Truck (part 2)
In case you missed part 1, start here: Truck (part 1)
The Highway
Despite his slightly longer ignition time, Jud’s connection to the truck felt as seamless as ever. He glowered at the other vehicles on the road, old fashioned drivers too weak to make the necessary sacrifices to operate a proper truck. Lost in thoughts of superiority and the soothing rumble of the road, he edged too close to the car in front of him, felt a pang of pressure inside his head and blasted his horn. Something about the tactile satisfaction of slamming his fist into the middle of the steering wheel to operate the bleat made him giddy. “Get out of my way, you weak ass!” he shouted. The truck revved threateningly in response to his outburst.
The car in front of him tapped on his breaks a bit, attempting to assert some control over the situation. Jud’s eyes popped open wide with rage as he swerved to the left, shot in front of the car and slammed on his breaks. A camera in front of him shot to life and engaged a screen in the back of his truck. His rage choked face filled the screen as he pulled his hand up and turned his fingers into a gun and mimed shooting the driver and passenger in the car behind him. His rear facing camera captured their terrified expressions and he felt a wave of euphoria splash over his rage. He revved and sped away triumphantly, swerving and aggressively accelerating around any other vehicles in his path.
Work
Garden Variety was a small but quickly growing chain of gourmet grocery stores headquartered in Tennessee. Jud had been with them so long, he remembered pricing items manually with a sticker gun before the store had scanners to beep the products at the registers.
He looked down the aisles of overpriced groceries and reflected on 15 years in the same collection of walls for at least 40 hours a week. Two years ago, he made assistant store manager. Not a long climb for the amount of time, but he was on his own pace. Now that his new truck life seeped into every waking thought, he felt less and less connected to the job. It’s a special kind of career that puts you in position to be tenured a decade and a half and still have to clean out a gnarled shitter at a moment’s notice.
As he pulled into a spot in the sprawling parking lot, his truck began the disconnection process. All the windows faded to black and the individual connections to his body severed simultaneously. It wasn’t a long, involved percolating process like the ignition sequence, more like a body sized band-aid ripped off all at once. Excruciating pain pulsated and throbbed across his whole body as the seat began its wicking procedure that captured any blood and dried him off all over again. An overhead compartment flung open and dropped his clothes for the day as the seat retracted and the floor lowered to give him standing room to get them on.
Even as assistant manager, he still had to wear a green apron to reinforce the false rootsy vibe of the overpriced grocery store. Jud looked at the clock on the dash and read 10:45. 15 minutes early for the dehumanizing 11-9:30pm shift, and ready to suck shit. He was closing by himself and it was a Tuesday, which meant it was tear down the produce racks and spray down the lettuce gunk night. He wasn’t getting back to his truck until 11pm at best. His rage bubbled and churned, intensifying as he felt the loss of being disconnected from his truck. His fingers twitched and shook as an overwhelming itchiness rolled across the back half of his body like a tractor plowing a stubborn field, digging tracks across his body.
He read 10:55 on the time clock and stood there, waiting for the clock to roll to 11 and fuming over the shit he’d catch if he clocked in early. He heard the blasting beeps of a delivery truck outside the loading dock backing into place. “The grocery truck is this late?” he bleated a little louder than he intended, dreading starting his day by unloading pallets of grocery stock on top of all his other start of shift duties.
“They’ve been getting later and later, I’ve been telling y’all,” Reb, the grocery department manager, popped out of nowhere and chimed in.
“Oh yeah… thanks,” he said as calmly as he could muster. Reb really pushed his buttons all the time, but today he felt a headache rolling in similar to caffeine withdrawal. He knew he didn’t forget his morning coffee, but here it came all the same. He forced himself to unclench his fists and continued to twitch and itch while pushing down the urge to shake and scratch. BEEP! Clocked in, let’s roll.
As the bay door began laboring and whining from the strain of opening, he heard the familiar voice of his boss Bill, the store manager, “Jud, follow me.”
They walked through the bowels of the store, passing the back ends of each department. Department supervisors scratching their heads and struggling with paper calendars to figure out their employees’ schedules. Jud knew for most of them it was a fresh and uncharted adventure every week, no matter how much he tried to suggest keeping everyone on similar schedules or having some core foundations in place.
“Jud, we’ve talked about this already.” Scenes from his marathon working 75 hours over Christmas week less than one month ago flashed within his mind as Bill continued droning on. “Your no eyebrow thing is creeping the customers out. You look like a damn nosfurrahtuu or some shit,” Bill’s southern drawl saying nosferatu contrasted his completely serious face as he produced a caked and disgusting eyebrow brush and a rusted metal eyebrow stencil. “Go up to the employee bathroom upstairs immediately and fix your face before you start work today or else I’ll have to write you up again.”
Jud’s bubbling rage gave way to an overwhelming wave of embarrassment and powerlessness. A hundred responses ran through his head, but after a moment he felt himself nodding and saying, “ok.”
In the bathroom, he held the rusty stencils up to his face and applied the expired makeup. The sharp bristles of the busted brush scraped at his face and made a minor cut above his eye. “Oh, this is much better you jackass.”
8 Hours Later
Face down in the toilet, puke blasted out violently while Jud felt a sudden clambering of thoughts and connections as he realized the headaches, the itchiness, the throbbing, swelling, twitching, shaking all have been steadily increasing through his shifts and even overnight while he slept. He’d been pulling excuses like allergies, atmospheric pressure changes, communicable diseases, moon cycle, but he knew this feeling from the cop shows he used to watch when he wasn’t using all his spare time to drive around. Withdrawal.
He heard the knock and jiggle of the door again, lifted himself up to the sink, splashed water on his boiling face and looked in the mirror. 8 months later and he still couldn’t recognize himself with no hair on his head or face, even more intensely foreign now thanks to the splotchy paleness. Melted eyebrows framed his already crumbling self-image. His brain rewound back to his triumphs on the road that morning. The only place he felt complete, in his weird, mobile throne.
...to be continued in Truck (part 3).
