Chapter 5
"0h, I don't know," Dan sighed. He stretched his heavy frame alongside Nelida's body and stared at the mug of coffee resting in his lap. "Maybe I should go back and maybe I shouldn't. If I look at it, like objectively I think one thing. But every bone in my body's telling me to go home where I belong. A year away from your wife and kid is just too long, honey. You know how it is."
Nelida smiled sympathetically an looked out the truck windshield. It was now about six in the morning and the two of them were parked in the lot of a truck, stop, just outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Six in the morning was already much too late for their timetable. The load Dan had in the back was mostly perishable, and Nelida knew that if they didn't make it into Kansas City by ten a.m. he would probably be fined heavily. But she also knew that they probably would not really be leaving the truck stop for some time, and leaving the truck stop for some time, and when they did they might not be together. Nelida frowned and looked out the windshield of the Kenworth. Her pretty, deceptively innocent sixteen year old face pouted girlishly with worry. Outside the weather seemed to mirror her emotions. It was bleak and cold; she could see gusts of icy wind pouring across the deserted parking lot, shrieking from the dark silhouette of one truck to another like primeval birds circling around dinosaurs. Nelida smiled briefly. It was nice to be in the truck, lying together in the sleeper and drinking coffee together like this. Dan always complained about how cramped the sleeping quarters but she didn't mi of his Kenworth were, but she didn't mind at all; it was like they didn't have any choice but to cuddle. Nelida frowned suddenly and looked into her mug of coffee. The sad things of course, was that this would ever might-be the last, time they share the pleasure together. She knew that this was the most, important discussion Dan and she had had in a year of being together day and night.
"Why do you want to go back to your wife all of a sudden?" Nelida asked softly.
"Oh, I don't know," Dan repeated. He shrugged his heavy shoulders and stared at her blankly. He was such a big m' an, Nelida thought. Six-feet, three-inches tall, 250 pounds, a broad powerful jaw and the face of a lumberjack; he looked like a professional fighter almost, like a Jack Dempsey with sixty extra pounds. "It just seems like the thing to do, that's all. Lucy was always a real fine woman. I left her without a cent, you know. I wonder if I ever told you how bad off I left her and the kid. Not one red cent." Dan grimaced and stared at his closed fist, as if intent upon torturing himself. Then he sighed and rested his head against the light steel wall of the sleeper. "It's been such a while," he murmured. "I don't even know what they look like anymore. Garry ... shit, Garry must be seventeen years old by now. That's practically full grown."
"But I don't understand," Nelida interrupted. She sighed with exasperation and paused in an effort to phrase her words perfectly. "Danny, this is all so sudden, so out of the blue. Like last night it was just us and now you've got her on your mind again. I just don't get it."
"It was never just us, honey, not the way you think," Dan said gently "Lucy and me was married for almost twenty years. That's a long time, practically half my life. Of course ..." Dan smiled wanly and looked at Nelida as if remembering all the time they'd spent together. "You and me've been together a long time too."
Nelida nodded her head and said nothing. She and Dan had been together constantly for practically a year, and she knew without having to remind herself that he was the only man in the world for her. Without him she was sure she'd probably be dead.
They'd met on the road. Dan had picked her up hitch-hiking out of Xenia, Ohio, less than two blocks from the house she'd lived in throughout her girlhood. Later on Dan had confessed that she was the first hitchhiker he'd ever given a ride to. Ordinarily he was afraid of being hijacked, but at fifteen, Nelida looked even more innocent and pure and angelic than she did now, a year later. What Nelida had never told him, or at least what she had never completely explained, was that he was the first man she'd ever known on her own like that. She'd only decided to run away from home fifteen minutes before he picked her up; that was how long it had taken her to walk the two blocks from her house. Her family life had been terrible. Her father was drunk most of the time, and her mother stayed sober just long enough to beat her. Nelida had known since her twelfth birthday that would have have to leave them eventually. It was only the purest matter of coincidence that Dan had picked her up, that she'd decided to leave home just then.
But the coincidence had occurred and for a year the two of them had lived on the road like husband and wife. Nelida's age didn't matter to Dan; he told her that he'd met full grown women at eleven and spoiled babies at fifty-five, and ten years one way or the other didn't make much difference. But Nelida had always known how important her age really was in their relationship. Dan was forty, twenty-four years her senior. He wasn't just a lover to her, though being her first lover would certainly have been important enough; he was also the father figure she'd never really had in her own. So she'd loved him completely, utterly and without restraint, and there was nothing Dan wanted that she had ever been unwilling to give him. Life on the road for a truck-driver was extremely hard. Usually they drove non-stop from one load to the next, hitting New York on a Monday and Los Angeles the following Friday, maybe taking two days off every four weeks to spend the weekend balling in a sleazy anonymous motel. Sometimes the Kenworth broke down, and they'd be marooned in a blizzard for ten hours to fix it. Sometimes they ran out of money; some times they ran out of work; sometimes Dan ran out of patience and would shout her down until she cried. But Nelida had tolerated all of it. She'd given Dan everything she had, and now that he had taken all of it he was going to go away.
"I'm sorry, honey," Dan said, gently breaking the silence. "I know how this must be hurting you. But I've got loyalties. There's nothing else for me to do."
Nelida raised her head and looked at Dan steadily. She loved him enough to want what was right for him, but she couldn't help wanting to protect her investment.
"I thought you said you were never nice enough to-what was her name?-Lucy. Isn't that why you left her?" Nelida asked quietly. "That you thought you weren't good enough for her."
"Oh yeah, I guess so," Dan muttered. I'm a real asshole, I know that. But things are going to be different this time. There's a big difference between being thirty-nine and forty, at least for me. I feel, I don't know, older somehow., This time I'm going to treat both of them with a little respect."
"What about your temper?" Nelida reminded.
"Oh ... it just won't be as bad, that's all, Dan said. "I just ... I don't know why, but I just know in my heart that I won't abuse her like I used to."
"Like what did you used to do?"
Dan hesitated and wrung his massive hands together, grimacing slightly with embarrassment. "It's kind of shameful, actually, if you want to know the truth. Most of it was ... well, it had to do with her being a woman, with our sex life."
"Did you rape her?" Nelida asked. She remembered the one time Dan had been angry enough to rape her, and shivered briefly with the recollection of his violence.
"Yeah, a couple of times," Dan admitted. "But even that wasn't ... the worst thing. I mean I was real bad to her; I don't even know what got into me. I used to ... well, Lucy was a real clean woman, and she didn't want to do anything exotic in the sexual department, if you know what I mean. And I'd sort of kind to try and force her into it ..."
Nelida bit her lip and nodded her head.
"Like making her give me a blow job when she didn't want to," Dan sighed. "I did that a couple of times. The worst was that I was always trying to do it to her in the ... behind, you know, up the ass." Dan shrugged and shook his head in exasperation. "I don't know, why I wanted to fuck her in the ass. It's kind of weird. But I just did, all the time. I wanted that even more than regular sex. She never let me, but it got real close a couple of times. She'd never talk to me for days afterwards."
"Well, aren't you afraid you right, do that to her again?"
"No, I'm not," Dan replied firmly. He calmly raised his eyes and looked an Nelida and resolutely for several seconds. Then he pulled her gently to his chest and embraced her affectionately, holding her slender teenage body tightly against his. "Nelida, baby, I know what you're thinking. You're trying to keep me from going back to her."
"I guess I am," Nelida admitted miserably.
"Honey, it's just impossible," Dan said firmly. "It's just something I got to do. I feel real bad about leaving you like this, but it can't be helped. You'll make out okay sixteen years old, and you're I mean, you're real pretty, and you know the road real good. You can do a lot better than an old washed up trucker like me."
"Oh God," Nelida moaned unhappily.
Dan said nothing in response and two of them were silent for several minutes. A welter of thoughts ran through Nelida's mind, making her temples ache with concentration and her wide brown eyes throb with repressed tears. Deep down inside she knew that this would be their last time together. Dan was the sort of man who made up his mind once and for all; when he'd reached a decision there was no chance of changing it, regardless of what happened. A deep shudder ran through Nelida's body; she bit her lip and moaned against his brawny chest. But he couldn't leave her, she thought helplessly. She loved him. He couldn't go away, he just couldn't ...
Then Nelida realized he really was going to, and as the enormity of the thought filled her mind she felt a strange, irresistible heat emerging in her loins. This was going to be their last time, she thought, their very last time ... Before Nelida was fully aware of what she was doing she raised her slender arm and pressed her hand between the buttons of Dan's workshirt. Then she mewled softly and pushed her fingers under the hem of his pants, fumbling for, the meaty thickness of his flaccid organ.
"Nelida!" Dan exclaimed. He lifted his head slightly and looked at her in' surprise.
"I've got to, Dan," Nelida whimpered. She pulled down his zipper and insinuated her fingers through the opening of his jockey shorts. Finally she found the shaft of his penis, and she clasped it firmly in her warm fingers. Nelida's body felt as if it was on fire. Her nipples were distended stiffly beneath her t-shirt, and the pouting lips of her pussy were moist and swollen with arousal. Nelida tightened, her grip around the thick trunk of Dan's member and began to stroke it salaciously, exciting him as best she knew how.
"Nelida," Dan repeated.
"This is going to be our last time Nelida said anxiously. "h please, Dan, please let me do it. I've just got to."