First time I laid eyes on Nina was the winter I got outta the service. She was jailbait then—not more’n fifteen. She was washin’ school busses for the now defunct United Transit Corp. I come in lookin’ for work an’ get invited to have coffee an’ donuts in the shop with my ol’ grammar school buddy, Dwayne Truck. Dwayne was shop foreman at the time. Anyway, we’s standin’ round the coffeemaker, shootin’ the breeze, when somebody notices a suspicious bunch of men collectin’ out on the road near the driveway. When two of ’em breaks off from the group an’ heads for the office, Dwayne calls up front to see what’s brewin’. He comes back lookin’ like a storm fixin’ to break out, an’ says, “Sheriff’s come to take the stock. Seems like somebody had a lien on ’em an’ got a court paper to take ’em away.”
Just then, Nina comes in, an’ I spot her without really noticin’. She’s got her hair up in twin pony tails an’ she’s wearin’ hip boots, an’ a short raincoat, an’ tight jeans. She looks about twelve years old, so it seems kinda funny her helpin’ herself to coffee’n standin’ there with the guys to drink it. An’ nobody but me takes any notice.
Dwayne says, “Boss’s on the phone to his lawyer, try’na git a court order to stop ’em, but he’ll have to go to court an’ that’ll take hours. By that time, the sheriff an’ his posse’ll be outta state with them busses.”
Just then, Nina pipes up. “D.W., what’d happen if a bus just happened to stall in the driveway in front of the office? I mean, the owner of that car that’s parked there’s gone for the day, ain’t he?”
We all look out. Richard Truck’s old, rusty white Caddy is sittin’ T-crossed to the driveway, stickin’ out in the in-bound lane because of the half-assed plow job the snow crew’d done.
Richard, Dwayne’s younger brother, is standin’ right next to Dwayne. “I shore am,” he says. “May not be back ’til tomorrow sometime.”
Dwayne thinks about it for all’a thirty seconds, then says, “I dunno. Lemme ask the boss.” He gets on the phone for a while, then comes back an’ tells Nina, “Go fer it.”
We-all watch as she opens the front garage door an’ starts up the bus she just washed. It’s a pusher, one of them flat-fronted things with the engine in back. She weaves it down the driveway, towards the street, like she don’t quite know which way she’s goin’ with it, then—just about even with the office—she gets in the right lane an’ cuts left, ’cross both lanes of the drive. When she’s just past Richard’s old Caddy, she starts backin’ up, jerkin’, like she’s got it in the wrong gear. Then she stalls it. The bus’s a old diesel; Nina must’a hit the emergency cut-off switch, which disconnects the fuel line, ’cause she spends the next five minutes crankin’ the starter an’ wearin’ the battery down without turnin’ it over.
’Bout the time she gives up an’ gets outta the bus, the boss comes outta the office, trailin’ the sheriff. We hear him ask, “What happened?” all the way in the shop. From where we’re watchin’, we can see her give a little shrug, like she’s embarrassed. The boss says, “Get in there an’ tell Dwayne to fix it.” He sounds mad, but nobody could’a planted a roadblock better than that bus was parked.
Nina walks back to the shop head down an’ scuffin’ her boots on the blacktop like she’s goin’ to a funeral. As she comes through the doorway, though, I notice her shoulders shakin’, an’ she barely gets inside ’fore she busts out laughin’.
“You’re on, D.W.,” she says.
Dwayne gets a handful of wrenches from his tool box an’ goes out to make sure nobody can move that sucker ’til the boss gives the word. It ain’t long ’fore he has engine parts laid out all over the drive. The boss comes out an’ does some armchair quarterbackin’ for the sheriff’s benefit—that we can hear all the way in the shop. Pretty soon, Dwayne starts throwin’ his tools down like this tail-bitin’ is the last straw. “If you don’t like the way I’m doin’ it,” he tells the boss, “fix the damn thing yourself!” Then he turns round an’ stalks back to the shop, where we-all give him a round of applause.
“Dwayne, what’s to keep the sheriff from callin’ someone to come fix it?” Patrick Truck says.
“Nothin’,” says Dwayne. “But he’ll have a hell of a time fixin’ it without these.” He holds up a handful of small parts he’d took out. “Don’t guess Call an’ Haul carries spare bus parts in their rig.”
“Hey, Dwayne,” someone says. “Here comes the boss.”
Boss comes in without the sheriff. He hands Dwayne a fifty-dollar bill an’ says, “You-all go to lunch. An’ if anybody asks, I’m a son-of-a-bitch an’ you’re lettin’ your union rep work all this out.”
Dwayne says, “Sure thing. But how’re we supposed to get out with that bus blockin’ the drive?”
The boss was halfway out the door by then. He says, “Call an effin’ cab for all I care. Just get lost for a couple hours.”
Which is what we done. We all piled into my van, ’cause it was the only vehicle that wasn’t trapped by the bus, an’ went to KFC. By the time we got back, the sheriff an’ his posse was gone. Dwayne fixed the bus, an’ Nina backed it up—all the way round the shop building.
While we was watchin’ her park, Dwayne said, “Homer, you got any sense a-tall, you’ll marry that gal. I’d do it myself, but I already got a good woman.”
“Be kinda robbin’ the cradle, wouldn’t it, Dwayne? What is she, fifteen?”
“I ain’t sayin’ this week, man. But she’s definitely worth the wait.”