Salvation by Anne Osterlund Page A

his tight T-shirt, not a good look on a guy with a gut, then slammed his chewed-up baseball cap down on the counter and demanded a quote.
    “En-engine no work.” Señor Tosa glanced nervously toward the yellow invoices by the hat.
    “What the hell you think I’ve been sayin’?” The customer spat a wad of chew onto the floor.
    Real classy.
“Just a sec,” Salva said to the jerk, then turned and did his best to translate the problem without wasting his breath.
    “Change oil?” Señor Tosa asked.
    The customer was turning purple. “What do I look like, some teenager?”
    I’m guessing you’ve trashed a lot more vehicles than I have.
    “Air filter?” asked Tosa’s father.
    The guy scoffed and hitched his thumbs through his belt loops.
    Señor Tosa dropped into Spanish.
    “If the air filter was installed incorrectly,” Salva translated, “the dirt might come straight in and damage the engine.”
    The customer folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t wanta know what this grease rag”—he jerked his head at Señor Tosa—“thinks I might’ve done wrong; I wanta know what he’s gonna do to fix the problem. And how much it’s gonna cost me.”
    How about some time in anger management? Or maybe with an antibiotic.
A circle on the guy’s arm looked suspiciously like ringworm.
    Señor Tosa explained that he would have to check out the engine first.
    “So you’re saying you can’t do your job?” the other man griped.
    Salva wished he could send a silent message to the mechanic.
Just let him take his beer gut somewhere else and see how fast he gets a quote on a Sunday.
    Señor Tosa, his face blank, asked for the man’s phone number, promising to call back with the quote by four o’clock.
    The customer seemed to get over himself long enough to reel off his number, which Salva scribbled down on one of the yellow invoices.
    The guy swiped up his hat and stomped toward the door.
    “We’ll need the keys,” Salva called after him.
    The man spat again. Then he dug into his jeans pocket, pulled out an object, and sent it spiraling in a lousy throw. Salva caught the key.
    “You tell your real boss,” the guy said to him, “I’m talkin’ to someone who speaks
English
on the phone, not this Spanish flunky. This is America.”
    And the guy walked out.
    Salva still hadn’t gotten the anger out of his head by the next afternoon as he entered the cardboard forest that now filled the multipurpose room. Rows of wooden stands with corrugated tree trunks and boughs covered in paper leaves stood in his way. He burst past one, knocked it down, and sent dozens of leaves blowing in every direction.
    “Careful!” Beth gasped from the stage. “That’s the forest for the spring production. They’re not dry.”
    Yeah, well, he’d figured that out a little late.
    He reached for the sundered foliage and got his palm covered in glue.
Ugh!
    Beth came forward with a wet towel and reached for his hand.
    He tugged away, grabbing the towel more brusquely than he should have.
    “Is something wrong?” she asked.
    Yeah, something was wrong. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Which bugged the hell out of him.
    He wiped his hand.
    She stood there, just waiting at first, then crouched down and began to pick up the ruined leaves. “What is it?”
    She doesn’t want to know.
No one ever wanted to know. And the people who did know—his father, Señor Tosa, Señora Mendoza—they all preached the same silent mantra.
Poner la otra mejilla
. Sometimes he hated the friggin’ Catholic Church!
    “Salva?”
    “This is America!” The words burst out before he had a clue he was going to say them.
    “Oh”—Beth paused in her leaf gathering and grinned up at him—“is it?”
    Exactly.
“What makes people think I need to hear it?!” He whirled and crossed through a row of drying trees, separating her from his anger. “Or that anyone needs to hear it?”
    The tone of her voice sobered. “It’s a defense, I