“Hold the flashlight steady, Chief,” he joked, echoing terms he’d heard me use around the garage since he was knee-high to a grasshopper.
We patched the hose, refilled the coolant with a jug we kept in the back, and let the engine idle for twenty minutes. The temperature gauge stayed dead center in the normal zone.
As we packed our tools away under a sky turning the deep, bruised purple of an Oklahoma twilight, Jason leaned against the rear bumper and wiped his brow. “You know… back when Britney and I were fighting about money, I used to think life was supposed to be easy. Like happiness was just something you bought off a shelf.”
“Most people think that,” I said, handing him a clean rag. “That’s why advertising is a multi-billion-dollar industry.”
“It’s exhausting,” he whispered, looking out across the open prairie where the first stars were beginning to prick through the darkness. “Working yourself to death trying to impress people you don’t even like, just to buy things you don’t need.”
“Welcome to middle age, son,” I smiled gently. “Takes most men half their lives to figure it out. You got off lucky.”
