Prologue: The Day the Jack Slipped

  Yamiko Tanaka had lived in the Ozarks for two years, and she still wasn’t sure if her next-door neighbor was a man or a cautionary tale.

  His name was Cletus Hickenbottom. He was a broad-shouldered man with a permanent sunburn, a loud laugh, and a truck that looked like it ran on equal parts oil and spite. He was, as the locals said, “a real piece of work.”

  At this very moment, he was lying on his back beneath her own truck. He had one hand gripping a wrench and the other clutching a can of used motor oil. The radio propped on the tailgate blared distorted guitar riffs and someone wailing about “Sweet Home Alabama,” though they were, in fact, a solid eight hours and several bad decisions from Alabama.

  Yamiko watched from her porch, arms folded, the cicadas droning all around them like some endless, buzzing commentary on her life choices.

  She had wanted a quiet home in the country. She was looking for a place to breathe after years of concrete and deadlines. She had not, however, anticipated Cletus.

  He had shown up uninvited the first week she moved in, baseball cap in hand, boots leaving red dust across her porch, offering to “help out with any ‘stuff’ she might need doing.” She’d politely declined, but somehow, he’d wound up mowing her lawn, fixing her fence, and today, insisting on changing her oil because, in his words, “That ol’ Toyoter sounds like it’s garglin’ gravel.”

  Yamiko sighed. “Just… be careful with it, please. It’s an old truck.”

  “Aw, don’t you worry, Miss Yamiko,” he called from under the chassis, voice muffled. “These Toyoters are built tougher’n a two-dollar steak.”

  “It’s Toyota.”

  “That’s what I said. Toyoter.”

  She pressed her fingers to her temple. It was too hot for this.

  Her grandfather had bought the truck when Toyota opened its first American plant in Michigan back in the 1980s. It had been the family’s pride. It was the first car he ever owned in the States after moving for work and managing that same plant. He’d added little touches over the years: a carved wooden ofuda on the rearview mirror for luck, a small omamori tucked under the seat, and a faded decal of Mount Fuji on the tailgate.

  Her father used to say the truck had a soul.

  He said it the way some people spoke about ancestors, half joking and half reverent. “Metal remembers,” he used to tell her. “Every rattle, every dent, that’s the road writing its story.”

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  Yamiko never knew whether he truly believed that or if it was just another of his poetic indulgences, whispered in the garage when he thought she wasn’t listening. After he passed, she inherited both the truck and the silence that came with it.

  Sometimes, when she sat behind the wheel, she could almost hear him humming beneath the steady growl of the engine.

  She did not believe in spirits, or luck, or any of the superstitions her grandfather swore by. But she believed in memory, and the truck carried three generations of Tanakas through blizzards in Michigan and sun-cracked highways in Arkansas. Her grandfather, her father, and now it belonged to her.

  It was, in its way, a vessel of the family itself: weathered, stubborn, and still running.

  If it ever died, she’d have it restored. She could afford to. But it would not be restored by a man who smelled like gasoline, beer, and the kind of stubbornness that ignored safety warnings.

  Cletus Hickenbottom was the kind of neighbor who appeared whenever something broke, usually uninvited, always loud. He never knocked, just hollered from the yard until you came outside. He was missing half his shirtsleeves, owned three lawnmowers that all barely worked, and seemed to believe duct tape and prayer could fix anything short of a tornado.

  He was the sort of man who measured time in fishing seasons, carried jumper cables everywhere “just in case,” and treated every mechanical problem like a personal challenge from God Himself. He would argue with a carburetor before admitting he needed a part replaced.

  Yamiko had met people like him in passing, usually in line at the hardware store, but Cletus was something else. There was a wild sincerity in him, a kind of chaotic decency that made it impossible to completely dislike him, no matter how hard she tried.

  Cletus rolled out from under the truck, wiping his hands on a rag that had seen better days. “Well, she’s drainin’ just fine. Reckon we’ll have her topped off in no time.”

  He grinned, and Yamiko forced a polite smile in return. His teeth were fine… mostly. But his beard looked like it hadn’t met a razor since the Obama administration.

  “You’re very… helpful,” she managed.

  “Aw, t’ain’t nothin’. My daddy always said a man oughta lend a hand when he can. Besides, I can’t just let a nice lady like you crawl under a truck an’ git ‘erself all mussed up. That’s bad manners where I come from.”

  “Your manners are… unique,” she said diplomatically.

  He chuckled, taking a long sip from his can. “That’s what my ex-wife said, too.”

  She watched him position the jack, still shaking her head. The man worked like someone wrestling the world into submission. There was no finesse, just sheer force and optimism. It was maddeningly effective, and terrifying to witness.

  “Are you sure that’s stable?” she asked.

  Cletus gave the handle a few confident pumps. “Oh yeah. This ol’ gal ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  The jack creaked ominously.

  “Maybe—”

  Click.

  Her heart skipped. “What was that?”

  Cletus frowned. “Huh. That’s new.”

  There was a split second of silence. Complete silence. It carried a weight with it, and the cicadas didn’t let out a single chirp. A sudden chill in the air followed that eerie stillness. It didn’t feel natural.

  Then the world shifted.

  The jack slipped. The truck lurched.

  “Cletus!”

  He looked up, eyes wide. “Aw, hell.”

  Metal screamed. Oil spilled. And Yamiko’s shout cut through the summer air as the truck came down in a crash that sent birds scattering from the trees.

  When the noise stopped, all that remained was the soft hiss of cooling metal and the smell of motor oil.

  Yamiko stood frozen, the rag he’d tossed to her still clutched in her hand.

  “Cletus?” she whispered.

  No answer.

  She stumbled forward, panic rising. Before she could reach the collapsed jack, a strange light shimmered from beneath the truck.

  A dull, golden glow—faint at first, then pulsing brighter. The ofuda hanging from the rearview mirror fluttered as if caught in a breeze.

  Yamiko blinked.

  The air around her truck rippled, like heat haze.

  Then, with a sound halfway between a thunderclap and a revving engine, both Cletus and the truck were simply… gone.

  All that remained was a half-drained oil pan, a dent in the dirt, and the lingering scent of gasoline and beer.

  She would spend the rest of the day trying to convince the police that, yes, her truck really had vanished into thin air.

  And she would never again listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd without flinching.