AHMM, November 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I called after Mrs. Samuelson, who had gone only a few steps toward their store.

  "Where was it this happened?"

  She looked back at me. “About five miles out of town. My folks have a farm over near Spring City. I was on my way back from there when it happened."

  I nodded and she continued on her way. Her accident had happened on the highway to Spring City. If you stayed on it, that same highway eventually connected to others that went to the capital, but it was a longer way to get there. The shortest way went through the county seat. Perhaps the passenger could have been Mr. Barnes hitching his ride. But still, why would Barnes go out that way to hitch a ride? And what connection might he have with the junkyard?

  As interesting as that thought was, I was also trying to remember something else I had noticed about one of the other junker cars I had seen at Cluff's. I had been looking around after finding the running board, hoping to come across any parts for my pickup project. At the time, it was just something a little odd, a little out of place. I hadn't spent a lot of time looking at it, and I had intended to look at the car again when I went back to remove the running board. But with my head spinning after discovering the Packard and with the yard's mechanic looking over my shoulder, I had not thought of it again until now. I spent a long few moments trying to remember exactly what it was. And what it meant.

  * * * *

  "Actually, I didn't think much of it when I first noticed it,” I said.

  It was the end of the evening. All the chores had been done and Billy had, after three tries, been successfully put to bed. I was sitting on a sofa in our living room with Lillie.

  "What was it you saw?"

  "One of the wrecks had been moved. And recently. And for no reason that I can think of. The frame was sitting right on the ground. When a car's been sitting out there for a while, grass and weeds kind of take over. But they don't grow under the parts of the car that are sitting on the ground. From what I saw, the car had been moved. There was a bare strip along the side."

  "Don't they do that sometimes? To get parts off?"

  "Sure. But anything underneath that car was gone a long time ago. Axles, wheels, running gear were gone, and grass was growing where they would have been."

  "Then why move it?"

  "I can't think of any reason."

  "Is it important?"

  "I don't know. Probably not."

  Nevertheless, I sat for a long time trying to think of a reason. Finally I said, “I ought to go over and have another look at it, make sure I saw what I think I saw."

  "This is not any of your business, Cliff Mills. From what Dave said, you might not be very welcome over there."

  "I can't tell the sheriff about it. He thinks I'm seeing things."

  "Dave didn't say that."

  "After his deputy went over there on a wild goose chase, what else is he going to think?"

  * * * *

  I didn't go back over to Cliff's the next day. I sort of put it out of my mind as I looked over the long crease in the fender of Mr. Samuelson's car. Yesterday I had taken off the damaged running board and sanded a few rust spots on the replacement I'd gotten from the junkyard. I knew that was going to be the easy part, so naturally, I had done that first. Now all that was left was the hard part, the fender. My work habits seemed to be going downhill on this job.

  I didn't have all the assorted hammers and hand anvils a good body shop would have, but the old blacksmith's tools and equipment were still there in one end of the shop. I sorted through them and came up with an amazing assortment of hammers and other things I thought might actually be quite useful.

  Still, it was going to take a little more courage than I had to go directly to the fender of Mr. Samuelson's Plymouth. I took Lillie's advice and started to practice my fender unbending skills on a fender that didn't matter as much in the larger scheme of things. I picked up the one I'd taken off the old Dodge and began to attack one of its major creases. One thing I had learned from that body man I'd watched is that if you begin with the point of first impact and work that back to its original place, the minor wrinkles will try to follow.

  It was logical, but finding that spot on this one was easier said than done. The metal was moving slightly, but at the present rate this dent was going to take the rest of the morning. Nevertheless, it was working, and as I worked, I thought about how the same logic might be applied to the problem of the tire and the missing banker. The only problem was, I couldn't put my finger on the point of first impact of that problem either.

  I was standing there scratching my head when a car pulled up in front. It was Mrs. Constantine, and the front of her car was enveloped in steam.

  "I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr. Mills,” she said. “But when she started to blow, I thought I'd better not wait to get home before I filled it up again. And I thought you could see if it was leaking somewhere."

  "You had the right idea,” I said.

  Mrs. Constantine is an elderly widow who lives just through the block from us. She's been a good neighbor and friend to my wife and me. While we waited for her radiator to dry off and cool, she told me about her morning.

  "I've been over to the county seat to take my money out of the bank."

  "The Grower's Bank is open again?"

  "No, not that one. The State Bank. They say it's going to be all right, but with what's been happening to banks all over, a person can't be too careful!"

  "I guess that's true."

  "My son Fred, who lives over there, he had a little money in Grower's. The authorities won't say when it'll be open for business. It's in the paper, the owner is still missing."

  I told her about fixing a tire for a man we thought might be the missing banker and about his not returning to pick it up. I didn't say anything about the junkyard where I'd seen his car, though.

  "I saw a car like that a few days ago,” she said. “I was down at the gas station. Not often you see a car like that in this town. They were driving away just as I was pulling in."

  "They?"

  "There were two men in the front seat."

  There it was, the banker's car again, and I wondered again who the second person was. Somehow, I had trouble with the theory of a hitchhiker. Even from my brief acquaintance with the banker, he didn't seem like the type of person who would bother giving a ride to a hitchhiker. But maybe I had him pegged wrong.

  "The radiator has stopped steaming,” Mrs. Constantine said.

  I put my hand on the radiator cap and judged it was indeed cool enough to remove. I grabbed a hose and refilled it. While I was at it, I carefully checked it and the hoses.

  "I don't find anywhere it could be leaking,” I said.

  "I know radiators eventually get clogged up,” she said. “I probably need a new one.” There was disappointment and resignation in her voice.

  "I've heard of a fellow over in the county seat that rebuilds them, cleans them out, and it's a lot cheaper than a new one. But if you don't do more than drive around town, it should be all right for a while."

  She offered to pay for my trouble in filling and checking. I refused and said it was no trouble at all, but I knew she'd be calling with a big pie or cake or a plate of cookies in the next few days.

  Just before climbing into her car, she paused to glance from the old Dodge to the fender I had been working on.

  "I heard you banging away on that fender when I drove up. My husband used to have a little forge. He would fix things with it and sometimes I'd have to help him. Why don't you fire up that big one over there in the corner and heat that fender up before you start banging away?"

  I turned to stare warily at the forge. I knew less about operating a forge than I did about snake charming. And even less, it seemed, than Mrs. Constantine.

  * * * *

  I wondered if the body man I knew would have approved of the idea. But I had seen him occasionally heat a damaged area with a special acetylene torch. I didn't have one of those, so maybe the forge m
ight be worth trying.

  As I watched my neighbor drive away, I noticed Dave's truck parked in front of the city offices down the street. I walked over to look him up.

  I found him as he was coming out and walking to his truck.

  "They found Mr. Barnes up at the capital,” Dave said right away. “They haven't arrested him, but they're sure thinkin’ the two of them could have had a run-in over that foreclosure notice."

  I told him about the two people Mrs. Constantine and Mrs. Samuelson had seen in the Packard.

  "Interestin',” Dave said. “The sheriff might think it would support his idea Barnes was involved."

  "And how did his car get to that junkyard?"

  Dave paused for a long moment. “They're still thinkin’ you maybe made a mistake."

  I paused, too, but not for as long. “Can't say I blame ‘em."

  "Barnes says he left early that morning to hitch a ride up there. His wife says he did. But I sort of get the feeling they'd really like to arrest him anyway."

  I could see Dave was as troubled as I was by that statement. Then he added, “With cops up there talking to him, his wife says the boss at the place where he was trying to get a job ... Well, it's not looking very likely now. Too bad, too, with his kids looking as scrawny as they do."

  Dave shrugged, more as an expression of futility than anything.

  We parted without mentioning the car over at the junkyard, the one I thought had been moved. The sheriff's people would really have a laugh over that. And I didn't want to embarrass Dave any more than I thought I already had. When it came right down to it, it might have been moved for reasons I couldn't even begin to think of. Or maybe I was wrong about what I had seen. A nagging feeling wasn't enough, and in the end I felt a little silly about even bringing it up to Lillie.

  * * * *

  "The bellows on that old forge was in good shape,” I said to Lillie. “There was plenty of coal left from heating the shop last winter. And I finally got the hang of how much air to pump."

  We were sitting on our back porch looking out on the yard. It was shaded and cooled by a couple of enormous walnut trees her grandfather had the foresight to plant about fifty years ago.

  Billy was down in a patch of dirt nearby, playing an intense game of marbles with one of the neighborhood boys. Under his friend's coaching, he seemed to be catching on to the basic idea of the game, which was to shoot a marble with your thumb and knock as many of your opponent's marbles out of a circle as you can.

  "You actually fired it up?” Lillie said.

  "And I put the fender from the Dodge on it. I had a couple of those dents worked out in nothing flat. There's a couple of minor wrinkles I'll have to fill by melting some solder into them, but if I'm careful not to bang it out in the other direction, it saves a lot of time."

  "Does this mean you won't be calling a junkyard to pick up your little project?” Lately, she had started calling it my ‘little project.’ Probably to encourage me.

  I smiled. “Someone told me I shouldn't get into the habit of not finishing something I've started."

  "Good advice, whoever it was."

  We quietly watched the boys’ game for a few moments, but my thoughts were somewhere else.

  I was finally remembering the other thing that had seemed a little off. It was that patch of bare dirt. It should have been just a patch of bare dirt, but one spot alongside the wreck showed signs of having been disturbed by footprints. Some of the surrounding weeds had been broken down, too, and were beginning to dry up. There had been some recent activity there, but I simply couldn't imagine what part they would have been after.

  Another idea began sneaking into my mind, trying to attract my attention, and I realized I might indeed have an idea why that junker had been moved. But it was an idea so outlandish I was hardly prepared to discuss it ... even with myself.

  * * * *

  I kept thinking about the old junker the next morning as I was watching Mr. Samuelson's fender sitting in the coals of the forge. I was watching it closely because working with the old Dodge fender had taught me that all I needed was a soft reddish glow that would let me push the metal easily. Get it too hot and the sheet metal wants to melt or stretch. But doing what I was doing still left plenty of time to wonder about those footprints.

  In the afternoon, Lillie stopped by the shop and spent a moment looking over what I had been doing. The fender was back on Mr. Samuelson's car. I was using a file to smooth out the solder I had melted into a few remaining wrinkles.

  "It looks very nice,” she said.

  "It's about ready to take over to the paint shop in the county seat,” I said, running my fingers over the formerly dented fender of the Plymouth and thinking maybe that old body man might approve.

  "Have you thought about painting it yourself?"

  "Me?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't have a spray gun, and I don't know how to use one to paint a car anyway."

  "Seems to me, you'll have a lot of painting to do on that little project of yours."

  It took only a half second to know where she was going with this.

  "It takes a lot of practice to get a good even coat on a curved surface."

  "It looks like you have one about ready to practice on.” She pointed at the fender from the old Dodge I'd been using to test my techniques with the old forge. “You already have a compressor. Do you think a spray gun and some paint might cost you less than what you would pay sending it out?"

  Actually, I had thought about it. For about a second and a half. It would be just one more thing I would have to learn how to do.

  "I think you'll do all right. You can do anything when you set your mind to it,” she said with a broad smile.

  I wasn't sure she was right about that, but it was nice to hear the words anyway.

  * * * *

  Later, I spent a restless night. I wasn't only worrying about how to spray an even coat of paint on a curved surface. It was the disturbed dirt. And the other thing that had been creeping into my mind when I tried to imagine why it had been disturbed. If I didn't have another look, it was going to bother me forever. Sleep came only after I made a couple of decisions about the next day.

  First, I would go over to the county seat to see about a spray gun and paint. And I would go have another look at the old junker. It was stretching it more than a little to say it was part of the same trip because Cluff's was in the opposite direction. Still, I would stretch it.

  And second, I wouldn't mention the stretch to Lillie or anyone else.

  * * * *

  When I left the house the next morning, I was wearing a disguise. No, not like you think. I wasn't dressed up like Charlie Chan. But it occurred to me that I ought to wear something different when I showed up again at Cluff's. Perhaps a different shirt and cap would at least postpone immediate recognition. I'd often had the experience of not immediately recognizing someone when I had seen them in an unaccustomed place or in unfamiliar clothing.

  On my way, I stopped at the gas station to get a few gallons to see me through my errands. The owner was another of my neighbors who lived just a few houses away. He recognized me immediately, of course. But then, he knew me well and I was sure he had seen me wearing this same outfit before. While he was levering gas up into the big glass reservoir of the pump stand, I thought to ask if he had noticed a Packard passing through in the late afternoon a few days ago.

  "Sure. Nice car. Be hard to forget. Stopped here and I filled his tank all the way up too."

  "Was anyone with the driver when he was here?"

  "Nope, by himself, he was. Least, when he came in. Saw a feller get into his car while he was stopped waitin’ for traffic to clear on the highway."

  "Did you see who it was who got in the Packard?"

  "No one I know."

  "Wasn't anyone from town, then?"

  "Could'a been Herbert Hoover, but I doubt it,” he said, smiling at his own joke. “Didn't get a real good look, an
d I had another car come in right then."

  I wondered if he might have recognized Barnes if it had been him. Maybe, but I decided not to mention him. I thought about stopping off and mentioning this to Dave, but decided to put it off until after all my errands.

  At the moment, I had other things to think about. Such as an excuse for poking around the junkyard again. There was no circumstance I could think of where an ordinary person would simply show up saying, “I just want to have a look around.” It took only a moment to decide I could be looking for a replacement radiator for Mrs. Constantine's car. While she hadn't actually asked me to repair it, it was likely she would sometime soon. When she did, a serviceable one from a junkyard might even be less expensive for her than having hers rebuilt. It seemed a safe request because I thought I had seen a couple of junkers of the same year as hers.

  The morning started well. The paint dealer had a used spray gun and air regulator, both in almost new condition. And he agreed to sell me the equipment and paint on credit until I was paid by Mr. Samuelson. I left there feeling quite optimistic about the day.

  The feeling lasted almost all the way to Cluff's. By the time I got to the junkyard, I had worked up a pretty big helping of nerves, and it wouldn't have taken a lot to get me to turn around and hightail it back to my shop. I parked and looked the place over. There were several cars parked in front, indicating there were other customers in the place. That was good. And the old tow truck was absent, as was the newer one. I hoped the mechanic I had encountered before was out on a tow and that meant I likely wouldn't be running into him. That was even better.

  With a deep breath, I grabbed my bag of tools and stepped inside. The moment I did, the feeling returned that I had seen the proprietor before, and this time I remembered where it could have been. It was the gray, almost white hair on his temples that was familiar. I had seen the same flash of white on the passenger of the tow truck that was pulling the Cadillac a few days ago. I asked myself if he could have been the man seen getting into Murdock's Packard by the gas station a few days ago. I also asked myself what the Sam Hill I thought I was doing here and whether I should be quickly turning around and getting back to work in my shop.