Just now an older man came through the car wash with his pickup truck. His window was broken, so he had to open his door and get out to pay me. He seemed weak on his feet, and his hands shook so much he could barely unzip his pocketbook. But he smiled easily and talked like we were old friends. His words, like his hands, were clumsy, and I couldn’t understand them. I smiled in response, and he climbed back into his truck.
As I watched him drive into the wash, as I watch all customers, I realized that he wasn’t stopping. Our car wash pulls cars through, and they have to be stopped and in neutral at the entrance for this to work. I ran to catch the man before he drove too far, but as I entered the wash tunnel, he seemed to give the truck more gas. It sped forward between the the brushes and rammed into a large spinning brush which normally eases away on a hydraulic arm as a car passes through. It swung forward violently and then slipped to the side. I followed after the truck, running by the first set of hoses which were now spraying empty air, and stopped the driver just before he ran into two more spinning brushes.
His truck sat under wet hanging wraps. They weren’t yet moving because, as far as the wash’s mechanism knew, the man’s truck was still where it should be, a few feet behind us. He cracked his door as I walked up, and I shouted over the spraying hoses and whirring brushes, “You’re supposed to put it in neutral!” I stayed and watched to make sure the rollers which pull cars through the wash had reached his truck and would take it to the end of the tunnel.
Back in my booth where I wait for customers, I sat at my laptop to cruise the Internet. A short time later, I happened to looked up to see the man driving away. The vinyl cover over his truck’s bed had come open during his wash. It was crumpled and hanging over the side of the pickup’s bed. I wondered if the man realized it was there and whether or not it might blow off as he drove down the road. Somehow, all I could think of was his shaking hands.
