Raising Wrecker

CHAPTER FIVE





And then Wrecker was eight. He climbed atop a stack of produce crates in the back room of the Mercantile and ate dried apricots one sticky fruit at a time. He was waiting for Melody to finish work. The knees of his jeans were white with wear but as yet unbreached, and he was wearing red Keds whose rubber heels bounced impatiently off the wooden sides of the crates. It was always One more thing, Wrecker, just let me finish this and Are you ready? Where’s your jacket?—and then someone else would poke his head through the stockroom door and call her name. Wrecker tapped his head against the wall behind him to the beat of the song on the radio. He sat chewing and tapping and bouncing his sneaker against the crate when DF Al the stock boy burst in.

“Sport!” Al said. He could make his face physically larger with his expressions, as though his skin had a special expansiveness that spread his hairline back and his ears farther to the sides. He stopped, stared diffusely, listened for the tune. Then he picked up a head of celery and played air guitar, mouthing the words.

Wrecker liked Al. Al walked with verve and carried food. “I have apricots,” Wrecker told him. He extended a sticky hand with two flat fruits. “Want to trade?” The apricots looked like dried ears. Wrecker would not have thought of this on his own, but Al had taped two to the sides of his head over his own ears and walked around like that for one whole day.

Al lifted the dried disks carefully from Wrecker’s grimy palm and sniffed them, ogled them, reached out the tip of his tongue to taste them. He squinted suspiciously at the boy. “Genuine?” Before Wrecker could answer Al popped them both in his mouth and glanced around furtively. Then he shut his eyes and faced beatifically toward the ceiling. Al was weird. Melody thought he smoked too much dope but Wrecker just figured he was probably born this way. He chewed and winked at Wrecker and reached into his pocket. He passed the boy a small handful of the cinnamon redhots they both liked. “You going to school?”

“Soon as Deedee’s ready.” Wednesdays he had the morning off and spent it helping Melody at the Mercantile. Wrecker slid down off the crates and crouched to extract the dry sponge they used as a soccer ball from between the wheels of the shopping cart. “Want to play?”

“I have to work.”

“Yeah.” Wrecker laughed. “Right.” He faked to the left. Then he tapped the sponge forward with the toe of his sneaker, dribbled past the mop bucket, advanced toward the opposing defender, and slapped it with the inside of his left foot toward the goal. DF Al shot his leg out to block and deflected it into the open carton of soaps he was supposed to be pricing. Wrecker lunged for the sponge just as Al flung his foot out to bar his path and the boy was knocked off his feet while propelling forward toward the brooms that lay in a tangled mess in the corner.

The door flapped open and Melody entered. She was jotting something on a clipboard and didn’t look up. “Wrecker,” she said absently, “Got your jacket? We should go,” checked a note she had pinned to the corkboard by the clock, registered the information, and swung back out.

Wrecker extracted himself from the brooms. He glanced at DF Al, who had snatched up the pricing gun and was waving it in front of himself. His black glasses sat crooked on his face and his hair was wild. “Easy, now, boy,” Wrecker said. “Don’t shoot.”

DF Al leaned over, clicked the trigger, and rubbed the tag onto the sleeve of Wrecker’s shirt. “Seventy-nine cents,” he said. “This week only. Limit one per customer.”

Melody poked her head through the door again. She had tied her blonde hair up in a bun but half of the strands had already defected. “You ready, son?” she said. She looked at Al. “You done pricing those soaps yet? Jesus, Al. Get a move on. I need you on the register while I’m gone.” She let her gaze stray around the stockroom. “This place is a mess.” She squinted at them. “What the hell’s been going on back here?”

“Monsters,” Al replied, and nodded his head solemnly. “Intergalactic. Had to fend ’em off with my long range hypno-gamma ray tommy gun. They won’t give you no more trouble, ma’am,” and he blew on the business end of his price tagger and made to reholster it.

A grin played at the corner of her mouth but gained no lasting purchase. “Can the bullshit, DF. You don’t get your work done Dreyfus is going to—”

“Right, right. All work and no play.”

“Find your jacket, Wrecker,” Melody said, and a customer called to her and she ducked back out the doors.

DF Al beamed at her retreating back. He tilted his head toward Wrecker and sighed. “Women love me.”

Wrecker nodded. The women he knew joked about Al when he wasn’t there, called him Dope Fiend Al or Dumb F*ck Al or worse. Wrecker thought he should act more normal around other people, but he didn’t know if Al could pull it off. “Seen my jacket?”

“Yeah. A penguin waltzed in here, asked if he could have it. Said it’s cold at the South Pole. I told him sure, you were a generous guy.”

Wrecker spied the blue sleeve of the parka on the floor by the meat locker. He pushed himself to his feet. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

“Not if I see you first, brother.”

Melody was in a huff. She had to get the produce order in by 3:30 and do the payroll and file the something and do the something something for Wrecker’s school and still catch Ruth before five o’clock at the salvage yard with some kind of information. Wrecker yawned. His stomach hurt from too many apricots. The day was bright and cold. One kid from school had off to go hunting. He wanted to go hunting. Why couldn’t he go hunting.

Melody tapped the steering wheel of the bus with her index finger while she drove. It was a nervous habit. “When you’re older.”

“How old?”

“Old enough to know better than to want to do that,” she said, flicking her turn signal and flooring the gas pedal to urge the old bus past a lumbering pickup loaded with trash for the landfill. The motor made its cheery jingling VW sound. The little engine that could. On Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday, at least. The rest of the time was a toss up. She wished she could shoot the poor thing and put it out of its misery. She alternated between feeling nostalgic about its years of magical service and disgusted by its current unreliability. Disgust was weighing in heavily, but it wasn’t like she could run down to the local dealership and pick up a new one. If she skimmed the top off what she took home each week, if she made payments, maybe she could spring for a skateboard. Maybe. She and Wrecker could take turns riding and running alongside. It would take them—oh—a day and a half each way to commute into town.

Why couldn’t she have been born rich?

Oh yeah. She had been born rich. It just hadn’t worked out.

Wrecker made a face. “Too many apricots,” he said.

“Go easy on them, buddy. They sneak up on you.” She cut a quick glance at his face and then swung the bus back into the proper lane. He was changing so fast. One week his face was all baby fat and foolishness and the next it had slimmed down, had an eight-year-old’s skepticism and resolve. Well, not resolve. He’d always had that. They’d just labeled it stubbornness. Stubborn fit in with ornery and immature, but resolve?

He sure hadn’t picked that up from her.

“What time is it, Wrecker?”

He lifted his wrist to check. She watched his lips move as he counted by fives. He was okay to thirty or so, but after that it started to break up. She had bought him a watch so he could practice. At school they played cooperative games and learned number theory with manipulatives; at home, guiltily, it was flash cards and torn sheets from the cheap pulp workbooks she picked up at the supermarket. “Eleven ten.”

“Let me see.”

Jesus, it was five to two. She was supposed to have him there by one fifteen. By two she was supposed to—oh, well, great. They were out in the open, three minutes from Wrecker’s school, and a cop was dogging the van with lights flashing and the siren making its stupid little whoops. A cop? Out here? She pulled to the side of the road and shut her eyes. She rolled down the window. “Yes?”

“Holy mackerel, lady!” The cop had a beefy face that appeared red from internal combustion and not from any exposure to the elements. “You know how fast you were going?”

Speeding? No. Not speeding. She couldn’t keep a small smirk from staining her face. “Not exactly, officer. But I can tell you this old bus”—her index finger flicked rapidly against the steering wheel—“she just hasn’t got it in her to speed. I’m lucky if I can coax her up the hills.”

“Up, maybe,” he said. He looked earnestly affronted. He looked personally offended. “But coming down that hill I clocked you at sixty in a forty-five zone. That’s—that’s—”

Fifteen.

“—that’s fifteen miles over the speed limit. I’ll have to ticket you for that.” He rearranged his features to express paternal disapproval. “Where are you in such a rush to get to?”

Melody rubbed her face with her hands. She was going to have to grovel. “I’m taking my son—” She tipped her head toward Wrecker and the words died in her mouth. His face was ashen and he had made himself as small as he could in the seat. His hands gripped the frayed piping of the upholstery edge.

The cop bent sideways to get more of his face in the open window. “Something wrong?”

Melody turned in the seat and put her hand on Wrecker’s cheek. “Hey,” she said softly. “You okay?”

The kid wouldn’t look at her. He kept his head down and his eyes fixed on the white rounds of his pant knees. She leaned closer to him. Whispered in his ear, “You need the bathroom?” He didn’t look up, but he freed one hand from the car seat and took hold of the sleeve of her sweater. He gripped it hard, his small hand kneading the fabric. He gathered more and started to twist. “Ow,” she breathed out. “That hurts. You’re pinching my skin.”

“Miss? Is everything all right?”

The boy kept an iron grip on the sweater sleeve. He drew back so he wouldn’t hurt her, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Miss!”

Melody swung her head toward the cop. “Look,” she said. “My son—I don’t know what. I think he needs to get to a bathroom. His school’s just a few miles ahead. I’m going to have to talk to you later. Okay?” Her voice cracked. “Will you just—okay?”

“Oh,” he said. His wedding ring clinked on the metal of the car door before he backed away. “Sure. Just slow down on the hills, lady. You need an escort or something? I could go ahead of you with the siren.”

Wrecker gripped tighter and it sent a volt of pain to the root of Melody’s brain. “No siren,” she gasped. “I’ll slow down.” She remembered to say thank you and the cop climbed into his cruiser and pulled away.

Melody moved to extract her right arm from Wrecker’s grip so she could start the engine. “Wrecker, let go.” She kept her voice as calm and low as she could. “I can’t drive with you hanging on.” She studied his face. His eyes weren’t closed but he kept them turned from her. He was as white as a sheet. What was this? Even his lips were pale. His hair had darkened with each year to a dirty blond but it looked brown against his skin. Slowly he eased up until his hand was open and resting on her forearm. She started to move her arm away but a thread caught on his fingernail and he gave a short, sharp cry of pain. “What!” she shouted, jangled to the quick. Trembling, she extracted the thread from his nail and took his hand in both of hers and held it to her cheek. “I’m sorry, Wrecker. I am. I’m so sorry.”

She could tell from the slight quiver that ran down his arm that he was holding himself as still as he could to keep from crying. He kept his head turned and all the misery in the world seemed trapped in the twist of that stiff neck.

Melody was desperate to say the right thing. She racked her brain for the exact words. Maybe his real mother would know what to say. His real—she fit the key in the ignition and waited for the engine to even out before pulling onto the road. As if it weren’t hard enough already, being a mother. No. Willow had to make it harder. She had to go and dig up that other one, turn her from the ghost who loitered around the edges of Melody’s fear into a flesh-and-blood human being sitting in a prison cell while another woman mothered her son.

My son, Melody thought savagely. He’s my son.

She looked straight out the windshield and kept the speed just below the limit until they arrived at the school. Melody halted the bus beside a spindly madrone. Wrecker stumbled out of his door, and she trotted around the front of the bus to catch up to him. “Does your stomach hurt?” She reached to adjust the shoulder strap of his knapsack. “Need the bathroom?” He pulled away from her touch and continued toward the front steps. “Wrecker,” she called softly. His back was turned but she thought she saw him hesitate. Even softer, she called, “You okay, buddy?”

The boy glanced over his shoulder toward her, and Melody caught his eye like a bird on the wing. She felt her own heart pumping like a bird’s heart, pulsing in her throat. She could haul him back or she could lose him for good and she stood paralyzed, afraid that any move she made would be the wrong move. But Wrecker slowed, and turned to face her. For a moment he seemed to waver. And then he started back in her direction.

Thank God. She opened her arms to him.

But he lowered his head and collided with her, butting her to the ground.

Wrecker’s arms swung like windmills. It was all Melody could do to dodge the blows, and when she rolled away she somehow—half by accident—got behind him, got her arms around his to stop their flailing. She held on tight. Dropped her head to gasp in his ear, “What? In the hell? Are you doing?”

He had froth around the corners of his mouth and she could barely understand his bellow. Until, suddenly, she could.

“F*ck, no! I would never,” she yelled, and squeezed hard. Wrecker paused in his thrashing. Melody roughly spun the boy to face her. He dropped his chin and she reached out and lifted it until his eyes were forced to meet hers. “I would never let him take you. Never. Not him and nobody else. Do you understand me? Never.” He watched her and she thought, Oh God let it be true. Forget everything else I have ever asked of you and give me the strength for this one thing.

She felt him reach his gaze behind her eyes and grope around for the shape of her prayer.

For today. Okay.

His body relaxed some under her grip and she eased off a bit. Melody glanced over her shoulder and saw that they’d attracted an audience. She dragged her shoulder across her cheek to wipe the sweat and elbowed toward the school. “You going in?” He barely blinked but she understood him. “Then get in the car,” she muttered, and released him.

Wrecker did as he was told. Melody stood and faced the small crowd that had assembled. Their faces were aghast. “Well,” she said. She tugged on the hem of her jacket and cleared her throat. “I guess we’ll see you on Monday,” and she managed a wave before bolting for the bus and pulling away.

Wrecker was laughing softly. The color had come back into his face. “Did you see them, Deedee?” he asked. “Did you? They looked like—”

Melody brought the bus to a screeching, shuddering stop in the middle of the road. “Wrecker,” she said, her voice trembling. “I swear to God I will not give you away. But do not hit me again. Understand? Because—”

“Okay.”

“Because—”

“O-kay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” she muttered, and shifted into gear and started forward again. They were as real as it could possibly get for each other. That woman in jail—“Okay,” she said. She started to laugh. It tasted like salt and lilacs, like snot and pine needles and a torn heart. “Okay,” she said again. Wrecker was laughing hard. He was starting to hoot. “Okay.” Torn but still functioning. Okay. It would have to be.

Melody maneuvered the bus fitfully up and down the small hills and around the bends as the road traversed the valley and headed for the sea. Wrecker hummed to himself beside her. He seemed pleased to have the afternoon off. Melody squinted at him. He bounced back fast, but for her? It had been weeks and still she couldn’t shake the scare of Willow’s trip to the prison. It had flattened her confidence and left her second-guessing every move she made with the boy, looking over her shoulder for the long arm of judgment to snatch him away.

All this, because of that damned check. It had come in the mail without warning, a piddling inheritance that was the scant remainder of Meg’s parents’ estate once the banks and the creditors and the government and the lawyers got through taking their cut. It was laughably small, but Len was adamant. It wasn’t right for one daughter to inherit everything. He didn’t care what the will specified; as Meg’s guardian, he wouldn’t let her accept it. He would locate Lisa Fay and deliver her half.

He would not, Willow said. She was due for a trip to the city. She would take the money.

When Melody caught wind of the plan it raised every hair on her body. Len had launched some bad ideas before, but this one was terrible. Rotten as a fetid fish and just as dangerous, and Melody had not had a single stinking say in the matter. When she’d tried, both Len and Willow had gazed at her—gently, affectionately, entirely blankly—and then went back to debating the best way to handle the situation. When she’d shouted with exasperation that she was the one raising the kid and should therefore be party to this decision, they had finally paused and paid attention.

“Melody,” Willow said, somewhat quizzically. “This is not about you.”

“It’s about Wrecker!”

Len and Willow looked at each other, considering, and then back at Melody. “No,” Willow said, “it isn’t, actually.” It was about Meg, she explained, and Meg’s sister. And their parents. It was a small part about Len, who wouldn’t cash the check unless he could split it with Lisa Fay. “None of it is about me. That’s why I’m the obvious person to bring it down to her.” And Len, determined though he was, couldn’t talk her out of it.

Willow was gone for a week. She took the Greyhound down to San Francisco, did some sleuthing, and tracked Meg’s sister down at Chino, the giant prison east of L.A. Willow was gaunt and exhausted when she returned. She had visited the prison twice. They had spoken for a long time. Lisa Fay wouldn’t take the money.

“She wants you to have it,” Willow told Melody.

“Me,” Melody scoffed. “She doesn’t know me.” Her face suddenly blanched. “No.” She watched Willow’s face closely. “You didn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “No, Willow. You couldn’t have.”

Lisa Fay needed to know that her son was safe, Willow explained. Was that so hard to understand? And so Willow—Willow had told her. Where Wrecker was, who was raising him in her absence, what he looked like at eight, which foods he liked and which he could not abide. Willow told Lisa Fay how Meg had suffered in the dental surgery, she told her that her parents had died—but at length, and in as much detail as she could muster, she described the boy’s life at Bow Farm. In exchange, Lisa Fay told Willow everything: who had fathered the boy, what happened in Wrecker’s first years, the whole sordid story of her arrest and trial and incarceration.

“I don’t want to know,” Melody cried bitterly. “None of it.” She glanced at Willow and away, her eyes flashing with anger and pain. “And don’t you tell Wrecker.” She glared at Willow. “Promise me that. Not a word.”

“He should know, Melody. It’s his history.”

“This is his history!” She swung her arms stiffly. “Bow Farm. The Mattole. You, Ruth, Johnny, me. The rest is dead weight, Willow. You want to remind him of that? Whatever happened to him, you want to bring that back?”

Willow looked at her steadily. “You’re making a mistake. Someday—”

“Someday I’ll explain it to him.” Melody felt her breath scour her insides. It was no lie, what they’d told him—and no secret. Someone Len knew had given the boy up for adoption. With Meg ill, Melody had stepped in to raise him. Len signed the important papers, but Melody was his mother. It was as close to legal as things got in the Mattole, and it had been working just fine. “But not now. It would just confuse him. He doesn’t remember any of that, anyway.”

“There’s a photograph.”

Melody felt Willow’s soft voice seep in to stain her heart. “No.” Her lips closed in a tight line and she worked her hands, squeezing the knuckles. “Absolutely not.”

“It’s his history.”

“And this is his present,” Melody snapped back. “This is his reality, Willow. Don’t you realize how vulnerable he is? If she wanted to take him back—” Melody stopped and tore her gaze away. Only Len, skinny Len, stood between her and losing Wrecker—and he was no protection at all.

Melody felt panic grip her throat. Her brother Jack was a lawyer. Could she count on him to help her? Maybe she should take Wrecker and run. But—leave the Mattole? Where would they go? She forced herself to turn back to Willow. “No.” Melody lifted her eyes to confront Willow’s steady, penetrating stare. “That’s my decision.”

The corners of Willow’s mouth turned down. There was a long pause, and then she nodded slowly, as if deciding something. “All right,” she said, her voice low and measured. “I’ll hold it for him. You tell me when it’s okay.”

Melody shot a sidelong glance at the boy, now. He was gazing out the window at a trio of horses in a green pasture. Wrecker liked horses, but they made him sneeze.

Did his mother sneeze at horses, too?

It would never be okay, Melody knew. But that didn’t mean she could keep it from him forever.

The boy rode shotgun for Melody all the rest of the afternoon. They took care of business at the post office, making copies at the only Xerox machine for miles, and Wrecker filled up on free popcorn at the counter while Melody struggled with paper jams and a defunct stapler. They doubled back to the Mercantile to check produce inventory and phone in the order by the supplier’s deadline. Wrecker went looking for Al. Melody sussed the situation with the cantaloupe and kale; she was getting it down out of Eureka and it was looking a little shabby. The Ukiah distributor was more professional and had higher-quality stock but charged too much to bring it this far north. Nine tenths of this job was aggravation, and now she had to tell the others payday wouldn’t happen until Monday. Dreyfus needed the weekend receipts to keep the checks fluid. Why were these apples stacked so poorly? DF Al was supposed to take care of that. Where the hell was he, anyway?

Wrecker reappeared. “I can’t find him.” He had shed his jacket.

“Where’d you look?” Melody was tallying: two crates of apples, an assortment of squash, spinach if it looked any good, low on citrus. Bad time of the year to buy citrus. Plenty of onions.

“In the stockroom, in the bathroom, out back by the trash bins. And I asked Sheila.”

“What’d she say?” Melody glanced at the short redheaded girl in the velvet shirt running the cash register. Sheila was a slut. It was her most likable quality. Melody suspected her of underreporting her drawer, but she had been there longer than anyone else and this gave her a kind of mystical protection. Besides, Dreyfus needed her. Everybody knew the Merc couldn’t stay afloat on the business it did; Dreyfus had a more lucrative side gig hooking up the Mattole growers with his city connections, and Sheila’s farm grew better bud than any of the others. Not even Johnny Appleseed’s forest crop could match her quality.

Wrecker shrugged. “Said he had to go. Can I have a licorice?” He preferred real candy, but the Mercantile only stocked the healthy kind.

“No. Had to go where?”

“Fix his car or something. Why not?”

Melody had lifted the phone to call in the produce order but she put it down to look at him. “What’d you have so far today? Dried apricots, popcorn, and whatever candy Al gave you? Don’t shake your head. I know he gave you candy.” She lifted the phone to her ear again but kept talking to him. “He’s in deep shit, your friend. He’s supposed to be working today.” She held the phone with her shoulder and dialed the number on the sheet. “He’s this far away from—” She held her thumb and index finger barely apart. “Hello? Yeah, hi. This is Melody? Lost Coast Mercantile? I’ve got my produce order.” She muffled the mouthpiece with one hand while she gestured to Wrecker to come closer. “What?” she said, turning her attention back to the phone. “No, nobody told me that. I know. I just don’t think— Okay. All right. Monday, then.” And she hung up the handset with a crash.

Sheila twisted her neck to look over toward them. “What?” Melody challenged. She looked down at Wrecker. “Where’s your coat?”

“Just one licorice?” he bargained.

“One, then. And find your coat. We’ll be late to meet Ruth.” She fished a dime out of her pocket and gave it to him for the candy. “Get an egg, too. Something to keep you anchored down.” She added a quarter to the dime. The Mercantile sold them hard-boiled. “Meet you in the bus. I’ve got to run next door and talk to the mechanic.”

Wrecker nodded. He walked to the checkout counter and watched Sheila dig an egg out of the glass jar for him. He gave her the licorice and the coins.

“You could get another one with the money you’ve got,” she said.

“I can only have one.”

She yawned. At the end she patted her mouth delicately with her fingers. “Just doing the math for you.”

Wrecker nodded. He walked back to the candy counter and strung another black shoelace from its mates. Already the shadows were getting long. He walked to the bus and climbed in. A moment later Melody jumped in the driver’s side and fired the engine. Wrecker brought both black strings out from the bag.

“I thought—”

“It’s okay, Deedee.” Wrecker handed her one. “I got this one for you.”

The main gate to the salvage yard was shut by the time they got there, but everyone knew that meant go around to the door in the chain link fence that flanked the office. Melody waved to the stout man who ran the yard from the desk. He never stepped out of the office until he was ready to leave for the day, but he had a photographic memory of the layout of the lot. He didn’t need to step out. He could tell you which parts were still on which vehicle in the whole sixteen-acre spread. Melody marveled at a brain like that.

“Ruth still here?” she shouted.

He didn’t look up. “Northeast corner ’66 blue Ford one ton. Close in half an hour.” The words ran together out of the side of his mouth. The first time she met him, Melody thought he spoke a foreign language. It took some experience to parse the meaning of his utterances. “Half an hour I ain’t waiting,” he warned. “I put the dogs in and I go home.”

She and Wrecker took off at a trot. The lanes were wide enough between the rows of junked cars to tow them in and out. The place smelled of engine oil and the damp rot of car seats exposed to months of rain. It didn’t help Melody to realize that half the cars she passed looked in better shape than her van. She tossed a look of longing at a black Studebaker coupe. Now, that was styling. She shook off the thought. That wasn’t styling, it was stupid. More stupid. If she ever had the chance to replace the bus she’d probably get another just like it. Only one that worked.

She looked down at Wrecker, gliding effortlessly beside her while she puffed and strained. Maybe she should get a station wagon. Didn’t mothers drive station wagons? Maybe that was the trick to it all. Get the station wagon and there, in the operator’s manual, were all the little tips that made you successful not just as a driver but as a proper carpooler, as a fully accepted hostess and caretaker of other mothers’ children, as a just disciplinarian, as a sympathetic listener, as a solver of problems (mathematical and otherwise), as a pillar of the community and an unshakeable source of confidence and protection for her own child’s growing self-esteem—

All right. So that was a lot to ask of a car.

She looked down at the kid again. Good stride. Quirky sense of humor. Ten fingers ten toes. Deeply, unreasonably adored. That thing this afternoon—

So not everything could be anticipated. Not everything could be warded off. Not everything—oh, God! Where was the justice in this?

She crossed her fingers. She caught his eye and he smiled.

They found Ruth just where the desk man had said she’d be. They found her boots, anyway. The rest of her was banging away under the chassis of the blue Ford.

“Hey, girl,” Melody said. “You almost done? They’re closing in”—she lifted Wrecker’s wrist to check his watch—“in twenty minutes.”

Ruth’s voice was muffled by the truck body. “You bring that number?”

“Got it right here.” Melody reached into her pocket for the scrap with the information Ruth needed. The farm truck was down again. Ruthie had hitched a ride to the junkyard and called Melody at the Mercantile to ask for a ride home and to bring her a part number and a price from the book at the Napa counter. It would come in handy, Ruthie told her, when it came time to pay. The desk man was a genius, everybody knew it, but he was as tight as a man could get and stay in business.

Slowly, incrementally, Ruth started to work her way out from under the truck. Each movement radiated pain. Melody watched the legs of her grease-streaked jeans emerge first, then the broad belt with the fist-sized buckle that encircled her wide waist, then the faded plaid of her flannel shirt. Ruth’s head arrived last, round and watch-capped. She grinned at Wrecker. “Hey, you little fart. Bring me anything good to eat?”

Like a magic trick, Wrecker pulled the egg, unbroken, from his pocket and held it like a diamond in the light. It glowed golden in the last rays of the sun.

Ruth guffawed. She still lay on her back. Melody knew it would be a lengthy process to get her unkinked and ambulatory. “You eat it,” Ruth said. “I eat one more egg I’ll turn into a chicken.” They were all sick of them. Johnny Appleseed’s hens laid the cheapest packets of protein they could access and there was some discussion at the farm over whether they would sprout wings or feathers first.

“Br-br-br-br-BAWK,” Wrecker crowed. He cracked the shell and slipped the whole egg in his mouth. It made Melody shudder.

“You get the part?”

“I got it.” Ruth handed Melody a cruddy lump of metal. “Wasn’t easy.”

“Think it’ll work?”

“Damn well better,” she grumbled. “After all this. Help me with my tools.” She reached back under the truck for wrenches, for drifts, for a ball-peen hammer, and Melody took them as she passed them out, put them in their slots in the canvas tool wrap.

“Where’s this go?” Melody held up a small sledge and Ruthie gestured to the bucket. “Wrecker saved me from a speeding ticket.”

“How’d he do that?”

Melody flushed and looked up. The boy was several vehicles away, climbing onto the running board of an old pickup. She watched him for a minute and turned back to Ruth. “I’m an a*shole.” She pulled her jacket tighter around her.

The older woman struggled onto an elbow. She wore a streak of grease across her face like war paint. “Well, I won’t argue with you about that. What happened?”

“Damn cop.” Melody shook her head. “Pulled me over at the bottom on Thompson Creek Hill. A cop there, on the Mattole Road. Can you believe it?”

“Your lucky day.”

“Something like that.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “So I’m talking to him, and when I glance over at Wrecker he looks like he’s going to throw up. I told the cop I needed to go ahead and get Wrecker to his school, that it was an emergency.”

“He let you go?” Ruth was sitting up by now.

Melody nodded. “I got to the school and Wrecker went berserk.” She glanced at Ruth. “I didn’t realize it until then.”

“The cop.” Melody’s face twisted in a thin smile and Ruth shook her head, looked down at the dirt. “Poor kid must have freaked,” Ruth murmured. “Probably hasn’t been that close to a cop since they picked him up under the bridge, all those years ago.” She rubbed her hand across her face and the grease smeared onto her chin. “Sweet mother of God. If I could just wash all that—”

“Dream on.”

Ruthie glanced at her sharply. “Oh. You giving up now?”

“Shut up, Ruth.” Melody scowled and bunched her shirt cuffs into her fists. “I’m just saying. Those first three years? I thought we’d gotten past that. I thought that was over.”

“So we quit on him?”

“You know that’s not—”

“Well then, what?” Ruth struggled to her feet.

“Christ, Ruth!” Melody’s voice rose into a yelp. “Back off.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and shook her head to fend off tears. “It’s just hard.” Harder than anything she’d ever done, already. Hard enough before Willow went and told that woman, that Lisa Fay, where to find him. What if she got out early? Wasn’t anybody else as scared they’d lose him? She dropped her volume, tried to even out her voice. “It’s a hard time, now. That’s all I’m saying.”

But Ruth wouldn’t budge. “Hard for him?” Her voice was sharper than Melody had ever heard it. “Or hard for you?”

Melody felt it like the sting of a slap, and stalked away.

Wrecker was standing on the hood of the old pickup when he saw Melody storm off. He watched her back and then he slid down the left fender and walked over to Ruth.

“Where’s Deedee going?”

Ruth wiped her hands on the rag she kept in her back pocket. She looked down at the boy and shrugged. “Taking the long way, I guess,” she said. “We’ll meet her at the gate. I’ve got to pay for this part before the Desk Man closes shop. Go on and grab that bucket and come with me.” Wrecker hesitated and Ruthie laid her hand on the back of his neck. “Leave her be,” she said. “She’s just getting some air. Aren’t you cold? Where’s your jacket?”

Wrecker flushed. His jacket. He looked up at her. “I’m not cold.”

“Left it at the Merc? Fair enough, then. Get it tomorrow.”

They walked together past the rows of cars. Wrecker peered down each intersection.

Ruthie said, “She’s coming.”

They could see the office ahead. The Desk Man was standing outside with someone else. It could be Melody. But they got closer and saw that it wasn’t. It was a man.

“Uh-oh,” Ruth said. “Better hurry.” But she couldn’t go a lot faster than she already was. Faster for her meant a determined look on her face and a more exaggerated limp. When they got closer the other man came toward them. He reached to take the U-joint and tool roll from her hands. He was a young man with a friendly, almost goofy smile.

“DF Al!” Wrecker exclaimed.

“Hey, buddy!” He clocked the boy on the shoulder. “You out fixing your ride?”

“Where’s Deedee?”

“Lady,” the Desk Man grumbled. “I’m closed up.”

“Not for me you’re not,” Ruth warned. “Let’s talk about price.”

“I said I’m closed.”

“You quoted me six bucks over new. Forget that! I’ll give you half.”

“Did you see her?”

DF Al looked at Wrecker. “Is this your aunt?”

“Give me twenty bucks and get out of here. You’re wasting my time.”

“Al. She go out already?”

Ruth wasn’t happy, Wrecker could tell from the red on her cheeks. But she pulled a crumpled bill from her pocket and handed it to the man. “This doesn’t work, I’m bringing it back.”

“I’m late,” he grumbled. “Past closing.” He gestured toward his truck or the setting sun, it wasn’t clear. “Go on, now. I’m letting out the dogs.”

Wrecker said loudly, “Where’s Deedee?”

They all turned to look at him.

Melody reclined with the Studebaker seat pushed all the way back and her legs stretched out in front of her, her ankles crossed and her arms folded across her chest. The sun was a lump of red in the rearview mirror. She had quit crying and was just listening to the breath whistle in and out through her nose. The sound was oddly comforting. She knew she should be getting back but felt that she had discovered a pristine, unrecycled pocket of calm that couldn’t last, and that it would be sinful to turn her back on it. She gave it six breaths. She gave it ten and then opened the car door and got out.

Ambling up the lane was a thin man with a shuffling walk, a dark apostrophe that resolved, as he got closer, into DF Al.

“You,” she said.

He stopped a few yards from her and shifted his weight from foot to foot. He reached a hand to scratch the back of his neck and then ran it over the beard growth on his chin. “I guess so.”

She laughed. It surprised her and she put her hand to her mouth. She had been exposed, as—as what?

He didn’t seem to care. He just stood there and let the evening air spill over him.

“You know what I’d like, Al?” Melody felt emotion swell again in her throat and had to talk just to keep it from spilling out. “For a little while? I’d like everything just to stop. Just for a bit. So I could stand here and smoke a joint with you.” Her voice wobbled, but she kept going. “We could talk about nothing. Bullshit. Whatever.” She took a deep breath and leaned back against the car door. “Then I’d like to smoke another one. And then—” She glanced at him and almost said it. Because it was true, he looked good, standing there like that. And the truth hurt.

It had been so goddamned long.

He didn’t look embarrassed. He just nodded, his head gently bobbing, his body moving slowly forward with each dip of his chin until he stood close enough for one more nod to bring the rough scratch of his beard gently onto the crown of her head. His arms had somehow taken up positions around hers to circle her rib cage. He kept his body close but tilted his chin back and to the side to gaze at her. “Aw,” he said. She watched him smile and then he leaned forward and let his breath ruffle the whorls of her ear. “I gave up weed a long time ago.”

Melody felt a sob disguised as a warble of laughter escape.

Al shuffled into the opening it made and reached beside her to unlatch the back door. He made a formal gesture with his hand, but his eyes, warm behind the black-framed glasses, held her steady as Melody let herself sink onto the horsehair bench. Her heart was bruised and her confidence torn to ribbons, but when Al squeezed in beside her, bumping a bony knee against her hip and releasing a cloud of dust from the seatback, she could feel it start to mend. As long as he kept doing that. And that. As long as he didn’t stop with any of that.

It was nearly dark when they made their way back to join the others. The Desk Man was agitated in a damped-down, church-whispering way. “Don’t come back,” he said, but not to anybody in particular. He led the dogs, two sleepy Dobermans who stretched and yawned and slobbered on Wrecker’s hand, out of the office. He released them into the yard and then herded everyone outside the gate. “Don’t you come back,” he muttered again, and got in his truck and revved the engine and drove away.

“Ruthie,” Melody said. She felt as though someone had scraped away the top layer of her skin and left everything internal—blood vessels, organs, emotions—horrendously exposed. “This is DF Al.”

Ruth looked from her face to his and down to take in Wrecker. The boy was watching Melody carefully. Ruthie reached for his hand and pulled him closer to her, but he wouldn’t be drawn in. It wasn’t an angry resistance; he was simply magnetized in a different direction. “Right,” she said. She turned her gaze back to Melody. “What’s the DF part?”

Melody flushed. She had come up with many derogatory tags. She had not been discreet about it, either. She winced and offered, “Damn Fine?”

Wrecker kept watching her. He said, his voice soft, “Deedee’s Friend.”

The man stepped forward. He took Ruth’s hand in both of his and shook it. “Douglas Franklin Albert Rice,” he said. “And the pleasure is all mine.”