Auto-De-Fe

by Paul Hawkins

have been her birthday' old Walters mused sadly. Cathy looked at the picture, and she knew she should be very touched - that's what made her feel guilty - she could hardly keep from laughing. The mother looked like Walters in a wig. She nearly went into hysterics telling it. Cathy laughed and laughed. It made her feel so terrible.

  We realized that this crush, if you could call it that, probably explained why the boss got onto Bill as much as he did. Over the course of the past few weeks some defiance had been building inside the little man, in spite of Bill’s standing tacit threat of violence. Bill's job assignments became more and more menial. He took it, always remembering the money needed to fix the car. But the contention appeared to grow more powerful between them.

  Not that Bill seemed to notice it. Being a participant you'd think he'd be an authority on the mounting rivalry, but ask him about it and he'd just laugh, saying: "What, him? He's nuts." Then he'd go back to work on the car.

  It made you want to tell him something - I don't know what, and come to think of it I wouldn't've told him even if I did. In catechism we learned that we shouldn't emperil the faith, and since those ideal days I've abstracted that directive down through all levels of pettiness to include a prohibition against the disillusioning of trusting squirrels and faithful dogs. I'm sure Bill would fit in there someplace.

  One day when the car was almost finished I guess he noticed my less than thrilled expression and he asked me what was the matter. What could I tell him? That he'd stolen my girl, that I didn't feel right in my family any more, that I had bad luck and nothing good seemed to be happening for me now that I need it? I told him I was worried about the Navy in the fall.

  "The Navy? Is that all? I had an uncle in the Navy. It wasn’t so bad. He made a lot of good friends and besides, he came back from his tour experienced. Naw," he said, "the Navy's nothing to be afraid of. You're just worried about finally doing it. You need to stop worrying." His eyes began to glow as he tightened a bolt. "I know what - we'll have a party. Outdoors. Yes sir, when we get this old car fixed, you and me and all our friends from work, we’ll all go down to the beach. Maybe we'll ditch work and just decide to have a party. We can buy some beer and food – it’ll be fun," he asserted.

  I wanted to believe him and I almost did. It would be great just to get away for once, just to be in the sun and have everything you worry about be nowhere in sight, if only for one bright afternoon.

  Bill monitored my response and was encouraged, and I stifled my disbelief though I could think of one good reason why this scheme would remain unreal, and suspending disbelief I just listened to him dreaming out loud undauntedly as he always did, always convincing himself. With every bolt he tightened he added a new embellishment to his design, always concluding with 'that's what we'd do.' It sounded good, and it was nice to think so.

  One day Bill pushed the boss too far. Of course I don't think he realized it. He'd stared down old Walters before. The problem was that this time he did it in front of a crowd.

  A whole gang was coming back from break, Bill included. They were in a spirited mood, which didn't help any. Carlene took it upon herself to shove Eddie into a stack of boxes just as Mr. Walters appeared. He shook his head. Carlene had always been hopeless. The group's enthusiasm evaporated beneath the boss's stare.

  "Break-time's over!" he snarled.

  Exhibiting appropriate brow-beatenness, they prepared to slink away. Then Walters called to Bill. "You - get over here,” he said.

  The rest of the group reduced their slink to an incredibly slow pace to ensure that they'd hear every word.

  "Your work's been lousy lately," Walters said.

  "Yeah?" Bill replied.

  The boss continued. "But it's always been lousy. I'm used to it. The trouble is, now my secretary's work is starting to get lousy too, and I can't stand that."

  "So..?" Bill pronounced slowly.

  "So," Mr. Walters concluded, running a hand over his slicked black hair and pointing at Bill with his cigar angrily, "I want you to leave her alone!"

  The slinkers had long since stopped dead in their tracks.

  The two stared at each other, and the boss's glare was, even for him, exceptionally fierce. He wasn't giving an inch. Bill, still staring, asked: "Who's gonna make me?"

  The boss's only response was to pull his upper lip up sinisterly above his little sharp teeth. And the stare-out went out, and they stood facing each other so long you'd think somebody was painting their picture. Only when the boss's cigar had smoldered down so low as to burn his fingers did the stalemate end. He cursed and shook his hand, and as he did so Bill excused himself, saying, "I've got to get back to work."

  Later that night, after work, as we hung around the burger joint, Bill decided that, based on the depth and breadth of the boss’s cursing, that Walters must've been in the navy, too.

  "He'll put his goons on you," somebody warned.

  Bill shrugged this off, reexpressing his skepticism in the whole 'godfather' theory.

  Some nights Bill walked home with me so as to take a last appreciative glance at his automobile before calling it a day, or else to attend to some aspect of repair that'd been bugging him during work. With the vehicle's rehabilitation imminent, and Bill's enthusiasm cued to near its peak, he started coming over to my house after work all the time, performing whatever miniscule operation that late hour would accommodate, in order to coax his dream a little closer to his grasp. We came home one night to find my father tightening the last bolt of the water pump. Just as we came up the drive he lowered the hood and looked at us.

  "Well," he said, "that's it."

  He'd pronounced it like a death sentence, but Bill somehow managed to glean the statement's true significance. "You mean," he inquired with wide-eyed, reverence, "that it'll run? It's fixed?"

  My dad was wiping off his hands. "I suppose it'll run," he said. "If we've done everything right, that is. All she needs is a battery and a fan belt."

  Bill began to scan the cars parked up and down the street. My dad clapped him on the shoulder, laughing. "It'll wait," he said. "You stop by the store early tomorrow morning and buy those things, bring'em over here, and I imagine before long you'll have yourself a 'road machine'."

  'Road machine'? Dad could still embarrass me.

  Bill left in a daze, and we walked back to the house.

  "Aren't you excited?" my dad asked, sort of squinting in the darkness to see my reaction.

  "I should be," I shrugged, "I've put my whole Summer into it." "We'll see what happens tomorrow," he said. "I think we've done good work."

  Bill returned, still in a reverent daze, at five-thirty the next morning. I don't know where he got the parts, but if stolen fanbelts made the headlines I would have had a fair idea.

  He worked without breakfast, and of course I worked with him. There was still a lot of work to do - loosening this to put on that then retightening it and finding something else, then putting in the battery and getting shocked, only to hear the other person laugh about it and start you wondering if it had really hurt you as much as you'd thought at the time (it had). And then you try to start it but there's no gas, so someone runs and buys some and you crank it ... and it coughs. You crank it and prime it and it coughs violently as though upset at having its eternal sleep disturbed, but you crank it some more and just when the battery sounds like it's about to fail something catches, and the coughing keeps going, and starts to sound smoother. Before you know it the darned thing's actually running - that's it! that's what it's supposed to do! - and the jubilant owner says 'get in' and you do and you back out of the driveway at maybe eight o'clock in the morning and naturally you go screaming down the street around the block.

  Bill was ecstatic. I couldn't help feeling a little proud. It ran! We were geniuses. We were gods. I was still half-asleep, and the air rushing past my face felt good.

  "Man!" Bill said. "Oh man!"

  I had to agree.

  We sped around, passing places we'd had to wa
lk to a hundred times in the past, places we'd walked to getting parts. Then we cruised down the street with the bars and the diners, and they looked sort of pale and flaccid in the daylight, and we were sailing past them in an instant and all of a sudden everything about them seemed sort of embarrassing and small.

  Bill roared through turns and any other time I'd've felt unsafe, but right now I just didn't care. I was surprised at how detached I felt, just sitting there and witnessing. We were heading steadily uphill. He made another turn and we wound through a residential area I was totally unfamiliar with, passing frowning sleepy-eyeds then shooting out of it again, still higher up. We went into another, plusher, residential area only to circle around it, and coming around its other side a spectacular view began to open up before me. It was the Shoreline. In one part, near the piers, it was crowded and busy. But that wasn't the Ocean. The Ocean was a patient, majestic thing, bouncing silver and gold off of its many waves, journeying patiently toward the horizon, spreading out patiently in all directions - too vast too inquisitive too wonder-full too young to get caught up in the pier activity and its little games.

  "Whaddya think?" Bill asked.

  "Cool," I said.

  We drove back down, I nearly oblivious, just feeling the motions, the turns, the speed the stops and starts as a welcome symbiosis. Then suddenly we were back at my house. It was maybe nine