For more about former HHG owner-operator — and current journalist and novelist — Fred Afflerbach’s latest novel, The Bison & the Butterfly, read this review/brief interview with the author:
The following excerpt from the beginning of the second big section of the book, “The Backhaul,” follows 70-year-old small fleet owner-operator Ubi Sunt and his teenage grandson, Jeremy, after Jeremy has hitchhiked to the Texas panhandle from Philadelphia to deliver the message to his grandfather that Jeremy’s parents, including Ubi’s daughter, have died in a car wreck. Here, they’ve decided to run across the country in Sunt’s “Old Ironsides” 1950s cabover Peterbilt, recent restored with intentions of donating the rig to a truck museum. Chapter 18 picks up just as they roll out, early morning:
EIGHTEEN
After the moon, but before the sun, the two travelers departed the lonesome compound. Ubi squinted into the darkness, hit the high beam switch and lifted his foot from the accelerator. Something on the shoulder ahead. A large, shadowy figure.
“Look out!”
Ubi stomped the brakes. The rig skidded and bucked. Jeremy braced both hands on the dash but his head lurched forward and smacked the windshield with a thud. Ubi wrestled Old Ironsides onto the side of the road. Jeremy rubbed the red spot on his forehead.
“You all right?”
