Whoever it was, they were close to me at that point and not doing too good a job hiding their approach.
“Stop giggling. Someone will hear us,” a hushed whisper said.
“I can’t help it. McNally will flip when he sees his car is gone,” another not-so-hushed voice said.
The first voice said, “If he catches us while we’re doing it...”
“I’ll blow your head clean off,” I said with as much menace as I could muster. I cocked the shotgun for effect.
“Jesus Christ! He’s here!”
There was a mad scramble as the three figures tripped over each other trying to get as far away from me as they could. Just my luck, a bunch of the local schoolboys come to mess with goofy old Walter McNally. Was I really that easy a mark? I hoped the shotgun story would make its rounds and enough people would know I meant business when it came to Jimmy’s car. Or anything else on my property for that matter.
I guess it did the trick because the old rust bucket sat there on the edge of my field undisturbed for quite some time. I eventually got up the nerve to walk up to it, to get a real good look at it. It had local plates that were now expired. The inside of the car was all black vinyl. And it was clean. There were no suitcases clogging up the back seat. There was no bloody trail leading to the trunk. There was just dusty old seats. I didn’t try the trunk. I knew that as long as I had the car I could never pry that thing open. Heck, I didn’t even try the doors to see if they were locked or not, to see if there was anything under the seats. I didn’t want to ruin the magic of this car. It had kept my mind whirling for the longest time, trying to come up with every possible solution to how this car got here and why no one had come for it. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. And no matter how many scenarios I came up with, I always came back to Jimmy. They hadn’t found him yet, so it could still be him.
Things were quiet for a long time. Months rolled by as I buried myself in farmwork. It wasn’t hard to do. There’s no such thing as a day off on a farm. When the weather got warm again, I took to sitting out on the porch, sometimes with Larry, more often just by myself. When Harold came up onto the porch, it sent me for a loop, that’s for sure.
“What if there’s money in there?” were the first words out of his mouth. I shook my head. If he’d come back just to get me to go into the car, he might as well have stayed away. And I was ready to tell him that, too.
“Walter, don’t be stupid. You could be a millionaire, and you don’t even know it.”
“People don’t abandon millions of dollars in cars. If they did, they’ll come back for it. Nothing good would come of taking it out.”
“You’re a fool, Walter. I don’t know why I bother.”
I built a small wooden rail alongside it, to trap it into my land. So that everyone would know that it was my car, on my land. And if someone came looking for it, well, I hadn’t moved it an inch from where they had left it. Most of the locals had forgotten about how the car showed up on my lawn. Me and Larry would talk about it from time to time, but that was about it. In this part of the state most of your bigger homes have at least one car somewhere on the property. But me and Larry weren’t the only ones who hadn’t forgotten.
It was a long time later, but when Harold returned, he was still on the same topic. “Says here in this magazine that Hoffa is buried at Giants Stadium.”
“Don’t prove nothing,” I told him.
“But this is from a mobster. He would know.”
“Don’t touch the car, Harold.”
He stormed off again.
When Harold came back, he didn’t come to the porch. I had just gone into the kitchen for another beer during a commercial break when I glanced out the window and saw a flashlight working its way toward Jimmy’s car. I glanced at the clock and thought about the stupid high school boys. It was a school night, but what did that ever matter to delinquents?
I cursed at whatever stupid idiot this was going to turn out to be because I was going to miss the end of my show. This was before everyone had them VCR’s. Not that it would’ve mattered. I never learned how to program the thing. I picked up my shotgun and headed out. The flashlight was not like when them kids went to it. This was a steady beam of light, making its way straight to where the car sat.
I moved as quickly as I could over to where Jimmy’s car was. I could tell that the flashlight would beat me there, and I thought about shouting out to whoever it was, but I wanted to see the face of who was doing this to me. If I yelled, they might run off, and I would always be left wondering just who it was.
As I got closer, I heard the sound of breaking glass. I ran as fast as I could, and when I came up to the car, I saw someone sitting in the front seat on the passenger’s side. It looked like they were going through the glove compartment. I stood a few feet away and aimed the gun at the intruder. “Get out nice and slow.”
The figure turned and smiled at me. It was Harold. “Hey, Walter, I had to find out.”
“You?” I momentarily faltered. My gun started to dip toward the ground. “What are you doing in the car?”
“There could be money in this car. Don’t you understand? We could be rich, beyond our wildest dreams. We could have young girls wanting us. Things that could never happen without money.”
“What do you mean, we? This car is on my property, not yours. Now, get out of the car. I mean it. I don’t care if there’s a billion dollars sitting in there. This car was not to be touched. And I told you that more than once.”
“I opened the glove compartment. I know who the car was registered to.”
“I don’t want to hear it!” I shouted louder than I had intended. Not that it mattered. My closest neighbor was not in shouting distance. “Get out of the car, Harold, before I shoot you where you are.” I raised the gun again. His eyes fixed on the long, dark barrels and nothing else.
“Walter, don’t be stupid.”
“I am really tired of hearing you say that. You were my best friend for years, but you always told me I was stupid. You stopped talking to me, all over this car, and now you have the nerve to say it again. Now, I asked you once already. Get out of Jimmy’s car.”
“This is not Jimmy’s...”
Harold never finished his sentence. Or if he did, I couldn’t hear it over the shotgun blast. I stood there looking at his body strung out over the front seat. The glove compartment was open, and papers were hanging out and some lay under him. Eventually I moved back toward the house, leaving him be. I knew no one would be coming down the road this time of night. I got an old equipment cover from the shed and flung it over the whole scene. It covered everything, even Harold’s legs, now hanging out the passenger door. I didn’t shut the door, I didn’t do nothing. I just left it there until the following night.
No one came by asking about Harold. No one wanted to know if I had seen him. I guess after years of not talking to each other, people no longer thought of us in the same sentence. That night I forsook television and made my way out to Jimmy’s place. I pulled back the cover and looked at what damage had been done the night before. Harold was still dead; his blood had ruined the front seat. The papers from the glove compartment looked ruined as well. I climbed over Harold, not really thinking about what I was doing, until I was in the driver’s seat. I released the emergency brake, then got out and pushed Jimmy’s car a few feet forward. Finally I took shovel to earth and began to dig, in what I knew would be a long night.