LeBay was standing on his balding lawn not far from the place where that big patch of oil had defoliated everything, and he had this great big old man’s snotrag out and his head was down and he was wiping his eyes with it. The tears gleamed greasily on his checks, more like sweat than real tears. His adam’s apple went up and down.
I turned my head so I wouldn’t have to look at him cry and happened to stare straight into his one-car garage. Before, it had seemed really full—the stuff along the walls, of course, but most of all that huge old car with its double headlights and its wraparound windscreen and its acre of hood. Now the stuff along the walls only served to accentuate the garage’s essential emptiness. It gaped like a toothless mouth.
That was almost as bad as LeBay. But when I looked back, the old bastard had gotten himself under control well, mostly. He had stopped leaking at the eyes and he had stuffed the snotrag into the back pocket of his patented old man’s pants. But his face was still bleak. Very bleak.
“Well, that’s that,” he said hoarsely. “I’m shot of her, sonny.”
“MrLeBay,” I said. “I only wish my friend could make the same statement. If you knew the trouble he was in over that rustbucket with his folks—”
“Get out of here,” he said, “You sound like a goddam sheep. Just baa, baa, baa, that’s all I hear comin out’n your hole. I think your friend there knows more than you do. Go and see if he needs a hand.”
I started down the lawn to my car. I didn’t want to hang around LeBay a moment longer.
“Nothin but baa, baa, baa!” he yelled shrewishly after me, making me think of that old song by the Youngbloods—I am a one-note man, I play it all I can “You don’t know half as much as you think you do!”
I got into my car and drove away. I glanced back once as I made the turn onto Martin Street and saw him standing there on his lawn, the sunlight gleaming on his bald head.
As things turned out, he was right.
I didn’t know half as much as I thought I did.
5
HOW WE GOT TO DARNELL’s
I got a ’34 wagon and we call it a woody,
You know she’s not very cherry,
She’s an oldy but a goody…
I drove down Martin to Walnut and turned right, toward Basin Drive. It didn’t take long to catch up with Arnie. He was pulled into the kerb, and Christine’s boot-lid was up. An automobile jack so old that it almost looked as if it might once have been used for changing wheels on Conestoga wagons was leaning against the crooked back bumper. The right rear tyre was flat.
I pulled in behind him and had no more than gotten out when a young woman waddled down towards us from her house, skirting a pretty good collection of plastic-fantastic that was planted on her lawn (two pink flamingos, four or five little stone ducks in a line behind a big stone mother duck, and a really good plastic wishing well with plastic flowers planted in the plastic bucket). She was in dire need of Weight Watchers.
“You can’t leave that junk here,” she said around a mouthful of chewing gum. “You can’t leave that junk parked in front of our house, I just hope you know that.”
“Ma’am,” Arnie said. “I had a flat tyre, is all. I’ll get it out of here just as soon as—”
“You can’t leave it there and I hope you know that,” she said with a maddening kind of circularity. “My husband’ll be home pretty soon. He don’t want no junk car in front of the house.”
“It’s not junk,” Arnie said, and something in his tone made her back up a step.
“You don’t want to take that tone of voice to me, sonny”, this overweight be-bop queen said haughtily. “It don’t take much to get my husband mad.”
“Look,” Arnie began in that same dangerous flat voice he had used when Michael and Regina began ganging up on him. I grabbed his shoulder hard. More hassle we didn’t need.
“Thanks, ma’am,” I said. “We’ll get it taken care of right away. We’re going to take care of it so quick you’ll think you hallucinated this car.”
“You better,” she said, and then hooked a thumb at my Duster. “And your car is parked in front of my driveway.”
I backed my Duster up. She watched and then joggled back up to her house, where a little boy and a little girl were crammed into the doorway. They were pretty porky, too. Each of them was eating a nice nourishing Devil Dog.
“Wassa matta, ma?” the little boy asked. “Wassa matta that man’s car, Ma? Wassa matta?”
“Shut up,” the be-bop queen said, and hauled both kids back inside. I always like to see enlightened parents like that; it gives me hope for the future.
I walked back to Arnie.
“Well,” I said, dragging out the only witticism I could think of, “it’s only flat on the bottom, Arnie. Right?”
He smiled wanly. “I got a slight problem, Dennis,” he said.
I knew what his problem was; he had no spare. Arnie dragged out his wallet again—it hurt me to see him do it—and looked inside. “I got to get a new tyre,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess you do. A remould—”
“No remoulds. I don’t want to start out that way.” I didn’t say anything, but I glanced back toward my Duster. I had two remoulds on it and I thought they were just fine.
“How much do you think a new Goodyear or Firestone would cost, Dennis?”
I shrugged and consulted the little automotive accountant, who guessed that Arnie could probably get a new no-frills blackwall for around thirty-five dollars.
He pulled out two twenties and handed them to me. “If it’s more—with the tax and everything—I’ll pay you back.”
I looked at him sadly. “Arnie, how much of your week’s pay you got left?”
His eyes narrowed and shifted away from mine. “Enough,” he said.
I decided to try one more time—you must remember that I was only seventeen and still under the impression that people could be shown where their best interest lay. “You couldn’t get into a nickel poker game,” I said. “You plugged just about the whole fucking wad into that car. Dragging out your wallet is going to become a very familiar action to you, Arnie. Please, man. Think it over.”
His eyes went flinty. It was an expression I had not seen before on his face, and although you’ll probably think I was the most naive teenager in America, I couldn’t really remember having seen it on any face before. I felt a mixture of surprise and dismay—I felt the way I might have felt if I suddenly discovered I was trying to have a rational conversation with a fellow who just happened to be a lunatic. I have seen the expression since, though; I imagine you have too. Total shutdown. It’s the expression a man gets on his face when you tell him the woman he loves is whoring around behind his back.
“Don’t get going on that, Dennis,” he said.
I threw my hands up in exasperation. “All right! All right!”
“And you don’t have to go after the damn tyre, either, if you don’t want to.” That flinty, obdurate, and—so help me, it’s true—stupidly stubborn expression was still on his face. “I’ll find a way.”
I started to reply, and I might have said something pretty hot, but then I happened to glance to my left. The two porky kids were there at the edge of their lawn. They were astride identical Big Wheels, their fingers smeared with chocolate. They were watching us solemnly.
“No big deal, man,” I said. “I’ll get the tyre.”
“Only if you want to, Dennis,” he said. “I know it’s getting late.”
“It’s cool,” I said.
“Mister?” the little boy said, licking chocolate off his fingers.
“What?” Arnie asked.
“My mother says that car is poopy.”
“That’s right,” the little girl chimed. “Poopy-kaka.”