Thermos of Soup

Gabe here, twenty-eight, landscaper, married two years to a customs officer who lives three hundred miles away from me. You need nothing more than that. This weekend was our friend Sonia's wedding, out at the rodeo grounds, and it was supposed to be the first time Lachlan and I had shared more than a phone screen since March.

It wasn't going great.

I stood by the fence Saturday morning and watched my husband pick up hay bales like they weighed nothing. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up and there was dust all down his forearms, and he was laughing with a woman I'd never met about where the bales should go for the backdrop.

"No, further left, a bale and a half," she was saying. "The arch has to sit between them."

"A bale and a half. You people measure in hay now?"

"We're country folk, we sure do."

I'd been married to him for two years and I hadn't heard him joke like that in months. With me he'd been giving one-word answers since Thursday. Nice drive? Fine. You eat? Yeah. I was starting to feel like a lodger at my own marriage.

He stacked the last bale and brushed his hands off on his jeans, and when he turned and saw me at the fence his face did something complicated before settling into a smile.

"Hey. You helping or supervising?"

"Supervising. I'm very good at it."

"You're good at leaning on things, that's for sure." He came over, and for a second I thought he was going to touch me, and he didn't, and that second was somehow worse than if he'd stayed on the other side of the arena.

"Beer tent opens at noon," I said.

"Good. I could use one."

That was about the length of our conversations lately. I could use one. Good. Fine. We'd been sharing a rented room in the bunkhouse side of a horse trailer conversion, actual beds, actual door, and we'd been polite about it the way you're polite about a hotel.

Sonia found me near the supply tent around two, holding a clipboard like it was a weapon.

"Gabe, thank god. You're not in the wedding party, right? Tell me you're not."

"I'm nobody's groomsman. I'm furniture."

"Perfect. I need somebody with wheels who isn't drinking tonight, because half my wedding party is going to be useless by seven. Supply run. Juice boxes, granola bars, the little water bottles, stuff for the kids' table tomorrow, and about nine other things on this list. You game?"

"Yeah, sure. When?"

"Whenever, tonight. Here." She shoved the list at me and was already walking away. "You're a lifesaver, Gabe!"

I looked at the list and it was long and I looked at my husband across the lot, because apparently I still did that, still found him first in any crowd, and he was already walking toward me.

"I heard all that," he said. "I'll drive."

"You don't have to."

"The rental's manual. You drive stick?"

"I do not."

"Then I drive." He took the list out of my hand and read it over. "This is a lot of stuff."

"She said whenever tonight."

"Then let's go now, before the beer tent gets us."

That was the most words he'd aimed at me all weekend so I grabbed my jacket and got in the truck.

* * *

The rental smelled like pine air freshener and somebody's cigarette ghost. Lachlan drove with one wrist on the wheel the way he always did, and I watched the fence posts go by and tried to think of something to say that wasn't small talk.

"So the hay lady," I said. "You made a friend."

"Ruth. She runs the arena. Nice lady. She's got opinions about the arch placement."

"Everyone's got opinions about the arch placement. Sonia's changed it four times."

He laughed, an actual laugh, and something in my chest unclenched a little. Then it clenched again, because I remembered how long it had been since I'd heard it.

We met at the border, him and me. Four years ago, I was twenty-four, hauling a truckload of nursery stock and stone up from Oregon for a job, and my paperwork was a mess. I knew it was a mess. He knew it was a mess. He was twenty-seven, in a booth, in a uniform, and he had this way of reading a form like it had personally offended him.

"You've written Oregon three different ways on this one page," he said.

"I spelled it two ways. That's not three."

"There's an O-R-E-G-O-N and an O-R-E-G-I-O-N and I believe this one is O-R-G-E-N."

"That one's a typo."

"That one's a war crime." He stamped something and slid the clipboard back. "Get it fixed before your next crossing, or the next officer won't be as charming as me."

"You think you're charming?"

"I think the next officer won't be. That's the point I'm making."

I came back through two weeks later with fixed paperwork and a coffee, and I set the coffee on the ledge of his booth like an idiot, and he looked at it and then at me and said, "Is this a bribe?"

"It's a thank you with a selfish motive. There's a diner two miles up. If you're off at six."

He was off at six.

We drove back and forth for a year, whoever could travel that weekend, and then he proposed in the parking lot of that same diner, and I said yes before he finished the sentence, and two years ago we got married with Sonia crying in the second row. And now we could barely manage a conversation about juice boxes.

"I miss this," I said, before I could stop myself.

"Miss what?"

"This. You driving. Me shutting up. The two of us going somewhere."

He was quiet for a while. The road hummed.

"I know," he finally said. "Me too. I've been garbage company all weekend, Gabe."

"Yeah, you have."

"That's fair." His hand left the wheel and found my knee, just rested there. "It's been a bad stretch at the posting. Twelve-hour shifts, short staffing. I didn't have anything left over and I came here anyway and then had nothing left over for you too. That's on me."

I didn't say anything. His hand stayed.

* * *

The supply store was one of those country stores that sells feed, wedding stuff, and firearms in the same square footage. We split the list. He took the cart and worked through it with the same focus he gave customs forms, reading labels, checking quantities.

"Two more cases of the little waters," he said.

"Grab the apple juice boxes too, the list says no sugar added."

"This one says it has sugar."

"Then that's not it, put it back."

We got it done in twenty minutes, and the cart was full, and outside in the gravel lot the light was going all orange. And there, at the edge of the lot, was a roadside stand, a woman under an awning with a row of thermoses and a hand-painted sign that said HOT SOUP, HOME MADE, and Lachlan stopped walking.

"Hang on."

"We got everything."

"You haven't eaten since the ceremony rehearsal. You had half a roll. I watched you."

"So?"

"So wait here." He walked over to the stand and I heard him talking to the woman, and he came back with a thermos and two paper cups and a sleeve of crackers, and he held it out to me like it was no big deal.

"What's this?"

"Chicken rice. She makes it herself. It's four dollars and I already paid, so don't argue."

"Lachlan, I can buy my own soup."

"You can. You weren't going to, though." He popped the cups into the truck bed and leaned against the tailgate. "Sit. Eat. It's hot."

I sat next to him on the tailgate with the gravel digging into my legs, and he poured, and the steam came up between us, and I felt something in my throat go tight, because this was the thing, this was always the thing. He never made a speech. He just noticed that I