When they let go, Eric called the tow company, and they said it would be ninety minutes at least, and so the two of them let down the tailgate of the F-150 and sat on it in the dark. Above them the sky was full of stars, more than you could ever see in Mesa, and the black bulk of Picacho Peak blotted out a piece of it like a hole cut in the night. The desert smelled of creosote and dust. Every so often a semi roared past and rocked the truck on its springs.
"I was forty minutes from his house," Tyler said after a long time. "When the truck died. Daniel's. Forty minutes. You were more than an hour."
"Yeah," Eric said.
"I didn't even think about it. I didn't even think about calling him. I just pressed Dad." Tyler looked down at the phone in his hands. "I didn't realize until I was already talking to you."
Eric looked up at the stars. He did not trust himself to speak for a moment.
"My dad," he said finally, "wasn't a perfect guy. Your grandpa Jim. He had a temper. He worked too much. He wasn't great at saying things. When I was about your age, I was so mad at him for something, I don't even remember what, I took his car and drove out to Saguaro Lake at two in the morning and ran it out of gas on the Bush Highway. And I called him. And he drove out in my mom's station wagon in his bathrobe with a gas can and didn't say one word to me the whole way home. Not one. Next morning he made me pancakes. Never mentioned it again." Eric shook his head. "I spent a long time thinking that's what made him my dad. Being the guy who comes when you run out of gas."
"Isn't it?"