The Gospel of Mack

I ran into Mack just outside a truck stop off Route 24, the kind of place that wasn’t really alive anymore, just too stubborn to die. The neon sign above the diner read 24-Hour Service, but half the letters had gone dark, and the ones still shining pulsed like they were trying to communicate with passing ghosts. The "R" buzzed out every few seconds, as if giving up mid-sentence.

It was the kind of stopover where the coffee tasted like burnt sorrow, and the floors stuck to your boots like bad decisions. I pulled in on foot, thirty-something miles since the last ride dropped me, too much sky and not enough kindness along the way. I was bone-tired, the kind of tired that makes your soul sit down before you do. My coat was still wet from the rain earlier, and the wind hadn’t let up since Missouri.

I pushed through the front door, and the bell above it rang like it didn’t want to.

Inside, the light was dim and yellowing, the kind of color that makes everything feel like it's been left out too long. There were a few tables, none of them inviting. The counter had one customer on the far end, a long-haul type in a mesh hat, face like cured leather. He didn’t look up when I came in.

But Mack did.

He was sitting in the back booth, right-hand corner like he owned it. And maybe he did, in the way that ghosts own haunted houses, not officially, but nobody argues with them. His coat looked like it had been through every war since Korea. Hat low, cigarette hanging on, half-smoked and forgotten. He didn’t smile. He didn’t have to.

I’d seen that look before. On drifters, on lifers, on the mirror once or twice.

I nodded. He returned it. That was all it took.

I slid into the booth across from him, the vinyl groaning under my weight like it had something to say. He pushed a cracked mug toward me without looking. It was half full of something hot and bitter. Coffee, I hoped. Maybe something else.

“Long road?” he asked, his voice gravel and molasses.

“Long enough,” I said, blowing on the coffee before taking a sip. It tasted like melted regret and nickel shavings, but it was warm.

He didn’t introduce himself, so I didn’t either. Not right away. That’s not how it works in these kinds of places. Names are earned. Or forgotten.

“You look like a man who's been carrying a piano on his back,” he said.

I gave him a tired grin. “Feels more like the keys are loose and I’m still expected to play.”

He let out a dry chuckle. “Yeah. That’s about right.”

The waitress came by. Her name tag said “Ginny” but the way she walked said she hadn’t been called anything sweet in years. She poured more coffee without asking and gave Mack a look that could’ve meant ten different things. None of them friendly.

He didn’t flinch. Just sipped.

She left. The silence returned.

“You passing through, or you hiding from something that already passed you?” he asked after a moment, like he was just picking up a thread that had been hanging in the air.

“Maybe both,” I said. “Hard to tell in the dark.”

He nodded slowly, like a man who’d had that conversation before, just with different faces.

“S’pose it don’t matter,” he said. “Road don’t care. Keeps going whether you're on it or under it.”

We sat for a while. The radio in the kitchen played some old country tune, the kind that sounded like it was being sung through a long tunnel full of smoke and broken promises. Something by Lefty Frizzell or maybe a cover by someone trying to sound like him.

Finally, he said, “Mack.”

“Charlie,” I said. It wasn’t my real name, but it was the name I used when I wanted to start fresh without actually being clean.

He offered a cigarette. I took it. We smoked in silence, two question marks waiting for a period.

He started talking then. Told me about how he used to drive long-haul for a shady outfit based out of New Orleans. Hauling crates that weren’t always labeled, picking up from warehouses that didn’t have addresses, dropping off in places you didn’t stop to sightsee.

“Once drove a load of empty coffins all the way to Omaha,” he said, flicking ash into his empty saucer. “Didn’t ask why. Didn’t want to know who was gonna fill ’em.”

He talked slow, voice full of rust and echoes. Every word felt like it had weight. Like it had been chewed on before he spoke it.

Said he’d had a woman once. Named Jolene, like the song, though she hated being compared to it. Said she could sing Patsy Cline so sweet it would make a bouncer cry. They lived in a trailer outside of Knoxville, next to a used tire lot and a church that only opened on Sundays and emergencies.

“She left me a note on a napkin,” he said. “Told me she’d had enough of half-love and two-thirds rent. Said she was leaving with the preacher’s son. I didn’t even know he was old enough to drive.”

He smiled, but there wasn’t joy behind it. Just memory.

I nodded. I’d heard the same story told different a hundred times, and told it myself more than once.

After a while, he asked, “You got anywhere to be?”

I shook my head. “If I did, I’d probably find a way not to get there.”

Mack tapped a crooked finger on the table. “Come with me, then. Got one more delivery to make.”

I hesitated, then nodded. Why not? My feet were sore, my wallet was empty, and the motel down the road looked like it rented by the hour, not the night.

His truck was a bruised black Ford that looked like it had been resurrected more than once. The passenger door creaked when I opened it, and the cab smelled like oil, old coffee, and something floral that had long since given up the fight.

There was a picture duct-taped to the glovebox. A kid, maybe ten. Curly hair, shy smile, eyes that looked out at you like they already knew the world wasn’t fair.

“Yours?” I asked.

He nodded, didn’t speak. Started the engine. It coughed, then caught.

We pulled out onto the dark road, tires crackling over broken asphalt. The night wrapped around us like a blanket that smelled of smoke and sorrow.

We drove.

The night unfolded in slow motion, a long stretch of black ribbon lit by twin beams and flanked by fields that didn’t care if you lived or died. Mack didn’t talk much, just kept his hands firm on the wheel like he was steering something heavier than metal and rubber. He chewed a toothpick like it owed him something.

Every few miles, the truck would rattle like it remembered it was old. We passed motels that looked like mausoleums, a burned-out bait shop, and a billboard advertising fireworks from three summers ago.

I didn’t ask where we were going. I just sat with my boots up on the dash and let the road hum its lullaby through the frame.

Eventually, he spoke.

“This last job... it ain’t what it sounds like.”

I looked over. “What does it sound like?”

He didn’t answer. Just lit another cigarette and cracked the window.

The box in the back of the truck had no labels. Just plywood and wire straps. I didn’t ask about it. He didn’t offer. We passed a sign for an old mining town I’d never heard of. I checked my watch, but time didn’t matter out here. The road was old and it didn’t tick.

After a while, I must’ve nodded off. I dreamed of Jolene singing in a church lit by nothing but headlights, and Mack at the altar, sweating bullets and gripping a steering wheel like a cross.

When I woke, we were parked in front of a house that looked more like a memory than a home. The windows were boarded up. The yard was swallowed by weeds. A rusted swing hung from a dying tree. One tire swayed gently in the wind, creaking like it had something left to say.

“This it?” I asked.

Mack nodded but didn’t move. He stared at the house like it had grown fangs since the last time he saw it.

“You want me to wait here?”

He shook his head. “No, you should come.”

I followed him to the back of the truck. We popped the tailgate and pulled the box down with a thud. It was heavier than it looked. Inside, something shifted.

We carried it across the yard, through the busted fence, past a baby stroller covered in moss. At the front steps, Mack paused. He put the box down and wiped his hands on his jeans like he was trying to scrape off the past.

“She lived here,” he said.

“Jolene?”

He nodded. “After she left. This is where she raised him.”

I didn’t have to ask who “him” was.

“She died in that room upstairs,” he said, nodding toward a broken window. “Cancer. Fast. Angry. Like everything else in her life.”

“What’s in the box?” I asked, not really wanting the answer.

He opened it.

Inside was a boy’s bicycle, rusted and bent. A pair of boots. A tackle box with one lure still clinging to life. And a jar full of matchbooks. Dozens of them. Bars, diners, gas stations. All the places Mack had passed through without ever stopping.

He pulled out a toy truck with half its wheels missing. Held it like it was made of glass.

“I wasn’t there,” he said, voice low. “Didn’t know how to be. Thought sending money made me a father. Turns out, it just made me a ghost with a checking account.”

He left the box on the porch and stepped back.

“I promised I’d bring it all home one day. Every piece of what I missed. She didn’t want it. But she asked me to anyway. Told me in her last letter.”

He looked at me then. “You ever been too late for something you can’t fix?”

I nodded. “Every day.”

He laughed, sad and sour. “Yeah.”

We sat on the porch until the light came up, dim and pale. The kind of morning that doesn’t rise so much as crawl into the room and sit there, wet and shivering.

Then Mack stood.

“Well,” he said, “That’s that.”

He walked back to the truck, opened the door, then stopped.

“You want a ride?”

I looked down the road. Then at the house. Then at him.

“No,” I said. “I think I’ll walk a while.”

He nodded. Didn’t argue. Just got in and turned the key. The truck rumbled like an old dog coughing up its last bark. He pulled out slow. No wave. Just gone.

I stood there, boots on loose gravel, the road in front of me stretching like a long sigh. The wind kicked up. I zipped my coat and started walking.

No plan. No need.

The house faded behind me. The road whispered its usual sermon, keep moving, don't look back, forget what you can't carry.

My legs were sore. My heart even more so. But I walked. Past the empty fields, the tire swing, the ghost porch where a man left behind the weight of his absence.

And the sun rose like it always does, dull at first, but stubborn.

I didn’t know where I was headed. Maybe nobody ever really does.

But I was moving.

And for now, that was enough.