“So that’s two hours a day that you spend, just commuting,” Earl said. “How long would that take you by car?”
Charlene laughed, “I don’t know,” she said. “I never had one. I got my driver’s license, high school? And all the time I’m studying, and then practicing the driving, all the time I’m asking myself: ‘Why’m I doing this? I don’t have nothing to drive.’ And then I think: ‘Well, we might get one, if I get my license. Maybe we’ll get a car then.’ And I knew that wasn’t true. That was just pretending. What difference does it make, I know how? Might as well take pilot lessons, if that’s how it’s going to work. We might get a plane.”
“Well,” Earl said, “do you think you could make it in less’n an hour?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What do you think, Ma?”
Mrs. Arnold shrugged. “I got no idea,” she said.
“Well,” Earl said, “but you’d know the way to get there by car. Isn’t that right, Charlene?”
“Sure,” Charlene said.
“Wait a minute,” Mrs. Arnold said. “I don’t know what’s going on here. What does all this stuff mean?”
“Well,” Earl said, “I’m not from around here, you see. I grew up, I lived in Vermont. I went to college in New York. When I got out, I was in the Peace Corps. So I know the way from where I live to here, and how to get back home again. And I know the roads around where I grew up, and the subways and trains in New York. And I know the dirt roads all over Kansas, because that’s where I was in the Peace Corps. But from here to Bunker Hill College? I don’t know how to do that, so that’s why I asked her that question.”
Mrs. Arnold’s eyes narrowed. “I thought that Peace Corps thing,” she said, “I thought that was just for places across the water. Coon countries, helping all them naked coons.”
“They got all the publicity,” Earl said. “The domestic branch, no one paid attention to us. But we still did our jobs, though—thanks or no thanks, made no difference, we still did our jobs.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Arnold said, “well see, I didn’t know that.”
“Perfectly all right,” Earl said, “we’re all used to it by now. But see, the reason I was asking that, asking about the way, is I think I’m seeing something here that maybe fits together. And I thought maybe, we took a ride, we might see if I’m right.”
“Yeah?” Charlene said.
“Like what?” Mrs. Arnold said. “Like what might fit together?”
“Well,” Earl said, “I’ve been listening very carefully here, to both of you. And it seems to me, well, I know that you, Charlene, really want a car.”
“That car,” Charlene said, gazing up at the Impala. “That’s the car I want. That one sitting right there.”
Mrs. Arnold grunted. “And you, Mrs. Arnold,” Earl said, “you really want for Charlene to make the best of what she has. Realize her full potential. Have a better life than yours.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Arnold said, setting her mouth, “which she don’t want to do.”
“But,” Earl said, “on the other hand, you wouldn’t mind having a car, enjoying the convenience of it, if you thought you could afford it, and—and—you saw how it might help, help Charlene to do what you think she should. And what you think she can. Like legal secretary.”
Mrs. Arnold barked a brief laugh. “Mister Beale,” she said, “when I was a little girl, my Uncle Joe used to be able to find dimes behind my ears. Found nickels in my hair. Never found a lot of money, just enough for ice-cream cones. I asked him once, guess I was six, how come he always stopped. Why he didn’t just keep on, use his magic, make us rich. And he said, well, nightshift magicians for the Edison, they had just a little magic, just enough for ice-cream cones.” She smirked at him. “Now Mister Beale,” she said, smiling, “I don’t know you very long. But if you’ve got some magic that not only gets us this car, but Charlene to do her work, well, good thing for Joe that he is dead. You’d put that poor man to shame.”
Earl grinned and shook his head. He held up his hand in the stop-signal gesture. “Ah, Mrs. Arnold,” he said, “you’re a skeptical woman. But you’re right: you don’t know me. On the other hand, what’ve you got on your schedule today? Both of you, I mean. Charlene I take it’s off from school, and you spend days at home. So why not take a ride with me—Charlene, you’ve got your license and you want to show it to me, don’t see why you shouldn’t drive. And what we’ll do is get the ramps out, and—I’ll back this baby down for you, ’cause that part can be tricky—throw on a set of plates, and go to this college. See how long it takes. Then stop, turn around, maybe come back a different way. And see how long the trip home takes. That could tell us something.”
Charlene clapped her hands. “Oh, Ma,” she said, “let’s do it? Please please please please, please?”
“Like what?” Mrs. Arnold said, quelling Charlene with her right hand. “Just what could it tell us?”
Earl drew a deep breath. “What I’m hearing, Mrs. Arnold,” he said, “is that Charlene here is spending about four full hours a day, going back and forth to school. Now, that’s wasted time, ma’am, which means it’s wasted money, too. You, she, could save that time, good chunk of it, at least, if she had a car. Maybe not this car, maybe a less expensive model. We have several in stock. But see my point? If she saves the time, and she isn’t bored, it’s likely that her grades’ll go up, and that’d put her in a position to go for something better. Every morning I have breakfast at this place over in Cambridge, near where my apartment is. They’ve always got the signs up for waitresses and so forth. Desperate for help. Now that’s pretty far from you, but there’s other places, around here, must be the same position. If you spent the time working, you’re spending traveling now—not all of it, but most of it—how much you think you’d make? Make in say a week?”
Charlene shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “My girlfriend Cathy, she works. Down McDonald’s there. I think she works whole forty hours, but I’m not sure what she gets. Maybe brings home, I don’t know? Ninety, hundred bucks a week? Something like that anyway. Maybe a little more.”
“Call it that, anyway,” Earl said. “Figure fifty for half-time, McDonald’s, where they don’t allow no tips. Figure fifteen, twenty more, in a place where they do tip, and a pretty girl serves guys the food.”
Charlene blushed again.
“Now,” Earl said, “I’m not even going to tell you what the price is on this car. No need of jumping into things, not until you’re sure. But I can tell you right now, and I’m prepared to back it up, I know, I’m absolutely certain, I can put you in a car.”
Charlene jumped three times and clapped her hands again. “Do it do it do it,” she said, her eyes dancing with her feet and the jangling chains on her white boots.
Earl went into the showroom and selected the Impala keys from the pegboard in Waldo’s office. He took a screwdriver and dealer plates from the desk. Fritchie spoke to him as he emerged. “What’re you doing to those people, Earl?” he said.
“Only what they want done,” Earl said. “Only what they want.” He went into the storage room and picked up the corrugated steel ramps and carried them, one under each arm, out to the parking lot. He fastened them to the brackets at the rear of the platform.
“Now,” he said, dusting his hands together, “I’m going to back it down. While I’m doing that, I’d like both of you to think about some things I’d like to do. Give me some help on this.” He nodded toward the Impala. “I haven’t driven this car myself. It’s a southern California car, only two years old. The owner drove it here, to school, and then he had to sell it to get money for expenses. So I know it’s got no rust. But what I don’t know is how it handles. We put on new tires; maybe it needs alignment. Maybe after that long trip, it needs a shot of oil or grease—may be some creaks in it. The mileage is low—even going coast to coast, that once, it’s still only got about eighteen thousand miles on her. Anyway, watch and listen all the way, what you see and
hear and feel. And if there’s the slightest thing wrong with it, well, I’m sure we can take care of it. Okay?”
“Uh huh,” Charlene said. Mrs. Arnold said nothing.
“Let me see your license, Charlene,” he said. She displayed it. “Okay, good,” he said. “Now, just one more thing: our insurance says no customer testing over forty. Will you keep her under that?”
“Uh huh,” Charlene said.
“Promise?” Earl said.
She nodded. “Cross my heart to die,” she said.
Mrs. Arnold shook her head. “I wished Timmy was home,” she said, “ ’stead of over in Saigon there. I wish he was right here now. Timmy would know things.”
11
Roy Fritchie before eleven thirty had invoked both seniority and elementary justice as his entitlements to oust Earl from the early lunch break. “It isn’t fair,” Earl had said. “I didn’t want it when I first come in here. I told you and Waldo both I never ate my lunch until around twelve thirty, so. And it was gonna get my stomach all screwed up. But you both said I hadda take it because I was the new man, and the one that was here first got to pick which one he wanted, and you happened to like eating your lunch later on. I’d get used to it, you said. So that was that, and my stomach did get all screwed up, and I lost about ten pounds. But I did get used to it, and now my stomach wants lunch early. So now what are you telling me? I got to eat lunch late.”
“It’s just today,” Fritchie had said, getting into his jacket. “And it’s your own fault anyway. You had me thinking about eating ever since this morning, telling me about all that breakfast you scarfed up. I’m going over Hyde Park there, the other Eire Pub, and have myself about a dozen hot dogs, all with onions, and ten beers. Maybe a hot pastrami, too.”
“Yeah,” Earl had said, “well fart your ass off there, okay? Before you come back here. And don’t forget to come back here, like you been known to do when you went that place before. I don’t see your ass in that chair by five past one, the latest, I am calling Waldo up. Speaking of which, where the hell is he? Waldo coming in today?”
“He called up while you’re out with that honey,” Fritchie had said. “Told him it’s quiet, nothing much going on. He said he’d be in, around two or so, but I bet he never shows up. He was on his way to the boatyard, getting things all set for winter. But that always takes him more time’n he thinks. I doubt we see Waldo at all.”
Shortly after noon a middle-aged man in a shapeless gray suit drove a ’fifty-five Ford Crown Victoria into the lot. It had come out of the factory two toned, the body divided by a thick chromium strip that swooped down from the crests of the front fenders into a fat silver line ending at the taillight assemblies. The lower part of the car had been painted brilliant turquoise; the upper half, including the roof, had been blinding white; another thick chromium strip went over that to create what Ford had advertised as “a tiara effect.” Earl got up from his desk and watched as the man stopped the car in front of the door, shut off the engine, and got out. Earl opened the office door for him.
The two of them stood in silence for a minute, the man staring at the car as though unfamiliar with it, Earl making notes in his head. After a while he went out into the lot and walked around the car, running the tips of his fingers along the trim strips, stooping to rap his knuckles lightly on the liners inside the wheel wells, noting the fit of the removable skirt over the right wheel, placing his hands on the trunk and then on the hood to jounce the car on its springs, touching the treads of the tires, opening the driver’s side door and examining the jamb and sills, getting in and looking at the odometer reading, starting the engine and listening to it while he turned the steering wheel from lock to lock, stepping on the brake pedal, and running his hand over the white upholstery. Then he shut off the engine and returned to the office.
“What do you think?” the man said.
Earl shrugged. “Same thing you probably do,” he said. “You wouldn’t be here, otherwise. Owned it since new?”
The man nodded proudly. “Original owner,” he said. “Got the bill of sale in the glove box. Complete service records on her, too. Taken damned good care of that car.”
“Yeah,” Earl said, “I believe it. Taken pretty good care of you, too. I assume the clock’s on the second time around, right?” The man nodded. So did Earl. “Hundred forty thousand—that’s damned good for any car. She’s plumb wore out now, of course, but New England’ll do that. Do that every time. But stood up a lot better’n most cars I’ve seen, driven that far around here. I’d go back to the guy sold me that one, buy another one, I was you.”
The man’s face crinkled into the kind of reluctant smile that Earl had seen on the faces of very tough men the nights before their release dates at the end of long terms in jail, when other inmates heckled them about bedding wives and girlfriends blind before the next sundown. The amount of mail and visits he had had from the women that he’d known had told him what the chances were of such things happening. “I lived in New Bedford then,” the man said. “I think he’s out of business. And if he isn’t, I am—that kind of business, at least. I paid thirty-one hundred bucks for that car, two thousand bucks in my trade-in and cash, and the rest I paid off in a year.” He paused. “I could do that then. Spend it all on a car, I mean. I was single. I’d earned it. It was all mine to spend like I wanted.” He looked at Earl as though seeking approval.
“And now you’re not,” Earl said.
The man lifted and dropped his eyebrows, tilting his head slightly, and making a small gesture with his left hand. “And now I’m not,” he said.
“What’ve you got in mind?” Earl said.
“I don’t know,” the man said. “Well, like I said, I know damned well I’m in no position to buy me another new car. But she said to me, my wife did, this morning, I’d better face facts pretty soon. Because winter’s on the way.” He sighed. “And she’s right. I know that. I’ve got to get on the stick here.”
“Do you know what you want?” Earl said. He nodded at the Impala, back up on the platform. “I’ve got a customer looking at that, but it isn’t sold yet. Committed. I don’t personally think it’s likely to give you the service you got out of this one, but it is ten years younger, eighteen on the clock, and you’d still have that, well, sporty look. How much you figure you can spend?”
The man shook his head. “I wouldn’t want that one,” he said, squinting at it. “You can see it from here—it’s been hit. And as for the sporty thing, well, facts’re facts: my sporty days’re behind me. Least for damned certain now, I can tell you, and as far’s I can see up ahead. I think what I’m looking for’s what they put under the old ‘good transportation’ flags there. Something three or four years old, kind of dull, with low mileage on it so far and good mileage on the gas. I’d like a radio and heater—well, I’d like a lot of things, but I really do need those.”
“We’ve got some, might meet your requirements,” Earl said. “But I still can’t be sure till I know, about how much you can swing.”
“Well,” the man said, “I won’t know that until I know how much my car there’s worth in trade. How much I can swing on another one depends a lot on that.”
Earl stared at him. “You mean,” he said, “you don’t know? Is that what you’re telling me here?”
“Well,” the man said, somewhat defensively, “I mean, I know it can’t be much. It does have a lot of mileage on it, and I know it’s twelve years old. But it still starts and everything—it runs. I put new tires on it last year. And it’s had new shocks, and a tune-up. I know it won’t stand up much longer, someone drives it to work every day, or needs a car in his work, as I do. But for somebody who just needs it for doing errands, maybe retired, going to the store and so forth, or to get to the nearest subway stop, well, it might last someone like that quite a good long time. It must be worth something. Had no trouble passing Inspection.”
“Mister,” Earl said, “don’t give me ‘Passed Inspection.’ You h
ad that done by the guy sells you gas. He’d pass a camel, you had one. No, you just got a common sickness. Some people get it from getting too close to their dogs. Or their cats. Canaries. Some people get it from boats, so I heard anyway. And some people, like you, get it from cars. You fall in love with your dog, you just can’t face the fact the dog’s gotten old, and it’s sick, and it’s got to go to sleep. The cat, same thing. The bird. The people who get it from pets: their vets all drive big Cadillacs. The people who get it from boats: if the old tub doesn’t just sink and drown them, the guy that repairs it gets rich. And that’s why where cars’re concerned, you don’t fall in love with the things. Gets in the way of your judgment.
“Now,” he said, “it does start. Starts when it’s hot, at least, and the weather isn’t too cold. But it doesn’t really want to start, even when it’s warm. You had it tuned? Well, it was either a while ago, and you’ve been driving it a lot in city traffic, or else it’s burnin’ more oil’n both of us think, because those plugs in there’re all fouled. And the tune-up did not include a new starter motor, which pretty soon is my guess is gonna cost someone most of what’s in a C note. New shocks? Cheapies, then, or else you’ve been driving on dirt roads—they’re shot. Tires’re bottom-the-line Sears, and you were smart to save your dough because the front ones’re all scalloped and the back ones’re all scuffed. It needs a new muffler, and a new tail pipe, and a new resonator—you drive it with the windows closed, like people do, the winter, you’re at least gonna get a bellyache from the exhaust fumes seeping up from that system through the floorboards. If you’re lucky and don’t die—because my guess is those boards’re all rusted out, just like the rockers, and the wheel wells, and the sills, and all the panel welds that I saw just in my few minutes. Which means that anyone dumb enough to dump a lot of money into parts and labor on that thing is only saying he’s determined to make sure that when it falls apart, it will be at least moving.
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