says. “Thank you so much. I’m sorry we had to call you out here. Come on, Evelyn. It’s time to go.”
“Don’t be sorry!” he yells. Even when Mr. Mitchell yells, it’s in a nice way, the way Santa Claus yells “Ho Ho Ho” outside of Wal-Mart at Christmas. “What the hell are you-all doing sitting outside is what I’d like to know. Didn’t they let you wait inside?”
My mother puts a finger to her lips. “Shh. It’s just an older woman. She was scared, I think.”
He picks me up and carries me down the steps of the porch, my mother walking behind us. “Come on, squirrel,” he says. “We’ll get you home.”
I squint into the headlights and see the outline of someone sitting in the passenger seat. It’s a woman, Mr. Mitchell’s wife. She gets out of the truck to let us in, and I see she is short, halfway between my mother and me, with broad shoulders. Her hair is cut close around her head, like a little hat, and she looks at us with small, staring eyes.
“Hello,” my mother says. “Thank you so much for coming all the way out here. This is my daughter, Evelyn.”
Mrs. Mitchell smiles quickly at me, but her small eyes stay on my mother, even as she leans down to pop the front seat of the truck forward for us. I get in behind the driver’s seat next to a bag of dog food. My mother sits behind Mrs. Mitchell, her legs folded, her chin resting on her knees.
Mr. Mitchell jogs around the front of the truck and slides in, whistling. “So, Tina, what do you think happened?” He looks over his shoulder while he backs out of the driveway, and when he catches my eye, he winks.
“The clutch gave out. I can’t get it into first. I knew it was going to happen, but I thought I could make it to Wichita and back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you needed a car? I would have loaned you the truck.”
Mrs. Mitchell makes a quick, hissing sound with her tongue, like water sprinkled on a hot pan. We drive on in silence, until the back of the Volkswagen appears in the headlights.
“Do you want me to take a look at it?” Mr. Mitchell asks, pulling up behind it. “I could try to fiddle with the clutch a bit.”
Mrs. Mitchell turns on the overhead light and holds her watch up underneath it.
“Oh, that’s okay, Merle,” my mother says. “I feel bad enough, dragging you both out here.”
Mr. Mitchell says, “Don’t be ridiculous,” but Mrs. Mitchell says nothing. From where I sit, I can see only one side of her face, gray and unmoving. She is looking straight ahead, squinting at the white Volkswagen bug.
“That’s our car,” she says, like no one else knows this. She looks at Mr. Mitchell with her small eyes. “You gave them our car?” Mr. Mitchell gets out of the truck, letting the door slam behind him. We watch him pop open the back of the Volkswagen and stand there, looking at it and shaking his head. I’m scared to talk. Mrs. Mitchell is not saying anything, but something about her, something invisible coming out of the back of her head like ultraviolet rays, makes me scared to move, even my head, even my mouth. My mother isn’t moving either.
Mrs. Mitchell reaches up to the rearview mirror, tilting it so she can see my mother’s face. “So, uh…Tina,” she says. The way she says this makes it sound like just my mother’s name is something bad, something you don’t want to be called. “You don’t have any family or anyone who could have come and picked you up?”
My mother waits so long to answer that at first I think she won’t, but then she clears her throat and says, “Well, if I had, I suppose I would have called them.”
“I suppose. How long have you been working for Merle?”
“About four years.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my mother is actually biting her tongue, the pink tip of it sticking out from between her teeth. She reaches over the front seat and opens Mr. Mitchell’s door.
“Let me out, Evelyn.”
I get out quickly, shutting the door behind us.
“No,” she says. “You get back in. I need to talk to Mr. Mitchell.”
“With her? No way.”
“Get in now.”
I get back in the truck. Mrs. Mitchell and I watch my mother walk over to Mr. Mitchell, her body making a shadow like