Page 76 of Trucker
I stopped at a market just before entering Albright and bought some shrimps. I’d found a pepper shrimp recipe from Jamaica online and I wanted to surprise Trucker with it for dinner.
There was an appreciation when I cooked something from his culture—and I loved the way he smiled when he came home to something familiar.
I’d just entered Albright when I turned on the radio.
Hitting the Groundby Ben Broussard played softly from the speaker, and it reminded me of my grandfather.
In his last few years, that song was one of his favourites.
He taught me how to play it on the guitar then the piano. We’d spent hours, sitting at the piano as I learned the keys and how to read music. He would laugh softly when I made a mistake but he always cheered me up with a kiss to the forehead.
I miss those kisses most of all.
“Try it again.” His voice was smooth, calming. “It’s okay. Just try it again.”
When his mind started going, every time I played it for him, he’d remember me—not as an adult. In his eyes, I was still the fifteen-year-old who he sat with every Sunday to share a root beer float.
Something smashed in the back of my car, jerking me forward and back to reality.
I screamed.
Gripping the wheel tighter, I glanced in my mirror to see a red SUV was following behind me entirely too close. I wound down my window and motioned for the person to go around. There was no way I’d speed up.
I was already going almost eighty in a seventy zone.
A speeding ticket would ruin my day.
“Go around!” I shouted.
The driver responded by ramming me again.
“Son of a bitch!” I swore. “Go—the fuck—around!”
When the person pulled from the lane and sped up beside me, I slowed thinking they were going to go around my car.
But instead, the driver swerved wide then brought the large vehicle hard into the side of mine.
Metal scraped against metal as I slammed on the brake causing the SUV to shoot forward ahead of me. That should have been the end of it—if it had been an accident.
But when driver reverse in the outer lane, lined up with my cooper and tried hitting me again, I slammed my foot down on the gas, sending my car faster ahead and out of the way of getting hit, this was no accident.
The truth was, I was still in danger.
My mini couldn’t outrun the monster after me.
Soon, they caught up again and this time, I couldn’t avoid the hit.
My car swerved out of control and though I tried keeping it on the road, my vehicle slipped over the embankment and continued rolling down the side of the hill. My heart stopped and the though I tried slowing down by using the brakes, nothing worked.
Releasing the wheel, I covered my face and waited.
When the hit came, pain surged through me as my body jerked forward, my neck doing a weird shake dangerously forward then back. Something slammed into my chest, causing me to struggle with pulling air into my lungs.
But each time I inhaled, it was like breathing in fire.
My eyes fought to close on themselves.
Soon, I couldn’t see anything, even though my eyes were open.
