Second Shift

By Dean Moore

Jack Allen, an aging, lonely widower with grown children, had been driving a truck long-haul for decades. He figured his days of doing anything more significant than delivering freight were far behind him, and those days were getting shorter all the time. Jack's troubled past had been successfully buried for decades. Why was it getting dredged up now? Little did he know that his glory days might not be over after all, and there might be a whole new adventure waiting for him right up the road a stretch if he can wrestle with his troubled past. Ten-year-old Ben had never known what a "normal" life was like, and it was not about to get normal any time soon. Kids like Ben didn't get many happy endings, and he sure hasn't had a happy beginning, but it could always get better. Some folks just don't get a fair shot at life. Maybe this time? Two defeated and unlikely people experience a bumpy road full of challenges and redemption. Can a pair of hard lives manage to coexist together, and even help each other out? Can eighty thousand pound of diesel-powered conflict and trouble headed for a dead-end sign at seventy miles per hour get turned around in time?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645696957

Book preview

cover.jpg

Second Shift

Dean Moore

Copyright © 2019 by Dean Moore

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

Jack looked out across the hood of his Freightliner and marveled at the barren beauty of the American Southwest. Although he’d seen this stretch of I-40 between Grants and Gallup tens of thousands of times before, sometimes it just seemed fresh and amazing for some reason, and this was one of those times. Jack remembered the twilight years of the old Route 66 era, and that made it hard to be too grumpy about the current condition of the worn and rugged asphalt.

The truck dashboard display says it was fifty-five degrees outside, and he could feel the wind moving the truck and trailer around, but in the cab, it was seventy degrees, and Jack was in short sleeves. In Jack’s early days, he’d be wearing a jacket in the truck and feeling the wind through the drafty cab of those older utilitarian trucks. Jack looked out at this amazing scenery out the windshield of what he figured would probably be his last brand-new truck. Because of this, he went ahead and ordered a little more truck than he usually did. These new trucks were so much nicer than what he was driving when he first started driving, but this truck was especially nice inside by Jack’s standards.

His old bones were getting sore quicker and easier these days, so a softer bed and more luxury options were checked off on the order sheet this last time. Jack marveled at how these new trucks had such comfortable and fancy interiors, they drove well, and they were so quiet compared to the older trucks; so much more comfortable than any of his older trucks, many of which sat silently, rotting along the back fence of the yard behind the shop where his trucking business was located.

He tried to make life as comfortable as possible for his family, so he bought more Spartan, cheaper trucks to save money, and ran them longer than he probably should have right into the ground usually. He did save money but at the cost of sore bones now. It was also harder to keep drivers when other trucking companies had nicer, newer trucks, but Jack had always tried to treat his trucker family like family, so they often stayed even though he was cheap. Aside from comfort, the trucks built in the past few decades could also haul more weight and drove much faster than trucks did in Jack’s early days.

He shivered as he remembered driving the same routes years ago with two jackets because it was so cold inside the cab of the truck and so loud and with so many rattles that it would drive a man truly crazy, crazy enough to keep an old trucker driving a truck he supposed. Jack Allen had been hauling produce east and dry freight west across the North American continent for over forty years.

A widower with four grown children, three sons and a daughter, he really felt that his glory days were far behind him. Nothing but more hard work and, hopefully, a quiet old man’s death lie ahead for him, but he was mostly content and still active, and while he would have liked to have done more, he figured that he’d had a pretty good run overall.

He spent decades providing for his family (and if you asked him, he’s admittedly done a pretty good job of it). These days, however, Jack found himself tired and alone. He really loved his wife Dorothy, and he loved his sons and his lone daughter but never was one to show it much. He figured that providing for them and working hard should have been enough proof of his love.

They did go on vacations as a family, but usually, he just took the kids in the truck every summer, and when they grew up, Dorothy even drove with him for a while before she passed away a decade ago. He had long had a nagging feeling that he had missed out on something, but he figured it was too late now to do anything about it.

He stared out the windshield at the never-ending road, in this case I-40. He was still two days from home; he sighed at the thought, and although he was rarely ever there, it was still home, and somehow today, he felt the need to get home as if he had an appointment that he couldn’t remember making. As he drove across the plains of Texas and Oklahoma, this nagging feeling only got worse. While he slept and worked most days in his truck, he still kept a small house as his home base. About once a week or when he ran out of driving hours near home, he came back to the slightly run-down house near the securely fenced yard and office where he kept his little fleet of tractors and reefer (refrigerated) trailers.

He got out of the warm tractor to drop the trailer; it was fall, and though it was not too cold yet, it was a little windy, and he was old, so he felt the slight chill in his bones more than he did in his youth.

He grabbed his gloves and jacket and proceeded to crank down the landing gear on the reefer and disconnected the air brake lines and electrical connections. He dropped the trailer in the yard and headed out to the house in his semi-tractor-driving bobtail.

In the nicer months, he often kept his car, a restored 1954 Kaiser Manhattan, in a shed at the yard, but in the winter months, he figured the salt damage wasn’t worth it, and now, it seemed it was just easier to drive the truck home most of the year. Jack rolled the tractor into his widened but cracked concrete driveway and looked