The Truck Driver Parable

The driver pulled away from Humphert's garage with ease.
This was easy, he thought.
He pulled off onto an inter state and went off.
His truck, white to the wheel wells, handled well.
Cars passed, families focused on the road ahead of them all.
John just drove, shifting up and down but mostly just long, unfiltered, driving.
While the car passing him had a wife and husband laughing, John just had his CB radio collecting dust.
They passed without even looking over.
The road eventually turned into a highway.
The towns of hotels and gas stations passed by, each stop progressing the trip.

The states easily began to blur.
The grass is beginning to burn the farther John goes South.
The travelers pass faster.
The roads become wider, the drive easier, but John is still at the wheel.
Shift, brake, gas, shift, pass, check mirrors, look at cars passing, check gps, sleep.
Radio kept playing the same old songs.
The speakers cracked while riding over overpasses and construction sites with no workers.
It was winter where the snow was patchy and the geese stayed in the man made lakes of yesteryear.

The white mixed with the blue to create a foggy tapestry to stare at.
Over the horizon was nothing but the continuation of this one road.
John began to scratch at his right thigh.
His truck passed over an over pass.
He saw rivers as he went over bridges.
He witnessed the state borders blend into one another.
Homes off in the farm lands where the new barn was placed next to the old one that fell under gravity.

But the half way point began to fade behind John.
It was back in Pepsicola.  A few hours behind John now. About a hundred stops.
Miles and miles that were too hard to keep track.
Construction zones.  City mergers.  Cop cars and slow drivers sleeping at the wheel
when our sun was still so out.

The night began to fade in.
All the landscape turned grey beneath his truck.
The only way to see a sign is from maybe
shifting your eyes into the right alignment
and read the exit signs with those stupid little lights
they pass and each one makes John seem agitated.

In the dark the cars drive faster, the stranger're stranger.
The yellow lights spaced out look lost.
John thinks to turn here.
And he goes for it.
Just to make sure, he thought twice.

The parking was the hardest part.
backing in for the first time.
slow, simple, gentle
it was easy.
It was all too easy.


#2
It was the same trip.
Long roads measured by thumbs on a wall map.
each road shifted to fit in a tetris box
like a sand clock.

The trees would change.
leafs would grow green
then turn yellow
and then fall
to the ground.
rain to heat to wind.
Snow came and went to ice.

John was thinking of scaling as a freelancer.
The truck was his.
And he could invest in himself.
It was just one three day trip a week.
Money floated in.

It didn't come all free.
It had to come to him but he was a step ahead.
Before, in the dark age, taking a trip was always a job.
A sattellite turns it into a chore.
Follow the directions until ending.
Reverse.  Repeat.

Watch the surroundings.  These white lines can hold the road together.
Look through the mirrors
and notice the cars that are following this truck.
Getting ahead of him to arrive earlier.
Get passed and take longer.
Travel in the space of another
only separated by moments of wind
between air and metal.

The grey road began to close in around the Truck
it hardly ever widened and it's growth stagnant
to the surrounding gas station towns.
The space was becoming a much closer world
to the transportation vessels.

The travel still lasted as long.
The roads the same
and the moments still dull
all occurred on the reoccurring days
when the truck needed to drop
a box off.

#3
Then the truck became nothing.  This simple gesture of
convenience and money.
Responsible to bring this from here to there.
John was just parading around paraphernalia
like the next vendor.
But the truck was discrete.  It was just white,
carrying something, and each driver
that drives by tries to solve the mystery too.

No one ever approached John about it.
Just medicine he would tell himself
as he gripped the steering wheel
with one hand and put the other out the window.

The towns were all curious.  Here was this trucker
trucking past them all all the time.
It's like the prairie dogs look in a pack as a fox
is running by.
And this fox has jeans on metaphorically.
But the truck was hooked up with cameras.
The cameras told the truck who nodded with certainty
where the environment was.
The truck loses his blindness.
The truck now follows the directions.

The travel is an event to watch.
John observes the road around him
and only needs to manipulate the truck
if it translates the environment incorrectly.
The chances of John adjusting controls
before a camera is pitiful.

John just went to thinking
as the surroundings around him blared past
him in consistency.
This was just an obligation.
All he had to do was stay in the white truck
and supervise.
But John wasn't fulfilled.

Each time he parked, to pick up or to
drop off was another notch.
The camera's being able to sync
past user data to set history to the Truck's travel
only obliterated any human existence.
John was just a body
with eyes
that engineered this simplicity.

Each trip got him closer and nearer
to answering his thoughts.
A future is in the next word, the next dotted line,
the next breath, but is the moment after
actually change.
John just wanted to be John, not a body
holding down a truck, to drop a package off.