the cafe is not working. We are looking for a working telephone. Un telefono trabajando.
Si? The man holding the child speaks to the boy. The boy translates. My papa says, if you go to the white trailer, there is a woman who lives there who has un telefono trabajando and she will help you.
Do you think the kid was telling the truth?
Not yet. Sam has no dimes, can't wait, jams a quarter in the slot, can't get a dialtone.
Haw. You should have used a dime. Now we'll have to go to one of these houses and ask for help.
Who lives out here?
Another dog, watching the first house, not barking, not growling, shies away from us, its tail tucked tightly around its balls.
You have to watch out for dogs like that.
At the white trailer, it is the same story. The woman speaks no English. The children translate. There is un telefono at the cafe. The wind gusts through the camp.
But it doesn't work. Ay, que vida!
She gives us a look and then tells us, Go to the house across the way, and she gestures with her chin toward the third house, the one that went so quickly dark as we approached. She tells us there are men who live there, they own a big pickup and if you go there and ask them they will be sure to help you. The nearest other telephone is Los Banos. Thirty miles.
Oh. Great. Thanks.
Now what, chief?
Well I ain't knocking on the door of no dark house to ask for help. Now we go back to the cafe and see if there's another telephone we can use.
There is the one, the one we cannot get to work on this cold, windy, strange night and Sam is about to kick it through the wall.
Wait a minute. The phone has suddenly become cooperative and gives us a dialtone. Holy cow. Now we are getting someplace. Operator? Operator, give me the Highway Patrol.
Highway Patrol.
Highway Patrol, we've blown out and need a truck with a compressor.
Wait a minute. Are you calling to report an accident?
No. A blow-out.
Well, this is the accident line. You have to call back on another line if you just want to shoot the breeze about flat tires.
Hold it. Hold it. You might call this an accident. We certainly didn't intend to blow out that tire. Got things to do. Cold out here. Woman waits in the city in a warm bed.
Listen. I can't tie up the accident line. Call back on another line.
Well can you give us the number of the nearest road service?
Call us back, pal.
Operator? Operator!
Yeah, it just so happens I do know a fella carries a compressor, works on big rigs, might just help you out. Give him a call. He'll help you out.
With all this help we're getting, we should be back on the road and out of here in no time, straight shot to the city.
Sam calls the man, gives him the information. Says, the guy's on his way. Sounded kind of tired, though. Said a few hours.
Did you say hours? A few hours?
Got more time to kill.
The road is very big at this hour. It doesn't get any smaller. No matter what time it is. The clouds part and half a moon shines through. No more rain tonight. Cold February night air six lanes across from the truck and the road much wider on foot in the dark, retread fragments everywhere along the way. How many tires can fall apart between cities? Behind the wheel 15 hours this day and night. A hundred and fifty miles short of San Francisco, a ton and a half of vehicle to haul two tons of freight.
Do you know what I'm going to do now, Sam?
What are you going to do?
I'm going to crawl in there behind the wheel and get me some sleep. Because I'm tired, Sam.
Yeah.
It isn't any warmer in the cab than it is outside. Not much traffic on the highway. Let them go. Help is on the way.
You know what happened to me one time?
What's that?
Had a blow-out on the highway.
Like this one.
Don't remember where, but I wasn't carrying no diesel engine. I can tell you that, nor any spare tire, flat or otherwise, neither. Got to a call box and called in for a tow. Was in the night. The guy says he'll be right out. Two hours later I'm cold and shivering and wondering hwere his is, so I give him another call, just to find out. Says he got to watching television, fell asleep and forgot all about the call.
Hey, you trying to cheer me up?
Nobody's going to stop at that speed unless they got to.
Almost bought me a Camaro one time when I was working down in L.A. Beautiful automobile. I'm telling you. '67, black paint with a black interior, looked bad. Must have been boosted. Mexican guys in a corner lot. Fixed it up to race, Hurst 4-speed with the V-8, and put in your 8-track tape deck. Wanted eleven hundred for it. But I let it go.
Sorry?
Damn right I'm sorry. We got any food in here?
Sam rummages behind the seat, finds a bag with half-eaten apples, squashed bananas, days-old hard doughnuts. Nothing. Hungry. Kind of tired, too. Know the woman is waiting up now in the city for me. Always do this. No. I didn't flatten that tire. An accident. Haw. Why does it take hours to drive the 29 miles from Los Banos?
One time I had a girl named Sam. Did I ever tell you about this?
No. Sam shines a flashlight out the back window to make sure his big diesel engine is still back there.
In summer. I was 19. Working in a summer camp back east. She was a Girl Scout, 16 she was, your age come to think about it, smooth summer skin, green eyes.
Sam clicks off the flashlight, turns around in the seat. A tractor-trailer roars in a roll on by, the truck shakes, all 5,000 pounds.
'Course now, Sam wasn't her real name.
No. Didn't think so.
Naw. Nickname it was. Andrea was her real name. Andrea Good. She was good. Had a day off and went up there to see her, spent the night at her place, slept out in the back yard in a borrowed sleeping back.
You didn't sleep with her?
No. She was a virgin girl. I told you she was a Girl Scout. In the morning, we got on bicycles and rode across farm country up to this lake. Nice bike ride. Lake with a sandy beach, wood piering, high diving. You change your clothes in a locker room. Thing was, it's late in summer, August, past the season. Wasn't nobody around except us. Swam there and played in the warm shallow water. Water lilies and swamp grass, and she let me take the top of her swim suit off.
Did you love her?
Didn't know not to. Sure I did. Wish she was around. Say, you ever get out in a big summer wheat field, make a little place out there and lie under the moon? There ain't nothing in the world like that. Don't call me Sam when you're making love to me, she told me. It makes me feel funny.
Real funny.
Say, where is this guy anyhow? How long does it take to drive 30 miles?
Okay, I just told you three stories. Now you tell me one.
Wait. That's him. Highbeams come on, cross and keep going.
Naw. That's not him.
You're right. Look at that sucker travel.
That ain't him.
Did I ever tell you the Valerie story?
I think so. How old were you?
I was 12.
I don't want to hear it.
Wait. That's him.
That's him all right.
Power Wagon cruises on south after he spots the old Dodge three-and-a-quarter-ton. Driver finds a place to cross, then pulls up behind old Dodge. Driver gets out and cranks up his compressor, puts air in the tire. It holds.
That's some old truck. What have you got running that thing?
That's a diesel.
Lights. Reflections on glass. The wet roadway. Engines idling, warming. The men stand behind the old Dodge, fingers slung in casual belt loops, blue denim, well worn.
Are you kidding me? You got a diesel in that old Dodge?
Sure. Sam pulls back the canvas tarpaulin covering, reveals the living tissue of the machine in the headlights of the Power Wagon.
Diesel, he says.
Haw haw haw, all around.
I spit the blood into the sink, turn out the light, walk into the room.
Get the candle. Good. Bring it here. The woman's shadow on the wall.
Sit down on the bed. Pull the shirt over my head. Can't even begin to tell you.
Be quiet, baby. Go to sleep. It's 4 o'clock. You'll tell me about it in the morning.