I got out of the car. I didn’t even close the door.
“Where is it?” I said.
He came down two steps. Not all the way. Grant liked to keep a step or two above people.
“Loretta, you had sixty days’ notice,” he said. “Inoperable commercial vehicle. Section 7.4. It’s been in every letter.” He took a sip. “I don’t make the rules. I just enforce them.”
“It runs,” I said. “I started it yesterday.”
“It has a plow mount bolted to the front,” he said. “That makes it commercial. Rules are rules.”
Then he went inside and shut the door, and I stood in the middle of Juniper Court in my good wool coat with my purse on my arm.
A Green and White Ford on Juniper Court
It was a 1987 Ford F-250, forest green on the bottom and white on top, with rust at the wheel wells no matter how often my husband Jim sanded it back. The bench seat had a crack he’d fixed with gray duct tape. On the front was a heavy steel frame where a yellow plow blade hooked on in winter. In summer the blade sat on cinder blocks beside our garage, under a tarp.
