took her out in that truck simply because driving made her smile.
She would roll down the window and hold her hand outside in the wind like she was seventeen again.
“This old thing is going to outlive both of us,” she once joked, patting the dashboard.
She was half right.
So when fuel began disappearing from that truck, it bothered me far more than losing twenty dollars’ worth of gasoline should have.
It started on a Tuesday.
Tuesday was always fill-up day.
Old men become creatures of habit.
I filled the tank at the Shell station on Hollis.
Forty-one dollars and some change.
The next afternoon, I drove ten minutes to help my friend Walt repair a section of fence.
Ten minutes there.
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Ten minutes home.
Then I barely drove anywhere for the rest of the week.
Thursday.
Friday.
Saturday.
I stayed home.
Read.
Mowed the yard.
