Bertie,” my father yelled from the doorway between his office and the hot garage. Roberta Byrd is my name, but everyone calls me Bertie. That’s right. Bertie Byrd. Please don’t ask what my parents were thinking. It’s pretty obvious . . . they weren’t.

“Bertie?”

“Yeah, Pop?” I slid out from under the Lincoln Continental I’d been working on, struggled to a sitting position, then pulled a rag from my coverall pocket. A twinge of old age crawled across my shoulder blades. Rolling my head from side to side, I hoped to relieve some of the ache.

When I lay under a car, flat on my back on a creeper, as opposed to flat on my back with a creep, I tend to feel much older than my thirty-two years.

“Were you sleeping under there again?” Pop had left the sanctum of his air-conditioned office to see what I was doing.

“Only for a few minutes,” I lied. By the pain in my back, it must have been quite a while. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I worked that big wreck out on Turner Highway, and Martin Griffin drove off the culvert in his driveway about three this morning.”

“Well, you got a call now too. Ethel Winchell’s out of fuel, again. She’s in front of the Dew Drop Inn and Tavern. She wants you to get her away from that ‘heathen breeding place.’ You better get out there before she develops a case of apoplexy.”

“I’m sure it’s not the first case she’s had today.” Or the last. I had to smile thinking of the snit she’d be in worrying that someone might see her out there and report her to the Sweet Meadow Garden Club. They might put her on one of their lists. Trust me. You don’t want to be on their list. I know I try to stay in their good graces at all times.

Every Sunday morning, when anyone enters the back of the First Baptist Church over on Liberty Street, the whole Garden Club turns in unison to see who came in. As people enter, the ladies mark that person’s name off the list. At the end of services, they check to see which infidels didn’t show up.

The Garden Club is easy to spot from the back of the church. They’re the group of women who have two hair styles-high and higher. The colors span about three shades of blue.

They’re a powerful group. I go to church every Sunday, as much for the Garden Club as for the Lord.

Pulling into the parking lot, I didn’t see Mrs. Winchell. I backed my wrecker up to her 1982 Mercedes. You couldn’t ask for a finer running machine, if Ethel Winchell would quit letting the diesel engine run out of fuel. However, Mrs. Winchell felt that pulling into a filling station was beneath her. I thought that having to be towed about six times a year was stupid. Of course, I make more money with her way of thinking.

I hooked the chains to the undercarriage, then winched the wheels off the ground. As I walked toward the Dew Drop Inn to find her, I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Winchell scrunched down in the front seat. I walked to her car, then tapped on the window. With dark eyes she looked up at me. The driver’s window eased down. Mrs. Winchell whispered something I couldn’t make out.

I leaned closer. “What’d you say?”

“Get me out of here before someone sees me.” The old woman ground her words through her teeth and stared at me like I’d sucked all the fuel from her car and left her stranded at the devil’s doorstep.

“Yes, ma’am. Come on up in the truck with me.” I opened her door. She snatched it shut so fast, I almost got my hand caught.

“I’m not setting foot on this parking lot. Now, get me out of here.”

“If you didn’t get out, how did you call for a tow truck?”

She reached to the seat next to her, then waved a cell phone in my face.