a tale of two cars

part 2

Read Part 1 here.

A couple days before Lucky and Carol finally tied the knot, I snagged a bottle of Bushmills, headed up the North Coast, plucked my dear old pal out of his ramshackle dwelling place, and dragged him down to the beach for a bare-bones bachelor party: just the two of us, huddled up to a little driftwood fire, under the cold stars. It wasn’t like I set out to nail down, once and for all, how he came by the name Lucky, but when I went to pick him up, I happened to notice two cars in the driveway I’d never seen before—a Peugeot and a Chevy Caprice—and after we’d exhausted most other subjects, and put a fair-sized dent in the Bushmills, I asked about them, figuring there might be a story in it, knowing him. Turns out, he and Carol had been back East visiting family when they scored the Peugeot, by chance, off a guy in New York who owed him some money. This made it possible for them to drive up to Boston, where—regrettably, from his point of view—they could now take on an oversized load of “stuff” from Carol’s recently deceased grandmother. Next, they paid a visit to his old man in Buffalo, a used-car salesman, whose diminutive second wife was having trouble mastering the largish Caprice he’d given her the previous Christmas. Apparently, she was constantly running over gardening tools or tagging the mailbox or smashing into the garbage cans at the back of the garage, a thing Lucky happened to witness firsthand.

“So …,” I said. We were standing with our backs to the fire at this point, staring at our shadows on the face of the continent-ending cliff.

“So,” he said. “A light goes on in my head.” He had the bottle, took a hit off it and handed it to me, then grabbed the last decent-sized log off our dwindling stash, threw it on the fire, and sat down.

“Oak,” I said and took a seat next to him, practically shoulder to shoulder. “Where you suppose that came from?”

“God knows,” he said.

“Burn forever,” I said.

He gave me a grinning sideways look, his face lit with satisfaction, and stared into the fire. “Do you know Buffalo, Jack?”

“Not really,” I said, shook my head, “Rust Belt, right?”

“For sure. But no. The thing is, winter. That’s the deal. Back when I was growing up, Buffalo was getting, I don’t know, a hundred-fifty, hundred-sixty inches of snow every year. On top of that they got that Canadian wind comes whipping off Lake Erie—you best walk backwards on the worst days if you don’t want to freeze your snorkel off. Seriously. Worst of all, by January, the streets are lined with these big, rock-hard walls of sooty snow from all the plowing, and everybody’s car’s got an old man’s five o’clock shadow of gritty gray road salt all over it, and you’re having to kick frozen hunks of filthy black slush out of your wheel wells, and it seems like it’s always cloudy and dark—and did I mention the wind?—well, I’m here to tell you, Jack, it can get real darned depressing. Come February, most folks are about ready to pack it in.

“But then, you know what? A kind of miracle happens. Because right when you’re ready to load up that filthy car and head South to pick oranges for a living—you got to hand it to them, they got this thing timed perfectly—right at that precise moment when fathers are grumbling about sacrificing their first-born sons, anything, just get me out of Buffalo—suddenly in the midst of all this gloom and doom, a divine ray of light appears. It’s time for … ta-da … THE AUTO SHOW. You wake up one day and you’re driving by The Aud—sorry, that would be The Buffalo Memorial Auditorium—and there’s this big motorized pedestal out front and it’s got this spring-green velveteen skirt around it, and there’s this shiny new Chevy Bel Air sitting up there, rotating slowly, and there are spotlights and footlights, and everything’s gauzy and at the same time sparkly in the pale light, like a movie, and … well … this car … it’s a convertible, Jack, a convertible!—in Buffalo!—in the middle of winter! She’s lime-green and whip-cream white, and damned if she don’t look good enough to eat. Like a big-ass slice of frozen lime pie.”

“My mom used to make that.” I was holding a small stick and tossed it into the fire.

Lucky nodded. “So, here’s how it works,” he continued. “You buy a ticket to the show, fill out the raffle part of it, drop it in this big wooden barrel in the lobby, and suddenly you got a chance to win something nobody—absolutely nobody—within the city limits of Buffalo N-Y has. A clean car. The show runs for four days, and they give away a new car every … single … day. Man, I’m tellin’ ya—talk about knowing your mark!—the Auto Show really packs ’em in. They got the shiniest, the smoothest, the flashiest, the sleekest new cars you ever saw, one after the other, and like I say, they’re all spotless. Plus, they’ve got these sexy models dressed up like movie stars draped over a fender here and there, all winks and smiles, and God knows how many potted palm trees—palm trees!—in Buffalo!—and these giant posters with big orange suns on them, and everything’s all lit-up and sparkly, well, you can’t imagine the effect all this has on the natives. It’s a dream world. And into this world we march, the good citizens of Buffalo, like an endless stream of Siberian refugees, the cold air still clinging to the folds of our overcoats and the little metal clips on our boots clinking and chinking as we shuffle along. They’ve laid down a red carpet to mark the route through this paradise, which is soaking up all the crud from everybody’s boots, and it does get to be kind of black and squishy down the middle of it, but the point is, it’s a rug, and Buffalo is being allowed to walk on it with its boots on! Talk about your royal treatment. For me, it was kind of like my first real religious experience, you know? Being in the presence of the world’s slickest motor machines, and nobody talking above a whisper hardly, out of respect. I was ten years old first time I went. I actually half thought I was dreaming it.”

“Your dad take you?”

“Un-unh. Woolly refused to go to the Auto Show. ‘You wanna look at cars,’ he’d say, ‘come on down to the lot. And you can sweep the showroom while you’re at it.’”

“So…?”

“So … I was on my own. But you have to understand, all anybody’s been talking about for weeks is the Auto Show. At school, on the radio, on TV, it was non-stop: the Auto Show, deliver us from evil, amen. Come Saturday morning, I’d made up my mind. I waited patiently, and after breakfast, while my mom was in the bathroom, I filched the lunch money out of the kitchen cupboard. I honestly don’t remember the specifics of my actual getaway—Woolly was at work, so that helped. And my mom … well … you’ve met my mom. When the time seemed right, I tiptoed out, flagged down the local, dropped the fare in the box, driver didn’t blink an eye, and we were away—clear sailing.”

“Ha! I can picture it, you screwing up your courage and going for it like that.”

“Didn’t take much in the way of courage. There and back without a single hitch, nobody the wiser.” Lucky, who was working a little chew under his lip, spit in the fire. His eyes were shining.

“Next day, Sunday, I’m barely back from Sunday school when the phone rings. Mom picks up. ‘Hello? … Yes…. Yes.’ She shoots me a look—what is it this time? a teacher? the police?—hands me the phone. ‘Hello,’ I say, real tentative-like—she’s standing directly over me, tapping her foot, trying to listen in. ‘Am I speaking to Mr. Behr?’ the caller asks. It’s a man’s voice, but cheerful. ‘Un-huh,’ I go. He asks me one or two more questions, but it’s obvious I’m only a kid, so he asks to speak to my mom again, and I hand the phone back.

“Now she’s sure I’m in Dutch. I’m watching her. It’s like watching a silent movie: her face keeps changing expression. At one point she throws me a real dark look, like this is one of my pranks, but right when I think she’s about to slam the darn thing down in disgust—I don’t know what the guy said to turn her around, but I suspect he was used to not being believed at first—suddenly she’s doing a complete one-eighty. Her eyes widen, and her jaw drops, and she gets to nodding, slowly at first, then faster, and by the end it’s all she can do to say thank you and a couple of yeses, maybe another thank you, and goodbye. She’s staring at me, her mouth wide open, and she forgets she’s holding the receiver, which falls from her hand to an inch or so short of the floor and hangs there, mute. Then she reaches out with her plump arms and pulls me into the most suffocating embrace I ever hope to experience and starts bouncing up and down, so I’m bouncing up and down, and she’s yelling, ‘Lucky! Lucky! Lucky!’ and I don’t have a clue why, and then, I swear to you, Jack, she pees her pants, just puddles up like a puppy right then and there on our ratty old hall rug.”

I laughed, shook my head, kept shaking it, laughed some more, and let myself fall backward from my sitting position onto the beach gravel. Even the stars were bouncing now.

“Well, there it is,” I said, looking up at my old friend in a new light, so to speak. “Name like Lucky—always figured you had to have earned it someways. The Bel Air, right?”

He winked, grinned, and offered me the bottle, but I waved it off. I’d never won anything, whether by skill or chance, except for the occasional piece of carnival glassware. “Drain it,” I said, “like I say, you’ve earned it. Winner’s share.”

“Yeah,” he said, “the backwash,” and he threw his head back and emptied the dregs.

Together, we observed a brief moment of silence. It’s during moments like this, outdoors, under a clear, if wobbly, night sky, that you are reminded you live on a celestial object of some sort.

“Look, Jack”—the silence had been long enough for Lucky to entertain a second thought—“could we maybe just let that be our little bachelor-party secret?”

“Till death do us part,” I said.

“Oy.” He shook his head. “Wait. Do they still say that?”

“You’ll be finding out soon enough,” I said and hoisted myself back up—a little shakily, I must confess—and we were sitting side by side again.

“All right,” he said. “So anyways, my mom, she’s scuttling off to the bathroom. She doesn’t appear to be the least bit embarrassed. ‘Call your father,’ she yells over her shoulder, ‘tell him I said it’s an emergency.’ She pauses at the bathroom door. ‘When he gets here, we’ll tell him the rest.’

“‘What’s the rest?’ I ask her.

“She lets out a hoot—I don’t know how else to describe the sound she made—and lunges into the bathroom. But she pauses for a moment before closing the door behind her. ‘You don’t know?’ she asks.

“‘Know what?!’ I’m calling down the hall, to a crack in the bathroom door.

“‘You won the car!’ she calls out, hitting a note as high on the register as anyone could ever expect her to go. But then she tops it: ‘At the Auto Show!’

“I call Woolly, as instructed, he comes home in a huff. His first words, blasted through the front door, are not fit to print. He was in the middle of a negotiation that, if consummated, would have put me through college, is what he told me, after he’d half-collected himself. I didn’t know from ‘consummated,’ I just told him, talk to mom.

“After they talked—what a magical transformation—he was all light and air. I got a younger brother and sister, you know that. Don’t recall where they were that morning—not their keeper, you know?—but wherever they were, they got rounded up, and we all piled into the Buick—Woolly sold a lot of Buicks—and headed downtown to visit my car.

“‘There she is,’ he declares, as we approach The Aud and The Bel Air heaves into view, ‘the most coveted material object in all of Buffalo.’ He plows through the slush and pulls right up to the curb in the no-parking-or-standing-at-any-time zone directly in front of The Aud. The Bel Air is shining like a lime-green star in the midday dusk. ‘Ain’t she a beaut?’ he says. ‘And to think she is all ours.’”

“Aw, man!”

“Thank you, Jack. You read my mind. You know what I’m thinking, why can’t we park it in the garage for five years, till I get my permit? But Woolly could read my mind too. He had this ruby ring he always wore, and whenever he sensed I wasn’t thinking too clearly, he would rap me on the back of the head with it, one sharp backhand knock, and so he does now. I mean, what do I bring to the table? Besides being my father, this is a guy who makes his living selling used cars to people who can’t even afford next month’s rent. Plus, nobody has uttered a single word about my stealing off to the Auto Show in the first place—not so far, anyways—so I’m kind of boxed in. But Woolly, he knows he’s got to play the angles. We live under one roof, I’m watching and learning, and one day, I will be fully growed. So the wheels are turning.

“We’re sitting there, idling, in the no-parking zone. Everybody’s speechless, for the moment, staring in awe at the Bel Air. Woolly’s thinking: the kid’s still riding that old balloon-tire bike I grew up with. He breaks the silence. ‘It’s time you had your own bicycle, son.’

“Long pause. ‘Thanks, dad,’ I say, finally.”

“I’d call that a pregnant pause.”

“Hey!” Lucky elbowed me. “Don’t say pregnant.”

“Oh, yeah.” I patted him. “Sorry.”

“Well.” He took a deep breath, blew it out. “Good old Woolly. The man’s a pro, he’s gauged my reaction. You put a car in one scale and a bike in the other, who’s gonna take that deal? So now he really goes to work. Balancing the level of resistance, he hears in my voice against such variables as time, change, the unreliability of memory, and the total unforseeability of everything—God, Jack, I’m starting to sound like you—he tosses out a final offer he’s confident, if I don’t think too hard about it, I will fall for. ‘One other thing, Mister Lucky,’ he says, fixing me with a look of the utmost sincerity. ‘One day, when you’re of age, I promise to personally see to it that you get your very own car.’”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said.

“Twenty … five … years … later.…”

Boom! That went straight to my funny bone, and I’m back on the gravel again, laughing and laughing and laughing, and kicking my heels too close to the fire for comfort.

“Jack! Get ahold of yourself!” Lucky was laughing also. But he managed to pull me away from the fire and straighten me back up.

“OK. So … Jack, you still with me?”

“Of course, I’m still with you,” I mumbled.

“Well and good. Because I’m almost done with this goddam story.” He was slowing down, let it be noted. “How did you even get me started on this?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh, well. Bringing it home.”

I happened to observe something while he was hemming and hawing: the tide was going out. I wasn’t in that bad a shape.

“Here we go,” he said.

“I’m right with you, Luck.”

“OK. It’s later that day—the day me and Carol showed up in Buffalo—I can’t believe I’m still talking—we’re at the dinner table, me and Woolly. Carol and Gladys are in the kitchen or something. The silence in the room is thickening, like the smoke from Woolly’s cigar. I can’t tell you how many times I’d rehearsed this moment. Finally, I pretend to make a stab at small talk, commenting, good-naturedly, on the mismatch between little Gladys and the Caprice. He chuckles. Encouraged, I follow up with a polite question or two about the nature and extent of the damage done to date. He allows as how, although it has been mostly petty so far, it is beginning to add up. At this point, with the prospect of having to cross our double-wide continent in that loaded-down Peugeot, joined at the hip with my dear bride-to-be—this is the place where courage comes in—I look him straight in the eye, and in a quiet but firm voice ask the question that’s been waiting all these long years for exactly the right moment to be asked. ‘Remember the Auto Show?’”

*******************

Lucky would have been the first to tell you what a fine time he had driving across the country in that big old Caprice. He could pack a little chew in his lip, rest his arm on the seat back, listen to country music, even sing along if he wanted to—nothing to stop him. Pick up a hitchhiker? Why not? Need gas? Fine, stop for gas. Hello there, Carol. Saw you waving. What’s that? You say you’re hungry? I suppose we could meet up for a bite at the next Stuckey’s, maybe. Or then again, we don’t have to. Whatever.

You get the picture. The man’s wedding day is almost upon him, yet here he is tooling across this fair land of ours, under that big dome of sky, with his beloved, his betrothed, his very own bride-to-be—just the two of them—in separate cars. Talk about a man at peace with himself, why, his heart’s as flooded as your typical French carburetor on a cold morning. What a lucky guy! That right there? That’s as good as it gets.

For Lucky, with love, from the boys.

Thomas Shane is a contributing editor for Arcadia. His stories can be found online at Per Contra, Mount Hope, and trans lit mag. Other publication credits include Aethlon, American Way, Elysian Fields, Light, Other Voices, River Oak Review, Slippery Elm, and Trajectory, and the anthologies Fresh Water and When Last on the Mountain: The View from Writers over 50. He has also been runner-up or finalist in a number of writing contests, including the Glimmer Train Fiction Open, the International Imitation Hemingway Competition, and the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest.

For more work by Thomas Shane visit his page at Online Sundries site.