Trouble on the Road

Loaded down with a year's worth of dried and smoked fish as well as the remainder of the black tail deer venison I shot, fuel, tools and sundry other things that we had scavenged from Pendleton and the surrounding communities, we took off that morning early before it got hot and heavy up the 76 Expressway away from the coast with a bit of regret.

I took the lead and kept Charlie's truck in my rearview camera monitor, knowing that he probably wouldn't drive as fast as I. It wasn't long before, up ahead, I saw our first obstacle… A new mudslide that had resulted from the recent hurricanes that we experienced come up from Mexico. The slide looked to be about 50 yards across and rose from the highway about 5 to 10 feet with three foot diameter boulders here and there and wasn't entirely dried by the sun yet. I reached for the radio.

"Charlie, we've got trouble ahead. I'm going to pull over and let you go first because you've got more power and traction with your tires. We've got quite a slide to deal with. Over."

"10-4. Let me just mosey on by you and see if I can tackle that mess."

I just barely got pulled over when Charlie and that big truck, snorting black smoke in a lower gear, flew by and hit that slide with all four wheels pumping. Mud and rocks flew everywhere, some hitting my windshield, thankfully not breaking it, as he tore through the greater part of the, still soft, mud until he had about 10 yards to go and bogged down.

Charlie was on the horn. I could hear him coughing in the background before he spoke. "Damn! Almost made it! I'm going to get out and see if I can hook my winch to that big rock up there and get myself pulled out. See if you can get as close as you can to my rear end so we can winch ourselves out. Over."

"10-4. Sounds like a good plan, Charlie. We'll see how far I can get without running over your rear…" Couldn't help laughing at that thought. I put the Peterbilt in second gear and took off. There was no chance of my running over that truck stuck ahead, but I did make it halfway through that muddy mess before I got bogged down, too.

By that time, Charlie was already hand pulling the steel cable from his front winch all the way to the boulder by the side of the road that was guaranteed to pull his Oshkosh out of the muck. "I'll get this end, and you tie onto the back of my truck! Over." He yelled, taking charge and giving orders.

"10-4. I'm already about to pull the winch cable from my truck to yours. Should be done in five minutes or so. Over." I struggled with the mud and the cable. It took me a little longer than I thought.

I could hear Charlie wheezing and gasping as he came on again. "I just… Just about got this cable around this thing.… Will… Have it ready before very long. Over."

I thought about going out around his truck to help him, but then, in discovering the thought, I thought better of it. Let him do it. I told myself.

I got back in the cab and waited. I finally saw him struggling in the mud to get back into his truck. He came on the radio still wheezing, and now, coughing a bit, as well. "That took me a bit… longer than I thought…. But I'm all hooked up… and I'm going to use both the truck… and the winch to move forward…. You do the same. Over."

I complied and answered. "10-4." And put the Peterbilt in first gear while engaging the winch and starting both the wheels turning and the winch pulling at the same time, slowly. I watched, like in slow motion, Charlie's Oshkosh moving off the mudslide as I slowly crept up on its backside without spinning my wheels.

Charlie came back on the radio. "I'm almost to the boulder and have to stop. I think you've got enough room to get off the slide. Right? Over."

"That's a 10-4. I've cleared the slide and am back on the road again. Over." I sighed. Knowing that we had one down and hopefully, no more to go. But I knew better. We would have to use the winches more times ahead. Looked like we got out of there just in time before the winter storms would close all the roads, permanently. I thought about not being able to come back to the West Coast. It wasn't a good thought. Maybe with a bulldozer.

When we got to I-15 at Pala Mesa, the going got easier, but we still had to winch ourselves across two more mudslides before we got to Temecula about 3 pm. Charlie came on the horn again, hacking in the background. "Let's pull over… at that… Truck stop up on the right. I gotta pee… Not feeling very good. Arms about wore out… Wrestling this beast!"

He had been quiet since the last slide we had to navigate together. I sensed he was in big trouble. I answered. "10-4. I'll take the next exit. Over."

"10-4.… Hack… Hack…"

I pulled over like I said and he came up behind me and stopped. I watched in the rearview screen as he stumbled out of the truck and leaned up against the tire to take a leak. And then, he suddenly doubled over and threw up. I climbed down from the truck and ran over to help him. He was hacking again by the time I got there and coughing up blood.

Charlie had a fever and was obviously in bad shape. I helped him climb up into the back of his truck and into his bunk where he lay down and I had him put his feet up with some blankets underneath. I debated whether to cover him or not because it was about 105° and I wasn't sure whether he was suffering from heat exhaustion or something else. After giving him some water, he fell off to sleep, apparently exhausted.

While Charlie was sleeping I built a fire and made some soup from some venison bones, some plants I'd gathered and other odds and ends. About 6 pm, I woke Charlie up and had him take as much of the soup as he could, hoping that would help bring down the fever. Immediately after taking the soup, he fell back asleep again. In the hour, or so, until sundown, I checked out the truckstop and found nothing of value. When I came back to Charlie's truck I found him awake but moaning and groaning. Obviously hurting. We talked a bit.

"Charlie, I'm glad you're feeling better. You were in a real bad way  when we stopped."

Charlie cleared his throat and spoke with a raspy whisper. "Yeah, I sure was. I waited too long to tell you. Too proud, I guess."

"We all have our limits."

"But I never thought it would be as tough as this was today. Shouldn't have kept… driving myself… to go further." Charlie began to cough again and coughed up more blood.

I got him a clean rag to replace the one he had been using to cough into. I would throw it on the fire with any others rather than try to wash them.

"You'll feel better in the morning and then we can move on. Let's hope there'll be no more mudslides in our way."

"I don't know, I'm feelin' poorly…." He dozed off to sleep in midsentence.

I got a sleeping bag and rolled it out in the aisle between all the gear on Charlie's truck and tried to sleep. My mind kept going round and round whether I should take him in my truck to Palm Springs and leave his truck. Take his truck and leave mine. Or find some way to tow his truck with mine. Staying where we were as hot as it was in the daytime with winter storms due any day now, didn't seem to me to make any sense. Morning came before I fully decided.

I heated up the soup from the night before and brought breakfast to Charlie. His fever wasn't any better and he didn't look like he would be able to drive anytime soon. I thought that he might have pneumonia. Tried to put cancer out of my mind.

I shook him lightly. "Charlie, wake up. I've got some breakfast for you."

Charlie opened his eyes, but looked at me worried with bloodshot eyes. "I don't feel so good. Are we at Palm Springs yet?"

"No, Charlie, we aren't. I'm trying to figure out how to get us there. Here, drink some soup and I will see what I can do."

I held the soup up so that Charlie could drink it. He didn't drink very much before rolling back and closing his eyes again. He needed sleep and probably a lot more medical attention than I could provide.

Desperate, I made the rounds of the truck stop again and found a fifth wheel boom attached to a trailer that I thought I could disassemble and use on Charlie's truck. It was getting quite warm, so I laid my sleeping bag under Charlie's truck in the shade and then went and got him down out of the truck and had him on the sleeping bag where he could breathe better. He woke up periodically to cough, and then fall off to sleep again. Every time he did, I gave him water. He was still feverish.

I spent the whole morning removing bolts where the towbar was attached to the trailer. It looked strong, but I wasn't sure how it would work with Charlie's truck. It was all I could do to drag that heavy piece of metal over to our trucks and get the 5th wheel end locked in. I then had to raise the other end up on boxes until they lined up with the bumper on Charlie's truck.

With the field generator providing power, I drilled holes in the bumper on Charlie's truck to match the makeshift towbar and used the bolts removed from the other trailer to attach it as best I could. After that, I wrapped heavy safety chains around both ends in case the bolts failed.

By afternoon, I had to carry Charlie to my truck and put him in the sleeper with the air conditioning on and the engine running. It was just getting too hot for him to even breathe.

That evening, I made a fish stew. And tried to give some to Charlie, but he wasn't eating. So, I made sure that he had enough water. And spent another night tending to him and getting more worried about how I would get both trucks to Palm Springs. In the morning, I gave it a try. Thinking, If only I had welded the towbar to the bumper, like Charlie was capable of. I wasn't.

The next morning at dawn, I got up and made sure that Charlie's emergency brake was off and his transmission was in neutral. Time to give it a try. I gently cranked up the Peterbilt's engine and put it in first gear and moved out slowly to test the rig I had bolted together. It held, so I proceeded to speed up until I was doing about 30 mph in third, about all I was willing to do without any brakes on that truck behind me with its weight heavily felt on my end.

Very soon I came onto the 79 Expressway and took that to Winchester, Hermet and San Jacinto. Fortunately, there were no more mudslides and the long downgrades were manageable as long as I kept it in third gear keeping me from going too fast and burning out my brakes. But progress was slow and it was nightfall again by the time I reached I-10.

I pulled off the road for the night. Heated up the leftover stew, and tended to Charlie who still was, "Feeling mighty poorly." I was just grateful that I had made it this far for his sake.

The next morning, about 50 miles west of where we stayed the night, I felt a kind of shaking going on between my truck and his and pulled over to see what was going on. The bolts connecting the bumper to the fifth wheel were all stripped and the only thing holding it on were the chains. I didn't want to take a chance of that truck breaking free on a slope, either way, going up or going down, so I unbuckled the chains and continued on my way without Charlie's truck. I didn't have the heart to tell him.