Coming Home To Texas. Allie Pleiter

Three

      “That’s one of them foreign sports cars, isn’t it?”

      Nash looked up from under the hood of his 1980 Datsun 280ZX to find Theo Kennedy, the local pastor, standing in his garage doorway. Kennedy was twice Nash’s age—graying at the temples and a bit thick around the middle—but he was a likable guy, and it was clear people in town loved him dearly.

      Nash had been to church once or twice since coming to town, liked the local congregation, but hadn’t realized he’d drawn enough attention to warrant a pastoral visit. Evidently what Don kept telling him about small towns like Martins Gap was true—nothing ever truly went unnoticed.

      “It’s an import, yes. Japanese, to be exact.” Nash wiped his palms on a nearby towel and offered a hand to the pastor.

      “Don’t see too many of those around here. Looks fast,” the man said, peering at the array of tubes and parts under the vehicle’s long, sleek hood.

      It was true. Nash had seen nothing but domestic cars in his travels around the small town. He’d also noticed his share of glares that clearly translated to “Why ain’t you drivin’ an American car?” when he’d taken the Z out for drives. Some days the stares didn’t bother him. Other days they made him feel about as foreign and shunned as the import. “She is fast. When she runs right, that is. She threw a fan belt on the highway two days ago and is currently giving me a hard time.”

      “We got a hardware store and a garage in town. Both of them carry car parts.”

      Nash laughed. “Not these. This little lady has very exclusive taste in accessories. I didn’t bring all my spare parts in the move from LA, and now I’m regretting it.” At least the Z was reasonable compared to other foreign cars. Some of the Italian models could cost his yearly salary in parts and labor, but the Z sucked up only a slightly painful portion of his spare cash. “Still,” he continued as he dropped the hood down and heard it latch with a satisfying click, “I don’t mind tinkering with a few things while I wait for parts to ship.”

      “Like to get grease under your fingernails, do you?” Pastor Kennedy asked.

      “It’s a good stress release from law enforcement. And a nice change to be making things run instead of stepping in when they don’t.” Nash moved his toolbox from one of the two metal stools beside his workbench and motioned for the pastor to sit down. “Something I can do for you, Pastor Kennedy?” As soon as the words left his mouth, Nash realized that was probably a dangerous thing to ask a pastor. Yes, he ought to get better connected in the community, but he didn’t exactly feel ready to set down roots or open himself up to relationships.

      “Please, just Theo or Pastor Theo if you like, since I am here on church business. There is something I’m hoping you might help with.” The man picked up an air filter from Nash’s workbench and examined it. “Don told me you worked with at-risk youth in LA. I think we have some trouble brewing with ours.”

      Nash’s stomach tightened. He’d always found “at risk” a sanitized and clinical term for hoodlums and gangbangers who seemed closer to savages than humans some days. He often could glimpse the person hiding under the animal, and he knew the value of that sight. But what he’d told Ellie was true; he wasn’t ready to go back to that kind of brutal. He returned a wrench to its place in the toolbox rather than respond.

      “Don also tells me you agree with him that whoever’s making trouble over at the Blue Thorn is most likely young folk,” Theo went on.

      Nash sat down opposite the man. “Seems like it, yes. Only it’s too early to say for sure.”

      “Kids need something good to do, or they find something not-so-good to do, don’t you think?”

      Nash tried to calculate polite ways out of this conversation, regretting that he’d sat down. “That’s been my experience.”

      Theo shifted on the stool. “Our boys need something good to do. Something new and interesting.”

      The pastor was staring at the car. It wasn’t hard to see where this was heading. Nash snapped the lid of the toolbox closed with what he hoped was finality. “There’s always auto shop at the high school.”

      Theo chuckled. “If you met Clive Tyler, you’d know why I might be lookin’ for someone with a bit more...appeal.”

      Nash remembered Mr. Smith, the bug-eyed, odd little man who’d been his own auto-shop teacher in high school. “Smitty” was as uncool as could be and no one Nash had ever wanted to spend his free time with at that age. “I guarantee you, a deputy has probably just as little appeal to boys that age.”

      “Well, a sheriff like Don, maybe. But you’re different. They’d take to you.”

      They do take to me. And I take to them. And then they shoot me and I end up in Texas. “Not so much, Pastor.”

      “Don’t sell yourself short. Our boys who play sports—they’ve got places to go and coaches looking after them. The boys who don’t, well, I feel like they’re falling through the cracks.”

      “It happens.” How like a pastor to find and hit Nash’s soft spot: kids who fell through the cracks. Kids who didn’t fit the mold, who either didn’t stand out or stood out in all the wrong ways. A knack is not an obligation. I moved here to get away from all that.

      “The thing is, Nash, I want to start an after-school program for them at the church. Someplace positive for them to go. Something constructive for them to do, even if only for one day a week. I need something that catches their interest. Something like that car over there.”

      To Kennedy’s credit and Nash’s growing regret, the pastor was dead-on in his thinking. To a high school boy, was there anything more attractive—other than a high school girl—than a cool car? A year ago Nash would have jumped at this opportunity. Building relationships with the local teens was always a good idea in law enforcement. It was just that the past six months had trampled Nash’s desire to do anything with teens, at least for now.

      Nash wiped his hands down his face. “Look, Theo, your idea’s a good one, but I don’t think I’m your guy.”

      “Why not? No one around here drives anything like this. It’s a head turner of a vehicle. Are you afraid a foreign car won’t—” Theo searched for the word, obviously not a man who spent time under the hood “—translate to the beat-up domestic cars they drive? Folks out here pretty much divide between Ford and Chevy and that’s it.”

      Nash laughed. It was the most absurd version of giving a guy the benefit of the doubt he’d heard in months. “No, I know how to work on American cars. Most of it ‘translates,’ but I’m still not your guy.”

      “Why? Don told me you worked with inner-city youth for years at your last post.”

      Pastors must take a course in persistence at seminary. “Did he tell you why I left?”

      “No.”

      There was no way around it now. “I left because one of those inner-city youth I worked with put two bullets in me. I’m only here now because he missed what he was aiming at and hit my shoulder and my leg. So you can see why I’m not your guy.”

      Theo looked down for a moment, and Nash rose off the stool to close the rest of his workbench drawers. That wasn’t so bad. His gut didn’t knot up at the words like it usually did.

      “Actually, I still think you are the right guy,” Theo said. “We got a saying around these parts about getting back up on the horse that threw you.”

      Nash sent him as dark a look as he dared. “That particular horse shot me. With intent to kill. So believe me when I tell you I’m in no hurry to mount up again, Pastor. There isn’t an ‘it’ll do you good’ version of this.”

      “You’re what those boys need. Half the boys I want to reach have cars, and the other half are saving up for