Before Unloading

Turn off the engine.

Even after the sound fades, the seat springs are still pulsing. Three days' worth of vibration swirls beneath my lower back, having nowhere to go. Knees, heels, palms. My blood still remembers the speed at the extremities and doesn't yet believe we've stopped. My right toe faintly presses down on a pedal that isn't there. My fingers, still gripping the steering wheel, grasp at empty air, having lost their object. Behind my retinas, the white lines are still flowing backward.

Beyond the windshield, it is the same white line as before departure. A landscape that has carried nothing. The cargo in the truck bed is still in the truck bed.

On the dash, a red cap.

The salt from my sweat has crystallized white on the edge of the brim, and the fabric fibers are stiff like a specimen. A cloth that has blocked the sun for three days. If I pull it down low, the upper half of my forehead sinks into the shade. That is all the tool it is. My palm leaves the steering wheel, brushes the cap once, and then reaches for the door lever. My finger joints are still twitching minutely. My tendons cannot let go of the angle of the drive.

On my lap, the screen lights up.

Numbers. Unknown numbers. The digits of incoming calls pile up from the top, one after another. It is not anyone's number. From a place I should have left behind three days ago, only the digits have arrived ahead of my body, waiting. Why it rings, the body inside the driver's seat does not know. The light from the screen hits the bone beneath my cheek, turning blue. My retinas receive that blue just once, then immediately look away. My fingers do not touch it. The light accumulates even without being touched.

On my lap, another digit is added. The pressure around my pericardium rises slightly. The reason is not visible from here.

Pull the lever.

The door exhales trapped heat. Three days' worth of body heat, residual engine heat, and the smell of the cloth. The outside air touches the nape of my neck, and my sweat cools in a second. Only the surface of my skin is cold; the three days inside are still hot. The reflection of the asphalt rises from the soles of my shoes to my shin bones. My veins have not yet caught up to the standing posture. Blood drops to the soles of my feet, and the edges of my vision sink into white for a moment.

The step at the unloading dock. I start to lower one foot toward it.

Below, there is someone.

I do not look at their face. What I see is a hand pointed toward me. Several palms are lined up side by side, holding square lights up toward me. The surfaces of the lights are looking up at the driver's seat from below the step. One of those lights catches the red. The red of the cap. The red point of the brim. It is not the body I have spent three days transporting, but the color of the cloth that connects to something first. This is it, it says.

The cloth meant to hide me from the sun is now, for as many eyes as there are that I do not know, a cloth that points out, "This is it." The red for hiding has flipped into a red for being found. The lights in the palms continue to increase, and all of them are looking for the same red.

My feet stop.

Above the step, in the middle of the air. My heel is still on the iron of the step, and my toe remains searching for the height of the unloading dock without descending. The angle of my knee freezes. The muscles in my thigh become a specimen in the middle of the act of getting out. The body that tried to get out and the body that stopped trying to get out struggle against each other at the height of a single foot, and neither wins. My cartilage groans under the weight.

My palm goes to the cap once more.

I am neither brushing it nor taking it off; I simply hook my fingers on the edge of the red cloth and stop. My fingers are pressing exactly on the boundary between what hides and what exposes. If I let go of my fingers, I am found; if I put it back on, I am found. Neither hand can return the cloth to its original purpose anymore.

The things in the truck bed have not yet been unloaded.

Behind me, the engine cools and clicks. A small sound of metal contracting. The iron that has finished running still holds heat, and with just that one sound, it lets me know it is here. My toes still do not descend. In the interval until the next sound comes, only my body has truly arrived here.