Second Call
The phone went at 2:14 and Ray had his boots on before he was awake.
It was Dana. Her kid had locked himself in the bathroom with the water running and wouldn't answer. Ray drove twelve minutes in the dark and talked through the door for forty. When the kid finally opened it, Ray didn't say one word about it, then or ever. That's the whole job.
Ray is the one you call. Everybody says it like it's a compliment. He's had the call for a burst pipe on Thanksgiving, for a wreck on 98, for a dog that got out, and for a man who needed somebody to sit in a parking lot with him until he stopped shaking. He's never once been called for nothing. He's proud of that in a way he doesn't look at too close.
Thursday his own truck died on the shoulder. He sat in the cab with the hazards ticking and his thumb over the screen. Forty contacts. He went down the list and could not make the call. Not one. He found a reason for every name. She's got the baby. He's on nights. That one would ask what happened, and Ray didn't have an answer that fit in a phone call.
He waited an hour and forty minutes for the tow. Paid cash. Drove home behind the truck in the dark, and the shape he kept landing on was this: a man can own the whole list and not be on it.
Nothing happened after that. Nobody died. He didn't change.
But the next Tuesday his sister called at eleven about nothing, and he stayed on the line for an hour. He didn't ask her what she needed. He let her talk. And when she asked what he'd been up to, he said, “Truck's been acting up,” which was as close as he could get that day.
That's the story. He's working on it.