by J. C. Geiger
“Holy shit,” Lance says.
He freezes. The tabby cats stare, anticipating his next move. There are mysterious, small-town forces at work here. Police involvement. He’s all tangled up with Stone. He’s gone too far with Dakota. She belongs to this town, and this town will have its revenge. He pulls on his thrift shop clothes and stares at the mirror.
He needs to be The Lance Hendricks Machine. The machine that plowed through six AP classes and hundreds of hours of pep-band practice, endless disappointments in Miriam’s basement, lectures from his mother. A machine that gets things done, and runs on a few simple truths:
You are valedictorian.
You are the first-chair trumpet player.
You have a full-ride scholarship.
Miriam Seavers is in love with you.
And nothing is different. Only the days have changed. It’s Tuesday instead of Saturday. His speech is in three days instead of six. This is now a story problem, and all he needs are the right numbers. Phone numbers, road numbers, bus route numbers, dollar numbers.
He will solve this equation for home.
The number 5 bus can drop him on Route 2. It’s a 25-minute ride, then a 10-minute, half-mile walk to Macland’s, X dollars for the repair, 17 miles back to the Trainsong, 400 miles to Bend.
He has the figures, and The Lance Hendricks Machine is moving. He is across the empty parking lot before anyone can see him. He is waiting 17 minutes for the number 5 bus and 47 minutes later he is standing outside Macland’s.
But his car is not there.
Not outside, where it should be. It’s still inside. Behind the Plexiglas, on a lift. No one is working on his car. The smells of popcorn and burnt coffee. The mechanics are wearing the same clothes, drinking the same soda. Only without Dakota, it’s no longer funny. Standing at the counter is the man from yesterday. The one with the purple tongue.
“I’m the owner of the Buick,” Lance tells him.
“Yeah? Lucky you.”
“I really need my car today,” Lance says.
“We’re working as fast as we can, kid.” His mouth makes a tight purple O when he purses his lips. The white badge on his blue uniform reads: clem.
“What’s wrong with the car, Clem?” Lance says.
“Plenty of things,” Clem says. “It won’t start.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Clem’s eyes shift, and Lance can hear it coming. The approaching sentence, like an atmospheric pressure change and then he actually says it:
“We’ve also noticed the check engine light is on.”
Check engine light. The words echo with Clem’s voice. In Lance’s head, the pop of a broken lightbulb.
“You know,” Clem continues. “That little light on the dash.”
Nails dig into Lance’s palms. He has two fists. Targets include Clem’s big jaw and a plastic cup of pens. Lance swings hard and smashes the cup. Pens scatter. The cup does a limp cartwheel across the floor.
“Hey!” Clem says. “Those are our pens!”
“Check engine? The dummy light, Clem? Do I look like a dummy to you?” Lance chokes back the words ACT score. Valedictorian.
Clem shrugs.
“Get my car off the lift. Now.”
Clem mumbles something and walks away. Fifteen minutes later, the Buick is coming down and Clem has an invoice with him, bright yellow paper with perforated sides and a bold black number in a box.
“Five hundred and fifty dollars?” Lance says. “For what? What did you even fix?”
“Your starter.”
“There was nothing wrong with my starter!”
“It was blown. Looked recent, too. Someone had been cranking on it pretty hard.”
Just crank on that real hard.
“You’re kidding me,” Lance says. “Three hundred dollars for diagnostics? I’m not paying that.”
“Then you’re not getting your keys.” Clem lifts his chin a little, as if inviting someone to punch him there. Another blue-suited mechanic walks up behind him. A show of force.
“And we’re gonna need you to pick up those pens,” the other mechanic says.
Lance stares at them, and a sudden coolness washes over him.
“That’s it,” Lance says.
“What?” Clem says.
The red lever. Break glass in case of emergency. Lance withdraws his phone from his pocket.
“What are you doing?” Clem asks.
“I am calling my mother.”
“Oooo,” Clem says. The other mechanic laughs.
Lance will pay the price for pulling The Mom Lever. She interrupts his hello, and her opening salvo has all the words: responsibility, ungrateful, loyalty, disaster, ruined. But he can endure. This is not about words. It’s about numbers. Minutes and dollars. And she will only talk so long before he can explain that her only son is being taken advantage of by cruel small-town mechanics.
“Now what’s going on?” she finally asks.
He tells her.
“So let me get this straight,” she begins softly. She repeats back the details, then Lance stands up and gets ready for the show. Clem does not hear his ringing phone the same way Lance does. Clem even answers with a smirk, as if his world is not about to end. It takes his mom about ten seconds to shatter his smirk all over the floor. Poor Clem’s smirk may never be the same again. It only gets worse. Clem, not knowing Lance’s mother, attempts to speak. He jerks and sputters. He twists his head one direction, then another. He makes the mistake of saying Listen, lady.
Lance flinches, and Clem goes pale. His eyes widen with horror. He looks out the window, over his shoulder. Like someone is coming for him. Lance can’t watch. Quietly, he walks over and picks up the pens.
His mother calls him back with that straight-out-of-combat edge in her voice.
“That’s it for the Buick. I’m having it junked out.”
“Mom—”
“I’ve had it, Lance. Your car is off life support.”
“How am I supposed to get home?”
“I’ve made all the arrangements. Just get yourself back to the hotel.”
“Okay, but—”
“And now I understand there is a police officer looking for you?” She laughs, not a happy sound. “Why didn’t you tell me about the accident?”
“I didn’t really have—”
“You just need to get home. Immediately. That’s what needs to happen. Get yourself to the hotel.”
“Okay, Mom.”
Back at the counter, Clem pushes some papers at him.
“Special lady you got there,” Clem says. “I’d be doing you a favor, keeping you here.”
Lance thinks about this. Stares at the counter. “Is there another mechanic in town?”
“For this car? No.”
“What about—is it Robert? Robert’s Auto Repair?” Lance remembers the bizarre advertisement from the phone book. A REAL MECHANIC.
“Robert!” Clem says, suddenly coming to life. “That guy? Yeah. He’ll take your car as a down payment. If he’ll take your car at all.”
“Is he good?”
“He’s good with problem cars.” Clem chews the inside of his cheek. “He’s the best.”
“Maybe I’ll go see him,” Lance says.
“Your mom had better be rich, kid. And you’d better not pull any of your grade-school b.s. over at Robert’s. He’ll feed you to his fish.”
Outside, the air is quivering with a grass-crackling, sticky-tar-bubble heat. The tow truck his mother called is waiting for him. A bleak shade of green, like something decommissioned from the military. The driver has a wattle chin and nicotine-stained teeth. Instead of hello he says:
“Junkyard?”
His eyes are small and dark, buried in the folds of his face.
“How much to go to Robert’s?” Lance asks, tapping his wallet.
“Robert’s Auto Repair? I got orders to go to the junkyard.”
“How much?” Lance asks, heart poundin
g.
“How much you got?”
Lance has thirty-three dollars. The man takes the money without counting it and Lance climbs into the cab, which is neat, but rank. Stale fries and wet laundry. No air-conditioning. No identification in the truck. No pictures, no stitched oval name tag. The man says nothing, and turns onto the highway.
Hot pavement stretches out like a quivering blue ribbon. Miles later, the driver twists the truck onto a narrow lane that winds through tall walls of ferns and blackberries. Sun filters down in blobs and the sky has a silver tint, like they’ve traveled into a new layer of atmosphere. A gap opens in the vegetation, and they’re crunching down a gravel road.
The truck idles in front of a two-story cyclone fence. Concertina wire spools around the top. Blades like silver butterflies. The driver stares at Lance.
Small, dark eyes.
“What?” Lance says.
The driver rolls down his window, leans out, and punches a code into a keypad. The tall gate splits, swinging inward without a sound. A flawless mechanism. They pull inside, cresting a hill. An industrial maze sprawls below, a factory that manufactured something, maybe aluminum. They descend and are lost in tight gray corridors. Steel shutters and shop doors. They drive to a dead end, then make a hidden turn.
The driver stops. Stares.
“What?” Lance says.
“End of the line.”
The driver points a meaty index finger. Like a horror movie. Like he might open his mouth wide and scream. Lance jerks back, looks over his shoulder. A small yellow awning over a gray door.
ROBERT’S AUTO REPAIR
Lance exhales.
“What?” the driver says.
“I wasn’t sure where we were going,” Lance says.
“I went where you told me to go.”
“Right,” Lance says. “I’m just glad to be here.”
“Are you?” A hiss, and the Buick’s wheels touch the ground. “That’s because you haven’t met Robert.”
Robert’s office is sparse and neat. A well-lit collection of ninety-degree angles. A giant wooden desk. On the desk, a single black portfolio. And a wall-size aquarium at the back of the room with the biggest fish Lance has ever seen.
The fish is several feet long with scalloped silver scales like layers of freshly minted dimes. It has a blade of a lower lip, protruding at a forty-five-degree angle. The fish doesn’t swim. It paces. Like the grizzly Lance once saw at the zoo with his mother, the day he came to understand the word cagey.
A door bangs open.
The man stepping inside looks ready for a postapocalyptic gunfight. Torn leather jacket, bounty hunter sunglasses. Black hair combed in neat, greasy rows. He shoves the sunglasses up on his forehead and his dark eyes roll around the room like overlubricated ball bearings. Those eyes will not stop.
“I’m Robert,” he says. “And that’s my platinum arowana.” His voice is rough. Words crumble out of his mouth.
“Beautiful fish,” Lance says.
“Ha!” Robert says, crossing behind the desk. “They call them monkey fish. Want to know why?”
“Yeah.”
“Because they eat monkeys.” Robert stares at the fish as if he hates it. “Solitary son of a bitch. Can’t put another fish in there. Just try.”
The front door bangs open again and a young man enters with a clattering steel box. Robert jolts, his tattered coat ruffling like plumage.
“Shit, Douglas!” he shouts. “Way to make an entrance.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Douglas is just a few years older than Lance. He carries a stack of papers to a filing cabinet.
“So what brings you here?” Robert says, turning his wild eyes on Lance. “That Buick out back?”
“Yeah,” Lance says. “Macland’s said you’re good with problem cars.”
“Oh, that’s what they said, did they?” Robert throws himself into the leather chair behind the desk, rocking backward. “What they meant was, I actually fix things. What they meant was, I don’t sit around giving grandmas lube jobs all day. What they meant was, I’m a real mechanic.”
“That’s great,” Lance says. “I was—”
“I’ll tell you something else,” he says. “I expect to be paid for my work. I’ll tell you—I’m not doing this for fun. Am I doing this shit for fun, Douglas?”
“No sir,” Douglas says.
“No sir,” Robert says, leaning forward. “I’m a rabid capitalist businessman. I’m here to make money. Right, Douglas?”
“Right,” Douglas says.
“Kids don’t feed themselves, do they Douglas?”
“Nope.”
“Now let’s get out and see that car.”
Robert’s garage is a two-story cathedral. Only five vehicles inside: gleaming, foreign things, tiny and colorful, more candy than car. Two are up on giant lifts bookended by machines the size of mainframe computers. And there’s space. So much space. Lance’s Buick is in the middle of it all. Isolated as if contagious.
Robert walks up and pops the hood, exposing the engine.
“Are you kidding me?” he says, a vein near his left temple suddenly visible.
“What?” Lance says, peering over his shoulder.
Robert reaches into the engine block and plucks out a chunk of yellow glop. “You see this?”
Lance nods.
“Insulation. Some sonofabitch squirted insulation on your hose.” He flicks the chunk against the wall like a cigarette butt.
“And this!” He backhands a limp piece of plastic, then tears it off.
Lance flinches. “Is that—”
“I’ll tell you what that is,” Robert says. He flaps a wide palm in front of his cheek, like a leaf. “Some shade-tree bullshit. This is out under the maple with your football buddies and a case of Oly.”
Lance almost laughs, but Robert is tearing into the guts of his engine block. He twists his wrist and yanks out a giant piece of metal, like pulling a tooth.
“And this?”
“Airflow sensor,” Lance says.
“Sure, if you’re driving a Dongfeng in Beijing, goddamnit!” Robert says, spittle flying. “But we’re not in China, are we? We buy American here, don’t we, Douglas?”
“Yes sir,” Douglas calls back.
“I won’t put this part back in your car,” he says. “You could beg me. Pweese, Wobert. Pweese give me a cheap Chinese part. Why? So it can break in six months? So we can buy more shit parts from China? No!” He thrusts the part at Lance’s chest.
“I think the original airflow sensor is still on the backseat,” Lance says.
Robert glances in back. “Yeah, good.”
“Any idea what’s wrong?”
“You got two issues.” Robert’s hands writhe like mice in his jacket pockets. “You got what was wrong in the first place. Then you got what’s wrong now that a couple of grease monkeys have been jerking off on your engine block.”
“Geez,” Lance says. “I can’t believe this.”
“Hey, hey,” Robert says, clapping him on the back. “Don’t go to the dark side, kid. Look. This is an amazing car. A ’93 Buick Century, V-6 Custom? You kiddin’ me? American made. Bulletproof.” His eyes were fixed, reverent. “Hell. If I had to peel out of here in any one of these pieces of shit and drive cross-country, I’d do it in this car.”
“It was a gift.”
“Well,” he says, “someone must love you. Let’s sort this out.” Back in his office, Robert pulls out a black calculator, a fountain pen, and a neatly lined sheet of paper. He works with horrifying delicacy. On the wall, beside the aquarium, a framed picture Lance hadn’t noticed before. A family photo crammed with at least a dozen faces. An attractive, red-haired woman stands beside Robert. Lance recognizes Douglas as the oldest kid in the picture.
“Here it is,” Robert says. Lance’s eyes skip to the bottom, ink figures so neat they might’ve been typewritten.
$1,500
“Fifteen hundred dollars?” Lance stops br
eathing. He touches his empty wallet.
“Just the advance authorization,” Robert says, shuffling papers.
“Authorizing what?”
“Diagnostics.” Lance hears himself ugh.
“Look,” Robert says. “I can’t work on a meter, kid, coming out to call you every hundred dollars’ worth of work. I need full trust. I work with a clear head, and it takes as long as it takes.”
“Is the car even worth fifteen hundred dollars?” Lance asks.
“Is it worth it to you?”
Lance nods. “Yeah.”
“Then you just answered your own question. Sign right there, and there.” Lance signs his name twice and Robert tucks the papers in a desk drawer. “Now, where do you need to be?”
“The Trainsong Motel,” Lance says. “Is there a bus stop nearby?”
Robert scoffs and picks up the phone. He calls someone named Bea and asks her to scoot right over. About five minutes later, the red-haired woman from the picture shows up. She and Robert kiss, then she looks Lance up and down.
“The Man With The Buick,” she says.
“That’s me.”
Bea is sweet. She has attitude, but none of the googly-eyed madness of her husband. She drives a Buick, too. A much newer, much nicer Buick. On the way to the Trainsong, Lance tells her the story of his breakdown and she really seems to listen. Her hands are small and pale and delicate on the wheel. He tries to imagine those fingers locking up with Robert’s greasy metal-ripping talons and can’t quite make the pieces fit.
“How many kids do you guys have?” he asks.
“Twelve,” Bea says with a proud smile.
Kids don’t feed themselves.
Twelve kids. Which part of their family will Buick diagnostics finance? One meal for fourteen? Robert Junior’s braces? Bea drops him at the front office and gives his shoulder a squeeze.
“Robert will fix you up,” she says. “He’s the best.”
Bea’s confidence lights him up, but the feeling vanishes the instant he opens the door to his motel room. That smell. And the place is just as he left it. A wreckage of dirty clothes. Scattered papers and the awful orange duffel. He’s just starting to straighten up when his phone rings.