I heard a door slam off to my right and glanced over to see Delia standing on the front porch of a white house, her arms crossed over her chest. “Macy?” she called out. “Is that you? Oh, God, I forgot to tell you about the hole. Hold on, we’ll get you out. I’m such an idiot. Just let me call Wes.”
“I’m on it,” Wes yelled back, and she put a hand on her chest, relieved, then sat down on the steps. Then, to me, he added, “Hold tight. I’ll be back in a second.”
I sat there, watching as he jogged down the street, disappearing into the yard of the house at the very end. A minute later an engine started up, and a Ford pickup truck pulled out to face me, then drove down the side of the road, bumping over the occasional tree root. Wes drove past me, then backed up until his back bumper was about a foot from mine. I heard a few clanks and clunks as he attached something to my car. Then I watched in my side mirror as he walked back up to me, his white T-shirt bright in the dark.
“The trick,” he said, leaning into my window, “is to get the angle just right.” He reached over, putting his hands on my steering wheel, and twisted it slightly. “Like that,” he said. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, putting my hands where his had been.
“Have you out in a sec,” he said. He walked back to the truck, got in, and put it in gear. I sat there, hands locked where he’d said to keep them, and waited.
The trucked revved, then moved forward, and for a second, nothing happened. But then, suddenly, I was moving. Rising. Up and out, bit by bit, until, in my headlights, I could see the hole emerging in front of me, now empty. And it was huge. More like a crater, like something you’d see on the moon. A doozy, indeed.
Once I was back on level ground, Wes hopped out of the truck, undoing the tow rope. “You’re fine now,” he called from somewhere near my bumper. “Just keep to the left. Way left.”
I stuck my head out the window. “Thank you,” I said. “Really.”
He shrugged. “No problem. I do it all the time. Just pulled out the FedEx guy yesterday.” He tossed the tow rope into the truck bed, where it landed with a thunk. “He was not happy.”
“It’s a big hole,” I said, taking another look at it.
“It’s a monster.” He ran a hand through his hair, and I saw the tattoo on his arm again, but he was too far away for me to make it out. “We need to fill it, but we never will.”
“Why not?”
He glanced over to Delia’s house. I could now see her coming down the walk. She had on a long skirt and a red T-shirt, her feet bare. “It’s a family thing,” he said. “Some people believe everything happens for a reason. Even massive holes.”
“But you don’t,” I said.
“Nope,” he said. He looked over my car at the hole, studying it for a second. I was watching him, not even aware of it until he glanced at me. “Anyway,” he said, as I focused back on my steering wheel, “I’ll see you around.”
“Thanks again,” I said, shifting into first.
“No problem. Just remember: left.”
“Way left,” I told him, and he nodded, then knocked the side of my bumper, rap-rap, and started back to the truck. As he climbed in, I turned my wheel and eased around the hole, then drove the fifty feet or so to Delia’s driveway, where she was waiting for me. Right as I reached to open my door, Wes’s truck blurred past in my rearview mirror: I could see him in silhouette, his face illuminated by the dashboard lights. Then he disappeared behind a row of trees, gravel crunching, and was gone.
“The thing about Wes,” Delia said to me, unwrapping another package of turkey, “is that he thinks he can fix anything. And if he can’t fix it, he can at least do something with the pieces of what’s broken.”
“That’s bad?” I asked, dipping my spreader back into the huge, industrial-size jar of mayonnaise on the table in front of me.
“Not bad,” she said. “Just—different.”
We were in Delia’s garage, which served as Wish Catering central. It was outfitted with two industrial-size ovens, a large fridge, and several stainless-steel tables, all of which were piled with cutting boards and various utensils. We were sitting on opposite sides of one of the tables, assembling sandwiches. The garage door was open, and outside I could hear crickets chirping.
“The way I see it,” she continued, “is that some things are just meant to be the way they are.”
“Like the hole,” I said, remembering how he’d glanced at her, saying this.
She put down the turkey she was holding and looked at me. “I know what he told you,” she said. “He said that I was the reason the hole was still there, and that if I’d just let him fill it we wouldn’t have the postman pissed off to the point of sabotaging our mail, and I wouldn’t be facing yet another bill from Lakeview Tire for some poor client who busted their Goodyear out there.”
“No,” I said slowly, spreading the mayonnaise in a thin layer on the bread in front of me, “he said that some people believe everything happens for a reason. And some people, well, don’t.”
She thought for a second. “It’s not that I believe everything happens for a reason,” she said. “It’s just that . . . I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It’s the universe’s way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It’s how life is.”