Page 2 of Life and Death
“Yeah. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure.”
“Fair enough.”
I only had two big duffel bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for the Washington climate. My mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but it still wasn’t much. I could handle both of them, but Charlie insisted on taking one.
It threw my balance off a little—not that I was ever really balanced, especially since the growth spurt. My foot caught on the lip of the exit door and the bag swung out and hit the guy trying to get in.
“Oh, sorry.”
The guy wasn’t much older than me, and he was a lot shorter, but he stepped up to my chest with his chin raised high. I could see tattoos on both sides of his neck. A small woman with hair dyed solid black stared menacingly at me from his other side.
“Sorry?” she repeated, like my apology had been offensive somehow.
“Er, yeah?”
And then the woman noticed Charlie, who was in uniform. Charlie didn’t even have to say anything. He just looked at the guy, who backed up a half-step and suddenly seemed a lot younger, and then the girl, whose sticky red lips settled into a pout. Without another word, they ducked around me and headed into the tiny terminal.
Charlie and I both shrugged at the same time. It was funny how we had some of the same mannerisms when we didn’t spend much time together. Maybe it was genetic.
“I found a good car for you, really cheap,” Charlie announced when we were strapped into the cruiser and on our way.
“What kind of car?” I asked, suspicious of the way he said “good car foryou” as opposed to just “good car.”
“Well, it’s a truck actually, a Chevy.”
“Where did you find it?”
“Do you remember Bonnie Black down at La Push?” La Push is the small Indian reservation on the nearby coastline.
“No.”
“She and her husband used to go fishing with us during the summer,” Charlie prompted.
That would explain why I didn’t remember her. I do a good job of blocking painful things from my memory.
“She’s in a wheelchair now,” Charlie continued when I didn’t respond, “so she can’t drive anymore, and she offered to sell me her truck cheap.”
“What year is it?” I could see from the change in his expression that this was the question he was hoping I wouldn’t ask.
“Well, Bonnie’s had a lot of work done on the engine—it’s only a few years old, really.”
Did he think I would give up that easily?
“When did she buy it?”
“She bought it in 1984, I think.”
“Did she buy it new?”
“Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties—or late fifties at the earliest,” he admitted sheepishly.
“Ch—Dad, I don’t really know anything about cars. I wouldn’t be able to fix anything that broke, and I couldn’t afford a mechanic. . . .”
“Really, Beau, the thing runs great. They don’t build them like that anymore.”
The thing, I thought to myself . . . it had possibilities—as a nickname, at the very least.
“How cheap is cheap?” After all, that part was the deal killer.
