Scott Assman

This is what they stole from us

My car wouldn't start in a Tractor Supply parking lot in Tennessee, so I opened the hood. I know nothing about engines. In American movies, opening the hood is how a man calls for help. It works outside the movies too. The first one arrived in under two minutes with a fifty-pound bag of chicken feed on his shoulder. No hello. He set the feed on my bumper, put his hands on his hips, and looked into my engine. Then a man from a truck hauling fence posts. Hands on hips. Then an older man came out of the store holding a receipt. He had not finished paying. Through the window I could see the cashier still holding his card. I think he heard the hood. Nobody touched anything. Nobody asked my name. Three strangers stood around my engine like it was a campfire. "Battery," said Chicken Feed. "Could be the starter," said Fence Posts. "It's not the starter," said Receipt. Fence Posts made a clicking noise with his mouth to show what a bad starter sounds like. Receipt said that was the wrong click and did his own, and for a while two grown men in Tennessee just clicked at each other. I did not interrupt. It felt religious. It was the battery. The terminals were crusted white. Chicken Feed walked to his truck, came back with a can of Coca-Cola, cracked it, and poured it on my battery. "Has to be Coke." "Pepsi works," said Fence Posts. "Pepsi does not work, Ronnie." "It's the same acid!" "Then why'd God make Coke?" I looked it up that night. Men have been having this exact argument online since at least 2004. The sun was going down. Receipt said, "Somebody hold a light," and a flashlight was in my hand. I pointed it at the battery. "Not there. Where I'm looking." I moved it. "Where I'm looking NOW." For ten minutes I chased an old man's eyes around an engine with a beam of light. I have trained with a sword for twenty years. Nothing has ever asked more of my wrists. Then, without looking up, Receipt said, "Don't watch my hands, son. Watch my face. Took my daddy eleven years of yelling to teach me that." So I watched his face. I saw where he was going to look before he looked, and the light was already waiting there. He stopped correcting me. The car started on the first try. Nobody cheered. Chicken Feed took his feed back off my bumper, Fence Posts said "There ya go," and in under a minute they were gone, the way they came. I was closing my hood when a truck two rows over wouldn't turn over. Up went its hood. A father, and a boy of maybe nine. I walked over with the flashlight. I did not ask. I put the light where the father's eyes were about to go. He glanced at me. Then at his son. "Watch how he holds it."