had moved out to their lawn chairs. Patty was staring at the view, which contained the dead Honda in the stony lot, and then the flat two acres, and then the dark belt of trees beyond, implacable, like a wall.
She looked at her watch.
She said, “Why is it when someone says between two hours and four hours it’s always nearer four hours than two hours?”
“Parkinson’s disease,” Shorty said. “Work expands to take up as much time as there is.”
“Law,” Patty said. “Not disease. That’s when you get the shakes.”
“I thought that was when you quit drinking.”
“It’s a lot of things.”
“How much longer has he got?”
Patty looked at her watch again, and did a sum in her head.
“Thirty-three minutes,” she said.
“Maybe he didn’t mean to be exactly precise.”
“He said two hours minimum and four hours maximum. That sounds exactly precise to me. Then he said, I promise I’ll get you on your way, cross my heart. With his accent.”
Shorty watched the dark space where the track came out of the woods.
He said, “Tell me about the mechanic things he told you.”
“Best part was he said he had to pay the bills. He said he was going to head out to the highway and maybe he would get lucky with a wreck. The way he said it sounded professional. It was the kind of thing only a mechanic would say. Who else would say lucky about a wreck?”
They watched the track. The sun was higher and the front rank of trees was lit up bright. Solid trunks, packed together, with more behind, with brush between, and brambles, and fallen branches propped at crazy angles.
Shorty said, “How long has he got now?”
Patty checked her watch.
“Twenty-four minutes,” she said.
Shorty said nothing.
“He promised,” she said.
They watched the track.
And he came.
They felt it before they saw it. There was gradually a deep bass presence in the air, in the distance, like a shuddering, like a tense moment in a movie, as if huge volumes of air were being bludgeoned aside. Then it resolved into the hammer-heavy throb of a giant diesel engine, and the subsonic pulse of fat tires and tremendous weight. Then they saw it drive out of the trees. A tow truck. A huge one. Industrial size. Heavy duty. It was the kind of thing that could haul an eighteen-wheeler off the highway. It was bright red. Its engine was roaring and it was grinding along in low gear.
Patty stood up and waved.
The truck bumped down off the blacktop into the lot. She had said it would be the shiniest truck you ever saw, purely from the guy’s voice alone, and she had guessed exactly right. It was as bright as a carnival float. The red paint was waxed and polished. It had pinstripes and coachlines painted in gold. There were chrome lids and levers, all polished to a blinding shine. The guy’s name was written on the side, proudly, a foot high, in a copperplate style. It was Karel, not Carol.
“Wow,” Shorty said. “This is great.”
“Sure seems to be,” Patty said.
“Finally we’re out of here.”
“If he can fix it.”
“We’re out of here either way. He doesn’t leave here without us. OK? Either he fixes our car or he gives us a ride. No matter what the assholes say. Deal?”
“Deal,” Patty said.
The truck came to a stop behind the Honda, and it settled back to a grumbling idle. Way up high the door opened and a guy used one step of the ladder and then jumped the rest of the way down. He was medium sized and wiry, bouncing on his toes, full of get-up-and-go. He had a shaved head. He looked like a photo in a war crimes trial. Like a stone-faced lieutenant behind a renegade colonel in a black beret. But he was smiling. He had a twinkle in his eye.
“Ms. Sundstrom?” he said. “Mr. Fleck?”
Patty said, “Call us Patty and Shorty.”
He said, “I’m Karel.”
She said, “Thank you so much for coming.”
He pulled an object from his pocket. It was a dirty black box the size of a deck of cards, with stubs of disconnected wires coming out. He said, “We got lucky with a wreck. Way in back of the junkyard. Same model as yours. Same color, even. Rear-ended by a gravel truck six months ago. But the front part was still OK.”
Then he smiled encouragingly and shooed them toward their door.