The Eight Tires I Took Back

“Read me the codes,” I finally said. “On the outside ones. Read me what’s on the sidewall.”

He read me four. Not one of them was in my book.

Then he said, “Hang on.” I heard him crawl back under. When he came back he said, “There’s writing on the inside of one rim. Paint marker. It says R2, LR.”

My stomach dropped. Royce numbers his trucks one and two, and he marks his wheel positions on the rims in paint marker so his tires get rotated right.

I had seen those marks on his wheels a hundred times. R2, LR. Royce’s truck two, left rear.

“Lyle,” I said. “That’s Royce.”

He was quiet a long time. Then he said, “I know it is.”

He ran it home empty and slow, fifty-five on the interstate and slower on the two-lane, with his flashers on through the towns.

It took him better than two hours. I prayed the whole way, standing at the kitchen window, the same plain prayer over and over. Bring him home.

When he pulled in a little before noon, I was out the door before he set the brakes.

He climbed down and I held on to him in the yard, and he let me, which is not like him in daylight with the road right there.

Then we got the flashlight and the tread gauge and went around the truck together. Outside duals, maybe eight thirty-seconds left on them.

Inside duals, nothing. Bare steel in two places, cords showing like the ribs on a starved cow.

A drive tire has to have at least two thirty-seconds of tread to be legal.

A state truck inspector at a roadside inspection would have put that truck out of service on the spot, and he would have been right to.

I got my ledger and read every code off every tire. None matched. Not one. My eight tires were gone.

At about two, I drove past Royce’s lot on the way to the post office. I didn’t slow down much. I didn’t need to.

His truck two, the white Peterbilt his young driver runs, was parked by the shop with its drive axles sitting on brand-new black tread with crisp, deep grooves.

In the low afternoon sun you could see those grooves from the road.

I went home and told Lyle. He picked up his phone and called Royce. It rang out.

He called again. It rang out. He sent a text that just said, Call me. Royce never did.

We sat at the kitchen table at four that afternoon, with the low sun across the oilcloth and the ledger open between us and my coffee going cold, and we talked about what to do.

“We could call the sheriff,” Lyle said. He said it the way you say a thing you have to say out loud just to hear how it sounds.

I had thought about it all afternoon. Here is where I came out, and I will tell you the same thing I told Lyle at that table.

If we called the sheriff on Lyle’s cousin, that would be the end of this family. Royce’s mother would never forgive us.

Half the cousins would take his side because they always do. Thanksgiving would be over, and not just for this year.

And the tires would not come home. They would go into an evidence lot somewhere while it all got sorted out, for weeks or months, and meanwhile our new truck would sit in our yard on bald tires making a $1,410 payment to nobody.