He finished his eggs. He drank his coffee. He got up and rinsed his plate and set it in the rack and then stood behind his wife at the stove and put his arms around her and his chin on the top of her head, which he could still do, because she had always been small and he had always been tall and age had shrunk them both at about the same rate.
"Where are you going?" she said. "Really."
"Quimby Ford."
She was quiet a moment. "That's where she works."
"That's where she used to work. I don't know if she still does."
"You could call."
"If I call, she'll make a fuss."
"And if you just walk in?"
"Then maybe she'll make a smaller one," Arvel said. "Or maybe she won't be there, and I'll buy a car from somebody who's never heard of me. Either way, Immy, you're getting a car."
"I don't need a new—"
"I didn't say new."
"You didn't have to." She turned around inside his arms and looked up at him. He could not see her eyes, exactly. He could see the soft, bright place where they were. "You're going to drive there?"
"It's the thirty-first."
"I know what day it is."
"Then you know I've got till midnight." He kissed her forehead. "It's four miles. It's broad daylight. I'll go slow enough to bore the squirrels."
"And how are you getting the car home?"
"I'll figure that out when I've got one."
He took the S-10's key off the hook by the back door. It was on a ring with a brass tag from the Owensboro post office that said JOHNSON A. — RTE 14 in letters stamped deep enough that he could read them with his thumb. He had carried Route 14 for twenty-two of his thirty-eight years: the old streets between the river and Fourth, the narrow brick houses, the rooming houses and the churches and the one-story laundries, the porches where people waited for him because he was the only government they saw every day. He had retired in 2012. He still carried the tag.
At the door he stopped, and patted the left pocket of the jacket again, and felt the cards.
"Arvel," Imogene said behind him.
"Mm."
"If she's there." She hesitated. "Tell her I said hello. Tell her I still have that dish."
"I'll tell her."
He went out into the cold blue morning, and got into the truck, and sat a moment with both hands on the wheel the way he had taught his wife to sit, and then he turned the key and the S-10 cleared its throat and he drove, very slowly, the last drive he would ever make, down Locust Street toward Frederica.