It took George the better part of an hour to change and fix the flat and get the old coupe running. But it wasn’t running well. It limped along at twenty miles an hour the whole trip, the car wheezing like a ninety-year-old chain-smoker suffering from emphysema. It was just past eleven when the mechanical crate jerked into his drive and, with a final sputtering cough, died. As he stepped out, the back passenger-side tire, which had been fine, blew out with a bang loud enough to wake anyone within five blocks.
“Great,” he sighed. “This is just what I need. Of all days for you to let me down.”
Still consumed by automobile misery, he did note some good news. The rain—that had been falling in buckets ever since he left the hospital—quit. By the time he walked through the entry to the house, the sun pushed through the clouds and brought a bit of light and hope into his world. He quickly made a ham sandwich, chased it with a six-ounce bottle of 7Up, and headed to the bathroom. After drying off and changing his clothes, an exhausted George collapsed in a heap on the green divan. Though he was so tired his bones ached, he only tossed and turned for fifteen minutes without nodding off even once. Maybe it was because of the excitement of being a new father or the frustration of having a bum car, but for whatever reason, sleep evaded him. It was thirty minutes after the hour when he got up and walked back out into the front yard to take another look at the tired old Chevy.
“Hey, George,” Glen Adams called out from across the street. “Heard you have a brand-new daughter. You must be one happy feller this morning!”
Glen was a good man and a great neighbor. Outgoing and warm, he was the prototype for the person whose chief worry was not about the size of his paycheck but rather which lure to use when fishing the Middle Fork River. In his fifties, the stocky bricklayer and has wife had moved past the parenting stage and into the spoiling grandkids phase. From what he’d told George, it was the best time of his life.
Waving, the new father nodded and laughed. “She’s the prettiest thing in the whole world.”
“That can’t be,” Glen said as he crossed the street.
“What?” George said, surprised by the man’s retort.
“No,” the neighbor announced, “my new granddaughter already has that title. I’m guessing Rose will just have to settle for second place.”
George shrugged. “Maybe we can call it a tie. What are you up to today, Glen? Now that it’s clearing up, I’m guessing you’ll be going fishing?”
“Be a good day for it. Rob Martin caught a six-pound catfish down by the highway bridge yesterday. But I’ve got other things on my mind today. In fact I’m just about to drive over to the Watling sale and auction. Old Abbi had a bedroom suite my wife has been yearning to claim for at least a decade. I don’t care what it costs; I’m going to get it for her. When I do that I can finally tell her about that flat-bottom boat I bought and have hidden in the shed. She never goes in there. Once she has the four-poster bed she won’t care much that I bought the boat.”
George laughed. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Of course not,” Glen quickly replied. “She thinks the fact I already have two other boats would have made this one unnecessary. She just doesn’t understand fishing. But I understand her temper and what soothes it, so I have to get the bedroom suite. If I don’t, that boat is not going to do me any good at all.”
“I’m thinking about going, too,” George chimed in, “nothing I probably need, but I would like to see what her car goes for.”
“The Packard?”
“Yeah. Be nice to have a car that runs like a watch rather than one that performs like a three-legged mule.”
Glen rubbed his chin and glanced over to the well-worn Chevy. He grimly studied the beat-up car for a few seconds. “It has seen much better days.” He continued to take stock of the coupe before adding, “I don’t know how much ready cash you’ve got, but I’m thinking that Packard won’t go for as much as you might expect.”
“It’s practically new,” the younger man shot back. “A car like that will likely go for more than nine hundred.”
“A car like that would,” Glen agreed, “but that car has a strange legacy. Most of those here in Oakwood whisper when they speak of it. They think it’s cursed or haunted or something. At the very least it is the bearer of bad luck. Millie told me that if I came near it she would divorce me.”
“What?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but counting Abigale, three different people who have touched that yellow beast have died. I heard a joke yesterday that the car had seen more dead folks than Floyd Bacon’s hearse.”
“That’s ridiculous,” George shot back, “cars don’t have souls. They don’t commit premeditated murder. They’re just pieces of engineering that get you from point A to point B. Now some, like that Packard, do it with a lot more style, but their function is the same. My car has gotten to the point where it only stays at point A. So I’ve got to do something.” He leaned closer and whispered, almost as if he was scared someone might overhear his question, “So you think it might go cheap?”
“I think so!” Glen assured. He paused, took another look at George’s coupe, and added, “There’s more spit and bailing wire in your old heap than there is gas. I’ll admit you’ve got to get something, but that Packard’s not for a married man with a new kid.”
“Are you kidding? That car has all the room a family would need. And it is barely broken in. It would last us until Rose went to first grade without missing a beat.”
“Maybe that’d be true,” came the reply, “and if you were single I’d say go for it. But you have responsibilities now. You owe it to Carole and that baby to make a wise decision. And though I don’t buy into ghost stories, I’m still thinking that if I were in your shoes, I’d look at something other than that car. You know folks could be right; it might be cursed somehow.”
George swallowed hard to keep from laughing. Trying to keep a straight face he noted, “You’ve never hit me as the superstitious type. I’ve watched you lay bricks six stories up on a windy day. Didn’t think anything scared you.”
The middle-age man blushed, turning his pale green eyes to the street and pushing his hands deep into his brown pants pockets. He didn’t reply either, probably because he couldn’t come up with the words to justify his worries. Instead he started humming “When the Blue of the Night.”
“Tell me this, Glen,” George asked, ignoring his neighbor’s feeble attempts at crooning, “would you buy a car that had been owned and driven by, say, John Dillinger?”
Turning to meet George’s eyes, Adams answered, “If it hadn’t been shot up, and it ran well, sure, why not?”
“Well that car would have probably seen a few deaths in its time as well.”
The older man shook his head. “You’re not getting me to fall into that trap. That imaginary Dillinger car you just dreamed up didn’t do the killings. He and his gang were the ones murdering people, not the car! This Packard killed two men.” He paused and licked his lips before clarifying his remarks, “Or at least it was the cause of their deaths. Now, I don’t know this for a fact, but I heard someone say yesterday that a man who worked on the assembly line died because of the car, too. I don’t really believe in demonic possession, especially of something mechanical, but in this case I might make an exception.”
George grinned. “Suit yourself, but I’m not buying it. At least I’m not buying your fears. But I might just go over to the sale. If no one else bids on it, I might be buying the Packard. No use turning down a bargain, no matter its history. Besides, I was taught a long time ago at Sunday school that superstitions like that aren’t of God.”
Glen shrugged, his eyes catching the noonday sun, and his furrowed brow displaying genuine concern. “I wouldn’t do it, George. Maybe I’m being silly, maybe the whole town is, but I just get the sense that for all its beauty and power, there’s something evil lurking in that auto. I sure don’t want to see you bring anything into your life that might end up hurting your family.”
The new father smiled. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you at the sale.”
As Glen wandered back across the street, George took another look at his old Chevy. Keeping it was simply out of the question. This pile of junk was so far gone, a farmer wouldn’t even want it to turn into a doodlebug tractor. He had to have something dependable in order to get to work each day as well as take his family to all the places they would need to be going. But what were his options?
Until he visited with Glen, George figured he’d have to haunt the want ads or the used car lots to find something he could buy that would serve the family for at least a couple of years. But now, after hearing the story of the silly curse attached to the Abigale Watling’s Packard, he sensed that the few hundred he had in savings might just buy the ride of his life. At the very least it would be worth going to the auction to find out.