Hazel Ann was a squat plain-faced woman, and at 6’2” Robert McTavish had to lean down to look her square in the eye and say his mind.  “I told you to keep those papers on your clipboard Hazel,” he spat out in a firm tone that barely masked his simmering agitation. 

Hazel Ann was one of McTavish’ part-time drivers at the dealership who regularly swapped vehicles in short runs throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.  For the fourth time that month she had failed to secure the paperwork on her truck exchanges and he was tired of the G.M. chewing his ear.

“I told you, and I told you, and I don’t want to tell you no more,”  he continued, pressing forward.

McTavish saw Hazel Ann’s sudden inhale of breath, a blink of her eye.  “Evr’y damn time, Hazel Ann.  Evr’y damn time you put that paperwork on your clipboard.  And if you can’t manage to do that,” he continued, poking his finger into the soft pillowy flesh of her right shoulder for emphasis, “I’ll - get - another - driver.”

Straightening up to his full height, McTavish waited for Hazel Ann’s agreement.  He watched her swallow and look away, to the floor, the wall, out the window where there were rows and rows of shiny new vehicles parked on the lot.  Her hands seemed to flutter with nervousness as she removed her half-glasses and wiped them on the corner of her long-tailed blouse. Then she trailed off down the hall toward the employee break room.

McTavish ran his hand over his dome head as he walked back into the cubby-hole he called an office, frustrated at Hazel’s stubbornness or ignorance or both.  It reminded him of the lazy young men who worked for him early in his management career, on the roofing crews and on the GM night shift, or the Mexicans who pretended they didn’t understand English. 

Shrugging, McTavish returned to the tasks at hand.  By noon he had all of his drivers on the road in new Silverados, except for Hazel who had told the dealership receptionist she had a headache and was clocking out for the day. 

By 2:00 p.m. McTavish had made the return calls for all the pink message slips piled on the corner of his desk and had talked with his wife about weekend plans. 

“Robert, I think it’s going to rain out the barbecue and then we’ll have a trailer full of kids,” she had fretted.

“If you say so,” McTavish had answered and hung up the phone.

By 4:00 p.m., the dealership’s GM and a Deputy Sheriff were standing outside of McTavish’s cubicle; by 4:30 p.m., McTavish was sitting in the Hempstead, Waller County, Jail, accused of assault and battery in a complaint filed and sworn to by affiant Hazel Ann Gardener.

Robert McTavish. Age 64.  Prideful man.  Third generation American. World War II veteran. Husband, father of four, grandfather of nine, law-abiding citizen.  He had not so much as received a traffic ticket in his six decades.  Years earlier he’d even considered running for Justice of the Peace when that job had stayed vacant for six months in his small Texas town.  McTavish paid his taxes on time, voted every election, went to church most Sundays.  But here he was, confined to a steel-gray cell, accused of a criminal offense by a spiteful employee.

Alone in the cell block, McTavish sat at his stoic best, upright, back straight as a ramrod.  His eyes, focused on the cinder-block wall, flickered from time to time. He heaved a sigh as though a thought had crossed his mind, but none had.  Or if one, fleeting. 

When his older brother, the rancher, posted bail, McTavish marched away from his cage and into the bright fluorescents.  Nothing more than a grunt passed between the brothers until they were inside the cab of the 4x4, and then only this from his brother:  “Ride with me over to Austin to look at some bulls and we’ll get some chicken-fried steak on the way home.” 

McTavish rolled down the window on the passenger side of the truck and shifted his glance to the passing buildings that soon dissolved into farm and ranchland punctuated with occasional billboards announcing coming real estate developments.  The closer the truck rolled toward Austin, the more that the signs dominated the roadside.

Reaching out the window, McTavish  adjusted the side mirror.  Going to hell in a handbasket, McTavish thought, his eyes stinging from the warm air whipping in the window as the truck barreled past the changing scenery.    He straightened again in his seat and without turning asked his brother in a distant voice:  “You ever thought about getting some of them Santa Gertrudis bulls?”

A sudden pop and the metal ring of a hub cap hitting the pavement and rolling across the highway signaled the brothers that there was something wrong with an old green truck a few yards in front of them.  The truck fishtailed slightly, then slowed and pulled to the shoulder in a wake of dust.  “Shit,” the McTavishes said in union, but pulled in behind.

The green truck had seen better days; bent, rusted.  Shreds of material hung down in one corner, the remnants of a padded roof.  The woman at the wheel was almost as worn, with deep rutted creases burned into her face by the Texas sun. 

While his brother asked after the woman’s health, Robert McTavish bent to the offending wheel, pulling off some of the shreds of tire.  “There’s a spare in the trunk,” the woman noted in a hoarse smoker’s whisper, handing over her car keys.

The spare was only marginally better than the flat, but McTavish pulled it from the tire well along with a crowbar and jack.  It was difficult to find a rust-free place on the car’s frame to support the jack’s leverage.  McTavish began to feel the sweat dripping down his neck and into his shirt collar.

Lug nuts, corroded with neglect, resisted McTavish’s every turn, but he waved away his brother’s help and took a different stance, bringing to bear more of his muscle and weight.  His breath was faster now, more labored, and he pushed harder against the resistance until the crowbar slipped its hold and smashed McTavish’s knuckles on gravel and dirt.

“Goddamit,” McTavish bellowed, standing and kicking the jack, rocking the truck to a three-point tilt.  They stood there for a time, the three of them.  In the heat and the dirt.  Cars blowing past on the highway.  Robert McTavish’s knuckles on the right hand were a shred of skin and blood.

Then McTavish took out his handkerchief and with his good hand began to wrap the wound, allowing his brother to tie off a square knot.  Without a word, McTavish began the process again.  Jack.  Crowbar.  Lug nuts. 

After the spare was on, the old woman thanked Robert McTavish for his kindness and offered him money she surely didn’t have.   “No ma’am,” McTavish said, with a shake of his head.  He watched her pinched face relax, her eyelids flutter between embarrassment or relief.  “You drive careful,” he said.

The brothers had driven several more miles, approaching Austin’s rolling countryside, when Robert McTavish let out a deep breath he had apparently been holding for awhile.  His brother said “Better get some iodine on that hand when you get home.”

McTavish looked at the spots of blood that had seeped through the kerchief and winced when he tried to close his right hand.  It was getting stiff on him, and he figured he ought to boil it out with some peroxide that night.  Holding the hand up he continued to slowly open and close it, wondering whether he could do his dealership paperwork with his left hand for a day or two.