The Taillights We Fixed for Free

The Red Ford

Around one o’clock, a red Ford pickup pulled in, an older F-150 with rust on the wheel wells and a feed store cap on the dashboard. The man driving it was Walt Lindgren. He was eighty-four years old, and he had farmed north of town for sixty years.

He got out slow, the way old farmers do, with one hand on the door and one on the side mirror.

“Heard you were doing taillights,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Tyler said. “Let’s take a look.”

Walt’s left taillight was out completely. On an F-150 that age, you drop the tailgate, take out two screws along the inside edge, and the whole lamp housing pulls straight back. Tyler knelt down on the asphalt on his walking-bean knee pads and had it out in a minute.

“I used to do that myself,” Walt said, standing behind him with his hands in his jacket pockets. “Can’t get down there anymore. Can’t get back up, is the trouble.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Tyler said.

I held the box of bulbs out, and Tyler picked one, and he screwed the lamp back in and stood up and wiped his hands. Walt stepped on the brake, and both lights came on red.

Walt stood looking at it the way Tyler had looked at his own car on Tuesday night in my garage.

Then he took out his wallet and pulled out a five-dollar bill, and he held it out to my grandson.

“No, sir,” Tyler said. “It’s free today.”

“Take it.”

“No, sir. Really.”

Walt looked at him for a long moment. Then he folded the five in half and tucked it into the front pocket of Tyler’s hoodie himself, and patted the pocket twice, the way you would pat a grandson.

“You’re Marge’s boy,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Walt said, and he got back in his truck.

Tyler stood there with his hand over the pocket. He did not say anything. When Walt pulled out onto Main, Tyler took the five out, unfolded it, and put it in the collection envelope Pastor Ron had left on the card table for the food shelf.

I had to turn around and pretend to look for something in the box of bulbs for a while.

The Afternoon

By three o’clock, the line ran down the curb, past the parsonage and around the corner onto Main Street. Hailey was on her third sheet of paper. Somebody had called the radio station in the next town, and they mentioned it on the afternoon farm report between the corn prices and the obituaries.

Tyler had not sat down since nine. His knuckles were black with grease and he had a scrape on the back of one hand from a Buick’s license plate bracket. When I tried to get him to rest, he shook his head.

“There’s people waiting, Grandma.”

So I brought him a sloppy joe and held it while he ate it in three bites between cars, standing up.

Around four, Pastor Ron came out of the church and stood next to me with his hands in his pockets.

“How many?” he asked.

“Hailey?”

Hailey checked her sheets. “Fifty-eight lights. Thirty-nine cars.”

Pastor Ron whistled low. “Fifty-eight.” He looked at the line. “You know what, I think I know the number now.”

“What number?”

“You’ll see,” he said, and he went back inside.

At about half past five, the sun was getting low behind the bell tower and the shadow of it lay long across the parking lot. The line had thinned to the last few cars. Hailey’s mom came to pick her up and decided to stay. Dale from the parts store had come back with a second box of bulbs and was sitting in my extra lawn chair.

Tyler was kneeling behind a Ford Taurus, putting a bulb in. Hailey counted it.

“Sixty-two,” she said.

Then a minivan with a turn signal out. Sixty-three.

And then I looked up, and there was one more car turning in off Main Street, slow, with its blinker on.

It was a county squad car. The old Ford Explorer the county keeps for the night shift, white with the green stripe and the star on the door.