Moving

Gary had been carrying heavy and heavier boxes for what had seemed like hours. Kathryn, on the other hand, was upstairs in the townhouse they had been renting cleaning the bathroom they had just cleaned a few days ago. “Christ, she's gonna scrub the tile off the floor,” he grumbled to himself as he manhandled another box into the moving truck. When he thought about it Gary really didn't mind that Kathy was doing the cleaning and the nit-noid parts of the clearing out. She was, after all, better at it than he was and he was much stronger than she so he could carry the larger boxes and stack them all higher in the truck.

After he fit this box into position Gary paused a moment to look at the great wall of stuff; large, formidable, foreboding even. It was nothing less than a great wall. Empty space in the truck was becoming scarce. The smaller items would get packed into the old blazer with Kathy, the three kids, two cats, two dogs, rabbit, and the iguana. The driver's seat in the moving truck would be occupied by him. “Damn it, I wish we could afford to have someone do this for us.”

“Yeah, that would be nice, honey.” Kathy was obviously taking a break from the sweaty jobs inside to catch her breath in the sweltering Texas summer day. “How's it going, baby?”

Gary answered almost solemnly, “It's going,” he hung his head and shook it slightly. “I need a cold drink.”

“Great!” Kathy tried to be perky, annoyingly perky, but she was too hot and tired to pull it off, “There's bottled water in the fridge.” Gary didn't hear her as he was already shoulders deep in the fridge getting two bottles of water.

When he got back to the truck and handed Kathy an opened bottle she thanked him. Then said, “You know, I think we have plenty of room to get everything in there easily.”

Gary was dumbstruck. The thought of not getting everything into the two vehicles had not come anywhere near to his mind yet alone crossed it. “Whatever,” he shook his head and smiled.

“I just hope that the start date for your position with Homeland gets set.” Now that was the fear. That was what was keeping Gary up at night. Why hadn't the department come back yet with a start date? Was it a wise gamble to move the entire family on the promise of a job without a start date? Sitting there, in the sweltering heat and humidity again Gary heard the voice of Kathy's old world intelligence operative uncle that night on the phone years ago. “I would stay the hell away from Homeland Security. They are about as inbred and inept as a government organization can get.”

Still, it was more than he had in Texas right now. He went back to packing the can. “Gotta keep moving,” he mumbled to himself.