Flashback

I sensed that Val was most interested in Cooper Jakes (called Old Jakes Brakes by the other truckers for some impenetrable reason)—an ancient philosopher more ancient and wise than I, easily in his 80s if not 90s, but also as thin, tough, resilient, and seemingly immortal as gristle. Cooper Jakes’s silhouette makes up in white beard what he lacks in body fat, and, in the tradition of all great prophets, his prodigious eyebrows are jet black. Those brows can, in an instant, become as cocked and intimidating as two aimed pistol muzzles. When he is angry, Cooper Jakes reminds me of Ahab.

But most of the time, Cooper is in a relaxed and humorous (however sardonic, especially on such subjects as politics and religion) mood. The old man has been driving large rigs (he says) since he was seventeen years old. He’s never had a wife, family, or home (he says) and has never wanted one. His cab has been his ark—his words—through all the “floods of shit” that have been dropped on America by a pissed-off God in his lifetime.

Val can’t seem to get enough of the old reprobate’s barbed but almost iambic commentaries. I watch Val’s gleaming eyes across the campfire and think of young Prince Hal in Eastcheap’s Boar’s-Head Tavern at the rhetorical feet of Falstaff. (I was one of those scholars who infinitely preferred Falstaff—a source of wit not only in himself but in others and a potential Aristotle/Socrates tutor of the true humanities to the young prince in training—to the wordy killing-machine-cum-lying-politician that Henry V became in Shakespeare’s work, however moving the much-trotted-out “band of brothers” St. Crispin’s Day speech may be.)

But I digress.

Val actually said something to me yesterday in a tone devoid of the contempt, guardedness, and sarcasm that have ruled all his speech in my presence for the last four years or so.

—I could be a trucker, Grandpa.

I said nothing at the time but I came close to weeping to hear those few unguarded words slip out. (Including, I admit, the childish “Grandpa” that I’ve missed so very much.) Val has not spoken of being or becoming anything—other than his unconscious but continuous attempt at becoming a black-hole source of disillusionment so unrelenting as to approach pure nihilism—since he was twelve years old.

Before I become too sentimental, I need to remind myself here that it is likely that my grandson killed someone last week. Or at least tried to kill someone.