The Truck

There's a beer I like that's at its best in the first two weeks after it's canned. After that it's still good, but it's no longer the beer I came for. It's the beer's cousin.

So I check the date. Every can. I was standing in the cooler at the store, turning them around, when the manager came over and told me the shipment comes in on Thursdays. He said it the way you tell a man where the bathroom is.

Next Thursday I was in the parking lot at 8:15. The delivery driver climbed out of the truck, saw me, and said, "Can I help you?"

I said I was waiting for the beer.

"You and everybody," he said. There was nobody.

His name is Ray. I asked him about the dates on the cans, and he told me, and I wrote them down, and he watched me do it.

Now I get a text on Thursday mornings. It says, "Truck's in." That's all it says. Ray's never written anything else, and I've never written back.

But I have never been told anything so nice by a man I've met four times. I'm in the lot by 8:15.