Paul Maliszewski – on a giant truck.

Durham, North Carolina
September 29, 2000

Dear Paul,

A few weeks back, I drove a twenty-four-foot truck from Syracuse, New York to Durham, North Carolina. I say it was a twenty-four-foot truck because when I tell this story to people it seems like a crucial detail, as important as where we were moving from and where we were going. Why we moved had to do with Monique’s new job. Why I had to accept a twenty-four-foot truck, when a smaller one would have worked and been less intimidating to drive, had to do with Monique needing to start work four days from then.

I have noticed people are not immediately struck by the massiveness of the twenty-four-foot truck. The detail merely slips by them, as if it’s superfluous. There is, in fact, nothing superfluous about a twenty-four-foot truck.

When we pulled into the Ryder dealership in Syracuse, and I saw the twenty-four-foot truck, three of them actually, lined up side by side, backed up against a line of trees in such a way that it appeared as if the trees were to be casually tossed in the back by giants, I said, “Is that the twenty-four-foot truck? That can’t be. That must be a thirty-foot truck.” We looked around the parking lot, drove toward the back of the building, thinking our truck might be concealed there. All we saw were those three trucks and a van. Monique said, “I think that’s the twenty-four-foot truck.”

I can provide you with as much instruction as I received from the Ryder person in four simple imperatives: Allow greater following distances. Be careful backing up. Trucks are longer and wider. Watch overhead clearances. Each of these sentences appears in bold on the Vehicle Damage and Safe Driving Tips triplicate form. Beside each sentence a yellow cartoon truck gets itself into various hair-raising pickles when its cartoon driver fails to heed a safe driving tip. The driver who doesn’t allow enough distance balances his truck on the front two wheels and crushes two cars into Wile E. Coyote-like accordions. The driver who fails to watch clearances opens up the roof of his truck like a sardine tin. I only had to place my initials next to each of the cartoons, to indicate that I understood, say, that cutting across curbs scares cartoon cats and squirrels into trees. Inhaling the distinctive whiff of liability lawsuits from the form, I plm-ed each tip. As I signed I imagined some Ryder corporate attorney rounding a table to stand in front of me and ask, Are these not your initials, Mr. Maliszewski? Didn’t Ryder in fact inform you, Mr. Maliszewski, that trucks are both longer and wider?

The twenty-four-foot truck weighs over 23,000 pounds when empty. The twenty-four-foot truck has dual wheels in the back. That means two wheels in the front and two pairs of wheels in the rear. The twenty-four feet of the twenty-four-foot truck includes only the cargo part, not the entire vehicle. It’s equipped with air brakes. Putting it into park automatically applies an extra safety brake. It has speakers installed in the bumper so that when I put the truck in reverse – and let me just say I really did not like putting the truck in reverse and avoided doing so whenever possible, driving a mile out of my way in forward, because in reverse it felt as if all bets were off, the child would certainly be struck, her beloved poodle killed, and the site of local historic interest, the one I happened to be right in front of, leveled – the truck’s bumper’s speakers unleashed those piercing, pulse-like beeps. The back of the sun visor, one of many surfaces of the truck full of yet more liability-shedding language, had some wise words for drivers: “Never forget you are driving a truck.” The reminder seemed unnecessary. I felt incapable of thinking about anything else.

We had a system for driving. Monique drove in front, in her 1984 Plymouth Reliant, a trusty car if you know its quirks. With her were our two cats, various cat supplies, and whatever we felt we needed most essentially. Before moving I thought I needed certain books more essentially than anything else, books such as J R by William Gaddis and my American Heritage Dictionary, but when it came down to it, and I had to choose, I selected T-shirts and shorts, toothpaste and toothbrush, deodorant, a box of crackers, and some bottles of Syracuse water.

I drove behind Monique. My father had loaned us his two-way radios to keep in touch. My father is sixty-one, and on weekends he likes to do a lot of work outside. A couple of years ago, with his neighbor’s help, he built a barn from the foundation up. About a year ago he had a heart attack, or nearly did, or would have had the doctors not been quick about performing an emergency angioplasty. My mother bought him the two-way radios for Christmas last year. With the radios he could, in theory, keep in touch with her while he was working outside, just in case anything happens. That’s the phrase they use: just in case anything happens. In practice, my father radios in and asks if my mother wants to go to the hardware store with him, if she thinks it’s time for lunch yet, if she could bring a glass of water out to him when he swings by the door on the riding mower.

Monique and I used the radios to say things such as “I only have a quarter tank of gas left,” “I have to go to the bathroom,” “How are the kitties doing?” and “I just heard on NPR that William Maxwell died.”

I did not drive like a menace. I didn’t speed. I didn’t swerve. Insofar as I was able, I did keep those four tips in mind. I hardly ever even moved out of the slow lane. Still, I sensed I had to be doing something wrong, endangering everyone who had the bad luck to be in front, beside, or behind me. I felt grossly unprepared to drive what I was driving. I imagined being the cause of hundreds of fatal accidents. Most of the scenarios involved both Monique in her car and me in the truck. Many ended in squealing tires, smoke, spilled oil and gas, and flames.

As I drove I was filled with fear of driving and worry, all of which stewed in the thick anxiety of leaving the place where we’d lived for seven years and not knowing anything about the place to which we were moving. For brief seconds as I drove my chest seized up and my eyes clenched at the simultaneous thought of all this and about a dozen other things. Did nobody else know how unprepared I was to haul our accumulated books, furniture, and possessions six hundred-plus miles behind the wheel of a twenty-four-foot truck? Then I criticized myself for being so self-involved and endangering others. I got a grip, you know, and kept driving.

In Frackville, Pennsylvania, we needed to stop for gasoline. This was our first stop since leaving Syracuse, so Frackville would be the first time I had to drive the truck through small city streets since scooting out of town on a series of main roads and getting on 81 South.

I missed the turn for the first gas station in Frackville because it came up too quickly and because I was not ready to turn. After conferring on the radio with Monique, we drove into the heart of Frackville.

Frackville is like many small towns located in close proximity to major highways. What I mean is that gas stations, fast-food franchises, and perhaps a motel or two cluster aggressively, jockeying for position near the highway, while the old town, the town that existed long before the highway came along, remains more or less undisturbed, economically oblivious. What this also means is that the old town is not constructed to accommodate the easy passage of trucks driven by some guy versed only in Ryder’s four tips of safe driving.

In order to have the privilege of spending $37.48 on twenty-five-odd gallons of gas at the Frackville Uni-Mart, I first circled once around the station, then executed a stunning slow-motion, three-point turn in an empty church parking lot, all to align the gas tank with the gas pump.

Once the truck was gassed up, I was not ready to start driving on the highway again. My right hand had gone numb about an hour earlier from gripping the wheel too tightly. Shaking it vigorously, as I used to in the middle of scribbling out three-hour essay exams, wasn’t helping. I pulled out of the gas station, and headed away from 81. I turned right at the next light onto what turned out to be a narrow residential street. I found a block of houses with no cars parked on the street – exactly the space I needed to park. Monique parked behind me and came and sat in the cab. A hard rain started falling on Frackville, a rain that followed us, letting up only for a few miles here and there, all the way to Virginia. We had snacks and told each other we were doing fine, under the circumstances. So what if we drove too slowly and everyone passed us. If need be we could take an extra day.

After a few minutes Monique left in her car to explore, to find a way out of the neighborhood and back to the main road. As she circled around several times, sometimes popping out on the street in front of me, sometimes coming up behind, we kept in touch on the radio.

“What if you go straight?” I said to her. “It looks like I may be able to turn around there, if it widens enough, I think.”

“I’ll check it out,” she said.

A minute later she radioed back. “I don’t think you can make it through there. Let me try this other way. I’ll be back.”

As I waited for her to discover the widest, most secure passage with the fewest tight turns, I tried to shake some life back into my hand, and to forget that in a few minutes I would once again be driving a twenty-four-foot truck.

Take care,

Paul