Saint of Liberty - Part 4

Part Four of Saint of Liberty.

Even though it was a quarter past seven at night Mr. Jenson had called Jack. His car had to be serviced before his trip. Jack, who was in the middle of dinner, asked if he could call him back after dinner. Mr. Jenson told him that the situation could not wait and told him of the dire shape that his mother was in and the urgency at which he needed his car serviced. Jack informed Mr. Jenson that it would be impossible for him to work on the car due to the fact that the air filter had yet to be delivered and that he wasn’t expecting it to arrive until late tomorrow. Mr. Jenson was mortified to hear Jack suggest that he not worry about the service and just drive up anyway. Mr. Jenson knew that Jack had the parts and was just being lazy. He demanded that Jack work on the car tonight. Jack once again reiterated that without the parts there would be no reason to service the car. He told Mr. Jenson that he would be willing to move around his schedule so that he could work on Mr. Jenson car as soon as the parts came in tomorrow. Mr. Jensen knowing that his mother surely had little time left on this planet began to panic. Unable to talk, he slammed the phone receiver into the cradle smashing the delicate French eighteenth century side table that the phone was on.
He sat on the floor for over an hour not knowing what to do. His wife pleaded with him to just get in the car where she had already buckled up the children. He just sat there with his hands in his face, perplexed. All he could repeat was ‘what if the car breaks down? What if the car breaks down?’ The phone, now having found a new home on the floor of the hallway rang with a call from Mr. Jenson’s sister Helen. Helen wanted to make sure that the Jenson’s were on their way. Mother’s condition was getting worse. Mr. Jenson hearing the news grabbed the keys and ran to the car where his children had been waiting for the last hour. Susan Ann the youngest of the three Jenson children was already fast asleep and was excused from hearing her father repeat for two hours ‘What if the car breaks down?’.
Mr. Jenson’s babbling was finally put to an end by the huge bang that came from the front right tire. Mr. Jenson, going well over the speed limit, snapped out of his paranoid trance just in time to manhandle the car that was now being pulled off the road. He avoid smashing into the old pine tree that was the cars original target, but he was unable to stop the car from going though a very fine white horse fence. It took Mr. Jenson a good hour to change the tire and find and pay the owner of the fence for the damage his car had done. When he and the family were back on the road Mr. Jenson’s wife started to list a litany of things that could have popped their tire. Mr. Jenson knew that this was a waste of his wife’s time and energy. He knew why the tire had blown. It was obvious. The tire blew because the car wasn’t serviced. Mr. Jenson had read in popular mechanics that not only did lack of air pressure in a tire cause a car to get bad gas mileage but also forced the tire to wear faster. He started to debate if Jack had checked his tire pressure at the last service. It was perfectly clear to him that Jack Spazcosi’ laziness was the reason that his tire had blown almost killing his family and stealing the little precious moments that he had left to see his mother alive.
Mr. Jenson pulled up to his mother’s house, jumped out of his car and ran to the front door. As he reached the door he was greeted by his sister, who was in tears. Mr. Jenson fell to his knees as his sister Helen told him that his mother had died not five minute prior.