A Knit of Identity: A Novel

Praise for A Knit of Identity

"With A Knit of Identity Chris Motto has accomplished something both astonishing and profound. Against the backdrop of professions as seemingly ordinary as truck driving and road laying, Motto has crafted one of the most unique and uniquely moving love stories I have ever read, featuring what might be the two most memorable lead characters in literary history. Haunted by their separate pasts and struggling to find places in a world from which there are painfully, even physically, alienated, they encounter each other in the unlikely locale of a South Carolina trucker bar. What happens between them changes them forever and will change the reader as well, who is forced, by the beauty of the relationship and the passion in Motto’s writing, to rethink every gender category they may have held dear. Motto shows us that truly love is all that matters. As much her characters learn this, the reader will learn it doubly. And it’s a lesson we can’t absorb enough. A Knit of Identity will make of every reader a different and wiser and nobler person."

- John Vanderslice, author of Nous Nous

"This hard-scrabble novel was difficult to put down. It’s an old-fashioned American love story. Motto writes with the conviction that these people’s stories really matter. Her characters seem driven by a gathering need to learn and do what is right. A Knit Of Identity opens new windows to the dark corners of the human heart and spirit where real loses and real gains are made. It’s genuinely moving."

- Lisa Cupolo, author of Have Mercy On Us

A Knit of Identity

Chris Motto

Regal House Publishing

Copyright © 2022 Chris Motto. All rights reserved.

Published by

Regal House Publishing, LLC

Raleigh, NC 27605

All rights reserved

ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781646032778

ISBN -13 (epub): 9781646032785

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021949163

All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.

Cover images © by C. B. Royal

Regal House Publishing, LLC

https://regalhousepublishing.com

The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

For Shawn, who carries my heart,

and for Francie, who keeps it beating

synchronicity

meaningful coincidence without apparent cause

There’s a myth that truck drivers take seriously and it’s this: if you see the black dog when you’re driving, something bad is about to happen. It isn’t a superstition nearly as well-mannered as the black cat. If a black cat crosses your path, you have options, an automatic opportunity to change your fate. It’s the only superstition I can think of that offers a warning and a choice. Not so with the black dog. Once you see it, you have somewhere between zero and five seconds to react. Usually it’s closer to zero, and your reaction will affect what happens to the eighty-four thousand pounds of rolling iron riding your ass.

Many acquaintances of mine have seen it, but I’ve lost just one friend to it. People wonder how I know he saw the black dog before he died. For now, I can offer only this: I just do. His name was Bobby and he was making a run through Tennessee, hauling a load of aluminum down seven winding miles of Jellico Mountain. Its drop in elevation is hazardous, it’s liable to be seventy degrees at one end and freezing sleet at the other, and it curves so Z-like that between the speed and the height it can eat up a set of brakes as fast as a shark can detect blood. Accidents on Jellico Mountain, both four wheeler and big truck, are as commonplace as falling leaves in autumn. Crosses could fill the roadside if anyone cared enough to put them there.

We lose somewhere close to a thousand truckers a year to accidents. You’d think we’d learn from their mistakes. We know we need to keep our wits about us and stay awake, but it’s impossible not to memorize stretches of road. One thing’s for certain: We learn quickly we shouldn’t take for granted the mountainous areas. What we do with that knowledge is up to us.

When I started driving, I was a fresh twenty-one-year-old who didn’t have much going for me. I knew nothing about everything. My first run was from New York to Florida, nearly fourteen hundred miles, and I walked away from it still knowing nothing. Bobby once told me you’re not a driver until you’ve been through your first accident and seen the damage. Like a virgin, I was afraid of the pain, but I couldn’t wait for it to happen.

I may not have been a real driver when I first started, but I couldn’t help but feel like God sitting in that rig. She was as old and as rickety as a locomotive, but she was known for her long runs and durability, her power. I loved her; she was my first. I named her Big Bertha. I made the beginning of that run in eleven hours, stopping at a truck stop in Charlotte, North Carolina—Queen City as we call it—for my first official dinner as a trucker. It wasn’t easy walking into a truck stop as a woman (hell, a kid, really), when nearly all its patrons were men, when the only women they saw back then were either Lot Lizards who gave a whole new name to parking lot screwing, or fluffy haired coeds who hopped out of their boyfriends’ sports cars or gripped on to each other for dear life as they half ran, half walked to the bathroom because they couldn’t hold it long enough to find a respectable rest area. When a woman like that walks into a truck stop, just about everyone stops to watch the ass saunter by. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, married or single, gay or straight. You’re used to watching the tail of cars and trucks, not a mound of flesh. By force of nature, you look. It was going to happen to me whether I wanted it to or not. I took a deep breath and pushed through the door, zeroing in on the counter. As expected, they looked, until they noticed the work boots, the oil-stained jeans. Just like that it didn’t matter what my ass looked like, it wasn’t royal enough to sit upon one of their thrones.

Paranoia sat in my gut like the bricks I was carrying. I couldn’t hide the fact that I wanted to be accepted—any respect would have to wait for time and experience, and that I understood. But it was too depressing to think about being turned away from another thing I was really good at, all because of my gender. There were quite a few lady truckers out there, but just enough to irritate the masses, not enough to make a stand.

I ordered the most masculine entrée I could find—steak and potato—and stared at the soap swirls in the cup of black coffee. I pretended not to hear the whistles, the sarcastic kisses, the catcalls. The sounds weren’t exactly aimed at me. They certainly were about me but directed to each other loud enough for me to hear. I made the choice not to turn and tell them off. I was twenty-one, what could I say? It was a thin line I was walking. I didn’t want to be too assertive or defensive, nor did I want to seem like a coward. I’d defend myself only if I were directly challenged. I listened to them heckle for as long as it took to finish my brew. Heckles that stung like razor-sharp pellets. I’m not one to carry the past with me, but it was difficult not to compare it to the laughter from the girls in high school. Insecurity began to resurface. But before it could drain me of my contentment, the waitress, carrying a full pot, went over to a table, pulled the baseball hat off one man’s head and hit him with it. She said something like, Why don’t you save it for the strip joint.

Then she came over to pour me another and gave me a wink. It lifted my spirits a little. I thought maybe she’d talk to me, but that’s when Bobby came in, and she said sort of off-hand, Well, hello, darlin’. Where you been at? Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. He answered with a wave and sat down next to me. No one else would. He greeted me with a nod, asked me who I was, and held out a light instead of a hand. I hadn’t even gotten the cigarette out of the pack. The other truckers watched this exchange from beneath the bills of their caps.

Danny, I mumbled, and waited for a snide remark about my name.

How long you been at it? he asked, apparently unaffected.

This is my first run, I said sheepishly, tapping off a nonexistent ash.

That’s quite an antique you ridin’. It looks a bit big for someone who ain’t got a pair of balls.

It came out sounding affectionate rather than derogatory, but any word related to male anatomy made men of all ages laugh. A guy at the register decided to be a smart aleck. He muttered, The pickle park is a few miles back, missy. He didn’t think I’d know that a pickle park was a rest area where the hookers hung out, but I had learned the language from days on the road with my father. The driver got his laugh. Then he said louder, The only thing that girl should be riding is my dick.

They haw hawed into their beer bottles and coffee cups. I nodded, even smiled. Sat up nice and straight, sticking out what very little I had up there, showing them I was proud to be a woman, and turned my stool to get a good look at the testosterone behind me. I gave each of them an artificial glance, so they knew I wasn’t that interested, except for the one at the register. I slid off the stool and walked up to him. He wasn’t that much taller than me, but beefier with a smell like rancid fruit. As I approached, he turned to me, leaning into my space, hoping, maybe, I was going to take him up on his offer. My hand shot out too quick for him to react, and like a K9, I latched onto the crotch of his pants, gripping his balls like fruit about to be savagely plucked from a tree. I sized him up good before releasing him.

"You couldn’t pay me enough, good buddy, I answered, deliberately using the term that over the years had changed from comrade to homosexual. Now I got the laughs, and perhaps a tiny bit of respect. Even though my heart was pounding, I strolled casually back to my stool and said to Bobby, From the feel of things I got bigger balls than some."

Bobby looked around at the laughing men. Hell, I could of saved you the walk and told you that myself.

I hadn’t planned on spending the night at the truck stop, but Bobby said I looked tired and convinced me to stay. Told me I reminded him of his daughters. Wondered aloud why I wasn’t working in an office or married to a nice boy, like his girls. We left our trucks at the stop and crossed the street to a bar. It was here Bobby initiated me into the world I believed in due time would lead me to wherever it was I was supposed be. He told me about the black dog, not knowing it would get him three years later, or that five months after that another trucker would, like a corner shot, cross a median and take my parents out too. Bobby described the dog, best he could, as a vicious Doberman, his yellow teeth snarling, his eyes black as night. The grim reaper of truckers, Bobby joked. And that’s why, in the end, Bobby convinced me to stay over; don’t ever give the black dog a chance at you, he said, if you can help it. He didn’t seem nearly as afraid of it as he wanted me to be, and I wondered if after so many years of driving, you got to the point where you felt untouchable, infallible even. Or if you just stopped caring.

He told me that if I stayed at it long enough, my truck would take me just about everywhere, including the other side, and since we all had to go eventually, what better way? But he told me other things that night too. Some about safety and brotherhood, but the stories always came back to the coincidental, the bizarre, the urban legends. He took them all seriously when he spoke of them.

There was this one trucker who rear ended a station wagon and rode it straight up a runaway truck ramp. When the smokey was taking information, didn’t both drivers’ licenses say John T. Baskin? Another driver lost his watch somewhere in Oklahoma, best he could figure, and two years later was running oranges and grapefruits, and found it stuck between the frame and the cross member of the bed he was pulling. It gets worse. A friend of mine was driving in the middle of the night and saw something dead on the road, thought it was a deer. Do you know, when he went back to see for himself, it was his brother that’d been hit.

Get out.

Bobby held up his hand like he was taking an oath. That’s the God’s honest truth. It gets stranger than that! They say there’s a she-male somewhere in the Bayou. Heard about it for years, but I ain’t never seen it.

A man that dresses like a girl? I asked with interest.

No, not a queer. A half-and-half. What they called? he asked a trucker on the stool next to us.

’Maphrodite.

That’s right. What they say is it has sex for food, booze, money, even just a place to sleep. Heard from another trucker he thought he was getting a piece of ass, off come the pants, and this thing’s got a dick and a pussy. He said he didn’t know if he was supposed to suck or eat. I’ll tell you, Danny, you stay at it long enough, you’re liable to see just about everything there is to see.

His stories were meant to shock me, scare me into a better life.

But Bobby didn’t know me back then. He didn’t know that I had not only struggled through school but had also struggled through the concept of life. I had spent the better part of my youth standing back, void of understanding and feelings, watching other kids find and enjoy the basic pleasantries that would carry them to better things. Then, despite my mother’s and guidance counselor’s protests, I signed up for shop and automotives in high school. The only girl. It would take away my femininity, my mother cried. Maybe it would, but the first time I put my hands under the hood of a car, I went limp with pleasure. It felt right.

Once I was out of high school, I found that no one would hire me. I was a girl who was a mechanic, not a mechanic who happened to be a girl. After a very brief, oppressing experience working at an automotive shop, I got a job at a grocery store, and worked on cars for my parents’ friends at night, in a garage my father rented for storage.

I didn’t loathe my grocery job, but I didn’t love it, either. Still, I would have stayed ringing up groceries until the end of time if it hadn’t been for the clock-faced woman I waited on one snowy November night. The woman was scratching lottery tickets with her thumb nail while her groceries traveled slowly toward me on the conveyer belt like lazy passengers in an airport.

I knew it. I just knew it! she exclaimed. And I didn’t even need groceries.

Having already stuffed four bags full, I felt my eyebrows rise.

It’s this, she said, holding up her right palm. It never lets me down. As soon as it starts to itch, I find the closest store. Looky here, ten on this one, free ticket on this, five on this…

That’s some luck all right, I agreed.

She handed me the tickets and studied me. I tried to step back from her gaze, but I was trapped in my station. Her frame was oddly tiny, disproportional to her rotundness, her face too flat to be functional. Except for her nose, which was like a gnomon on a sundial, the rest of her face was level and spotted with moles. If it hadn’t been evening, I would have dragged her outside to see if she could measure time.

Not luck, she said. Fate. Those tickets were meant for me.

Well, it’s good news whether it’s luck or fate, I said.

She had to agree.

You always seem to be looking for something, she said as she watched me stack her remaining items.

I usually recognized the regulars—this was a small family-owned operation—but nothing about her seemed familiar; God knows I wouldn’t have forgotten that face.

The way you stack the groceries, I mean. You stack and restack as if you were trying to predict your future. Some people use tea leaves, or tarot cards, or chicken bones, but you do it with groceries.

I studied the pile of items. The box of drier sheets I placed off to the side. A children’s activity book of word circles and mazes, a tabloid magazine, and a children’s-sized scrapbook were stacked on top of a carton of eggs. A lined notebook was last. I didn’t see any revealing patterns.

Unexpectedly, she took hold of one of my hands, and, surprised, I tried to yank it back. She held tight, surely sensing I was embarrassed by the coarseness of it, the oil stains under the nails.

Oh dear, she said, running her finger down my palm. Do you want me to tell you?

No, ma’am, I said, thoroughly spooked.

How about with this? she asked, touching the pile.

Now I laughed a little and said, All right, if you think you can.

Drier sheets, comforts of home. She lifted the box and placed it softly on the belt away from the rest. An empty notebook, your immediate future to fill in as you go. Activity book, chaos, confusion, she said, holding up the book of games. Then she took the tabloid magazine. Oh dear, I get mixed feelings from this. They blend together and fall apart like they’re dancing. Binge, spree, carnival, but I feel you running, still running. From? To, maybe? I don’t know.

And the scrapbook and eggs? I asked, trying to bring her back, trying to sound as humored as I should have felt.

Acceptance. Hope.

She paid for the groceries, taking everything but the notebook.

Fill it, she said, handing it to me, before walking away.

She didn’t give me a time frame, so I didn’t know if she meant now or in the future. But one month later, using my notebook as an unofficial logbook, I sat behind the steering wheel of an eighteen-wheeler, relearning everything my father had once taught me when I was a child.

My very first night as a driver, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bobby showed me which truck was his, and told me to ease mine into the line of sleeping rigs, right behind his. Another truck butted up close to mine, as though snuggling, keeping her safe from thieves. I crawled through the window situated between the seats of the cab into the sleeper box, and settled in. My new home was no bigger than a casket, with a reading light and a small vent in the side door, but it was the safest I’d ever