Hat Tricks

Taylor poked the search button on the dashboard causing the digital display to cycle up, then down, then full circle back to the Bible spouting station, apparently the only station he could receive up here in the Mountains. The radio preacher warned, “. . . the thing about the road less traveled is that it often don’t go nowhere, and that’s why folk avoid it. So many

 youngsters today are following the road when they should be following the map.”  

     “No one uses maps anymore,” he told the radio as he turned it off. He wished he could hear some music, something his mother used to play on a turntable, something about country roads like the road he was on. Was the name of it Mountain Mama or maybe Mountain High – and something about Virginia or was it West Virginia – why did we have two Virginias anyway? Well, why not? There are two Carolinas, and he was driving through the northern one when he heard the bass beat of slack rubber slapping the tar. He eased the Crown Victoria over to the shoulder stopping well shy of the cliff like precipice. He stepped out on cramped legs, sucked in a lungful of clean, thin, cool air, took in the vista of mountains and clouds, and found a near flat driver’s side rear tire. 

     He gazed down the precipice which ended in swirls of white mist, He tried his cell phone reconfirming the absence of service. He had first driven this boatish car at three that morning when he left the dispatch yard in Newark. It belonged to a Mr. Marks in Miami who intended to add it to his fleet of taxis and was willing to reimburse for the gas (and now a new tire, guessed Taylor) if someone would drive it down there. Mr. Marks would get his car; Taylor got an almost free ride.

     Now, he was going to have to work for his passage. He found the jack and a full-sized spare and had the left rear in the air before discovering the wheel lock. A puzzle piece key was required to remove the lock; so, he searched for such in the glove box, and behind the visors, and under the mats.

     He was rereading the contract he’d signed when the pick up rattled past him. The brakes squeaked, the truck stopped and then ued. Then it passed him going the other way, only to squeak, u, and pull up behind him. The driver killed the engine, fiddled with the shift, cut the wheels toward the roadway, and yanked a bleating cable brake. She was female, he guessed, as she emerged and her work boots touched the pavement. Her worn khakis were incongruously clean and pressed. A greenish sweatshirt under a Carhartt jacket emphasized her shapelessness. A red MAGA hat topped her short gray hair. She yelled, “Got trouble?”

    “I hope not,” he thought. He didn’t know anyone who wore MAGA hats. He had never known anyone from below the Mason-Dixon. He pointed to the unmovable bolt and said, “I’ve got a locked wheel and no key.”

      Her stubby, scarred fingers explored the plastic ring and asked, “What is this thing?”

     “It’s a wheel lock. It prevents thieves from stealing your tires.”

     “Shit,” she said, “Down here, they just steal the whole car. Didn’t you get a key to it when you bought the car?”

     He waved the contract at her as he explained that he had neither bought nor rented the car but was receiving free gas for driving it south. She rocked on her heels and lit a Winston before pronouncing, “Well, locks only keep honest people out. You want me to remove this thing?”

     “Yes, please,” he said, “or get me to a service station or maybe . . . “  While he was searching for alternatives, she went back to her truck and returned with a sledge hammer and a gunny sack of clinking metal. She dropped the sack and extracted a ratchet head which she held up to the wheel lock. She stood still as she positioned and repositioned the socket against the lug,

     He was about to state the obvious: that the parts wouldn’t fit when she swung the sledge and hammered it home. The big car shook on its jacked-up perch. She followed the first blow with another which again tipped the car toward the cliff but nonetheless set the socket firmly over the lug.

     “Ha!” she laughed, “Damn few problems that can’t be fixed with a bigger hammer.”

     She dropped her jacket beside the bag and pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She slid a tire iron crosswise through the socket and applied both arms and her girth to the task. Ropey sinews emerged through the slack crepe of her forearms and a walnut like bicep popped out of her upper arm. The lug screeched as it backed out of its nest. Then it squealed, and she freed it by hand. She held it out to him, the ratchet head and the rusty lug united forever. “You want it?”

     “Don’t think so,” he said.

     “Hell no, both pieces are useless now. Still, I might need just such a thing somewhere /sometime,” she said and dropped the item into the sack. “Well, you got it from here. I’ve got to see Miss Aggie. You can fix the spare on with four lugs, and you’ll make it to George’s”

     “Who’s George?” he asked wondering also who Miss Aggie was.

     “Garage, down about ten miles. He can patch your tire and sell you another lug. He can take the other locks off too . . smoother than I did.”

     She was gone before he remembered to thank her. He had a spare tire held on by four lugs carrying him down the road before he remembered he had been afraid of her. In fact, he was afraid of this whole region. He wanted to get out of the South and to Miami, which despite being further south was not the South.  He thought of skipping George’s and discarded the thought. Driving without a spare was unthinkable.

     Then he saw the pick up on the shoulder and pulled up behind it. He found her under the hood which was propped up with a one by four pine board. He wondered why he had stopped as he didn’t think he could be any help, but she looked at him from across the manifold and said, “Good. Give me a lift to George’s.”

     When she entered the car, she glanced at the BLM hat sitting on the back seat and said, “So, you’re one of them.”

     “Sure as you’re one of those,” he said pondering how MAGA hats and BLM hats could occupy the same cosmos let alone the same car.

     They rode in silence till she asked, “Do you really want to do away with cops?”

     “Absolutely not,” he said.

     “Well, that’s alright then,” she allowed and having established the possibility of coexistence, she told him about the fuel pump. George could get a used one for her, but he still needed a hundred for it. Meanwhile, she had been thinking she could squeeze a few more weeks out of the one that had just failed and now Miss Aggie’s left alone; so, she concluded, “I’m fucked again.”

     George’s proved to be a building marked only by a five-foot square sign promising “GAS”  above a no brand gas pump. The interior oozed motor oil as did George himself, a tall black man in coveralls open enough to reveal gray chest hair, who also smelled of Day’s Work chewing tobacco although Taylor couldn’t have identified that scent. He embraced the woman and called her Tina which surprised Taylor as he had assumed that MAGA people and black men lived in separate universes or at least used separate garages. He said, “Old pump give out on you, didn’t it?”

     He nodded in sympathy but decided to deal with Taylor’s problem first. The injured tire was submerged into a tub of water and pumped with air till bubbles emerged. George spit and said, “Little patch’ll fix that, less than twenty bucks. Another twenty and I’ll get rid of all your wheel locks.” But turning to Tina said, “I can carry you some on labor and a tow, but I’ve got to have a full hundred to pay for that pump.”

     Tina laid two twenties and two fives atop the rolling tool chest and shrugged, “I’m fucked.”

    An idea began to blossom in Taylor’s head, a way to repay the favor she had done him. He said, “My cell still has no bars, but if I could use a land line, I think I might be able to help with this situation”

     “Could you run that by me in English?” said George.

     “I think he wants to use your phone,” said Tina.

     George pointed to a smudged black desk phone on a worn metallic gray desk. Taylor called the number on the contract and explained the wheel lock problem to Mr. Marks who had also been unaware of these devices.

     “So,” said Taylor into the phone, ‘since I’ve got to pay for the one, I figured we’d get them all removed.” He paused and smiled at Tina and George saying, “Okay then, with the tow, the whole thing’ll run about a hundred bucks.” He paused again and then concluded, “Good, I’ll get it done and see you in Miami in a couple days.” 

     He hung up the hand set and pulling out his MasterCard, he had a sudden panicked thought. “Please tell me you take these.”

     George scrutinized the plastic plate. “Oh yeah, I like them better than cash.”

     “Alright,” said Taylor, “If you put one-ten on there, could that cover her and me?”

     George picked the fifty off the tool chest and said, “Yeah, I believe it could.”

     “That’s real Christian of you,” said Tina.

     Taylor winced, “Sort of, I expect to get reimbursed, so ah . . . could you not write anything about a fuel pump on the receipt?”

     George nodded and then shook his head. “That takes care of everybody except Miss Aggie.” 

     “Shit!” said Tina, “New York’ll have to run me up there first while you get me back on the road.”

     “That’ll work,” said George.

     Realizing Tina had named him New York after the plates on the car he was driving, Taylor asked, “What will work?”

     “Miss Aggie’s all alone up top of the crest,” said Tina as if she were explaining the obvious, “Janey goes shopping today and I’m already late. You have to get me up there.”

     Even without understanding most of this, Taylor thought he should beg off, yet he felt guilt not so much for padding Mr. Marks’ bill but for accepting the compliment of being christian for doing so. And then Tina added, “Woman’ll die if we don’t get moving.”

      And George added, “Yeah, get along. I got this end covered.”

     As he was a young man following the road instead of the map, he started his engine and took directions from Tina up the winding road that led to the top of the crest.  Apropos of nothing, Tina said, “You know ninety-five ‘d get you to Miami a lot quicker.”

     He nodded, “Yeah, but I wanted to see the Great Smokies.”

     She flicked ashes out the window, “I can understand that. I was born here, and I still look out in wonder on them every morning. So, why’s a decent young fellow like you want to force us all to be socialists?” 

     “I’m not about forcing anything. I just think those who have more could give a little more to help those of us that have less.”

     “You think you’re going to get money out of the rich without a bit of violence?”

     “Well, you know, taxes and laws, not exactly jack-booted thugs . . . I mean decent working people should be able to replace a fuel pump when it’s needed.”

     “Well, we are replacing it, and we didn’t need no Socialism to do it,” she said.

   He said “I don’t understand how a decent person who works for a living and pays her bills could support a president who’s never done either.”

     “He works kinda- “she tried.

     “He doesn’t even drink or own a dog. . . or a gun or a Bible”

          Taylor was waiting for her rebuttal and thinking Mr. Marks should be included in this debate when she told him to bear left up the last grade of the crest. Miss Aggie’s house would have been just one more rancher in any suburb, but it stood out on a shard of cliff surrounded by evergreens. A woman in an SUV pulled out as he pulled in. She shook a finger at them and tossed up gravel as she left.

     “She’s pissed at me,” said Tina, “Probably left a mess for me to clean.”

       He wondered why he was there as he followed Tina into the living room where Aggie’s ninety pounds lay pillow propped in a hospital bed twice her length. The fetid scent of decay and feces assailed his nostrils. He backed away saying, “I’ll . . . uh . . . “

     “Why don’t you get some tea water boiling,’ said Tina pointing him toward the kitchen where he put a kettle on. He could hear her tending to the invalid and arranging the room. She yelled out, “Can you scramble eggs and make toast?”

     He explored the sparse but sufficient larder finding tea, sugar, a pint of milk, eggs, white bread and butter. When he had breakfast ready, Tina came out, put it all on a tray, and tried the tea before tossing the bag. He carried the tray in and fixed it to the wheelchair where the old woman now sat. An open window had improved the air. Her full head of snow-white hair seemed to have more mass and density than her skeletal body. She locked pellucid blue eyes upon him.

     “I had to bring my boyfriend today. He gets crazy jealous whenever I’m out of his sight,” said Tina and the women laughed. Tina guffawed and Aggie made rapid aspirations.

      “Eat up now. Janey’ll be back in a couple/three hours,” said Tina and clicked on a bulky cathode ray tube tv. The small screen blossomed into The Price is Right. Taylor stared at the show and realized that he had somehow expected a set of this vintage to still feature the white-haired guy as host instead of Drew Carey. He drifted back into the kitchen while Tina took up dusting and vacuuming. Then he drifted into washing the egg pan and whatever other dirty dishes he found and even retrieved and washed Miss Aggie’s breakfast dishes.

     An oil truck arrived. Tina went out to supervise the filling of the tank that stood beside the house. On her way back through the kitchen she suggested or perhaps ordered, “Whyn’t you sweep and mop it while you’re in the mood.”

     And he did though he wondered why as he worked. Oddly, it felt right, and it felt good. He could hear the two women, one barking, the other whispering, as Tina clomped around the parlor/sick room. He used the bathroom which was located off what had once been Miss Aggie’s bedroom. The queen-sized bed was made up motel style with more pillows than anyone would ever sleep with. Hardwood floors glistened around untrodden throw rugs. The room was a monument to the life that its former occupant no longer lived.

     A row of pictures along the bookcase completed the monument. A black and white photo of a bride and a soldier smiled from one. Another showed a group of soldiers next to a jeep in front of a European castle. Then there were color shots of children, a boy and a girl, and the aging soldier in civies and the aging bride in jeans, the boy in a baseball uniform, the girl on a horse, then the boy now a young man in a soldier’s uniform., A triangular box with a folded American flag in it, and a framed letter of condolence signed by Richard M. Nixon completed the display.

     He wandered out and found Tina in the back yard filling bird feeders. She waved at the French doors to the living room where Aggie waved back. She said, “She loves watching the birds and whatever else around here that helps theirselves.”

     Janey returned carrying two bags of groceries. She pointedly ignored Tina and told Taylor that there were more bags in the car. Tina got back into his car while he unloaded Janey’s.   He said goodbye to Miss Aggie and that it was a pleasure to have met her though he thought of saying “privilege” to have met her but discarded that as sounding too pompous. She waved like a child and emitted a susurrus goodbye. Back in the car, he asked Tina, “How old is she?”

     “Like the song says: ‘Younger than the mountains, older than the trees’.”

     He didn’t know what song that was and might have asked but Tina said, “As Antifa flakes go, you’re one of the good ones. It’s been a privilege to know you.”

     “I feel the same,” he said, “You’re the first frothing at the mouth fascist that’s ever given me hope that the country may survive the present administration.”

     “Oh, New York, you’re kind of silver tongued and funny at the same time,” she snorted. 

     Her vehicle was ready and waiting at the garage. George put the Crown Vic up on the lift and removed and replaced the three locks in short order. He put the spare tire back in the trunk and secured the jack and iron around it. He held out a stainless-steel cylinder to Taylor and said,” You’re set, except for . . .  I found this in the spare well. You could keep it as a good luck charm, but it’d probably be best if the man who paid for all this never sees it.”

     “What is it?” asked Taylor.

     “Not sure, but I suspect it’s that wheel lock key you couldn’t find.”

     He shook George’s hand. Turning to Tina, he was surprised by her embrace and the smell of Fels-Naphtha. She muttered, “Thank you.”

     “Why don’t you take this,” he said offering her the cylindrical key, “You might need just such a thing somewhere/sometime.”

         “Well thank you,” she said and added, “and all that stuff, you know, that’s just how different people vote different sometimes. It doesn’t mean all that much.”

     “I wish I believed that,” said Taylor.

     “Yeah, me too,” said Tina.

end

D.M. Kelley has written reviews for The Norwich Bulletin in college (UConn '72). He has taken up writing in retirement and recently been published in The Lighthouse Digest.