The Truck My Husband Built With His Hands
There was more.
It was in a different hand. Blocky, heavy pencil, the handwriting of a man who works with his arms. It began on the line right below my husband’s last note.
4/19. Filled up. 34.2 gal. Odometer 211,408. Her tank was low. Sorry Roy.
5/2. Oil changed. Used straight forty weight like you wrote on the lid in the barn. Did not forget.
5/30. Rear brakes. She was pulling left. Cost me $212 and I did it myself in the barn at night because I did not want the guys to see how much I was babying her.
6/21. New fuel pump. $186. Didn’t ask nobody.
I turned the page. And the next. Every fill-up. Every oil change. A set of tires rotated in August. A note: Wyatt asked if he could ride shotgun. Told him no. Not yet. This is Roy’s. A note from July: Joanne drove by again. Saw her at the mailbox. I will call her tomorrow. And the next day, and the next, in the same blocky hand, the same four words, written over and over like a penance. I will call her.
Shane had taken my husband’s truck, and Shane had also, for six months, taken care of it with a tenderness I would not have guessed he had. I could not make those two facts agree in my head. They are both true. Most people are like that.
I put my hand flat on the page and I closed my eyes.
There was a tap on the window.
Shane was standing there with his cap in his hands. The sun was behind him and his eyes were red.
I rolled the window down. He tried twice to speak.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said finally. “I want you to know that. I really did think, Joanne’s too kind. She’ll never come.”
“I know you did.”
“I counted on it.” His voice broke. “I hate that I counted on it. Every time you called I’d think, I’ll call tomorrow. And tomorrow it was too long. And then Kari’s mad, and the bank’s calling, and I have this truck that works, sitting right there. And you kept being so nice about it. You never once got ugly.” He wiped his face with his wrist. “It would’ve been easier if you had.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t.”
“You’d have said yes,” he said. “If I’d asked you straight, in May. If I’d said, Joanne, my truck got repossessed and I’m drowning. You’d have said yes.”
“I might have.”
“That’s why I couldn’t ask. Because I’d have kept taking.” He looked at me with Roy’s look, the look of a man caught by the only person whose opinion he cares about. “I was ashamed to ask, and ashamed to give it back, and you were the only person on earth who wasn’t going to make me do either one. So I let it ride.”
“Shane, hear me plain. What you did was wrong. You borrowed a thing and decided I wouldn’t mind if you kept it. I’m not going to say it was all right.”
“No, ma’am.”
“But I also want you to know that I read the book.”
His face crumpled. He put his cap over his mouth.
“I read the book,” I said again, softly. “And I know who took care of that truck. Roy would know too. If he were here, he would have taken one look at those brakes and shaken your hand.”