DAY 40: Pears to Apples

We wind down Blewett Pass, just a few cars on the road.
Dark, silent, snow falling.
Spines of pine, bare branches traced in a thick outline of white. Toward Wenatchee, Chelan County, where Washington’s famous apples and not-as-famous pears sit in warehouses like the one we will pull up to tomorrow, rows of orchards dormant until spring.

We pull into town around 7 p.m. Daniel goes to the gym; I go to Big Lots and make a supply run. Precooked pasta pouches and a jar of red sauce. Boxes of protein bars. A packet of couscous. Paper towels. Water. Melatonin gummies. There are a few treats too: small tubs of garlic stuffed olives, some salt and vinegar potato chips. I avoid the sweets I seem to have acquired a ravenous desire for, whether for comfort  or due to the constant  assault at every fuel station, I’m not sure.

Despite the peaceful float of snow covering the parking lot where we’re settled in for the night, and my best intentions to get to bed early, it’s nearly midnight by the time I put my AirPods in and go to sleep. The noise canceling feature is a godsend. I'm trying to shake some anger at the slowness of the day, waking suddenly at  hotel in Port Townsend where enjoying the sunrise becomes a blur to hit the road: Dan’s appointment to clear up some tardy paperwork was in a different town then he’d thought, and we'd had to rush. Then a short disagreement about whether to stop at his storage unit on the way to deposit an expensive Lego kit half-assembled with his son. I vote no, a choice that finds us at Walmart in Wenatchee at 10 p.m., he trying to navigate the truck around a tricky parking lot turn, and me desperate to find something to shield the structure from life in the cab of a truck. 
I come out with flat boxes, bubble wrap, and stretchy plastic cling.
Daniel has his idea of what will work, I have mine. We rarely argue but it's been a long day.
I know he is missing his son. I know I am feeling powerless, a little insecure about my decision to head out on the road with no job in sight. I think back to an acronym I once used as a tool for self-care, HALT: I am all the things right now: hungry, angry, lonely and tired.

Daniel doesn't sleep well. We are up at 1 something, 2 something. Just before 7 a.m., the broker calls.

Daniel tells me to go back to sleep, but the roads are slick and it has snowed through the night. I once considered working at a newspaper in Wenatchee; now I’m glad I wasn’t seduced by photos of the verdant valleys of orchards. This place sees some real winter.

The truck slides, hits the center median on the road headed toward the main drag. The slight uphill grade is too much, and I start layering up to help put chains on. Light filters through the nearby chainlink fence, striating the top of the snow. The razor wire is comically soft, covered with snow.

The chains are heavy and steel and rusty and cumbersome.
Drivers nose toward us only to discover the road is blocked. Finally, one cavalier truck passes us and with the tracks laid in the snow, folks start to follow. Dan is under the truck, reaching between the duallies to fasten the chains, sitting on ice and snow. A driver honks and I feel like punching the window.

I feel unable to be be truly helpful. But the truck eventually makes it over the berm and up onto the main road —  called Easy Street — and he strips the chains and we are on our way (finally) to the pickup, about an hour behind schedule.

We cross a narrow bridge, a burned out warehouse, and what we both remark on as a cute little market. Next time we hope to stop.

The forklift is ready for us and we are loaded with pallets of pears in record time. I take Hatch on romp in the empty yard of an apple warehouse, apple boxes, which I have never seen before, stacked several stories tall, each stenciled with a city (perhaps county) name and year. Hatch runs, pisses, lays his ears against his head and rockets across the snow.
​His happiness makes me buoyant.