"HER BODY'S in good shape," my father said, "no rot." His feet crunched on the gravel as he knelt down, running his fingers along the bubbled paint like he was reading Braille.
"'68?" I asked.
"'67." He slid underneath the chassis, muttering, his voice echoing up through the rotted floor. "Shit."
I poked my head through the broken passenger-side window and saw his finger wagging through one of the rust holes in the floor. "Swiss fucking cheese." He slid out from under the Mustang and pulled a Winston from his pack, his teeth clenched. "A rotted floor is the worst. You'd have to do a ground-up restoration, which we ain't gonna do." Lighter sparked into flame. "Even then you'd probably end up like Fred Flintstone, most likely in a rain storm." Sharp inhale and long exhale, smoke pouring from his nose. I was reflected twice in his black sunglasses, two miniature versions of myself, like in cartoons when, after a small puff of smoke, a tiny, angelic version of the character appears on one shoulder, a devilish one on the other. In cartoons, the angel and devil spoke and moved independently. In my father's shades, they moved together.
"Daylight's burning," he said. I followed him down the long row of rusted cars.
I knew we'd see Billy standing next to his '72 Olds, wolfing down his second sausage sandwich, telling Greg about "what a nice fucking day" it turned out to be. Greg had a red '66 GTO convertible, smoked little black cigars, and wore a heavy set of keys that protruded from his hip like a spiny chrome tumor. Not too far off was Reggie, The Automotologist, setting up his sign in front of his gold Lamborghini. It was a huge white sign with a glossy finish, displaying the specs and history of the car. A lot of guys made signs, but not like Reggie's. What made Reggie's special was he had a picture of himself on there—a scrawny black man in a tan suede coat and sunglasses—and in tight, flashy script it read: The Automotologist. No one ever asked for an explanation. Nobody gave a shit about foreign cars anyway.
"I wonder if that peckerhead with the blue 'Vette will be there?" my father said as he bit down on his Winston and turned the wheel. I could picture Eric in his monogrammed satin jacket cleaning the rear window of his Corvette.
As we drove to the show, my father and I rattled off names of whackos we knew we'd see there. Even though we pretty much kept to ourselves, we knew a lot of names. It was either on their license plates (JOE'S 55, MIKE'S 68) or they trapped us in torturous conversation. Mark wandered over and tried to sell us a rusted center hub off a '69 Vega. Fat Ricky's shirt inched up on his white belly as he sloshed across the field to mumble about his '56 Merc. Or else it was Billy with the '72 Olds, come to breathe his sausage breath all over us. These guys were at every show. But then, so were we.
A long line of gleaming cars and trucks growled at the entrance to the fairgrounds. My father pulled in behind a black '70 El Camino. Not even two cars passed through registration before five more rumbled in behind us.
My father glanced at the side view. "Good turnout."
The thick pine trees bordering the fairgrounds and the blue cloudless sky were more than just reflected in the red and black hoods, the chrome bumpers and rims. They were absorbed into the paint, swallowed by the chrome—each car a moving landscape. The peaceful union of nature and machine tarnished only by block letter bumper stickers stating "Big Tits Save Lives" and decals of skeletons 69ing. My father had a set of flashing, magnetic boobs stuck to the dash.
We pulled into the fairgrounds and, sure enough, Billy was waiting for a sausage sandwich, Greg's keys were sparkling, and The Automotologist was setting up. My father grinned like he'd bet on a rigged game.
"I told ya, boy. I told ya and I told ya."
After we set up—popped the hood, unfolded the lawn chairs, took out the cooler—we walked over to the swap meet. Initially intended to be an outdoor market for used car parts, the swap meet had mutated into a god-awful yard sale. Guys dumped rusty bicycles, broken lampshades, and dusty Nintendo games onto blue tarps next to milk crates full of cracked distributor caps and grease-caked carburetors. Some didn't even sell any car parts. One guy parked his truck up against the fence so he had a spot to hang his wife's old nightgowns.
My father shook his head. "Same shit, different show."
We found the guy who sold Matchbox cars and my father stopped.
"Any '67 Chevy pickups?"
The guy thumbed through a wad of cash.
"Doubt it. Don't think they made 'em."
Guys who owned Novas or Corvettes had no trouble finding original owner manuals, tin signs, posters, calendars, hats, t-shirts, pins, buttons, stickers, or Matchbox cars. My father had to settle for generic versions: ambiguous miniature red pickups or hats that just said "Chevrolet." For all anyone knew, my father was the proud owner of a '96 Lumina.
We grabbed a couple of sausage sandwiches on our way back to the truck. By then, dozens and dozens of cars and trucks had entered the show. Parked in long rows, they stretched across three acres of patchy grass and dirt. A lot of guys would talk about the way a car "sits." They'd see a Camaro SS or a Roadrunner with over-sized rear tires and a set of air shocks lifting the tail and they'd say, "Man, that just sits nice." I stared at the cars from the edge of the swap meet. Each one of them sat nice, as if they were here first, and the world had grown around them.
The judges ticketed each car with a yellow evaluation sheet and wrote the class number on each windshield with a white marker. I didn't understand that. Here were a bunch of tough dudes, many of whom had been brown-bagging beers or something harder since breakfast, each one watching their cars and each other so closely—and then this little judge came over and scribbled on the windshield. Some guys actually winced.
My father cracked open a ginger ale. He leaned back, pushed his hat up, and tilted his head to the sun. He groaned a little as he kicked his feet up on the cooler.
"How's ol' Mama Mia doin'?"
I laughed. "She's good. She wants to hang out all the time, though."
"They all like that, boy." He sipped his ginger ale.
We watched a '67 El Camino roll through the gates, followed closely by a '56 Bel Air.
"Hey, boy, check that out." My father stood up and pointed to the Bel Air. "Mom had the same one. I mean, exact same one. Color and everything."
I tried to imagine my mother peering out through the wide windshield, but all I could see was the fat man in denim behind the wheel. A small woman sat in the passenger seat. Now and then, a few more cool cars rolled in. One of us pointed, the other said, "Yeah." Soon, "yeahs" became nods, and then silence. My father dozed off.
Sometimes I wandered the swap meet while my father was asleep. One guy set up dozens of shallow glass cases full of patches and stickers. I liked looking at them; they reminded me of the baseball cards I used to collect, and the trips my friends and I took to the store, buying pack after pack as the owner rested his belly on the glass counter. The owner would point out valuable cards and give us little plastic sheaths to protect them.
There were Camaro stickers and Nova stickers and Corvette stickers. Super Sport patches, STP patches, Valvoline patches. There was a progression to the merchandise that I was aware of but didn't understand. Like a gradient scale, the colors of the stickers and patches began to darken, until they were just white letters on a black background. THESE COLORS DON'T RUN. A silhouette of a man beneath the arcing letters POW/MIA. One patch read: SPEAK ENGLISH OR GO HOME! A man in a sleeveless denim jacket with a Rebel flag patch on his chest leaned over the case. He knocked his greasy knuckles on the glass, and the man behind the counter nodded and gave him a sticker that read: I'D RATHER BE RIDING YOUR WIFE. I watched the man walk away, dragging two young boys behind him.
I understood the stereotypical masculinity in restoring a muscle car: using your hands to rebuild a machine, the sweat, the oil, sliding underneath a chassis while "Whole Lotta Love" blasts from the garage. This seemed safe. What I didn't understand was the seamless progression from automobiles to patriotism to xenophobia to screwing someone else's wife. It wasn't clear to me what came first. What was prerequisite? What was learned on the job?
1966 Dodge Coronet 500,
360, little rust, solid floors and trunk, great interior. $2,700.
"I can't picture it exactly, but. . ." My father circled the ad in the paper, then dialed the phone. He made all the calls. He called about the black '69 Nova, the blue '67 Camaro, the orange '70 GTO, and the pea-green '76 Mustang: all of which were too expensive or too fast, the latter more my father's concern than mine. That black Nova was a beast, though. Barebones, practically stripped to the frame except for the 454 sleeping under the hood. Straight out of Mad Max, that car could crush the Volkswagens and BMWs that filled the high school parking lot. But my father didn't go for it.
I sat next to him at the kitchen table, listening to him talk to the guy with the Dodge. Coronet didn't sound too cool. It was too feminine, like the name of a perfume or a piece of lingerie. I looked it up in the dictionary and found a picture of a woman wearing a small crown.
I wanted a car that everyone would recognize, a car that was classically cool, like the ones caressed by models in the old car commercials. A car whose slogan made you feel unpatriotic not to drive one. Chevrolet: The Heartbeat of America.
"All right, so Thursday. Sounds good. Thanks, buddy."
My father scribbled something on the newspaper.
"Nice guy. I'll take half a day tomorrow and we'll check it out when you get home from school."
I agreed. I was skeptical, but curious. I was also getting impatient.
"I think it's similar to a Comet, or a Satellite," he said on his way upstairs to take a shower.
I heard the water beat down into the tub. I stared at the circled ad. While he was on the phone, my father had traced the circle so many times that it bled through the pages of the newspaper. I flipped ahead four pages and could still see the faint ring of ink.
Ron's screen door squeaked, then slammed behind him. He waved to us from the brick stoop and made his way across the lawn. He was always chomping on a piece of food you don't normally see people eating outdoors, like a handful of popcorn or a pork chop. Last week, when we first came to look at the Dodge, he introduced himself in between bites of corn bread.
"Back again, fellas?" He picked at a hunk of meatloaf wrapped in tin foil.
"Yeah, I think this is the last time, though," my father said.
I stood behind him, holding a large manila envelope containing every cent of my junior savings account.
Ron walked over to the car, popped the hood, the trunk, and opened the doors. The Dodge was a faded and bubbled cranberry color, but the original black interior gleamed like volcanic glass. Strips of chrome lined the dash. Chrome radio knobs, chrome gear shifter, chrome door handles and seat backs and ashtrays: all mirrors reflecting exactly who I wanted to be. The black leather creaked and pulled at my father's tank top as he adjusted himself in the driver's seat. He looked up. Ron poked his head in and pointed to the ceiling.
"Like I said, most headliners sag like an old broad. Not this one."
My father nodded. We got out and stood next to the car. My father and Ron talked for a little while about the car, then veered off into a conversation about upcoming shows, and soon they were talking about their first cars and spending all day and night in the garage and how sometimes they didn't know what they were doing—they just slid underneath with a wrench and poked around. My father lit a cigar and told Ron about the time he nearly burned Haggemeyer's eyebrows off.
"He looked into that carburetor like fuckin' Elmer Fudd. Backfired right in his face. Oh man, we were howling!"
I stood behind my father with the envelope. I had bent the metal clasp so many times that it had fallen off. When their laughter died down, I handed the envelope to my father.
"We'll take her."
My father passed the envelope to Ron. Ron folded it in half, and tucked it into his back pocket.
"Take care of her, son." He gave me the keys.
"I will."
My father grinned, and walked back to his Chevy parked in the street. Ron went back in the house and closed the door. The two gold keys dangling from the ring felt foreign in my hands. Our clunky silver house key was the only key I knew. The Dodge keys were sharp, like two little swords.
The kick of the ignition—an eruption—cued the engine's beautiful rumble. Great gray puffs of smoke rose above the trunk. I checked my mirrors. Adjusted my seat. Buckled my belt. This was not Mom's Taurus. No air bags here, no padded steering wheel. No cruise control. No shoulder straps. No power brakes. I backed the Dodge into the street and followed my father to the Expressway.
At some point on the drive home, I passed him. I looked over and nodded at him sternly, as if I were a big-rig truck driver. He grinned, chewing a little piece of gum slowly. The rumble of the engine eased into a steady vibration. The wheel seemed to turn on its own, anticipating the curves in the road. I watched the slide show of sky and pine trees on the hood. The road signs I knew so well, the town names and exit numbers I'd watched from the backseat for years were different now, smaller, as if the windshield were a backward telescope. I saw my father in the rearview, his bald head above the wheel of his Chevy. I kept looking at him, glad he was there but at the same time wishing I was alone, completely alone on the highway, driving in total silence in the car I bought with my own money, more money than I'd ever held, let alone spent. A wave of adrenaline surged through me. The asphalt world stretched out before me, and as I accelerated, the dotted lines blurred into a single white strip.
And then I broke down.
The throttle linkage had busted loose in the middle of the highway. I was giving it gas and going nowhere. I pulled over and my father quickly repaired it with some wire he had in his glove box. When we got home, he tinkered with it for the rest of the afternoon.
"No big deal," he said. "Easy fix."
We began the year-long restoration process. My father continued to shave a few hundred bucks off his paycheck. We didn't tell my mother. I started painting houses for my cousin to pay for the Dodge. I liked being outside, doing manual labor, working with tools. I liked the routine of coffee and bagels in the morning, big deli sandwiches for lunch, blasting music all day. This felt right. This was what I expected work to be: rise early, work hard, sleep well.
My father showed me how to use Bondo to fill in the rust holes. Scoop out the red goop with a putty knife and spread it evenly over the chewed metal. Sand it smooth with a piece of sandpaper wrapped around a wooden block to avoid leaving fingerprints. He repeated several tips almost every time we were in the driveway: Always check your fluids. Keep at least a quarter tank of gas. Pump your brakes.
When the car was finally ready for paint, we took off the emblems, the mirrors, the bumpers, the grille and put them on the lawn. I stopped for a second. The Dodge looked like an old man getting ready for bed, his dentures beside him on the nightstand.
"Man, wait'll she comes back," my father said. "You won't even recognize her. Remember when the Chevy was painted?"
I remembered. My father took a picture of me sitting on the step-side of the Chevy, my knees almost to my chest, the fresh red paint blazing around me like fire. My father hung the picture in the garage next to the picture of me sitting on the stepside of the truck when it was gray, my feet dangling above the driveway. Beside an old shot of my father's Triumph motorcycle—Grim Reaper airbrushed on the gas tank—there were two dim photographs of my brother's cars, the Volare and the Buick. There were no pictures of the restoration process, no images of the Volare or the Buick patched with Bondo. No shots of my father bending beside the fender, Don leaning over his shoulder, listening to my father's instructions on how to repair rusted metal. No pictures of my father and Don holding golden trophies beside their gleaming cars, validating their work. These pictures did not exist. There were only the two dim shots of Don's cars, later used to prove their original conditions to the insurance company.
"Yeah, boy," my father said in the driveway. "When she's done, she's gonna look mint."
I couldn't wait to see Billy with the '72 Olds look up from his sausage sandwich and see me rolling in behind my father. Greg with the '66 GTO would be right behind him, standing up on his toes to get a look at the Dodge. I'd tell The Automotologist he'd better print a sign up for me. It felt a little weird not driving to the show with my father. I saw him in the rearview, chewing gum, his wrist resting on top of the wheel. Sometimes it felt like he was close enough to see my eyes move and that he knew when I was looking back. Other times he seemed too far away.
We registered and rolled through the rows of cars and trucks. I saw Billy with the '72 Olds and a few other guys check us out. My father and I parked next to each other in the shade.
"I thought Billy was gonna shit when he saw you roll in."
The Dodge did look good. We picked an aggressive red, somewhere between fire and blood. It complemented the black interior, made the new bumpers and mirrors pop. I borrowed some of my father's spray-on wax to clean the dirt and pollen off the hood. He did the same, then took out the chairs. I unloaded the cooler from my trunk.
"Let's do it," I said. We headed over to the swap meet.
Around four, they started announcing the winners. Even though my father took first once, he'd be the first to tell you it was only because the competition was light that day. The guys who took first were rich and retired. Their cars were full restorations, right down to the last washer. We did what we could.
My father took second. He stood with his arms crossed, waiting for the judge to announce my class. The judge called out a two-way tie for third—a ratty orange El Camino and an ugly silver Mustang. I knew I had them beat. My father looked over and nodded.
"Okay. In second place," he shuffled through some papers; the microphone squealed, "we got Anthony's '66 Do-"
"Yeah, boy!" My father yelled out and squeezed my neck. I started laughing, and walked up to get my trophy. When I turned around, my father was waiting for me, halfway between the crowd and the trophy table. Billy's Olds took first. My father and I heard them announce it as we compared trophies at the back of the crowd.
We hung around for a while, listening to the engines start up and then fade away. The sausage guy climbed down from his truck and dumped out a stainless steel bin full of grease. He got back in and drove out through the front gates.
My father had been talking about taking pictures of my car and his truck, parked next to each other, on the opposite side of the fairgrounds. The grass was fuller on that side, and the pine trees formed a natural wall, blocking out the highway. We hopped in and drove over.
My father made a wide turn, pulling in at an angle. I did the same on the opposite side, angling the front end of the Dodge toward the truck. We got out and my father snapped a few pictures.
"That looks good, right?" He snapped a few more.
"Yeah, it looks awesome."
We wanted to take one with both of us standing in front, but everyone else had already left. We'd stayed so long we'd lost track of time.
On the way home, thick clouds of steam billowed from the front of the Dodge. It smelled horrible, like there was a bonfire of plastic trapped under the hood. My face flushed. I lifted my foot off the gas but didn't brake. I just coasted, letting the road pull a little, slowing me down. My father blew the Chevy's air horn, and I saw him stabbing his finger toward the shoulder. I pulled over.
"You fuck. You motherfucker." My father stuck a rag in the radiator to stop the antifreeze from gushing out.
"What happened?" I stood behind him, rubbing my palm with my thumb.
"The fuckin' radiator cap blew."
The inside of the hood was dripping with antifreeze. It left ugly green streaks on the valve covers and boiled in little puddles on each manifold bolt. The distributor cap was pock marked, the battery cables soaked.
"Get another rag, huh?"
I ran to the trunk and grabbed all the rags.
He wiped down all the cables and bolts. He let some rags sit and soak up the puddles.
I stood next to him for a while, watching him clean off the engine and then I walked back to his Chevy and climbed in. When the tow truck came, my father flicked his Winston and lit another. He watched the driver place the long steel supports behind the tires. When the driver was ready to go, my father slowly walked back to the truck. It took about a half hour to get home and we spent it in silence, the Dodge dragging in front of us.
After my father paid the tow truck driver, he pulled the Dodge into the driveway. He got out and popped the hood. With his white handkerchief, he polished the valve covers, the carburetor, each manifold bolt. I stood behind him, watching him work. When he was finished, he closed the hood and went inside. I stood in the driveway and stared at the Dodge. The exhaust pipes ticked, a faint puff of steam seeping out from beneath the hood like breath.
I barely drove the Dodge in the winter. My father said the snow and salt would ruin the paint. It sat in the driveway, underneath a dark blue cover, and the snow piled up in three thick squares—one on the hood, one on the roof, and one on the trunk. After a storm, I'd go out and clean off the snow.
On bright, dry winter days, I drove the Dodge and listened to the engine. When I accelerated, I heard a noise like a bomb ticking. Once, I tried to yield to a tractor-trailer on the Expressway and the brake pedal dropped to the floor. I swerved onto the shoulder, coasting over the rumble strip, until the dirt and gravel slowed me down enough to shift into park with a loud bang. I popped the hood. The brake lines were bone dry.
I didn't tell my father. I kept the Dodge's flaws to myself, unless they were impossible to hide. If I could top off the fluids or fix a flat without him knowing, I would. I wanted all the internal parts to seem as perfect as the external—the bright chrome, the blood-red paint as bold and powerful as each piston pumping inside the engine. To take the whole car apart, to bring each piece into daylight, would be like staring at the anti-smoking poster hanging in health class, the one where a woman's face is covered in black, sticky tar. The caption asked us if we'd still smoke if what happened on the inside, happened on the outside. Full car restoration starts inside and moves outward, but my father and I didn't have the money. Instead, we patched the body and gave the surface a glossy coat.