The Grand Marquis Across the Highway

When He Pulled In

It was almost seven when his headlights came over the rise.

I watched them swing into the drive and then stop short, because his spot was taken.

The truck sat there idling at the end of the gravel for a long time. I could see the shape of him behind the wheel, looking at the Marquis.

Then he shut the engine off and got out.

He walked up slowly, past the car, and he stopped beside it and put one hand on the champagne roof like you would put a hand on a horse you did not know yet.

He looked at the temporary tag in the back window. He looked at me.

He came up the porch steps and stood at the top and took off his cap. His hair was flat from it.

He looked tired in the way only a man who works with a torch all week looks tired, from the inside out.

“Whose car?” he said.

“Mine,” I said. “I bought it across the highway from the gas station. Nineteen hundred down. A man named Merle filled the tank for me.”

Jesse looked back at the car. He let out a long breath through his nose. And then he said the thing I will remember all my life.

“Good,” he said. “I’m glad somebody had the sense to take care of you today, because I didn’t.”

I did not say anything. I could not have if I tried.

He sat down on the top step with his back to me, his cap in both hands between his knees. He looked out at the car.

“I went back to the jail,” he said. “Sat in the lot two hours. I called Gene at the bond office and asked would he take payments. He said not for Dusty, not anymore.”

He turned the cap over in his hands. ” I called three guys from work. I was going to ask them for the money.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t make myself say it. I sat there with the phone in my hand like a fool.”

“You’re not a fool,” I said.

“I left my wife at a gas station,” he said. “Seventy miles from home. Because she wouldn’t give me our daughter’s braces money.” He said it slowly, every word, like he was reading it off a list somebody had handed him. “I heard it out loud in my own head about halfway back to the jail, and I about drove into the ditch.”

“Then why didn’t you come back?”

“Because I knew you’d already be gone,” he said. “And because I’m a coward about some things. I thought if I could fix the Dusty part first, I could come home and fix the rest.”