Free Tender Grace by Jackina Stark

she didn’t. Besides, she had her hands full with Helen. While I collected my towel and sunblock, heading to my room to clean up, Helen yelled “Bye” and in the same breath begged her mother to come in the water and play whales with her.
    I walked away thinking how much Tom would have enjoyed talking to Helen. Though he was a high school principal, talking with young children was one of his greatest delights.
    I had walked out to the garden unnoticed one May afternoon and watched him showing a then three-year-old Kelsie how to plant tomatoes.
    “I’ll pour the water, Papa,” she said when he had scooped out the soil and set a new plant into the hole he had dug.
    He handed her a plastic cup and held the plant straight while she poured the mixture of water and Miracle-Gro around it. When he began to push the soil back around the plant, she knelt beside him and said, “I’ll help you, Papa.” And she, as gently as her grandpa had done, patted the soil around the plant until it was secure.
    “Good job,” he said, kissing the top of her head. Kelsie stood up and stretched like Tom did and saw me standing at the gate with her baby brother on my hip. “We’re making tomatoes,” she said, beaming.
    On this August afternoon, I slipped my key into the slot and admitted to myself that Helen had been a pleasant intrusion.
    August 26
    I’ve wondered how much easier this trip might have been if my car had one of those navigation systems. At the same time, I rather like my atlas. I opened it to Texas and laid it out before me on the bed last night to look at my options. I decided I could make it all the way to Amarillo today, a seven- or eight-hour drive according to my rudimentary calculations.
    Make that twelve hours, when you count the four hours I sat on the side of the road.
    Between Austin and Amarillo there might be five miles that don’t have cell phone coverage, and that is where the blowout occurred. I was able to get the car to the side of the road, for which I gave thanks, but when my cell phone didn’t work, I began to panic. I am sorry to admit that, at fifty-five years of age, I have never changed a tire or had a lesson on how to change one. Tom tried to show me once, but I didn’t want to fool with it. I always assumed Step One, join AAA, Step Two, get a cell phone, and Step Three, pay your bill.
    The road was not busy today, but the cars that were on the road zipped by like my Solara and I didn’t exist. It was discouraging at first, and then maddening. I’m happy to say my irritation did not escalate to using inappropriate language or hand motions. I told myself, Surely some kind soul will call the highway patrol when he or she gets close enough to a tower for a cell phone to work.
    But nooooo.
    Two hours later, I was thinking about opening the trunk and seeing if I could find a jack and intuit how to get it on my car. What kind of death did I want to die?
    My answer was pulling over in his beat-up pickup truck.
    “Got a problem?” he asked, spitting tobacco on the side of the road and wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
    I hoped that question wouldn’t prove to be ironic.
    “It’s a hot one,” he added
    I looked at his black hat, black shirt, black jeans, and black boots and thought a man driving without an air-conditioner might consider wearing white. He didn’t smile, and his truck and demeanor didn’t comfort me.
    He bent over and looked at my right back tire. Finally he smiled. “This ain’t good.”
    “Do you happen to have a cell phone?” I asked.
    He laughed.
    “Mine doesn’t work out here, I’m afraid.”
    “Well,” he said, rolling up his sleeves, “let’s get you taken care of.”
    “Oh, thank you!” I gushed, but he was in the trunk pulling out the jack and spare and didn’t appear to hear me.
    “So,” I said while he made short work of replacing the old tire with the spare, “do you live around here?”
    “Over in Nazareth,” he