A boy young enough to be my great-grandson kicked my walker twelve feet across a gas station lot while his girlfriend filmed it, and when I hit the concrete he told her camera, “She tripped, y’all saw it.” I was still lying in the oil when the ice in his drink started to jump.
My doctor told me in March that one more fall and I’d leave the hospital for a home, not for my car.
So I didn’t fall. Not ever. I planned every step like it cost money.
Thursdays were the one exception to staying home. Thursdays were Phil’s.
He’d been out at the cemetery seven years that October, and I still told him things. The price of eggs. The gutter that pulled loose over the porch.
Nobody else asked anymore.
I was eighty-one and ninety-four pounds in my shoes, and the Victorville heat sat on me like a wet towel.
That morning I’d cut zinnias from the bed Phil dug the summer before he got sick. Orange ones. His favorite.
I put them in a pickle jar with an inch of water and set the jar in the basket of my walker.
Getting my walker clear of the passenger seat took four tries.
One leg caught the seat belt. The tennis ball on the other one wedged under the floor mat.
“Don’t you start,” I said to it.
I got it onto the concrete and pulled myself up. My left hip sent its little warning, a hot wire down the back of the leg.
I put my card in the pump.
The screen told me to see the cashier.
Twenty dollars. That’s all I wanted. That would cover the drive to Phil and back home.
Then the music came. I felt it in my teeth before I saw anything.
A black Charger with dark windows cut across the lot at a stupid speed and stopped about a foot off my back bumper. He gunned it twice. Just to hear it, I guess.
I stood there holding the walker.
His car sat between me and the store entrance. He’d parked right across my way.
The driver got out. Seventeen, maybe. Blond hair stiff with something, sunglasses, a school jacket with leather sleeves in that heat. He had a face like he’d rehearsed it.
He smacked his roof with a flat hand. “Grandma. Roll it. You’re on my pump.”
“The machine won’t take my card,” I said. “I have to go in and pay.”
A girl climbed out on the far side, aiming a phone at me before she’d even straightened up. Long pink nails. Gum going.
“Lukas, are you serious,” she said. “She’s like a hundred. Just tell her to go.”
So that was his name.
A third one stayed in the back seat with the window down and his own phone poking out the gap.
Lukas walked over. He was a foot taller than me and he made sure I felt every inch of it.
But he wasn’t really looking at me. He was looking at her phone.
“Some of us got lives,” he said, loud, to the phone. “Get in that boat and scoot it up.”
“My legs don’t go fast,” I said. “Please. I only want to pay for my gas.”
“You shouldn’t be behind a wheel at all,” he said. He laughed and looked back at the car. “Right, Conor? She’s a menace.”
Conor laughed. Of course Conor laughed.
“Please,” I said again.
My eyes stung and I hated them for it.
Phil would have said something. Phil would have stood between me and that boy in his feed-store cap with not one word in his head but no.
But Phil was across town under the grass, waiting on his zinnias.
Lukas glanced over his shoulder at her. She was grinning. So he grinned too.
“Here,” he said. “Let me get you moving.”
He drew one foot behind him.
I thought he meant my car. I really did.
HE KICKED MY WALKER.
His big white shoe hit the frame and the whole thing went out from under my hands. It clanged across the concrete, spun once, and stopped twelve feet away against the curb.
The pickle jar went with it.
It broke. Orange flowers everywhere in the oil.
For a second there was nothing under me.
Then the ground came up.
I landed on my left side. Shoulder first, then the hip, and the hip was the one that mattered.
I made a sound I had never made in my life. The pigeons on the light pole all went up at once.
“OH, he GOT her,” Conor yelled from the back seat. He was howling.
The girl crouched low with the phone. Close on my face. “Lukas, stop, you’re terrible,” she said, laughing.
“She tripped,” Lukas said, right into her camera. He winked. “Y’all saw it. She tripped.”
I couldn’t get AIR.
The pain in my hip was WHITE. Not red, not hot. White.
I reached for my walker. It was nowhere near me.
Gas-station water soaked through my clothes, grit pressed into my skin, and a zinnia stuck to my cheek, and NOBODY in that whole lot was coming.
Phil, I thought. I’m on my way, Phil. I’m worn out.
Lukas stepped over my legs. Stepped right over them like I was a hose.
“Whatever,” he said. “I’m getting my gas. She can lay there.”
He took down the nozzle. He looked so pleased with himself.
Then the ice in his drink started to jump.
It was a big plastic cup sitting on his roof. I could see it from the ground. Little cubes ticking against the sides.
Then I felt it in the concrete under my cheek. A hum. Deep.
His stereo was off.
Lukas stopped with the nozzle halfway to his tank. “The hell is that?”
The hum got bigger. It turned into a roar that swallowed the freeway whole.
Not one engine. MANY.
The girl lowered her phone. “Lukas?”
Beyond the pumps, riders rounded the curve from the freeway ramp toward us.
One first. A big black bike, tall bars, the man on it built like a stone wall.
Then three.
Then a dozen.
Then I stopped counting. Sixteen, I found out later.
They didn’t pull in. They filled the place. Every pump, the air hose, the strip of shade by the ice machine. I felt it in my teeth again, the same as his music, only this time it didn’t scare me.
Black leather vests. A gray wolf’s head on every back.
These weren’t dentists out for a Sunday ride.
Lukas’s hand slid on the nozzle. “Zofia,” he said. “In the car. Now.”
Zofia didn’t move. Neither did he.
The nearest rider touched a switch, and his bike went quiet.
Then the rest did, one after another, until the quiet was worse than all that racket.
He put his stand down and got off slow. SIX-FIVE if he was an inch. Gray beard braided to the middle of his chest. Arms inked to the wrist, with old scars running through the ink.
His name was Rusty. I didn’t know that yet.
He never looked at Lukas.
Not at the Charger. Not toward her or her phone.
He came straight to me and stopped at my feet.
He looked at the walker against the curb.
He looked at the broken jar. At the orange flowers in the oil.
He crouched, picked one up, and held it a second.
Then he looked at my arm, already going dark. Then at my face.
He stood up.
Only his head moved, a quarter turn, until his eyes were on Lukas.
Lukas’s mouth opened. What came out barely counted as a voice. “She… she just went down.”
Rusty didn’t blink.
He tucked the zinnia in a pocket on his vest. Then he reached inside the vest with the same hand.
Behind him, fifteen kickstands hit the concrete at the exact same time.
The inside pocket
Rusty took out a phone.
He called for an ambulance, gave the station’s address from the sign, and crouched beside me again.
“Don’t try getting up.”
I caught the bottom of his vest.
“My car.”
“It can stay.”
“The keys are in it.”
“We’ll take care of that. What’s your name?”
“Maxine.”
“I’m Rusty. Can you tell me where it hurts?”
I pointed at my hip. Pointing was cheaper than talking.
Lukas put the nozzle back. Carefully, too. That boy could handle something without kicking it when a deposit might be involved.
“Ma’am,” he said.
Ma’am. I had been promoted.
“Tell him it was an accident.”
Rusty held the phone away from his mouth.
“Give her room.”
“It was. Ask her.”
I still had a handful of vest. My fingers wouldn’t open.
“He kicked my walker.”
Lukas took a step toward us. Rusty put one hand out, palm forward, without touching him.
“Stay there.”
Two riders moved their bikes to clear the way for the ambulance. Nobody put a hand on that boy. Nobody needed to.
He kept looking past Rusty at the other men, waiting for something he could complain about.
Conor climbed out of the Charger.
Now his phone pointed at the riders.
“Everybody’s seeing this,” he said.
Rusty gave him about as much attention as a fly on the pump.
“Can I put this under your head?” he said to me.
He held a folded sweatshirt. I said yes.
Zofia stood beside Lukas with her phone against her chest. The screen was still lit.
“Put that away,” I said.
She lowered it to her side.
Conor kept his up.
The basket
Still on the concrete that Thursday, I asked Rusty to bring my walker where I could see it.
He set it beside my feet. One handle sat lower than the other.
I knew that frame better than I knew the furniture in my own front room. Every doorway in my house had been measured against it.
The basket hung from one hook.
“Don’t throw that out,” I said.
“The basket?”
“It fits.”
People who can walk without equipment are forever suggesting you get another one. As if the new one will know where your fingers go.
That morning, before leaving home, I’d stood at the flower bed with the walker braced against the edging. Phil dug that bed when bending still came easily to both of us. He’d wanted roses. I told him roses required the kind of attention normally reserved for visiting royalty. We planted zinnias. Seven years after his funeral, I could still cut them myself, provided I rested between stems.
Now the stems lay under a stranger’s shoes.
Rusty turned the walker over. A small strip of cloth was tied around the right handle.
“That yours?”
“So I can find the front when it’s folded.”
He left it alone.
Zofia stepped closer.
“Were the flowers for somebody?”
“My husband.”
“Oh.”
“At the cemetery.”
She looked down at the jar.
For a moment, I thought she might put her phone away properly. Into a pocket. Out of her hand. Somewhere a person could remember she had two hands and neither was helping.
Instead, she turned the screen toward herself.
Lukas leaned close to it.
“Don’t send that.”
“I haven’t.”
“Then get rid of it.”
Conor backed toward the front of the Charger, speaking into his own phone.
“Look at these guys. Whole crew over one accident.”
“Is he recording?” I said.
Zofia pressed her lips together.
“He’s live.”
I didn’t know much about that. I knew enough. The people inside that little thing could see me down here before anyone could get me up.
“Tell him to stop.”
“He won’t listen to me.”
“You’re standing right beside him.”
Lukas touched her elbow.
“Come here.”
She went. Two steps, but she went.
Rusty finished the call and tucked his phone away. The orange flower stuck out above the pocket.
“They’re coming,” he said.
I looked at the bent handle.
“Can you straighten that?”
“Let’s get you checked first.”
Across from us, Lukas put his mouth close to Zofia’s ear.
Her thumb moved.
Zofia’s thumb
I lifted my head.
“What did you do?”
Zofia looked at me, then at Lukas.
“Nothing.”
“To the film.”
“It’s gone,” Lukas said. “There. That’s what you wanted, right?”
Rusty put his hand beside my shoulder, without pressing.
“Keep your head down, Maxine.”
I lay back. A strip of sky showed between his arm and the pump.
I had wanted the camera out of my face. I hadn’t wanted the only close view of that shoe disappearing.
“Did you erase it?” I said to her.
She nodded.
Lukas spread his hands toward Rusty.
“We’re trying to make it right. She asked us to stop filming. We did.”
Conor’s phone remained up.
I pointed at it.
“What’s that, then?”
“That’s for our protection,” Lukas said.
Our protection. I was on the ground with a sweatshirt under my head, apparently organizing an attack.
Rusty started to stand.
I caught his vest again.
“Don’t.”
He stayed beside me.
Lukas rubbed his hands down the front of his jacket.
“We can all just calm down. I can help her up. You get one side, I’ll get the other.”
“No,” Rusty said.
“She doesn’t have to go in an ambulance. She probably doesn’t want the bill.”
He looked down at me when he said bill.
There it was. Something he could still put his foot on.
I lived on money that arrived once a month and left whenever it liked. He couldn’t have known the amount. He knew my car was old. He knew I’d asked for twenty dollars of gas.
“My purse,” I said.
Rusty reached through my open car door and brought it out.
Lukas bent toward me.
“See? You’ve got everything. We get you sitting in your car, you rest a minute, and you’re fine.”
I wanted to agree so badly I hated him for offering.
The cemetery closed before evening. There were still flowers at home. I could go back, cut more, find another jar.
Then I tried to shift my left leg.
Nothing about that little movement was little.
I cried out and grabbed Rusty’s arm. He let me hold it.
“You’re staying where you are,” he said.
Lukas stepped back.
“Well, don’t make her move.”
Zofia turned her face away from him.
For the first time since she’d climbed out of the Charger, she wasn’t smiling.
I opened my purse with one hand. My glasses case fell out. Rusty put it back.
I couldn’t make my fingers work the zipper.
“Leave it,” I said.
He set the purse against my right arm.
The walker stood beyond my feet, crooked enough that even Lukas stopped offering to use it.
A drop of water fell from the empty basket.
The front of the Charger
Conor moved around the hood while we waited.
“Show them the whole thing,” Lukas said.
Conor pointed the phone at the riders. Two stood beside their bikes. Another had gone to the store entrance to send the ambulance around the clear side of the pumps.
“Sixteen against three,” Conor said.
I could count one woman on the ground. Apparently she didn’t make the teams.
“Turn that off,” I said.
He put a finger to his ear.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I’m not filming you.”
He angled the phone farther toward Rusty. My shoes were still at the bottom of his screen.
Lukas walked into the picture.
“We were helping this lady when these guys rolled up. Now they’re acting like we did something.”
Zofia stood behind him.
I looked straight at her.
She looked at the ground.
“Tell him,” I said.
She rubbed a nail along the edge of her phone.
“Tell him what happened.”
Lukas turned.
“She fell. I was right there. You were right there.”
“You kicked it,” I said.
“She’s upset,” he said to Conor’s phone.
Rusty stood, slowly enough that nobody could call it a lunge.
“She said stop filming her.”
Conor lifted the phone higher.
“And there it is. You hear that?”
Rusty stepped back instead of closer.
Conor followed him with the camera.
The boy in the jacket relaxed a little. He had found a way to turn the men into the story. I could see it in how he stood, one shoulder toward the lens, his face arranged for sympathy.
“These guys didn’t see anything,” he said. “They just came over yelling.”
“No one yelled,” I said.
“Ma’am, please. We’re trying to get you help.”
I wanted to reach up and pull that ma’am out of his mouth by its roots.
Zofia came to my right side. She crouched there.
“I can get you some water.”
“I want you to tell him.”
Her eyes filled.
Lukas stayed in front of Conor’s phone.
“We’re not leaving her. We’re staying until the ambulance gets here. That’s the right thing.”
Zofia put her hand on the ground near mine.
I held it.
She was warm. Young. Eighteen, she told me later. Old enough to know, young enough that I still wanted her to choose better while she had my hand.
“You saw his foot,” I said.
She nodded once.
“Then say it.”
She opened her mouth.
Lukas turned toward us.
“Zofia. Tell them I tried to help.”
Her hand slid out of mine.
“He did come over to her,” she said.
It was such a small sentence. You could have tucked it into a pocket and pretended it weighed nothing.
Conor swung the phone toward her.
“Exactly.”
“He came over,” she said again.
I pulled my hand against my chest.
She reached toward it, but I put it inside my purse instead. There was nothing I needed in there. I couldn’t bear to leave it lying where she’d let go.
Rusty crouched again.
“Maxine?”
“Don’t.”
He nodded.
I stared at the knot in the cloth around my walker’s handle.
That morning, I’d tied it twice so it wouldn’t come loose.
Zofia stood up and went back to Lukas.
My car keys
The siren reached us while Conor was still talking.
I tried to turn toward my car. Rusty kept his hand beside my shoulder.
“They’re coming this way.”
“I need my keys.”
“I’ve got them.”
He held them where I could see. My house key hung beside the car key. Phil had filed a rough edge off it years before, and I still rubbed that spot with my thumb.
“Give them to me.”
Rusty put them in my hand.
The ambulance stopped beyond the pumps. Two people brought a stretcher through the gap the riders had cleared.
Lukas went toward them.
“She fell. We don’t know if she got dizzy or what.”
“I didn’t get dizzy,” I said.
One of the ambulance workers knelt beside me.
“Tell me your name.”
“Maxine.”
“And where are you hurting?”
“My hip. My shoulder. Mostly my hip.”
She asked more questions. I answered them. Lukas stood just outside her reach, adding things nobody had asked him.
“She’s been upset.”
“She’s pretty shaken.”
“She said she wanted her husband.”
I shut my eyes.
I had said Phil’s name. Sometime between the ground and the siren, I’d said it aloud.
Conor’s phone was pointed our way again.
“Please don’t film this,” I said.
Rusty stood between it and me.
Conor shifted sideways.
“People want to know she’s okay.”
“They can wait,” Rusty said.
The ambulance worker asked whether anyone could come with me or meet me at the hospital.
I looked at my keys.
Seven years was a long time until somebody asked that question. Then it was no time at all.
“I can,” Rusty said. He looked at me. “If you want.”
“Your ride.”
“They know where the road goes.”
I tried to laugh. It hurt.
The ambulance workers told me what they were going to do before they moved me. I held the keys so tightly the teeth pressed into my palm.
“Can I drive home afterward?” I said.
“We need to get you checked first.”
“That’s what everybody keeps saying.”
“I know.”
They moved me together. I cried. I couldn’t stop it. There are ways to make crying look decent, but none of them work when strangers have to lift you.
Lukas stood beside Zofia.
“See what I mean?” he said. “She shouldn’t have been out by herself.”
I wanted my shoes on my own floor. I wanted the kettle with the loose lid. I wanted to shut my bathroom door without anyone outside it asking if I was all right.
The stretcher straps went across me.
My walker couldn’t come home with me as it was. My car couldn’t go anywhere without somebody else’s hands on its wheel.
“Someone you trust can move your car,” the ambulance worker said.
I held the keys out to Rusty.
Lukas put his hand on the Charger’s door.
Then Conor turned his screen toward him and said, “They’re asking what you actually did.”
The right handle
Lukas left the car door open.
“What are they saying?”
Conor read from his screen.
“They want to know why the walker went all the way over there.”
“It slid.”
I turned my head.
“Bring it here,” I said.
Rusty picked up the walker.
“Beside me. Don’t fix it.”
He set it where I could reach the right handle from the stretcher.
Lukas looked at the ambulance workers.
“Shouldn’t you be taking her?”
“In a minute,” I said. “You wanted to tell them.”
I pointed at Conor’s phone.
“Let him.”
Rusty looked down at me.
I nodded.
Conor came closer, keeping a space between himself and the riders.
“She wants to talk,” he said into the phone.
Lukas shook his head.
“She’s hurt. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“I know where my hand was.”
I put it on the strip of cloth.
“Here.”
“Nobody’s arguing with you.”
“And the other one was there.”
I pointed at the lower handle.
“Yes,” he said. “Okay.”
“What was I supposed to hold when you moved it?”
He looked at Conor.
Conor kept the phone pointed at us.
“I didn’t touch you,” Lukas said.
“Where did your foot go?”
He put both hands on top of his head.
“This is ridiculous. I didn’t kick YOU. I kicked that thing. You were supposed to catch yourself.”
Zofia put a hand over her mouth.
Conor lowered the phone an inch.
“Keep it up,” I said.
Lukas took his hands off his head.
“I mean, I moved it. With my foot. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.”
I left my hand on the cloth.
“Then tell them where I tripped.”
He looked at my feet. At the clear patch of concrete where I’d been standing.
At the walker.
Conor’s phone made a little sound.
Lukas reached toward it.
Conor pulled it back.
“Don’t touch my phone.”
Beside the stretcher
Lukas faced the camera.
“Everybody’s making this into something. It was a joke. We were messing around. I didn’t think she would actually fall.”
I said nothing.
“How was I supposed to know? She drove here. She got out by herself.”
“You heard her,” Zofia said.
He turned on her.
“You were laughing.”
“I know.”
“You were filming it.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t stand there acting like you weren’t part of it.”
She wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
Conor moved the phone toward her.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Keep it on him.”
“You don’t get to tell me where to point it.”
“She did,” Zofia said. “She asked you to stop.”
Lukas stepped between them.
“Can we just stop? Can everybody stop? She needs to go to the hospital. We’re making her wait.”
He looked at me.
“I’m sorry. There. I’m sorry you fell.”
I took my hand off the walker.
He leaned toward the stretcher.
“What do you want me to say?”
“The part you did.”
His face went red above the jacket collar.
“I kicked it. I said that.”
“To them.”
He looked at the phone again.
“I kicked her walker.”
Conor held it still.
Lukas swallowed.
“She was holding it, and I kicked it. She didn’t trip.”
I let him stand with that.
He looked back at me, waiting.
The ambulance worker stood beside my shoulder. Rusty held my purse and keys. Nobody supplied the next line for him.
“I didn’t mean for her to get hurt,” he said.
“But you left her there,” Zofia said.
He stared at her.
“You left her there too.”
She started crying harder.
“Yes.”
Conor took a step back.
“This is their thing. I was in the car.”
I pointed at him.
“You laughed.”
His phone dipped.
“I didn’t kick anything.”
“You laughed while I called for help.”
He looked behind the screen.
For a moment his mouth worked without any sound. Then he said, “I laughed.”
“Let them hear.”
“I laughed when she fell,” he said toward the phone. “I shouldn’t have.”
Lukas grabbed the edge of his own jacket.
“Are we done? Is everybody happy?”
“No,” Zofia said.
She took her phone out again.
“I deleted mine because he told me to. He said it made him look bad.”
“You said you were going to delete it anyway.”
“She asked me to stop. She didn’t ask me to erase what you did.”
“You want to put this all on me? You crouched right down in her face.”
“I did.”
She looked at me. This time she stayed looking.
“I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t give her the answer she wanted. My hip hurt too much, and I’d already spent one please on her that day.
“Don’t erase this one,” I said to Conor.
He shook his head.
“Send it to him.”
Rusty took out his phone.
Lukas turned toward the riders.
“You’re going to put this everywhere, aren’t you? Send people after us?”
Rusty stayed beside me.
“Nobody here’s following you.”
“People online will.”
“You put me there,” I said.
He shut his mouth.
I held a hand toward Conor.
“No address. No school. Nobody needs those. They need what happened.”
He nodded.
Rusty stood beside him while he saved and sent the recording. I could hear Conor explaining which button did what, suddenly polite enough to sell you a washing machine.
Lukas waited by the stretcher.
“I’ll buy another walker,” he said. “A better one.”
“The same kind.”
“Fine. The same kind.”
“And what this costs me.”
He looked down at his shoes.
“I don’t have much money.”
I looked at the Charger.
“It’s not mine,” he said quickly. “The car’s not mine.”
“Then spend yours.”
He rubbed at one shoe with the toe of the other.
“My number,” he said. “I’ll give you my number.”
Rusty handed him the phone. Lukas entered it, then called it from his own so it rang in Rusty’s hand.
The ambulance workers began moving the stretcher.
Zofia stepped away from the Charger.
“Come on,” Lukas said to her.
“No.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m not getting in with you.”
He looked at Conor. Conor was looking at the message he’d just sent.
Lukas came alongside me for two steps.
“You don’t have to make me look like this.”
“You did.”
The replacement
Three Thursdays later, Lukas stood on my porch with a walker.
Rusty sat beside me. I’d asked him to be there. I could manage my own mouth, but getting to the door still took planning.
Nothing had been broken. I said that often during those weeks, mostly to people who thought it meant nothing hurt.
I couldn’t drive yet. Rusty had brought my car home with my permission and put the keys back in my hand. He’d taken me to appointments when I asked.
I missed three Thursdays at the cemetery.
Lukas set the replacement in front of me.
“Same model.”
I checked the height. He waited while I moved each adjustment one hole.
The basket from my old walker hung on it. Rusty had saved it, along with the cloth from the handle.
“Does that work?” Lukas said.
I gripped it and stood.
He reached toward me, then stopped.
“Would you like help?”
“No.”
I took four steps and came back.
“It works.”
He took an envelope from his pocket.
The walker cost $214.80. The bills I’d paid for my care came to $203.80. I’d shown him the receipts. He owed $418.60, with the walker counting toward it.
I opened the envelope.
Two hundred and three dollars in bills. Eighty cents in a little bag.
I counted it on my lap.
He stood there in a sweatshirt. No leather sleeves.
“I sold the jacket,” he said. “And the shoes.”
Rusty said nothing.
“I know that doesn’t fix your leg.”
“No.”
Lukas rubbed both palms against his jeans.
“Conor left the video up. The whole correction. He sent you that, right?”
“Yes.”
“People I know saw it.”
I put the money back in the envelope.
He looked toward the street, then at me again.
“I kept wanting to tell them I’m not like that.”
The porch step creaked under his foot.
“But it’s me. On there.”
I left him the space to finish.
“I called you a menace. Then I did that.”
“Yes.”
His eyes filled. He wiped them with his sleeve.
“I’m sorry I kicked your walker, Maxine.”
He used my name.
I nodded once.
He bent to pick up the packaging, then checked under my chair for the bit he’d missed.
At the steps he turned.
“Can I do anything else?”
“Keep your foot to yourself.”
He carried the empty box to his car.
Orange ones
Six Thursdays after the fall, I drove myself back to the same station.
My doctor had cleared me to drive. I’d made the trip around my block first, twice, with nobody cheering. Some things are easier without an audience.
Rusty met me at the pump. His bike stood out of my way.
He’d offered to drive me to the cemetery. I told him he could come along, provided he let me get there myself.
Getting the walker clear took three tries.
The tennis ball caught the floor mat again.
“I remember you,” I said to it.
Rusty stood by his bike. He didn’t reach into my car.
I set the walker down and pulled myself up. My hip complained, but it held.
“You all right?” he said.
“Ask me after I pay.”
The pump accepted my card.
Twenty dollars.
I held the nozzle myself. Rusty leaned against his bike and talked about a turn he’d missed that morning. He’d gone several miles out of his way before admitting it.
“Men will cross a county before they turn around,” I said.
“Only one county today.”
In my basket stood a pickle jar.
Zofia had brought it to my door the week before. Empty, washed, with the label soaked off. She’d stayed on the step until I asked her in.
She’d offered to buy flowers.
I told her I grew my own.
That morning I’d cut orange ones, resting between stems. The bed needed weeding. I left the weeds. They could enjoy their victory until Saturday.
Rusty followed me to the cemetery.
I parked where I always parked and took my time getting out. He walked beside me without getting between me and the path.
At Phil’s grave, I rested both hands on the walker.
“Well,” I said. “You’re not going to believe the trouble I had getting gas.”
Rusty stood a little way off.
I told Phil about the boy. About the money in the envelope, down to the bag of coins. I told him I still had the car.
Then I couldn’t talk for a while.
Rusty waited.
When I could, I took the jar from the basket.
“Would you put these down for me? I can get there. It’s the getting back up that’s expensive.”
He took the flowers and knelt.
Before setting the jar beside the stone, Rusty opened the inside pocket.
The zinnia from the station lay in his palm, flat and dry inside a folded piece of paper.
“You kept it.”
“Didn’t think it belonged in the trash.”
I touched the edge of one petal.
“There’s room.”
He tucked the stem among the flowers.
I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Phil,” I said, “this is Rusty. Move over. He’s sitting with us.”
If this one stayed with you, send it to someone who knows how much an ordinary Thursday can mean.
For more stories of family members crossing painful lines, read the father who promised Mario his daughter’s only day off and the son who demanded rent after taking $168,480 in mortgage money. There’s also the mother-in-law who put her son’s guys’ chat on the big screen.
