His wife Gina caught me at the mailboxes that fall. She’s a quiet woman, maybe fifty-five, who always looked like she’d been interrupted.
“I’m sorry about the letters,” she said, low, looking back at her house. “He gets an idea.”
“Then maybe you could give him a different one,” I said.
She almost smiled, then took her mail and walked home fast.
A Tow Yard on Highway 23
The work order was on a clipboard at Jankowski Towing, out on Highway 23 past the feed store, in a cinder block office with a space heater.
The man behind the counter was big and gray, with reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. The patch on his shirt said GUS.
“Green and white Ford,” I said. “From Juniper Court.”
He looked up. Then he looked at me for a long moment.
“Kimball,” he said.
“Loretta.”
“I know who you are.” He turned the clipboard around. “Your husband pulled my boy out of the ditch on County 8 in March of 2011. Nineteen years old, rolled his Cavalier on the ice at two in the morning. Jim sat in the snow with him till the ambulance came. I didn’t know it was his truck till I saw the notebook on the dash. I’m real sorry.”
