The Milk Truck at the Church Steps

The morning

I was up at five that Saturday, which is sleeping in for a milk hauler. I’d run my route Friday and the plant had washed the inside of the tank after I unloaded, the way they do after every load, so the inside was clean and the tank was empty.

The outside was mine to do.

I backed the truck out of the shed into the yard. The sun came up over the Kowalski place across the road, big and orange, and then it climbed and went white, and by eight it was a clear, cool September morning without a cloud anywhere.

I washed every inch of it. The cab, the frame, the fenders, the tank. I went over the stainless with polish and a clean cotton rag, until I could see my own face in the tank and it didn’t look half bad.

I did the inside of the cab too. I vacuumed the floor mats. I took out my route book and my sample cooler and wiped the dash.

Then I sat in the driver’s seat for a minute and looked up at the visor.

Janet’s picture has been tucked in that visor for seventeen years. It’s a little wallet photo, faded now, of her standing in our garden in a yellow blouse, squinting into the sun and laughing at something I said. I don’t remember what I said. I wish I did.

“Well, Jan,” I said. “Big day.”

I left it right where it was.

The last thing I did was the bow. Madison had dropped it off the week before: a big white satin ribbon bow, the size of a dinner plate. I tied it on the passenger side mirror bracket with a double knot and fluffed it out with my fingers, which are not made for fluffing anything.

Then I went inside and put on my navy suit. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Short gray hair, more gray than I remembered. A face that’s been in the sun for twenty-six years. I looked like exactly what I am, which is a milk truck driver in his good suit.

“That’ll have to do,” I said to the mirror.