The Best Backer Upper in South Dakota

“I’m watching them,” she said. “That’s who. You’ve got a test to take.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “In about eleven minutes, by the look of it.”

I want to tell you I said something gracious. I didn’t. I said, “Are you sure?” about four times, and she said, “Go put your hat on,” which I took to mean yes.

She had a little cocoa machine in the corner. She made three paper cups of cocoa and blew on each one before she handed it over.

Then she lined the three of them up at the big window that faces the lot, Lula in the middle, still in her rabbit fog, with Mira on one side and Cal on the other.

Tessa, the student worker from the front desk, wandered over to see what all the cocoa was about. She stayed.

“Your mother is going to back that big truck right through those cones,” she told them. “You are going to sit right here and watch her do it. That’s your whole job.”

“Can we cheer?” Cal asked.

Mrs. Ostby looked at me over the top of the cocoa machine. “I don’t see why not,” she said. “The examiner can’t hear a thing from in that cab, and I’ve never heard of a rule against it.”

Then she turned back to me. “They’re mine till you’re done,” she said. “Go.”

I kissed all three heads, and I went.

The examiner was a man named Steve Hagen, maybe sixty, with a wind-burned face and a clipboard under his arm. He had been testing drivers longer than I had been alive.

He looked at the three faces pressed against the window as we walked out. He didn’t say anything about them, but he gave a little nod toward the glass.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then let’s start with the pre-trip. Talk me through it. Everything you check, you say out loud. If you don’t say it, I can’t give you credit for it.”

A Class A skills test has three parts, and you pass them in order: the vehicle inspection, which everybody calls the pre-trip, then basic control, then the road test.

The pre-trip took the better part of half an hour. Engine compartment first: oil, coolant, power steering fluid, every belt checked for cracks and for play.

Tires for tread depth, four thirty-seconds on the steers and two on the rest. Every lug nut for rust trails. Brake chambers, slack adjusters, springs, all of it out loud in the cold.

Then the coupling: the fifth wheel, the locking jaws around the kingpin, the air lines and the glad hands, no gap between the trailer and the plate.

Then the in-cab check and the air brake test. Governor cut-out. Applied pressure loss. Low air warning. Watching the needle and calling out the numbers.

Every so often I looked over at the building. I couldn’t hear anything from inside the cab, but I could see three little shapes at the big window, and two grown women standing behind them.

When I climbed down, Mr. Hagen was writing on his clipboard. He wrote for a long time. I tried not to look like I was trying to read it.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Basic control.”