Necessity

5

At an exit just past Blythe marked Gas-Food-Fuel she aims the car into the first filling station she sees. Under the alluring sign sixty feet high it turns out to be an unappetizing dump but she’s too numbed by road weariness to seek another.

A punk-haired teen-age hoodlum slams the nozzle into the filler pipe and leaves the pump ticking while he checks the oil and smears bugs across the windshield with inadequate swipes of a long-handled squeegee. She stands in the shade waiting; the kid darts his furtive eyes toward her and she wishes she were wearing something that had more practical armor than this thin cotton print.

She pays in cash and drives around the side to park in the shade while she visits the Ladies’; it’s not until the tires crunch that she notices where the filthy pavement is strewn with the glittering remains of broken beer bottles.

It’s a choice between broken glass and the hot sun: she chooses the shade, steps out with care, and picks a path away from the car, tiptoeing through shards.

The stifling bathroom is repulsive visually and olfactorily. She departs in record time. Nevertheless the upholstery is so hot she can’t relax her spine against it. She sits bolt upright when she backs the car out.

Watching her, the young hoodlum stands beside a gas pump with a bottle of beer in his hand. His very lack of expression seems malevolent.

The desert has been carved into farms here, kept alive by the trickle of water at the bottom of tapered concrete canals; past the irrigated area there’s nothing but scrub and sand and the heat against which the air conditioner struggles.

She has gone only a few miles and she’s doing about seventy when the wheel begins to pull to the left and she hears the rapid flubbing tattoo of the collapsing tire. With more stoical resignation than anger she takes her foot off the gas and fights the wheel, hauling it to the right. Thank God for power steering. Prompted by a fragment of memory from her teen-age years she forces herself not to touch the brake pedal.

The car chitters all over the road. It feels as if it’s ploughing through thick mud but in fact the speed is still high-fifty miles an hour now and only dropping slowly. She thinks: emergency brake? Does that operate on the back wheels or the front ones? But she’s not sure; she knows only that if she does the wrong thing it may flip over, as her mother and father found out.

She lets it coast, weaving from lane to lane. She’s very lucky there’s no traffic.

Finally the momentum comes off the charging automobile and she is able to horse it onto the shoulder.

She steps out into the blast of heat and examines the damage.

The car droops over its flat tire.

She’s no mechanic but she knows this much: drive any farther on it and the wheel rim will be destroyed.

All right then. What are the choices?

You’re supposed to wait for help. She knows the procedure. Open the trunk and the hood; tie a scarf on the door handle and lock yourself inside the car.

In this sun with the engine idling and the air conditioner blasting-how long will it be before the old car overheats and dies?

And who wants to sit here for six hours expiring of dehydration before the next highway patrol cop drives by?

And do you really want to take the chance that a cop won’t ask to see some identification?

Change the damn tire, then.

There must be tools in the trunk. She opens it and sees the spare and realizes she’s never paid any attention to it before. Suppose it’s flat?

Leaning in under the useless shade of the upraised trunk lid she unscrews the butterfly nut that secures the spare. Just this little effort drenches her in sweat. Now to lift the thing out and see if there are tools under it.

She hoists it over the bumper and lets it bounce when it hits the ground. What do they make these things out of-solid lead?

At least it bounces. Maybe it actually has air in it.

She sees a cluster of cars approaching as if afloat on watery mirages that hover above the highway. She pretends to busy herself in the trunk and does not look at the cars as they whoosh past. The last one seems to slow down and she glances that way as it goes by-an open convertible, young driver in a cowboy hat. He seems to be looking at her in his mirror but she doesn’t try to flag him down and finally he guns it and the old Cadillac fishtails away with a loud pneumatic hiss of noise.

I wonder what he thinks he’s proving?

She recognizes the jack and the tire iron with its socket-wrench end and its pry-bar end. These two-are they all the tools you need?

You changed a tire once, remember? Four o’clock in the morning after the homecoming game and the fraternity beer bust. Can’t remember that boy’s name. He was so stoned on grass he just lay back and laughed: “Far out!” And you changed the tire while he waved the flashlight around so that your work was illuminated as fitfully as a battlefield under artillery attack.

But I got it done, didn’t I, and drove the worthless kid home and left him asleep in his car and walked half a mile to the bus stop.

She’s thinking: how come you were so much smarter when you were eighteen?

Hard to breathe now: this air feels like sawblades in the throat.

Naturally it has to be the left front tire and this shoulder of sandy hardpan and gravel isn’t really wide enough; to change the wheel she’s going to have to get right out in the roadway with her hindquarters waving in the traffic.

What traffic? One pickup truck in the last two minutes. The hell with it.

The jack is an odd-looking device with a crank handle and at first she can’t tell how it’s supposed to work. She opens the door and gets into the car. It has become a furnace in here. She opens the windows before poking into the glove compartment, hoping to find an owner’s manual that will have illustrations and instructions.

No such luck. Nothing in the glove box except the Pennsylvania registration and the maps she put there herself. Startling her, a drop of liquid falls onto her wrist-sweat from her own forehead.

A huge truck goes by: a semi at great speed. The blast of its wind nearly knocks her off her feet. As it gnashes away she’s thinking about the likelihood of the truck driver’s calling in on his CB radio to alert the world of her predicament-thinking no doubt that he’s doing her a favor.

Must get out of here.

She studies the jack and the car. There’s what looks like the open end of a pipe directly under the door post at the side of the car. Is the jack meant to fit into that? Why not give it a try.

It fits, a male member into a female receptacle. She turns the crank and is pleased enough to smile when the side of the car begins to rise.

Another cluster of traffic goes by. She doesn’t ask for help; no one stops. After they’re gone she puts her weight against the crank handle and soon both left wheels are off the ground. She locks the crank in place and pries the hubcap off.

One of the lug nuts is so stiff she has to stand on the handle of the tire iron to break it loose but finally she has all five nuts in the upturned hubcap and she horses the flat tire off the car. Her hands are filthy and she’s ruined the damned dress.

She hears the crunch of gravel and looks up.

It pulls to a stop on the shoulder just behind her car: a Jeep or a Bronco, one of those outdoorsy four-wheel-drive vehicles-high and boxy, forest green. A man gets out of it.

His face is hidden inside a trim brown beard streaked with grey. He’s chunky and muscular in faded jeans and an olive drab tee shirt.

“Need some help?” His voice is pleasant enough. At least he’s not a cop.

She rises to her feet. She has the tire iron in her hand.

“I think I’ve got it licked. Thanks all the same.”

The man looks at the tire iron. He seems a little amused but she’s not sure-it’s hard to see what’s going on under the beard.

He says, “I had a flat tire on one of these Interstates a couple years ago. Discovered I didn’t have a jack. I waited seven hours for help and what I finally got was a ripoff artist in a tow truck, charged me fifty dollars just to borrow his jack and do the work myself. Ever since then, I see somebody broken down by the road, I see if I can do something.”

She’s trying to look icy. “Thanks for stopping. I really don’t need any help.”

He says, “I’m not a rapist, you know.”

“I hear you saying it.” She shifts the tire iron in her grasp: not an ostentatious movement but enough to remind him of it.

She says, “I appreciate the offer. It’s very kind of you. But I’m sure you’re on your way somewhere and I wouldn’t want to delay you. I’m fine. I’m not in any trouble.”

He watches her. She keeps her voice calm. “Please go.”

He looks at the tire iron. “I guess these days there just isn’t a whole lot of point trying to be a good Samaritan.” He turns with a reproachful snap of his shoulders and climbs back into his vehicle.

When he drives by he looks at her and she feels she can read his thoughts: independent liberated feminist bitch.

No good explaining it’s not because you’re a man and I’m a woman. It’s not even because you’re a stranger.

It’s because I don’t trust you. But you didn’t need to, take it personally.

It’s not you. It’s me. I can’t afford to trust anybody at all.