Hush Hush

by Steven Barthelme

  “That’s all right,” Quinn said. “I’ll pay cash.”

  The clerk tore the credit card slip in half and handed it across the counter, took the five hundred dollar bills. “You stay here a long time. We hope you enjoy your stay,” he said, and wrote Paid at the base of the bill.

  “I like motels,” Quinn said.

  The guy turned back around, smiling. “You know, I do too. I take a room here, too. Sometimes I stay a week, two weeks.” He nodded, settled back on his stool. “This a great job. Nobody believes me, you know, but this a great job.” He smiled and rubbed both hands over the hair left at the sides of his head. “I am sorry about the Visa card.”

  Quinn laughed. “My mistake,” he said, and waved the card. “It’s …” He blinked and looked at it. “Broken,” he said, finally, and shrugged. On his way out, he bought a paper. The knee he had twisted on the steps at the party felt better, almost well, as he walked the narrow sidewalk in front of the rooms.

  Back in his room, he remembered reading the want ads, or trying to, the jobs he couldn’t do or had never heard of, “Junior Liaison Engineer, nut test, P-test specializations,” other weird notices written in code. Nurses. References, he thought. Must have own tools. He shuddered. I used to have potential. But you probably can’t have “potential” at thirty-two.

  This a great job, he thought. Jesus, what must that be like? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not work. No, not it. He slipped his car keys off the night table. Happily, he thought, there’s a path of least resistance available. I used to like fooling with cars, anyway.

  The Car Clinic was out in a field under a too blue sky in a depressed part of town near the intersection of three highways. The road in front of it ran between alternating fields of tawny weeds and low industrial brick buildings inside hurricane fences. The full name was Lancaster Car Clinic and Fine Auto Detailing, Inc. It occupied three steel buildings each with a concrete apron spreading out in front, and between the concrete slabs were two alleys of red mud, dry and hard now, flecked with scrub grass. An old Checker taxicab was parked at the back of one of these mud alleys, along with two weathered VW’s, and some seats, fenders, batteries, starters, and lumps covered with thin black plastic which looked big enough to be engines or transmissions. The farthest of the three tin buildings had the big doors shut. Four kids, three skinny boys and a very tall girl, were sitting around just inside the nearest steel shed, passing a joint and laughing. One blond boy with rock ’n’ roll hair was holding a big silver wrench in his hand.

  “Help you?” he said, when Quinn walked up. He looked about eighteen.

  “Help you?” the girl said, mimicking him. Striking blue eyes, made more striking by her hair—boy cut, dyed black. She was wearing black leggings with big holes in them, under a T-shirt, even though it was nearly 95 degrees.

  “Shut up, Dix. Don’t mind her.”

  The girl was staring. “I love your shoes,” she said. “Are they Bally? What size are they? They might fit me.”

  “Bigfoot,” one of the others said.

  “I’m looking for a guy named Rollo,” Quinn said, leaning down, rubbing his knee with the heel of his hand. “Allen sent me.”

  “Wooooo,” the kids said, in unison.

  “Al-len sent him,” the girl said. “What’d you, just get back from Huntsville?”

  “Shut up, Dix,” the blond kid said again.

  “He’s not very pretty,” she said. “Most of the guys from Huntsville are rhinopretty.” She grabbed at the remains of the joint, which the first kid held up out of her reach. “C’mon, gimme,” she said. She frowned. “You are acting like a child.”

  “My name is Morton,” the blond kid said. “Mort.” He handed the girl the joint, pointed with his wrench. “Dix. And Dave, and Patricio. Rollo’s never here, really. Just as well. He couldn’t fix a car if his life depended on it.”

  “Woooo,” the others said again.

  “Like, quality control,” the one called Dave said.

  “You couldn’t either, Mort,” Patricio said. He looked at Quinn. “Don’t think he knows how to use that wrench. Yesterday, he asked me what a head gasket was.”

  “I knew,” Mort said.

  “What about … Lancaster?” Quinn said. “Someone named Lancaster around?” It dawned on him that that was the name on the place.

  “Get Bubbles,” Dave said.

  “Davy,” Mort said. “I told you not to talk like that.”

  “It’s ugly, Davy,” the black-haired girl said, with a studied look away. “Why be ugly?”

  Mort looked suddenly tired, as if he could barely raise his arm to point to the next steel shed. “Next door,” he said. “Stay away from the detailing shop—the last building? They don’t like it when you hang around there.”

  “Thanks,” Quinn said, and started across the hardened mud alley toward the second steel building. Even these children belong here, he thought, wondering at their quirky serenity, recalling his own childhood, its unease. He wondered how old he must look to them, and then he thought about Liz the librarian, wondered how old she thought he was.

  Inside the second shed there were two Hondas, an old Oldsmobile, and a new blue Pontiac in the bays. Lancaster was underneath the Pontiac, a big man in worn shoes and stiff blue coveralls. “With you in a minute,” he said. He sounded black. Quinn looked around.

  The place was uncommonly tidy, even clean. A tall red tool chest, on wheels, stood beside the Pontiac, and a fat black wire ran to the trouble light the guy had under it. The Olds was up on a lift, hovering a foot off the ground. Beside one Honda, pieces of something were laid out between two red rags like an exploded diagram. A long counter ran three feet high along the corrugated steel rear wall, and above it and above three or four old Pirelli calendars, a string of windows, the glass, amazingly, clear, sparkling.

  “So what can I do you?” the black guy said, standing, wiping his hands on another red rag. He looked past Quinn for a car. “What sort of problem you got?” He was easily six four. His eyes were streaked and red and sagged a little and his arms, his belly, even his cheeks looked heavy and soft, not so much fat, Quinn thought, as uncared for.

  “I’m looking for work,” Quinn said. “That so,” the guy said. “That so.” He was looking at Quinn’s shoes. “Well, you need to talk to Rollo, or a man named Powell.”

  “My name’s Quinn.” He held out his hand.

  Lancaster shook hands. “Well, Mr. Quinn, we’re pretty well fixed right now. I got four kids working next door.” He pointed.

  “Actually, Allen Powell sent me over,” Quinn said. “He said I should talk to you, if Rollo wasn’t around. You’re Mr. Lancaster, aren’t you?”

  The black guy laughed. “I’m Bub. I used to be Mr. Lancaster at one time, sure was. Then I got sent to Viet Nam, and then I got sent to Raiford, that’s in Florida. Since then, I’m Bub.” He looked at Quinn, appraising him. “You know about cars?”

  “Not a whole lot. Been working in a shop for a year in Atlanta.”

  Lancaster laughed. “That so, you’ve been wearing some fine leather gloves.” He laughed again, saw Quinn looking up at him. “Show me your hands,” he said. He motioned for them. “Go on, let me see your hands.”

  Quinn held his hands out. Lancaster took them, turned them palms up, stared at them, looked up at Quinn, smiling, and let them fall.

  “Yeah, okay,” Quinn said. “Yeah. Maybe it was fifteen years ago. It was a while back. All this electronic stuff, I don’t know anything about it.” He looked back toward the first building. “But, you know, I met your help. The boys and girls?”

  Lancaster shook, laughing, tried to stop, couldn’t. “Yeah, Rollo hires them. They’re sort of … trainees,” he said. “Tire needs changing, dope needs smoking, we bring them in.” He laughed again. “Actually ’Tricio is a fair hand and so’s Davy. Other two are strictly Blue Lagoon.”

  Two Porsches, lipstick red, roared up the street and turned in at the third building and stoppe
d. A small, dowdy young woman, in glasses and an old, empire-waisted dress, stepped out of the near car and trudged inside as a garage door went up.

  Lancaster turned back to him. “Let’s see, Mr. Quinn. I wonder if you know anything about fixing cars. Can you do us a brake job, say? On this Olds here?” He petted the rear fender of the big yellow car. “Certainly would save me some trouble. Little hundred dollar job.”

  “Right now?”

  Lancaster looked at him. “You want a job?” He started to rub at the corner of his eye with a finger, then stopped to rub the finger clean on his blue suit. “It’s already up, and there’s an impact wrench on the floor there and all the tools you’ll need in the tower.” He pointed to the fancy red toolbox. “Bottom two drawers.”

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “It doesn’t stop.”

  Quinn looked at him, trying to remember brakes.

  “Okay, you tell me,” Lancaster said. “Man says the brakes are bad. Car’ll stop but it takes a good long time. Fluid’s low but still okay.”

  “Warning lights?” Quinn said. He crouched down next to the front wheel, wincing, and looked across under the car at the inside of the other front tire, then in around at the near one, checked the back tires. “It’s not leaking at the wheels. Master cylinder leaking?”

  The big man, watching, smiled, shook his head.

  “Just the front pads, then,” Quinn said. He stood up again. “Right?”

  The guy laughed, nodded. “That’s right. Just do the front. I’ll put the shoes on the back later. There’re no leaks. The master’s almost new.”

  “Why are you going to do the back, if it’s just the front?”

  Lancaster looked at him, trying to simplify what he had to say enough to make it comprehensible to a soft-handed, but maybe not hopeless apprentice. “Look here, Shadetree, if the front’s worn a lot the back’s worn a little, you know? They got a metering valve on here, supposed to even up the braking—it only half works. Any time car’s been driven, the wear’s uneven. So we start them over even, it’s a equilibrium thing.” He held out his two pale rough palms, as if weighing something. “And I don’t want the man back a week on with a car I fixed that don’t stop. This used to be my shop. But that ain’t it …” He sighed, shook his big head, and looked out toward the road in front of the place. “Bad work makes me feel bad. You know what I mean?”

  Quinn looked at the big yellow Oldsmobile floating in the oily air of the place. How hard can it be, he thought. Just brakes. He remembered doing brakes in parking lots on cars up on scissor jacks and bleeding them into Coke bottles. He remembered sitting around in clubs with people from the law office where the bar tab ran to three hundred dollars.

  “What’s the matter?” the black man said.

  “I’m used to doing this on Volkswagens.”

  “ ’bout the same thing,” Lancaster said. “Only these just have one piston. And you take the caliper off to do the work. Two bolts.” He held up two thick fingers.

  Quinn looked past him, at the front wheel. “Doesn’t make sense. How can they do it with one piston? How do they equalize the pads, balance the pressure?”

  “Caliper floats. Whole thing. Piston’s squeezing against itself. Jesus H. You’re sure enough shadetree, aren’t you?”

  “I can fix this.” Quinn pointed across to the Pontiac. “You can go on back under there. Out of my way. I’ll have this sucker finished in an hour.” He walked over to the impact wrench lying on the concrete and picked it up.

  “Okay, Shadetree,” Lancaster said. “But the book says the job is two units.” He started walking back toward the office at the end of the building. “That’s half hour. You want a coke?”

  Quinn pulled the trigger to hear the power wrench’s rolling scream. He looked over to the next parking lot, but they had pulled the Porsches inside.

  It took him the full hour, getting the feel of the tools, taking care to keep parts clean and free of dirt and grit, double checking that this moved freely or that fit the way it was supposed to. He liked the work, the feel of the tools and the grease smell and the intoxication any physical work brings, if you don’t do too much. The machine had a sort of pride in itself, an elegance of operation, and the work a sort of coherence. Things had reasons for being the way they were. The tools had their own coherence, an invented logic. Someone just made it up, like someone had just made up the law, but if a bolt was the wrong thread, there was no arguing it, and having twice as much money, or twice as much attorney, didn’t change the fact. But that wasn’t it either.

  He liked the law still, really, the arrogance of its made-up-ness, the handsome job men had done with it. It wasn’t law that had set him down on this cool concrete with the grime on his fingers and grit in his eye and idiot grin on his face. The law was all right. And the money was all right. And the clock with the big numbers, he thought. I loved that clock.

  In fact, he liked all the yuppie stuff. Toaster, fat sweatshirts, microwave, wok. He liked walking into everyone’s house and finding that same red electric wok. But the price was pretending to be someone out of Fortune crossed with someone out of the Utne Reader married to someone from Vogue crossed with Bulletin of the National Anti-vivisection Society. Pretending to know things. In almost all ways an easy, pleasant life, plus profit-sharing, except for the pretending, the sensation of walking around in an extra skin, like some weird deep sea diver who has forgotten why he came here. But it’s not the law, Quinn reminded himself. This is the way I felt in elementary school.

  He twisted the torque wrench, set at 37 ft-lbs., until it slipped internally, checked it, then tightened the other mounting bolt on the caliper. The work had taken him too long, but it had gone easily. Only once had he had to ask advice, about a rubber dust boot, and Lancaster himself had had trouble getting it in. Lancaster had left whatever he had been working on for later and done the rear brakes on the old Oldsmobile while Quinn was working on the front. He had finished sometime earlier even though he had rebuilt the wheel cylinders as well as replacing the brake shoes. Now he was sitting on a stool by the long counter at the back, drinking vodka and coughing.

  “You done?” he said, when he saw Quinn set the black torque wrench down on the concrete. “Finally?” He raised the broad little pint of vodka, laughing, then pointed at a length of clear plastic hose and a Coke bottle standing on the counter. “Now we got to bleed them. Why don’t you get in the car and pump the pedal for me?”

  “What?” Quinn said. “Why do I get in the car? Why don’t you get in the car?” He looked at the green bottle. “That’s very technological equipment you got there.”

  Lancaster looked at him, stood up from the stool, shook his head. “Okay, Shadetree, I’ll get in the car.” He took another drink. “Here,” he said, and held out the vodka.

  Quinn took it, glanced at him, wiped the neck of the vodka on his shirt and took a drink. He wiped his lips with his sleeve and handed the bottle back, pointing with it at the driver’s door. Then he fetched the hose and the Coke bottle and sat down by the right front wheel.

  The front wheels went quickly, there was no air in the lines, but the rear took some doing. Lancaster had cleaned up the wheel cylinders, including the bleeder bolts, so that they turned like butter, there wasn’t any feel in the threads.

  That’s what Quinn told himself anyway, when on the last wheel, with the bubbles of air just about out of the line and clear brake fluid coming down it every time he opened the bleeder, he snapped it closed too smartly and twisted off the top half.

  “Oh, Christ,” he said, looking at the torn metal in the jaws of the locking pliers. “Shit.” He stared at the other half lodged in the wheel cylinder, and his shoulders sank.

  After a minute, Lancaster got out of the car and walked around to Quinn, sitting at the right rear wheel. He looked huge. “There a problem?” He coughed into his fist.

  Quinn held up the pliers, showing him the half bleeder bolt.

  H
e laughed. “You’re taking this too hard, Shadetree. Try an Easy Out. I’ll get one. It’s probably too soft, but you might get it that way.”

  Quinn was still staring at the pieces of the torn bolt. “I always used to do this. Overtighten things. Try too hard. Being a good boy.”

  “Look, you messed up. Let’s not make it Biblical.” Lancaster looked at the vodka bottle, shook it. “Shoo,” he said. “I think they don’t put a whole pint in these things.” He shook it again.

  It took another twenty minutes to get the broken bolt out and replace it, re-bleed the rear brakes. When Quinn started the hydraulic lift up instead of down and then jerked the lever back in a panic, letting the Oldsmobile drop a foot onto the concrete, Lancaster laughed until he started to cough again. He raised the car back up and slid underneath to check it. “There’s a big can of Gojo in the bathroom down there,” he said from under the car. “Hand cleaner, you know.”

  Quinn shuffled off, smiling, toward the bathroom next to the small office, watching his soft charcoal gray slip-on shoes kick out in front of him. I’m home, he thought. I’ll move into the apartment, subscribe to the paper. Get a library card. Some regular shoes.

  Lancaster was leaning against the other car looking at the yellow Oldsmobile when Quinn walked back up. “Well, I guess you’re hired now,” Lancaster said, watching Quinn wiping his hands on a rag. “If you want.”

  “After screwing up twice?” Quinn said. “Bleeder bolt and the lift?” He tossed the red rag into a gray steel barrel of rags on the concrete under the back counter and looked toward the Oldsmobile, frowning. There wasn’t any obvious damage from its fall. It had bounced.

  “Wouldn’t mind having an adult around here.”

  “Probably be more trouble to you than—”

  Lancaster sighed. “Look, white boy, you’re hired. You been hired since you said the two magical words. Allen Powell. But I’m mighty happy to have this brake work done. You want the job or don’t you?”