Dave Nelson’s Story
Dave T. Nelson looked up and noticed the sign. “Welcome to Louisiana” it read. Hmm...the Chicken Coop on Interstate Ten ought to be a mile or so over the line...and yup..there it was.
Closed.
The Coop is closed.
As it should be.
He drove on down the road a while...Not very many people out and about that early. It was pretty easy getting thru Lake Charles. He’d seen it much worse. He drove on over the bridge and through the town and was soon rolling cross country.
A little bit of mist here and there. He hoped it wouldn’t develop into fog. If the fog got thick enough he’d stop. He didn’t care who wanted what or when. He was NOT driving in thick fog. He was double especially NOT driving in thick fog on that bridge ahead. The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge. Between Baton Rouge and Lafayette over the Atchafalaya Basin. It was damn near 20 miles long over that swamp. Very few exits. He did NOT want to be on it in fog..
But it didn’t. He was getting a bit drowsy. He was a few hours ahead of schedule. Plenty of time to take a little nap. He pulled into Frog City, a truck stop in Rayne Louisiana.
Time for a little steering wheel nap.
It seems he’d just crossed his arms on the steering wheel and lowered his head when…..
“BAM! BAM! BAM!”
...whuh? He raised his head. He’d gone to sleep as expected..but what was that noise?
“BAM! BAM! BAM”
...someone was throwing rocks at his truck. He looks out the window to see flames and smoke. He can’t see out very far...the fire must really be intense...his view is obscured.
“You’re on FIRE!!”
Over the increasing roar of the fire he hears someone shouting.
“yeah, no shit” thinks the trucker.
“BAM! BAM! BAM”...more rocks. Who ever it is, is damn persistent...thank god for that.
Dave looks around at a cloud of smoke shot through with flames. Smoke is seeping into the cab. It’s getting hard to breath. It’s time and past time to un-ass the area. He yanks on the door latch to open the driver’s door.
Nothing. Won’t open. Damn electric locks. He hated them. He
was locked in a burning truck. It’s starting to burn INSIDE the truck now. patches of upholstery are smoldering. Toxic smoke probably since the whole damn truck is plastic.
Panic. He mustn’t panic. Like that old witch said in the Novel “Dune”. Fear is the mind killer. He mustn’t panic. He wasn’t dead yet though things looked kinda grim. While there was life there was hope….
……...and a hammer. He remembered his four pound mini sledge that he carried in the door pocket right beside his left leg. He grabbed it and swung. The window became history and he squirmed out. Cutting himself on broken glass as he fell almost six foot to the ground. He was a fat man and in poor shape. He was also on fire. He didn’t land well.
He rolled his sprained, burned, cut and bruised body over and over in an attempt to put out the fire. His clothes were burning and his hair and beard were pretty well singed. It had rained earlier and there were puddles of water, that helped some. He rolled away from the burning truck. It was totally engulfed in flames now. Flames reached twenty foot into the sky. Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed.
The old man continued to roll until he judged he was far enough away from the inferno that was once his truck. He quit rolling and just lay there, panting like a dog. He lay splayed on his back. Some of his clothing had caught fire and he had several burns here and there. His hair and beard had were smoking still. He lay on the pavement as his truck went up in flames. It pretty much burned to the ground.
He was gasping for breath. A Firetruck arrived. It was too late for the truck so they just kept the fire from spreading, the truck was just gone. When it was over they packed him away in an Ambulance to the hospital.
It turns out he wasn’t so seriously injured as he’d looked. His clothes were a total mess but they didn’t burn well since he’d been dressed for the job. Heavy cotton overalls didn’t burn worth a damn They had protected him from serious burns. Rolling across mudpuddles had put out the fire pretty fast.
The definition of serious varies according to the ability of the patient to pay. The old man had no insurance so his burns weren’t all that serious. Even so it was a miracle. It should have been impossible. He should have been burned much, much worse in that inferno. Yet there he was. He had some facial burns...he’d probably scar. He wasn’t pretty any longer, but he wasn’t seriously injured. He was mostly just singed and crinkled around the edges some.
Insurance
[spit]
It took the insurance company [spit] over a month to pay off. During that time he lived in a nearby motel.
Eventually he got a check. It was a pretty hefty sum although he still felt cheated. He felt that since he’d been paying premiums on the 50K assigned value of the truck then by God they should pay him 50K. But no. The insurance company [spit] was more than happy to take his money for $50K payments but they only paid on ‘market value of the truck’...which turned out to be $30K. He didn’t think that was right.
He paid his bills, paid off his debt, paid off his taxes and put the pitifully small remaining amount in the bank. Everything he’d worked for in a long life of hard work. Reduced to few dollars in the bank.
No more trucking. He’d never be able to buy another truck. He didn’t have enough money for downpayment for a good one. Trucking wasn’t much fun any more anyway. Too many rules and too much paperwork. He was more than old enough by a few years to draw Social Security so he did. He’d retire.
He did grow his beard back. Oddly enough it did grow, and his hair. Many people with scars can’t grow hair over the scars. He could. Another anomaly. It covered the burn scars. The beard was pure white...as was his hair. All his hair was white now...and his skin was leathery brown.
Stealth Camper
Where to live? Where to live? Just about all he knew was the road. He’s stay on the road.
With a large part of his remaining funds he purchased a small Avis box truck, some tools, and some accesories. The cargo box was larger than his truck sleeper had been and the truck itself was small enough to park anywhere. Over time he converted it to a stealth camper using materials and supplies he picked up here and there. Until he got a bed made he slept on the floor. He could pretty much sleep anywhere.
He lived in it from the beginning and he slowly made it more and more comfortable. Living in the equivalent of a motor home he wouldn’t be tied to any one spot and wouldn’t spend much of his meager income.
He hoped.
Surely he could live on the remainder.
Shirley.
Food
Hungry. He didn’t eat a lot but he had to eat something. Since he was mobile and fairly small he could drive anywhere and park. Not at all like the truck had been. The big truck had been severely limited in where it could go. More so with a trailer.
Not that he went to restaurants much. He used to pay four dollars for an omelette at a truckstop. A similar omelette now cost eight at an IHOP. He couldn’t afford that very often.
One day he’d spent the night at a MegaMart. MegaMart parking lots were so huge, lighted, had security and were so busy that no one paid his little truck much attention He parked back toward the unloading dock and hoped his truck might be mistaken for someone who belonged there. So far it had worked, or perhaps the guards were turning a blind eye toward him. Back when old Sam was still alive they’d treated truckers right. Perhaps some of that attitude carried over.
He got dressed. He put on Shoes and a shirt and everything, and went wandering through the MegaMart. He was out of beer and low on coffee. He was hungry too but tried not to think about that much.
He wandered up and down the aisles. He was mostly just looking at people. Fascinating but strange critters….people. They’d see him looking and glare at him, perhaps even assume a threatening posture. Mostly the men but the women weren’t much better. He had the impression that he wasn’t wanted there. His type should know their place.
Where his place was exactly he wasn’t sure. He’d seen other, less well prepared, homeless runoff from just about anywhere they went. Even the famous Leslie in Austin had finally lost in the end. Someone had killed him.
The old trucker was never was much good about knowing his place. Even so there was no need to draw unneeded attention. He might get kicked out. Then what would he do? Suddenly inspiration struck him. He walked back up to the front door and acquired one of the store’s electric scooters. It was for disabled people but fat people used them too. That was ok...he was fat.
He went back to people watching. It was easier from the little scooter. People looked right past him for some reason. He was in a different category now. He was acceptably ‘odd’. He was one of the politically protected classes. He was...perhaps, disabled. He was definitely strange and probably a freak. People didn’t want to see his kind of people but they couldn’t admit it...even to themselves. Yet there he was. He was ‘politically correct” now so they couldn’t object. People were supposed to “relate” to him. They really didn’t want to. The just didn’t want to see him so they didn’t. They didn’t see him...they looked right past him. They ignored him.
Unseen. Ignored and overlooked he roamed the aisles. He happened upon odd activities and he saw some strange people. Stranger than himself. That would be….Very strange.
There were those ‘parents’ (and he thought of them in quotes) who deposited their children in the toy section and told the kids to play. The parents then went off shopping on their own leaving the children with all those toys.
The children took advantage. The Old Man had nearly been run down by kids on skateboards and bicycles. He’d been shot by BB guns and stuck by darts. He’d learned. He stayed away from the toy section. Odd the store didn’t interfere. Must be a legal reason.
Speaking of legal. The shoplifters. They were as ignorant as they were prevalent. The things they thought they could get away with were incredible and stupid. He guessed they didn’t realize that the store had cameras mounted everywhere. Nothing that went on in that store went unrecorded.
He wandered around for some time...then decided it was time to go back to his camper. He oriented himself . Beverages was “that” way. Off he went.
A day in the life of an internet hermit
He’s wake up when he woke up. He absolutely did not care when. He’d open his eyes and get out of the chair in front of the computer where he’d fallen asleep. The First Thing after visiting the porta potty was to start coffee. He always had coffee available. He had a cheap coffee maker. It was an uncomplicated device. It’s instrumentation was sparse and to the point. It had an “on/off”switch. That was it. Simple. He liked simple. He kept coffee in it all the time. He shut it off in the evening when he switched to drinking beer. He made coffee first thing in the morning and drank what was leftover from the evening before while it was still making. It was small enough that it ran off an inverter. He nuked the cold coffee in the microwave, which was also inverter powered.
He was gradually getting his stealth camper into shape the way he wanted it. He’d lived in his truck for fifteen years. He was slowly becoming as much at home in his camper as he had that truck. He had some solar panels on the roof that helped keep his battery bank charged. He had a small wind generator. When worse came to worse he had a small gasoline powered generator as the final back up. He had very few devices that needed electricity and they were high efficiency and low power . He also had a porta potty that he had to dump occasionally. He was very serious about keeping a low profile.
The best thing was he had wi-fi and thus he had internet. He had a Chromebook. It extremely cheap, had fantastic battery life and it was fast. It just worked...that was all that mattered.
Some cities had free municipal internet. Some rest areas had it free. Most truck stops provided it inexpensively. He had found a guide on the internet and knew where to go. He kept moving. He didn’t stay in one place long enough to draw attention.
Except for the moves he’d sit in that computer all day and much of the night, surfing the net. He’d surf the net for hours. He’d fall asleep in front of his computer, not even know he was asleep, and wake up and continue to surf. His dreams merged seamlessly with his net surfing.
The next day was a repeat….
….as was the next...and the next. Only broken by moving his camper to another location. Sometimes he’d meet with other bums. He thought of himself as a bum. He met with other bums and visited a bit. Most weren’t doing as well as he was so he oftentimes gave them a few bux. But then he made sure to leave. It was dangerous being seen as a source of income.
He lost track of time. Months passed. Years. Lately he’d discovered “The Crazy Cat Woman’s Cat House”. It was the name of a chat room on the internet. It was in the DarkNet actually...and hard to find. He’d received an invitation out of the blue and accepted.
He’d found a home. He was hooked. He kept coming back. He, basically, lived there. When he was awake he was mostly online in the Cat House, or driving his camper to another location.
Interlude Two
Sphynx: That’s sad Dave. Your story and mine are very similar.
Burmese: It is?
Sphynx: Yes. Be patient. You will see.
Sphynx: Hank dear...would you be so kind?
Bombay: Certainly mum.
(“Mum”...now why had he said that? Hank was beginning to have an odd feeling. He couldn’t really describe it...he had had NO parents. This was very odd)