Jesus Is Lord Used Tires
- Taylor picks up her own narrative again, when she's crossing the state line into Arizona.
- A number of days have passed since that fateful night when the Cherokee child came into her life. Since then, she's been staying and working at the Broken Arrow Motor Lodge.
- Now it's early January.
- Taylor explains that she has chosen to call the child Turtle, "on account of her grip" (3.4). Um, cute, we guess.
- Near Tucson, Taylor pulls off the highway and into a disused gas station to wait out a hail storm. While she waits, she talks to a local, who points out that one of her rear tires is flat. But what do you expect with a lemon from Kentucky.
- Taylor drives the car gently into town, and soon spots a used tire lot called Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. How could that not inspire hope?
- There, a woman helps Taylor get her car up onto a jack, and introduces herself as Mattie.
- Mattie points out that not just one, but both of Taylor's rear tires are flat. When she takes a closer look at them, it's clear that neither of them can be patched. That's how not to ride a car.
- Mattie invites Taylor to sit and have a cup of coffee with her, and she scrounges up some crackers for Turtle while she's at it.
- When Mattie runs upstairs to get some juice for Turtle, two men stop by the lot. One of them is a client, and the other is a priest. When Taylor tells them that Mattie will be back in a minute, the client waits, but the priest doesn't seem so anxious to stay around.
- Taylor thinks that the priest seems "a little jumpy," and notices when he leaves that "there was a whole family packed into the back of his station wagon," and "[t]hey looked like Indians" (3.71).
- After Mattie gets back with Turtle's juice, she starts checking over the waiting client's car. Taylor looks on with admiration. She explains: "I had never seen a woman with that kind of know-how" (3.73). Good for Mattie.
- When Mattie is done with the client, Taylor admits that she can't afford to replace her tires just yet. Mattie tells her not to worry (again, good for Mattie), and asks what kind of work she'll be looking for in Tucson.
- As they talk, Mattie leads Taylor and Turtle out into her backyard garden, where she shows them the huge crop of purple bean trees she has growing back there. Title alert!
- At this point Taylor's narrative zooms out as Taylor describes what it's like to get used to Tucson after growing up in Pittman County. In Tucson, she feels as though she's time-travelled into the future. Who woulda thought that's what bean trees trigger.
- Taylor and Turtle "take up residence" (3.106) in a local hotel.
- They get into the habit of eating breakfast every day at a local Burger Derby. We know—burgers for breakfast? Mm.
- Over their morning shakes and fries, Taylor strikes up a friendship with an employee there named Sandi, who tells her that she should get a job there too.
- We just hope that means free burger breakfasts.