Necessity Read Free

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.
    â€œNeed 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.
    â€œI 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