The Tribe

by Jon Gerrard

  * * *

  Reed pulled his car over and parked when he was a block away from the accident scene. A police car and a fire engine were stopped near Magda’s red hatchback with their lights flashing and he could see an officer standing next to the car talking to everyone. There was an ambulance at the scene also, but it pulled away as he approached. Its lights were off and Reed could see through the back doors that the bed was empty. A movement overhead caused him to look up. He watched as one of the firefighters climbed down the rescue ladder carrying a very frightened looking dog under one arm. He had no idea what that was all about but was relieved to see that Paige and the others seemed to be alright.

  As he approached Magda’s car the police officer finished writing in his notepad and put it away.

  “You were very lucky, Miss,” the officer said to Magda.

  “Are you going to give me a ticket?” she asked.

  The officer gave her a half smile and shook his head. “No. It doesn’t look like you were really speeding,” he said, glancing at the short line of skid marks her car had left in the road. “But we’re going to find out whose dog that is. They need to keep a better eye on it. Things could have been a lot worse.”

  Magda looked relieved as the police officer turned and walked back to his car.

  “Reed’s here,” Paige said after the officer walked away.

  The group looked over to see Reed standing in the street behind Magda’s car. But his eyes weren’t on them or even the car. For some reason he was staring at the road.

  “What’s he doing?” Tom asked.

  “Looking at the ground,” Danny answered.

  Tom rolled his eyes as Danny grinned at him.

  After a few moments Reed looked up from the street and made his way over to the group. He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans as he glanced at the scraped up side of the car. “The cop’s right, you guys were pretty lucky. What happened?”

  “A dog ran out into the street,” Paige said.

  “Actually, I was talking about the door,” Reed said, nodding toward the car door lying on the ground nearby.

  “It was stuck,” Magda said. “I couldn’t get out so Tom pulled it off.”

  Reed’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead. He stepped over to the opening where the driver’s door used to be, examined the frame briefly then moved to the discarded door and squatted down to look at it. Grabbing the edge of the door he stood and managed to wrestle it up so that he could get a better look at the hinges. Then he looked up at Tom.

  “You just…pulled it off?”

  “It got messed up in the crash,” Tom said and shrugged.

  Reed stared at him for a moment then let the door fall. It struck the ground with a solid thud.

  “Do you think you can fix it?” Magda asked.

  Reed ambled to the front of the car and glanced at the damage to the front bumper. “The body work’s no problem. It’s your brakes and suspension system that are the real trouble. That’s why you crashed. Your ABS is out too and you’re going to need shocks, struts and probably springs as well.”

  Magda frowned. “How do you know it needs all of that when you didn’t even look under the car?”

  Reed walked to the back of the car and pointed at the skid marks. The dark marks made parallel S-shaped lines across the road. “Your car’s supposed to have anti-lock brakes. If they were working you wouldn’t have left those solid skid marks. If you left any marks at all it should have been a series of dotted lines and you would have been able to stop a lot sooner. Also, see how one of the lines disappears where you turned? I’ll bet it felt like you were about to flip over, didn’t it. That’s because your suspension system is so mushy that the inside wheels came off the road when you tried to make that last turn.”

  “I don’t understand,” Magda said. “My father just bought it last year. Could all that stuff have gotten broken that soon?”

  Reed met her eyes. “No. It couldn’t. That’s what’s so weird. I looked at your inspection sticker. You just had it renewed last month. Unless your mechanic’s a complete idiot he should have noticed anything this bad.” Reed wandered back to the front of the car and frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” Magda asked, fearing that he was going to tell her the damage was more severe that he first thought.

  “This car comes with a driver’s side airbag,” Reed said.

  “Yeah. My dad said he wanted us driving something safe.”

  “Okay,” Reed said as he stepped back to the open door. “So why didn’t it go off? There’s more than enough damage to the front bumper to trigger it. If you’d been going much faster when you hit that tree you could have been really hurt.”

  Magda wrapped her arms around herself as a shiver ran up her spine. “Do you think there’s anything else wrong with it?”

  Reed shrugged. “I won’t know until I take a look. But on a car this new you shouldn’t have had these problems. Whatever it is, I can take care of it for you. It’ll just take some time.”

  The police officer who had been taking Magda’s statement came back over just then. “Here’s your copy of the accident report, Miss. You’ll need to give a copy of that to the insurance company when your parents file the claim. Do you need me to call a tow truck for you?”

  “We won’t need a truck, officer,” Reed said. “My house isn’t far from here. I can drive it over there myself.”

  The officer studied him for a moment. “Your family owns the riding stable down by the park, don’t they.”

  Mayfair was bordered on the south by a state park. The park was a rambling tract of forested land that encompassed a pair of large lakes and several miles of bridle paths. Reed’s family made a living giving riding lessons and running trail rides through the park.

  “Yeah,” Reed said. “I’m going to park it out back so I can work on it.”

  “Okay,” the officer said after thinking it over. “Technically, I’m not supposed to let you drive it without a door. As long as you take it straight there I’ll let you drive it yourself. But no side trips.”

  “I promise, officer. Thanks.”

  The police officer nodded and went back to his car. Reed got into Magda’s car and turned the key, which was still in the ignition. It started easily. He spun the steering wheel experimentally in both directions and the tires turned with no trouble. Leaving the car running, he got out and dug in his pocket for his own keys.

  “I’ll drive Magda’s car and you guys can follow in my car,” he said, tossing his keys to Paige.

  Paige glanced at the little plastic cow hanging from the keys in her hand then looked down the road to where Reed had parked. “You’re driving the Cowstang? What happened to the Suburban?”

  “The starter gave out,” Reed said. “I need to scrounge up a new one when I have some time. But the Cowstang’s running just fine. You still remember how to drive stick, don’t you?”

  Paige gave him a deadpan look in response, then motioned for the girls to follow her. She was one of the few people Reed knew, boy or girl, who could handle a stick shift. Her parents had given her their old, 5-speed Jeep when she got her license and she was one of the only people he trusted to drive his precious car.

  The Cowstang had been Reed’s very first car. Before he was even old enough to drive he had found what was left of a 1966 Mustang in a local salvage yard. The classic muscle car had been rusting in the yard forever and Reed eventually persuaded the yard owner to sell it to him for practically nothing. After working on it in every minute he could spare for more than a year, he had finally been able to get it running. The car’s unusual name came from its unique color pattern. Since a mustang was a type of horse, Reed reasoned that his car should look like one. At that time his favorite horse at the stable had been a paint called Vanilla-fudge. Like all paints, Fudge had a distinctive pattern of large black and white patches. Reed did his best to duplicate the pattern on his car. Once he had it painted however he reali
zed that it looked more like a cow than a horse. Undaunted, Reed mounted a small pair of horns on the hood of the car and the Cowstang was born.

  As Paige and the girls started for the Cowstang, Reed enlisted Tom to help him with the broken door to Magda’s car. Between the two of them they managed to haul the door over to the car and load it into the hatch. Once the door was secured, Tom told the guys to head back to his car. He would take them to his house then swing back to Reed’s place to pick up the girls. He was about to start toward his car with them when he noticed Reed hesitate.

  “What’s wrong?” Tom asked.

  Reed nodded in the direction of a nearby street. “That car.”

  Tom followed his gaze and saw a black sedan parked near the corner. “What about it?”

  “It’s a ’95 Impala SS,” Reed said. “You don’t see a lot of those.”

  “Mmm,” was Tom’s only comment. He wasn’t into cars the way Reed was. “So, how long do you think it’s going to take to fix Magda’s car?”

  Reed shrugged. “A few weeks. I’ll be able to spend more time on it once school is out.”

  “Mmm,” Tom said again. “What do you think happened? How come all those things went wrong with her car?”

  “I don’t know. All those systems going bad at the same time like that shouldn’t happen.”

  “But you can fix it.”

  Reed eyed him for a moment. “Yeah, I can fix it. What’s the matter, don’t you trust me?”

  “Paige trusts you. I don’t really know you.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve known Paige since kindergarten.”

  “And I’ve known Magda since before that.”

  The two stared at each other. Reed felt himself starting to get angry.

  “Look,” Reed said, “I’m not going to do anything to hurt your friend or her car. In fact, a job like this would cost at least five thousand if you took it to a regular shop. I’m going to do it for cost.”

  Tom studied him for a moment then extended his hand. Surprised by the gesture, Reed hesitated before he finally took the offered hand.

  “Thanks,” Tom said. “Paige always said you were good people.”

  “No problem,” Reed managed.

  Tom gave him a brief smile, nodded, and turned away. Reed watched him walk across the street before he climbed into Magda’s car.

  Chapter Four