Page 11 of Hot Doggin'
“Yeah, I think that’s everything.” With one last look around before I leave, I grab my truck keys, my bike keys, my wallet, and my helmet, and lock the door behind me.
“Throw that shit in the back. Don’t bring those fleas in my cab.”
“Should I take my truck? I guess I can come back for my bike.”
“Fuck it, we can come back for your truck, too. I’ll drop you at work in the morning. Get in.”
I toss the garbage bag of clothes and my cardboard box in the back of his truck, brush off my pants and shirt as best I can, stomp my boots, and climb in. McCormick’s busy going through an entire decontamination process of removing the duct tape and plastic bags. He wads everything into a bundle and chucks it in the dumpster.
“I’m surprised you didn’t bring a gas mask,” I tease when he slides his ass in the cab.
“It’s in the back.”
I stare, maybe a beat too long. He’s really too much.
“What?” he asks defensively. “That shit is invasive. They multiply by the thousands. Once you’ve got them, you can’t get rid of them.”
Great. I’m never getting rid of the fleas. I’ll be on McCormick’s couch for life.
“What’s your problem?” he asks after five minutes of silence. I guess that’s too much for him. He’s a talker, always filling the space between my lack of words.
“Nothing.” My gaze falls on the scenery passing by the window.
“Don’t give me that bullshit. Something’s wrong. If you can’t tell me, who can you tell?”
Blowing out a big breath, I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t really know how to put it into words.”
“Well, try.”
“It shouldn’t be that easy to move my entire life to a new location. Everything I have fits in one box. At least, everything worth taking. What kind of life is that? Have I truly built something worthwhile if I don’t care about leaving it all behind?”
“First of all, your stuff didn’t disappear into the ether. It’s just being exterminated.”
“Fumigated.”
“Whatever. My point is, you didn’t lose everything you own. As far as your shit fitting in one box, thank God. Less I have to move,” he chuckles. When I remain silent, he does a double take. “Christ, seriously? This really bothers you?”
“Yeah, it does.”
He reaches to turn the radio down. “Look, it comes down to the fire rule.”
“What’s the fire rule?”
“If your house caught fire, and you had to leave at a moment's notice and could only take what you could carry, what would you take?”
“I don’t know, shit, my helmet and my truck and bike keys. I have a photo album from when I was enlisted. That T-shirt you got me that says ‘bitch on wheels’ that I wear when we ride. I really like that shirt.” He smiles when I smile.
“That it?”
“I think so.”
“All of that fits in one box.” He makes an explosion sound, like he just obliterated the argument with his logic.
“All that shit people work so hard and bust their asses for? Worthless in a fire. They throw their paycheck away on luxury shit like big screen TVs, DVDs and electronics, and nice furniture, but all that can be replaced. It holds no meaning. The shit in your box in the back of my truck? That’s the core of you, that’s who you are. It’s your sourdough starter.”
“My what?” Every conversation with him goes like this. Round and round the nonsense wheel. How did we go from my box and the meaning of life to the fire rule to sourdough starters, whatever that is.
“Your sourdough starter,” he explains, as if he can’t understand why I’m not catching on. “You know, when you bake sourdough bread, you have to begin with your starter. A little piece of dough that’s been fermenting since your last batch. It’s the core, everything grows from there. That’s what’s in your box. You can build a whole new life or bake a whole new loaf with what’s in that box.”
