Like A Runaway Train

The twenty-four wheeler left Thunder Bay at seven o’clock in the morning, its driver determined to make Toronto in one day.  Normally, there’d be a stopover in Sault Ste. Marie, a chance for a break in the Soo.  But with two Blue Jays tickets for tomorrow’s game, and the Yankees in town, the big rig knew its driver wanted the full day off.  A sixteen-hour trip was a small price to pay.

The monstrous black truck, chrome trim gleaming wickedly, rolled across the north shore of Lake Superior toward the rising sun.  Its shiny, silver tanker, loaded with chemical pesticide, followed obediently, pulled along by the powerful urgency of the truck’s Volvo diesel engine.  Blue skies, dry roads, and sparse traffic encouraged its high speed along the open highway.  It was to be a cannonball run, virtually unstoppable.   

The big rig roared past Terrace Bay at mid-morning, Marathon before noon.  It made White River just after the lunch hour, then turned south, cruising past the off-ramp to Wawa by mid-afternoon.  In its pell-mell push to the city, all the familiar towns flashing past, the dramatic vistas of the pre-Cambrian shield went unnoticed by its driver.  It made only two stops, one to refuel, another to allow its driver to relieve himself and grab a meal to go.  Truly, there was no reason for the behemoth to rest.  It could run forever, like a runaway train, swallowing the road, charging past any vehicle daring to slow it down.

By suppertime, the black rig had churned by the Soo and turned east, away from the setting sun.  The long June day gave way to dusk as it pounded past Spragge, past Spanish, past Espanola.  By the time Sudbury slipped away behind it, the monster was rolling relentlessly south into darkness, its halogen lamps piercing the gloom.  For long, lonely stretches, it was the solitary vehicle on the  highway, no traffic in either direction.  The growl of its massive diesel, the fumes spewing from its twin chrome stacks, the whoosh of air the trailer left in its wake, were the only things that marked its passing through the northern night.  By now, of course, its driver was weary, fighting sleep, but the big black truck rolled tirelessly on.

North of Parry Sound, the highway narrowed to accommodate new construction not yet completed.  Garish rows of fluorescent, black-and-orange markers heralded the transition; glowing, black-on-white signs demanded reduced speed.  But the monster truck paid them no heed.  Another two hours, perhaps a bit more, and the journey would be done.  Its twenty-four tires hummed their hypnotic tune to its sleepy driver, nodding now, high up behind the wheel.  Entering a right-hand curve at the top of the long grade down to Parry Sound, the cone-markers stretching ahead along the centre line, the truck was pushing 120 kilometres per hour—cruising speed, really, for its huge diesel power-plant—running effortlessly ahead of its heavy load. 

But by now, its driver had become increasingly inattentive, lulled by the rumbling power carrying him along.  Under a loose hand on the wheel, the juggernaut drifted dangerously to the left, into the northbound lane, picking up speed and scattering cone-markers high in the air.  Cursing in alarm as they glanced noisily off the cab, its driver tried to correct the line.  Too late!

Headlights coming north around the curve blinded him.  The truck, its air brakes now locked under his panicked reaction, veered to the right.  Its huge left fender just missed the oncoming vehicle as the rig bulled back across the southbound lane.  Black smoke streamed from beneath its tires; trails of scorched rubber streaked the road.  The loaded tanker fishtailed left, then right, shaking the cab violently.  Its driver, now fully awake, barely had time to throw his arms in front of his face as the truck piled into the rock-cut on the west side of the highway, the cab crumpling against the solid granite.

The catapulting trailer flipped on its side, rolled once, twice, dragging the black wreckage of the doomed rig with it, finally coming to rest upside-down in the wide ditch separating the roadway from the rock wall.  Pieces of gleaming, black metal and shiny chrome littered the roadway for two hundred metres.  Liquid streaming from the ruptured tanker made its way down the incline, over and around the stones lining the spillway.  Pale-gray plumes of steam rose heavenward, ghostly waifs against the black night sky.

The cannonball run was done.

_{© J. Bradley Burt 2022}