I got my start,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, looking out the window. He made no move to get out his cell phone to record my story. “How did you get your start?”
“Showing is better than telling. I’ll do both,” I answered. “In a few miles we’ll pull over and I’ll give you the grand tour. You should be ready to stretch your legs.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I lost the feeling in them about ten this morning.”
I eased the truck and trailer along the narrow shoulder, careful not to grab too much ditch in the process. There was barely enough room to park safely. Josh waited for my nod and hopped out of the cab. The wind blew some sagebrush to his feet, where it attached itself to the laces of his fancy new hiking boots. He stood there as if a wild but loving animal were harassing him.
“This is where you got your start as a desert trucker?”
I asked him to follow me. Every few steps he paused and tried to shake the sagebrush loose. “Right there.” I pointed to a cross sticking up out of a pile of rocks.
“Someone died here?” he asked.
“Two men died here.” For the sake of accuracy, I added, “They died over there.” I pointed ahead of us to the northeast. “About a half mile away, on an access road that doesn’t access a damn thing except a steep ditch and a hundred miles of nothing.”
I explained that Rockmuse had once been a viable little town until the coal mine shut down. “Fresh out of high school, I drove back and forth from Price to Rockmuse for Utah Express Provisioners. I did that for about five years. Every day, five days a week. I hauled everything from a baby mule to a wedding cake. When the mine closed, the trucking company pulled out and let me go. People on 117 would phone me or flag me down and ask me to deliver this or that. I used my little Toyota pickup and pulled a small trailer — mostly on weekends for about six months.”
“The men who died were truck drivers?” Josh asked.
“Not exactly,” I said. “One drove for UPS and the other for FedEx. They got lost in a snowstorm the December after the mine closed. When they couldn’t find anything else they managed to find each other. They froze to death in each other’s arms in the UPS van. It took search and rescue over a month to find them.”
“That seems like a long time.”
“Think so?” I asked. “Look at your phone. Got a signal?”
Josh checked and shook his head.
“Spotty reception at best. GPS and homing beacons aren’t much better. Same with radios. Even satellite phones. This desert is like a Bermuda Triangle of sand and rock. I heard once it had something to do with the mesa and a weird magnetic iron content. Someone else told me it was sunspots. Personally, I think aliens have a secret base out here somewhere, and they jam everything.”
Josh nodded, caught himself, and smiled sideways at me. “Makes sense to me.”
“Makes as much sense as anything else in this world,” I said. “All I know is I’ve gotten along okay with nothing more than common sense and a lucky star. Almost twenty years now.
“Those two Mormon boys couldn’t be thawed so they could be separated. It was minus ten degrees the afternoon search and rescue located them. It was night by the time the Guard helicopter came. They had to be airlifted in one piece suspended from a cargo net like an ice-blue statue of reconciling lovers. A lot of folks in Price still remember that night, seeing the copter coming in low over town with its grisly cargo swinging in front of a full moon.”
Josh cringed. “God, that’s terrible.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Except for one thing,” I said. “There wasn’t any moon that night. You can’t argue when tragedy collides with a bored population’s power of imagination. Around Price it’s like JFK’s assassination or 9/11. People can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they saw that copter. One more thing.”
Josh glanced at me.
“Okay,” he said, looking out the window. He made no move to get out his cell phone to record my story. “How did you get your start?”
“Showing is better than telling. I’ll do both,” I answered. “In a few miles we’ll pull over and I’ll give you the grand tour. You should be ready to stretch your legs.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I lost the feeling in them about ten this morning.”
I eased the truck and trailer along the narrow shoulder, careful not to grab too much ditch in the process. There was barely enough room to park safely. Josh waited for my nod and hopped out of the cab. The wind blew some sagebrush to his feet, where it attached itself to the laces of his fancy new hiking boots. He stood there as if a wild but loving animal were harassing him.
“This is where you got your start as a desert trucker?”
I asked him to follow me. Every few steps he paused and tried to shake the sagebrush loose. “Right there.” I pointed to a cross sticking up out of a pile of rocks.
“Someone died here?” he asked.
“Two men died here.” For the sake of accuracy, I added, “They died over there.” I pointed ahead of us to the northeast. “About a half mile away, on an access road that doesn’t access a damn thing except a steep ditch and a hundred miles of nothing.”
I explained that Rockmuse had once been a viable little town until the coal mine shut down. “Fresh out of high school, I drove back and forth from Price to Rockmuse for Utah Express Provisioners. I did that for about five years. Every day, five days a week. I hauled everything from a baby mule to a wedding cake. When the mine closed, the trucking company pulled out and let me go. People on 117 would phone me or flag me down and ask me to deliver this or that. I used my little Toyota pickup and pulled a small trailer — mostly on weekends for about six months.”
“The men who died were truck drivers?” Josh asked.
“Not exactly,” I said. “One drove for UPS and the other for FedEx. They got lost in a snowstorm the December after the mine closed. When they couldn’t find anything else they managed to find each other. They froze to death in each other’s arms in the UPS van. It took search and rescue over a month to find them.”
“That seems like a long time.”
“Think so?” I asked. “Look at your phone. Got a signal?”
Josh checked and shook his head.
“Spotty reception at best. GPS and homing beacons aren’t much better. Same with radios. Even satellite phones. This desert is like a Bermuda Triangle of sand and rock. I heard once it had something to do with the mesa and a weird magnetic iron content. Someone else told me it was sunspots. Personally, I think aliens have a secret base out here somewhere, and they jam everything.”
Josh nodded, caught himself, and smiled sideways at me. “Makes sense to me.”
“Makes as much sense as anything else in this world,” I said. “All I know is I’ve gotten along okay with nothing more than common sense and a lucky star. Almost twenty years now.
“Those two Mormon boys couldn’t be thawed so they could be separated. It was minus ten degrees the afternoon search and rescue located them. It was night by the time the Guard helicopter came. They had to be airlifted in one piece suspended from a cargo net like an ice-blue statue of reconciling lovers. A lot of folks in Price still remember that night, seeing the copter coming in low over town with its grisly cargo swinging in front of a full moon.”
Josh cringed. “God, that’s terrible.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Except for one thing,” I said. “There wasn’t any moon that night. You can’t argue when tragedy collides with a bored population’s power of imagination. Around Price it’s like JFK’s assassination or 9/11. People can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they saw that copter. One more thing.”
Josh glanced at me.
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