The Rig in the Mirror Had No Trailer

I have driven nights for nineteen years because I like the empty roads and the radio and being left alone. That preference took a hit on a stretch of interstate through the flatlands, the kind of road where you can see another vehicle's lights for ten minutes before it reaches you.

Around 3 a.m. a set of headlights appeared in my mirror and settled about two hundred metres back. Nothing strange yet — trucks pace each other on long hauls, it's almost companionable. Except this one matched me exactly. I run at a steady speed on cruise; I nudged it up five, the lights closed to two hundred metres and held. I dropped ten to let it pass; it dropped ten and held. Twenty miles of this. No CB response — I hailed the standard channels, nothing. No overtaking, no falling back. Just paced, headlights high and unwavering, in a way headlights on an uneven road do not stay unwavering.

Twenty miles is a long time to be quietly unsettled, and I don't unsettle. I decided to end it by pulling into a rest area, letting whatever weirdo it was blow past.

I indicated, braked, took the ramp. And in my side mirror as I slowed, the thing finally passed the mouth of the rest area under the sodium lights — and it was a cab. A tractor unit, no trailer, running bobtail. Cab light off. And through the driver's window, clearly, in good light, for the second and a half it took to pass: nobody. No silhouette, no slumped shape, no arm on the wheel. An empty cab holding a dead-straight line at speed, matching a truck it could not see the driver of because there was no driver to see.

It did not slow for the rest area. Its lights went on down the interstate, steady, until they were a point, until they were nothing.

I sat in that rest area until the sky went grey and another human trucker pulled in and I could hear a radio and a man swearing at a coffee machine. I run days now, mostly. The empty roads and I have broken up.