The Grace Methodist church van had four hundred and twelve thousand miles on it, a side door held shut with a bungee cord, and a dashboard patched with so much silver duct tape that the old men at the Liars' Table called it the Tin Man, and on a sleeting Friday afternoon in November, on Route 9, with six old people aboard, it finally died.
Leon Mast felt it go. He had been driving it for fifteen years. He felt the engine cough twice and shudder and then go quiet, the way a tired horse lies down.
He steered it onto the gravel shoulder and set the brake.
"Well," said Clarabelle Yost from the front seat. She was eighty-one and had been riding the Tin Man to dialysis in Marietta three times a week for six years. "That doesn't sound good, Leon."
"No, ma'am," Leon said. "It doesn't."
Leon was seventy-eight. He had been the head mechanic for the Calder County school buses for thirty-four years. He knew engines the way some men knew Scripture.
When he retired in 2010, Pastor Sam Greer had asked him if he would drive the church van a couple of days a week. For the seniors. Doctor's appointments, mostly. The pharmacy. The grocery store. Dialysis.
A couple of days a week had turned into five days a week. Sometimes six.
Leon drove them to Marietta and Athens and once, in a snowstorm, all the way to the heart doctor in Columbus. He walked them in. He waited in the waiting rooms with a paperback Western. He walked them out. He knew all their medicines and all their grandchildren's names and which ones liked the radio on and which ones did not.
And he had kept the Tin Man running for fifteen years, through four hundred thousand miles, with junkyard parts and his own two hands and an awful lot of duct tape.
Hank Doyle came out with his tow chain and pulled them back to the church parking lot.
Hank did not even open the hood. He just listened while Leon turned the key.
The engine made a sound like a coffee can full of bolts.
Hank shook his head.
"That's the bottom end, Leon," he said gently. "Rod bearing, sounds like. Maybe a cracked block. On a 1999 with four hundred thousand miles..." He did not finish.
Leon did not need him to finish. He had heard it too.
"She's done," he said.
Pastor Sam called a meeting that night in his office.
He was a big, calm man, a former Marine, who fixed most of the town's problems quietly before Sunday. He sat behind his desk with a yellow legal pad, and Leon sat across from him with his cap in his hands.
"A good used van," Pastor Sam said. "Wheelchair lift. Fifteen passengers. Low miles. I made some calls. We're looking at thirty-eight thousand dollars."
"What's in the van fund?" Leon asked.
Pastor Sam looked at the legal pad.
"One thousand, one hundred and forty dollars," he said. "And some change."
Leon closed his eyes.
"Sam," he said. "Clarabelle has dialysis Monday morning at six-thirty in Marietta. Twenty-six miles. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If she misses it, she gets sick. If she misses two, she ends up in the hospital." He swallowed. "And there's five more on the Monday list. Two eye doctors. A cancer check. Two heart."
"I know, Leon."
"I've got my truck. It holds two."
"I know."
They sat in the quiet office for a while.
"I'll put out a call," Pastor Sam said. "For drivers. This weekend. In the bulletin. On the board at Calder Feed. We'll get the word out."
Leon wrote the list himself that night.
He wrote it on a piece of poster board, in big block letters with a black marker, and on Saturday morning he tacked it up on the bulletin board at Calder Feed and Seed, where half of Pine Hollow went to read the real news.
RIDES NEEDED. MONDAY. LEAVE GRACE METHODIST 5:45 A.M.
1. Clarabelle Yost. Dialysis. Marietta.
2. Harvey Bain. Eye doctor. Athens.
3. Mae Ellen Royce. Eye doctor. Athens.
4. Lester Quick. Heart. Marietta.
5. Inez Cotter. Heart. Marietta.
6. Wanda Shupe. Cancer check. Columbus.
DRIVERS SIGN HERE.
He left a pen hanging on a string.
On Saturday afternoon, he drove by Calder Feed. There were no names on the poster.
On Sunday after church, he drove by again. Still nothing.
Pastor Sam had announced it from the pulpit. He had asked. People had nodded. People had said what a shame it was about the Tin Man. But not one person had come up to Leon afterward in the fellowship hall.
On Sunday night at nine o'clock, Leon drove by Calder Feed one last time. The store was dark. He got out with a flashlight and walked up to the bulletin board.
The poster was gone.
Somebody had taken it down.
Leon stood in the cold parking lot with his flashlight for a long time. Then he drove home and set his alarm for four-thirty.
At five-thirty on Monday morning, in the black November dark, with frost on the windshields, Leon Mast pulled his old pickup into the Grace Methodist parking lot.
Clarabelle was already there, on the church steps, in her wool coat and her rain bonnet, with her dialysis bag. Her son had dropped her off on his way to work. Harvey Bain was there with his cane. Mae Ellen and Inez had come together in Inez's granddaughter's car.
Six of them. Waiting under the porch light.
Leon got out of his truck. He did not know what to say.
"Leon," Clarabelle said. "How are we going to get six people to three different towns in a truck that holds two?"
"I don't know, Clarabelle," Leon said. "I honestly don't know."
And then, at the bottom of the hill, on Route 9, he saw headlights.
Not one set. A long line of them. Coming up the road in the dark, one behind another, slow, the way a funeral comes.
They were turning into the church lot.