the new guy
People come and go through the Hauler! We sit in the cab and tell stories, double park in front of a Victorian, move some furniture, then head home. They may last a few months, maybe a year. Then they move on.
Mac is the newest one to ride shotgun. Doesn’t like there to be silence, so he asks a lot of questions.
“Do you have a favorite dinosaur?”
“I haven’t thought about dinosaurs in a long time,” I say.
“Well, how about when you were a kid?”
“I wasn’t really a dinosaur kid,” I answer.
“I always thought I’d be buddies with a brontosaurus. Ride around on his back while he eats leaves. Then when a t rex comes up, I’d call out to a pterodactyl and be like,’fly me out of here man!’”
He appears to only ask questions he’s put hundreds of hours of thought into answering.
“Ever think about how you want to be buried or whatever, when you die?”
“I don’t know. Maybe cremated and sprinkled off the Golden Gate Bridge. But that might be too much like a suicide.”
“Not me man. I want my girlfriend or wife or whatever to die at the same time, and she’ll be on one of those Viking boats with the crazy tall front end, and she’ll sail out in the ocean, and I’ll be cremated and turned into a cannon ball. Then when she gets out there, they can shoot me out of a cannon and blow up her boat. But what if they miss? I better get made into 3 or 4 little cannon balls so they have a second chance.”
“Ok. We’re here. Get out of the truck.”