You go to sleep for four hours and get back up at midnight. You've shaved off a ten hour break. A cup of coffee in the truck stop. We set out again at 1:00am. By 6:09, Cleveland Ohio, you are sluffing out of the cab. Morning fog, off Lake Erie, holds you upright. You disappear at the back of the trailer. In my mind, I see you swing both back doors open. Somehow you will back in to a door that at best is yawning through the white tumbled figures of cloud. The first fork lift jostles the truck as it pulls into the trailer deflating the airbags.
By eleven we are backing into Akron. I take Tip for a walk. The morning is too bright, it stings my sleepless eyes. Tip noses the sidewalks. He lifts his leg on a tree. He is a generous dog with those he loves. He will make do, feign a wonderous level of interest, in a blowing syrofoam cup if that is all I have to offer. We meander. Delivery vans pass by. A silver sided canteen truck turns left into another parking lot and blows its horn. Let's go back Tip, I say. Let's see if the lunch truck comes to our warehouse.
It does. I get a sausage sandwich. I eat a bite, take a bite and hand it over to Tip. We sit side by side. You come for us, sitting on the curb. I can see the shipping papers sticking up from your back pocket. We are done loading in Akron. You are gray from lack of sleep and don't want anything to eat.
We make it to Canton. There's a Dukes truck stop. We're there by 2:00. It is fourteen hours since you got up, already skating on sleep, at midnight. I go in to brush my teeth like it is first thing in the morning. When I come back, I notice that you've parked straight into the sun. You want curtains you ask? You are standing naked, already taken the rubber band from the back of your hair. No, no curtain. And you slide between the covers while I take off my clothes. I have to climb over you but already sleep has locked you down.
The sun shines through the windshield. It fills the whole cab like an aquarium. Sun butters the duvet and penetrates the coverings, the feathers, wool, flannel, skin. It sinks between the filiments of muscles and buries its treasure within the marrow of our bones. We do not move for a long time.
But when we do, our generous dog leads the way. We walk to the back of the truckstop and start the climb up the hill. Tip roots under the brush checking for rabbits, sure at least of mice. You and I puff because this is a steep. We swagger at the top. We walk up to the commercial signs posted high above Interstate 77. We're as high as the motel signs. It's clear up here. Tip scouts out the brush.
You and I sit as the sun flattens against the horizon. I say let's wait for the signs to light up. We can try you say. You say you want some beef vegetable soup though.
Tony, what did we deliver this morning? I can't remember. I can't either. Well, what did we pick up? Hmmm. You're hand goes to your back picket but there's nothing in there now. Fixtures you say. Fixtures? Probably fixtures. Well, they could be fixtures anyway.