The Bird Boys by Lisa Sandlin

Author:Lisa Sandlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
Published: 2019-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

XXVI

WITH A BAD conscience, Delpha deserted the phone again in order to check out the last two homebuyers. She drove west on I-10 and gradually began to notice an unwillingness in the rumbling Dart. A gimp that felt unsteady on the freeway. She took an off ramp and drove, limp increasing, until she found a gas station with a line of cars waiting to pump gas. She skirted the line and pulled up to the bay. Delpha got out, flat-handed the car door shut, walked around it, and spotted the problem on the passenger side front. She stuck in the trunk key and unlocked it, checking to see if the jack and tire iron were there. They were. A uniformed young man with a Cab Calloway complexion and a junior mustache approached her.

His nametag read Wesley, and he was probably about eighteen, but he did not have a bandleader personality. He was sober, silent. As Delpha assessed this stranger, it briefly occurred to her that no one in her thirty-two years had ever called her a chatterbox, either. Then it occurred to her she was measuring herself against other people out here in the free world. How long had she been doing that—ever since she got out? Sure she had. But till she’d got a job and a place to live, she’d had no inclination to note what she’d been noticing, at least about herself. So now she had to? It jarred her.

She stood there with her head bent like the gas station attendant’s. Both of them considering the sagging tire, which did all the talking, anyway. The young man loosened the lugs, jacked the car and spun them off, he had the tire lifted and up on his tub in no time. Delpha peered intently as he sprayed it with soapy water. When the bubbles began to blow, neither one of them remarked, There it is.

Wesley pointed at the leak with an eyebrow.

Delpha asked, “How much?”

“Three dollar.”

Nod of agreement. “Check the oil?”

Raised thumb.

She went into an office with candy bars, cigarettes and chew, Pennzoil cans. A rotating fan ruffled her hair, then relocated the office air, then blew on the fifty-ish white woman smoking on the stool behind the counter. The top of her long blond hair was cut in swoops lifting every few seconds, like she was flapping away. “What can I help you with, honey?” she said.

“He’s fixing a flat for me.”

Ka-ching. Delpha handed over three dollars and sat down in a folding chair. An outside bell clinked. She studied the assortment of calendars on the far wall: a naughty Mexican señorita, some preening cars, a locomotive snaking around a snowy mountain track, and a cartoon character, a giant-size, bottom-heavy yellow bird with orange legs. The message by the bird said Today is brought to you by the letter U for Unemployed.

“He’s such a hoot,” the woman at the counter said.

She couldn’t mean the yellow bird or even young Mr. Calloway repairing her tire. Delpha turned to look.

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