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The Green Strap
Episode 2 of 3 of Half a Tank by Greg Sandoval · free to read
“Mom sewed the strap in February,” Kyle said, “the week the truck went back.”
He had the red bag over his shoulder and the spare key in his hand, and he had found me in the passenger seat of Mom’s car at six on a Wednesday night. Martin’s week. He did not look surprised. He looked like a man who had expected to be found and had hoped it would be me.
“Went back where.”
“To the bank. The yard closed in January. No yard, no truck payment, no truck.” He got in behind the wheel, and the seat fit him, because he is the only one of us built like her. “This car is the only thing I have that moves, and I wasn’t going to say so in a parking lot.”
“Rule six,” I said.
“I know what rule six says. I know what the insurance says. I also know what the room over the garage costs, because Martin set the rent.”
Four hundred a month to the estate account. Martin had called it fair. Kyle had signed the page.
“Four nights,” he said. “Thirty miles a night. It covers the rent and the phone and not much else.”
“And Mom knew,” I said.
“Mom ate the cancelled orders. She had a lot of pie in April.” He set his phone in the mount. “She said not to tell Martin. She said not to tell you either, but she was tired by then.”
“Give me the spare key,” I said.
“No.”
“If you hit somebody on a delivery, the claim gets denied. The car is gone for all three of us and the estate eats the rest. Give me the key and I’ll put Wednesday on the pad myself.”
“You’ll put it on the pad and Martin will read rule six out loud again.”
“Then we change rule six.”
“In pen. All three present. You know who holds the pen.” He held the spare key out on its tag. “Take it. Then take the rent to Martin and tell him where it stops coming from.”
I did not take it.
“Or you ride along,” he said, “and you hold the bag.”
I held the bag.
The app pinged before we were out of the driveway. A pizza place on the highway, then a split-level with a dog that knew the car. The woman there called Kyle “hon” and tipped in quarters. I read the house numbers. He drove with the seat where Mom had it and did not have to think about it.
“Martin paid the roof,” he said at the third stop. “You did the lists. I did the nights. It’s not a contest.”
“It’s a little bit a contest,” I said.
“Then I’m winning, and I’d rather not be.”
The app paid by the order and by the mile, he said, and paid worst in the rain, when the orders came thickest. He had a spreadsheet on his phone. It was the first spreadsheet Kyle had ever made, and Martin would have wept to see it.
The winter she could not do the stairs, Kyle slept on the couch with the baby monitor from the church rummage sale. I knew that. I had made the list that put him there.
The last order of the night cancelled while it was in the bag. Two slices of pie, paid for and unwanted. We ate them in Mom’s driveway with the engine off, out of the box, and there is no rule about pie. Martin missed one.
“She liked the cherry,” Kyle said.
“She liked that it was free,” I said.
“Same thing, with her.”
Thirty-one point six miles by the trip meter. I unclipped the log from the visor and wrote them in. Wednesday, 31.6. I sat with the pen over the purpose column the way you sit over a form at the bank. Then I left it blank. That column belonged to Kyle, and he was already upstairs.
Thursday I held the bag again. Friday, Rob held it, and came home smelling of garlic and forty dollars richer in quarters.
“Your brother tips himself,” Rob said. “There’s a jar.” I logged both nights in my own hand, the miles to the tenth, the purpose column empty three times running.
Kyle put the spare key back in Mom’s kitchen drawer, and I clipped the log where it lives.
Saturday at nine, Martin would want the purpose column.