My first impression of him was sidetracked by a black speck on his right incisor so large it stared back at me and begged curiosity.
He wore unfaded Dickies blue jeans with a long sleeve camouflage tech shirt and below were the cowboy boots I should have expected. But the speck was so Imposing I almost resolved to think it was part of the show.
“Just being a bro, you got something in your teeth” said Cory, the other guy in our group by the door.
After picking it out he cracked open an energy drink. It was 7:40pm.
Tony drives truck. In fact, twice across the country this year. Sometimes to Florida, or Texas, and the money isn’t always better on the cross country trips, he tells me. He drives his dad’s truck and when I ask him about his operation he tells me he does it all — the sales, dispatching, and all the wheel turning. His job is paid through movement yet at one point he stopped in California long enough to see the Redwoods.
“Thought they’d be bigger” he said with a grin.
I’d say Tony’s 5’11”. If he packs for a weekend retreat – the case we found ourselves in – he’ll stick with the jeans and only trade out various cotton t’s from the agricultural or trucking industry. His light brown hair is short and is mostly flat except for streaks of hair jetting out like a prickly bush.
The next morning I sat beside him at breakfast and attempting to build rapport I told how when I drove out to Arizona I felt like a trucker, right alongside them and exchanging nods in Love’s Travel or Flying J, peeing beside them and hearing their trucker buddies on their Bluetooth headsets . This led me to ask what the small talk is like between them, and whether there’s a mutual glance much like the three finger wave cyclists give each other.
Tony said no, but they do talk about the road, what’s ahead, and what’s to know. Small talk, just trucker small talk.
And I questioned more.
“So is it true there’s that radio channel that…”
“Channel 19” he jumped in.
“But it only covers bout 20 miles,” he continued. “Might call in a cop ahead, but no one really uses it much anymore”
“You can get radios that go further but they’re illegal. Mudduckdesert’s got one that’ll go across the nation.”
“Mudduckwhat?”
“Mudduckinthedesert”
“So that’s mud, M.U.D, duck D.U.C.K —in the desert?”
“Yeah”
“So he’s some YouTuber or trucker on social media?”
“No, just everybody hears him.”
And that keeps my mind running through a screenplay long enough to stab at my yogurt with granola and fruit, imagining Mud Duck schlepping loads across New Mexico. And then I see Mud Duck as still a young boy wanting only to be heard for once, and him clasping the dispatcher for the nation to hear him out. Is Mud Duck really so criminal?
“So what’s the most unethical thing you can do as a trucker? Tampering logbooks? Too much weight?”
I watched Tony pick at his hash browns a moment, wondering if he liked the question or not. But after reaching for mud duck I felt we were in rapport.
“Transporting drugs, it’s not hard to do”
I never talked to Tony again that weekend. But I liked Tony. At the end of our meal I looked him in the eye and thanked him for keeping America running or something patriotic like that. Wasn’t hard to do. He was a good fellow, even complemented me once, said I’d be good on the radio. Maybe as good as Mud Duck, I’d hope.
And we still won’t know what the speck was.
