The Widow Who Learned Three On The Tree
I held that book against my chest in the middle of a Chevrolet service bay and cried in front of six mechanics and a parts girl, and not one of them looked away and not one of them made it into anything.
Somebody brought me a shop stool. Somebody else brought a paper cup of water.
After a while I said, “It’s done, then.”
“What is?”
“The job. Somebody taught me.” I found the pencil. “Can I write that in?”
“It’s your book,” Hoot said.
So under Dale’s line I wrote the date, and the odometer, and Town and back. Oil change, Hoot. N. driving. And then, because it was true: Killed it once.
The bill was sixty-one dollars and forty cents. Hoot tried to tear it up and I would not let him. I pay my way.
Brad was waiting by the truck when Kyle pulled it around front.
He had his hands in his pockets. His customer was gone.
“Did you sell that man his pickup?” I asked.
“He said he’d come back tomorrow.” He looked at the pavement. “He might.”
I waited.
“Nancy, I knew what it was worth.”
“I know you did.”
“I knew to the dollar. I’ve known for two years.” He got it out all in a rush then, and none of it in the right order. “The first manager I ever worked for, in Wichita, I was twenty-five. He told me, estates and widows, that’s your margin, they don’t know what they’ve got and they want it gone. He said it wasn’t cheating because you never tell a lie, you just name a number and let them say yes. And I thought that was just knowing the business. I’ve done it. Not a lot. I’ve done it.”
“To other widows.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And then to me.”
“That’s not,” he said, and stopped, and tried again. “I didn’t want to flip it. I swear to you. I wanted it. I held the trouble light on that truck for six winters. He taught me to set points on that truck. My own dad never showed me how to do one thing, and Dale would hand me a feeler gauge and say you’ve got the hands for it, Brad, go on. And then he was gone and I couldn’t,” and his chin went, a grown man in a parking lot. “I couldn’t say to you that I missed him. I don’t know how to say that. I know how to make an offer. So I made an offer.”
“It was a bad one.”
“Yes, ma’am, it was.”
“And what you said. Wasted on a widow.”
He shut his eyes. “I’d give anything to have that back.”
I looked at him a while.
I thought about what Dale would do. Dale would have handed him a wrench and not said a word about it for the rest of his life. I am not that good. But I could get some of the way there.
“You’ll tell Jenna,” I said. “The number, and what you said in my shed. Tonight. I’m not going to do that for you.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“And the next widow that comes on this lot with her husband’s car, you tell her what it’s worth. Every time. I’ll hear about it if you don’t. This is a small town and I fed half of it lunch.”
He almost laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”