a good start to the day
In a truck, the kind which pulls the road out into the seas and ploughs them both until they are ripe to the touch; this is where the light of many days begins. One man in a cab, freshened by a clock schedule and the stillborn daylight tripping over the fence of a lay-by, where he prepares for the bones to sit and bounce once more. This story begins in the back of a haulage container. I don’t know it well, so it is that much of the extra detail will perhaps appear as though it has been made up, that is not to say that it is embellished beyond the real journey. This said, let us continue, back to a morning start, sprinkled with the litters of the last night, which are brushed in a single movement of his hand, falling loose into a plastic carrier bag. Its rustle echoes of logo and convenience as it wars with the new day.
A broad yawning mouth tears open a magazine, and is titillated to the point of routine ejaculate, no less peaked; part and parcel of the life, the road never too far. All manner is of a personal concern, and so the matter of substance is in effect, the containment of more than the one load. Part of the way there, moving through a spine of concrete, lights flood down, laid into the horizon like broken vertebrae, poked up toward the night shift as it clears, slowly turning on and off. Everywhere around is sign-posted and still identical but for the details, which change in range from look and style to first-hand experience; one sign posts the position in the darkness, where his delivery route of two weeks ago, took him to a place previously unknown to him. A waterfall hidden in the cleft of the mountain; worth seeing in full from the crossing road-bridge, just east of the drop, but not on today’s calendar; too long a trip as it is to extend it by another stretch.
In the loosest of terms, it is morning; little is any more awake than when he began, at least not in the cab. The scenes each move one by one, in and out from view and driving distance. Where else could the next hours driving take him. It’s not a question which he asks often, and today is not any different. In any case, the fantasy was short lived, the world is awaiting its breakfast.
In the back, where the crates of large multi-pack cereals are each securely fixed by a worn nylon strap, and every wooden box is smothered by a film of clear wrap; unknown to him, some life has fit itself between the centre of the crate-stands.
A hundred
thousand tables in houses are set for the day, the truck pulling him up into the brightening mix of duty and sunrise. An alert teen sways with the road, where, in the massive container, behind the first three rows of crates, each stacked to the roof of the trailer, her hand is closed tight around a single bar, which connects with the inner frame of this alien environment. She does not know where she is being taken, he does not yet know that he is taking anyone but himself; that is of course not including the small family of mice, which he has been reluctant to do anything other than the minimum to chase off. On occasion, he will leave out a scattering of the most appropriate foodstuff of his cargo and tell himself that whatever the guys say, it’s better that he know what he has on his hands, rather than leave it to the creatures to fend for themselves; no doubt meaning that the mice will work away on all and every box in the truck, in small nibbled holes. That would surely be no good to anyone, particularly the retail and warehouse inspector, whose job it is to refuse delivery if there is any sign of interference. No, this is his way, and for him it is best.
With the day now visibly beginning, outside of the cab is a clear run; with under an hour before he reaches the first stop on his list. No more aware of north or south, in the darkness of the trailer, a young woman waits nervously to begin a new life. At this point in the trip, her eyes are accustomed only to the dark of this steel capsule, and in truth she has not heard human voice for some time. All the trip she has been hopped and scared rigid, to the point that her muscles are now so much suffering fatigue that she fails all of a sudden to maintain this peculiar grip. Her hand slips from its purchase, and only for the fact that her knee has locked, she would crumble down into a pile and surely give away her best kept secret. Having been lucky this time, she climbs down from the makeshift ledge and gathers herself. Soon she is rocked to a terrible but most needed sleep, where she dreams that she befriends a family of small grey mice, only there is one white one and she learns all that they know. She dreams that she is free. In reality a noise breaks her slumber, and startled to instinct, she runs out of the now opening door and falls on her
feet onto the hard but solid ground of a parking lot; and light which is still in its infancy, grows deep into her eyes, which remain closed. She keeps running.