I was way early when I stepped into Toby’s shop. It didn’t matter because he had just finished and was wiping his hands on a rag. The ragged hole where the mirror had been was more or less repaired, the metal straightened and flattened and a similar if not matching piece screwed down over the wound.
“That’ll have to do,” he said. “You’ll need to order a new panel. As for the door, I got it working but not for long. The inside track is busted to shit.”
I thanked him while he pulled up the sliding trailer door.
“See up there? I heated it up and bent it into shape as best I could so the rollers stay in the track. The door still sticks some. I called into Johnson’s Commercial in Price and they’ll have a new section of door track waiting for you tomorrow morning. Won’t take long to install.”
I thanked him again and took out my wallet.
“No charge, Ben,” he said. “Remember when I told you what a lucky man you were?” He walked around the trailer to the patch. “Just getting to tell this story is payment enough.” He took a mangled piece of metal off a nearby worktable and handed it to me. “I thought at first this was an M2 mirror off a medium duty. It’s not. Jesus, Ben, you got hit by maybe the only kind of rig that wouldn’t have spread your guts and bullshit all over Utah and halfway to eternity.”
I had a funny feeling. “What are you saying?”
“Almost all of the big road rigs these days are long-snouted front-engine designs. The Peterbilts and Freightliners and so on. Their fenders and fairings come out far enough that what happened here just couldn’t happen without making structural contact. You had to be hit by an older rig, practically a ghost these days.”
“Like a cab-over? Maybe an old White?”
“That’s it,” he said. “Jesus was riding shotgun with you on this one. What are the odds?”
“Yeah,” I said. “What are the odds.”
I put the remnants of the mirror back on the worktable thinking of my conversation with Trooper Smith and wishing I had mentioned the truck I’d made contact with early that morning. If I knew then what Toby was telling me I sure as hell would have. But I didn’t. Now that I did, I would, first chance I got. It might not be the truck Andy was searching for and then again, it just might be. That driver would be looking to replace his side mirror as soon as he could. There weren’t that many places in the area he could go to get that particular mirror and have it installed. At least it gave Andy and the Utah Highway Patrol a place to start.
“Again, I’m no expert in accident investigation, but I have over fifty years of experience. The way that mirror was planted in your trailer that cab-over was doing at least eighty. Probably more, judging from the way the metals fused from the impact.”
Toby opened the bay doors and I thanked him again as I drove out into the street. I set the brake and hopped out and walked back to where he was standing. “I was just wondering,” I said. “Any chips or indication what color that truck was?”
He shook his head. “There might have been some on the anchors for the extender brackets but those got blown to hell on impact. Can’t help you.”
“Do me a favor, Toby?” He nodded, and I said, “Keep this story to yourself for a while?”
He nodded again.
“But not from the Highway Patrol. Put that mirror in a clean bag and give them a call in Price. Tell them everything you told me. And make sure you mention I told you to call. Make sure they let Trooper Smith know. Tell them I’ll come by as soon as I can and file a report.”
Toby said he’d get to it and pushed the button that closed the bay doors. I stood next to my truck thinking. Roy’s voice startled me. “Found my gun,” he said. “Right there on the picnic table where I left it.”
“Good for you,” I said.
Roy’s mode of transportation these days was a 1970s kid’s bike, a Schwinn Stingray with a banana seat and handlebar risers. Pride and embarrassment are sometimes expressed in the oddest of ways, especially, or so it seemed to me, by men. For a long while Roy drove a pretty nice pickup, nothing grand, but decent and newer. Finally his inability to make the payments caught up with him, along with the repo man, and one day it just disappeared. Rather than tell folks his truck was repossessed by the finance company, which everyone knew anyway, he told everyone he’d gotten a DUI and he lost his license and his truck was impounded.
People are usually generous when it comes to a lie so boldly told, and no one disputed Roy’s story—not to his face, anyway. Since then he’d taken to riding his bicycle. He was a tall man, and with his cowboy boots and black hat and damn holster and gun, he had become an odd but accepted fixture pedaling around Rockmuse. A lot of people had sunk damn low and my guess was that seeing Roy on that bike somehow made a lot of others feel better about themselves, maybe even a little superior. Waves and pleasantries were exchanged when Roy would ride by, and without so much as a grin. At least not a grin he might see.
Roy was sitting on his Schwinn with his legs splayed out for balance. “Hey, Ben, you got a few minutes?”
I was still thinking about the mirror and the odds and wondering just how many cab-overs might be still running around on America’s highways. Five hundred? A thousand? Maybe. I started to tell Roy how I was short on time and then I saw him there on his bicycle with his Stetson pushed back on his forehead. I couldn’t say no.
“A few,” I said. “We’ll have to make it quick. What’s up?”
From his wide smile you would have thought I’d just given him a Christmas present. Maybe I had.
He began pedaling and gave me a high “Westward Ho” come-along wave. “Follow me!”
He rode through town and I stayed behind him driving slowly in first gear. We passed the First Church of the Desert Cross and Ginger’s Glass, Whatnots, Handmade Soap & Ballroom Dance Emporium. Ginger had been the one driving the Subaru abandoned over the summer on the outskirts of Price. She’d wasted no time in starting over and setting up her shop in the former movie theater across the street from John’s church. Small-town businesses have a way of combining their products and services and Ginger’s store was a prime example. Others included Harvey’s Barbershop/Ranch Supply and the Rockmuse Toys and Liquor Mart, which, if you know drunks at all, kind of makes sense. You can buy a bottle and an apology gift for later all in one stop.
Ginger was outside up on a ladder adding a new service in black plastic letters to the theater marquis when Roy pedaled by. She was almost six feet tall with red hair that reached nearly to the small of her back. My guess was she was pushing fifty and a little on the heavyset side, and the round, kind face she wore into town was a breath of fresh air, always smiling and upbeat in her long bright dresses and hippie-dippy ways. I’d never spoken to her. She and Roy waved to each other and even at a distance I could see the dark patches on her back where the perspiration had come through her blouse.
Out to the south side of town, past shuttered storefronts and empty strip malls, we turned onto a dirt road and came to an old house that backed up against miles of unbroken desert. I parked in the drive while Roy unfolded the kickstand with a boot tip and dismounted. He lifted the garage door to his home. If I owned a wristwatch I would have been checking it.
As I stepped down from the cab onto the running board, Roy shouted, “I’m like you, I’m an entrepreneur!”
The inside of the garage was overflowing with what looked to me like junk. Somewhere I supposed there was a bed of some kind, though I couldn’t see it. An acrid stench of burning rubber rolled out of the open garage door. Everything was covered in black dust. Old mattresses had been stuffed between the studs of the wall for insulation. Several long tables held wires and electronics and baskets hung from the rafters spilling over with various hand tools. Toward the back of the garage were a drill press, band saw, lathe and jigsaw, plus what appeared to be a molding press of some kind. Several rough drawings and diagrams on white copy paper had been thumbtacked to some of the mattresses.
I had yet to see a bed but I did see a microwave and a hot plate. He gave me the nickel tour and I noticed a broken-down easy chair covered with crap. In front of that was an old portable Sony television sitting on a TV tray that held a VCR with three movies next to it: The Wild One, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Cool Hand Luke. I approved, except maybe for Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
“Congratulations,” I said, and hoped a little sincerity trickled through. “What have you got here, Roy?”
“The doghouse of the future!”