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EDITOR’S NOTE: Following is Chapter 11 of “Adrift in America: Diary of a Minimalist Mariner,” a work found in the nonfiction section:

Kingston, New York. December 27, 1989.

The man walking toward me is so large that he blots out nearly all the light coming with him through the door from the tool shop to the service bay. In his hand, he holds a four-way tire iron that looks like a cross. The image is timely because it is only two days after Christmas, although in this man’s hand, the cross looks like something he might have torn off the top of a church.

“They told me out front to ask for Paul,” I say.

He says nothing.

“Are you Paul?” I ask.

“Mmmm hmmm, whassaproblem, mista?” he says in a slurred, ponderous voice that comes from a place as hollow as the long concrete service bay. Royal Tire Service of Kingston advertises itself in the Yellow Pages as an outfitter of all trucks, large and small, but the service bay is bare. No lifts, no jacks. Driving into it is like entering a car wash from which all the cleaning equipment has been removed.

“Left rear inside tire. Flat. Road junk,” I say, bowing to his preference for unembellished conversation.

“Hmmmm,” he says. He glowers at the left rear dual wheel, which is now supported only by the outside tire. The tire seems to sag under his gaze.

He is a mountain of a man, 300 or more pounds bulging in a work uniform that once was blue or green but now, like his skin, has become a gray blanket of fresh and faded grease. On the high promontory of his head, his black eyebrows gather in thought.

In the Christmas spirit, I think of another Paul, described by some historians as a large man of intimidating demeanor and unpredictable seizures, maybe epilepsy, maybe just the Holy Ghost, that must have inspired as much fright as faith in the wayward Gentiles.

“Whassit weigh, mista?”

In his rumbling voice, I can hear echoes of some far-off place and time. No, not biblical. Wait, could it be Memphis? Elvis?

“Whassit weigh?” he says louder.

“Huh. Oh, fifty-eight hundred.”

Is this man going to lift the truck himself?

He gestures with the tire iron toward the front office, which is where he presumably wants me to stay until his work is done.

Forty-five minutes later, I ask in the front office if I can return to the service bay. I want to tighten the lug nuts myself so I can get them loose again if I ever have to change a tire on the road. But I am worried about how Paul might take the intrusion.

“Naw, he’s OK,” the office manager says.

Paul has the rear of the truck up on a portable hydraulic jack he has slid beneath the rear axle, and the left rear wheel is on a bench in the tool room, but the tire hasn’t been replaced. The spare is still on its mounting beneath the rear of the truck.

“Couldn’t get underneath,” he says. “Gotta wait for Paul.”

“Aren’t you Paul?”

“I’m Big Paul. He’s Little Paul.”

In a few minutes, a short, slender man named Paul returns from lunch, slides beneath the truck and sets about dismounting the spare.

“Where are you from?” I ask Big Paul.

“Here,” he says.

“No, I mean born and brought up.”

“Here,” he says. “All my life.”

Kingston is the seat of Ulster County, a mostly rural county that sits on the west bank of the Hudson River between New York City and Albany. The county’s pastoral fields and forested hills, which to the west and north become the Catskill Mountains, have long been attractive to refugees from both metropolitan areas – everyone from actors to gangsters, Hindus to Hutterians. In my brief sojourns as a reporter for the Kingston-based Daily Freeman, I guess I haven’t come across Big Paul’s sect.

“Done,” he says. The repaired wheel is back on the truck.

“Listen, I wanted to hand-tighten the lug nuts myself,” I say. “Just in case.”

“Won’t do you no good,” he says. “Too much weight. Never lift it on the road.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“One-ton truck. Loaded to three tons. What you got in there?”

“Everything I own,” I say.

“I guess the hell you do,” he rumbles.

“Good thing it has dual wheels,” I say. “Good thing Royal Tire Service has dual Pauls.”

He looks down at me blankly.

– Sid Leavitt