Thursday, December 31, 1998
Written at: parked at a grocery warehouse in Denver, waiting for them to open on Saturday. Engine idling for the heat.

New Year's Eve. Ray was asleep by ten. He's been sleeping a lot this winter. I let him go until five to midnight and then I shook him and we watched the clock on the dash turn over and he said "Happy New Year, Payroll" and kissed me and was snoring again by 12:02.

All anybody on the CB wants to talk about is next New Year's. The computer bug. Will the fuel pumps work, will the satellite box on the dash still know where we are, will the banks open. One guy says he's parking his truck on December 30, 1999 and not moving it till spring. Another says nothing will happen and it's all a scheme to sell generators. I figure we'll find out together, like everybody.

Resolutions. Ray's: lose the gut. Mine: back into a tight dock on the first try, every time, so the men standing on the dock with their arms folded have nothing to say.

1999. Last year with a nineteen on the front. That feels like it should mean something. I'm too tired to think what.

Sunday, October 18, 1998
Written at: truck stop, I-35, Emporia, Kansas. Flint Hills going brown and gold.

A year ago this week Mom got her new hip. Now she does water aerobics three mornings a week at the Y with a group of ladies who call themselves the Hip Replacements, which I think is the funniest thing I've ever heard. She says she's the youngest hip in the group, even if she isn't the youngest lady.

Ray is driving me crazy with the water. He carries a gallon jug in the cab and drinks it like a camel, and so now we stop every two hours so he can use the restroom. I timed it today. Two hours and five minutes between stops, and he was out of the seat before the brakes set. I tease him that he's turning into an old man. He says that's what happens when you live with an accountant. I'm not an accountant. I did payroll. He knows that. That's why he says it.

He's tired, too. He says it's the age and the miles. Probably it is. We're both tired. The summer was long and the fall isn't any shorter.

Thursday, August 20, 1998
Written at: truck stop, Highway 99, Bakersfield, California. 106 degrees at the fuel island.

I haven't written since the wedding and I'm sorry. Nothing happened. That's the problem. Nothing happens, at sixty-five miles an hour, all day and all night.

The summer of 1998 has been one long day. Salinas to Chicago. Chicago to Fresno. Fresno to Atlanta. Atlanta to somewhere I already can't remember, and back. Wait at the shipper. Wait at the receiver. Pay the lumpers. Sleep. Drive. Fuel. Shower if there's time and if the shower line isn't forty minutes long. Call home from a pay phone that smells like cigarettes and say "I'm fine, we're fine."

Ray's back hurts. My knees hurt. The company is happy with us because we run a lot of miles and don't complain. Every week I look at the check and I think about the house and the payments and Melissa and Wes's first year, and I think, okay. Another week.

We said when we started we'd do it till the house was paid off. Six more years. I can't think about six more years tonight. I can think about Fresno.

Sunday, June 14, 1998
Written at: home, Tucson. In my bathrobe at eleven in the morning. Nobody can stop me.

Our daughter is married.

We made it home Thursday afternoon with four hours to spare before the rehearsal. I took the fastest shower of my life and got my hair done Friday morning and my nails done, which was a waste, because I'd scraped the polish off two of them by noon unloading Ray's suit from the truck.

Yesterday Ray walked Melissa down the aisle in the same church where he and I got married in 1972. He was steady as a mountain until about the fourth pew, and then I saw his chin go, and he looked straight ahead the rest of the way like he was driving through fog. She was beautiful. Her dress was simple, no big puffy sleeves, which she said is how they're doing it now, and I'm glad, because mine had sleeves you could have parked a car in.

At the reception Mom danced. With her new hip, slowly, with Greg, to an old song, and the whole room stopped to watch and then pretended it hadn't. Ray and I danced to everything, even the songs we didn't know. You don't get to dance in a truck.

Late, Ray took Wes outside by the cake table and said something to him. I asked what. Ray said, "I told him, whatever you do, don't make her a trucker." Wes laughed and said yes sir. Ray wasn't joking.

We go back out Tuesday. I'm going to sit here a while longer.

Monday, June 8, 1998
Written at: the sleeper, I-40 westbound, somewhere in Tennessee, typed with the laptop on my stomach.

The wedding is Saturday. We're in Tennessee.

We were supposed to be home yesterday. We were supposed to load in Pennsylvania Friday morning, a load going to Phoenix, which was the whole plan, and the shipper was eleven hours late. Eleven hours. I sat on the dock and watched a man drive a forklift like he was paid by the year. Joel says, "I promised you'd make it and you'll make it." Joel has never once lied to us. He has also never once been right about how long a shipper will take.

So we're running straight through. Two thousand miles and change. Ray drives, I sleep, I drive, Ray sleeps. This is what team is for. When I'm driving tonight I'll have the whole country to myself and the radio, and when I hit the Arizona line I'm going to honk.

Melissa called the terminal twice today to ask where we are. They told her "Tennessee" both times. She cried both times. Wes got on the phone and said he'd keep her calm. Good luck, Wes.

Sunday, April 19, 1998
Written at: truck stop, I-40, Tucumcari, New Mexico. My favorite booth. They know me now.

Planning a wedding from a truck. Let me tell you.

Melissa sends Polaroids to the company terminal in Phoenix and they put them in our mail slot, and we pick them up every couple of weeks. I've seen her dress now, in a Polaroid, a little blurry, held up in a dressing room. I cried at the truck stop in Kingman. The fuel desk lady gave me a tissue and said "Somebody die?" I said, "No, my daughter found her dress." She said "Oh, honey, that's worse."

We've asked for home time June 10 to June 16. We asked in January, in writing, and we asked again in March, and Ray stood in front of Joel's desk last week and asked him in person with his arms folded. Joel wrote WEDDING in red on the board behind him. That's as good as it gets in this business.

The waitress here told me green chile stew is good for wedding nerves. I had two bowls.

Wednesday, March 18, 1998
Written at: waiting to load tomatoes in Nogales, Arizona. An hour from my own bed. Of course.

One year on the truck, as of March 10. I did the figures, because that's who I am.

Miles, the two of us: about 231,000.
States: 44. We have not been to Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Alaska or Hawaii, and two of those don't count.
Times through Amarillo: I stopped counting at 30.
Showers in truck stops: roughly 290. Worst: Laredo. Best: Ogallala.
Lumper receipts I got the company to pay back: all of them.
Times I cried: 6.
Times Ray cried: 1. In Wyoming. He says it was the wind.
Times I wanted to quit: about once a week.
Times I did: 0.

The winter vegetables come up from Mexico through here, tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers, and the trucks line up at the warehouses on the hill. You can see the hills on the other side of the fence from the dock. Ray grew up in Tucson with his grandmother telling him stories about the Sonora side of the family, and every time we load here he gets quiet and looks south.

Saturday, February 14, 1998
Written at: truck stop, I-80, Laramie, Wyoming. Truck fixed. Toes thawed.

Valentine's Day. Ray gave me a heart-shaped box of chocolates from the truck stop counter, the kind with the plastic rose stuck on top, and a brand-new pair of insulated coveralls in my size. He said, "One's for now, and one's for the next time." I said which is which. He said I'd figure it out.

That's love, when you've been married twenty-six years and stuck on I-80. I wore the coveralls to the fuel island. I ate the chocolates in the sleeper. Both were exactly right.

Friday, February 6, 1998
Written at: a motel in Rawlins, Wyoming. A real bed. A bathtub. I may never leave.

First: we're fine. Mom, Carol, Greg, Melissa, we're fine. I know you called the terminal. I'm writing this so I only have to tell it once.

Tuesday night we were westbound on I-80 between Laramie and Rawlins, where the wind comes across the flats like it has somewhere to be. It started snowing at dark. By ten it was blowing sideways and you couldn't see the reflectors. I was driving. Around midnight the engine started to stumble, and then it quit, and I coasted onto the shoulder with the hazards on, and that was that. Ray got out and looked and came back with ice in his mustache. The fuel had gelled up in the cold. It was something like twenty below with the wind.

No engine means no heat. They closed the interstate behind us an hour later, so nothing was coming. We put on every piece of clothing we own, both of us, and got in the sleeper under every blanket and Ray's old Army sleeping bag, and we called on the CB.

A driver parked about a quarter mile up, a handle called Sooner, came back right away. He said his truck was running fine and he had a heater and a pot of coffee and two seats. So at two in the morning Ray and I walked a quarter mile up the shoulder of I-80, holding on to each other and the guardrail, into wind that took your breath out of your mouth. I don't know how long it took. Long. Sooner had his door open and his dome light on so we could find him.

We spent the night and the next day in Sooner's cab, three people who didn't know each other, drinking coffee and telling our whole lives. He's from Oklahoma, obviously. He has four daughters and he showed us all their pictures twice. When the highway patrol came through Wednesday afternoon, the trooper looked in and saw the three of us and said, "Well, you folks look like you're having a party."

The wrecker got to our truck Thursday. We came in behind it. They're fixing the fuel system and the company is paying for this motel and I have taken two baths.

I've never been that cold. I never want to be again. And I've never been so glad to be married to somebody who would walk a quarter mile into a blizzard holding my arm.