First Chapters Page 8

  And then the test. It would take thirty minutes and did I have any questions? I didn’t and he left the room, hopefully before my face fell as I opened the booklet. There were no IQ-type questions at all, just a lot of little pictures of chaps with shovels and buckets and things. Some pictures of trains and dams and drinking straws.

  Which is the easiest to push?

  Which is the strongest setup?

  Which chap will lift the heavier weight?

  Which diagram shows what will happen?

  Where is the least bumpy seat on a school bus?

  The book had been much used and the diagrams were worn, faint and difficult to interpret. Some of the levers and gears and see-saws were things I’d just revised but much of the rest of it was real life. What about that bus? I had to think back an awfully long way. When I was a kid we’d sit at the back for bumpiness, and I thought I’d heard that people who are travelsick avoid being over the wheels, so which is it? A lot of the questions sort of related to hydraulics, which made sense, but there had been none of that on my online papers. The real ‘O’ level physics was 35 years behind me. Something to do with the size of the pipe affecting the pressure in some sort of ratio, but what exactly?

  These questions, the ones that related to life, were taking too long to answer. I was the wrong side of middle age and there was a lot of life to trawl through. What shape made the strongest dam? I could tell you from ambulance days what shape of crowd barrier would crush the fewest teenyboppers...but was spreading out the crush points for people good or bad for water? And the second picture of a train crash meant that I must have got the previous one wrong. I dashed back miserably to the earlier question featuring a little train on a bend, confirming that I’d visualised it backwards.

  I got the point of the test. This sort of mechanical aptitude made much more sense for the task ahead than the abstract stuff I had played with, and was a great deal fairer for people without a poncey education, but I had to make a few guesses. That $19 had been a waste of money, the toy truck, ditto. Who the hell did I think I was? “Oh yes, I’ve decided to be a truck driver you know, because I’m the sort of intrepid, brilliant woman who can do anything she puts her mind to.” Silly cow.

  The nice chap took my paper away and returned a few minutes later, grinning at the number of Kleenex I had managed to shred during the interregnum. He declared 89% more than ok for aptitude of the mechanical variety, who’d have thought I knew so much about shovels and train wrecks?

  Instead of learning from this experience that I wasn’t temperamentally suited to trucking, I was sufficiently dazzled by the idea of being eligible for trucking school that I sat and listened to the routine. Medical, registration with the school, receipt of a pile of textbooks, taking the Ontario Transport Ministry’s A class licence knowledge test, classroom. Then truck. Apparently one needed to pass the Ministry theory test before they would let one onto the course so the absorption and revision of unladylike facts and figures had only just begun, as had the conveyor belt that is always so easy to step onto and so difficult to get off.

  The doc pronounced me fit enough for purpose therefore, a deposit to the school and some signatures later, I found myself the proud owner of three text books to be read in specific order within the next three weeks. I placed them proudly on the dining table next to the toy truck and invited people over for coffee, so they could notice them.

  On top of the pile, the Official Ontario Ministry of Transport Truck Handbook. Memorising its contents for the Ministry theory test was the first real task, only then would I be able to start school and climb into the cab. Then there was a handbook all about air brakes, to be worked through before day one because that was where the classroom part of training would start. I didn’t know air brakes needed a handbook. Then there was a worryingly fat text book for everything else. It would help, allegedly, to look at some of this in advance.

  There appeared to be a lot to learn. Who knew? Back in the ‘ho, ho’ days I’d assumed it was merely a matter of getting used to where the corners were and developing a technique for climbing in. Underneath the bravado I suspected I had finally bitten off more than I could chew. My Dad may have wanted a boy—he might have been prouder on the day I climbed into an ambulance than the day I received my M.Sc.—but I’m over fifty and he is long-gone. What was I trying to prove? And to whom? Surely it would be acceptable to say to myself and everyone else, “I’ve looked into it and I think that maybe it’s not such a good idea after all.”

  On the other hand, who would want to get so close to a madcap enterprise that you can almost smell the diesel and then wimp out? Driving a truck was now irrevocably on my bucket list, whatever happened next. Sanity and introspection would just have to bugger off and make way for pig-headedness and hubris, especially since I seemed to have accidentally committed too much money to the venture to stop before trying to earn it back again.

  The gent who handed me the books had two pieces of advice to give with regard to the Ministry test. The first was to memorise all the numbers, the second was to ask to write the bus-driving test while I was there. Why would I want to write a bus test? I didn’t want to drive a bus. This was about toys, not people, I’d been nice to people for five years during the B&B phase and I’d turned into Basil Fawlty. My dreams were of the open road, driving into the sunset with no-one’s needs but my own to cater to, the romance of those two beautiful words…long haul.

  The book-handing gent told me it was only ten bucks and very easy and you never knew when you might want to drive a bus. But he also touched on the frequency with which burned out executives, social workers and customer service reps passed through his office with dreams of solitude. Maybe I wasn’t mad.

  I memorised the numbers. Maximum allowable heights, lengths, widths and weights in metric and imperial. That part was easy. Not so simple, the memorising of routines involving jargon and describing bits of stuff I’d never heard of. I had to dip in to the truckers’ text book to find out what I was applying, releasing and lining up in order to make sense of the apparently vital coupling and uncoupling routines. Fortunately the book had pictures. Once I knew the difference between a fifth wheel and a king pin I stood a better chance of remembering what got done to which.

  The most entertaining chapter of the Ministry book (yes, there was one) related to manners on the road. It listed the things that people who don’t drive trucks dislike about people who do. It told me, Today’s truck drivers are among the most visible citizens on the highways, and the motoring public tends to criticize some of their driving practices. So, it’s up to responsible truck drivers to influence the public’s opinion.

  It also advised, Be aware that most drivers of smaller vehicles do not understand what it is like to drive a large vehicle such as a tractor-trailer. Well ain’t that the truth? I would appear to be one of them. I didn’t even know you were supposed to call the front bit a tractor.

  ~~~~

  Nobody at the test centre looked at me askance, no-one laughed. The lady operating the eye-test gubbins was perfectly nice about the fact that I didn’t know it was a bad idea to turn up wearing bifocals. Once I’d twigged that I could see the dancing numbers if I mimicked them with a dancing head we got on fine. The chap who marked my paper congratulated me relatively genuinely.

  “Now you’re qualified to drive with someone who has an A licence,” he observed.

  “Blimey, am I? I don’t even know how to climb in yet.”

  “Maybe they’ll find you a ladder.”

  ~~~~

  And on to the next thing. Practical Airbrakes: Driver Handbook and Study Guide. It was written in a friendly, jocular manner with spaces to scribble notes and little self-tests at the end of each chapter. It began nice and simply with line drawings of wheels and thermometers to illustrate a spot more school curriculum physics, friction and the like. I’d just revised this sort of thing so the first few chapters lulled me into a false sense of security. They moved s
lowly through topics such as how compressed air gets compressed and what valves do. There were helpful pictures of people getting blasts of compressed air in their faces, leaving one in no doubt as to the wisdom of being careful with the stuff.

  Then all of a sudden, in the turn of a page, air brakes became a tad complicated. It crept up on me that I was having to concentrate more…and read bits several times. The section I had to read six times and then go back to after a lie down in a darkened room—identifying whether your trailer has a ‘spring brake priority’ or a ‘service brake priority’ sub-system if you must know—appeared just about half way through the book, precipitating the crisis. Finally after committing far too much time and money, and after telling way too many people to be able to back out with dignity, appeared the what the hell have I done? moment. The who on earth do you think you are? You cannot possibly cope with this thunderbolt.

  I suddenly recalled that actually I was not and have never been terribly mechanical. I may be intelligent and relatively practical but have spent my life to date choosing to allow others to know about activities that are greasy, dirty and/or heavy. Had I forgotten when I started this caper quite how much I liked to be all clean and relatively fragrant? It now appeared that I was engaged in learning to make inspections of air brake systems on a daily basis and from the little line drawings in my handbook this looked to involve grubbing about under greasy undercarriages.

  Did I really want to do this? Did I have a choice? Could I learn to want to? Nobody would mind if I just stopped the madness right now but that wouldn’t be very intrepid and I liked it when people told each other I was intrepid. So, maybe I was doing this for them. That would be beyond nuts though, it would be really stupid.

  I solved the problem by going shopping. I became the proud owner of a pair of fleecy-lined work gloves and some army surplus overalls. I could maybe climb underneath a truck and maybe keep relatively clean and dry. I liked my gloves a lot, they looked very workmanlike and I considered adding them to the dining table montage but I knew that every penny I expended on this potty scheme would be another reason not to stop.

  As I watched myself brick up the escape route I told myself it would be ok in the end. Maybe I couldn’t stop now I was on the conveyor but we all knew I’d never really get the hang of it. I’d flunk out of school after a valiant effort and people would be sympathetic. They’d admire my pluck. I could end my days telling grandchildren that I might have been a long-haul trucker if it weren’t for the…something.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Carolyn Steele has been a psychologist, a paramedic, a proof reader and several other things, not all of them beginning with P. A trucker, for example. She began writing the day she decided to try and see the world…doing both just to find out whether she could. When excerpts from her first travelogue were published by the Rough Guides she decided to keep on doing both. It made a change from teaching CPR to nightclub bouncers and designing wedding cakes.

  Carolyn and her son emigrated from London, England to Kitchener, Ontario, where she now writes websites, copy and the occasional inflammatory leaflet—in between popping off to do a mad thing and write a book about it.

  Carolyn's Armchair Emigration series begins with her first book A Year on Planet Alzheimer.

  THE RELUCTANT HERO

  by

  Jackie Weger

  Copyright 2014 Jackie Weger

  Editor: Carolyn Steele

  Cover by: EDH Graphics

  Formatting: Rich Meyer

  Parnell Stillman, ace pilot, is man to the bone in a lackadaisical kind of way. He has the ability to fly through anything except solid mountain. He lives alone because people are not to be trusted—especially women. Flying is his high road until one sleet-filled morning--it isn’t. Mischance forces his plane down in a frozen wilderness. He can survive, but his live cargo is another matter--an annoying social worker and five orphans--the most irksome freight he’ has ever hauled in his life.

  Rebecca Hollis is determined to force the obnoxious, disagreeable, self-centered pilot to do whatever is necessary to insure the survival and rescue of the orphans…Even if it means making the noble gesture of keeping her mouth shut—or other womanly things. But the pilot isn’t having it. No way. No how. No time. He’d rather dance with a grizzly or wrestle a puma than give his heart over to a conniving, wily do-gooder. Heroics is not his thing. Rebecca Hollis has other ideas—lots of them! All artful and disingenuous—one of which is bound to work… She hopes. 

  Please press “Next Page” on your e-reader for the first chapter of The Reluctant Hero.

  The Reluctant Hero

  By Jackie Weger

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Santee, you hang on to Nicholas," Rebecca ordered as she lined up the five orphans just inside the hangar door. She had an instant sensation of space and unfamiliar shadow. The building, huge and poorly lit and smelling of grease, much like a mechanic's garage, intensified the sensation. Rebecca shivered. She'd had misgivings about this trip from the start, but her arguments against it had fallen on deaf ears. In her heart she felt the children would end up being disappointed yet again. Too, she wasn't certain of her ability to handle five rambunctious kids on her own. The orphans seemed to have an instant affinity for trouble making.

  "I'm hungry," said Jonesy. "We should've stopped at McDonald's for breakfast."

  "McDonald's isn't open this early, it's barely dawn. Besides, you had breakfast."

  "I'm cold," said Yancy.

  "Swing your arms. I'll be right back. Don't anybody wander off. And hang onto your totes—I mean it. I'll go find the office."

  Rebecca turned and studied the shadows. It really wasn't much warmer inside the monolithic Quonset than outside, but at least they were out of the wind and sleet. She could make out the nose and propeller of a small plane and what seemed to be the dismantled parts of another. At the far end a beacon of light slanted from a pair of windows. She admonished the children once again not to wander, then negotiated the length of the building.

  She stopped in the beacon of light and stared through the dusty windows.

  As her brain registered the airline office her disquiet grew. There were furnishings of every kind that had nothing in common with each other but their infirmity and a dusty, dilapidated air. An oil heater was turned so low it had no effect on the thick rime of frost at the outside windows. Curtain rods were bent and barely hanging on.

  Amid all the clutter a man sprawled in a chair, asleep. His head was tilted back revealing a jaw covered with beard stubble, several days thick. His arms were folded across his chest and his booted feet were crossed and propped on the desk. He looked like a scruffy bag of assorted human parts loosely held together by army surplus specials. A living reproach to manhood, Rebecca thought uncharitably. But then, she was intolerant of men. There wasn't a man in her life and she wasn't anxious to include one. If it meant lonely nights, well...her days were full.

  But it saddened her that this was what the foundering Tynan Foundation had come down to; begging favors for the children from those who appeared least able to afford them. If she had one whit of sense, she'd grab up the kids, return to the orphanage and tell the director they'd missed the plane. If she practiced the lie all the way back to Boise, perhaps it wouldn't show on her face.

  A yelp echoed in the dark vastness. She glanced at the orphans. They were arguing among themselves already. She expelled a sigh. They would put the rout to any lie about missing the plane. With a sinking feeling, she tapped hard on the metal door and moved across the threshold.

  The man opened his eyes. Rebecca could see him trying to shake the dregs of sleep. Once his gaze seemed focused on her, she spoke, "I'm looking for Mr. Stillman."

  He came alert, his lips thinning as suspicious eyes darted to appraise her.

  "You a bill collector?"

  "Rebecca Hollis, from the Tynan Foundation. Abigail Tynan booked us a flight on the mail run. To San Francisco," she added, sinc
e the man looked blank. "We're a bit early, but if you could just direct me to Mr. Stillman, I can let him know we're here."

  "Captain Stillman."

  "Okay. Captain Stillman."

  The man dragged his feet from the desk, stood and stretched, which had the effect of making his shirt collar poke up like limp flags from beneath the crew neck of a British commando sweater. When he came out of the stretch, the gleam in his eye was still guarded. "You're looking at him and I'm not."

  "But..." Rebecca began. She caught herself before she blurted that he couldn't possibly be the pilot. She took a step back. Standing, the man was taller than she'd supposed. And given the slothful way his clothes hung on his frame, he appeared even more disreputable. The kind of man one either crossed the street to avoid, or if one were kind, dropped a quarter into his cup.

  "You're not what?" she said, in no mood for benevolence, telling herself she'd misunderstood him.

  "Not expecting you."

  "You can't be Captain Stillman then, I assure you, we are expected." She was in no humor for charades. She'd spent the better part of last evening packing, managing only several hours' rest before she'd had to roust the children from their beds, after which she'd spent a tension-filled ninety minutes on slick and unsafe roads to reach the airfield on time.

  ~~~~

  "You hard of hearing or something? I'm Stillman." Parnell was fully awake now. Irritably so. There was only the woman, but she was talking in plurals.

  "We? Who's we?" he demanded.

  Rebecca answered his hostility with what she considered to be more pleasantness than the situation required. "Myself and the children—from the Foundation, the foundling home."