of it. " " No? " " No. I'm about the middle. " There was a silence on the line. Tyler could picture his father in the recliner in the duplex in Lawton, the television on mute, frowning. " Dad," Tyler said, "do you remember when you used to take me to the lot? On Saturdays? And sit me in the chair by the trailer? " " Sure. " " And teach me how to read people? Their shoes and their trucks and all that? " " Sure I remember. You were good at it. You were a natural, Ty. Best I ever saw at that age. " " Yeah," Tyler said. " I was. " He turned the coffee cup slowly in his hands. " Dad, can I ask you something? Do you remember any of them? The customers. Not what they bought. Them. Do you remember any of their names? " The silence on the line went on for a long time. Long enough that Tyler thought the call had dropped. " There was a man," his father said finally. Slowly. As if he were bringing something up from a long way down. " Old Black fella. Farmer, from out past Snyder. He used to come in every spring, look at trucks, never buy anything. Every spring for — oh, six, seven years. I used to send him off to the new guy, whoever was newest, so I didn't have to waste time on him. " Another pause. " And one year, the new guy was a kid named Danny something. Danny Reyes. And Danny spent the whole afternoon with that old man. Walked every truck on the lot with him. And at the end of the day the old man bought two. Brand new. Cash. And then he came back every spring after that and bought from Danny, every year, for ten years. And I never — I never knew his name. " His voice had changed. " I sold cars for twenty-six years, Ty. I don't think I remember one of their names. "
Tyler did not say anything. " Why'd you ask me that? " his father said. " I'll tell you," Tyler said. " I'll come down next weekend and tell you. It's kind of a long story. "
The wind came across the high plains on the last Friday of October the way it always came in that part of Oklahoma, from the southwest, steady and dry and full of red dust, and by four o'clock in the afternoon it had turned every flag on the lot of Ridgeline Cadillac into a cracking, snapping, living thing. Tyler was on the deck. He had a clipboard under his arm and a key fob in his hand, and he was wiping a fine haze of red dust off the hood of a black Escalade, and he was not thinking about anything in particular, when he heard the sound of an engine he did not recognize. It was a small car. An old one. A Buick, maybe fifteen years old, maroon, with a cracked taillight and a bumper sticker on the back that said MY GRANDCHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT WHEELER ELEMENTARY. It came across the lot slowly and parked crookedly across two spaces near the bottom of the deck steps, and a woman got out. She was in her seventies, probably. Small and stout, with gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, in a pair of men's work jeans and a barn coat with straw stuck to the sleeves and a smear of what was almost certainly cow manure across one knee. She had on rubber boots. She stood beside the Buick in the wind and looked up at the long black row of Escalades on the deck, shading her eyes against the sun, the way you look at something you have heard about for a long time and never seen. Tyler felt it happen. He felt his mind start to do the thing. Automatically. Instantly. Rubber boots. Barn coat. Buick. Bumper sticker. No phone. No keys. Walking slow. Stopping to look, like a tourist. The quick, practiced, invisible arithmetic, running all on its own, the way reading happens, the way breathing happens. He felt the number start to come up, the way it always came up. And he put it down. It was not easy. It was like putting down something heavy that he had been carrying for so long he had forgotten his arms were tired. But he did it. He stood on the deck in the wind and he put it down, and he left it there, on the dark planks, and he walked away from it toward the top of the steps. The woman had started up. She had one hand on the rail. She was breathing a little hard. " Afternoon," Tyler said. She looked up at him, startled, as if she had expected something else. Then she said, " Afternoon. " " Windy one. " " Always is. " " Can I get you some water? It's hot out here. " The woman looked at him for a moment longer, and he saw it — he saw her waiting for the flicker behind his eyes. The decision. The look. He knew it now. He had learned to recognize it from the other side. She had probably been watching for it her whole life. He made sure she did not find it. " I'm Tyler," he said, and put out his hand. She looked at the hand. Then she wiped her own palm on the leg of her work jeans and took it. Her grip was hard and dry, and her hand was rough, the knuckles swollen, a small white scar across the back of it. " Maxine," she said. " Maxine Tuttle. " " Nice to meet you, Maxine. What brings you out? " " Oh," she said, and laughed, a little embarrassed, and looked past him at the cars.