Car Sinister

by Robert Silverberg

  It could have been a hovertruck off over the horizon somewhere, I suppose. I’ve never heard a hovertruck make that sort of noise, but still, it might have been a hovertruck.

  But I don’t think so.

  I think it was the wind whistling through the nose of a rusty white ghost car, driving on a haunted highway you won’t find on any road maps. I think it was the cry of a little lost Edsel, searching forever for the exit to San Breta.

  CAR SINISTER

  By Gene Wolfe

  The sexual and erotic element in our car culture should not be underestimated. It can be found in our popular music from Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” to the late and lamented Phil Ochs’s “My Kingdom for a Car”—“if you want me you’ll have to pass me,” in the mystique of the back seat—and in literary works, the ultimate example surely being Crash by J.G. Ballard.

  But what of the cars themselves? After all, they have needs just like anybody else.

  Q: What do you get if you cross a raccoon with a greyhound?

  A: A furry brown animal that climbs trees and seats forty people.

  —GRADE SCHOOL JOKE

  There are three gas stations in our village. I suppose before I get any deeper into this I should explain that it really is a village, and not a suburb. There are two grocery stores (privately owned and so small my wife has to go to both when she wants to bake a cake), a hardware store with the post office in one comer, and the three gas stations.

  Two of these are operated by major oil companies, and for convenience I’ll call them the one I go to and the other one. I have a credit card for the one I go to, which is clean, well run, and trustworthy on minor repairs. I have no reason to think the other one is any different, in fact it looks just the same except for the colors on the sign, and I’ve noticed that the two of them exchange small favors when the need arises. They are on opposite sides of the main road (it is the kind of road that was called a highway in the nineteen thirties), and I suppose both managers feel they’re getting their share.

  The third station isn’t like that at all; it looks quite different and sells a brand of gasoline I’ve never seen anywhere else. This third station is at the low end of the village, run by a man called Bosko. Bosko appears stupid although I don’t think he really is, and always wears an army fatigue hat and a gray coat that was once part of a bus driver’s uniform. Another man—a boy, really—helps Bosko. The boy’s name is Bubber; he is usually even dirtier than Bosko, and has something wrong with the shape of his head.

  I own a Rambler American and, as I said, always have it serviced at one of the major-brand stations. I might add that I work in the city, driving thirty miles each way, and the car is very important to me; so I would never have taken it to Bosko’s if it hadn’t been for that foolish business about my credit card. I lost it, you see. I don’t know where. Naturally I telegraphed the company, but before I got my new card I had to have the car serviced.

  Of course, what I should have done was to go to my usual station and pay cash. But I wondered if the manager might not be curious and check his list of defaulting cards. I understand that the companies take great pains to keep these lists up to date, and since it had been two days since I’d wired them, it wasn’t out of the question to suppose that my number would be there, and that he’d think I was a bad credit risk. A thing like that gets around fast in our village. I shouldn’t really have worried about something like that, I know, but it was late and I was tired. And of course the other major oil company station would be even worse. The manager of my station would have seen me right across the road.

  At any rate I was going on a trip the next day, and I thought of the old station at the low end of the village. I only wanted a grease job and an oil change. Hundreds, or at least dozens, of people must patronize the place every day. What could go wrong?

  Bosko—I didn’t know his name at the time, but I had seen him around the village and knew what he looked like—wasn’t there. Only the boy, Bubber, covered with oil from an incredible car he had been working on. I suppose he saw me staring at it because he said, “Ain’t you never seen one like that?”

  I told him I hadn’t, then tried to describe what I wanted done to my American. Bubber wasn’t paying attention. “That’s a funny car there,” he said. “They uses ‘em for drag races and shows and what not. Rears right up on his back wheels. Wait’ll I finish with him and I’ll show you.” I said, “I haven’t time. I just want to leave my car to be serviced.”

  That seemed to surprise him, and he looked at my American with interest. “Nice little thing,” he said, almost crooning.

  “I always see it has the best of care. Could you give me a lift home now? I’ll need my car back before eight tomorrow morning.”

  “I ain’t supposed to leave when Bosko ain’t here, but I’ll see if I can find one that runs.”

  Cars, some of them among the strangest I had ever seen, were parked on almost every square foot of the station’s apron. There was an American Legion parade car rebuilt to resemble a “forty and eight” boxcar, now rusting and rotting; a bulking candy-apple hot rod that looked usable, but which Bubber dismissed with, “Can’t get no rings for her, she’s “overbored”; stunted little British Minis with rickets; a Crosley, the first I had seen in ten years; a two-headed car with a hood, and I suppose an engine, at each end; and others I could not even put a name to. As we walked past the station for the second time in our search, I saw a sleek, black car inside and caught Bubber (soiling my fingers) by the sleeve. “How about that one? It looks ready to go.”

  Bubber shook his head positively and spat against the wall. “The Aston Martin? He’s too damn mean.”

  And so I drove home, eventually, in a sagging school bus which had been converted into a sort of camper and had WABASH FAMILY GOSPEL SINGERS painted in circus lettering on its side. I spent the evening explaining the thing to my wife and went to bed rather seriously worried about whether or not I would have my car back by eight as well as about what Bubber’s clothing would do to my upholstery.

  I need not have concerned myself, as it turned out. I was awakened about three (according to the illuminated dial of my alarm clock) by the sound of an engine in my driveway, and when I looked out through the Venetian blinds, I saw my faithful little Rambler parked there. I went back to sleep with most of my anxiety gone, listening to those strange little moans a warm motor makes as it cools. It seemed to me they lasted longer than normal that night, mingling with my dreams.

  Next morning I found a grimy yellow statement for twenty-five dollars on the front seat. Nothing was itemized; it simply read (when I finally deciphered the writing, which was atrocious) “for service.”

  As I mentioned above, I was leaving on a trip that morning, and I had no time to contest this absurd demand. I jammed it into the map compartment and contrived to forget it until I returned home a week later. Then I went to the station—Bosko was there, fortunately—and explained that there must have been some mistake. Bosko glanced at my bill and asked me again, although I had just told him, what it was I had ordered done. “I wanted the oil changed and the chassis greased,” I repeated, “and the tank filled. You know, the car serviced.”

  I saw that that had somehow struck a nerve. Bosko froze for a moment, then smiled broadly and with a ceremonious gesture tore the yellow slip to bits which he allowed to sift through his fingers to the floor. “Bubber made a mistake, I guess, Colonel,” he said with what struck me as false bonhomie. “This one’s on the house. She behave okay while you had her out?”

  I was rattled at being called Colonel (I have found since that Bosko applies that honorific to all his customers) and could only nod. As a matter of fact the American’s performance had been quite flawless, the little car seeming, if anything, a bit more eager than usual.

  “Well, listen,” Bosko said, “you let me know if there’s any trouble at all with her. And like I said, this one’s on the house. We’d like your business.”

  My new c
ard came, and I had almost forgotten this incident when my car began giving trouble in the mornings. I would start the engine as usual, and it would run for a few seconds, cough, and stop; and after this prove impossible to start again for ten or fifteen minutes. I took it to the station I usually patronize several times and they tinkered with it dutifully, but the next morning the same thing would occur. After this had been going on for three weeks or so, I remembered Bosko.

  He was sympathetic. This, I have to admit, made me warm to him somewhat. The manager of my usual station had been pretty curt the third time I complained about my car’s “morning trouble,” as I called it. When I had described the symptoms to Bosko, he asked, “You smell gas when it happens, Colonel?”

  “Yes, now that you mention it, I do. There’s quite a strong gasoline odor.”

  He nodded. “You see, Colonel, what happens is that your engine is drawin’ in the gas from the carb, then pukin’ it back up at you. You know, like it was sick.”

  So my American had a queasy stomach mornings. It was a remarkable idea, but on the other hand one of the very few things I’ve ever been told by a mechanic that made sense. Naturally I asked Bosko what we could do about it.

  “There’s a few things, but really they won’t any of them help much. The best thing is just live with it. It’ll go away by itself in a while. Only I got something serious to tell you, Colonel. You want to come in my office?”

  Mystified, I followed him into the cluttered little room adjoining the garage portion of the station and seated myself in a chair whose bottom was dropping out. To be truthful, I couldn’t really imagine what he could have to tell me since he hadn’t so much as raised the hood to look at my engine; so I waited with equanimity for him to speak. “Colonel,” he said, “you got a bun in the oven—you know what I mean? Your car does, that is. She’s that way.”

  I laughed, of course.

  “You don’t believe me? Well, it’s the truth. See, what we got here,” he lowered his voice, “is kinda what you would call a stud service. An’ when you told Bubber you wanted her serviced, you never havin’ come here before, that’s what he thought you meant. So he, uh,” Bosko jerked his head significantly toward the sleek, black Aston Martin in the garage, “he, you know, he serviced it. I was hopin’ it wouldn’t take. Lots of times it don’t.”

  “This is ridiculous. Cars don’t breed.”

  Bosko waggled his head at me. “That’s what they’d like you to think in Detroit. But if you’d ever lived around there and talked to any of the union men, those guys would tell you how every year they make more and more cars with less and less guys comin’ through the gate.”

  “That’s because of automation,” I told him. “Better methods.”

  “Sure!” He leveled a dirty finger at me. “Better methods is right. An’ what’s the best method of all, huh? Ain’t it the way the farmer does? Sure there’s lots of cars put together the old-fashioned way early in the year when they got to get their breedin’ stock, but after that—well, I’m here to tell you, Colonel, they don’t hire all them engineers up there for nothing. Bionics, they call it. Makin’ a machine act like it was a’ animal.”

  “Why doesn’t everybody . . .”

  He shushed me, finger to lips. ” ’Cause they don’t like it, that’s why. There’s a hell of a big license needed to do it legal, and even if you’re willin’ to put up the bread, you don’t get one unless you’re one of the big boys. That’s why I try to keep my little operation here quiet. Besides, they got a way of makin’ sure most people can’t”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know anything about horses? You know what a gelding is?”

  I admit I was shocked, though that may sound foolish. I said, “You mean they . . .?”

  “Sure.” Bosko made a scissors gesture with his arms, snapping them like a giant shears. “Ain’t you ever noticed how they make all these cars with real hairy names, but when you get ’em out on the road, they ain’t really got anything? Geldings.”

  “Do you think . . .” I looked (delicately, I hope) toward my American, “it could be repaired? What they call an illegal operation?”

  Bosko spread his hands. “What for? Listen, Colonel, it would just cost you a lot of bread, and that little car of yours might never recover. Ain’t it come through to you yet that if you just let nature take her course for a while yet, you’re goin’ to have yourself a new car for nothing?”

  I took Bosko’s advice. I should not have; it was the first time in my life I have ever connived at anything against the law; but the idea of having a second car to give my wife attracted me, and I must admit I was fascinated as well. I dare say that in time Bosko must have regretted having persuaded me; I pestered him with questions, and once even, by a little genteel blackmail, forced him to allow me to witness the Aston Martin in action.

  For all its sleek good finish it was a remarkably unprepossessing car, with something freakish about it. Bosko told me it had been specially built for use on some British television program now defunct. I suppose the producers had wanted to project the most masculine possible image, and it was for this reason that it had been left reproductively intact—to fall, eventually, into Bosko’s hands. When Bubber started the engine it made a sound such as I have never heard from any car in my life, a sort of lustful snarl.

  The Aston Martin’s bride for the night was a small and rather elderly Volks squareback, belonging I suppose to some poor man who could not afford to buy a new car through legal channels, or perhaps hoped to turn a small profit on his family’s fecundity. I must say I felt rather sorry for her, forced to submit to a beast like the Aston Martin. In action all its appearance of feline grace proved a fraud; it experienced the same difficulties a swine breeder might expect with a huge champion boar, and had to be helped by Bosko with ramps and jacks while Bubber fought the controls.

  The months of my American’s time passed. Her gasoline consumption went up and up until I was getting barely eleven miles to the gallon. She acquired a swollen appearance as well, and became so deficient in endurance she could scarcely be forced up even a moderate hill, and overheated continually. When eight months had passed, the plies of her tires separated, forming ugly welts in the sidewalls, but Bosko warned me not to replace them since the same problem would only occur again.

  On the night of the delivery Bosko offered to allow me to observe, but I declined. Call it squeamishness, if you will. Late that night—very late—I walked past his station and stared from the sidewalk at the bright glow of a trouble light and the scuttling shadows within, but I felt no urge to let them know I was there. The next morning, before I had breakfast, Bosko was on the phone asking if I wanted to pick my cars up: “I’ll drive your old one over if you’ll give me a lift back.” Then I knew that my American had come through the ordeal, and breathed somewhat more easily.

  My first sight of her son was, I admit, something of a shock. It—I find it hard to call him he—is a deep, jungle green inherited from Heaven knows what remote ancestor, and his seats are covered in a long-napped sleazy stuff like imitation rabbit fur. I had expected—I don’t know quite why—that he would be of some recognizable make: a Pontiac, or perhaps a Ford, since they are made in both England and America. He is nothing of the sort, of course, and I realize now that those marques with which we are familiar must be carefully maintained purebred lines. As it is I have searched him everywhere for some sort of brand name that would allow me to describe the car to prospective purchasers, but beyond a sort of trademark that appears in several places (a shield with a band or stripe running from left to right) there is nothing, Where part numbers or serial numbers appear, they are often garbled or illegible, or do not match.

  It was necessary to license him of course, and to do this it was necessary to have a title. Through Bosko I procured one from an unethical used-car dealer for thirty dollars. It describes the car as a ’54 Chevrolet; I wish it were.

  No dealer I have found will give me
any sort of price for it, and so I have advertised it each Sunday for the past eight months in the largest paper in the city where I work, and also in a small, nationally circulated magazine specializing in collector’s cars. There have been only two responses: one from a man who left as soon as he saw the car, the other from a boy of about seventeen who told me he would buy him as soon as he could find someone who would lend him the money. Had I been more alert I would have taken whatever he had, made over the spurious title to him, and trusted him for the rest; but at the time I was still hoping to find a bona fide buyer.

  I have had to turn my American over to my wife since she refuses to drive the new car, and the several mechanical failures he had already suffered have been extremely inconvenient. Parts in the conventional sense are nonexistent. Either alterations must be made which will allow the corresponding part from some known make to be used, or the part must be made by a job shop. This, I find, is one of the penalties of our—as I thought—unique automotive miscegenation; but when, a few weeks ago, I grew so discouraged I attempted to abandon the car, I discovered that someone else must have made the same crossing. When the police forced me to come and retrieve it, I found that the radiator, generator, and battery were missing.

  INTERURBAN QUEEN

  by R.A. Lafferty

  It is a truism in America these days that if you hold onto something long enough, it will increase in value. This is the case for a wide variety of items from comic books to the early recordings of Sam Cooke. It is also true of old cars, especially those from companies that have gone out of business, like Packard, Studebaker, and De Soto, which are now worth many thousands of dollars in the lucrative “antique car” market.

  A large part of the joy of the old cars is in the driving—they handle differently, you feel the road more, and you actually have to do something. In this typically strange and wonderful story, R. A. Lafferty allows us to share his vision of the automobile hobbyist of tomorrow.