Mother Trucker (Crownville Truckers Book 1) Read online

  MOTHER TRUCKER

  Crownville Truckers Book One

  Moxie Darling

  Mother Trucker Copyright © 2018 by Moxie Darling. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover design by Moxie Darling

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Moxie Darling

  Visit her website at www.MoxieDarlingAuthor.com

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  Dedicated to truckers everywhere. Thank you for making the world go ’round.

  (And fueling our fantasies.)

  ABOUT MOTHER TRUCKER

  SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE FORT WORTH …

  A dusty highway stretches. A big rig idles. A passenger’s door opens.

  Evening, traveler. Where you headed? Ah, New York City. Got some big dreams in those suitcases, do you?

  The trucker’s weathered eyes sparkle. His cigarette bobs as he grins.

  Tell you what, kid, I can take you as far as Crownville, West Virginia. After that, you’re on your own. What’s in Crownville, you ask?

  He gazes down the highway. His exhaled smoke swirls in the waiting space.

  Well, no more’n a grease smudge on the map, I’ll tell you that. Life is slow and dirty there. In every way you can imagine. The men are hard and the women strong. Because they have to be. Because it’s all they know.

  He smiles as if remembering.

  But it ain’t all bad. Sometimes, when the wind blows right, two heartless souls collide.

  And find out they weren’t so heartless after all.

  He taps his cigarette. Ashes fall.

  Matter of fact, if you got an ear, I got a story about two such strays. Lost and then found.

  He points a gnarled finger at you.

  Now, it ain’t a pretty tale, mind you, but the good ones never are, and you’ll survive it. They did. Barely.

  He chuckles, adjusting his grease-stained hat.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I do. Hop in. We’ve got a lot of miles to cover, and diesel isn’t cheap. What’s that, you say? How’d they meet?

  Passenger’s door closes. Air brakes hiss. Gearshift rattles.

  They met on a muggy August night full of sweat and secrets. She was a virgin with steel in her spine and tears in her eyes, and he was a man made of regret and old, cold betrayal.

  Together, they fell kicking and screaming into the love of a lifetime …

  CHAPTER ONE

  Shifty’s Petro & Go

  Crownville, West Virginia

  Mae Harrison’s bones rattled as she stared into the grimy sink of Shifty’s ladies’ room, her fingers white-knuckling the porcelain rim.

  Her soul rattled, too.

  Outside, the big rigs rumbled, making the lone bulb overhead flicker. The noise was as familiar to her as the permeating stink of diesel. Comforting even, in its own way. It was the overwhelming ache of aloneness that paralyzed her.

  Her ma was gone. Dead and buried in a pine box in a no-name cemetery up on Creamery Hill Road. No marker. No flowers. No mourners.

  Nobody except Mae.

  And Jerry.

  Even Mae’s pa hadn’t been there. Not that she’d expected him to be. She’d never known the man, and her ma had never spoken of him. Had closed up tighter than the ass of a straight man headin’ up the river, as Jerry had once put it. When Mae would ask, her ma’s gaze would drift somewhere old and dusty, and her mouth would thin. She’d tell Mae, “Your pa was a good man. That’s all you need to know.”

  But Mae hadn’t seen hide nor hair of that good man when her ma had died of “parking lot consumption.” Better known as AIDS. Though, Mae knew it wasn’t all that killed her. Desiree “Angel Eyes” Harrison had taken ill some five years ago, and by the time Mae had put her in the ground yesterday in a thrift-store wedding dress—the only thing in the woman’s closet decent enough to be buried in—Desiree had been a hollow-eyed bag of bones with more tracks in her arms than stars in the sky. Like most of the working girls that crawled Shifty’s lot like desperate cockroaches, Desiree had clung to the needle—or anything else she could get her knobby hands on—to escape her knees-in-the-gravel reality.

  Mae looked at herself in the streaked mirror. Though her eyes were green and her ma’s had been blue, they’d shared the same freckled nose. Same chin. Same auburn hair that never held a curl no matter how hot the iron. As the tears welled, blurring the face staring back at her, Mae could almost believe she was looking at her ma instead. “Stay pretty, Maybelline,” Desiree would tell her. “Stay pretty and you’ll always have a dime in your pocket.”

  Before the sob could escape, Mae turned away, drying her cheeks with trembling thumbs. She thought about the wedding dress she’d buried her mother in. Ivory satin with lace sleeves and a row of pearl buttons marching down the spine. Mae could still remember the day Desiree had bought it. They’d gone to Becky’s Bargain Basement—a hole-in-the-wall thrift store in downtown Crownville—hunting a pair of Guess jeans for a thirteen-year-old Mae. She’d come home from school crying that afternoon because Jolene Denneroux had told her only white-trash inbreds wore off-brand jeans. Cold fury had crystallized in Desiree’s eyes, and she’d gotten real quiet and real still. “Now you listen to me, Mae Belle Harrison. You’re a good girl. A smart girl. Smarter than I ever was. Better than I ever was. You’re prettier than any of them highfalutin bitches.” Her voice had dropped to a fierce whisper. “And they hate you for it. They always will. But don’t you ever let them make you feel like you’re less than they are because of the clothes covering your back, you hear?” She’d given Mae’s slender shoulders a firm shake. “You hear what I’m telling you, girl? You got a heart of gold, and that’s more than any of them can say.”

  Though her bottom lip had quivered, Mae had nodded and sniffed, dragging her wrist beneath her red nose.

  “Good,” Desiree had said and stood, a satisfied look on her face. “Now, what brand of jeans are they wearing?”

  After that, Desiree had grabbed her worn red-leather purse and Mae’s hand, and together they’d walked the three miles to Becky’s. Desiree in a pair of scuffed stilettos and Mae in dingy tennis shoes. Mae had gotten her jeans that day, and Desiree had gotten the wedding dress. When, on their way back to Shifty’s, Mae had asked her ma about it, Desiree had looked down at her with a wink and a grin. “Someday, one of those truckers is gonna fall in love with me, Mae. He’s gonna marry me, and then he’s gonna take us away from here.” She’d gazed down the highway as if she could already see his rig gleaming in the distance. “He’s gonna show us the world, baby. We’ll travel clear to the Grand Canyon.” She’d stretched out her bangled arm as if encompassing everything and laughed with girlish excitement. “I’ll be a trucker’s wife. Can you imagine it?”

  Back then, Desiree’s hope had bled into Mae, and she’d nodded enthusiastically, following her ma’s gaze and trying to imagine all the places they’d go. “Yeah.”

  Only that man had never come. Desiree had never gotten married. And they’d never left Crownville.

  And, yesterday, Mae had buried her ma’s dreams right along with her bones.

  A
sudden banging on the bathroom door made Mae jump.

  “Mae,” Jerry’s uncertain voice called. “You okay in there?”

  Straightening, Mae cleared her throat and quickly redid her ponytail. It was Friday night and she had a job to do. If she ever hoped to save enough money to climb out of this cesspool of sex and exhaust fumes, she had to keep on keepin’ on, as her ma would say. Unlike Desiree, Mae knew there was no head-over-heels trucker coming to save her. No, she had to do that all by herself. Swallowing her memories and grief, she opened the door and walked out, the humid August air and reverberating rumble of a parking lot full of rigs too loud. Too sudden. Too real. But she forced a smile anyway. “Hey, Jerry.”

  Jerry Leon was a big man with a lazy eye and slow tongue, and everybody knew he wasn’t all there in the head. He was also the closest thing to a pa Mae had ever known. He’d been the maintenance man at Shifty’s for as long as she could remember. A familiar, shuffling presence with his rolling yellow mop bucket and gray overalls that had Jerry embroidered over the chest pocket, he was there night in and night out, looking over Mae and the rest. And he was probably the only other person in the world who would miss Desiree Harrison.

  “You been in there a long time,” he said uncertainly, his unkempt brows pulling together.

  “I’m okay,” Mae assured him, looking around his wide shoulders at the Shifty’s Petro & Go parking lot. Just inside the city limits of Crownville, off Interstate 109, it was the last truck stop between here and Lodi, so Shifty’s was always busy, and tonight was no exception. The large gravel disc was a maze of eighteen-wheelers of every make and model. Their lights shone into the muggy, buggy night, and their combined engines vibrated the very rocks beneath her feet. Truckers walked to and fro, some adjusting tie-downs or filling their tanks, and others making their way into the diner for a Big Rig Special, the heaping steak-egg-and-home-fry platter the place was known for. The restaurant and gas station themselves were lit up like the county fair. Inside the big glass windows, waitresses poured coffee, took orders, and carried platters, haggard but smiling as they worked for their tips. Outside, the fluorescent floodlights glowed harsh and bright, making the gas pumps seem a little less grimy. And Waylon Jennings’ “I’m a Ramblin’ Man” played over the loudspeakers as townies and travelers alike came and went.

  It all made her small world feel much bigger than it was.

  “I don’t think you oughtta work tonight,” Jerry said. “On account of your mama and all.”

  Grief grabbed Mae by the throat, and she fought to throw it off. Smiling at Jerry, she insisted, “I’m fine, Jerry. Really.” She thought about hugging him, but touching was one thing Jerry didn’t do. She didn’t know why and probably never would. Like most on the lot, he didn’t talk about his past, either. “How are you?”

  Tears welled in his eyes, and he self-consciously adjusted his grease-stained hat. “She was a good lady.”

  “Yeah,” Mae agreed, her voice cracking. Desiree had been a drug-addicted parking-lot prostitute, but she’d done her best. She’d put food on the table and kept a roof over their heads, and though she usually showed up in short shorts and a tube top, she’d never missed a school play or parent-teacher conference. She’d been the best ma she could’ve been given the hard life she’d lived, and Mae had loved her. And now she was gone. “She was.”

  He looked out at the night. “Won’t be the same around here without her.”

  Mae sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. “No.”

  “Fixed the leak under your kitchen sink,” he mumbled, holding up his old metal toolbox. “And changed the lock like you asked.”

  He handed her a set of shiny new keys, and she took them with a nod, thinking about the rundown single-wide she’d shared with her ma. Like the others cluttering the seedy trailer park behind Shifty’s, it was falling in. After long, hard nights on the lot, her ma would climb into bed with smeared makeup and haunted eyes and usually stayed there until it was time to do it all over again. The years of neglect hadn’t been kind to the trailer. The carpet was threadbare and the walls were yellowed. The bathroom floor had been slowly rotting for years, and water stains dotted the ceilings. But Mae had blown out birthday candles at the faded Formica kitchen table. She’d learned how to ride a bike around the weedy yard. She’d painted her ma’s toenails on the ratty tweed couch. It was trailer trash at its finest, but it was theirs.

  And now it was Mae’s. Alone.

  At least, until she got the hell out of Crownville for good.

  “Thanks,” she told Jerry and meant it. For all Desiree’s faults, she’d never brought her work home. She’d done her dirty deeds on the lot and that’s where they’d stayed. So, it wasn’t as if some trucker looking for a second go would come banging on Mae’s door. But word had a way of getting around, and a single woman living alone in these parts could end up a target for all kinds of arrows. “What do I owe you?”

  “You don’t owe me nothing,” he said, as he always did, and shook his head. “I’ll take care of you.”

  His oath churned up her emotions once more, and she managed a watery smile as she pocketed the keys. “I know you will.”

  He nodded in his simple way. “Ken brought you a mouse. I got rid of it.”

  For the first time all day, Mae laughed. It was weak and quiet but a laugh nonetheless. “Bet he wasn’t happy.”

  Jerry smiled a little, too, revealing crooked teeth. “He gave me the evil eye, all right.”

  Though her laugh faded, her smile lingered. Three years ago, when a scraggly tabby kitten had tumbled out of a Kenworth’s undercarriage as its driver had pulled out of the lot, it had been love at first sight for Mae. She’d snatched him up before he could be run over, and they’d been together ever since. And thank God for it. Damn cat was the only family she had left.

  “Who’s working tonight?” she asked.

  Jerry frowned as he thought. “Crystal, Roxy, Josie, Ariana, Tasha.” He paused as if ticking off names in his head. “And Violet.”

  Mae nodded. She adjusted her satchel’s strap. “I’d better get out there.”

  Though he looked as if he wanted to argue, he grunted. “Just be careful.” His eyes were troubled. “Things are different now.”

  She swallowed. “I know.”

  He stared at her a moment longer and then lumbered off.

  Mae sighed and gazed out at the lot once more until she saw Roxy strutting out from behind a tanker truck, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Mae caught her attention and held up her satchel. Roxy nodded and headed her way, her slender ankles wobbly as she navigated the gravel in six-inch red stilettos.

  Pulling the satchel off, Mae sat on the edge of the crumbling sidewalk and watched her come. Roxy—or whatever her real name was—had been pretty once. Beautiful even. But the years of hooking and drugging had taken their toll. Her brown eyes were sunken and ringed in dark circles, and her frizzy blonde hair was even wilder than usual, probably due to some man’s fist yanking it too hard. And Mae didn’t want to think about why the woman’s mouth was damp and blotchy around the edges. “Hey, Roxy,” Mae said, opening her bag.

  “Hey, babe,” she said, pulling a cigarette and lighter out of her low-cut top before joining Mae on the sidewalk. “Didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

  Mae managed a smile. “Staying busy makes it easier.”

  “No doubt, sweetie,” Roxy said around an exhale of menthol smoke. “No doubt.” Glancing away, she added, “Look, sorry I didn’t make it to the funeral. I just … couldn’t.”

  Nodding, Mae pulled out a baby wipe. Though the lack of mourners at her ma’s grave had hurt something fierce, she understood. Most of the girls who ended up on the lot never made it out, and they lived hard, often short, lives. Whether by drugs or by sickness or by a heavy-handed john, their ends were never pretty. And watching one of their own be lowered into the ground made that grim finale all too real. Too inevitable. “It’s okay,” she told Roxy, dabbing
at the woman’s smeared eyeliner and lipstick with the wipe. “I get it.”

  Roxy’s voice grew thick as Mae tended to her face. “I don’t got many friends, but your mama was one of them. She always treated me fair.”

  Despite working together nearly every night, the girls didn’t form bonds with one another. At least, not in the traditional sense. Whether it was because, at the end of the day, they were all competing for that dollar, or because they were simply in too much emotional pain, Mae didn’t know. But they did try to look out for one another, and Desiree had always been the first to lend a hand. “I know you’ll miss her,” Mae said, ditching the wipe and grabbing a black eyeliner pencil.

  Roxy halted her by grabbing her wrist and meeting her eyes. “We all will.”

  Sadness overwhelmed Mae, and all she could do was nod back, her eyes stinging with fresh tears.

  Roxy’s sorrow mirrored her own. “We all love you, kid. You know that.” She shook her head as if in disbelief. “How in the hell you turned out so good growing up in this shithole I have no idea. It’s a testament to your mama.”

  “Thanks,” Mae managed, the pencil shaking in her hand.

  Roxy went on as if she hadn’t heard her. “But you gotta get out of here.” Her voice softened. “This ain’t no place for you.”

  Again, Mae nodded.

  Roxy let out a breath of relief and pinched Mae’s cheek as if she was still ten years old. “And you’d better not let me catch you turning tricks like the rest of us whores, neither. Your mama would roll over in her damn grave.”

  Despite the gravity of their conversation, Mae couldn’t help but let out a weak laugh. Roxy was right. Desiree had been the worst role model imaginable, but she’d always insisted Mae walk the straight and narrow. As straight and narrow as growing up at a West Virginia truck stop would allow, anyway. She’d once told Mae that she could be anything she wanted to be, as long as it wasn’t her. “She’d haunt us forever,” Mae agreed.

  Roxy let go of Mae’s wrist and shook her head with a wry grin. “Fuckin’ prostitute poltergeist.”

  Mae laughed. “Yeah.”