We started to notice that every time we left the Steak ‘n’ Shake on Old Fort Parkway, the same truck was driving by. It was a “Bunny Bread” truck. Painted on the side was the head of a bunny rabbit, blue and yellow. The bunny was saying, “Be funny! Eat Bunny!” The bunny really liked his little rhyme, smiling a crazed blue and yellow bunny smile.
No matter what time we left – midnight, one a.m., or two – Bunny Bread was getting delivered right ahead of us. I’ve never seen Bunny Bread in a store. I got the idea to follow the truck, to see where all this Bunny Bread was getting delivered, but it was never the right time.
It might have been bound for Knoxville, and I wasn’t prepared to drive that far.
One night we got on the road right behind the Bunny Bread truck and followed it a mile or so to the intersection with Murfreesboro Road. We got stopped along the truck’s right side at the traffic signal. The blue and yellow rabbit looked right down into our car. “Be funny! Eat Bunny!” it said.
I wondered if the driver noticed us like we noticed him. I wondered if he thought it was strange that he was always delivering Bunny Bread when we were leaving the Steak ‘n’ Shake.
Then another Bunny Bread truck pulled up to the turn lane on Murfreesboro Road, perpendicular on our right-hand side. There was no one else on the road. Just two Bunny Bread trucks and, in between, our little Ford Escort, all waiting for the traffic lights to change.
The Bunny Bread trucks flashed their high-beams at each other.
I felt like the witness to a strange conspiracy.
Their blue and yellow bunnies told each other to be funny and eat bunny. They were like two children waiting for a prank to ripen, acknowledging the guilt between them with conspicuous blue and yellow grins. The teacher opens his thermos and it is filled with worms.
My life is full of such vague oddities, like a thermos filled with worms. My life is full of blue and yellow bunnies.