The Teddy Bear

I hadn’t noticed the driver when I came in through the back door of the truck stop. He must have been there. I hadn’t noticed. But then, I wasn’t looking, either. The day had been long and boring and it wasn’t over yet. I’d decided to treat myself to a table meal for a change so I breezed right through the store and found myself a booth in the café. The waitress came by and left me a menu and a cup of coffee. I was trying to decide between the BLT and a burger when a driver sat down in the booth next to mine. Nothing much unusual about the man, he was about thirty-five, average build, with curly brown hair that fell around his head un-combed and unnoticed. I’d not have thought anything about him except on the table in front of him was a small stuffed Teddy bear.

The driver looked up and saw that I was looking at his bear. I felt self-conscious so I shot him a half-way grin and gave him a nod and looked back at the menu.

“It’s for my boy,” the driver said. I looked up. He was smiling. “Yeah, they got’em in there on sale. So, I got him one. Jimmy. That’s my boy.”

I nodded at him, not really in the mood for a conversation. “Oh,” I said. Then I intentionally looked away towards the waitress coming towards me. In the corner of my eye I saw him poke at the bear and then lift the menu.

The waitress took my order. I settled on the burger. She re-filled my coffee cup and then went to the driver with the bear. He ordered and handed her the menu. Then he looked at me. “It’s been hell of a long two weeks,” he said.

I almost said they all are but stopped myself. I have been out here too long, I think. My life for the past fifteen years has been nothing but asphalt and white lines. “Know what you mean,” I mumbled. The waitress was gone and so was the menu so I had nothing to focus my attention on. I was wishing I had a magazine or something.

“Yeah,” he said. I’m sure he got the idea that I didn’t want to talk. He sat, tapping his fingers on the table, looking up at the ceiling and then out the window. Something was on his mind. I’d seen it before. Some driver with a burr up his rear, wants to talk, full of words and bull. I considered moving but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I braced for the inevitable. It wasn’t long in coming.

“Yeah,” he said, “so, who you drive for?” I told him my company. He told me his company. He drove for one of the big carriers whose drivers often found themselves the butt of jokes.

“How long?” he asked.

“Fifteen years, there about.”

“Wow, long time.” He was still a moment. I could tell he was trying not to talk to me. But he was just full. Drivers get that way sometimes. “Yeah, but not as long as some. How many miles?”

“I haven’t a clue,” I muttered. It was true. I kept telling myself I was going to figure that up some day. I keep seeing these Million Mile awards and things, how do they keep up with that stuff? I didn’t know how many miles I’d run the week before.

“How long you been out?”

I shrugged. I didn’t think about being out, the way he meant it, any more. My wife, or ex-wife, got tired of me being gone a long time ago. She found herself another fella who would stay home. Janette and Susan, my daughters, they were grown now, I saw them sometimes but they lived in different places. So I didn’t have a lot to go back to. I rolled into town where I had a little trailer stuck on a lot about once a month. I had been there about a month ago. “Oh, ‘bout a month or so.”

“No,” he said, “that’s too long. Can’t your company get you back any more than that?”

I shrugged again. “Nothing to get back to.” The waitress brought my burger and I set about fixing it my way, poured ketchup on my fries, sipped my coffee, and generally worked on halting the conversation.

The driver took the hint. He looked around again. But I could tell, he was going to blow any minute. Suddenly he picked up the bear. It was an ordinary-looking bear, brown, fuzzy, nothing special. He grinned at it like it was alive. He wiggled the bear’s arms and poked his finger into the bear’s nose. “Jimmy will love this,” he muttered. I knew he was working up to another conversation.

I was nearing the end of my burger when the driver’s order arrived. He had the BLT. When he’d taken a couple bites I opened my mouth and screwed up. I started the conversation again. “Is it good?”

“Oh,” he said, his mouth full, “Yupf.”

“I was thinking about that instead of this burger. Burger was ok, though.”

“This is good,” he said. “I love these things. Janette and I used to always go down to Billy’s, that’s a café in town, anyway, we’d go down and get BLT’s. Nobody could pile it on like Billy.”

“Janette?” I was surprised to hear the name. It was my daughter’s name.

“Yeah, my wife.” He stuffed the last bite of sandwich into his mouth. Then he slapped his hands together to shake off the crumbs, took a sip of tea, and picked up the bear again. “Janette is my wife and Jimmy is my boy.” He slipped out of the booth and slid into my booth on the bench opposite me.

“I’m Jim,” he said.

I nodded. I didn’t offer my name. I bet I haven’t given my name to more than a dozen or so drivers in ten years. We are all just driver. That’s our name. Driver. “My daughter’s name is Janette.”

“Really? Cool.” He leaned back and stretched. “Hey, it’s been a long day but I still got a ways to go. I have two hours driving time left and I’m going to use it up. I’m headed home.” He paused. “For the last time.”

“Gonna hang it up?”

“Yeah. I promised Janette that I’d be home when Jimmy started walking.” He looked at the bear. His face was sad. “I wasn’t there. Then I promised her I’d be there when he learned to talk. I wasn’t.” Jim looked at me with a pained expression. It was funny. Once I knew the man’s name I couldn’t think of him as a driver. Just as Jim. “Driver,” he said, “Five years I’ve been out here. And I love it. But you know. Yeah, but then, it’s been five years tomorrow when Jimmy was born.”

“Yeah, it’s hard on a family,” I muttered. I didn’t know what to say. I’d heard it all, a thousand times, from drivers in café’s across the country, on the CB, where ever there were a couple drivers. I knew the story.

“Sure,” he said, “but you see, back then, we needed the money. Even then the pay was good. I got laid off at the foundry. I hated that anyway. Filthy, hot, stinking work. But I couldn’t find anything. Janette suggested the driving school. I figured I’d drive local, you know, a beer truck or something. But hey, well, you know.” He nodded out the window at the row of trucks.

I wasn’t sure I did know. Driving was all I knew now. But not why, just what. “Yeah.”

“Janette was pregnant, we needed the insurance and the money. I promised her I’d get back. I didn’t.” He frowned. “We tried. I was with a trainer then, see. We were up in Wisconsin. Snow shut us down. I almost got a plane to fly back down to Dallas.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “I have a new job,” he said, changing the direction of the conversation. “Cement trucks.”

I lifted my eye-brows.

“Yeah, I know.” He shrugged and looked out the window wistfully. “It’s not driving, it is just a job. Pay’s good. I put my application in last time I was in town. Three weeks ago. I was supposed to be in last week but you know how that goes. Now tomorrow is Jimmy’s birthday and I’m going to be there if it kills me. And then I’ll turn in my keys and drive a cement truck.” He seemed to sink into the booth.

“Not a bad job. Pay good, huh?”

“Yeah,” he looked back at me, “sure, almost as much as I make now. And home every day. Yeah, I’ll be much happier.” He wouldn’t. He knew it and I knew it. But, I’d seen that too.

“Look,” I said, feeling sentimental, “you are doing the right thing. Comes time to decide, road or family. Best to choose family.”

He looked at me and I felt uncomfortable. I knew the question he had on his lips and I knew he saw the answer in my eyes. It was my turn to look out the window. “I got to go,” I said, standing.

“Me too,” he said. He stood and lifted the bear. “Yeah, you are right. I missed too much already.”

I walked to the cash stand and Jim followed, the bear tucked under his arm. It suddenly occurred to me that a bear might be the wrong thing for a five year old boy. I was thinking maybe one of the toy rigs would be better. But what did I know? I cashed out. Jim paid his tab. We walked through the store together and out the back door.

I stopped just outside simply because I couldn’t quite remember where my truck was. I’d been at this truck stop a hundred times and sometimes everything ran together in my head. Jim stopped and I heard him suck in a breath.

“I know it is corny as hell,” he muttered, “but I just love this stuff.”

I didn’t say anything. It was corny as hell. But I knew exactly what he meant. You’d just never hear me say it.

“I have to go,” Jim said, stepping off the sidewalk. “It’s been good to talk with ya, driver.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it perfunctorily.

“Yeah, good luck with your cement truck,” I said, “and tell your kid I said happy birthday.”

“Sure,” he said, walking away, “what was your name again?”

Again. Right. Never said it the first time. “Bill,” I blurted.

“Bill, right, well, hey, have a good trip, Bill.”

“You too,” I said. He disappeared between two trucks. I finally remembered where my rig was and headed for it. Then I changed my mind and went back into the truck stop and bought a cup of coffee, which I took with me to my truck. Ten minutes later I finished up making appropriate adjustments to my log book, tossed the empty coffee cup in my waste bucket, and pushed down on the parking brake. Ten minutes after that I was rolling full bore west bound.

“Brake check on your front door, west bound.” The CB crackled. I frowned. Great. Up ahead I saw tail-lights, plenty of them, in a neat row.

“What’s the hold up, East Bound,” I asked.

“One of those ninety-day wonders took a nose dive.”

“Ten-four,” I muttered into the mike and hung it back. For the life of me I don’t know why what the driver said struck me the way it did. My stomach rose up in my throat. A few seconds later I was busy slowing my Freightliner down and dropping it into a low gear. The traffic crept along but it was moving. Ten minutes of stop and go and then I topped a hill and saw down the other side where at the bottom there were the lights of a single police car blocking the right lane. It was a rather dark night and I didn’t see the end of the trailer until I was almost upon the scene. Just beyond the state police cruiser I saw the rear of a trailer which lay on its side. The tractor had to be down in the woods below the roadway. As I eased past the end of the trailer a logo leaped out at me. It was the same company Jim drove for. I jerked my wheel to the right and pulled out of the traffic, popped my breaks and pulled my four-ways. I had to know.

The officer looked a bit surprised and annoyed when I walked up to him. He was lit by the glare of spot lights from the top of his cruiser. “Everything is under control, driver,” he said. “You need to move your rig on down the road.”

“Sure, officer,” I said, looking at the truck, “ambulance on the way?”

“Should be here any minute,” he said, “not that they can do anything.” He frowned. “Probably went to sleep or something.”

“Think so?” I walked towards the truck.

“Who knows,” the officer said. “You better move on.”

“Look, officer,” I said, “I think, well, it might be my friend.” I didn’t have a clue who it was. This company had thousands of trucks. But then, I think I did have a clue. Somehow.

“Friend?”

“Yeah.”

The officer looked grim. I wondered where the rest of the emergency vehicles were. They should have been there by now. Suddenly a car swerved out of the traffic in the east bound lane and came to a halt in the grassy median. A young woman leaped from the car and dashed across the west-bound traffic in front of a car. The officer and I both stood watching as she came running up.

“Is he OK? Oh, God! Is he OK?” She was rather hysterical.

The officer struggled to calm her. The woman was young, attractive, and I suddenly had a terrible thought. But I was wrong. It wasn’t any driver’s wife.

“Ma’am, calm down,” the officer said, “calm down now. Do you know….”

“Is he ok?” She was breathless. “God, no, I didn’t mean to, I mean, really, I couldn’t really stop, and anyway, is he ok?” She shook violently. “I should have stopped, I mean, not gone on, I saw him in my mirror,” she breathed heavily, “but you know, I mean, I was afraid. Afraid!”

The woman didn’t have to say any more for me to figure out what happened. Slowly the officer pulled from her a story that I already knew. The woman had been coming down some small road and entered the highway without looking. She hadn’t noticed the truck coming down the hill. I didn’t want to hear her any more and I didn’t want to feel sorry for her, either, so I went to look in the cab of the truck. I didn’t want to. I knew what I’d find there, too, but I had to. The underside of the truck was lit with flashing red lights as a fire truck and ambulance approached from over the crest of the hill, trying to make their way around the tangle of cars.

The tractor smelled of hot diesel. I walked around to the front of the truck. Everything was pitch black. I was loathe to walk close enough to the windshield to see inside. As I stood there I heard an odd sound. Then I realized it was a cell phone. I followed the sound and found the phone laying in the grass not far from the rig. I picked it up. The face of the phone was blinking, indicating someone was calling. It was a phone similar to mine. I pressed a button and held it the phone to my ear.

“Jim?” I would have given anything not to have heard that name. “Jim?”

I tried to say a word but I was choking so I just sucked in a breath.

“Jim!”

“Janette?” I squeaked the name out, pushing the air across reluctant vocal cords.

“Jim?” The voice was quieter now. “What is going on?”

I controlled myself a little better. “Is this Janette?”

“Who is this?”

“This is Bill,” I said, “I’m a driver.” I couldn’t think of what to say next. I was wishing that I’d not answered the phone. Now I had no way out.

“Who? Bill who? Where’s Jim?”

“He’s….” What could I say to her? I just held the phone to my ear feeling stupid. An emergency crew was now at the truck and moving towards me. “Look, Miss, um, Janette, I’m a friend of Jim’s. He’s been in an accident. I really can’t talk to you now, the, um, ambulance crew, I mean, you know, they are here.”

“WHAT?” The voice on the phone was frantic, now. “What? Jim? What is going on. Is he hurt?”

“I really must go now,” I said. I pressed the off button on the phone. I stood there for a few minutes, not moving, just watching the emergency crew set up lights around the cab of the truck. One of them climbed on top of the truck, pulled the passenger door open, and looked down.

“Nah, he’s gone,” I heard him say. I was stunned. The phone in my hand was ringing again. I looked down at it absently. It flashed on and off. I stared at it.

“What are you doing here?” The voice was gruff. I looked up into the face of a tall fireman.

“I, um, that is, or, was, my friend, there,” I nodded. “I drive that truck there.” I pointed towards my truck.

“Well, you need to move it,” he growled. “Sorry about your friend. You know the family? What’s his name?”

“Jim,” I muttered, “his name is Jim.”

“Jim what?”

“Jim. I don’t know.” The phone in my hand had stopped ringing but now it started again. “Here,” I said absently, handing him the phone, “this is probably his wife. Her name is Janette.”

The fireman looked at me, then at the blinking phone. I pressed a button and handed the phone to him. He held the phone up to his hear. I could hear the frantic woman’s voice from a distance. I walked away. There was nothing for me to do now. Firemen were all over the truck, lights flashed inside the cab and from where I stood in front of the truck I could see through the windshield to where the crumpled body of my friend Jim lay. I walked to my truck, got in, and pulled out into traffic.

Two weeks later I found myself turning into the same truck stop I’d met Jim in. After fueling my truck I parked it and went inside to sign the ticket. I had not wanted to even stop there but it was a company fuel stop so I had little choice. Not far from the fuel desk I saw a table piled with stuffed bears. I walked to it and looked. They were like the one Jim had bought. Jim. Once I learned the man’s name I was forced to think of him differently. Drivers were just drivers. I’d seen dozens, maybe more than a hundred, wrecked trucks. Many more wrecked four-wheelers. In my fifteen years I’ve seen every kind of mangled vehicle and mangled body. But none of those people had names. But I knew Jim. And I was far from getting over knowing him. And now I stood at the same place he stood and looked at those same bears. I picked one up.

As I held it I remembered Jim poking at the one he’d had, as if it was his boy. I remember the look in his face as he mentioned his Jimmy and I remember the sadness in his eyes when he talked about missing the boy’s birth and his first time to walk and talk. My nose started running suddenly and I sniffed and wiped it on the back of my hand. I threw the bear onto the table and went to the fuel desk to sign my ticket. I was going to be late.

Some how, though, I found myself back at that table instead of walking to my truck. I picked up two of the bears, paid for them, walked through a doorway and sat at one of a dozen phones along a wall. It took almost an hour but I tracked down Jim’s dispatcher and got an address. I’d send the bear along with some kind of note. That is what I would do. I felt good about the idea.

Back in my cab I wrapped one of the bears carefully and stuck it in a bin. I’d send it on to Jim’s kid. The other bear I hung over my passenger seat. It would remind me. I pushed the parking brake down and started to ease out on the clutch but then pulled the brake again and slipped the shift to neutral.

There was only one ring before I heard my daughter’s voice. “Hello?”

“Janette?”

“Yes, is this you, dad?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“I can’t hear you clearly.”

“Cell phone,” I muttered, “probably out of range.”

“Yeah? I can hardly hear you.”

“I love you Janette,” I said. I could not remember the last time I’d told her that.

“Dad? What did you say? Are you alright?”

“I said I love you,” I said again, louder.

“What’s the matter, dad?”

“Nothing,” I said, looking at the bear hanging there smiling innocently, “nothing. Just, never know, you know.”

“Know? What, dad? I can’t understand you.”

“Oh, nothing, Janette, I just wanted to say I love you. Bye.”

“Um,” she paused, “I love you too, dad. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m fine, just, well, I have to go.”

“Sure, ok, have a good run, Dad.”

I put the phone back in the bin where I kept it. Then I pushed the parking brake down again and slipped my truck in gear. I had a load and it was going to be late.