I wonder at times
what life might be like
if somebody cared about me
if there were someone I could call
whenever I’m crying
without being a burden
if there were someone I could invite
to a birthday
and expect them to show
I have been made
to feel I must beg
for companionship
I wonder at times
what life might be like
if I believed somebody cared about me
isolation
The Convoy
Darren swirled his fingers in his belly hair. “Well,” he sighed, “shit.” He could feel the convoy slowing down and pulling over as he gritted his teeth against the irritating sound of the maintenance buzzer. Money down the drain, he thought to himself as he swung his legs out over the edge of his bunk and pulled off his virtual reality helmet. Darren glanced at the topless blonde on his calendar as he edged his feet into a pair of worn out, but comfortable brown slippers and pulled on his robe. He unzipped the privacy curtain and the bright red glow of the maintenance buzzer flooded into his sleeper cab.
As the truck slowed to a crawl, Darren plopped himself into the operator’s seat, looked over the instrument panel, and grabbed the computer to check the error code. The brakes squealed as the truck stopped and Darren could hear the sound of pressurized air escaping as he engaged the parking brake. He opened the door, and hopped down onto the road.
The moon was nearly full, and they sky was clear so it was easy for Darren to see, even without his flashlight. The lead truck had an air leak, and he needed to track it down. It wasn’t hard to find; air was rushing out of the red air brake hose at the back of the cab. He knew he didn’t have a spare. “Shit,” he sighed again. His convoy was in the middle of nowhere, it would take forever to get another hose. Darren placed the order with his company issued smart phone; it would arrive by drone in an hour. Good a time as any for an inspection, he thought to himself.
Darren operated a convoy of five smart trucks. His sleeper cab and most of his belongings stayed in the lead truck, as the four other trucks were not built for people to ride around in them. The trucks were all computerized and automated; Darren’s main responsibility was ensuring that the convoy kept moving across the country despite problems like leaky air hoses. He was paid sixteen cents for every mile that he traveled, and in order to make enough money to survive he needed to travel almost constantly. He showered about as often as he stopped for fuel; maybe three or four times per week. It had been two months and thirteen days since Darren had interacted with another human being. He liked to mark human interactions on the calendar he kept in the lead truck. Each month of the calendar featured a nude pinup girl. All of them were computer generated–endless facsimiles of the human form, each more perfectly proportioned than the last, could be churned out by computers in seconds targeting any demographic.
The convoy, though covered in grime and splattered insects, was in decent shape. Some of the tires might need a retread before too long, and truck #3 had a couple of running lights out, but those were things he could take care of the next time he fueled up. It felt good to walk around outside for a bit and stretch his legs, even though it was costing him money. He leaned up against the tail truck and watched other convoys rumble by at 45 miles per hour–all the major companies installed governors on their trucks for optimal mileage. He wondered what the people in the lead trucks were like. Probably like himself, anyway. Most truckers had similar backgrounds. Desperate to make money but without any pliable skills. Lonely. Desperate.
Darren operated a convoy because school hadn’t panned out and he didn’t like the idea of living in one of the corpo buildings. A lot of truckers had the same story. They couldn’t make rent so they signed up with a freight subsidiary to safeguard an automated convoy line of three, four, even five trucks for one of the corpo states. They were paid just enough that, if they never stopped moving, they could save up enough money to buy something nice for themselves every so often. Of course, never stopping was unrealistic. There were breakdowns, loading and delivery delays, and sometimes you just wanted to stop moving for a God-damned minute.
It had been almost an hour. Darren ambled back up to the lead truck, but didn’t climb in. Any time he could spend outside of the cab was like a vacation. All at once, he heard the low whir of a drone and the clumsy noises it made as it docked with the delivery port at the top of the truck. He climbed inside to grab the hose and set to work replacing the damaged one as the delivery drone flew away.
He was moving again. If he didn’t zip up the privacy curtain the sleeper cab felt like it had twice as much space, but the glow of the truck’s instrument panel was irritating. With the curtain closed, the sleeper cab seemed unreal. Of course it bobbed and bounced as more and more miles of road stretched off into the distance. The gray plastic molded shelf and cot discomforted Darren–like they weren’t real. Toy shelves and a toy bed. At least the dashboard’s instrument panel looked real.
A lot of operators went crazy. During training he had heard stories of truckers doing strange things. Hoarding things was common. Every company had stories of cabs that caught fire because they were full of newspapers and magazines. One of his driving instructors told Darren a story about an operator who killed himself. His truck was full of bottles of piss—gallons and gallons of it. The company had to decommission the truck because they couldn’t get the smell of piss out of it. Not that Darren believed that part—they’d probably make some poor sap deal with it before getting rid of the truck.
Suddenly, Darren zipped the curtain up. He bumped and jostled along with the truck as his convoy cruised down the road. He looked down at his virtual reality helmet, but the idea of surfing the internet or playing a game gave him a loathsome, empty feeling that he wanted to avoid. He stared at the image on the calendar for a long time before grabbing a thick black marker and reaching up to add another ‘X’ to the series. Two months, fourteen days. He turned out the lights and strapped in.
Darren awoke to the feeling of the convoy turning a corner, and undid the safety straps that kept him from being jostled out of the sleeper bunk. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep, but he could tell it was still dark out. The convoy was pulling up to its destination. Darren pulled on some clothes and unzipped the privacy curtain, climbing up into the operator’s seat. He liked to be alert and awake when his convoy was being scanned into the yard. Once, when he first started, he met a security guard.
He was an old black man, fat, with short white hair cropped around his bald head. Darren could still remember the face, but the name had slipped his mind. The man had been worried about his job–after shipping and delivery were automated security guards came to be seen as unnecessary. They had talked about the weather–it had been raining a lot–though Darren went through most of his days completely oblivious to the weather. When he had nothing better to do, Darren liked to replay the conversation in his mind.
This yard, like all the others, was automated, and there would be no security guard, though this was to be expected. Darren hoped to spot another operator. Generally, the rule was that an operator wasn’t allowed out of the truck on customers’ property, but exceptions were made for inspecting trucks and trailers. Since the advertising bots and company spybots crowded people off of radios, there was a simple protocol to follow to meet other operators. As the convoy is being scanned in Darren would climb into the operator seat and start looking for other operators situated similarly. If he spotted someone he would engage the big yellow safety release knob and get out to inspect the truck. Operators had no control over where the trucks would park themselves, so whether Darren would meet someone always came down to luck.
There were only a few other trucks in the yard, but their operators weren’t visible. Darren lounged sideways in the operator’s seat, resting against the door as his convoy pulled up over the switching pad. The trailer’s air brakes hissed as Darren’s lead truck disengaged and pulled forward out of the way. A dirty white yard jockey swung out from behind a row of trailers and hitched itself to the trailer Darren had safeguarded through the empty rural divide. The trailer’s landing gear retracted, and the jockey slowly pulled it out into the yard, disappearing behind a light blue trailer. The first tail pulled over the pad and detached, and another jockey pulled the trailer away. The process repeated until all the trailers had been hauled away and parked somewhere.
As soon as the final tail of the convoy was detached, each unit independently drove through the yard, hooking up to its next assigned trailer, and then came back together near the exit. After waiting for a couple of jockeys hauling trailers up the road, his convoy pulled left out of the yard, heading west. Operators were never given information about their loads or destinations, but Darren could tell the direction by looking at the sky. Before he could pick up any speed, he noticed someone hiding in some bushes off the road.
She was short, wide-framed, and ragged. She looked like she had been wandering through the wilderness for a long time. Her blonde hair was matted and tangled, she had a large scar on her right forearm, and the ring finger on her left hand was missing above the first knuckle. She wore common corpo worker clothes–cheap blue jeans and a plain t-shirt–but instead of shoes her feet were bound with cloth. Despite all of this, she looked determined. Confident, even.
Without thinking, Darren popped the yellow safety release for another inspection. The trucks pulled over in a line just a few feet from the bushes. He hopped down and looked right at her as she watched him walk around the cab. Approaching the rear of the passenger side, he pressed his thumb into a biometric scanner and the side compartment popped open. He glanced at the woman again, and pulled a large stone from the compartment, tossing it beside the road. As he continued discarding stones, she stepped out of hiding, and, eyeing him carefully, declared, “I’m not gonna fuck you.”
Startled a bit, Darren stammered out a response, “Oh, uhm, I’m sorry. You need a ride right?”
“I’m headed west.”
“I haven’t figured out which way I’m headed yet, but you’re welcome to ride along. We can take turns in the sleeper.”
He wanted to say something about how he was dying for someone to talk to, but she could probably tell.
After a moment, he looked down at the small pile of rocks he had tossed from the compartment—probably about the same weight as her. He shut the door.
“I haven’t had a shower in a couple of days, but you can take my next one when we refuel.”
She looked like she hadn’t had a shower in a couple of months.
“Thanks,” she said, and they got into the lead cab together.
A beat of silence passed before she asked, “You got food?”
“I’ve got some protein rations.”
Apostasy
I went to Travis’ reading a few weeks ago. It was held on a Saturday in the Depot District at Two Sisters Bookstore. It took me a few minutes to find–I had never been there before. This despite having lived in Richmond for a decade or so, and despite having lived only seven or eight blocks from the depot district for the first half of that decade. When I went out walking I generally liked to walk along the railroad tracks heading east, under the J Street bridge, past the old mattress and the heaps of garbage and what looked like abandoned jungle camps. I imagine it’s all still there, five or so years since the last time I saw it.
During undergrad I’d walk along the tracks to a wooded area where a large patch of polk grew not far from what looked like an old factory made of red brick. When I first found the place, I had hoped mushrooms grew there, but they didn’t. In the late spring and early summer, before the plants had grown tough and woody, I’d gather the polk with a pocket knife and a grocery bag and bring it home to eat. Strip off the poisonous red skin and cut the stalks into rings to batter and fry. I’ve never eaten the leaves before-they’re poisonous, too, and you have to boil them twice–though I’m aware people do. Tastes like fried green tomatoes.
I walked through town often enough when I lived in that part of Richmond, though I rarely walked through the depot district. I liked the straight up and down lines of the number and letter streets. I never really met anyone that I hung out with for very long–I’d hang out with roommates, when I had them, but I wasn’t very social otherwise. I’ve never been very good at being part of a community. When I was an ed. major one of my instructors asked me, after I had explained I was half an hour late because I had locked my keys in the house and had had to walk from E Street, why I hadn’t simply called someone for a ride. I told her I didn’t know anybody I could ask for a ride. She didn’t believe me.
The Saturday of Travis’ reading I was tempted to message him and say I couldn’t make it. Technically, Dad was coming up to help me caulk my leaky shower, but I had informed him of the reading and we planned to be finished in time. I was anxious about being around other people. Isolation is something that people with bipolar disorder do to themselves. We avoid parties. We shut ourselves up in our houses. We play video games by ourselves all day. I want to go, though, so even though I think I’ll probably have to talk to other people I get in my car and drive toward Richmond.
It was sprinkling in the Depot District when I got there. I had to drive around for a bit to find the bookstore and more to find a place to park. I’m familiar with the parts of Richmond where the streets are laid out like a grid–numbered streets running north and south, lettered streets running east and west. The Depot District and Old Richmond are confusing. The roads are laid out like a can of worms, as Uncle Elbert had once described Cincinnati. I parked in an alley just away from the shelter of the bridge, about a block away from the store.
When I stepped through the doors I had to stop for a moment. I had never been in a bookstore before. Not like this. I had been to Barnes & Noble, Borders, Hastings, different college bookstores, but this was different. It felt like a church is supposed to feel. The woman at the counter must have noticed my hesitation–she asked me if I was there for the reading and I said yes. Just walk straight back to the room at the end. Bookshelves that stood about a foot or so shorter than me criss crossed each other on either side of the path I walked. They were stained dark, or were naturally dark, and looked old. Handmade, maybe. It was quiet, sacred, like a library, and there were a few people browsing the shelves. A family of four. A couple. A young woman. I wondered if they were there for the reading.
In the back room I noticed three things immediately: One, I was under dressed. Two, Mary Fell was there. And three, all the seats were taken. I didn’t say hi to Mary or indicate that I knew who she was. I only had one class with her a long long time ago, and I wouldn’t expect her remember me. I thought she was cool, though, and I liked her. She sat between Travis and his wife, Karen, with the same gray hair running down to her shoulders in ringlets like she had years ago. She wore slacks and a flowy blouse. Everyone was dressed nice–business casual it looked like.
Travis must have introduced me as a professor at Ivy Tech, because someone commented that I looked like a professor. My hair, as always, was unkempt–short curls sticking out at all angles. My beard had started to go wild–I was in need of a trim. I wore a pair of dark blue sweatpants long ago spattered with white and green and red paint. My olive green sweatshirt was, likewise, spattered with a bit of paint. On my feet, foam flip-flops. Travis went around the room introducing everyone, his friends, to me–I don’t remember their names. There were six or seven of them including the readers: One of Travis’ former instructors from Earlham, reading from a book of poems that she had had published, the other a woman reading from her novel that was about to be published. The author with the novel had a man with her who I assumed was her husband–or maybe he was introduced as her husband, I can’t remember. There was another couple–the man, with his salt and pepper goatee reminded me of Ian McShane. There was Karen. There was Mary Fell.
The room was small, and the seats were taken. I stood chatting a bit, terribly conscious that I was standing in the doorway. The only other place to stand was behind the podium. Travis’ former instructor must have noticed my discomfort–or maybe she just wanted to get me out of the doorway–and offered her chair to me. Thank God. I sunk into the green vinyl chair, hoping to sink out of sight, and she went out to find additional seating, bringing back a couple of folding chairs.
I took in the room. I want to say the walls were painted green, though maybe they had some kind of patterned wallpaper. There was Sherlock Holmes paraphernalia everywhere–books, a street sign that said “Baker’s St.,” statuettes and busts on the mantle above the fireplace. In front of the fireplace was one of those black music stands to serve as the podium. Sofas and chairs surrounded the coffee table in the center of the room. Eventually, someone else came to the room–she was wearing crocs, a t-shirt, and walking with a cane. The reading began shortly after she was seated.
I can’t remember a word of it, but it stirred something in me. I’m unsure what I thought about as I listened, either except: Why am I not doing this? Why am I not trying to publish? Why am I not writing? Why am I not reading? I don’t even journal anymore. I don’t have answers, either. My favorite instructor told me once, while we were discussing my writing and the difficulty I had understanding why I had escaped and my friends had languished, “Riley, you’re living the life of the mind,” but whatever else she said didn’t stay with me. Without realizing it, I had always imagined myself a part of that life. Some of the poems, as I thought about myself and I thought about them–what might have inspired them, how they were written, how much work went into them, how much the writer reveals–made me tear up.
Travis is the last speaker. We clap as he finishes and sits down in his chair between Mary Fell and me. “Pretty good,” I say to myself. I stretch and stand. “Welp, Travis, that was pretty good.” He thanks me for the compliment, and I head out through the doorway, past the shelves, and out into the depot district. I’m conscious that my immediate exit might seem odd, but I want to be alone. It’s stopped raining, though the sky is still overcast. I walk down the sidewalk, glancing at the pushed together shops–coffee, ice cream, art, consignment, glass. Down the alley, on either side of me are run down homes–apartments attached to the shops. Crossing under the bridge, I stop and look for the Blues Brothers car but I don’t see it. I find my white Impala and climb in.
On the way home, I drive past my old house on E Street. It looks the same: Bad stone work–a web pattern–on the outside. Empty cement porch. A “for rent” sign is staked into the ground by the sidewalk. The store across the street is empty again. A couple of battered cars sit in the parking lot of the Tally Ho Pub. Mrs. Black, the shut-in who lives across the alley (if she still lives) still has a yard full of garbage. I turn left at the light, driving over the J Street bridge. I look out east, tracing the four parallel lines of the railroad tracks as they curve off into the horizon. I drive home.
Sophistry and Solipsism in the New Millennium 