Chapter 13 From David Sondermeyer’s to Texas
Musical theme: Woman I Have by J.J. Cale
Having said their goodbyes to the Sondermeyers, Dave and Jillian went out to the Baby. Jillian wanted to drive, but the truck was in an awkward spot. Dave backed it all the way out to the highway, and switched seats with Jainie.
“I don’t know how I am going to get that backing down.”
“It’s just like going forward, but it’s the other way.”
“You are so helpful.”
“It actually is. You put the wheel in a given spot, and hold it. Back up, go forward, the truck will go almost in the same track. So if you can pull out of a tight spot, well, you are doing the same things as you would to put it in. Just in reverse order. That means backing isn’t hard, it’s drivers who make it hard.”
“You have to turn the wrong way, and the trailer is not straight behind you.”
“It never is when you turn.”
“Well, don’t tell me it’s easy, because it’s not.”
“When you drive forward, you think about your steers, so it seems easy. They are right there. When you back, you think about your tandems, and they are 50 feet or so away, so you think that matters. And also you can’t see a lot of things. But you get out and look, and you find what you need to see, and then you can back, and you can’t see a lot of things, but you can see what you need to see.
“Your tractor is at an angle to the trailer. So you are turning. The angle you want to put it at is the one that will turn the trailer at the right rate. If you had the tractor at 90 degrees to the trailer, you could spin it around easy. But you can’t stop when it is pointed the right way. So you have to anticipate the trailer lining up, and straighten the tractor relative to it before you line up. You point the trailer where you are going, get under it, and it’s straight backing from there. Turn all your backing problems into straight backing as soon as you can, and it will be a lot easier.”
“You don’t do that.”
“I used to. Nowadays, I sometimes let the problem be complicated because I can solve it anyway, and it’s faster, safer, keeps me from having to step in a mud puddle, or something. At your skill level, I would have turned around, even though it was a pain. At mine, it was simpler to just back up a quarter mile.”
“I’m not entirely satisfied with that.”
“You’re never entirely satisfied.”
“Oh, yes, my mathematician. I am entirely satisfied pretty often.”
“We can do some backing practice in Texas. I know someone who wants to sell me a banged up 48 foot flatbed cheap. We could use it for driving practice, and haul a bunch of firewood, and such, and we could always put new wheel bearings and such on it if we want to take it over the road.”
“Call him, see what he can do.”
He dialed. “Casey? Dave. You still want to sell that flatbed trailer? My wife wants it for bringing firewood in out of the ranch, and things. Eight thousand? It’s not legal. Yeah, but it’s a 48, not a 53.”
The businesschick struck. “We’ll pay Four thousand, direct deposit, Western Union, or we have a cowboy bring it to him in cash today.”
“He will take it.”
“Call Billy Mouse. But make sure Casey knows he is going to the DMV with Billy today.”
“He heard you.”
Dave called Billy Mouse, and the bank, and it was all ready. When Dave was young, banks gave him a big hassle about cashing a $50 check at the drawee branch. Now he called on the phone, and they jumped and ran to give $4,000 to a cowboy. Jainie called them up and said things like “We want a card for “Princess Baby Doll expenses. Set the credit limit at 30 thousand, and the interest rate at 8%, and no fees.” She didn’t really care about the interest rates. Her CPA paid all the cards the day the bill came in. But she didn’t agree to high rates.
“I bought three pickups yesterday from a dealer in Washington State.”
“What size?”
“They are one ton. All three are midnight blue with automatics, air, all that crap. I got them for about 15% under market. The dealer wanted to charge me a ton of money for delivery, of course. I could just airmail some cowboys to do it, but they would probably scratch up my new trucks. I have insurance, and they never give me any problems with such things, but.”
Pull into the truck stop at exit 241. I want to think if we can put a pickup in the back of the bull trailer, and we may as well fuel and get coffee.”
“You think it will fit?”
“Well, I can’t think it’s too wide. You have the book on it?”
“Yeah, so we can measure.”
“If we can lift the second deck that much, we can do it.”
“Where do you want the trucks?”
“One in Texas, two in Wyoming. Or the other way around.”
“Isn’t the Tundra in Texas?”
“I think so.”
“We could take them to New Orleans, and let Marcie and Danielle drive them. They love new trucks, and they would never smash them up.”
They pulled into the truck stop, and measured everything. Dave figured out that he could raise the second deck almost to the top. So he could put three pickups in the bull hauler. He would just need some chain binders. Jainie called about hours of business to the truck dealer, and then lined up a supply company that was willing to sell her 12 heavy chain binders at a 25% discount. They were made in USA 11 ton commercial quality. Jainie was all charged up, so Dave had her drive first. She made a couple of stops, but she was soon in Idaho, asking him to drive. He took the Baby up to Washington State, and into the dealership in the wee hours. He raised the second deck, and set the ramp. He went back into the sleeper and lay alongside Jainie for a few hours. He awoke again as someone was cursing and slapping the side of the Baby. He put his shoes on, and got out. “What’s going on?”
“You can’t park here!”
“We’re picking up three pickup trucks.”
“Oh. That’s you.”
“That’s us. Bring them over here. My wife will take care of the paperwork. She is the Chief Financial Officer of the corporation.”
“Some little ranch somewhere.”
“She has enough money in her checking account to buy this dealership. Get me the trucks and spare me the bullshit.”
He left, but a few minutes later, he was back with one of the trucks. Dave wrote the VIN on a piece of paper, and drove the truck into the bull hauler. He threw down the chain binders, and started rigging it to the trailer.
“If you were really so big, why are you doing this yourself?”
“Want it done right. Both of my car haulers are busy. Get the other two trucks.”
He came with another truck. Dave wrote down the VIN, drove it in, and chained it down. They did the same with the third, and Dave threw the ramp up into the slot, and locked the gate up. He went inside, and gave Jainie the list of VIN numbers. “He wants to charge us an ‘administrative fee’ Dave.”
“We didn’t agree to it, we will not pay it. We can unload these trucks, and sue him, that’s what he wants.”
“It’s only $120.”
“Fill the gas tanks of all three of those trucks, and we’ll forget this impertinent bullshit.”
The sales manager looked at Dave. “Fuel the trucks, Peter. The gentleman will get them close enough, I’m sure. I would not expect the lady to do so.”
“If you don’t mind, I will drive the truck. The lady might drive it right into your office. She does not take insults easily. As to her ability, I do not expect you will ever be half the driver she is.”
He jumped into the driver’s seat, and zipped around the dealership, going too fast, and came up to the fuel islands, downshifting, and making the truck roar. He pulled up precisely to the first truck. Peter fueled it. He pulled ahead, lining up the second. Peter fueled that. They did it again. He opened the window and held out a $100 bill to Peter. “You aren’t the worst guy we ever dealt with. Good luck to you, Peter.”
The Baby roared out of the dealership. “You’re going to be a legend at this dealership, Jainie.”
“Why?”
“A couple of tellings, and you will be prettier than Marcie. A silk pantsuit with the pants tucked into suede boots. It looks very nice on you, as everything does. You’re the stuff legends are made of.”
“I liked the way you did that. First, you jam them out of $141.24 in fuel, then you give the rude guy a $100 tip. They are, at this moment, looking up Princess Baby Doll Ranch, Inc. Maris Lake, Wyoming. Let’s go to Texas.”
He got on the highway.
“’Both of my car haulers are busy.’ That really set him back. I looked at a car hauler. The one I want is 168 thousand.”
“A trailer?”
“Just that. My appraiser says I have to put out the big bucks if I want to run with the big dogs. He thinks I am all right if I run it for a couple of years before I sell it, if I do.”
“Sounds like too much money.”
“Well, this is top of the line hardware. Winches, so it can recover wrecks on both decks. Carries five cars. You could drive it?”
“I suppose I could, but why? This is what you really want? Why don’t we buy one of those huge cranes you see once in a while at the truck stops?”
“Could you operate one of those?”
“I suppose I could, but why? I’ve driven prime movers, tank retrievers. But do we want to run one of those?”
“I like the cranes better.”
“How about a super heavy lift barge crane? Something in the thousand to ten thousand ton lift class, or maybe even bigger than that?”
“Nice machines.”
“Would you like to run the world’s largest crane? A monster bridge builder?”
“I’d like to try it.”
“But what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I don’t know. When do I have to decide? Maybe I could be a TV show host. ‘Jainie’s big machines.’ I could do a different one each week, tune in Wednesday to see Jainie run a dragline crane in a Sac’s Fifth Avenue dress and Colin Stuart shoes?”
“It could be a good show.”
“We could throw in Dave, let me be a machine gunner, no, a medic, or how about the captain of a ship, or maybe a driver of a big truck?”
“I suppose it could be a good show.”
“Well, let’s try to market it. You know everyone from mathematicians to mechanics to mercenaries. You must know someone in television. What the hell?”
“It doesn’t start with an ‘m’.”
“Pull over the next exit.”
When the truck came to a stop, she jumped on him. ‘I love you, my silly mathematician! Love you, Love you, Love you!”
“I Love you, too, honey.”
She burrowed in close. She held him with all her strength as he stroked her hair.
“Get over there. I am driving.”
“Could we go to that truck stop first, Jainie?”
“We will.” She put the truck in gear, let a car pass, then took off down the way to the truck stop. They went in, and Dave went to pee. He came out, and got two jars of macadamias. He filled up the big coffee cup, and dumped in a lot of milk. There was a disturbance at the register, but it was just some loud customers. Dave headed that way with Jainie behind him. “You were looking for me.”
“Yes. Just in case.”
The cashier told them if they bought 100 gallons of fuel, they would get $10 in free food and drinks. Dave handed over a fuel card. “OK.”
“I’m supposed to have the fuel rung up and then I can do that.”
“How about she takes the food, and I give you the card, and fill up the truck. It will take at least 125.”
“OK, what the heck? Sign here.”
He went out, and they pulled the Baby into a diesel island and filled her up. He went back inside, and got the Trendar ticket printed. The cashier, who was very young, pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Too bad she saw you first.”
“I’m too old for you, anyway.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Come on, now.”
“Young women like Sean Connery in the movies.”
“I’m not Sean Connery.”
“Pretty close.”
He looked at her name tag. “Tammy, don’t settle for anything but a real nice guy. Promise me.”
“I promise you, Dave.” She had read his card.
“Good.” He kissed her on the cheek and scurried out.
He got back in the truck.
“The cashier likes you.”
“I’m old enough to be her grandfather.”
“That may be. She likes you.”
“She said I’m like Sean Connery.”
“You are.”
“I told her don’t settle for anything but a real nice guy.”
“Good for you.”
“I kissed her on the cheek.”
“If I did that, you wouldn’t like it.”
“I, yes, that’s right.”
“But I do. Because you told me. She got a kiss from Sean Connery. You did it to make her happy, not to cheat on me. It was nice.” She put the truck in gear and moved out. “I talked to Sue Ann. She’s having some delays with getting the drilling and all done. So we can still go to Texas.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“We already are.”
“You’re in a good mood now.”
“What’s her name?”
“Tammy. Don’t be mad at her, at least.”
“I’m not mad at anyone.”
He put the receipts in the book.
“I would be mad, except that I have figured out that for some reason, you being with me has made you much more attractive to women than you used to be. So they come on to you, and you don’t know what to do about it. Pretty, nice girls. So you want to be kind to them because if you were not mine, you would take them up on it. So you sort of flirt, and try to verify their attractiveness, and support their self worth. You say nice things to them. You’re very sweet and kind, and you are especially nice to women. And I like that. I like it a lot. Lots of men are not. So long as you don’t jump their bones, you go ahead and be nice to other women. But Dave, if you ever cross the line, it isn’t that I won’t understand, it’s that I will. Just stay on your side of the Rubicon.”
“I will. My inclination to cheat on you is non-existent.”
She pulled out of the fuel island. “The Rubicon is pretty easy to recognize.”
“It is. I know what side I belong on. And I will stay there.”
“I would hate to have to tell a quasar he was in the wrong galaxy.”
“That would be kind of hard, I suppose.”
I remember that you have a little lumber planer. Why can’t you make things with that?”
“It doesn’t have much power. At a 1/32” depth of cut, on a 12” plank, it can bog down. Most of the nice things I would like to mill are mulberry and mesquite. They are hard to cut, especially mesquite, which is by far the more attractive. The game isn’t worth the candle. A good planer would cost more than the things you could turn out would be worth.”
“There must be something to do with West Texas.”
“Run longhorns on it. Or buffalo. In a good year, it can produce wheat or cotton. But the good years are not so common. Without the government subsidizing and selling crop insurance at subsidized prices, nobody would farm there.”
“What would they do with it?”
“Deer and dove leases.”
“So it produces deer?”
“They put out corn for them, with automatic feeders. They even put minerals in to make the antlers bigger. That’s the trophy.”
“Dove.”
“A stupid bird with less on it than a good chicken wing.”
“And?”
“Wild hogs. They taste like crap, but you shoot one that has big tusks, you can have it mounted and put on the wall.”
“Gardens?”
“Black eyed peas and squash, in a good year. Some times you can get some cantaloupe or watermelon to grow. Tomatoes don’t take the heat. Corn makes some times, but usually the worms get more than you do.”
“But you are there.”
“Lots of people have thought it looked pretty good in a wet spring. They didn’t know it would dry and burn up in summer, and that most years, it would not even be green in spring.”
“Why are you there?”
“It’s the low end of the potential energy curve. It’s easy to move from the world to Texas, but hard to go the other way. You can’t make the money to get away. At least I have a home. I can’t make a living, but I can live there. The main industry of Texas is getting a check from the federal government every month. Either that or from some other source. Texas doesn’t produce any net. It’s a sinkhole.”
“So, should we give it back to Mexico?”
“Mexico never owned it.”
“They say they did.”
“Spain claimed it by the sword. The Anglos claimed it by the .45 Colt. Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.”
“But Mexico had political control of Texas.”
“They took it by genocide. Ask the Mayans if they consented. Oh, they killed off the Mayans, so you can’t ask them.”
“Didn’t the Anglos take the United States by genocide?”
“I think that’s right.”
“Where is there any sort of legitimacy?”
“The people who were living in Texas didn’t want Santa Anna running it. He was an evil, corrupt, greedy dictator and all around son of a bitch.”
“Sam Houston was?”
“An honorable man. A lot better than Santa Anna.”
“A lot of Mexicans would dispute that.”
“Seldom do a people admit their leaders were in the wrong. The Japanese did, but most peoples won’t. You look at Mexico, and the United States, and ask yourself if the illegal aliens are such hard working people, why is their piece of North America such a corrupt, ineffectively led mess?”
“Their government is no good.”
“Can’t argue against that. But the land Santa Anna gave up his claim to when he signed the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and took the money is in much better shape than the part Mexico has on the other side of the river. The Anglos and the Tejanos did a lot better job than the Mexicans.”
She slowed down. “I thought I saw brake lights over the rise, there.”
“Maybe you did.”
Two cars passed the truck.
“Jainie, don’t pay attention to the four wheelers. You can get your speed back if it’s nothing. If it’s something, you’ll be glad you lost a little speed.”
“I know that.”
“What’s better, you’re acting on it. I’m just telling you that you’re right.”
They came over the rise, and traffic seemed a little slower. Jainie downshifted and kept the right lane, letting cars go past her to the mass in front.
“Good. Stay back of all that. When it sorts out, you can probably go faster again.”
“Don’t you feel sorry for the poor people in Mexico?”
“Sure. And the poor people in the United States, too. I don’t want Mexicans here taking jobs from the people who need them the worst. But I think we should help Mexico. Mexico is our neighbor, and that is not going to change. We should not let things go to hell there if we can help. Did you know that, at one time, the United States wanted Mexico to sell natural gas at the Texas well head price, at the same time we were paying much more for LNG from the mideast? That’s pretty short sighted. The President of Mexico, I think it was Lopez-Garcia, said we should pay our friends as much as we paid our enemies. We should. But Mexico should not shut the door to used clothing being sold from the United States, either. Those poor people need clothes, and used stuff from the United States are a tenth the cost of new stuff. Instead of protecting their textile industry from our used goods, they should buy the used stuff by the rail car load, and then sell us a small amount of new stuff for the same money.”
“You would try to make Mexico do these things?”
“It’s our back yard. But not by force. GUS sent the Marines to Iraq to fix the problems there, not that we did.”
“GUS?”
“Government of the United States.”
“Oh, right.”
“Did we fix Iraq?”
“My way of thinking, it was none of our business, but time will tell, and maybe it will be that we did. My point is that if we think we can do that in Iraq, why would we not do things in Mexico?”
“No reason. If we were polite about it, we could do a lot for Mexico.”
“We could. The most powerful nation in history has a shattered hulk next door, and nobody seems to care. As if they thought it would .get better by itself.”
“Here is the turn for Big Bird.”
“I’m ready to sleep. You must be, too.”
“I’m tired but I’m all right to drive the last little bit.”
“You’re always careful when you’re tired.”
“Yes. So anyway, what will we really do about Mexico?”
“Let it get worse, and bear the consequences of our stupid short sighted policy.”
They came to the driveway, and she turned in.
“If you want to take a shower, I’ll fire the wood stove.”
“Let’s fire it together.”
“All right.”
She parked and set the brakes, and shut the Baby down. They got out of the truck and went in, Dave dragging in a 55 gallon drum of wood. He shoveled the ashes out of the wood stove. “Its too small to run it with ash building up.”
He took the top off of the wood stove and put it on an old tin TV stand next to the wood stove. “Crumple up some newspapers and trash. Put that on the bottom.”
“I know how to make a fire.”
He moved out of the way. “If you push some paper in the vent, and leave it open an inch, that will give you a place to light it. Once a small fire gets going in there, the heat will reflect. It will catch much faster than your Girl Scout campfires.”
She started putting in trash paper and tore up some cardboard. “Do you have some kindling?”
“Yeah, back in a minute.”
He came in with a 20 gallon garbage can full of kindling. “About 10 to 15 of these will do it.”
“Then I will put some of the small logs on top.”
“Yeah, that works the best. Let it burn for 20 or 40 minutes, and then put the big ones in. I’ll lift the lid for you. If you do it yourself, the welder’s gloves are there.”
“How come we aren’t using the one outside?”
“Not all that cold. Do you want to use it?”
“Yeah. I want to play with it.”
“Jack would be proud. Get your jacket, and get ready to drive a cantankerous little loader.”
They went out, and she started up the little loader. “Get us a half bucket of wood. Oh, first can you open this door for me? Lift it by the bar.”
She ran over with the loader and carefully opened the door. “Tricky little thing.”
“It is, but it’s a survivor.”
She reversed out of the shed and went out to get some wood. Dave found a box with some trash in it, and lit it on fire, and threw it in the box. He followed up by shoveling up a bunch of the little pieces of wood on the floor, and throwing them on top of the box. When Jillian came back, he held up his fist, and swept his thumb across his throat. She stopped the loader. She looked into the box. “We’ll just dump the logs on top of that?”
“When it gets going, yeah. You’d put it out if you did it now. When we get back inside, you turn on the ‘low blower’ to 15 minutes or so. Set the thermostat at 80 degrees, and turn the main switch on. The low blower will push air through the system, so that the thermocouple will feel the heat. Then the thermostat will turn on the high blower, and keep it on as long as the temperature of the circulating air is at least 80. It’s the cooling side of the thermostat he used. So when the air is no longer hot, it shuts off. The thermostat does not control the temperature of the house. The amount of wood in the burner does that.”
“Got it. It’s burning enough, now?”
“Think so.”
She started the loader, dumped in the wood, and closed the door with the bucket.