— A story about a truck, a cane, and the dog who never got lost
They said I wasn’t built for long hauls. Too short. Too soft-spoken. Too much woman for a man’s job, but not enough man to do it.
I kept my mouth shut and my boots laced, and I drove anyway. Forty-eight states before I turned thirty. Up the icy veins of Montana. Down through Amarillo under sun so hot the asphalt sweated. I hauled steel beams, cantaloupes, prefab sheds, once even a tank—though I still think that Army boy was pulling my leg.
But the miles? They never judged me.
Maisie did the navigating. Rough-coated Collie, with a white blaze down her face like she’d stuck her snout in a snowdrift and forgot to pull it out. Smart as sin, that dog. She could smell a rest stop from two exits out, pick out a loose fan belt by sound, and had a better sense for weather than the goddamn Weather Channel.
Then the wreck happened.
It was outside Omaha. Foggy. I took a turn too tight with a half-full load of lumber and flipped the whole rig sideways. Spent six weeks in the hospital with a broken hip and two collapsed lungs. They said it was a miracle Maisie lived. She crawled out through the busted window and stood by the wreck, refusing to leave. When they found her, she was bleeding from her front paw but still growling at the paramedics, like she thought they might hurt me.
After that, I quit the road.
Sold the truck. Bought a little house near an off-ramp in Missouri where the highway ran quiet at night, like it was whispering to the ghosts of us who’d once lived on diesel and time.
Maisie grew old. Slower to get up. Her bark got hoarse. And when she died, I buried her under the oak tree out back. Wrapped her in my old CB jacket. Took me two hours with the shovel and my bad leg, but I didn’t ask for help.
Some things a woman’s gotta do herself.
It was a Thursday in early March—just warm enough to smell the thaw coming. I’d stopped at a rest area off I-44. Not for gas. Not for anything, really. Just habit, I guess. Like muscle memory. The truckers call it “phantom throttle”—when your foot still taps the floorboard even years after you stop driving.
I sat on a bench outside the women’s room, listening to the wind rustle the vending machine awning. My cane rested against my knee, polished smooth where my fingers had rubbed it. I was sipping lukewarm coffee from a dented Thermos I still carried around like a security blanket.
That’s when I heard it.
Crying.
Soft. Wet. Not the wailing kind. The kind you try to smother into your own hoodie because you don’t want the world to hear you breaking.
I scanned around. No one in sight—just a rusty Corolla parked lopsided and a pair of squawking crows fighting over a burger wrapper.
Then I saw her.
Hunched behind the Coke machine. Skinny arms. Purple hoodie two sizes too big. Sneakers worn so thin you could see sock through rubber. She looked up when I walked over—eyes like firewood ash, wide and panicked.
“Don’t call anyone,” she croaked.
I didn’t. I just lowered myself slowly beside her, wincing as my hip locked. Offered her my Thermos. She didn’t take it, but she stopped crying.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Jay.”
“Okay, Jay. I’m Ruth.”
Pause.
“I like your boots,” she said, eyeing my oil-scuffed Fryes. “You a cowboy or something?”
I chuckled. “No. Just old.”
She didn’t say what she was running from. I didn’t ask.
But I saw the bruises—some yellow, some fresh. The way she flinched at loud sounds. The way her backpack was packed too neatly, like she’d practiced it a dozen times.
Maisie would’ve gone straight to her. No hesitation. She always knew who was hurting.
“I used to drive,” I said, filling the silence. “Big rig. Cross-country hauls. My dog sat shotgun.”
Jay looked up. “What kind of dog?”
“Collie. Rough coat. Smartest damn girl on the road. She once barked when a tire was about to blow. Saved me a tow and a night in Kansas.”
Jay snorted a small laugh. “Sounds better than my last ride.”
“You headed anywhere?”
She shrugged. “East. Maybe Chicago. I dunno. Just… away.”
“You got anyone waiting?”
She looked away. That told me enough.
I sat there awhile, watching the trucks roll past on the overpass. Big, grumbling machines with chrome teeth and bug-splattered grills. I used to be up there—me and Maisie, eating corn nuts and listening to Creedence on cassette.
But the road had moved on.
CB radios went silent. Logbooks became apps. Rest stops got fancier, but lonelier.
“You hungry?” I asked.
Jay nodded.
I led her to my car. Not much—an old Crown Vic that used to be white. In the trunk, I had a cooler with some ham sandwiches I’d made that morning. She devoured one like she hadn’t eaten in a day.
“Still warm,” she said.
“Still got hands,” I replied.
I should’ve dropped her off at a shelter.
Should’ve called someone.
But that night, I made up the guest bed. Found one of Maisie’s old fleece blankets and gave it to her. She curled up like a stray invited inside for the first time.
Didn’t say much. Just whispered, “Thanks,” before falling asleep.
And in the dark, I sat in the living room, staring at the empty space where Maisie’s bed used to be.
For the first time in years, it didn’t feel empty.
Over the next few days, Jay stayed quiet but steady.
She helped around the yard. Pulled weeds. Cleaned gutters. Washed my windows so hard I swore the sun came through brighter. Said she liked having something to do.
“I used to help fix cars,” she told me one afternoon. “With my uncle. Before he… before things got bad.”
I nodded. “Wrenching’s good. Teaches you patience.”
She smiled. “You ever miss the road?”
“Every damn day.”
“You ever go back?”
I tapped my cane. “This leg don’t shift gears anymore.”
She was quiet a long time. Then she said, “If I had a dog like yours, I think I wouldn’t be so scared.”
I smiled. “Maisie wasn’t magic. She just stayed.”
“Maybe that’s magic enough.”
A week later, Jay was gone.
Left a note on the kitchen table.
“You were my rest stop. I’ll keep driving now. Love, Jay.”
She took the fleece blanket.
Took one of my old denim jackets too. I hope it kept her warm.
Sometimes, when I pass the oak tree out back, I think about Maisie. Her nose in the wind. Her eyes always ahead, like she could see further than me.
She never asked for the road. She just followed it with me, mile for mile, tail wagging like a flag on the Fourth of July.
And Jay?
I figure she’s out there somewhere. Maybe under a different name. Maybe with her own dog riding shotgun now.
But I hope when she smells diesel, or sees a rest stop glow in the dark, she remembers the woman with the cane and the dog that never got lost.
The road ends eventually. But kindness? That runs forever.
