The Widow Who Learned Three On The Tree
I had heard that sound for seven years. It came up our road ahead of him. I would be at the sink with the window open, and that whine would come over the rise by the Kessler mailbox, and I would turn the burner on under the potatoes, because it meant Dale was a quarter mile out.
I had not known it was second gear. I only knew it was him.
“It’s supposed to do that,” Tyler said. “Those old three-speeds all do. Means the gears are good.”
“I know it’s supposed to,” I said.
I learned to back up. I learned that drum brakes want a firm foot and some room. I learned the dimmer switch is a button on the floor by your left shoe, and that the gas tank on a truck that age sits in the cab right behind the seat, which I did not care to think about very long.
I learned to start on a hill, on the terrace at the south end, holding the brake with my right foot and feeling for the pull with my left, then moving over quick. That took me a whole week and most of my religion.
Jenna called on a Thursday.
“Mom, Brad says you might sell Daddy’s truck.”
“I’m thinking on it.”
“You don’t have to. If you don’t want to. I told him not to push.”
“He didn’t push, honey. He made an offer.”
“What did he offer?”
So she did not know. I had wondered.
“That’s between Brad and me for now,” I said. “How are the girls?”
I was not protecting him. I just did not think it was mine to say. A man ought to carry his own number home to his wife.
In the fifth week Tyler said, “I think you ought to take her on the road.”
“I think so too.”
“You want me along?”
“I want you along the first time.”
We went four miles on the county blacktop, out past the cemetery and back. I got it into third. Forty-five miles an hour with the wing window cracked and the wheat on both sides just starting to turn, and Dale’s cap riding on the dashboard in front of me.
When we pulled back in the drive he said, “You don’t need me in here anymore, Mrs. Whitaker.”
“I know it.”
“You’re smoother than Granddad. I’d never tell him that.”
I took my hands off the wheel and looked at them. They were steady. They were the hands that had turned out four hundred hot rolls a day for twenty-nine years without tearing one.
Nobody had ever told me that was the same thing a clutch wants. A light hand that knows when to wait.
I picked a Thursday in June.
I called the dealership that morning and asked the service desk if they could do an oil change on an older Chevrolet that afternoon. The girl said they had an opening at a quarter to five. She asked the year. I said, “It’s an older one,” and she said that was fine, they would get it at the counter.
I spent the afternoon washing the truck and drying it with Dale’s chamois.
A little past four Tyler came across the road in his co-op shirt.
“Today?” he said.
“Today.”
“Stand right there a second.”
I was leaning on the driver’s door in my own gravel drive, with one elbow on the window sill and the keys in my other hand. The sun was getting low and gold and coming across the shed roof. Dale’s cap was on the dashboard.
Tyler held up his phone and took my picture.