The Car (2 page)

Nine-thirty.

He could, of course, sit and watch television—the thought hit him even as he was moving toward the door that led to the garage. He could sit and watch the tube and munch on some junk, or he could go to bed because it was getting late, or . . .

He opened the door to the garage, pulled the cord that turned on the overhead light, and looked at the pile near the wall.

Yeah,
he thought.
I could go to bed or watch the tube, or I could go over there and just take a look at what's involved.

He went to the workbench at the end of the garage where he worked on his mower. He had a complete set of tools—sockets and wrenches, feeler gauges, everything to work on motors. He'd bought the set at a rummage sale for thirty dollars two years before without knowing how complete the set was; it had belonged to an old man who had passed away, who had done all his own work on his car, and the tools were so complete they included a torque wrench and special deep-well sockets. There was even a small dental mirror for looking up in hard-to-see places, and everything, from the mirror to the largest wrench, every tool had been kept in top condition.

Terry kept them the same way. He'd bought a large bag of clean red mechanics' rags at the discount store and each time he used a tool he wiped it carefully before putting it back.

His toolbox was the kind that sat upright with four drawers that pulled out, and he moved to the box now and opened the top, pulled the drawers out, and made sure—as he always did—that the tools were all there.

Then he turned to the car.

The boxes and parts were in a haphazard pile on top of the frame. The man who had initially owned the kit car had done some basic work on it. The frame was bolted and welded together correctly and the wheels and tires had been put on. The motor and transmission were also bolted into position on the frame, set in rubber motor mounts, and the drive shaft was in place back to the rear differential, but none of the body was on nor any of the controls for the wheels or motor. The car sat on the floor on tires—the frame, the motor—and stacked on top was the rest of the car in torn paper wrapping and cardboard boxes.

“Let's see what we've got . . . ,” Terry said under his breath and started taking the boxes off, setting them around the garage on the floor, looking in each one as he did so.

Much of the stuff he couldn't identify. There were large boxes with the fenders, the rear trunk lid, the hood (tags called the hood a bonnet and the trunk lid a boot), doors, interior panels, molded black dashboard, windshield. All of that he knew, could understand, but there were numbered bags and boxes with just bolts and parts, and many of them made no sense to him, and he despaired of ever understanding it all when in the bottom of one of the boxes he found the instructions.

They were in the form of a book or magazine and seemed incredibly complete, explaining things in detail with step-by-step instructions and with photos to show each step being accomplished.

“A monkey could do this,” he said, sitting on the frame, going page by page. “You don't have to know anything about cars at all. It's beautiful. . . .”

Not only were the instructions complete but they explained what was in each numbered box or bag—what each set of bolts was for—and he set about organizing all of them to get ready for starting work on the car.

Time seemed to stop while he worked. He used a notebook to catalog and place items, writing them down as he put them in order on the garage floor, and after a period he felt hungry and went into the kitchen for some lunch meat. Once he started to eat he was amazed at his hunger and he looked up to the cat clock, stunned to see that it was three in the morning.

I should feel tired,
he thought, but the sandwich seemed to give him energy, and he moved back to the garage to start work on the car.

Initially the strike went as planned, was so smooth it seemed choreographed.

The river patrol boat dropped them with their canoe, where the stream from the hamlet entered the main river. They were dressed in black, with black hats and black camouflage makeup. They did not smile and squinted so the whites of their eyes didn't show, and against the black wall of the Vietnamese jungle they simply did not exist.

One of them bumped a paddle on the side of the flat black canoe and the other hissed a curse at the thumping sound, but they were still far from the hamlet—4.7 kilometers, according to the map they had studied when planning the strike—and there was nobody to hear the sound.

They moved away from the patrol boat, working their paddles silently without taking them from the water, and within a hundred feet they were part of the night. . . .

H
E WENT
to the instructions again, starting with page one, picture one, working against what had already been done, double-checking what the original owner had completed.

He didn't know the man's name at first, but a few minutes after he started, a piece of paper fell out of the instruction book with the name Tom Haskell written on it, and he thought of the owner as Tom after that.

Whatever the name was, Terry admired his work. The things that were done were done right. Bolts on the motor mount were torqued to the correct foot-pounds of torque. Everything was aligned properly, squared, and checked, but when Terry was working on the radiator, checking to see if all the hoses were there, the lack of sleep caught up with him.

He closed his eyes—to blink, nothing more—and they just didn't open again. He slept sitting on the frame, his forehead against the radiator, which was braced across his knees, for nearly two hours.

When he awakened, his legs were asleep because the radiator had cut off the circulation, and he stood carefully, went back into the house—walking like Frankenstein—and drank the last of the milk.

It was eight in the morning. He'd worked all night, except for the two hours' sleep. His brain was still numb and he went to the couch, flicked the remote to turn the television on, and fell asleep in the middle of a game show.

The ringing phone awakened him and he was sitting up, grabbing for the receiver on the end table, before he was fully awake.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Anders?”

“Uhh . . . yes.”

“Your phone bill is two and a half months past due, Mr. Anders. Could we expect some payment on it this week?”

“Well, see, the truth is . . .” Terry didn't know what to say.

“The thing is, Mr. Anders, if you don't pay on it, I'm afraid we'll have to cut service.”

Terry was fully awake now and realized what had happened. His mother and father had let bills go before they left. He lowered his voice, tried to sound older. “I understand.”

“All we can give you is another two weeks.”

“Fine.”

“Then you'll send some money?”

“I'll do what I can.”

“Thank you, Mr. Anders.”

Terry hung up and stood. Between sitting and standing the whole conversation on the phone left his mind.

The car.

He had to work on the car.

He went to the kitchen and ate some lunch meat. There was some mustard in a jar and he smeared it on the meat before eating it, and while still chewing he made his way to the garage where the car waited.

He was at the point where the body had to be right to give him places to bolt new things—like putting the radiator in place. It needed side mounts to hold it, and without the engine compartment there would be no side mounts.

He started with the compartment itself, bolting the red side panels onto the frame, squirting thread-lock on each nut to make sure they wouldn't vibrate loose later, even though he was also using lock washers.

With the compartment in place the pieces started to look like a car, and he stepped back to study it.

He smiled. Not much of a car, but there was a shape coming, a look to it. The side compartments on the engine, where the sweeping fenders would bolt on, gave the kit the beginning look of a car, started to show some of the curves.

He finished bolting the radiator in place, adjusting it to clear the blades of the fan mounted on the front of the engine. The hoses from the radiator to the engine and back took some work, but Tom had ordered them right, and by twisting and turning and warping them, Terry finally got them into position and clamped on tightly.

Steering was next. The tie rods and steering gear were already in place on the frame, but there was no wheel or shaft coming through the fire wall to steer the car with. He found the shaft and turn indicator bracket but there was no wheel, and the whole assembly was obviously from another car—as were the engine and wheels.

For a moment it threw him until he found the title of ownership in a plastic bag taped in place in the back of the instruction manual.

All the parts not from the kit—the four-cylinder engine, the wheels and tires, the steering column, and the brakes—were from a 1974 Ford Pinto. The title and papers from the original car were in the plastic bag along with a note from a machinist:

“Tom,” Terry read aloud, “I've gone completely over the engine and rebuilt it to tighter tolerances than they have in the factory. It will be better than new. Just break it in slow, real slow, and let the rings seat on their own without pushing it.”

And in a last box, leaning against the inside of the frame and hidden from view, Terry found the steering wheel.

“It's beautiful. . . .” He spoke aloud when he opened the box. The wheel was black leather, polished and hand-rubbed, with brushed stainless steel spokes. In the middle was a horn ring with the Bearcat emblem in the center. There were also complete instructions on how to mount the steering wheel, and he put it in just because it looked good, even though the dash wasn't quite complete yet and all the instruments weren't hooked up.

When the wheel was in and lined up right and tightened down, he stepped back and looked at the overall car again. Having the wheel in place gave it an even more complete look, and he smiled, almost laughed.

He was going to have a car.

It was right there. All the rest of what he needed was right there in front of him. The parts just needed to be bolted together.

But right now he was hungry—worse,
starved
—and there was nothing in the house. He took ten dollars from his stash and rode his bicycle to the supermarket nine blocks away, and all the way, with every push and pull of his foot on the pedal of the bike, he thought,
Next time I go to the store I'll take the Cat.

T
HE CAR SEEMED DONE.

Terry had lost track of time. He sat on the step leading from the house to the garage, drinking milk directly out of the carton and eating lunch meat rolled in a tube and dipped in peanut butter and then swirled in a mustard jar.

The grimy window at the side of the garage showed it to be dark outside. Other than that he had no idea of how long he'd been working. He'd stopped to sleep several times, catching naps on the couch or chairs, once sleeping for an hour or so sitting in the black leather seat of the Cat, looking over the hood before he'd attached the windshield.

It was done.

But it was like a large model. Or a toy, like Pinocchio. Pretty, but without life. It sat gleaming in the overhead light, beautiful curved lines and streamlined shape, looking more like an updated version of the old 1950 MGs. An almost square radiator grill, a flat windshield angled slightly back so it wouldn't catch the wind, doors that dropped so low it was possible to sit in the car and easily touch the ground, shiny silver-spoked wheels, chrome stand-alone headlights, and a squarish back and trunk lid with a chromed luggage rack. There was no top, no cover of any kind from the weather.

“Do you run?” Terry asked the car, not feeling strange in the least that he was talking to the Cat. He had spoken to it all the time when he was building it, sometimes smiling, sometimes swearing when something didn't fit quite right. Installing the interior carpeting and dash padding had been a headache as had the gas tank, which he was still worried about. “Will you start and run?”

He got in the car and sat in the driver's seat, looking at the instrument panel. Hooking everything up had been easier than he'd thought. There was a wire harness with all the correct jacks and plugs from various parts of the engine to the VDO instruments on the dash. They were easy to read, black with white letters and needles, and the tachometer had an adjustable fluorescent orange indicator where redline should be. Lights, indicators, everything was hooked up.

But the battery was dead, or nearly so, and while it made the lights work well enough, Terry wasn't sure there'd be enough juice to get the motor turning to fire the ignition.

He decided to use a trick he did with small motors when they'd been sitting a long time. He raised the hood—it went up forward—and propped it with the two metal arms that popped into little side brackets in the hood. The motor looked clean enough to eat from, and he unscrewed the top of the air cleaner and removed the cover to open the throat of the carburetor.

By the workbench he had a five-gallon gas container he'd carried from the gas station on the corner. Most of the gas he'd already poured into the small opening of the filler cap for the Cat. But he'd saved some, and he poured half a cup in an empty soda bottle.

He held the choke plate open in the carburetor with his finger and trickled a couple of tablespoons of the gas from the soda bottle directly into the carburetor.

He quickly jumped into the driver's seat, turned the key on, and pushed it over to the start position.

The motor growled lowly, hesitated, seemed to almost stop, and then fired with an explosion, shooting a spurt of flame out the top of the carburetor that lit up the whole interior of the garage and made Terry jump four inches out of the seat.