by J. J. Murray
“I am not sure,” he says.
“These parts look brand new already,” I say.
“I am a craftsman,” he says. “Michelangelo said, ‘Trifles fanno la perfezione, e la perfezione non è un’inezia.’”
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. “I think it’s because you like Louise’s company.” Louise Hill, professional gossip, sixty-five years old, pointy nose, 1950s “cat” glasses, fluffy white hair frozen stiff by AquaNet. I think she only likes Nonno for his accent, but at least he has someone in his life. “Was she here all morning?”
He nods. “She is off on an errand, but she will be back. She likes to watch.”
And gossip nonstop. “What will she do when you finish the clock?
“It may take many months,” he says. “This is very intricate work. Now, go.”
“Stringing along a younger woman with a grandfather clock repair is wrong,” I say.
He blinks his magnified eyes and shrugs. “She feeds me, too. What can I say?”
I kiss his cheek. “Goodbye, Nonno.”
I leave the workshop and enter the garage where I am truly at home among the pneumatic tools, hoses, fan belts, oil, grease, jack stands, and engine hoist. After loading up the Jeep with hoses, oil, gas, water, a six-volt battery, a used but serviceable set of sparkplug wires, a Purolator oil filter, and a weed-eater, I return to The Simmons Farm and get to work while Mr. Simmons drives his Massey-Ferguson tractor around the meadows delivering feed to his cows.
Once I trim away over forty years of grass from around the tractor, I cut and replace all hoses and lube up the distributor and drive housing fittings—and all thirty-seven places that need grease. I use a cordless Dremel to sand away as much rust as I can before cleaning the fuel strainer then plugging and filling the radiator one Aquafina bottle at a time. Then I add SAE-30 oil while sucking down another two liters of water.
I replace the battery and reconnect all the wires, replace and secure the housing and gas tank, slide in the muffler, and fill the gas tank.
While a few cows mosey closer and Jack plays chicken with a braying donkey, I sit on the scorching hot metal scoop seat and familiarize myself with the controls. “Choke rod, engine speed control, starter rod, ignition switch button,” I whisper. “Everything’s where it’s supposed to be.” I bow my head. “Padre e papa nei cieli, per favore sorriso su di me.”
I always ask God and my papa to smile down on me whenever I’m about to do something dangerous. So many things can go wrong. The wrong spark could set this field on fire, and I don’t think Mr. Simmons is planning to have a beef barbecue today.
“And God,” I add, “if there is a fire, please fashion a quick thunderstorm to douse it. Amen.”
Transmission in neutral, I pull the choke rod all the way out, advance the engine control lever one-third, pull out on the ignition switch button, and pull out the starter rod.
It starts!
I can’t see anything through a massive cloud of blue and black smoke billowing around me, but it is running! I never had a single doubt that—
The tractor coughs several times and dies.
Oh yeah. I didn’t push in the choke once I had it going.
I have made an amateur mistake.
Take two.
The second time it starts, I push in the choke and let it idle. A kind breeze pushes most of the smoke away from me, and I see Mr. Simmons high on a hill looking down at me.
That’s right, Mr. Simmons. A woman got this rust bucket started.
Now let’s see if it will move.
I push the engine speed control to a low idle and depress the clutch. It feels … fine. A bit stiff, but no one has pressed it in a long time.
No one has kissed me in a long time either, but that’s another story.
These are the strange things that go through my mind when I’m sucking in blue and black smoke on a broiling hot day.
I press the gearshift lever down and to the left until it engages in first, releasing the clutch slowly.
And … we’re moving. Slowly and downhill, but we’re moving.
There’s nothing wrong with this clutch.
I push the engine speed control to half and turn the wheel to the right, the tires flaking, shedding, and threatening to shred off the rims, the scoop seat searing its imprint into my flesh. I aim for Mr. Simmons’ wraparound porch, push in the clutch, and shift up and to the right for second gear. Hey, this tractor is rolling right along.
What was that bump? I look back.
Half of the right front tire lies in a heap.
So glad it wasn’t Jack.
I drop it into third gear, and we are rolling! I start up a slight rise and see two ancient rocking chairs near the front door and two brick chimneys at opposite ends of a shimmering tin roof. I turn slightly to avoid a massive gathering of daisies to the left of the bottom steps. I depress the clutch, shift into neutral, and step on the brakes.
Where are the brakes?
I stand on the brakes, and the tractor slides to a halt.
This tractor needs new brake linings.
I smile at Mr. Simmons, who lumbers down the hill with his hat in his hands. “Where should I park it?”
He walks once around the idling tractor, his eyelids fluttering. “Let’s see, I guess, up at the barn.” He waves at a dark wooden barn about a quarter mile up the hill.
“You want to take it for a spin? It’s idling a little high, but I can trim that. Think there’s a slight miss in cylinder three, nothing major. The brakes need some serious work, and—”
“It’s still rusty,” he interrupts.
“Yeah. I’ll do some more sanding and prime it before I paint it.”
Mr. Simmons nods. “That’s … that will be fine.” He runs a massive hand over the housing. “It’s … alive.” He puts on his hat, nods at me, and goes up the porch steps and into the house.
I think he’s touched.
I creep up the hill to the barn, parking and shutting off the tractor under the hayloft and next to a 1941 Chevy pickup that could be one serious ride. It might have been green once. Solid chrome grille, tilt-up windshield, long running boards with step rails. The tires are flat, but I bet they could still hold air. The truck bed has a wooden floor that hasn’t turned to sawdust yet. I look inside and see a speedometer that goes to 100. Right. The engine can’t boast more than ninety horsepower. Bench seats, no seatbelts, no power steering, a three-speed shifter on the floor, a glove box … that won’t open. Shoot. I was hoping to find an owner’s manual.
I pop the hood and smile. An inline six and only two squirrels’ nests. I remove the nests and close the hood.
I have to restore this truck.
After closing the tractor’s fuel valve and disconnecting the battery, I race Jack down the hill to the house and knock on the front door.
Mr. Simmons pushes the door open and steps outside.
“I’d like to take a crack at that 1941 Chevy up there, too.”
“That Farmall isn’t restored enough to run in a parade yet, is it?”
“No,” I say. “It’ll run, but I don’t know how far.”
He leans on the porch rail and looks toward the setting sun. “It used to be red. Fire engine red.”
“I can work on it nights and have it looking sharp in a week.”
Mr. Simmons nods. “Don’t fix it too well. I kind of like all that noise and smoke.”
“I’ll make sure that happens. It’ll need new tires, too. Can’t roll down Front Street on those rusty rims.”
He turns to face me. “All right.” He jams his hands into his front pockets. “I won’t pay more than … three hundred, parts and everything.”
It will cost much more than that, but … “The offer was for a free repair and restoration.”
“I gotta pay you something,” he says.
Three hundred might not even pay for one decent rear tire. “You could let me work on the Chevy, too. That would satisfy m
e. We have a deal?” I extend my hand.
“No contract?”
“Mr. Simmons, my hands are too tired and cramped to write,” I say. “A handshake will have to do.”
Mr. Simmons’ hand swallows mine. “Ain’t very modern of you.”
I watch my hand return to the land of the living. “I’m an old-fashioned girl, and that handshake comes with a lifetime guarantee. It’s great doing business with you, Mr. Simmons. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“You won’t see me,” he says.
I smile. “A true sunup to sundown man.”
“Ever since I was born. Right there.” He sighs. “There used to be a billion daisies out there.”
“I love your daisies, Mr. Simmons.”
He removes his hat and crumples it in his hands. “So did my wife.”
I see the silver glint of the world’s largest wedding ring on his finger. “Mr. Simmons, I think it’s romantic that you still wear your wedding ring.” As if I’ll ever get to wear one. His ring might fit around my wrist.
“I still wear it cuz I can’t get the dang thing off.” He puts on his hat. “You better get going. Easier crossing that creek when there’s daylight.”
I watch him leave the porch, and he seems to smile at the daisies. I imagine him walking in a field of a billion daisies with his wife as the sun paints their love every color of the rainbow.
What it must be like to love someone that much.
Chapter 3
I am starving, but I am too tired to get out of this Jeep to point out what I want on my sub at Subway, Kingstown’s only fast food restaurant.
But I’m not too tired to visit Delmer Farley. Delmer is Kingstown’s “Otis,” a town drunk whose hobbies include staring at the sun, camping out under Barrens Bridge, and serving as the county’s unofficial landfill attendant. Delmer doesn’t bay at the moon—his dog, Skip, does. I’m not sure what Skip is, maybe a basset hound mixed with a sloth, but most of the time I see Skip asleep and drooling. Like Skip, Delmer is so skinny he has to stand up twice to cast a shadow. Delmer once owned a worm farm on Blue Lake, but raccoons and ducks ate it. Most folks around here look out for Delmer, though, because even though he’s as dumb as a soup sandwich, he occasionally makes sense.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I pull off 303 and grab what’s left of the Aquafina case. When I get out, I peer into the darkness under Barrens Bridge. “Delmer? It’s me, Gio.”
“Hey, Gio. Come on down.”
“Um, it’s pretty dark down there, Delmer.”
A flashlight beam flits around under the bridge. “No it isn’t.”
I slide down the hill, duck under a rusted steel girder, and enter Delmer’s “house,” which contains a large collection of crushed Budweiser cans, a “fire pit” (a circle of stones around a hubcap resting on several Sterno cans), a sleeping bag, and a couch cushion where Skip snores and drools.
I set down the case of water. “When are you going to recycle all these cans, Delmer?”
“Soon as I get a bunch,” he says.
He has more than a bunch. He has a weekend frat party. “How are you doing?”
“Fine, fine.” Delmer uses a stick to poke what looks like a perch sizzling on his “hotplate”—a blackened Buick hubcap. “Care for some dinner? Me and Skip was just about to eat.”
“Um, no thanks.”
Delmer has an old football for a face, and many of his laces are missing. If it weren’t for dirt, his jeans and T-shirt would fall apart. I’m surprised Delmer doesn’t sprout yellow hawkweed or violet wood sorrel.
“So the fishing’s good?”
“Fishing’s always good,” Delmer says. “Fishing always beats working. You sure you ain’t hungry? I got enough for maybe a bite or two for you. Skip won’t mind.”
Because Skip is unconscious. “That’s okay. You take care, and stay hydrated.”
“Huh?”
“Drink the water I brought you, Delmer, and make sure Skip gets some, too.”
He points at Motts Mountain Creek. “Got water right here.”
“The bottled water. It’s better for you.”
Delmer squints behind him. “Where’d that water come from? Musta floated down the stream. Gotta six-pack of beer that way once.”
From tubers further upstream who were too drunk to notice their Styrofoam cooler floating away. “Good night, Delmer.”
“Good night, Gio.”
Cruising down Front Street after sunset sometimes unnerves me because there’s no one around, and the only lights shining are at the police station. Tumbleweeds would get bored here. Snails could safely race each other on any Kingstown street after sundown. Yep, my town is snug as a lightning bug in a rug.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I head west and turn onto Route 113, passing the trout hatchery, Gray County’s main claim to fame, and The Swinging Bridge, where Owen Bryan, my first love, spends most of his time. The restaurant is so-named because a real swing bridge connects one part of the upstairs gift shop to the other. The Swinging Bridge serves buffalo burgers, buffalo steaks, and buffalo barbecue along with prime rib on Saturdays and “fried chicken you wish yo’ mama made” on Sundays. They still have “Tallie Night” on Thursdays, but it’s not authentic spaghetti. Mixing Ragu with overcooked noodles and throwing some oregano and Parmesan cheese on top is not spaghetti. I do love their “Nanner Puddin’,” though. I eat a double helping of that once a month to keep my blood sugar levels high for the next two months.
I could stop and get something to go, but Owen’s new wife Kimiko might have a cow. Or a buffalo. Or their first child.
Or so I hear.
I take a left on Highway 17 and pass The Depot Lodge, an old train depot turned bed and breakfast that has a honeymoon suite in an actual caboose. That’s where Owen said we’d spend our honeymoon.
In a caboose.
“And we’d ride the bicycle-built-for-two”—one of the “perks” of the honeymoon package—“every day into Kingstown,” Owen had said.
At the time, I thought it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me.
I was so young.
A mile down 17 I turn into a rutted driveway through a short field of dry grass to a gravel parking area in front of a sixty-foot-long swing bridge leading to a small cabin where an American flag hangs limply from a short pole jutting off a porch column.
This is where I live.
Lovie runs from the cabin porch to the opposite end of the bridge and stops. She refuses to cross it, making the swing bridge the greatest dog leash on earth. I don’t know why exactly, but it might have something to do with her puppyhood. When I adopted her from Angels of Assisi in Calhoun, they told me Lovie had been a “bait dog” for pit bulls and has the scars to prove it behind her ears and on her sides. “She might have some issues,” they said.
Lovie has plenty of issues. I have to carry all forty trembling pounds of her across that bridge when we go to the vet. Once she’s on the other side, she becomes herself again—until she gets to the vet. Lovie gnaws on anything metal, so I have to keep track of my tools. She picks up and drops her dog food at various places around the yard to lure blue jays and squirrels to their doom. She chases loud trucks and their drivers but only on her side of the creek. During thunderstorms, she can leap the seven-foot fence to the buffalo farm field next to us. For some reason, she loses this leaping ability when the storm ends, and I have to climb over the fence to fetch her. Fortunately, it isn’t an industrial electrified fence or Lovie would burn off her nose. Lovie will also chase any thrown or flying objects or critters including rocks, bricks, snow flurries, bees, ladybugs, and fireflies.
I look at her white feet, the white “T” on her chest, her short black hair, and her hazel eyes. They say dogs sometimes look like their owners. Maybe I picked Lovie because of her appearance. I’m sure she thinks that she picked me.
Chi ama me, ama il mio cane. Whoever loves me,
loves my dog.
So far, only Nonno and I love her.
“Hey, Lovie-dovey. Miss me?”
Lovie wags her entire body.
She missed me.
I walk across the swaying bridge, Motts Creek trickling below, pet Lovie’s ears, and walk across my dirt and sand “lawn” to the front porch. I don’t have any grass to cut, but I do have to rake leaves. Snakes like timber rattlesnakes, copperheads, and corn snakes like to hide in leaves year round, and I do not want to “find” them.
Nonno built this rustic, roughhewn cabin fifty feet from the creek, and in the flood of 1985, Motts Creek rose up to the bottom step of the porch. Nonna stayed in her rocking chair knitting during the entire ordeal and refused to get into one of the inflatable boats the police were using to evacuate people. By the time the waters receded, Nonna had finished a scarf and a sweater.
And she needed that scarf and sweater to stay warm for the winter because pitch and concrete hold the cabin’s walls together. Though it has a massive stone fireplace, it’s extremely drafty. Nonno put large picture windows in every room for Nonna to have a peaceful spot to spend her last days tending her hostas, daylilies, and tiger lilies. The cabin is where Mama spent her last days fighting ovarian cancer and mourning the loss of Papa, who a drunk driver killed on Route 113. I don’t mourn for long because of the connection I feel for my nonna, papa, and mama every time I open the screen door and step inside the unofficial “Ferrari Family Museum.”
È meglio star solo che mal accompagnato. It is better to be alone than to be in bad company. I am always in good company here. Notte è la madre del pensiero. Night is the mother of thoughts. I can hear my mama now: “Mangiare! Si dimentica di mangiare!”
Okay, okay, I’ll eat.
My ancestors reclaimed and refurbished nearly everything in this kitchen. I take leftover hash brown casserole and some sausage patties from a 1942 General Electric refrigerator Nonno hauled up from the bottom of Coldwell Mountain in Calloway County. I warm the casserole and the sausage on a white 1920s Hotpoint electric stove that my papa rescued from the landfill. Its oven is just large enough to cook a full chicken or a skinny turkey. The white cabinets and ironstone porcelain double basin sink came from an old farmhouse where Bisnonno Carlo first lived when he arrived in Kingstown. Nonno transformed the boards and flooring of a collapsed barn into the kitchen counter. I can still feel the blade gouges Nonna and Mama put into it since they often used the kitchen counter as a cutting board. I still use the blue and white marble swirl graniteware pots and pans, maple wood bowls, and rolling pins they used. The only things remotely modern are the Cutco knives and utensils an enterprising University of Richmond student sold me ten years ago. They are still sharp and should last me the rest of my life because I use the cutting spatula and pizza cutter the most.