Big Driver Read Free Page B

store porches had become obsolete because they encouraged you to sit a spell and chat about baseball or the weather instead of just paying up and hustling your credit cards on down the road to some other place where you could swipe them at the checkout. A tin sign hung askew from the porch roof. It was more faded than the Esso sign. She took a few steps closer, raising a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU. Which was a slogan for what, exactly?
    She had almost plucked the answer from her mental junkheap when her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an engine. As she turned toward it, sure that the Zombie Bakers had come back after all, the sound of the motor was joined by the scream of ancient brakes. It wasn’t the white van but an old Ford F-150 pickup with a bad blue paintjob and Bondo around the headlights. A manin bib overalls and a gimme cap sat behind the wheel. He was looking at the litter of wood scraps in the ditch.
    â€œHello?” Tess called. “Pardon me, sir?”
    He turned his head, saw her standing in the overgrown parking lot, flicked a hand in salute, pulled in beside her Expedition, and turned off his engine. Given the sound of it, Tess thought that an act tantamount to mercy killing.
    â€œHey, there,” he said. “Did you pick that happy crappy up off the road?”
    â€œYes, all but the piece that got my left front tire. And—” And my phone doesn’t work out here, she almost added, then didn’t. She was a woman in her late thirties who went one-twenty soaking wet, and this was a strange man. A big one. “—and here I am,” she finished, a bit lamely.
    â€œI’ll change it forya if you got a spare,” he said, working his way out of his truck. “Do you?”
    For a moment she couldn’t reply. The guy wasn’t big, she’d been wrong about that. The guy was a giant. He had to go six-six, but head-to-foot was only part of it. He was deep in the belly, thick in the thighs, and as wide as a doorway. She knew it was impolite to stare (another of the world’s facts learned at her mother’s knee), but it was hard not to. Ramona Norville had been a healthy chunk of woman, but standing next to this guy, she would have looked like a ballerina.
    â€œI know, I know,” he said, sounding amused. “You didn’t think you were going to meet the Jolly Green Giant out here in the williwags, didja?” Onlyhe wasn’t green; he was tanned a deep brown. His eyes were also brown. Even his cap was brown, although faded almost white in several places, as if it had been splattered with bleach at some point in its long life.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I was thinking you don’t ride in that truck of yours, you wear it.”
    He put his hands on his hips and guffawed at the sky. “Never heard it put like that before, but you’re sort of right. When I win the lottery, I’m going to buy myself a Hummer.”
    â€œWell, I can’t buy you one of those, but if you change my tire, I’d be happy to pay you fifty dollars.”
    â€œYou kiddin? I’ll do it for free. You saved me a mess of my own when you picked up that scrapwood.”
    â€œSomeone went past in a funny truck with a skeleton on the side, but he missed it.”
    The big guy had been heading for Tess’s flat front tire, but now he turned back to her, frowning. “Someone went by and didn’t offer to help you out?”
    â€œI don’t think he saw me.”
    â€œDidn’t stop to pick up that mess for the next fellow, either, did he?”
    â€œNo. He didn’t.”
    â€œJust went on his way?”
    â€œYes.” There was something about these questions she didn’t quite like. Then the big guy smiled and Tess told herself she was being silly.
    â€œSpare under the cargo compartment floor, I suppose?”
    â€œYes. That is, I think