The Girl With the Pressure Washer

Ida’s Can

That can filled up all day.

The band teacher put in five. The family from church put in a five and two ones, and their little boy put in a quarter he had been holding the whole time they waited. A man from the elevator put in a ten and would not let her say no.

Fay came by at noon with sandwiches in a sack and stood with Ida in the shade. The two of them did not say much. They did not need to. They watched Kenzie work, and every so often one of them reached over and touched the other on the arm.

Rusty Drives By

It was about two-thirty when I saw him.

There were still five cars waiting. The side street was busy. Kenzie had a pickup on the pad and another one pulling up behind it.

A dark blue pickup came down Main from the direction of the car wash. It slowed at the corner by the post office. It slowed some more as it came past the side street.

It was Rusty. I would know that truck anywhere. He has driven it since it was new, and the dent in the tailgate is from the day he backed into the church sign.

He did not turn. He did not stop. He just slowed down to a crawl and looked at the line of cars waiting on the side street. Then he looked at the lot, at Kenzie with the wand in her hand, and at me on my bucket, and at Ida in her chair with the coffee can on her lap.

For a second our eyes met through his windshield. I nodded to him. I did not smile, and I did not frown. I just nodded the way you nod to a man you will see at Thanksgiving.

He looked away first. He drove on down Main and out toward the highway.

Kenzie had seen him too. She stood with the wand pointed at the ground, watching the place where his truck had been.

“Was that Uncle Rusty?”

“It was.”

“Did he look mad?”

I thought about it. “No,” I said. “He looked like a man counting cars.”

The Count

We packed up at four-thirty, with the sun still high over the elevator. Ida came out and helped Kenzie roll the hose back onto the reel.

Then the three of us sat in the shade, Kenzie on the cooler and Ida in her chair and me on my bucket, and we counted.

Thirty-one cars. Three hundred and ten dollars.

And in Ida’s coffee can, one hundred and twelve dollars and fifty cents in tips. That included the little boy’s quarter, which Kenzie set aside on the cooler by itself.

“Four hundred and twenty-two dollars and fifty cents,” Kenzie said. She said it twice. Then she put her face in her hands and laughed, and then she cried a little, and then she laughed again.

“That’s more than I made at Uncle Rusty’s in any week,” she said. “In one day.”

Ida leaned forward in her chair and patted Kenzie’s knee. “You made it all summer, honey,” she said. “You just didn’t get to keep it till today.”

Kenzie looked at her. Then she stood up and hugged Ida, wet tank top and all, and Ida let her, and patted her back like a grandmother, and did not mind the soap on her apron one bit.