The Goodbye Summer

by Patricia Gaffney

  “Stay,” she told the excited dog, and got out of the car. “Well, this is great. Can you believe it?”

  “I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Cornel groused, “your car’s a pile of junk.”

  “I just had it inspected. You know, if we’d stayed on 404 and then gotten on 18—”

  “This wouldn’t have happened?”

  “There’d be cars going by to help us.”

  “Now, ladies.” Magill fiddled with the latch and popped the hood, raised it over his head and stood staring into the black, hissing engine. “Yep,” he said eventually, securing the hood with the rod. “It’s your scraffinator.”

  “The—” Oh. Ha-ha.

  “Did the generator light come on?”

  “Um, I don’t know,” Caddie said, “I didn’t have time to notice.”

  “Check and see.”

  She looked in the car window. “Yes! It’s on!”

  “Could be your generator,” Cornel said, pursing his lips and rubbing his chin.

  “No, it would run off the battery for a while. It wouldn’t stop dead.” Magill wriggled hoses and poked at fastenings as if he knew what he was doing. “Could be the fuel pump.” He disconnected a hose going into the big round thing she thought was the carburetor. “Caddie, turn the key.”

  “In the car?”

  He looked over and smiled at her.

  “Right.” She got in the car and turned the key.

  “Okay.”

  “What happened?” She had to hold Finney by the collar to get out of the car without him.

  “Fuel pump’s okay.” Magill was wiping gasoline off his hands with a red handkerchief.

  “Something electrical?” Cornel guessed.

  “Well, except it would still run off the battery for a while. Then again, if a coil broke…but that’s not likely. My guess is it’s the timing belt.”

  “Huh,” Cornel said, nodding wisely. “Timing belt.”

  “What is it?” Caddie asked. “Can we fix it?”

  “It’s in here.” He touched a metal cover behind the ticking radiator. “The belt runs off the crankshaft and operates the valves, see, two valves per piston. It connects to the camshaft and turns—”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “No. Well, if I had tools. But to get to it you have to take out the radiator and the fan belt, some of the electrical wiring, maybe some pumps. What we need is a mechanic.”

  They looked at each other. They looked around at the buff-colored, spreading expanse of nothing. In the field on the other side of the road, a flock of starlings suddenly shot up in the air like a raggedy black net.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” Magill asked.

  “No.” She stuck her hand through the passenger-side door and petted Finney to calm him down. “Sorry. I don’t. A car!”

  A pickup truck, coming toward them in the far lane. It slowed as it approached—she could hear the engine change notes—but the occupants, a whiskery, red-faced man and a white-haired woman, craned their necks, bug-eyed, and never stopped.

  “How could you not have a cell phone?” Cornel wanted to know. “Everybody in the world’s got a cell phone.”

  “Except any of us,” Magill said, sweeping them with a rueful glance. Misfits, he was thinking. Caddie knew, because she was thinking it, too.

  “And I suppose nobody belongs to an auto club,” Cornel guessed. “Christ almighty. What a bunch.”

  Another car passed by without stopping, even when all three of them waved at it.

  “I don’t get it. Do we look like the Barrow gang or something? If nobody’s stopping, I might as well let the dog out. He hasn’t been for a walk in a whole hour,” Caddie added grumpily.

  “Lift your skirt next time,” Cornel suggested. “Ever see that movie? Claudette Colbert lifts her skirt—”

  “I’ve seen it. I’m not lifting my skirt.” Her back was killing her. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They should’ve been in Lewes by now, waiting in line for the ferry. Not only that, the sky, which had been bright blue thirty minutes ago, was filling up with mean-looking gray clouds. Oh, terrific, a storm, that’s just what they needed.

  “I’ll take him.” Magill gently took Finney’s leash from her hand.

  Immediately the dog pulled him over the ditch and up the other side into the stubbly cornfield. “Don’t fall—!” But she had to laugh, they looked so funny, long-legged man running after short-legged dog, the man’s jacket flying out behind him and his pants flapping around his calves. Finney was on the scent of something, probably a field mouse, and when that happened nothing could stop him.

  “He’s getting better, isn’t he?” Cornel said, resting his backside on the taillight.

  “Finney? Not really, he’s—”

  “Magill.”

  “Oh.” She squinted against the glare of sky at his dark silhouette, thin legs churning, one long arm stretched out toward the dog. He made her think of Ichabod Crane. “I hope so. Do you think he is?”

  Cornel glared at her in a searching, peevish way. “Why don’t you pay more attention to him?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you know how he feels?”

  “Um, about…”

  “You.”

  She looked away sharply. She laughed. She sidled away, moved out into the empty lane. “No. Are you kidding? No. Don’t be silly.”

  Cornel clucked his tongue and shook his head, but he didn’t say anything else.

  “Silly,” she repeated, to encourage him. She had the queerest flush, she could feel the heat of it crawling up her neck. “You’re crazy, we’re not like that.”

  Cornel wasn’t even looking at her, he was peering over her shoulder. “Car coming. Lift your skirt.”

  She wanted to muse on what Cornel had said, she wanted to ponder and ruminate and figure out what she thought about it. But an old station wagon, older than her car, and rustier, slowed and then stopped right beside her. A thick-shouldered man rolled down his window and put his elbow on the ledge. He had grizzled white hair and a lined, dignified face the color of muddy coffee, and he wore the strangest pair of round, cobalt-blue spectacles. As if he were blind.

  “Hi,” said Caddie, and “Howdy,” said Cornel when the man didn’t speak first. “We’ve had some trouble with our car.”

  He gave a slow nod of agreement. Just then Finney saw his car and began to bark madly and drag Magill across the field toward it.

  “My dog,” Caddie said quickly, “he’s terrible, he barks at everybody.” That was true; Finney was an equal-opportunity nuisance.

  No reply; the old man sat resigned, stoic, as if some white people’s yappy little dog was the least of his worries. He looked like a country preacher, Caddie thought, except that he didn’t have much to say.

  Magill snatched Finney up in his arms and somehow made it over to the car without falling. Muttering curses, he dumped him in the front seat, leash and all, and slammed the door. “Hi,” he called cheerfully. He started to tilt over backward and grabbed for the side mirror. Using the car for handholds, he made it around to where Caddie and Cornel were standing. “How’s it going? Thanks for stopping.”

  “Is there a gas station around here?” Caddie asked. “Or a garage? With a mechanic? Anybody with a tow truck?”

  The old man pushed his lips out, thinking. When he stared straight ahead, she could see from the side of his blue glasses that he had bleary, light gray eyes. “There’s Ernest Holly’s,” he finally answered in a smooth, surprisingly youthful voice.

  “Is he a mechanic? Can he fix cars?”

  He gave the long, thoughtful nod again.

  Pause.

  “Would you happen to have a cell phone?” Magill asked politely.

  Finney was hurling himself from one side of the car to the other; the frantic, muffled bangs sounded like a mental patient trying to get out of his cell.

  The old man shook his head.

  Long pause.

  “I guess I could
carry you up to Ernest’s.”

  “Oh, that would be great! How far is it?” Caddie asked.

  “About half a mile.”

  They decided Magill should go with Mr. Clark, as he turned out to be, while Caddie and Cornel stayed with the car and the dog. Magill was back in practically no time, in a red-and-white pickup truck beside a skinny, hatchet-faced young man in denim coveralls and a leather cap. Ernest Holly.

  Ernest diagnosed the problem quickly. “Gotta be your timing belt. Ever had a new one? What’s this, an ’83, ’84? Belts can go twenty years, but then you’re pushing it.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Ah. “Today?”

  Ernest had a gold eyetooth. Caddie saw it when he grinned at her as if he appreciated her sense of humor. “Not today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Gotta call over to Denton or Bridgeville for the part. It’s Saturday, I’m backed up till late. But I can get to it first thing in the morning, you’re on your way by eleven. That’s if I don’t run into anything funny.”

  “Funny?”

  Ernest reached up under his cap in back and scratched his head. He smelled like burnt oil. “Car this age, you never know. Might find anything.”

  She looked at Magill. Is this guy okay? Can we trust him? Not that they had any choice.

  Cornel had his map spread out on the trunk of the car. “Okay, so where’s to stay around here? They got a motel in Denton?”

  “In Denton?” Ernest flashed his gold tooth again.

  “How about Bridgeville?”

  “Not that I ever heard of.” He put a grease-blackened finger on the map. Fate again: Caddie half expected him to say there was a motel in Clover. “Place here, maybe eight or nine miles north of where we are, which is here. It’s sort of a motel, like.”

  Hmm.

  “Use to be for goose hunters, just cabins, no electricity or what you might call luxuries.”

  “Well, you know—”

  “But it got sold, then it got sold again, and these new folks fixed it up. I hear; can’t promise you nothing.” He looked at their faces with a certain satisfaction. “Bad place to break down. You’re in kind of a pickle, aren’t you?”

  “How would we get there? Could you drive us?” Caddie asked.

  “Nope. You saw all them cars I got stacked up,” he said to Magill, who had to confirm that by nodding. “Everybody waits till the end o’ the month to get inspected, nobody plans ahead. Tell you what.” He narrowed his eyes on each of them in turn. They must look pretty harmless, because he decided, “I’ll add twenty-five bucks to the bill and loan you my wife’s car.”

  “Twenty-five dollars!” Cornel exploded.

  “Deal,” said Magill.

  “You might have to buy gas. She never remembers to fill it up.”

  “You know, from here they don’t look so bad.”

  Caddie poured more coffee for everybody and added a splash of cream to hers. She never used to take cream, but these days coffee without it gave her heartburn.

  “They aren’t that bad,” Magill said, pushing away his plate with half a ham sandwich still on it.

  “No, but the outside is nicer than the inside, you have to admit,” she said. “Were you not going to finish that?”

  Goose Creek Guest Cottages, formerly Hunter’s Haven Cabins, were spread out on one side of the flat, two-lane highway, and the building with the owner’s office, the registration desk, and this coffee shop sat on the other side, behind a gas station consisting of an island with one pump. Texaco. Luckily it was a sleepy highway, so all the traipsing back and forth you had to do to stay here wasn’t dangerous. There used to be six cabins, all duplexes (so really, twelve), but the new owners had knocked down the center walls to make the rooms bigger. They’d been tiny before; now they were just small. And turquoise, with orange trim. Magill said they looked like Howard Johnson’s babies.

  They’d rented two side-by-side cottages for the night ($49.99 each, including continental breakfast in the coffee shop), to the delight of the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Willis, Peg and Ethel—Peg was the husband. They might not be so delighted if they knew Finney was taking a nap right now in the farthest cottage, the one you couldn’t see from here because a billboard was in the way. Then again, maybe they allowed dogs, who knew? But during a hasty conference before registering, Caddie, Magill, and Cornel had agreed that in this case it was better to be secretive than sorry.

  Cornel had his map out again. By now every time Caddie so much as glanced at it, the word “Clover” leaped out at her like flickering neon. The men were arguing about Maryland and Delaware, which state was better for taxes or something—Caddie silenced them by standing up. “I have to make a phone call.”

  They looked at her as if she’d announced she was hitchhiking to Dover. “Who to?” Cornel wanted to know.

  She’d tell them if it worked out. Although what working out meant in this situation, she didn’t know. “I, um, have a friend in the area. Maybe; have to check. Be right back.”

  Peg manned the motel office and the gas station while his wife handled the coffee shop. “Is there a pay phone in here?” Caddie asked Ethel, a hefty woman in her forties with a net over her wavy brown hair. She reminded Caddie a little bit of Brenda.

  “Around the corner, right next to the men’s room.”

  “Does it have a phone book?”

  “Sure does.”

  Why were restroom corridors always paneled in the same dark, depressing wood? They always had the same carpet, too, thin dark blue speckled with stains and ground-in chewing gum. The telephone book swiveled out from under a metal platform under the phone. It covered four counties in two states, but it was only about an inch thick. For Kent County, there was one Haywood listed in Clover. Mrs. C. R. Haywood. A woman?

  As soon as she got her money out, her hands began to perspire. The quarters stuck to her palm. She had to put her weight on one leg because her other knee was trembling. She dialed wrong twice in a row, and on the third try somebody answered so fast, she wasn’t sure what they said, or even if it was a man or a woman, or a child. “Hello?” she said. “Hello?”

  “Hello?” It was a woman. Old; quavery-voiced.

  “Hello—my name is Caddie Winger and I’m trying to locate a Mr. Bobby Haywood.”

  “Bobby? Who is this?”

  “Caddie Winger. I’m—”

  “Caddie? Who is this? Where’s Bobby?”

  “No, I’m…” She heard a scrabbling sound, a woman’s voice saying, “Mother, I’ll take it,” and then—

  “Hello? Who’s calling?” in a strong Eastern Shore accent.

  “Um, hi.” She started over. “My name is Caddie Winger, I’m in a phone booth in the neighborhood and I was looking—at the book, and wondering if by any chance this is the residence of Bobby Haywood.”

  “Bobby?” Not rude, but sharper. “I’m sorry, who’d you say this is?”

  She repeated her name. “I think he knew my mother, if I have the right number. Years ago.” Thirty-three years ago. If she had the right number. “Who’s this?” she asked politely.

  “Well, my name’s Dinah Krauss, but…” She hesitated. “My brother was Bobby Haywood. Robert Charles Haywood.”

  Caddie’s skin prickled; she felt as if she were getting a mild electrical shock. “Is he—” She had to clear her throat. “Is he there?”

  “Oh, honey.” The voice softened. “Bobby died a long, long time ago.”

  She didn’t feel anything. Then she did, a wave of disappointment so swift and heavy her legs went weak. She’d have sat down on the floor where she was, but the phone cord wouldn’t reach.

  She got over it fast, because it was silly: how could you grieve for someone you’d never known and never even expected to meet?

  The lady gave a little cough of concern into the silence.

  “Um,” Caddie said. “He was a musician, wasn’t he?”

  “Why, he sure was. Who did
you say is your mother?”

  “Jane Buchanan.”

  “Jane…”

  “But she used the name Chelsea.”

  “Oh, lordy, you’re Chelsea’s girl.”

  “Yes. Did you know her?”

  “I never met her, but I sure heard all about her from Bobby. How’s she doing?”

  “She died, too. In a car accident out in California, a long time ago.”

  “Oh, no. Did she? Well, I am real sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you.” There was so much sympathy in the lady’s voice, Caddie got a stupid lump in her throat. “The reason I knew to call—I found a letter from Bobby to my mother, and it seemed like…they knew each other real well.” Real well. She was falling into Dinah’s idiom for some reason. She guessed because she wanted her to trust her.

  “Well, Bobby was deep in love with her,” Dinah allowed after a funny pause. “That I know. Like I say, I never met her myself.” She said that carefully, as if trying to be fair.

  “Dinah?” Might as well jump in. That’s what Thea would do. “The reason I called is because I think, I’m pretty positive from the letter and the dates and everything, that your brother, um”—she almost lost her nerve—“might’ve been my father.”

  “Whoa.” A thump, as if Dinah had sat down. “Oh, my goodness gracious. Caddie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your name is Caddie?”

  “Catherine Ann Winger. My mother was Buchanan, well, actually Buckman, but—oh, that’s a long story, but Winger is my name.”

  “Where’re you calling from?”

  She told.

  “Why, that’s hardly any piece at all!”

  “I know. Would you like to meet?”

  “Why, heck, yes, wouldn’t you?”

  They laughed together.

  “Well, you could come here if it’s—”

  “No, come over here,” Dinah interrupted, “Earl’s working and I can’t leave Mother. Besides, you’ll want to see the house. Bobby grew up here.”

  Caddie hunched her tense shoulders with excitement. “I’m traveling with some friends, two people, I really was in the neighborhood—”