FURNACE Read online

  Table of Contents

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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  FURNACE

  Muriel Gray

  For Hamish, Hector and

  Rowan Marsaili Barbour, with love

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Ray Kasicki and his truck Thumper for the ride across America, Joan Kasicki, The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers’ Association, Dr. I. Cullen, Michael Fishwick, Jane Johnson, Bruce Hyman and Hamish.

  1

  There was no need for her nakedness. Not yet. But as she stood on the rock and looked at the pale hands stretched out before her, she was glad that she had shed her clothes. The dawn light would break over the mountain behind her at any moment, and although the cold was fierce, her shivering was of anticipation rather than physical discomfort. The chill breeze on her skin felt good and the heavy scent of dogwood blossom and wet grass filled her nostrils.

  Far below in the dark sweep of the Shenandoah Valley, the lights of isolated trucks and cars moved along the highway as though pulled by an invisible link. She opened the fingers of her right hand and moved them across the blackness until they cupped one of those moving lights like a firefly. Perspective. It was incredible to her that it had taken the human beings until the Renaissance to interpret size and the distortion of distance correctly. What did ancient man think when he held up his hand as she was doing now, perhaps to balance a herd of animals on his palm? Did he think that by the visual evidence of their diminished size he became their master? And what made that thought more obtuse than the beliefs of modern man? To his eye, this would be no more than a naked woman standing alone on a hillside, playing an optical conjuring trick that allowed a truck to drive across her opened hand. How long before the next Renaissance-like awakening of intelligence? The awakening that would confirm his mistake in this respect.

  As she became aware of the first rays of the new sun backlighting her hair, she closed her hand slowly and obliterated the lights of the far-distant vehicle from her view.

  “Hey, Peterbilt. You got the four-wheeler leg shot ahead of you?”

  Josh Spiller smiled before thumbing the CB in response.

  “Might do. Might not. How you gonna get that crawling piece of junk past my rig an’ find out?”

  There was a cowboy whoop from the radio speakers, and as Josh had guessed, the source of the message was the reefer coming up on his left, increasing its speed and pulling level with him. He glanced with measured amusement at the cab of the Freightliner Conventional. It was like he thought. A company truck. Company drivers. A name, “Kentucky Meat and Foul,” was painted on the door in fat blue letters, and the leering bearded face of the team driver hovered above them at the window, like he was a painting and the letters below spelled his title. The guy gave Josh a triumphant surfer’s thumb and little finger, accompanied by a shit-eating grin as his partner at the wheel came on the radio again.

  “Come on there, big truck. Bet you snatched a look at the snatch. Am I right, or am I right?”

  Josh rolled his eyes skyward, trying hard to suppress a smile, then looked forward again.

  To his right, the great rolling back of the Appalachians was a graceful black cutout against the lightening sky, and in only a few minutes the first orange arc of a new sun would break across the heavenly silhouette. But to the guys on his left, the sun could come up accompanied by a cloud of naked golden angels sounding trumpets, and all they’d do would be to slap their thighs and guffaw at the fact they could see some flying bare ass.

  He felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the girl in front, still oblivious to the harassment she was about to endure. Channel 19 had been discussing her for the best part of an hour. Sure her legs were long and her skirt short, though if she hadn’t left her interior map light on no one would have known. But the bumper sticker on the back of her tiny Honda, that line-drawn fish that declared the driver was a Christian, suggested that light being left on was an innocent error. In Josh’s experience Christian ladies didn’t flash truckers.

  His sympathy was mixed with a strange nostalgic melancholy brought about by the imminent appearance of the sun. He’d been feeling pretty mellow for miles, looking forward to slotting a cassette into the stereo and watching the dawn break over the mountains to the sound of something good. Something carefully chosen to heighten the privileged experience of welcoming the daybreak over gentle but beautiful open country. Now these pencil-dicks had ruined it, and there was nothing he could do. They would get level with her, probably sound their horn and embark on a series of gestures among which a zoologist could find subject matter for a dissertation.

  As they inched forward, the reefer struggling to get ahead of Josh’s more powerful rig, he sighed and resigned himself to the spectacle, running a hand over the back of his neck to massage away fatigue from the muscles there.

  And then the red light winked.

  Josh glanced up at the radar detector on his dash and as quickly across at the cab of the reefer.

  Company trucks didn’t carry radar detectors. Other owner-operators like Josh might just. The damned things were illegal in big trucks but nobody could get you for just riding with one, and Josh knew where to switch it on and where not to. Here, on this stretch of the northbound interstate through Virginia, he was glad it was on. If nothing had changed in the highway patrol’s routine since his journey down, then he knew exactly where those bears with the radar were. There was a rest area just ahead on the right before the next exit, and that’s exactly where he’d spied a state bear sitting hunting on the way southbound only three days ago. How could the apes in the Freightliner know that? They couldn’t. Not without a detector, or that other essential lifeline every trucker relies on: information from a fellow driver. A driver like Josh. And if Josh chose not to say anything, there weren’t a whole lot of trucks packing out this road right now who’d blow those bears’ cover instead. The highway was so quiet it could have doubled as a runway. On the dash the red light was going crazy, and Josh pressed simultaneously on his brakes and the talk button of the CB mike, a smile nearly cutting his face in two.

  “Yeah, you’re on it, guys. I looked for sure. And let me tell you, she’s askin’ for it. Since she been showin’ us so much leg there, why don’t you fellas give her a look at some of them Kentucky chicken pieces of your own.”

  He looked across as the cab of the Freightliner started to pull away by virtue of his own subtle braking, and watched the bearded guy slap the dash and give a thumbs-up in appreciation of the joke.

  “Come on, asswipes,” Josh whispered as he saw the rest area up ahead.

  The truck drew level with the Honda, and as the window of the Freightliner started to wind down he could just make out the nose of the patrol car, peeking out from behind a clump of scrubwood, still expertly hidden from anyone who wasn’t looking for it. Josh’s smile couldn’t get much wider, but he tried.

  The timing was close to perfect. The Honda swerved a little as two fat white buttocks poked out of the Freightliner’s window, a finger sticking grotes
quely into its own rectum, precisely as the three vehicles glided past the parked patrol vehicle. To the two cops sitting glumly in their car, wishing that dawn would break and bring the end of their shift closer, it looked like a circus act that had taken a lifetime to perfect. They exchanged no more than a brief and weary glance before snapping on the siren and pulling out.

  Now it was Josh’s turn to slap the wheel in glee as the Freightliner edged back and pulled over, falling prey to the police car like an antelope brought down by hyenas. Josh was alone with his good Christian lady again, and part of him wished she had CB so he could share the joke and, more important, so that she could thank him for his betrayal of colleagues in the name of chivalry. But the exit ahead seemed to be the one she wanted, maybe by choice, or maybe just so she could get off the highway and away from her persecutors. She started to brake and signal. Josh braked in response and was surprised when she slowed to a crawl. There was nothing for it but to pass, so he swung the rig out and downshifted accordingly. As the bulk of the Peterbilt moved past the woman’s tiny car, now peeling away at a snail’s pace towards the exit ramp, Josh Spiller threw a look across at her.

  From her open window an elegant arm emerged in farewell, and on the end of that arm, stabbing the air repeatedly like it was trying to puncture an invisible skin, was a deeply un-Christian middle finger.

  He’d fumbled in the plastic ledge above the dash for a good thirty seconds, initially finding only an evil knot of Jelly Bellies that had fused together in the heat of the cab, before his fingers closed on the cassette he wanted. The sun was almost visible now, and Josh urgently wanted to get his chosen track lined up before it was too late.

  He flipped the tape out of the plastic, junk-filled canyon and slotted it quickly into the stereo. It came on halfway through some terrible and elderly Doors number. Wrong. So wrong he wished he’d never included the track on this jumbled and hastily assembled compilation. He pressed fast forward, waited and then let it play again.

  Aerosmith. He cursed silently. That meant that it was rewinding, not going forward.

  The sky to his right was now growing light so fast that a ridiculous mixture of anxiety and frustration tightened his chest. He took out the tape and reinserted it. The machine didn’t like the way he did it and slid the tape back out at him again. The sky had now gone way past pink, turning into the luminous aquamarine that heralds the first glorious golden shards of sunlight, as he slammed the troublesome cassette back in and pressed fast forward again. Two pauses and he was there.

  Josh couldn’t say why he fancied this track most to greet the dawn, but he did. It was old but it was tranquil. A song off some weird album by a British band called The Blue Nile that Elizabeth’s kid brother had loaned him.

  It started with a slow drum, then this really sad guy came on and sang like he would break your heart. You had to be in the mood or you couldn’t take it. Josh was in exactly the right mood. It was just what he wanted for the big event, the arrival of the sun after this nine-hour, nonstop homeward haul from Tennessee. And it was going to work this time. It was going to be a peach. The track was lined up, the sun was maybe only seconds from view and he was northbound in the right lane with nothing obstructing his view across the dew-soaked fields to the Appalachians.

  That was important to the full enjoyment of the moment—the absence of anything man-made in between him and the sunrise. No buildings. No human junk. Nothing that would spoil his view with another reminder, particularly after his disappointment in the reluctant maiden he’d rescued, that sometimes people didn’t deserve another day graced by anything as beautiful and indiscriminately benevolent as the sun. He waited, his hand ready to press play, glancing every three or four seconds out the passenger window to catch the first sight.

  Up ahead, the highway stretched empty before him, an artery of stone that fed America its lifeblood. Or was it a vein that circulated the disease of man and his junk around the once untouched and healthy body of this delicate continent?

  Josh gazed out front, contemplating it for a second, knowing that whatever the answer, he was a part of it. The rare sight of clear road made him suddenly feel exposed, an alien object moving without permission upon an ancient and secretive landscape.

  And in those few moments of inattention as Josh dreamily regarded the road ahead, the sun betrayed him and sneaked up over the rim of the hills. He whipped his head to the east as the first orange beam hit the side of his face, shifted in his seat and stabbed the play button on the stereo.

  The tape hissed and then the song began.

  How could he have known? Even with the benefit of the height that he enjoyed from the truck, Josh couldn’t see the entire landscape ahead, couldn’t see the mark of man that was waiting for him, nestling smugly between mountains and highway. So at that religious and significant moment when the sun rose, it rose not over unsullied meadows and hills, but from behind a forest of four tall masts, one tipped by golden horns, another by the Cracker Barrel sign, the other two proclaiming Taco Bell and Burger King.

  Josh blinked for a second, his mouth slightly open until an excited voice on the CB crackled over the gentle song playing on the tape and brought him back.

  “Man, oh man! Any of you northbounds see that?”

  Josh glanced across at the source of the enthusiastic message: a lone R-Model Mack pulling a covered wagon on the southbound highway.

  Gratefully, Josh picked up the handset. “Sure as hell did, big truck. Glad there’s someone else out there with a soul.” He flicked off the tape, ready to receive the reply, and it came right back at him with its enthusiasm intact.

  “Yeah? Man, I can’t believe they’s only askin’ two dollars ninety for a chargrill, family bucket of fries, soup and a free soda. That’s a whole dollar less than the joint at exit 19. Sure gonna work for me!”

  Josh Spiller stared ahead for a second or two, then gently replaced the handset, let out the remains of his breath and started to chuckle. He shook his head and carried on laughing until a tiny rogue tear rolled down one cheek and he wiped it away with the back of a greasy hand.

  “Shit. Know what, America? You are one fucked-up country.”

  2

  She’d been awake for at least two hours. Now that the dawn was bleeding through the drapes, she shifted under the covers and ran a hand over her warm belly. She had to get up. No choice. But here, in the dark that was gradually being corrupted by light, it was safe and warm to think, and everything outside that cocoon seemed impossibly cold.

  Josh’s face. She closed her eyes and thought about it. Sometimes, if it had been a long time, she had trouble remembering the exact contours. But even if it was difficult to visualize she could always recall how it felt beneath her lips. She held on to that now, breathed in through her nose as she thought about the smooth, soft skin over his cheekbones, the thick curl of eyelashes and the rough texture of bristle around mouth and chin.

  With her eyes still shut, she swung her legs out of the bed and sat up.

  The bedroom mirror greeted her with her own reflection when she raised her head and looked towards it. Despite her hunched posture, even she would admit that her breasts looked enticing. They were fuller and firmer than she’d realized, and her hands came up in an unconscious gesture to cup them gently.

  Elizabeth Murray let her hands move up to her face and then spoke in a whisper to the mirror, the delicate planes of her cheeks and forehead sculpted by the grey dawn light.

  “What now?”

  Josh waited impatiently outside the phone booth. There were only three private booths at this Flying J truck stop, all occupied by frowning men who looked like they were making talking an Olympic event. He sighed and leant heavily against the wall, toying with his Driveline calling card.

  The big black guy next to him was holding the phone against his ear with his shoulder, passing a rubber ball restlessly from hand to hand as he listened, his eyes glazed like he was hearing bad news.

  Josh gues
sed what he might be hearing. The guy’s dispatcher would have put him on hold, and the profound expression of misery was most likely induced by an age of listening to the theme from Love Story reproduced electronically by a sadistic phone company. He looked at his boots. All he wanted to do was to call Elizabeth and tell her he was less than an hour from home. No filthy talk like you sometimes heard and wished you hadn’t, but he wanted privacy when they spoke, and if he didn’t get a free phone soon he’d miss her. He’d already gone past that delicious time when she would pick up the phone beside the bed and answer in a sexy, sleepy way. Right now she’d have a mouth full of Cheerios and be pulling on a jacket, ready to go to the store, pleased to hear from him but with a tone of urgency in her voice that meant he was making her late. Five more minutes and she’d be gone.

  The door of the centre booth opened but infuriatingly the guy hadn’t stopped yakking.

  Josh made a move towards him and the guy held up a hand without looking at him.

  “Uh huh? Well, it ain’t okay with me.”

  A listening pause.

  “No, it ain’t my last word. This is my last word. Okay, two words. Fuck you.”

  He slammed the phone down, got up off the small plastic seat and pushed past Josh.

  Josh grinned at him, and gesticulated at the phone. “It’s a drag always havin’ to call your grandmother, ain’t it?”

  The man looked for a moment like he might throw a punch, but something in Josh’s eyes held his clenched fist by his side, and he satisfied himself with a “Yeah, funny guy” muttered beneath his breath.

  Josh smiled at the man’s back and entered the booth, his grin deforming into a grimace at the blush of sweat those substantial buttocks had left on the plastic. But he needed to make that call. He decided to stand, and as he punched in the code for the card he shook his head. Seemed like all truck drivers did was drive and then get mad with someone for no other reason than they didn’t like driving.