At the station the next morning, Kirk arrived early. I could see him through the window as we drove up. After my mother handed me my lunch bag, I lingered briefly in the truck.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
As I walked in, Kirk said, “Sutton, I saw something crazy last night.”
Bud, in his usual stance—elbows on the glass counter, gumming Planter’s peanuts—glanced at Kirk, then stared off toward the intersection again.
“Oh yeah?” I said as I stashed my lunch bag in its usual spot.
“Yeah. Real strange,” Kirk said.
I found a clean grease rag, secured my tire gauge in my left breast pocket. “What would that be?” I asked.
“It would be you, Sutton. You and your old man towing that hippie van.”
Bud turned to look at me. I fastened my till key on its little chain that ran from my belt to my pocket, did all my usual routines.
“That wasn’t really you, Sutton,” Kirk said. “Tell me I was dreaming.”
“It was me.” I stared at him briefly, then found a broom and began to tidy up the front office.
“Why would you be towing the hippie van?” Kirk said.
I swept up two cigarette butts and a scattering of Spanish peanut husks. Then I stopped and looked up. “Because you screwed him over.”
Kirk stared at me. He grinned—and a moment later had me face against the wall locked in a hard half nelson. I didn’t know anyone could move that fast: in an instant my free arm was yanked high behind my back, my forehead mashed into the fan belts on the wall. “You went and told your old man, right?”
I grunted. He was breaking my arm.
“And then you Good Samaritans went to help out the hippies, yes?”
I grunted in pain. “Yes …”
Bud coughed lightly. Politely.
“Well, this is the kind of help those creeps need, Sutton,” he said, ratcheting my arm an inch higher, “help out of town—not back in.”
Bud coughed louder.
Kirk loosened his grip. I flexed my arm and stumbled back. I still had my broom, and I brandished it at him. “Go to hell!” I blurted.
“Well, well, Sutton,” Kirk said, laughing at the broom. “I thought your kind were supposed to turn the other cheek. And now you’ve started swearing, too.” He squared his body to me, lowered his center of gravity as if coiling to strike.
“Morning, gentlemen!” Mr. Davies’ voice called as he came through the back-room door.
“Morning, boss,” we all said in unison. I managed to be sweeping the floor as he arrived.
Bud said later, “Your arm all right?” He touched my shoulder briefly.
“Yeah. Thanks,” I said, though it ached badly. I felt worse about raising the broom in anger. What had I expected to do with it?
Later in the morning, on an auto-parts run, I checked with Dick to see if the Volkswagen piston rings had arrived.
“No,” Dick said with mild surprise. “The order’s written up and ready to go”—he paged briefly through a folder, put his rubber-tipped finger on it—“but it’s cash up front so I haven’t sent it in yet.”
I paused. “What’s the total?”
Dick ran his finger to the bottom of the page. “I’d need $219.78.”
“Ouch is right,” I murmured.
One of the hangers-on looked up. “Volkswagen? You’re not talking about that hippie van?”
I was silent; Dick refiled the order.
“That weirdo with the hair?”
“Thank you, Paul,” Dick said as I signed for the other auto parts and headed for the door.
“I heard they’re camped out now at some farmer’s place,” one of the cap boys said.
“Hell, you’d have to watch ’m day and night,” another said. “They’d steal you blind.”
“Me, I’d be more worried about my heifers with that weirdo around.”
Behind me they all laughed.
Except Dick Andrews. “Who’s next?”
At about ten a.m., with a couple of cars lined up for servicing and Kirk gone on a service call, the long black Cadillac of Harry Blomenfeld flowed up to the pumps.
“Criminy—it’s Kid Can!” Bud said. He hustled into the men’s room and clicked the lock.
I swallowed and headed out to the pumps.
The driver, wearing sunglasses and a faded blue short-billed hat, sat staring straight ahead. His jaw was set. Harry Blomenfeld, from the rider’s seat, gestured at him with both hands.
“So put a slug in my brainpan,” the driver said. “Let’s just get it over with.”
“Well, can you crawl under the car anymore? Yes or no? Answer me, Angelo!”
The driver set his jaw harder.
“No,” Harry Blomenfeld said. “You told me so yourself.”
“So give me the cement boots and drop me in the damn lake. Let the fish eat out my eyeballs.”
“This don’t have nothing to do with your eyeballs or any other kind of balls. It’s your legs that aren’t worth a damn anymore,” Harry Blomenfeld said.
I felt like I was at home and had happened into the kitchen when my parents were arguing. Without the swearing, that is. I cleared my throat.
The driver turned his sunglasses my way. “What’s your problem?”
I got ready to dive for cover.
“It’s all right, son,” Mr. Blomenfeld said, leaning over, speaking close across his driver’s mug. “We were just wondering if you might have time to change the oil today.”
“Change the oil? Yes, sir.”
“When would be a good time?”
“Ah … any time. Right now, sir.”
“You see?” Harry said to Angelo.
“I don’t want some damn kid working on my car.”
“He’s a good kid. And anyway, you can stand there and watch him.”
“You’re damn right I will.”
I felt my Adam’s apple moving like a yo-yo. “Where to, son?” Harry Blomenfeld said cheerfully.
In the front office I leaned up against the men’s room door. “Mr. Blomenfeld wants an oil change,” I whispered to Bud.
“Criminy!” Bud murmured through the closed door. “Why us?”
“What do I do?”
“Change his damn oil!” Bud said.
“I’ll need some help on the drive,” I said, meaning the gas pumps.
“To heck with the drive,” Bud said.
In the back room I removed the blocks from Mr. Heltjen’s Pontiac and backed it outside. Then I prayed briefly that I would not be murdered in the flower of my youth, after which I opened the door and waved Angelo forward.
The Cadillac eased softly onto the blocks. Angelo killed the engine. Outside the car he was a pasty-faced, squashed, dumpy man, thick-chested and short-legged. He moved as stiffly as if his feet were bound or frozen. I realized that Angelo was at least seventy; also that his black hair was dyed, like Mr. Kendrigan the clothier’s.
“I got my own oil,” Angelo said, opening the trunk. “My own filter. Everything.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All you got to do is service the car. You don’t touch anything else, right?”
“Right, sir.”
Mr. Blomenfeld sat inside the car, reading a newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. My hands shook as I placed the hoist arms under the frame. I went twice to all four corners of the car, making sure that nothing would scrape or bend. Then I was ready to raise the hoist. Mr. Blomenfeld remained inside the car, puffing on a cigar now, rustling his newspaper.
“Well, what’s the matter?” Angelo said.
“I … I’m wondering if Mr. Blomenfeld will be getting out?”
“Why would he have to get out?”
I swallowed. Inside my baggy pants my knees knocked like castanets. “Well, sir, station rules—insurance rules, actually—say that we can’t raise the hoist with anyone inside a car. In case there’s an accident.”
“Accident? You mean like the car falling off the hoist?!” Angelo said, putting his flat face directly under mine.
I swallowed.
“Sorry, no problem,” Mr. Blomenfeld said, opening his door. Fresh cigar smoke wafted forward. “I’ll go up front and read the paper.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“Don’t mind Angelo. He’s a little particular about his car.”
“Yes, sir. It’s a fine car,” I said.
“You’re damn right it is, kid,” Angelo said.
“And, son,” Harry Blomenfeld said, “the men’s room is up front, right?”
I worked underneath the Cadillac as carefully as a scientist. My trouble light illuminated the underbelly—muffler, drive shaft, transmission, brake lines—all of which looked shiny and new.
“I don’t drive this car in the winter,” Angelo said, “not with the damn salt they put on the highways around here.”
“No rust at all, sir.”
“They ought to shoot the guys that spread all that salt.”
“Yes, sir.” I carefully rolled the oil sump beneath the Cadillac.
“Salt is hell on cars, and it’s tough on roads and the winter birds, too. Did you know that birds eat the salt along the roads?”
“I hadn’t thought of that, sir.”
“Nobody thinks about the winter birds,” Angelo said. “The chickadees. The nuthatches. The English sparrows. The grosbeaks.”
I wiped clean the oil drain plug.
“Seven-eighths-inch socket,” Angelo said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Counterclockwise,” Angelo said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Otherwise you strip the threads on the pan.”
I nodded.
“Stripping the threads on the oil pan would not make me happy.”
“I’ll be careful, sir.” Slowly I eased back on the handle of my ratchet wrench until the plug loosened and began to drip. I set aside the wrench and used my fingers. Warm cashew-brown oil (not Brazil-nut black like the Mercedes’ oil) began to plop over my hand. I snatched free the oil plug just ahead of the shiny cascade.
Angelo nodded. “Nice work.”
“The oil doesn’t look dirty at all, sir,” I said, holding up the shining plug.
Angelo took my wrist, held it closer to the hot light-bulb as he inspected the plug for grit or metal shavings.
“That’s because I change it every fifteen hundred miles,” Angelo said. “Have since we bought the car new.”
“That’s pretty impressive,” I said.
“New-car manuals say change the oil every three to five thousand miles. That’s a crime,” he said, finally letting loose my wrist.
“You could be right.”
“Ought to shoot the engineers who wrote that.”
I brought around the grease gun and followed Angelo’s stubby, crooked forefinger to each grease fitting. As I worked, cigar smoke was suddenly stronger. “Son, is there somebody in the can?” Harry Blomenfeld said. “Or is it locked?”
“Just knock loudly on the door, sir. If nobody comes out, I’ll be there in a jiffy.”
“You want me to?” Angelo began.
“I can handle it.” Mr. Blomenfeld sighed.
As the oil drained, I heard heavy thudding on the door up front.
There was silence except for the drip-drip of the oil.
The pounding came again, louder this time. As I winced, I must have looked like I was grinning.
“What’s so funny, kid?” Angelo said.
“Nothing, sir.”
“A man’s gotta go, a man’s gotta go!”
“Yes, sir. I’d better see what the trouble is.”
“You do that,” Angelo said.
Up front Harry Blomenfeld stood glaring at the men’s room door.
I tapped lightly on the door. “Bud? You in there?”
“What?” Bud whispered.
“Oh, that’s right—are you finished cleaning the john, Bud?”
There was silence.
“Mr. Blomenfeld needs to use it.”
There was a brief flurry of whisking and scrubbing sounds, then the noise of a toilet flushing—after which Bud, white-faced and trembling, opened the door and rushed past us.
“About time,” Harry Blomenfeld said sternly, and closed the door behind him.
Bud, seeking escape through the back room, hurried squarely into the barrel chest of Angelo. Bud bounced backward and froze; Angelo’s hand went to his coat. The two men stared at each other. Bud’s wide eyes flickered from Angelo’s driver’s cap down to his Italian shoes and back up; Angelo’s squinty eyes took in Bud’s tidy Shell uniform, his jaunty cap. His hand relaxed; he smiled at Bud. “Hi there,” he said.
Bud blushed crimson.
Later, as I finished the Blomenfeld Cadillac, Bud worked the drive, pumping gas, washing windows, moving with an odd lightness to his step. It was the first time I’d ever seen him wash windshields. Angelo lingered in the doorway, his back to me, where he could see the pumps. Once I dropped a wrench and he whirled around at the clattering sound. “Geez, kid, don’t scare me like that!”
“Sorry, sir.”
He nodded and turned back to the driveway.
“All clear!” I said. The hoist sighed a long exhalation and slowly let down the Cadillac, its great tires touching concrete, swelling as they took on weight. The metal arms clanked weakly against the floor and were still. I let out a breath of my own, then wheeled around the vacuum. “Hey—where do you think you’re going, kid?”
“I usually vacuum and do windows inside and out, sir. Our motto is ‘extra service.’”
Mr. Blomenfeld leaned in the doorway, still scanning his paper. “Angelo can do that at home,” he said.
Angelo tipped back his cap and shrugged. “I could,” he said. “But what the hell’s the hurry? Let the kid do it if he wants. He’s a good kid. I like him.”
Harry Blomenfeld lowered his paper and laughed; the bouquet of his cigar smoke filled the back room.
At that moment, Kirk, who had returned from his service call, walked into the station. He froze at the sight of the big Cadillac in the back room—and at Harry Blomenfeld and Angelo.
“This is a good kid you’ve got here,” Angelo said, jerking his head at me. “Maybe the best one you’ve ever had—and you’ve had some real losers.”
“Thanks,” Kirk said. “Paul’s new but we like him, too.”
“I like him so much he’s gonna be changing my oil from now on,” Angelo said. “But only him.”
“Sure, you bet,” Kirk said.
“Good—then that’s all set,” said Angelo, clapping Kirk hard on the shoulder.
After work that day, my mother asked me about Kirk; if there was any trouble.
“Some,” I said. My shoulder still ached.
“Anything we can help you with?”
“No, thanks,” I said cheerfully. “Got it covered.”