"-ucking (THONK) son of a (thonk) FUCK."
The truck rocked to a stop perpendicular to the main road, facing it, gravel dust settling on the hood.
The radio, which Dan had turned way down in respect of his wife's nap, was playing an oldie very softly,
it sounded like The Hollies maybe, and the beat of it (the oldie) very nearly but did not quite sync with
the beating wings of the startled birds retreating eastward.
"I'm sorry. I missed the turn."
"Fuck."
"It was a mistake."
"Most people's mistakes don't concuss other, sleeping people. Generally."
"I'm sorry. People make mistakes. You do. Make mistakes sometimes."
"The very fucking definition of innocence, a sleeping person is."
Dan pulled a U through the shallow trench by the road, and the heavy old claw foot tub he had tension
strapped to the bed of the truck that very early morning slid surprisingly gently into the little bump in
the bed's surface that accommodated the back right wheelwell.
"Very nearly literally the last people on earth who deserve to have their heads slammed into a piece of glass."
"We're almost there."
"Well keep on going then."
But Dan and his wife, pickup and antique bathtub were already gently bumping down the little unpaved road.
*
Parked lakeside, Dan with one boot up on the lip of the tub. He flipped open the steel clasps on the
straps, releasing each with a quick zip of retreating nylon. His wife stood at the tailgate's open mouth
with her arms crossed and the ends of her sleeves pulled over her hands. She watched the lake's easy
movement, the grace with which water can accommodate anything it touches.
"Don't scuff it."
"Just stand right where you're standing, and I'll push it down to you."
Dan wedged himself into the narrow tubless space at the back of the truck's bed and unfolded his little
body against the tub, pushing with everything he had. It moved haltingly for three inches or so, the tub's
claws turning up brittle curls of the bed's paint. He stopped to pull off his sweatshirt.
"They don't make bathtubs this sturdy, this uh, solid, anymore."
"That's true of almost everything, I imagine." She looked at him directly for the first time that morning.
"Maybe you should come up here and help me push, and when we get it kind of tilted over the tailgate,
I'll jump down and grab the other end."
She ignored his offered hand and pulled herself up. They took positions and pushed, Dan's wife's side of the
tub moving a little faster and veering off to Dan's slightly slower moving side. After a few heave-ho stops and
starts, they got it seesawed over the tailgate and stopped, hands over their heads holding the lofted end of the
tub. Dan's wife looked at him.
"Maybe I better go down and grab it instead."
And of course as soon as she turned the tub loose, the heavy old thing lifted Dan up off his kicking feet and
slid down the lip of the tailgate and slammed into the ground so solidly it barely made a sound and Dan,
doubled over the airborne end of the tub, had just enough time to wheeze some air back into himself before
his own relatively insubstantial body weight tilted the tub clockwise and sliding across the tailgate's edge,
lengthwise toward the earth. And from his perch he watched his own slow fall, the inevitable advancement
of the ground, and clung to the tub as if it might save him, somehow.
When he opened his eyes, he learned he had landed or rolled far enough from his truck to see from the ground
back up into the empty bed, where the tub's claws had left desperate jagged trails, like it had been trying to
prevent its own abduction.
*
Together, they rolled the tub upright and pointed it at the lake.
"Thank Christ that's done."
"Well, halfway done." Dan a gave a kind of mock-bemused 1/4 smile.
"What does that mean, halfway done?"
"I mean we have to go get the other tub, back at home."
"The other tub?"
"His and Hers. Yours and mine."
"HIs and Hers antique claw foot tubs at the lake."
"I thought that part was evident, from the two tubs tubs sitting there in the the garage."
Dan's wife closed her eyes.
"I mean the truck's not big enough to hold them both." He gestured at his truck to her shut eyelids.
"I can't do this anymore."
"We can get back and set up by sundown, if we leave now. It'll be perfect."
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Her disappointment always capsized his stomach, rolled it right over,
it made him hate himself and everything he'd seen and touched in the world in his lifetime that his best
effort to finally stop disappointing her, his last, best plan, had caused more disappointment, for her.
"If we can just get through this, things will get better."
"Where are you going to get water to fill the tubs, Dan?"
He touched the bottle of pills in his pocket.
"If we just do this, things will start getting better."
"Were you going to use lake water, Dan?"
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