Free What You Have Left by Will Allison Page A

curled up next to her, but first I have to get the truck off the street in case the police are looking for it. Outside, it’s crazy hot for November, even November in South Carolina, sunlight blazing down through the bare branches. The pickup is slouched against the curb, one tire almost flat, the wind-shield spattered with insects. I pull it around back and let the rest of the air out of the tire, just in case she gets any ideas about hitting the road again. Then I check the bumper, bracing for the worst. But while there are dents and scrapes and a new MURRELLS INLET IS FOR LOVERS bumper sticker, there’s nothing to suggest she did anyone grievous bodily harm.
    In the glove box, underneath an empty whiskey bottle and a pile of gas receipts, I find her notebook. Inside are lists of names, addresses, phone numbers—the paper trail of her search. She started looking for Wylie the day after I asked her to marry me. By then she’d packed a suitcase, locked up the farmhouse, and moved into my apartment. At the time, Ithought that meant something, but it turns out all it meant was she didn’t want to stay on the farm. She was supposed to be in school, but she’d skipped the first few weeks to look after Cal, and by the time he died it was too late to enroll. Maybe that was part of the problem: too much time on her hands. She spent mornings on the balcony with a bottle of wine, making phone calls and scribbling notes, calling anybody and everybody who might have a clue as to Wylie’s whereabouts. When her mother died, he’d been working as a claims adjuster, so she started with the insurance agency and went from there, making her way through a list of garages, car dealerships, and boardinghouses. It seems Wylie had become something of a drifter. He also took up the habit of driving drunk, a habit Holly now sees as her birthright. The first time he landed in jail was 1979, down in Myrtle Beach. After he got out, he took a job serving papers for an attorney, a fraternity brother from his time at Carolina, but soon he went back to working on cars. Spartanburg, Chester, Florence—the list went on.
    Funny thing is, for all his moving around, he’s never strayed very far from home. Holly takes this as a sign. “What’s keeping him here if not me?” she said one night. “I mean, why not move to some state where you’re not the DUI poster boy?”
    â€œIf you’re the reason,” I said, “then why doesn’t he come around?”
    Camden’s only forty miles away, but the traffic is heavy on I-20, and it’s noon by the time I pull off Highway 521 and flip through Holly’s notebook to double-check the address. The garage sits between two empty lots about a mile down theroad from the military academy. As I pull up to the full-serve island, I’m relieved to see no police tape, no body outlined in chalk—just a sleepy Union 76 station with a handful of cars out front waiting to be fixed. Still, it’s no guarantee some mechanic isn’t laid up in the county hospital with a busted leg.
    An old guy with a cheek full of tobacco is working on a red convertible. When he sees my car, he wipes off his hands and heads over. “Fill ’er up?” he says.
    â€œPlease.”
    He puts the nozzle in and asks me to pop the hood. If he’s the mechanic Holly talked to, it’s clear he hasn’t been hit by a truck, but I want to be sure. It seems too dicey to come out and mention her, so while he’s poking around the engine, I get out of the car and tell him I’m looking for Wylie Greer. He wipes the dipstick clean, gives me the up and down.
    â€œYou a bill collector?”
    â€œNo,” I say. “Just an old friend.”
    He spits onto the asphalt. “He used to work here,” he says, turning back to the car, “but now he don’t. Spread the word.”
    So he’s the guy. I imagine the relief on Holly’s