He gathered up everything and stood.
“Then what would we put on the truck?”
“Oh.”
It had to be the heat—I wasn’t thinking clearly.
I followed him around the truck, towards his open trunk.
“So, yeah, I guess if you could drop me off in town, that would be great,” I said. I was jabbering to fill the awkward silence of mistrust. “I can’t imagine why there’s no jack. I mean, don’t they check that kind of thing when they inspect a vehicle? The thing, you know, just sat in my uncle’s barn for…”
“It’s not under the hood?”
“Sorry?”
“The jack?”
“Under the…”
“Yeah.”
He tossed the stuff in his trunk, slammed the lid, and then veered around me. I went to the door of the truck, but he kept going. From the front, he popped the hood. It screeched and complained when he raised it.
“Here,” he said.
I blinked at the dark cavity until I saw what he meant. The jack was mounted on top of the inside of the wheel well.
“Oh. I guess I never thought to look.”
He reached in for it and I stopped him.
“I’ll get it. It looks dirty as hell.”
From that point forward, his job was mostly consulting and holding things. I was glad that he stuck around. If the jack hadn’t worked or if one of the lug nuts had been impossible to turn, I would have still needed his help. Hell, without him, I wouldn’t have known where to put the jack. It attached under the front bumper instead of back under the frame. I’m not usually dumb about such things, but the truck was older than I was.
Fortunately, the kind stranger—I still didn’t know his name—seemed to know what to do.
“You’re going to want to break the nuts first,” he said.
“Of course.”
I went to loosen them.
“Where you from?” I asked. I was thinking about the fact that he had a rental car. The heat had made me forget that he was only renting it because his own car was in the shop. He didn’t have an accent that I could discern, but that wasn’t surprising. A lot of the locals didn’t have an accent.
“From here,” he said. “The Depot.”
I nodded and wiped sweat away with my shirt. The lug nuts were loosened so I went back to the front to start jacking.
“You’ll want to put your parking brake on, if you haven’t,” he said. “These things will roll right away from the jack.”
“Of course.”
I went to do it.
“How about you?” he asked.
“Sorry?”
“Where are you from?”
“Oh. Originally, Mississippi, then South Carolina really. Virginia, Jersey, all over. I live here now. At the end of this road.”
“Just you?”
Now, I was the one who was a little creeped out. There seemed to be some implication behind the question. If I was all alone, would I be able to defend myself in the middle of the night if someone should come creeping around? What if he was a serial killer, out searching for his next victim? One of those killers, BTK or maybe the Night Stalker, would find people with flat tires. Maybe I’m making that up.
“Just me,” I said. I had intended to lie. The truth popped out anyway. “If you have to go pick up your kid, I think I have this.”
“I have a minute. I’ll just stick around until you get the new one in place.”
“Thanks.”
I wiped my forehead again. With the panic of being stranded wearing off, my social anxiety was coming back. I almost wanted to tell him to get lost, but that would have required a confrontation of sorts. I kept my mouth shut and kept working.
By the way, I was right about my hands. The metal sticking out from the steel-belted tires scraped up my palms when I tried to throw the ruined tire in the bed.
“You’re bleeding.”
I mean, of course I was. Blood dripped from my fingers. I got it all over the rubber of the brand new spare. The truck might not have been haunted when I started, but all that blood probably summoned a half-dozen demons into it by the time I was finished.
He handed me the lug nuts one at a time and I secured them before lowering the jack. Of course, he had to show me how to reverse the direction of the jack first.
“Thanks again,” I said when the jack disengaged and clanked to the dirt.
I extended a hand to shake.
He cringed and put up his hands like it was a robbery.
“Oh,” I said, looking down at the sticky blood on my palms. “Of course.”
“Don’t forget to tighten those nuts. You might want to check the torque when you get home.”
“Uh huh. Thanks.”
I waved and waited for him to walk away.
As soon as he turned around and drove off, my affection for him began to come back. He had saved me quite a bit of trouble, after all. The blown tire had metaphorically robbed me and left me sweaty and beaten. A priest and a Levite had passed me by and then this Samaritan stopped for me even though he had nothing to gain.
“I have to get out of the sun,” I whispered to myself. “I’m going crazy out here.”
House
(Nobody could possibly live here.)
Nobody could possibly live here.
I’m standing here looking at this dusty, peeling, relic of a house. All the windows are closed and the grass in the lawn is as high as the porch railing. But I can’t stop thinking of the Good Samaritan—the guy who stopped to help me change my tire even though he was going to be late picking up his kid.
I wish I could remember the name of the man who used to live here.
Every time we passed, my uncle would say, “Wave hello to Mr. Such-and-such.”
It was an old-sounding name. I can remember that much. There’s no mailbox to help me out. Mr. Such-and-such and my uncle are the only two houses at the end of this long dirt road, so there’s no mail
