The Homeless Millionaire

His full name was Peter Schmidt and he'd been a truck driver for over ten years. He had a German father and an Irish mother; they lived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Most likely that was what had motivated him to become a trucker: if I were in his shoes, I'd have taken any job that would take me away from that shithole of a town.

His German father had been in the Luftwaffe during the war. He came to be in Canada unexpectedly, and against his will: he arrived in 1942 as a prisoner of war. He had been navigator and radio operator on one of the big, tri-motor Blohm und Voss flying boats that patrolled the Northern Atlantic, looking for targets for the U-boot fleet.

One summer day in 1942, they were just about to turn around for their base in Norway when they flew into a storm. Their wings iced over, their engines seized, and they made a crash landing a couple of hundred miles south of Iceland. It was more a crash than a landing, and they'd have perished if it wasn't for a Canadian destroyer that picked them up.

Oberfeldwebel Schmidt was put in a POW camp in Canada. His war was over, and he didn't mind: he'd never liked Hitler and the Nazi party. He was a friendly, easygoing guy, originally from Hamburg, a city that compared with the rest of Germany like San Francisco compares with Nebraska. He was a model prisoner, and he fixed the camp commandant's malfunctioning wireless set more than once. When the war ended, the commandant returned the favor with a fix for him: he stayed on in Canada as a landed immigrant instead of being repatriated back to Germany.

His son Pete wanted to be a pilot, but life intervened and he became a truck driver instead.

"It's similar in a way, you know?" he told me. "You sit in a c.o.c.kpit and pilot a vehicle, hour after hour. At night, like right now, when the road's good, it's a little like flying low above the ground."

"I thought you long-distance guys always had a partner. You don't have a partner?"

"Nah," he said. "This is my own rig. It ain't rented, all the money goes into my own pocket. And no partner means all of it stays there. I can drive for twenty hours straight no problem. A snooze back there, something to eat and a couple of coffees and I'm good for another twenty. Matter of fact, we'll stop for a few hours soon. I been at the wheel since six in the morning. Stopped for a meal and to stretch my legs in the afternoon, maybe an hour, and that's it."

It was nearing one in the morning when he said that: we were already deep into the Rockies and national park territory. The waning moon gave little light and I regretted that, because during the day the sights would have been spectacular. The mountains around us were a black mass blocking out the starlit sky, the evergreen forest - a procession of pale, ghostlike trees in the beams of the truck's headlights. Over the past hour, we'd passed a couple of trucks going in the opposite direction, and a train stopped under a red semaphore light on the tracks that ran parallel to the highway. We were all alone out there on the road, and it felt weirdly wonderful.

We were silent while Pete negotiated some tricky bends and curves. Then we went over a bridge spanning a creek, and another over a narrow, fast-flowing river. The road ran straight after that and Pete started questioning me about myself.

We'd talked about me before, of course. During the first hour of our journey I'd told him where I was from and that I'd been staying with a friend in Montreal and helping him out with house renovations. I didn't say anything about being a student at the Ecole des beaux artes, about my father being a diplomat, or about my foreign travels. I'd learned that if I said anything that made me seem unique to other people, most of them would immediately would do their best to prove to me that I wasn't unique at all, in fact quite common, and definitely not as unique as THEY were.

But Pete wasn't interested in my past. He'd become interested in my future. Why was I going to Vancouver? Did I have friends or family there? Did I have a job lined up? I answered him and simultaneously moved away from him in my seat because he'd taken to touching me on the shoulder after each question, and it felt weird. He noticed that and fell silent and drove on gloomily for a little while in silence. Our headlights picked out a lay-by on the other side of the road and Pete said:

"I'm gonna stop here. Need a little sleep."

"Sure."

He slowed down, swung the wheel and drove across the lanes and into the lay-by. It wasn't even paved, it was just a semicircle of roadside dirt bulldozed flat. It wasn't big either, the truck and trailer just about fitted in there. I had to admire the skill with which Pete maneuvered the vehicle into position. He didn't have to make a single correction, we rolled in there and came to a stop in one smooth motion, perfectly parallel to the road on the right and the railway tracks that ran a bit higher up the slope to the left.

"Wow. That was some fancy driving," I said when he switched off the engine. His gloom disappeared instantly and he said:

"You get a feel for your vehicle after a while. Me, I know exactly where every part of this rig is at any given moment. It's like radar."

"Awesome," I said, and opened the door to the cab.

"Where you going?"

"I'll have a smoke and stretch my legs and take a leak."

"Good idea."

I got out of the cabin and hopped to the ground and went up to the front of the truck and lit a cigarette. Pete got out of the cab too, but instead of going off to the side to do his business he came round the front and joined me and said:

"Can I bum one off you?"

"Sure," I said, surprised. He had two packs of Camels, one half-full, on top of the dashboard in the truck.

I gave him a light from my cigarette and when he bent down and puffed away to get his cigarette going I felt a wave of tension from him, so strong it was a physical sensation. I'd felt it before from guys that were about to hit me, and I didn't like it. If two-ton Pete hit me, I'd probably fly off into outer space. His biceps was the size of my t.h.i.g.h.

He straightened up blowing smoke, thanked me, and walked away and around the truck. I could hear him moving in the scrub behind the trailer. The road and the railroad were squeezed into a pass between two huge peaks that blotted out the sky. It was quite chilly and all the crickets were quiet. The wind whispered in the trees, which answered with rustles and soft squeaks.

I heard Pete zip up and walk heavily along the side of the truck. He climbed up into the cab and moved around in there for a while. I finished my cigarette and walked off to the side and took a leak, looking at the railroad embankment up the slope. Then I went round the front of the truck and climbed into the cabin on my side, passenger's side.

I noticed instantly that in the meantime Pete had adjusted the back of my seat; it was tilted back a few degrees more. I had barely settled into it when Pete said, behind me:

"I moved the back rest for you but that's as far as it will go."

"That's great," I said. "Thanks."

"But you can also lie down back here if you want. There's enough space."

That was bullshit; he took up as much space as two average-sized people. I said:

"I'm fine, thanks."

He grunted and moved around a little in the back and said:

"Shit. I gotta get something from the dash."

He had all sorts of shit strewn around on top of the dashboard: cigarettes, throat lozenges, crumpled tissues, an unopened pack of Gummi Bears. I thought he might be after the Gummi Bears and was about to offer to hand them to him when his forearm slid around my neck and he breathed right into my left ear:

"You're coming into the back with me."