Part 1 — Something Was Missing From Earl
I’m seventy years old, retired, and a widower.
Six years ago, I lost my wife, Nancy.
We had spent more than three decades in the same little suburban house, and after she was gone, I discovered just how much sound one person could take with her.
The kitchen became quieter.
The evenings became longer.
Even the old wooden floors seemed to creak differently.
People sometimes assume retirement means doing nothing, especially when you’re my age.
I suppose Clark, my neighbor, believed that too.
But I never thought of myself as someone who simply sat around waiting for another day to pass.
Every Thursday, I picked up groceries for Mrs. Patterson, an eighty-two-year-old widow who lived near the corner.
If somebody needed a refrigerator hauled away, lumber picked up, or a piece of furniture moved, I was usually the man they called.
Twice a month, I helped our church pantry collect donated boxes.
And most of those errands involved Earl.
Earl was my 1996 Ford F-150.
Once upon a time, the truck had been dark green. Thirty years of weather had faded the paint, the driver’s seat had a patch of silver duct tape across one side, and the passenger window needed encouragement before it would roll all the way up.
Nancy couldn’t stand that truck.
Which made it even funnier that she was the one who named it.
“Earl,” she announced one afternoon years ago.
I had looked at her.
“Why Earl?”
She shrugged.
“Because it looks like an Earl.”
I never understood what that meant.
After she died, though, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.
Maybe because Earl had been there through so much of our marriage.
Trips to the hardware store.
Moves.
Home projects.
Rainstorms.
Family visits.
Arguments over directions.
Quiet drives home.
The truck was scratched, noisy, stubborn, and old.
So was I, depending on who you asked.
But I knew that truck.
I knew every rattle.
Every hesitation.
Every strange sound under the hood.
And I knew exactly how much fuel it normally used.
Which was why I noticed when the gas began disappearing.
The first time, I blamed myself.
I’d filled the tank on Monday, driven perhaps twelve miles, and then barely used the truck for two days.
Thursday morning, the gauge showed a little more than half a tank.
I stared at it.
