The Day I Towed My Son’s Truck Home

The Counter

The office smelled like burnt coffee and the little pine tree air freshener Lonnie has hung from the same nail since 2009. There was a counter with a scratched glass top, and a cash drawer, and a receipt book.

Behind the counter sat Lonnie in his rolling chair, and at the end of the counter, filling out a log book with a ballpoint pen, stood Emmett Craw.

Emmett has worked that lot for Lonnie for eleven years. Before that he loaded feed beside my daddy for almost twenty. He is fifty eight now, thin as fence wire, with a gray mustache and hands like old leather.

He taught me to drive a stick shift in the feed store parking lot when I was fourteen. He has known me since I was nine.

He looked up when I came in, and then he looked at Cale behind me, and then he set his pen down very carefully on top of the log book.

“Shay,” Lonnie said. He did not get up. “You bring six fifty?”

I laid the title on the counter first, turned so he could read it. Then Cale’s driver’s license beside it.

Then I took the rate sheet out of the folder, the one Noreen had stamped that morning, and laid it on the glass next to them.

Then I took off my right glove and counted the money out onto the counter, out loud, slow, one bill at a time.

“One hundred,” I said, and laid it down. “One hundred twenty.” I laid down the twenty. “One hundred twenty five.” I laid down the five.

The window unit hummed. Out by the fence, nobody on that tailgate was eating anymore.

“That’s the posted rate,” I said. “Non-consent tow inside city limits. Hook, tow and the first twenty four hours. It’s on this sheet from city hall, stamped this morning, and it’s taped on your window right there behind you.”

Lonnie did not turn around to look at the window. He did not have to. Everybody in that trailer knew what was taped on it.

“Driveshaft labor’s not on that sheet,” he said.

“No, it isn’t. Neither is admin. Neither is a gate fee. And the storage starts after twenty four hours, and that truck has been here three.”

“My lot,” he said. “My rules. You want it, it’s six fifty.”

“I’m not asking you for a favor, Lonnie,” I said. “I’m paying you what the town says I owe you. To the dollar. In front of witnesses.”

He looked at the money. He looked at me. And for one second he looked at Cale, and something moved in his face, and then he put it away.

“Boyd sent you,” he said.

“Boyd is on Highway 68 with eleven calves in a ditch,” I said. “I came because you took my son’s truck on his first morning of work over something that is between you and my husband. Not him. Not this boy.”

“That boy’s daddy took my living.”

“That boy’s daddy is on a list on a clipboard in a sheriff’s office,” I said. “Same as you. Same as everybody. You know that. You’ve known it since April.”

It was so quiet I could hear the clock over the door.

Then Emmett moved. He slid down the counter the three steps to where the money lay, and he picked it up, the hundred and the twenty and the five, and he put it in the cash drawer and shut the drawer with his hip.

“Rate’s posted, Lonnie,” he said. Not loud. Just plain. “Been posted eleven years. I’ve been writing these receipts eleven years at that rate.”

Lonnie turned and looked at him, and Emmett looked right back.

“I’ll bring your receipt out to the truck, Shay,” Emmett said. “Go on and load him.”