The Taillights We Fixed for Free

Until Dark

I thought Craig would leave after that. He did not. He took off his duty belt and locked it in the squad. Then he walked over to Tyler’s toolbox, sitting open on the asphalt, and he picked up a Phillips screwdriver and turned it over in his hand.

“Is there anything else that needs doing?” he asked.

Tyler looked at him. Then he looked at the lot, where a handful of us were still standing around, and the cars we had come in.

“Nobody’s checked ours,” Tyler said. “Grandma’s. Hailey’s mom’s. Pastor Ron’s. Dale’s second truck.”

“Then let’s check them,” Craig said.

So they did. The two of them walked from car to car in the long October light while it went orange and then pink and then gray. Tyler would say “brakes” and Craig would stand behind the car, and the two of them would look at the lights together.

Pastor Ron’s old Buick had a license plate bulb out. Hailey’s mom’s Malibu had a turn signal flickering from a loose socket, and Craig held the flashlight while Tyler wiggled it tight.

I sat in my lawn chair and watched them, and I did not say a word, because I did not trust my voice.

They did not talk much. Men do not, mostly. But once I heard Craig ask Tyler how he knew which way to turn the socket on the Malibu, and Tyler showed him, and Craig said “huh” the way men do when they have learned something they did not expect to.

At the end, they did my car. Both taillights were fine. I knew they were fine, because Tyler checked them every Sunday. But Craig stood behind my old Impala and watched me step on the brake anyway, and he gave me a little nod in the mirror.

It was dark by then. Tyler turned on his headlamp. The parking lot was empty except for the three of us.

Craig came over to my chair. He took his wallet out of his back pocket and counted out two hundred and eighty dollars, in twenties, the same way I had at the tow yard, and held it out to me.

I thought about refusing it. Then I thought about Tyler watching.

“Thank you, Craig,” I said, and took it.

“Thank you, Marge,” he said. “For not calling it what it was. In front of all of them.”

“I didn’t need to,” I said. “You did.”

He nodded. Then he went to his squad and drove home to my daughter, with both brake lights showing red all the way down Main Street.