dt-comingore
I've hauled freight through forty-three states. Driven through blizzards that turned I-80 into a graveyard and monsoons that made the 10 through Arizona look like the bottom of a lake. I've seen the sun rise over the Cascades and set behind the Smokies, and I've talked to God through all of it.
I wasn't prepared for what talks back.
Mile marker 218, eastbound on I-90 - that dead stretch of Powell County, Montana, where the Deer Lodge Valley opens up and the road goes quiet in a way that has nothing to do with traffic. That's where the thin place is. Where the boundary between what you can see and what you can't wore down to nothing - and something figured out it could board a rig if the driver was empty enough to let it in.
I'm not empty. I pray over every mile.
So when they climb into my cab, they have to face what they are in the light of something they cannot survive.
I didn't ask for this. I'm a trucker.
But somebody has to hold this road.
My name is Caleb Mace. And on this stretch of highway, the ghosts pay the toll.