Corbin found out about Big Truck Day at eleven-thirty at night, which is the exact wrong time to find out about Big Truck Day if you are Corbin.
I was half asleep when he turned his phone toward my face. "It's free," he said, like that was the only relevant detail. Like I had asked. Like the question of cost was the only obstacle between a reasonable Tuesday and whatever this was becoming.
I said it was late. He said it was technically still tonight. I said I didn't know what Big Truck Day was. He said, and I want to be precise here, "It's trucks, but big. And there's a lot of them. At the SPAC parking lot." Then he showed me a photo of a child sitting in the cab of a dump truck, absolutely delighted, which I admit was cute, but I am thirty-one years old and I said so.
He RSVPed anyway. I know because he told me the next morning while I was still holding my coffee with both hands like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
"I put us down for ten AM," he said. "It's supposed to hit seventy."
It was sixty-five and gusty. The kind of April day that looks like a painting from inside but actually has opinions about your hair once you're standing in it. I mentioned this. He said the forecast he had seen was different. He did not share which forecast or when he had consulted it, but he said it with the confidence of a man who has made a study of the matter, which he has not.
We drove to the SPAC parking lot. Corbin had a whole plan: park near the back, work our way up through the smaller equipment, save the crane for last. He explained this like a docent. He had been awake for one extra hour the night before and had conceived an itinerary.
There were so many children. This is not a complaint, children are fine, but I want to document that we were by significant margin the only attendees without one. Corbin did not notice or did not care. He walked straight up to a bright yellow excavator and put his hand on the bucket like he was greeting an old friend.
A volunteer in an orange vest asked if we had a little one with us. Corbin said, "Not today," very pleasantly, and then asked if he could sit in the cab. The volunteer looked at him for a moment. Then she said sure, why not, and he climbed up.
He sat in there for four minutes. I timed it. He adjusted things. He made a sound that I can only describe as professionally impressed. A small girl in a ladybug rain jacket waited patiently at the bottom of the ladder and when he finally came down he said, "Your turn, it's great up there," with the energy of a man passing on hard-won wisdom.
We saw a fire truck, a street sweeper, a cement mixer, and something Corbin called "a really serious flatbed situation." He took pictures of all of them. He sent several to his brother, who responded with a single question mark. Corbin sent back three fire truck photos by way of explanation.
At some point I stopped being tired about it and just watched him move through the parking lot in the April wind with his phone out and his jacket not quite zipped, asking a man in a reflective vest about hydraulics, and I thought: this is who I am with. This specific person. This is the situation.
On the way back to the car he said the crane had been the best part, that he felt like they didn't get enough respect as equipment, and that we should come back next year.
I said I thought it was technically for kids.
He said it was free and open to the public, actually, which he had confirmed with the orange-vest volunteer, and I could look it up if I wanted.
I did not look it up.
The drive home the wind had picked up more and the trees were doing that anxious spring thing where they can't decide if they're budding or bracing. Corbin said it felt like summer was almost here. He said it with total certainty, the way he says most things, and I turned the heat on low and didn't argue.
He was already looking up what else was happening this week.