The black vinyl snapped and cracked when I sat on it. The night was cold like that. I fumbled the key into the switch, twisted it and the engine ground around until it’d hacked itself into a roar. Even in the cold, the cab stank like gas and sweat and grease burgers.
I grabbed the mic off the dash, “Eight-two in service, whatcha got Ronald?”
“H.P., northbound 35E at Maryland. Accident, car’s in the lane.”
“Ten-four, in route.”
I stomped the clutch and ground the stick into reverse. It was five-thirty in the evening, dark and starting to snow.
Eight-two’s one of Ronald’s wreckers. It’s got a strong motor and good tires, but the body sits on the frame like the fat on Ronald’s belt, kind of saggy and loose. It makes a racket going down the road.
At the end of the block I was driving forty miles an hour. I blew through the stop sign with my foot on the floor. The Highway Patrol contract is big dough and they like us on the scene quick.
I caught a yellow at the intersection and was hoofing it fast up Rice Street when I saw Eight-eight coming the other way. Red with white lettering, Ronald’s trucks stand out from the traffic. George in his blue company coveralls was on the seat.
He tossed me a thumbs-up as he rolled past, then cracked the radio, “Stevie, you got that Highway Patrol?”
“Ten-four.”
“Just come south on 35, looks a good one. Bet you want to know who’s at the scene, don’t you?” I could hear the cackle in his voice.
“Shit.” I said, then keyed the mic, “Nice George, ain’t it, I can’t cuss your mother over the radio?”
“Why’d you want to do something like that for?” He laughed.
“You might want to circle back and get on at Pennsylvania, traffic’s jammed tight down to spaghetti bowl.”
Spaghetti bowl’s a little hollow in the middle of Saint Paul where a wad of freeways and ramps come together like noodles. “Ten-four,” I said and swung Eight-two down a side street.
The radio cracked again, “Lovely Rita, meter maid…” That’s George’s idea of being funny. I screwed down the volume.
The road surface was good yet and I drove fast down Pennsylvania. Two blocks from the ramp, the street turned into a parking lot. Nothing moving. I flicked on the red lights and went up the oncoming lane, a sure ticket if I was caught. According to the law, wreckers aren’t emergency vehicles. They’re supposed to appear on the scene same time as the ambulance and fire guys but with no red lights or siren or fast driving.
I went up the ramp at a crawl, leaning on the horn, red lights flashing. They moved over as they could and I inched by, wheels crunching axle deep in the snow on the one side, mirror grazing cars on the other.
On the freeway, the shoulder was open. I turned off the red lights and put my foot down. By the time I reached the scene, I was doing sixty-five still on the shoulder. I slammed on the brakes and skidded in rodeo-style, pisses her off every time.
Like George said, it was a good one. Somebody’d driven a Delta 88, a beater, banged and rusted to the knees up the bumper of a brand-new Pontiac. Parts and glass and pieces of yellow plastic were spattered all over two lanes of pavement.
I said hello to the cop. She was in the lane directing traffic.
“How you going, Rita?”
She was a few inches shorter than me, five-eight or so, with black hair she kept chopped off at the middle of her neck. Her hat, one of those Smokey the Bear things, she wore tilted down over her face. When she was feeling friendly, she’d tilt it back and pinch it there with her thumb and finger while those green eyes strolled around your face, then she’d yank it back down and all you’d see would be her chin and the brown felt brim of the hat.
She’d been on the force a couple of years, us seeing each other on the job now and again, when we ran into each other in a burger joint. Both of us were eating alone so we sat together. We talked for must have been two hours. When we were leaving, I’d asked her out.
“What do you do, Steve, for a living?” she’d said to me.
“You know what I do, I drive for Ronald.”
“What are you going to be doing in ten years?”
“Hadn’t much thought about it. Same thing I suppose.”
“Think about it,” she’d said. “Call me when you change your mind.”
That was six, eight months before. I hadn’t called her though I still saw her on the road.
“If Ronald wants to keep the contract, he’s going to have to get you guys on the scene faster. I’ve been out here dodging drunks for forty-five minutes.” The hat brim stayed low on her face and her chin, lit by the lights of the passing cars, looked like the butt end of a two-by-four.
“You expect this raggedy piece of shit’s gonna fly, Rita? Traffic’s stopped solid all the way down to spaghetti bowl.”
“Get it out of here.”
“How about the Pontiac?”
“She can drive it.”
The Olds was tore up good. So was the kid driving it. Young, eighteen may nineteen, he looked a Minnesotan, dirt blond hair, heavy shoulders and stumpy legs. He had on a jean jacket over a red vest and chopper mittens on his hands. His nose was bleeding from where his head must have hit the wheel. You could see on his cheeks where he’d been spearing it around with his mittens. He’d been sitting in the cruiser but came over when I backed up to his car.
He right away started talking about his old man. Said he was going to thrash him for wrecking the car. I looked it over. He wasn’t going to be impressed, that was sure. The grill was stove in all the way to the motor block, the hood was wrinkled and the bumper was lying on the pavement under the car. But that wasn’t my business.
I told the kid to sit in the truck while I hooked up. I threw a 4×4 under the twisted metal where the bumper used to be to protect the straps. They weren’t cheap and I’d cut one a couple of weeks before on a twisted bumper. Ronald would not be pleased if I wrecked another one. I threw the bumper on the back of the wrecker with timbers and chains and made a fast pass with the broom to make Rita happy.
“Where to?” Rita’d stopped traffic and waved us into the lane. We were rolling north on 35.
“How much do you think to fix it?”
“I expect it’s junk.”
The kid moaned. I looked across at him. He was sitting doubled over with his face in his hands.
“Go easy,” I said, “It was a piece of shit.”
He didn’t say anything, just sat there hunched over on the seat.
“Where you want to go? It’s costing you by the mile to have me drive you around.” I pulled off my gloves and slapped them on the defrosters to dry.
“Shit, how much is this going to cost?”
“Twenty-five to pick it up, buck-a-mile after the first three.”
The kid was quiet for a couple of seconds, then told me his address. It was in a little burg about forty miles north of the city. In that weather, it was going to be a ride. The snow was coming down thick and it was starting to blow, the gusts were shaking the truck, and the road was getting icy black. I could feel it getting slick through the wheel. I crunched around on the seat until my back was comfortable, lit a cigarette, then picked up the mic and called Ronald. I could hear in his voice he was pissed I was going out of town. Bad weather’s where he makes his money. He’d want all the trucks he could get.
“What work do you do?” I said to the kid.
“I’m studying some classes at Vo-Tech.”
“What are you taking up?”
“Pipe fitting.”
“You like it?”
“Could you not talk to me,” he said.
It was dark in the cab, but I got a glance at him in the headlights of on-coming cars. His head was leaned back against the window and his eyes were closed. His hands were fisted up on his knees. His jacket was open and he’d unzipped the vest. His bloody mittens lay on the seat between us.
“Whatever, you’re paying.”
We rode along like that, not saying anything. After a while, I clicked on the radio. It was a piece of shit Ronald’d salvaged from a junk car when the original died. Outside the city, the only station it would pick up was top-forty. I left it on to cover up the racket from the truck. The D.J. was babbling on the telephone to some teenage girl, ‘the ninth caller’. Every time he’d pause, she’d squeal. She’d won some record by a group I never heard of.
“Turn that shit off.”
“Look friend, you don’t have to listen to my conversation, but I’ll do what I want with the truck.” I twisted the volume up. The kid was starting to annoy me.
I glanced at him again, he was staring out through the windshield. Wasn’t much to see, just snow, big flakes of it coming straight at us in the headlights.
“I get a smoke from you?”
I didn’t say anything, just took the box out of my pocket and tossed it on the seat.
He punched the lighter. “I got to apologize,” he said. “We just bought that car and we ain’t got money to get another one.”
“Been there.”
“You been following that shit about farmers?”
“Seen something about them having troubles on TV the other night.”
He laughed, “I seen that. Bunch of guys standing around with shotguns holding off the sheriff. Ain’t no point in it. Banks and the government are going to get theirs no matter what. I know. My old man’s a farmer and that shit happened to him. Fucker’s took damn near everything we owned. Pretty much all we’ve got left is a few acres and the house. That’s how come we’re driving that piece of shit car and I’m going to pipe-fitting school, ain’t no future in farming.”
I looked over at the kid. He was staring again through the window at the snow.
We rode along not saying anything. After a while, he kept talking. “Now my old man’s got a job at a gas station. Works with a couple of guys I went to high school with. Makes four-fifty an hour. My mother’s cashiering down at the dairy store.”
“No money in that,” I said.
“Nope.” He changed the subject. “You know what the icing on this shit cake is? You know that cop back there?”
I said, “I know her.”
“Bitch gave me a ticket.”
“No shit? For what?”
“Following too close.”
I had to laugh. “Don’t surprise me. She gave me a speeder once. Said she’d clocked me over the limit four times in a week, time to slow me down. But I’ll tell you what, the woman gives a shit. Once saw her give mouth-to-mouth and CPR to a guy for must have been half an hour when it was twenty below, her going back and forth and back and forth between blowing in his mouth and sitting on his chest. Guy puking all over the place and her down on her knees on the shoulder just keeping on. Had to haul her away in the meat wagon, too, but the guy lived.”
Kid didn’t say anything. By then the road was slick enough we were only going about thirty and I was putting my attention to managing the truck. We’d passed a bunch of cars in the ditch already. Ronald would have my ass if he had to come pull me out.
I figured we had to be getting close, but the snow was too thick to see the exit sign. I told the kid to watch for the ramp. Fifteen minutes we rode like that, not talking, him peering out a hole he’d rubbed in the ice on the door window. We found it, skidded past and backed up.
The ramp had about eight inches on it, but the Eight-two with the kid’s car on the back rolled on up. He told me to take a left at the top. It was a half hour, him giving me directions, before we got to his place.
The drive curved up a hill to the house between two lines of trees. I could only barely make out the wheel ruts under the snow.
The truck slid around some getting up the hill but we made it and I pulled it up in front of the house. It was grey and even by the headlights you could see it was needing paint. There was plastic taped over the windows. Out back was a barn and a pole building.
“Where you want it?”
“This is good. Go ahead and unhook it. I’ll get my old man.” His voice was quiet.
“Can’t put it down ‘til I get paid.” That was Ronald’s rule. Ronald ran a tough outfit – over the radio. Always seemed kind of amusing when he expected a driver, who’d be standing in front of some hardass customer, to be so tough; “Take nothing but cash, don’t unhook ’til you got it.” Then you go in his office and he’s got bars on the windows and a .38 in the drawer.
The kid went inside. A couple of minutes later a guy came out. He was wearing Sorels, laces dragging in the snow, and zipping a parka. It was green with fake wolf fur around the hood. He tromped over to the car and I slid out of the truck.
He stood there staring at it, his bare hands resting in the snow on the fender. He didn’t say nothing. Just stared at it. Under the boom lights it looked bad, it looked like a loaf of bread somebody’d stomped on. I was facing him on the other side of the car. I’d turned off the truck and in the quiet you could hear the snow hissing when it hit the ground. And you could hear him breathing, slow and deep.
Then suddenly, he spun around and started yelling at the house. “Jesus Christ! Roy! Get your ass out here. There was a hoarseness in his voice, the kind that comes from dry cold and cigarettes.
The door slammed and the kid came stumbling down following in the old man’s footprints.
“You little son of a bitch.” Then his hand swung around and hit the kid in the face. It must have hurt, especially with that nose, but the kid stood there and took it. The hand pulled back again, “You goddamned, worthless…”
“Sam, don’t you hit that boy.” The door crashed again and a woman came running down the path. She slipped and fell, picked herself up and kept coming. She didn’t bother to brush off the snow. An old woman, maybe sixty, she was wearing just a brown dress and house slippers on her feet.
“Ellie, goddamn it, you stay out of this.”
“Sam, I’m not going to stand here and let you beat my son.”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“Shut up, Roy. Get up to the house.” The old lady was standing in front of the old man, her hands on her hips, her elbows poking straight out to either side, “Don’t do this, Sam.”
“Look what he did to the car, Cat.”
“I don’t care. We’ll get another one.”
“With what?”
They kept on that way. I got back in the truck, I didn’t need to hear it.
After a while, the old man came around the truck and I got out, “How much?” he said. He had his wallet out.
“Seventy-three.”
He’d pushed his hood back and under the boom lights I could see his face clear. He looked older than the woman, bald on top with straight grey hair hanging down over his ears. His nose was red with busted blood vessels and his lips were raw and blistered like he spent a lot of time outside. He stared at me. His eyes were glassy and grey but steady, like the headlights of an old car on a dark road. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.
“Look,’ he said like he didn’t want me to hear, “we ain’t got it.”
“I don’t set the prices, I just drive the truck. You can’t pay, I got to take the car.” I could feel Ronald leaning on my shoulder.
He stared at me for what must have been a minute, the headlight eyes flickered, “Take it,” he said.
I got in the truck and started it, then turned It off. The old man hadn’t moved. I got out and shuffled through the snow to him.
“Look,” I said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”
“Get the fuck out of here.” The headlights had come on strong and bright and were aimed straight in my face.
“Listen,” I could see the old lady standing on the other side of the car watching us, “I can get a couple of hundred bucks for that car at a scrapyard. Lots of good parts in it. Why don’t I give you the difference now between the cost of the tow and what I can get for it. Save you some trouble and you’ll get a few bucks out of it.”
I didn’t see it coming. I guess I didn’t expect it. Out of nowhere his fist slashed around and caught me on the side of my head and threw me back against the truck and then I was lying on my back in the snow with a tingle in my spine and a whistling in my ears and the old lady was bending over me asking about my health.
She pulled me to my feet and leaned me against the truck while she brushed off the snow, all the while saying how sorry she was and please don’t get pissed off. The old man didn’t move, just stood there.
I didn’t say anything, not to the old lady, not to him, just put my foot on the running board and got in the truck. He didn’t move even when I backed the car right up to him turning it around. He just stood there. He wasn’t looking at the car or the truck or me or nothing.
I headed down the hill. I was at the bottom pulling out onto the road when I felt the truck start to go. I spun the wheel and stomped the gas. Too late, and slow and gentle Eight-two and the Olds slid into the ditch.
I didn’t bother trying to drive it out. Eight-two was a two-wheel drive truck, dualies in the rear and it was almost on its side, the car jackknifed up against it. It wasn’t going anywhere. Ronald was going to be pissed.
I called him.
“You what? Damn it, Steve.” He clicked off the mic and there was a long quiet during which I knew he was saying a lot of shit you can’t say over the radio, then, “Can’t you winch it out?”
“Got a car on the hook.”
“I can’t get anybody out there. Highway Patrol’s going to close 35 if the snow doesn’t let up. Let me call Freddie’s and see if they can get a truck out.”
Freddie’s is a little outfit that runs around the area north of the cities.
I was afraid to idle the engine on an angle like that so I didn’t have any heat and the seat was so steep I was jammed up against the door. I lay back on the black vinyl, closed my eyes and shivered.
Ronald hadn’t called back when I heard a noise, a clanking. I couldn’t see anything from inside the truck but it was getting louder. I got out. I had to climb through the passenger door because the driver’s door was wedged against the side of the ditch.
It was a tractor, coming down from the house. I could see the outline of the old man’s parka behind the wheel. And next to him, the kid sitting on the fender. It was an old machine, looked like a dinosaur skeleton with wheels. It had chains on the back that clanked in the snow.
The old man pulled it around in front of the truck and the kid got down. He had a log chain over his shoulder, “Where you want to hook it?” he said.
Links the size of my fist and caked with rust and black grease, damn thing must have weighed a hundred pounds. I grabbed an end, hauled it through the push bumper and shackled it to the frame rail. The kid dropped the other end over the axle of the tractor. I climbed in and started the truck and he flagged on the old man.
Old bastard must’ve spent most of his life on a tractor seat. It it’d been me, I would’ve backed up and put as much slack in that chain as I could then run at it and try to snatch the truck out. Not the old man. He come up against the end of that chain slow and gentle, then eased into the load, letting them tall tires bite down through the snow into the gravel road. As soon as he got traction, boom, he snapped the clutch out and I buried my foot and the Eight-two jerked forward and we earned a couple of feet.
A bit at a time, it took us more than an hour to drag that truck out of the ditch but we did it. And we didn’t break anything. While we were at it, the old lady came down with a thermos of coffee. She was better dressed now in a long coat and rubber boots. She put the thermos on the truck seat and started shoveling snow and hauling that chain. She could pick the damn thing up as easy as I could.
“I was afraid you might have trouble,” she said when we stopped to catch our breath. “Sam and I pull two or three out of here every winter. Sam,” she yelled, “get down and have some coffee.”
Just when we got the truck back on the road, Ronald called to say Freddie couldn’t make it. I explained what had happened, standing on the running board to keep the snow out of the truck, then turned to say thanks. But the old man was headed up the road to the house, the kid sitting on the fender. Already I could hardly see them for the snow. The old lady opened the passenger door and pulled her thermos off the seat, “You want some to take with you?” she asked.
I poured a cup and climbed into the truck. In the cold the black vinyl had hardened. When I sat on it, something tore under my ass and then, stitch by stitch, I felt the seat cover rip wide open. I didn’t bother to look at it.
“Eight-two clear and headed for the barn,’ I said into the mic.
“Ten-four, Eight-two, come on in.”
I dropped the car in the lot and pulled the wrecker around in front of the shop. There were six or eight trucks inside. From under the four-oh, a White tractor with a Holmes 650 wrecker body on the back, I heard the chatter of an air wrench. I squatted down to see who was working on it.
“Stevie, what’s happening. Sounds like you had a time of it.”
“A little tough. Kid ran his car up the ass of a Firebird. The old man couldn’t pay for it.”
George laughed, more of his humor.
I asked him if Ronald was around.
“Nope. He went home just after you cleared.”
I shrugged and walked back to office, picked up the phone and dialed Rita’s number. I didn’t have to look it up, it was one of those that sticks in your head. The clock on the wall read just past midnight.