I thought I she was a mirage. Temperatures outside the truck were around forty degrees and there was a cyclone brewing off the Kimberley coast. Here, on the side of the highway, was a woman walking northward. She wore sandals (not the best protection against harsh, sharp spinifex), shorts, a button up men's shirt and no headgear. A small backpack hung from her shoulder.
I have a strict no hitchhiker policy on my rig but I simply could not leave anyone out here in the hot Pilbara sunshine so I gently hit the brakes on my B double and drew up alongside her. Walking around the front of the rig, she nimbly stepped up on the side tanks to ask where I was going.
"Doesn't much matter," I answered quietly. "I can't leave you out here. I'm going straight through to Port Hedland."
"Can you take me with you, please?" she asked in a little girl voice.
"I don't normally take hitchhikers but you don't look like an axe murderer and I can't leave you here anyway, so get around to the other side and climb in."
"Thanks." She smiled, throwing her little backpack into the sleeper box and settling back in her seat.
Wheeling the rig back onto the highway, I waited for her to begin some sort of explanation but she looked straight ahead, leaning against the passenger door, seatbelt neatly separating her breasts.
Finally I broke the silence. "What were you doing out here and how did you get here?"
"Got a lift with a truckie at the Carnarvon fuel stop. He told me later what he expected in exchange for the lift was and when I refused, stopped the truck and told me to get off. He threw my backpack onto the road and I think something inside is broken. Nothing more to tell, really."
"So where are you going?"
"Away from Perth."
She certainly was achieving that goal. We were 1100 kilometres away from the city with another 600 or so to go to reach the iron ore port of Port Hedland, where I was due to drop off my load.
"OK then. I can take you as far as Port Hedland but from there you're on your own. We should get there around midnight."
It took longer than I thought because swirling winds ahead of the cyclone, accompanied by blinding heavy rain, slowed the rig down. By 3am however, I wheeled into the company yard and disconnected the trailers for the local boys to distribute in the morning. Now usually when I arrive at this hour of the night, I park in the back corner of the yard, curl up in the sleeper box and sleep until the guys from the depot wake me up with a coffee next morning. This time however, the yard was under several inches of water, I was soaked to the skin and it was still raining heavily. Sound asleep in my sleeper box was my hitchhiker, with a light blanket covering her slight frame.
A small motel in town was a popular spot for truckies to stay overnight. It was clean and reasonably quiet and boasted one of the best kitchens in the district. I needed dry clothes, a dry bed and some much-needed sleep so I fired up the truck and made the short hop to the motel. My passenger awoke when the big diesel fired up again and I told her where we were headed.
"Can I stay in here?" she asked.
I realized that she was traumatized from her earlier experience and definitely not ready to trust me so I agreed, suggesting that she might like to use the room for a comfort break and a shower before falling asleep again. Rain was pelting down, making visibility difficult. Flashes of lightning lit up the sky and thunderclaps were so loud as to be audible above the engine noise.
After collecting a key from the registration desk, I opened up the room, returning to the truck to let her have first turn at the bathroom. I remained in the truck until she returned, shielding herself from the rain with a tiny plastic raincoat. Her wide smile when she returned reassured me that she appreciated the gesture.
With my kitbag in hand, I dashed into the room, quickly showered, slipped into a dry pair of boxers and fell into bed. I have an uncanny ability to fall asleep in seconds and tonight was no exception.
I won't let thunderclaps interfere with my sleep, but above the noise was an incessant banging. Wearily I struggled back into consciousness and recognized the additional noise as someone banging on my door. Forgetting for a moment that I was only dressed in a pair of boxers, I staggered across to the doorway and wrenched the door open. A shivering, drenched hitchhiker stood in the doorway.
"This lightning is scaring the crap out of me," she blubbered before I had the chance to say anything. "Can I sleep in here please?"
"Ummmm, you do realise that there's only one bed in this room don't you? There's no lounge to relax in either, so either we sleep together in the bed or I go out to the sleeper box in the truck."
"No, no, no!" she cried. "I don't want to be alone in this weather."
"Do you have any dry clothes?"
"Everything in my backpack is soaked in shampoo and perfume. Perfume bottle broke when the bag was thrown on the road and it in turn punctured a plastic shampoo bottle. I need to wash all my stuff tomorrow."
Reaching into my kitbag I pulled out a dry tee shirt, handed it to her and rolled back into bed with my back towards the middle. I was asleep again in moments.
When I woke up the force of the rain had increased, pelting against the windows. The wind screamed outside. Several of the motel's palm trees had already lost leaves. A soft, warm body snuggled into my back, an arm slung loosely over my chest.
She woke as soon as I moved so I turned towards her. She was prettier than I remembered her yesterday. Her innocent face, devoid of makeup, smiled weakly. There was pain behind those big eyes, I thought.
"Well seeing we've slept together, you'd better at least tell me your name." I grinned at her.
"Janie," she smiled. "And thank you for being a real gentleman."
"You're welcome, but we need to do a bit of planning. You have no clothes you can wear, so you can't even make it to the dining room. I need to report to the depot by midday to collect the trailers and start the trip home again and you need to make some decisions about your movements, young lady."
She reluctantly gave me her size to allow me to slip into the town shopping centre, where I bought a pair of shorts, a couple of durable long-sleeved shirts and a pack of panties. She didn't reveal her bra size and I wasn't about to guess. On the drive back to the motel, the radio weather report was worrying. The cyclone was due to cross the coast to the north of us within hours. There had been torrential rain throughout the region ahead of the cyclone and extreme rainfall was expected in its wake.
The short dash from the truck to the motel doorway was enough to get me thoroughly wet again and I literally burst through the door. Janie was grateful for the clothes and retired to the bathroom while I rang the depot. They were not going to deliver the contents of my trailers today because of the weather risk. Furthermore, two rivers south of the town were close to flood levels, leading authorities to advise motorists to delay travel until after the cyclone had passed.
"Great," I thought. "Stuck up here in a cyclone when I should be out having dinner with my wife Marie celebrating Valentine's Day. And what am I supposed to do about Janie?"
When I phoned Marie, she was not surprised at the turn of events, having followed the progress of the cyclone on TV for the past 24 hours. She seemed unusually pissed however, that we would miss our Valentine's Day dinner. That wasn't like her at all, making me wonder what was behind her outburst. I told her about Janie, which didn't do a lot to improve her frame of mind.
What I discovered much later after returning home, was that Marie had been targeted by one of her work colleagues, a teacher at her local school. His strategy was straight from the Sleaze 101 handbook, making complimentary comments about how good she looked, how her dress looks great, fetching a cup of coffee during the lunch break and graduating slowly to going off site after school to share a coffee at a local café. All harmless stuff on the face of it; grooming techniques which usually pay off for the patient practitioners of the craft. This guy was an expert. Also married, with a wife and three kids at home. Nice!
My occupation made her an obvious target. Marie had to deal with loneliness, managing important household decisions without being able to discuss them with me and at times, needing to deal with the level of sexual frustration that comes with being apart from your lover.
To Marie's credit, she never crossed the line, considering her little trysts to a café no more than a get-together with a friend or colleague. There was no inappropriate behavior, but it was during a visit to their favorite café that Marie vented her frustration about the cyclone that had forced me to stay in Port Hedland. As a result, she had to cancel our dinner reservations for Valentine's and she also let slip that I had collected a female hitchhiker along the way.
Back in Port Hedland, I finally managed to get Janie to open up a little. Married only six months earlier, she and her husband had a huge row about finances, both said things they would later regret and she decided to have a break from the pressures of newly wed life in the city and ran away.
With very little cash and no credit card, she caught a bus to Geraldton, about 400 kilometres north of Perth, and decided to hitchhike further, with no real destination in mind. A friendly older couple gave her a ride to Carnarvon, where she met a truck driver who jumped at the opportunity to take her for a ride, only his notion of a ride was considerably different from her own, leading to the roadside where we met.
I asked her whether she had spoken to her husband. Sheepishly, she admitted that she had not, acknowledging that he would probably be worried sick. I agreed with that assessment and offered her the use of my phone to make the call. When the conversation started, I walked out of the room, out to a small overhead shelter that offered a little protection from the heavy rain and waited.
Ten minutes later, Janie stuck her head through the door of the motel room, calling me back inside.
Her excitement was obvious. We were not aware that another pair of eyes were watching us.
Janie's husband, as expected, was terrified that something awful had happened to his wife and reported her absence to police missing persons. They were convinced, however, that she would be holed up with a friend not far from home and so far had not put out a statewide alert. He apologized profusely and begged her to come home immediately. She pointed out the that all flights were grounded because of the cyclone, but he promised to buy her a ticket for her to collect from the Port Hedland traffic counter so she could catch the first available plane home. She was ecstatic. Ahhh, young love!
The weather would not let us leave for at least another 24 hours, so we headed for the dining room. Janie stopped so abruptly that I bumped into her from behind.
