Two white men came out of the mechanic’s shed, one of them wiping his hands on a rag, the other pulling from a bottle of sassafras. It was that one who said it sure was a nice car and asked Luther how he’d come by it.

Luther watched them spread out on either side of the hood, and the one with the rag wiped his brow with it and spit some chaw into the dirt.

“I saved up,” Luther said.

“Saved up?” the one with the bottle said. He was lean and lanky and wore a sheepskin coat against the cold. He had a thick head of red hair but up top he had a bald spot the size of a fist. “What kind of work you do?” He had a pleasant voice.

“Work in a munitions factory for the war effort,” Luther said.

“Uh-huh.” The man walked around the car, taking a good look, squatting from time to time to check the body lines for dents that might have been hammered out and painted over. “You were in a war once, weren’t you, Bernard?”

Bernard spit again and wiped his mouth and ran his stubby fingers along the edge of the hood looking for the latch.

“I was,” Bernard said. “Haiti.” He looked at Luther for the first time. “They dropped us off in this one town, said kill any natives give you a funny look.”

“You get a lot of funny looks?” the redheaded man asked.

Bernard popped the hood. “Not once we started shooting.”

“What’s your name?” the other man asked Luther.

“I’m just looking to fix this here flat.”

“That’s a long name,” the man said. “Wouldn’t you say, Bernard?”

Bernard stuck his head out from behind the hood. “It’s a mouthful.”

“My name’s Cully,” the man said, and reached out his hand.

Luther shook the hand. “Jessie.”

“Pleased to meet you, Jessie.” Cully walked around the back of the car and hitched his pants to squat by the tire. “Oh, sure, there it is, Jessie. You want to look?”

Luther walked down the car and followed Cully’s finger, saw a jagged tear the width of a nickel in the tire right by the rim.

“Probably just a sharp stone,” Cully said.

“Can you fix it?”

“Yeah, we can fix it. How far’d you drive on it?”

“Couple miles,” Luther said. “But real slow.”

Cully took a close look at the wheel and nodded. “Don’t seem to be any damage to the rim. How far you come, Jessie?”

The whole time he’d been driving, Luther kept telling himself he needed to come up with a story, but as soon as he’d start trying, his thoughts would drift to Jessie lying on the floor in his own blood or the Deacon trying to reach for his arm or Arthur Smalley inviting them into his home or Lila looking at him in the living room with her heart closed to him.

He said, “Columbus, Ohio,” because he couldn’t say Tulsa.