When you pull into the parking lot, you know you’ve made a mistake. It’s a convenience store in a bad part of town that somehow also rents U-Hauls? You didn’t know that was even a thing. When you made your reservation online, you picked the location that had a fifteen foot truck available right now, and it turned out to be this sketchy place. There are several bums wandering around the parking lot like extras from the zombie apocalypse. And there are some other men – harder looking men – leaning against the wall and watching you in silence.
Your wife is dropping you off, but you tell her to stick around to make sure you actually get into a truck. You step out of the car, then immediately double back to tell her to lock the doors. Then you cross the parking lot with a demeanor that you hope strikes the appropriate balance between affable and “don’t F with me.”
You step inside the shop. It’s cluttered with several of those weird slot machines that somehow exist outside of Nevada. They allow players to win store credit. Or at least that’s what you glean from the handwritten sign taped above the machines, which expressly excludes lottery tickets as an option. There’s a drunk seated at one. He doesn’t look up when you enter.
You step up to the counter. The air conditioner is inadequate for the space, and mostly just cools the cashier area. Which is fine, cuz you’re not planning to browse.
The cashier is a friendly Latina who reminds you of that pregnant girl from the only season of Orange Is The New Black that you watched. Because of this alone, you like her. But she has apparently never rented one of their fleet of four rental trucks before because it takes her THIRTY MINUTES to complete the transaction.
During this marathon, you have time to reflect on the choices that led you here.
You’re a supposedly intelligent man in his mid-forties. You need to move the rest of the stuff out of your parents’ vacant house. However, you are also a procrastinator. As a younger man, you believed this trait to be a character flaw. You repeatedly found yourself apologizing (“Dad, I’m sorry you have to take me out tonight to get the materials I need to start my science project that’s due tomorrow but . . . father son bonding time, right?”), or making excuses (“Baby, if you weren’t so sexy, I wouldn’t be so distracted and unproductive”), or vowing to change (“Next time I’ll start my term paper *during* the term”). But now you don’t. Instead, you live your life and advance your agenda (or not) on the time frame that suits you. But even by your standards, fifteen months after your father’s death and your mother’s disability is long enough to put off the chore of removing the last few things from their home.
Of course, you and your brother did get the important things out quickly. The jewelry. The photo albums. The guns (so, so many guns). In fact, there were so many guns that you were worried as you drove them out of there in the back of your brother’s van that night that a cop might think you were some kind of smuggler. So you covered them in layers of blankets (like a smuggler would), and scrupulously obeyed every traffic law. And upon arrival, you – a gun control advocate – organized your kids and your brother’s kids to help unload them. And like a line of leaf cutter ants, seven dumbstruck children somberly carried sixty rifles, shotguns and pistols from you (standing in the driveway) to your brother (standing inside his bedroom) to secure them in his locked closet. And you bought a biometric gun safe for the jewelry and the few guns you took yourself, because it’s the only sane way to own firearms. And now you can use your thumbprint to both secure these lethal weapons and to hide the iPads and iPhones from the kids during “Screen Free Sundays”. And between you and your brother, the Hamilton Boys can now arm a militia. Good Lord.
But after the high priority objectives at the house were completed, you left it still full of the random crap of life. Some of it you wanted (the antique mirrors, the grandfather clock, some of the art). Some of it you didn’t (the mounted longhorn steer horns, the decorative saddles for hypothetical horses, most of the art). But it would all keep until some date in the future.
That date is now. Because it’s time to put the house on the market, and nobody wants to buy a house full of 1980s hair dyers with comb attachments, vintage Army uniforms, and BluBlocker sunglasses. Let alone a garage full of . . . my God, what is the garage full of? How many shovels does a man need? There’s more than thirty. What about broken table saws from the 1970s? Because “no more than one” is the only non-crazy answer, and also apparently not the answer your Dad would have given.
If the whole house needed moving, you would of course hire movers. But your brother already did that for a bunch of stuff, and he used it to fill out his own house when he moved last summer. So now there are mostly scraps that would barely fill a one bedroom apartment. And the movers expect to be paid by the hour while they drive five hours up I-45 to Fort Worth. Which seems like such a waste for the amount of stuff you’re moving – especially when you and your brother could knock it out in an afternoon with a rented truck.
Which put you here, in this hot convenience store populated by vagrants. How much are you saving on this? A few thousand dollars? This is still worth it, right? Yeah . . . probably. Besides, it’ll be a kind of adventure. And you can hang with your brother! And while you drive back and forth between Fort Worth and Houston, you can catch up on your podcasts.
So you keep standing and waiting while the cashier click clack clicks on her computer trying to complete your transaction. You don’t know it yet, but one of the problems she’s having is that she has entered the wrong vehicle identification number – the number for a different, older truck they also own. Which means the low odometer reading of your rental will not match the high odometer reading of the other truck. And that means that when you return the vehicle two days from now, the gay Puerto Rican man who rings you up will think you somehow drove over 70,000 miles in two days. And with the mileage fee, he will try to charge you over $68,000 for this rental.
But that nonsense is still in your future. Right now, you have to deal with this nonsense. You’re standing to one side of the checkout area, because various patrons keep arriving and purchasing cigarettes or malt liquor. One man with dirty fingernails and vapors on his breath meticulously counts out exact change for his beer – he has one ancient nickel to spare. He nods at the Amex card you’ve been absently tapping on the counter, smiles at you with missing teeth, and says “Don’t leave home without it.” Then he laughs a hoarse laugh at his own joke and stumbles past you.
You slide the card back into your wallet, and secure the wallet back in your front pocket. Then, maybe for the first time today, you take stock of yourself.
You’re wearing a lavender golf shit. There’s a smiling whale logo on the front of it, which tells the world that you paid too damn much for your lavender golf shirt.
You’re wearing cargo shorts which are bad for two reasons: (1) their more subtle but still detectable branding tells the world that you also paid too much for this garment, and (2) they are cargo shorts, which are another way you unwittingly broadcast that you haven’t chased pussy since 1993.
You’re wearing flip-flops. Awful. If this situation goes tits up and it’s fight or flight time, flip-flops won’t help you either way. Sprinting in flip-flops is a non-starter, and so is losing them and running barefoot through this icky parking lot, covered as it is in broken glass and abandoned dreams. But if it’s Double Dragon time and you need to freak out with some ninja kicks, you won’t be getting off any Gymkata Pommel Horse combos wearing these.
So basically, you’re the asshole who came to the costume party dressed as a rich white dude – a casual rich white dude – only to learn that it wasn’t a costume party.
You move so you can see your wife through the burglar bars of the store. Her car window is down. Why is her car window down?! What is it with this woman and her need for fresh air? You see that she’s interacting with some schizophrenic bum. You can’t hear what’s being said, but later learn that it is incoherent gibberish. She nods along to it, and her expression is indistinguishable from the one she displays when she is listening to you vent. Son of a bitch.
Now the cashier lady is finally done, and she gives you the keys and a stack of moving blankets. But you just want the F out of this parking lot. You climb into the cab and Holy Tits of Saint Agnes! It’s filthy, and there’s old ketchup spilled and dried inside both cup holders. Were they dipping fries in this? Gross! Where are you gonna put your Yeti? And, your other Yeti?
And what the shit, there’s no cruise control? And no Bluetooth or USB port? And later, once you’re on the highway, you’ll learn that the noise is so loud that it prevents you from hearing phone calls, or podcasts, or anything other than crappy radio stations playing stuff like Crystal Gayle’s “Too Many Lovers”, or gospel music that makes you long for Crystal Gayle’s “Too Many Lovers”. So much for catching up on podcasts. The unwelcome surprises in this adventure are worse than Bridge to Terabithia.
You pull out of the parking lot. And after making your wife go through the Starbucks drive thru to get you an almond milk flat white – cuz you know, driving through it yourself in a U-Haul would be a whole big thing – you’re on the road in this rig. And you’re not exactly The Bandit, but you do know all the words to East Bound and Down. And that should count for something.
Four hours of driving later – some of it in a thunderstorm with crappy, uneven windshield wipers that caused you to crane your neck to see during the heaviest of the rain – you’re in your brother’s house on your dad’s couch. And you’re actually looking forward to sleeping on this couch because it’s exceptionally comfortable. And it is in this serene setting, when you’re laughing with your brother and your guard is down, that your phone rings.
It’s your wife, and she starts with “don’t freak out” – which immediately causes you to freak out. And she has terrifying news about the health of a dear friend’s child. And surgery is required soon. And it’s not your story or your news to share, but hearing it – even contemplating it – is devastating. And you can’t imagine what it’s like to face what they’re facing, but you owe it to them (and yourself) to try.
Should you call him? Should you text? You start to call, but then remember that he didn’t call you. He called your wife because she’s a doctor. And he’s probably dealing with a bunch of shit right now. And at a time like this, maybe you should respect his privacy (a practice you’ve taken up late in life). He can call if he wants. Maybe just send a supportive text? Yeah. You do so.
The next day a fog covers your mind. You wake with the intention of driving down to see your buddy. You even buy him donuts and order an Uber. (Your brother is at work for the morning, and you’re not gonna park a fifteen foot U-Haul in the hospital garage). As you await your ride, you call your wife to announce your plan. But she discourages you. They have scans to do at the hospital, and other tests, and they’re busy and anxious, and your presence might stress them out. Normally, you would disagree. This is your buddy, after all. But the sheer gravity of this news has you reeling and unsure.
You’re still on the phone with your wife as your Uber arrives. You hang up, hand the driver a $20 bill, and apologize for having wasted his time. You walk back inside and drop the two dozen donuts onto the counter. One dozen are plain glazed, as God intended. But the other dozen are a random assortment, because there is no accounting for taste. You stand there, looking at the boxes and the stack of miniature napkins on top of them inside the translucent bag, and you don’t know what to do.
You think about your buddy. There was nothing he could have done to protect his son from this dreadful diagnosis. And it could just as easily happen to your kids. Then a friend of yours might be standing dumbstruck in a kitchen in front of his own stack of useless donuts.
Tragedy comes in so many horrifying flavors. And you’re more aware of them than you used to be. For the past fifteen months, you’ve been trying to strike a balance between an appreciation of these horrors and paralysis in the face of them. And you still can’t get it right. Which is one of several reasons you haven’t really been writing much, which is your favorite thing to do.
Your brother arrives home earlier than expected, and together you drive over to your Mom’s house and get started. And it’s a pleasure to share this task with the person with whom you shared so many experiences growing up.
You’re done in a few short hours. But you both linger, communing with the memories you’ve summoned. You stand together in your father’s cluttered garage, the contents of which will be donated or dumped, and every object tells a story. As you pick through them, the past becomes present.
Your father left some part of himself in Vietnam – a part you never got to know. And what was left of the man who returned from the war often struggled to unlock his emotions, and instead attached those emotions to objects. And there are so very many objects in here.
So you’re sorting through the things your father left, and you’re simultaneously exorcising the emotions trapped inside them. And all day as you’ve worked, you’ve been worrying about your buddy and what’s going on down at the hospital with his little boy. And there’s no telling what the future holds for them, or you, or your own children. And it’s hard to make sense of any of it. But there’s something here, some lesson about life that eludes you, standing just on the edge of your consciousness.
The confident you of 2015 may have tried to summarize it – probably with a joke. But you won’t.
Then it’s time to go. And you pull away from your childhood home, empty of everything now but its spectral qualities. You’re a different man driving north today than you were driving south. And you’re headed back to your wife and kids, and your happy home, and your pleasant life. Your pleasant life that is not guaranteed, and that must forever be appreciated in the moment.
Now you don’t mind so much that the truck is loud, and you don’t bother turning on the radio. Because you’ve got plenty to think about. And so much for which to be grateful.
And with a heart both glad and heavy in equal measure, you rumble up the road, driving a truck laden with your parents’ antique mirrors. And their grandfather clock. And some of their art.
