Jeffers
Jeffers C. Burkhard was born with a butler’s name. Although he had never performed a single act of butlery.
Jeffers C. Burkhard was a truck driver. A long-haul load man. For 31 years he hauled loads, loads of granite, aluminum, sheep’s wool, tungsten, if a load needed hauling Jeffers hauled it.
He found his vocation the summer he turned 18. Jeffers loved to think. And no better thoughts were had than when long-hauling loads on the roads. The clarity of a Wyoming sunrise, the renewal of a Saratoga rain. The snows of Minnesota and the Missouri mud always proved a cognitive delight.
Jeffers wasn’t exactly well-read, but instead well-informed. He crawled the AM radio like a spongy centipede. After his second raise, he subscribed to Sirius. Talking head pontificators filled his mind brimful, yet never distracted Jeffers from the road. The road was Jeffers’ domain. His wheelhouse. His realm of brilliant expertise.
Until one day, the road spoke to Jeffers.
This wasn’t metaphor, or some inspired insight. The road spoke to Jeffers in plain English: “Tomorrow. You will die.”
Jeffers had wrangled rigs for 31 years and never once collided with another. He could reach his engine brake in 0.15 seconds and fire it off in 0.28. He knew his blind spots and checked his mirrors aggressively. But still he believed in the road — knowing her words were true.
If Jeffers had lived on the road, he decided he’d die on it too. Sitting pulled over far enough to the side in case his decided demise was explosive.
But Jeffers knew every inch of his tank and fuel lines. Diesel was safer than ever. “Won’t be an explosion.” Jeffers said aloud, fingers curled around his knurled wheel.
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In the early hours following the ominous message, Jeffers contemplated the ways in which he would die.
Overdose? Nope. Jeffers never even touched caffeine.
Asleep at the wheel? Never. Jeffers had the driving gene two-fold. His father was a long-haul trucker whose verbose arguments put everyone to sleep, except for Jeffers’ mother Deborah.
Jeffers ran through the possibilities of death. Considering obscure scenarios involving snakebite, bladder infection, and head-on buffalo-herd calamity.
And Jeffers considered the practical. His blood pressure was a constant battle. He’d often recover to 120/80 but would inevitably fall prey to cheese and beef sticks. His favorite flaw. The crumbly cheddar, greasy meat, and tearaway packaging made it the perfect vice for the road. Its evidence of consumption caking the knobs of his CB radio.
Over hours of thought, Jeffers concluded that the cheese and beef sticks would get him in the end. So he pulled over at exit 188 and liquidated the two-tubed cheddar and beef supply of a Love’s travel plaza.
Thirty-nine beef and cheese sticks sat piled on Jeffers’ passenger seat as the truck climbed to 70. The engine purred rhythmically, then choked chaotically. Jeffers squeezed his knurled wheel as his truck backfired, skipping gears and locking traction. Trucks zoomed past as Jeffers desperately wrestled his rig from danger.
A quarter-mile ahead a truck sat idle, flashers beaming off a blown tire. Jeffers stabbed at the brake, but the pedal wouldn’t budge. Four hundred feet away, Jeffers’ truck careened toward the hazarded Sterling, about to collide in conflagration when a tone chimed over Jeffers’ CB:
“Switching to automated control. Apologies for the disruption.”
Jeffers felt the wheel move beneath his fingers as the brake pedal automatically depressed. His truck safely rounded the grounded 18-wheeler, then rose to the speed limit without Jeffers’ input.
That’s when it dawned on Jeffers — this was day one of the AI revolution. His company onboarded the componentry months prior. Today was the takeover, but all the hours on the road rendered Jeffers weary. He was now safe, but also out of a job. The series of diametrically opposing events, hurtling his emotions from the extremes of despair and triumph and back again, snapped Jeffers like a rubber band.
The truck stopped at the next plaza and Jeffers sat still, roiling in the PTSD of unspeakable tension and unfathomable relief. He reached behind the passenger seat, fingers fumbling until they found the cold metal of his Beretta.
He looked down the barrel of his old Army weapon, released the safety and died that same day.
