by Brad Barkley
PORTER’S DODGE
PORTER’S knuckles were swollen big as lug nuts, so his fingers hardly worked anymore. He stood at the front window, sore hands braced on the sill, and leaned his nose against the pane, his breath slowly fogging the glass. When he moved, his bones cracked, a sound that put him in mind of broken ball joints. He wiped the window clean to watch the house across the street. Mrs. Burke opened the door and five cats spilled into the yard, then Mr. Burke leaned his large head over his wife’s shoulder.
“Me,” Porter said aloud to the empty room. “He’s looking at me.” Burke walked across his lawn toward his red Mercedes parked at the curb, testing its paint for dust as he passed. He continued into Porter’s drive; Porter thought to hide his face behind the curtain, but too late—he’d been seen. Burke did a fast lap around the white Dodge ragtop propped on stands in Porter’s driveway, shook his head, and mounted the front porch steps. His heavy boots sounded on the boards. A knock sounded, and Porter stepped to answer, his broken shoe flapping the carpet like a flat tire.
“Enough is enough, Porter,” Burke said. He stood, hands on hips, dark hair slicked back into a bladelike widow’s peak, eyebrows thick and black as a row of birds on a wire. Porter had spoken to him occasionally in the three years the Burkes had lived there. Moving day, before his boxes were unpacked, Burke had come across the street to sell Porter plastic gutter liner.
“The car has to go, Porter,” Burke said. “It’s an eyesore for the whole neighborhood.” Porter tried to remember his last conversation with anyone—Wednesday, the box boy at the store.
“Diesel,” Porter said, his throat rattling. Burke looked surprised, the line of birds making a jump.
“Your Mercedes. Runs on diesel. Tough things, engines like hateful women. Never would touch them.”
“We weren’t discussing my Mercedes, Mr. Porter. Your car doesn’t run, hasn’t been moved, and it’s bringing down my property value. You’ll have to have it towed.”
“Used to take coffee breaks whenever a diesel came in the shop. Noisy, smelly. You take that old Dodge convertible out there, powerglide transmission, in-line six. She hums, sings tunes, whispers in your ear.” Porter rubbed his knuckles.
Burke nodded. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, Porter,” he said. “But if you don’t move the car I’ll call the homeowners’ association. I’ll call the cops. I mean it.” Porter nodded and extended his hand, wincing when Burke shook it. Burke walked across the street, stopped to blow dust off the glossy surface of the Mercedes, waded through the cats, and disappeared behind his door.
That evening Porter walked, broken shoe flapping, to the Tick-Tock. A pint for his knuckles, to lube them up. Along the road, deep gashes of red clay filled spots where houses had been, new condominiums were planned. On the corner rose a gleaming office park where three years before had curved a gravel road marked by a weedy ditch full of beer bottles. As Porter waited to cross the street, two fire trucks rumbled past. New buildings go up, he thought, old ones burn down.
At home Porter drank from the bottle and pressed his nose to the window. Many nights Burke threw crowded parties, his house lit up, the neighborhood crammed with Japanese and German cars blocking Porter’s driveway. Tonight all was quiet, empty. The whole, still house settled around Porter, pressing on him. He drank to thin the blood in his hands, like packing a wheel bearing with fresh grease. He turned his pale hands, stretched them for their fit to a crescent wrench, a pry bar, a feeler gauge.
Porter remembered Burke, his first week there, had said, “Me and the boys,” like he’d arrived familiar with everything and everyone in Porter’s own place. A football pool was the scam (the word suited him: scam) for Burke and “the boys,” and did Porter want in? Then baseball, boxing, anything that would hold a bet. Every time, Porter said no. And still, Burke reminded him each visit, Porter’s gutters needed lining.
The only bets Porter made were with himself, and most of those he lost. Molly gone, kids scattered—like lottery tries thrown away. The Dodge, on blocks seven years now; a rebuild needed for something old enough that no one remembered its birth on a Detroit assembly line. No work left in useless knuckles. Porter drank, the amber line a quarter down the label now. His hands numbed. In his fist he gripped the bottle neck like a torque wrench—sixty pounds, ninety; he drank, and pretended to tighten the arms of his chair. Just enough, he told himself, not too much. Drinks piled up in him like weights tipping a scale. Doctors had warned him against it. He capped the bottle, set it on the shelf sideways, like a book.
Outside, Porter traced the lines of the Dodge beneath a blue street lamp. The powdery paint rubbed off like chalk on his hand. Mosquitoes, hatched from rusty pools in the floorboards, sang in his ears before biting. He smelled the mold that laced his upholstery. The bumper held as he lifted himself onto the hood and lay back, pillowing his head with the windshield. When the car was new Porter would lie like this parked on back roads, Stanley or J.C. or Harden beside him, radio playing, a sweaty bottle passing between them. Then into the car, top down, along the black roads that snaked between foothills and, where the hills tapered down, rolled out flat and opened to the sky like a dark carpet unfurled, blacktop paled to gray by a low moon, the Dodge hitting an easy eighty and humming.
He remembered his forty-fifth. “You old now,” Harden told him, and they ran the road. That night J.C. drove, and Porter stood on the front seat facing the blast of air, gripping the top of the windshield, riding the jolts that shook him knee to face, laughing, the wind snatching handfuls of his hair. Behind the Highway Six package store they stretched across the hot hood, the still engine ticking from the heat-damp August night—above them, a meteor shower. They watched stars fall, burn out like Fourth of July rockets.
“Somebody’s light going out,” Harden said. Another star fell: “Somebody else’s.”
Across the street, Burke passed his bedroom window wearing shiny black pajamas. Mrs. Burke too, her blonde hair stacked up, blue robe flowing around her. Porter watched Burke encircle her from behind and kiss her neck, then cross the window again. The room went dark. Porter felt the white car beneath him like a hard snowbank—cold, sealing an ache in his joints. He rose stiffly. Tomorrow, he would fix the Dodge.
Whiskey in his coffee, enough to loosen his hands. As he drank it down, the door sounded. He opened it to Burke’s face.
“Ever hear of the environment, Porter?” Burke said. “The county has regulations. That monstrosity of yours leaks purple liquid all over the drive. Gets in the ground water. Never mind the mosquitoes and vermin holed up in that thing. The county will be here Monday, to investigate. They’ll take your damn car away.”
“Steering fluid,” Porter answered. “One of the first for power steering, real innovation. Not to mention the FM.”
Burke smiled. “You just play your little game, Porter. The car’s gone. The process has started.” Then he left. Porter went inside and drank past what his knuckles needed, the amber line down to the rose on the label.
The toolbox an easy weight in his hand, Porter walked out and paced around the Dodge, lifted its hood. Beneath was rust and cracked hoses, pools of oil like small lakes on the engine block. Atop the water pump sat an abandoned bird’s nest. Porter closed the hood, walked to the parts store and emptied his wallet, then to the Tick-Tock where he bought a pint on credit. He borrowed a cart from the Safe way and pushed home with his purchases, drank, and rolled up his shirt sleeves.
Burke, rubbing a fresh shine on the red Mercedes, stopped to watch as Porter laid out his tools.
“It’s beyond repair,” Burke shouted and laughed, as if sharing a neighborly joke. Porter snapped the seal on the new pint and walked out toward the Mercedes, his legs wooden beneath him.
“You don’t know cars, Burke,” he said, his voice too loud.
Burke shook a handkerchief from his pocket to polish the three-pointed star mounted on the hood.
“This is a car,” he said. “It breaks—
I write a check. I know enough.” Everything about the Mercedes smelled new. Porter peered inside: brown leather, golf clubs on the back seat, white shoes with spikes on the floorboard.
“A car is born, has a life, dies,” Porter said. “It tells you this through your hands.”
Burke laughed. “I hope yours tells you bye-bye,” he said. “Come Monday, it’s gone.” Porter drank from the pint, set the bottle on the hood. The wax made the bottle slide; Burke snatched it away.
“You’ll scratch the paint!” he shouted. He shoved the bottle at Porter’s chest. Burke bent his face to the hood.
“Look. You put a hairline in it.”
Porter leaned toward the red hood, wavered, squinted. The surface blinded him, like sun reflected off deep water. Heat from it warmed his face, the paint red as fresh blood, his reflection melted so he could not make himself out. No scratch that he could see. They were quiet. Burke polished the hood.
“So,” Porter asked, “how’s the football pool?”
“Welcome to July, Porter,” Burke said. “No football.”
Porter, still bent, searched his distorted face in the surface of the car. He wanted to watch his words spill out of his mouth.
“You’re a betting man,” Porter said. “I bet I can get my car to run, drive it away.”
Burke rubbed the imagined scratch and shook his head.
“By dark, tomorrow,” he said, “take it around the block and you keep the damn car, leave it on blocks, whatever. You lose, you pay the towing first thing Monday. Sucker bet, friend.”
Porter drank, his hands numb. “Okay,” he said, and left Burke polishing the Mercedes.
Porter watered the battery, hooked it to the charger, cleaned the carb jets, replaced all the hoses. Band-aids, he thought, for cancer, for heart disease. When darkness came, Porter fired two trouble lights strung from the house. Beneath their light the broken engine looked startled, exposed. He tipped the bottle to keep his knuckles oiled; a pain began in his side, the scale in him tipping. Beneath the car, on a creeper looking up, Porter cataloged the deterioration. Tie rods gone, leaks from the oil pan, rust blackening everything like a forest fire. He worked, cutting corners, cheating, patching things, as Harden used to say, with spit and prayer.
Near midnight he primed the carb with lawn mower gas, turned the key in the ignition. The starter whirred and shook the frame, the engine wheezed then backfired, coughing up a faint cloud of blue smoke. Rings nearly gone, Porter realized, timing chain bad. He cranked again, another blue cloud rose fragile as a soap bubble. Porter watched it lift with the breeze toward Burke’s house, imagined it seeping through Burke’s walls, him sleep-breathing it, drawing it into his blood. Then, the carbon smell in him, Burke might understand what Porter understood, what Stanley and J.C. and Harden, all gone, had known. He would let the car stay until the earth took back its iron.
The engine’s whirring as he cranked it spoke of its ruin. Camshaft scarred, pushrods closed up like bad arteries. In the heart—the combustion chambers—no strength left, no compression, too much heat. Porter drank and worked—pulled a wrench, leaned into the pry bar—till his hands shook. The line of amber in the bottle shrank to thin as a fanbelt.
Beneath again on the creeper, Porter replaced the front seal and reconnected the steering. His head resting on the slick wood, he grew sleepy. Above him, past the engine well, the black sky full of stars lay like a tarp thrown over the car. His eyes watered, the stars blurred to a white smear, then the car groaned against its jackstands. He snapped awake, remembering that groan from the shop: Cheston Meyers crushed beneath the big Lincoln, how everyone in the garage had identified him by his legs sticking out, by the yellow socks he always wore, before the car had been lifted. Porter shot out from beneath the Dodge, shook the car to test its set on the stands. Squeaks, but no groan, no sick scrape of metal.
The sky shifted from black to dark gray. Thick dew settled on his tools, the car’s hood, his pant legs. His fingertips were blue, the knuckles stiff. The amber flowed in him like water. Porter lowered the car, tested the belts with his thumb, knocked dust from the air cleaner. As he bumped the starter to line up the pistons in their cylinders, he felt through the numbing tips of his fingers the car’s readiness. He poured gas in the tank. Enough work had been done.
Porter primed the carb, turned the key. The starter whirred, vibrated, caught. The car jumped, orange flame shot from the carb two feet, a throaty roar shook the ground. Porter moved to slam the hood, swimming a cloud of blue smoke. The Dodge settled to a shaky idle full of grind and scrape. Inside, his feet soaked by the floorboard puddle, Porter shifted to Drive and rolled into the street, his pint bottle a passenger beside him. He hit the accelerator in Neutral; the ragged exhaust note bounced against the houses. With his thumb Porter pressed the horn ring, and a raspy bark swelled from under the hood. Lights came on inside houses, curtains parted. Porter watched Burke’s house, still dark, then leaned on the horn again. The bedroom light came on, the front door flew open and Burke ran out in a paisley robe, shouting something Porter could not hear over the grind of the engine.
Porter danced the gas pedal, raced the engine, then hit Drive and scratched away in a burned rubber smell. The car listed hard to the right and he fought to keep the road, ignoring the stop signs. The gauges held; Porter made the right-hand turns that carried him around the block, back down his own street. From the top of the rise he saw Burke, leaning at his porch rail, watching. Burke shook his head and laughed at Porter. He raised his hands and slowly applauded. The process, Porter realized, had started: tools rusting, driveway empty, the car already not his. Wager or no, the inspectors from the county would be there Monday. A sucker bet, yes. Burke collected it with his laughing.
Porter shifted to Neutral, imagining Harden, Stanley, and J.C. packed in the car with him, along with Molly and the kids, Cheston Meyers with his yellow socks. The bottle held between his knees, Porter said aloud, “Here we go,” coasted the rise, and watched Burke wave his arms. The road dipped. Porter cut hard and slammed the red Mercedes head on. Porter’s forehead hit the steering wheel like a window slammed shut. He heard glass spray across the hood, the twist of metal, a hiss of air. Shaking, he lifted the pint in a toast to Burke. The amber line erased, Porter’s insides seized him. His vision blurred. He held his stomach, reversed the car and backed away, drove forward again. Metal scraped metal, something behind him dragged the street. The Mercedes sat creased, a shower of tinted glass and red paint chips dotting the folded hood. Burke ran across his lawn, trailing his robe, screaming. Porter levered the accelerator and the Dodge lurched forward, out of the neighborhood.
Porter found the old roads that twisted through the foothills, toward the place where the hills fell away and the road evened to a hard, dark line. He touched the cut on his head, tasted a button of blood and watched the gauge needles dip. A hiss sounded—oil and antifreeze spewed from under the hood and clouded the windshield. Halfway through their arc, the wipers burned out. Porter shifted to Neutral and stood in the seat, steering with one hand. The warm blast of wind pushed tears from his eyes, blew his shirt flat against him, whipped his hair. He coasted, glass fragments rattling in creases along the fender.
As Porter leaned out to wipe the windshield, his eye caught the hood ornament from the Mercedes—twisted, stuck like a wasp in his wiper blade. He grabbed it, tossed it to the floorboard, and watched it sink in the shimmering pool where the pale light of early morning reflected. The Dodge hit eighty, the hills rushed past—an outline of trees, faint moon stuck high in their branches.
KNOTS
MY husband Ray and his cronies are sports—they crush beer cans with their foreheads, stage arm-punch contests, wear identical hula girl tattoos. But their pranks are the worst. I get caught in the middle and it binds my stomach. One year, on Ray’s birthday, a policeman knocked on our door and asked to step inside, then stripped down to fuchsia bikini pants and shouted, “Charlie sent me!” Ray chased him away swinging
a beer bottle, then made me phone Charlie and ask him, in this nasal operator’s voice, to accept a collect call from the Knoxville city jail. (Charlie’s son Beau lives in Knoxville, and he’s had trouble with the law.) I know what you’re saying, I married him. But that was ten years ago, and things were different. We met when I turned nineteen, Ray was twenty-eight. Two girlfriends dragged me to a home game of the Winston Hornets, a class AA farm team for the Atlanta Braves. Back then I knew diddly about baseball, but I liked cold beer, shouting crowds, and dusty August nights when the sun stays up past eight. I watched the game in spurts, ate cheeseburgers with onions. On the bleacher before me, two men with shocks of gray hair and fat, splotchy noses jeered at the players, and with every pitch or whack of ball cursed and clutched at their heads. They consoled themselves with rancid cigars and large tumblers of beer. It was Hornets cup night.