Silence, by Tommye-K. Mayer © 2003

Chapter 1

Gripping the steering wheel tighter, Carol squeezed her eyes shut, until they began to water a bit. She held her eyes closed that way just a moment longer. They would feel better, less dry, when she opened them again.

It wasn't a very smart thing to do, but she'd been sitting there, in the same position, since she left the office. She shifted her weight, rocking her hips just a little and rolled her shoulders. Did those wooden bead seat covers that the ads said taxi drivers in Hong Kong use really help?

There wasn't much to look at on the side of the road. Traffic was pretty light. It was rarely any different out here, not much to be going to or coming from. Nothing like the jams you read about out East or in California. Well, she'd heard Seattle was getting pretty crowded these days, too. Just miles of farms, fences, and open land, some livestock. Nothing notable, especially now that it was after sundown.

What time was it? She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Damn. eight-fifteen already.

It was always like that; getting out late on Fridays. Every week, there was something that had to be "finished today and there by Monday." Mr. Reiner always seemed to make the promises, but it was Carol who stayed late getting it all together and out the door ; long after he'd gone home to catch one of his boys' ballgames. Every time, he promised and she got it done. Naturally, the rush only mattered on Fridays or Mondays. The end of the week and the beginning of the week, the two hardest days to stay late.

Carol stared out at the road. Still quite a ways to go yet, and almost pitch black dark already. She pressed the heel of her hand into the steering wheel, stretching her fingers one-by-one. Why did the radio in this car have to go dead? The silence made the commute seem to take forever; no music or talk, even lousy talk. Just listening to the steady hum of the engine and feeling the shiver of the tires rolling over the gravel stones in the black top was crazy-making.

By the time she got home, dinner; franks and macaroni, hopefully someone remembered to make a salad, would be cold and crunchy. But then, crunchy was really the only way to eat macaroni anyway. Her mouth watered just thinking about it. She swirled the saliva around in her mouth, her tongue rubbing against and around each tooth and then she swallowed. Her stomach rumbled too. It had been a long time since that cup of yogurt somewhere around noon, or was it one? A while ago anyway. Wasn't there an apple in the glove compartment? She reached over and rummaged through. Aha, paydirt!

The kids would already be ready for bed. But they wouldn't go to upstairs until she got home. It was getting awfully late, she'd better get going. Carol glanced down at the speedometer. Seventy was probably as fast as she should go, too much faster and the steering wheel would start shimmying.

Would the kid's have gotten their homework done? Or had they convinced Dan to let them stay up and watch TV? Depended on what was on tonight. If they had their homework done, then she wouldn't have to insist that they come in early tomorrow evening. And they could all go on down at the pond after dinner.

Still, those two were pretty persuasive, especially after a long day at work and if everyone at school had been talking about a really great show for tonight. Besides, who wanted to come home after work and fight with the kids? She really couldn't blame Dan if he was kicked back with them, all three of them nestled on the couch together. It sure sounded like a whole lot better idea than cruising down the highway at seventy miles an hour, the shadows encroaching her headlights beams, nighttime here already. Maybe there wouldn't be time for that movie after she got home.

All four of them together on the couch would be even better. Dan would throw his arm around her shoulder, his hand would be reaching around just to that place that her arm usually covered, where her side and her breast came together, and his fingers would be lightly caressing. She'd lay her hand high up on his thigh, squeezing so slightly that not even the kids sitting with them would notice. Imperceptible to anyone but Dan.

The flash of high beams reflecting in the rearview mirror yanked her thoughts back to driving. Sheesh, whatever it was behind her, the headlights were riding way too high on its front end for it to be just a regular old truck.

She released some of the pressure on the gas pedal and began easing out of the high speed lane, ooh, her ankle was so stiff after all that time of holding a steady seventy. Next time she'd get cruise control, like on Dan's truck, it made highway driving so much more comfortable.

As she eased over into the right lane, she it occurred to her that it didn't really matter where either of them drove, since there wasn't another car on the interstate for miles. But she didn't like anything, especially something as big as that thing must be, going by on the inside, and he was going to pass her.

When he did, she could steal some of his thunder and get home all that much faster. And maybe the kids would go to sleep quick so she and Dan...

Didn't take him long to step on it again and start passing her. What a monster of a truck that thing was. She gripped a hold of the wheel again. Before, her fingers had relaxed some, but now she needed to be holding on tight. The suction of the truck passing by, like a whirlwind buffeting her, pushed against her car. This one didn't weigh anything... Dan's truck felt more substantial. But it was better in the City, and for driving around town. Besides, when they bought it, she hadn't planned on commuting to the City and now, who could afford a new car, with two kids...

Sometimes they hitched two, three trailers together, piggyback, and made a massive thing was this baby one of those? Out of the corner of her eye, she watched it going by.

No, it was just one big truck, and he was just moving now. She squeezed the steering wheel tighter still, holding it in both hands, steering the car slightly more toward the breakdown lane. She probably should have slid over in that lane more before she let him by. Did he seem so close because he was so big?

After he got ahead of her a bit, she'd pull in and up behind the truck, almost tailgating. Ever since the oil crisis. When was that any way? Seventy-two? when ever, ever since then, she'd been riding tailgate on trucks whenever she drove the highway. Especially at night. They used to publicize that if you got your car into a truck's air pocket, you'd conserve gasoline.

Okay, it was time now. She pulled the wheel a little to the left and slipped in behind the truck. How in the world could someone verify that? It was probably some sort of a mathematical equation that some Stanford U grad student came up with. They were supposed to be pretty flaky out there in California, or one of those plastic pocket protector types from out East.

There were hordes of folks in the East that had time to do nothing but make calculations like that, so many other peculiar and useless statistics came from there.

Whether or not it saved any gas, it was the way to go in seventy-two. So why change now? Besides, with a commute like this, fifty miles each way every day, and most of it highway, even if it only saved five cents a gallon. I was something.

Now that she was snuggled in behind him she could relax a little bit, riding in the airpocket was smoother somehow. So what would it save? Figure a dollar a gallon and twenty-five miles to the gallon...

Oh why the Hell had she let the radio stay broken? Now she was solving word problems in her head! She pictured Mr. Pierce back in high school cracking the chalk against the blackboard, except they were always green..., trying to drill that convoluted stuff into her head every day for a whole year, at least that's how it seemed. "Carol Jamieson is driving fifty miles at seventy miles an hour," he would have said. Only then it would have been Carol McDonald. "The car averages twenty miles to a gallon of gas. She can save five cents per gallon of gas if she always drives in the airpocket of a truck. If she works five days a week and takes three weeks vacation and ten paid holidays and gas costs a dollar twenty-five a gallon, how much money will she save annually." He'd make up word problems like that, using their names, just like that. God, she hadn't thought of Pierce in years... Say X equals annual gas savings...

She stared at the road ahead except that pretty much all she could see was this truck. It was bigger than anything she ever remembered seeing, wider too. How fast was she going now? Carol glanced down at the speedometer, wow, seventy-five, seventy-six. And she hardly had her foot on the gas. The truck just pulled her along with it, almost as if they were tied together. The only way she tell she was moving was the air on the windshield, and the hum of the engine. She couldn't see much, and the road was real smooth.

But it was like flying along, doing seventy-five miles behind a gray cement wall of. Pretty eerie. She read the stickers all over the back door: Florida, Michigan, Alabama, Ontario, North Carolina, Guadalajara, Idaho, Oregon, California. This truck had been every where. Hmm, except in New England.

Jackie was out East. Little brother Jack, twenty-six now, and a college graduate now, working and getting his masters. Little bro, she smiled just thinking about him. What was it he said he was studying.. Umm, landscape architecture. He said he'd be designing parks and people's back yards. But it seemed a little ridiculous. Didn't you just dig a hole and plant a tree? What was there to study? He said they talked about what kinds of plants to put where.

But then, plants weren't her thing

She'd always told anyone who wanted to listen about her brown thumb. She'd even successfully killed the unkillable. Cacti dehydrated in days. Her Wandering Jew plants withered. Was it the perennials or the annuals that were supposed to come up every year. Well whichever, if they were supposed to show-up next year, they wouldn't. And if they weren't supposed to, they made a valiant effort but then gave up the ghost just before the Guinness people showed up.

So Jack was going to learn what to plant where. "I won't come out East, near your gardens, until you graduate. 'Coz if I come, your final project won't make it to be graded," she told him when they talked about Thanksgiving last year. Jack had thought it would be fun if the whole family came out to visit him for a change and spend holidays, out on the East Coast.

But it was just so expensive. She and Dan just couldn't swing it even if the kids were went for half-price fares.

But she couldn't tell Jack that. The family all thought she was working because she enjoyed getting out of the house now that the kids were in school, not because they needed the money. They didn't have a clue that a research scientists, even as talented as Dan, didn't make piles of money. So she made up a story about killing his final project, jinxing the soil, and ruining his plans to graduate to get out of that one. And they bought it.

Jack still called her from school quite a lot, "since Massachusetts was such a long way away, and you won't come visit. "He said there weren't any open roads out there, like here. But he wasn't drive much there either, they had this public transportation stuff, and it was cheaper to ride than drive.

Besides, he'd gotten together a bunch of guys and rented a big old house not too far from campus. Most of them would've gone home for Thanksgiving so the family could've had just about the whole house, he'd figured.

She was really getting tired. Must be getting close to the exit. It wasn't much farther from there. She glanced to the left, not much over there, some farm someplace, just open land. She should probably think about moving over to the traveling lane, But she hated to move over too soon. It was such a waste of gas.

They really should stop in at the Home tomorrow and spend some time Gramma Jamieson, all of them, tomorrow. Dan saw her as often as he could during the week. It was hard duty, going by there, but the nurses encouraged it, she seemed to perk up so much whenever the boys visited, they said.

Carol shook her head. It was hard to believe that Gramma Jamieson got anything at all out of their visits, she seemed so lifeless.

How was she doing for time? Carol glanced down at her watch. Almost eight-thirty. That exit'd be coming up soon. She should probably start moving over now.

Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit! The soundless words clanged through her mind. All she could focus on were the bright red tail lights lighting up the inside of the car, shining in her eyes, as the car kept going forward. She jammed her heel on the break pedal until she stood on that one foot, her body raised out of the seat. Even so, she watched it all happen. It was as if the front end was somehow sucked underneath the truck.

She clenched the steering wheel, the car filling with smoke still pressing her full weight into the break pedal. Dan! Thoughts swirled, clamoring, inside, her lips frozen shut. She couldn't even scream. What difference would it make anyway? God damn it. Oh shit oh shit. Dan, I'm not...I think I'm going to be a little late tonight. don't wait up for me! The macaroni pan, don't forget to soak it overnight. It'll be like cement tomorrow. Oh crap! Will you give my folks a call? And Jack? Don't forget, Honey, remember we agreed; kids in bed by nine, nine-thirty at the latest. Son of a bitch. It won't stop. Why won't it stop? Don't let'em con you, Sweet, they'll try. When it's both of us...but one against two...God damn it. Honey, I love you...

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