There’s a black pickup truck that sits in the driveway across the street. The man had lived there for ages, well into his old age and barely able to move. They hadn’t seen the old man since god knows when. They tried to respect his privacy, knowing how crotchety he could get whenever someone interrupted whatever it was that that crazy old man did. But occasionally they’d see the man in his wheelchair peak around the corner, shriveled and hunched over, white hair sticking up, and they’d smile.

Some of the neighbors remembered when that car used to shine like silver, as it peeled out of the driveway and back into it late into the nights. But now it sat abandoned, stuck in place, rusted and withered, alone.

And one day they knew that truck would disappear. It would go to the shop or scrapyard, maybe even sold to some sucker who didn’t have the money for a trustworthy vehicle, and those people would never know the stories it held.

The neighbors would never know that the car was bought by the man’s father, who gifted it to him when he’d finally been unable to drive himself. They wouldn’t know the cold nights he spent, curled up in that drivers’ seat, desperate for a good night’s rest so that maybe he’d be able to get a nice job in the morning. They’d never know that he picked up his first girlfriend in that car and taken her to the drive in, an arm wrapped around her as she sat next to him in the bench seat.

 And they’d never know that that rusty old pickup truck, one that used to be filled with life just like the old man himself, had a name: Helen, named after the girl he’d married, his first love, and his last.