“Looks like you might be having a problem. Anything I can help with?”
Perhaps he found it hard to talk up to a woman in a big truck.
“Gas,” he said, eventually.
I climbed down, careful to let my legs bend a little to minimize my height. I nodded at Adeline and the two children, who peered at me from the truck. Luz, in a dark green dress that didn’t suit her, watched me steadily, but the boy’s eyes wandered after a moment. “Lonely out here. Not the best place to get stranded with your family.”
Adeline stuck her head out of the window. “He filled the tank just yesterday,” she said.
“I could run you or your wife to the nearest gas station, if that would help.” Jud looked at me with his dark, sticky eyes. “Or if you live nearby I could drive you home. If that would be easier.” If I read him right, he didn’t want his wife to be alone with a stranger, or to leave his family stranded in the middle of nowhere. But he didn’t say anything. Us standing in the middle of the road staring at each other was not part of the plan.
Adeline got out. “Luz, stay in the truck with Button.” She stepped between me and her husband. Like her husband’s, her clothes were old-fashioned, a matching dress and shoes in aquamarine: bought years ago, rarely worn, and looked after with care. Her bright red lipstick couldn’t hide the fatigue in her smile. “We live six, seven miles north and west of here, off of Route 10. We would be sorely grateful if you would give us all a ride back.”
“I’d be more than happy.”
She smiled again briefly. “Luz, bring my purse. Button, come on out. Into the nice lady’s truck. No, in the back, scoot up, leave room for me. Your daddy will sit in the front.”
Jud, moving very deliberately, dropped the hood, retrieved the ignition key, shut but didn’t lock the pickup doors, and got in next to me. I started the truck.
“Mile down the road,” he said. “Then take a right.” He laid both hands palm down on his thighs and stared steadily ahead, like the seated pharaonic statues at Luxor. His hands were tan on the back, with the flat tendons and knobbed joints of hard physical labor, and there was a trace of oil under two of his fingernails. When I glanced down again, he had put them in his lap, right hand uppermost; the knuckle on the third finger was crushed, long ago by the looks of it—the kind of thing that happens if you punch someone in the head, or hit a wall with your bare fist.
I drove. Two minutes later Jud said, “Here,” and we made the turn. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Nor, it seemed, could anyone else. The next ten minutes passed in silence, until I pulled up in front of their house. I turned the engine off.
“Obliged,” Jud said, and got out, and went into the house without another word.
Adeline paused, half out of her door. “It’s just his way,” she said, apologetic. “I hope you’ll still be willing to give him a ride to a gas station.”
“I’d be happy to.”
She hesitated, and I thought she was about to introduce herself, but then she said, “He might be a minute or two. Would the wait be too much trouble? You’ve been so kind.”
“It’s a nice enough day and I can’t say I’m in a hurry.” And the Good Samaritan will demand payment.
She got out and the children scrambled after her. “You go change your clothes and play in back,” she told them, and went into the house. But the boy seemed unable to tear himself away from the truck. He patted the paintwork, then squatted down to look at something. Luz hung back, not wanting to get too close to me, unwilling to leave Button alone.
I got out and stretched. The boy was unscrewing the dust caps from my tires.
“I’m Button,” he said in a shiny voice, looking up at me. “What are these for?”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Button.” His teeth looked huge, adult teeth in a child-sized mouth. Just like any seven-year-old. “They’re to stop dust from getting in the air valve and clogging it up. I’ll need them back.” But he wasn’t listening; his eyes were wandering again, gaze alighting on this, flitting to that. “Button—”
“That’s not his real name.” I turned to the girl with the quiet, precise voice. “His real name is Burton, only he can’t say it right, so now we call him Button. He’s eight. Nearly nine,” she said carefully, waiting to see how I’d react: a nine-year-old should be able to say Burton.
“I’m surprised,” I said. She turned her head slightly, to examine me out of each eye, as though each saw a different world but only one could be trusted. Her straight, shoulder-length hair was a dense, matte chocolate brown, and would have looked better without the amateur cut. Delicate bones contrasted with the stance; she stood the way a Theban might at Thermopylae. Nine years old. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance also,” I told her, “though I don’t know your name.”
“I’m Luz. It’s Spanish. It’s not short for Lucy.”
“My name is Aud, rhymes with loud. It’s Norwegian. It’s not short for Audrey.”
“Aud,” she said, trying it out. I blinked at the perfect Norwegian pronunciation. “Aud.”
“You say it very well.”
She accepted the praise as her due, and opened her mouth to say something, but shut it when the front door opened.
Adeline had wiped away her lipstick and swapped her pumps for tennis shoes. An apron covered the dress. Judging by her hair—blond going gray, and pulled back in a short but thick tail—and the smile lines around mouth and eyes, other lines in neck and forehead, she was in her early fifties. Her eyes were not strange, but she was recognizably Button’s mother. Or grandmother. “Button, in the house.” Button wasn’t listening. “Luz, take Button in and get yourselves changed.”
“Yes, Aba.”
We both watched them go inside. “Now,” she said, turning to me. I got the impression she had spent some time thinking about what to say. “My husband is getting out of his Sunday clothes and will be back down directly. It’s his way to be a bit wary of strangers, but he would be most obliged for a ride to a gas station. I can’t tell you how thankful we are for your kindness. The name’s Carpenter. Adeline and Jud.” She held out her hand. Plain, thin wedding ring; straight-edged nails with no polish. Hardworking hands, but not overworked.
“Aud,” I said, giving it a deliberate American pronunciation: sounds like god. I took off my gloves. “Aud Thomas.” We shook hands. I put the gloves in my pocket.
“Now, Aud Thomas, although men make fun of us women and the time it takes to change, I think my husband might be a minute or two.” She patted the pocket of her apron nervously. “Is there something I can bring out for you meanwhile?”
Being parked on the doorstep was not what I had planned.
“If I’m to wait a minute or two, I’d like to borrow the use of your facilities if I may.”
Natural suspicion warred with Christian charity. She patted her pocket again. A weapon? It would have to be a small one. I shivered a little. That and the morning’s sermon turned the tide. She stood to one side and motioned me across the threshold. “Upstairs, first on your right.” Then, in a rush of overcompensation, “When you’re done I’m in the kitchen. In back.”
The bathroom was what I think of as southern feminine: clean, decorated in pastels, and with a shower curtain depicting sunrise over a perfect valley, complete with Bambi look-alike and rabbits. I used the toilet, washed my hands, and ran my fingers through my hair. What did someone like Adeline Carpenter see when she looked at me? No way to know, just as I didn’t know why I had used my real name with Luz.
I turned away, then back again, and opened the bathroom cabinet. On the top shelf lay the explanation for the lack of pets: asthma medication. Pills, and two kinds of inhaler. Adeline’s.