The Night Pajares Closed

Ubicación: Puerto de Pajares — Spain

Zona / Ruta: Puerto de Pajares

País: Spain

Tipo de lugar: Parking, Service Area, Truck

Protagonistas: Truck Driver

Horario: Night

Idioma: English

In thirty years on the road I’ve seen Pajares close more times than I’ve seen my brother-in-law open his wallet, and that’s saying something.

That night they closed it at a quarter past two. The Guardia Civil herded us heavy goods vehicles into the lot at Campomanes like cows into a barn, one after another, the hazard lights painting the fog orange. Snow on the pass, chains compulsory, and not even chains would do, because the snowplough was stuck further up. So there you stay. You stay as long as it takes. What I didn’t know yet was that the night would end with me wishing they’d never open the pass again.

I was hauling steel coils to Madrid and in no hurry; steel doesn’t rot. I switched off the engine, left the night heater running and went down to the bar, because at that hour the cab closes in on you, and a man’s not getting any younger.

The bar was full of folk with the same face: tired, pissed off and resigned, in that order. It smelled of reheated coffee, wet jackets and diesel. The woman behind the counter, who hadn’t slept in this life or the last, served coffee with a splash in it without asking if you wanted the splash. Good call.

There wasn’t a free table. Well, there was half of one: at the back, by the window, a lad sat alone with a dead phone and a sandwich he hadn’t touched.

“Anyone sitting here?” I asked.

He looked at me the way you’d look at a bear that’s just spoken to you. Then it clicked.

“Não, não. Pode sentar.”

Portuguese. I’d seen him park a reefer from Viana do Castelo two trucks behind mine, more carefully than you usually see from people his age. Thirty-something, I reckoned. Two days’ beard, grey hoodie, and forearms you earn unloading, not at the gym. And eyelashes that had no business being on that face, but there they were.

I sat down. I get by in Portuguese after so many years driving down to Porto, and he dragged his Spanish along with that music of theirs that makes even swearing sound like fado. His name was Tiago. He was taking frozen fish to Mercamadrid and was going to get an almighty bollocking for being late.

“Relax, you didn’t make the snow,” I told him. “And the fish is already dead. It’s in no rush.”

He laughed. He had a laugh that started small and then got away from him completely, like cider poured badly that goes everywhere.

We talked about what two truckers talk about at three in the morning: routes, fines, the stops where you still eat well and the ones where you don’t any more, how bloody hard it is to spend so many nights alone. That last bit he said looking at the window. I didn’t answer. Some things you don’t answer, you keep them.

Outside, the fog had swallowed the trucks. All you could see were the orange lights blinking in the distance, as if someone were signalling from another world.

I ordered another coffee, a double splash this time. When I set it down in front of him, our hands brushed on the cup. Nothing. A second. But he didn’t pull his hand away as fast as anyone else would have, and neither did I. I’ve spent my life in the cab and the cab knows everything: I can tell a touch from an accident.

“Tens frio?” he asked. God knows why; it was twenty-five degrees in that bar.

“I was born in Mieres, lad. You lot are the ones who feel the cold.”

He laughed again, but differently now. Lower. More for me.

At half four his phone died for good and I ran out of patience with the bar. I told him I had a charger in the cab, if he wanted. I said it just like that, the way you’d offer a smoke. He looked at the window, then at me, and picked up the sandwich, still untouched.

We crossed the lot with fog up to our knees. The kind of cold that bites. Inside, the heater had left everything warm, with that smell of home a cab gets when you’ve lived in it for years. I plugged in his phone. He sat on the bunk, because my paperwork was on the passenger seat. I stayed standing, and in a cab, standing means stooping.

“Obrigado, Xuaco.”

It was the first time he’d said my name. The X came out soft, almost a whisper. Nobody had ever said it like that.

He got up off the bunk to check whether the phone was charging, and there’s no room in a cab for two men standing. We ended up face to face, a hand’s width apart, with the hum of the heater and the fog pressed against the windows. I don’t know who moved first. I like to think it was him, but maybe it was me; at my age you’re done waiting for the passes to open.

He kissed me slowly, his beard still cold from the lot and his mouth warm with coffee and a splash. The kind of kiss that doesn’t ask permission, but isn’t in a hurry either.

Outside, an orange light was still blinking. The rest stays in the cab. That’s what it’s for: the cab knows everything.

They opened Pajares at ten past nine. When his reefer pulled out, I was already in my seat, with a coffee from the machine and the radio on. He honked twice as he passed. I honked once.

I’ve still got his charger. He forgot it. Or he left it, which isn’t the same thing.