The man offered his hand. This took Witherspoon aback a little. He had not expected to be touched. While they shook, the man said his name. Ronald Stallings. Witherspoon said his name back but did not pay too close attention to this exchange, because he was studying the man’s face, which was what they called open. Witherspoon was not expecting this, either, and he had never really thought what it mean to say someone had an open face. What it seemed to mean in this particular case was that Witherspoon was not in the least bit threatened by the way this man, this Ronald Stallings, looked him over.
Witherspoon studied this man’s eyes. He was looking for mockery or distrust but what he saw was the desire to sell this Eldorado. This man did not even appear to note the strangeness of a white man in a neighborhood where two tow-truck drivers had been shot just because they wore uniforms that, if you were high on some kind of dope or were worn down to where you just didn’t give a damn, might have resembled the police.
“In the market for a Caddy this sweet afternoon?”
“She’s a boat, ain’t she?” said Witherspoon, studying the sunken El D.
“Floats like the QE Two.”
Witherspoon feigned uninterest as Stallings talked up product. Witherspoon nodded a lot, avoided eye contact.
“Witherspoon,” Stallings said suddenly. He was looking beyond them, at the LeSabre parked snug against the curb. “That your ride?”
When Witherspoon conceded that the Buick was his, Stallings said, “Witherspoon Buick? I doubt you’re down here checking out the competition.”
“Straight up? I’m looking for a salesman.”
“You mean you’re straight-up looking for a black salesman.”
“I’m looking for a good salesman.”
“Who can sell to black people.”
“Who can sell a car to a nun.”
“Ain’t that many black nuns.”
“Proves my point.”
Stallings cocked his head and pretended to be confused. “Your point?”
“I could care less about color.”
“Oh, okay, uh-huh, right,” said Stallings, as if he’d heard this before. “Which is why you’re down in Glenville instead of over across on the East Side?”
“I used to play in the park over here when I was a kid. I have some fond memories of this part of town.”
Stallings laughed. His laugh was open, too. He saw a lot in a little, this man. Swift on the size-up.
“Let me guess. You got a crew of Polish and Hungary boys and some flat-out O-hi-o rednecks working your lot who’d as soon go broke as sell a car to a Negro.”
“They are a particular group of individuals.”
“And black people, in your estimation, love a Buick.”
Witherspoon shrugged. “We sell quality vehicles.”
“Japanese invasion got your ass on the run,” said Stallings. “Kamikaze sapsuckers taking a bite out of everybody’s wallet these days.”
“Desperate times.”
“Desperate measures, too,” said Stallings. “I imagine it would be kind of desperate, too, me trying to cop a customer on a all-white lot.”
“Oh, I’d make sure you got your shot.”
“With the Negroes?”
“You’d be selling cars to anyone who wanted to buy a car, and a whole lot who think they aren’t ready to buy.”
“Let’s get down to it, Mr. Witherspoon,” said Stallings.
“You can call me Spoon. All the others do, whether I say they can or not.”
“Spoon,” said Ronald, rolling it around in his mouth. “Nah, I think I’ll pass on calling you what the others do without your permission. So what I am hearing you say is you’re down here looking to add some affirmative action to your staff. But what I am hearing you mean is, this city’s black and getting blacker and you need someone to move some units to the brothers and sisters.”
Witherspoon slid his hand beneath the hood of the Eldorado. He found the latch and popped it, lifted the hood and propped it.
“You know my boss is having a high time watching this,” said Stallings. “It’s like a drive-in movie through that big glass. He had me swipe it down yesterday on account of we have not sold a vehicle in two weeks. My boss won’t care too much to get poached by some East Side operation looking to prey on his staff. Especially a white man moving new units. I imagine you’re going have to make things right for my man before I even think about leaving here.”
“How much?”
“I’d say a thousand would ease his pain.”
“What does he want for this crate?”
“Okay. I see. You’ll be wanting something besides a salesman in the bargain.”
“Lincoln freed the slaves, Mr. Stallings.”
“Hold up, here,” said Stallings, his face no longer open. He took a step closer to Witherspoon, which ought to have reminded Witherspoon of the neighborhood he was in, the fact that he had no friends down here, but instead made him worry he’d offended the man.
“You think I’m saying you get to own me for that? You don’t get shit but me off this lot.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Witherspoon. “I meant, you got a contract with him? Otherwise, see, my paying him off might look like he’s selling you off, that’s all I was saying.”
“Look like that to him or to you? If that man in there could sell me off, he’d do it. He’d tag on for these brand-new boots, though, and my tie, too. I don’t have no contract with the man. Down here we don’t sign contracts. I got a responsibility to him is all.”
Witherspoon tried to imagine one of his salesmen displaying such loyalty.
“Crank it up,” said Witherspoon.
Stallings pulled the key from his pocket. Witherspoon listened to the idle for thirty seconds before he drew his hand across his neck.
“Least you could do is replace the eggbeater somebody stuck in there in place of an engine,” he said in the praise-be quiet following the ragged death of the engine. “How much does he want for it?”
“He’s got it down for a grand. Though I believe he’d take eight hundred cash.”
Witherspoon reached for his wallet. He had stashed it in his inside coat pocket instead of in his back pocket as usual, which open-faced Stallings took note of.
“You carrying that much cash on you? Myself, I lived down here all my life and I don’t carry any more than lunch money.”
“I anticipated a transaction.”
“What you ought to anticipate is these dope fiends sticking a knife in your face. But I don’t reckon you’ll be back down here again.”
“I’ll send a man down here to pick it up later today,” said Witherspoon, nodding at the Caddy. “Though I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with it.”
“You don’t sell used?”
“I don’t sell crap.”
“Well, I happen to be between vehicles right now. You float me a little advance on my first check and I’ll make your money back on it.”
“You know you’re working on commission?”
“I’ll make it up to you in a week.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever advanced a man on his check before he’s even sold a car.”
“We’ll call it a signing bonus.”
“This ain’t the Cavaliers you’re joining,” said Witherspoon, though he felt his own face opening at the way Stallings worked. He had such a good feeling about this man, he would have handed him the keys to the LeSabre just to have him on the lot.
“Come by at noon tomorrow, I’ll get you through the paperwork, show you around the lot.”
First thing in the morning, Witherspoon called his boys into his office.
“You hired a spook” said Walenski. “To sell to spooks, right?”
“You only sell to Poles?” said Witherspoon.
“You think a white woman’s going to buy a car from a black man, Spoon?”
“You know what I think? I think the fact that we are having this conversation is proof tha
t it is not the economy or goddamn Toyota that’s about to drive me out of business but the fact that I have packed my lot with idiots stupid enough, in such uncertain financial times, to talk back to the man who signs their checks.”
Stallings appeared suddenly in the lot just before noon. The boys kept their distance, clumped up in the lot, smoking and looking occasionally at Witherspoon as he led Stallings through the stock.
“They’ll ease up,” said Witherspoon. “It’ll take them some time.”
“Don’t make a bit of difference to me if they never say boo,” said Stallings. “I’m here to make money, not friends.”
That evening, on his way home, Witherspoon spotted Stallings waiting on the bus. He pulled over and waved him in.
“Where’s your vehicle?”
“Funny thing, I took that Eldorado home last night, before I even pulled up in my drive, somebody took it off my hands.”
“How much did you get for it?”
“Enough to pay my bus fare back across town. But you know I got to transfer twice? They don’t make it easy on a black man to get over here.”
“How much did you get for it?”
“I did okay.”
“Well,” said Witherspoon, trying to sound gruff, “I hope you play as hard on my court.”
“I reckon I’ll make it up to you by noon tomorrow.”
“You reckon?”
“Got a fellow coming by first thing. He sings in the choir with my wife.”
“Church, huh?” Witherspoon was thinking a churchgoing man had a far better constituency than a pack of drunks whose friends had to pool their money for cab fare after spending every night in a tavern.
“You a God-fearing man, Stallings?”
“Fear is not what gets me out of bed and up to the House of Prayer when the wind’s coming off that lake at six below.”
They were stopped at a light. Witherspoon looked over at his passenger. “So you attend church to sell cars?”
“Nah,” said Stallings, “It’s not like that at all. That wouldn’t be right. See, I like the singing.”
The next morning Witherspoon was standing with Stallings in the showroom, going over some features of the new models, when a rust-colored Datsun pulled into the lot.
“That’s my man,” said Stallings, but he made no move, nor did any of the others as they watched a black hand emerge from the window and palm the top of the car. The entire vehicle lifted as an obese man in a too-tight suit emerged.
“Whoever sold him that piece of plastic ought to be shot.”
“Not near enough vehicle for his girth, you got that right,” said Stallings.
None of his other salesmen would know a word like girth, Witherspoon thought as he watched Stallings greet his man with a shake. He wasn’t sure himself he knew what it meant until Stallings put in into a sentence.
Witherspoon knew the entire staff was watching as Stallings led his customer right over to a sky-blue Electra. Stallings wasn’t at it long enough for any of them to grow bored. Thirty minutes max and he had the big man sitting across from him at the desk. The showroom rang with laughter as the man signed the paperwork.
Witherspoon watched Stallings take the man out to the Electra. They stood alongside it talking, as if what they were saying was the most important thing in the world, as if the car were not the thing that mattered. But Witherspoon was staring at the car, not at the men. Maybe the car didn’t matter at all. He loved a sell, and he felt confident that he’d made the right decision hiring Stallings, but he found it hard to get excited about the money he’d make off that Electra or the cars that Stallings would move for him in the future. And yet the longer the men lingered there, talking and laughing, as if the car could wait, the more Witherspoon focused on the car. He believed, after a time, that it sure did matter. He thought about the dollar bill framed by his grandfather hanging in his office, the first buck earned by Witherspoon Buick. The night before, after dropping Stallings off in his neighborhood and locking the doors before Stallings reached the stoop of his row house, Witherspoon felt as if he’d done something terrible, hiring this man. As if his motives were impure, as if everything he did these days, especially poaching Stallings, was done to line his pockets.
Stallings shook hands with the big man and held the door open for him. As the man climbed behind the wheel, the vehicle shifted only slightly under his girth. It was a good car, the right car for him. But it was more than that; it did matter. Maybe it was the most important car Witherspoon had ever sold. Cleveland was all to hell now. So much hate and fear and violence, so much poverty, so much distrust between the races. Witherspoon walked outside so he could better watch the Electra as it made its way out of the lot. For as long as he could, he kept the blue in his sights as the Electra turned onto the boulevard and entered the stream of other cars. When it stopped at the light, a rare slice of late spring Cleveland sun caused its window to glint. Then the light changed and Witherspoon watched the car drive away, off into the world, a sparkling symbol of something new, of some change in this city—in this country, hell, the whole world—that he had had a hand in creating.
Pinto Canyon, Texas, 2004
By three in the afternoon, on the lot of Kepler’s Fantastic Deals!, Marcus had narrowed it down to a Ford Ranger pickup with 106,000 miles, an ancient and deeply suspect Volkswagen Thing with a sloppy backyard camouflage paint job whose mileage, given that it was nearly thirty years old, struck him as dubiously low at 173,000 miles, and a 1984 Buick Electra. The odometer on the Buick registered only 60K and Marcus believed it. It was a sweet, low block of a ride, light blue with a strip of black vinyl along the bottom of the doors, perfect for rumbling around town with the windows open.
Each vehicle had its perks. He’d loved his pickup and he had needed it, too—he wasn’t the type to drive a truck around with nothing but autumn leaves in the bed—and the Ranger was a no-nonsense workhorse, a five-speed so stripped down—not even a radio—that it seemed like it would get him to Patagonia and back on a couple of tanks of gas.
The VW was butt-ass ugly, badly camouflaged, and capable at any minute of breaking down on the side of the road, but the fact that it was a damn lie made it fitting for a man deceiving his blood kin.
As for the Buick, Marcus saw himself steering that bad boy around town, the other hand out the window, drumming the side-view in time to the tunes or surfing stiff-fingered the fresh Texas breeze. He would not defile his vinyl tabernacle with Top 40 or talk radio; only deep southern soul or country old school and forlorn allowed. Isaac Hayes at Wattstax, Dusty in Memphis, that old silver fox Charlie Rich—when had he ever come up with a playlist just looking at a vehicle? And say Marcus got himself some companionship: She could start out on the passenger side, upside the window, but as soon as they got acquainted she could slide right across the seat and suction herself eventually, barnacle-like, to his side. Maybe put her head on his shoulder? No save-it-for-marriage bucket seats for the Buick. Yet it was a sensible ride, mature, dependable, more straight-and-narrow than bank-robbery getaway. Unless you wanted to lose a muffler, you’d be an idiot to take it off-road, say, on an ear-popping, downshifting descent through a series of gulches, bottoming out in a riverbed in the middle of which ran a trickle of suds demarcating one country from another.
While he was studying the Buick, a woman appeared suddenly from the rows of Fantastic Deals. Marcus had noticed her earlier, briefly, when he was checking out the VW, but the way she had been standing at the edge of the lot, looking not at the cars but at the plastic streamers fluttering in the wind kicked up by passing traffic, made him think she was either waiting for a ride or slightly crazy. But now she appeared to be looking, like him, for an automobile. His automobile, it seemed, since she had moved to the other side of it. Her hair was black and shoulder length and her skin was olive and later he would remember that the word lithe came to mind as he studied her, along with the word lovely, neither of which were common to the lexicon from which hi
s adjectives to describe women were drawn. Lovely, too, was not a word he’d ever think to apply to someone so effortlessly attired, not that he went for the painted, put-together types. She was wearing a tank top, flip-flops. Worn jeans hung low and tight over her hips, and instead of a purse she’d slung the strap of a faded backpack over her shoulder like a schoolkid. Marcus knew jack about fashion but he could tell when a woman got up in the morning and yanked on whatever articles of clothing happened to be lying on the floor, and appeared more striking than if she had spent a half hour pulling clothes out of the closet, leaving behind on the bed a reject pile so high it resembled a body in slumber.
It had been weeks since Marcus had even noticed a woman, so bound up in his various miseries had he been, and so unwilling or unready to give up the wound licking set off by Rebecca’s leaving. That this woman, standing just on the other side of the Buick, so close he might have smelled her perfume were she the type to wear same, seemed so entirely indifferent to his presence was maybe what made him so aware of her. But he wasn’t about to say anything. He did not like that he was wasting time thinking of such things. “A lump of Lord have mercy” did not even make his list. This woman was distracting him from his purpose. Therefore she was not on his side. The way she stood so close, only the car between them, and ignored him was ample proof that she was not on his side in more ways than one. Maybe it was the night he’d had—the lack of sleep, grieving over his lost truck, the flytrap seeds he would never see again, the other useless items the Border Patrol claimed would turn up in some draw but he feared were lost to him forever—but Marcus did not want to lose anything else. He’d gotten there first. That Buick was his.
MARIA’S MOTHER HAD WANTED to come along with her to the car lot.
“I’ve known the Kepler boys for years, I’ve bought two vehicles from them,” she said on the way into town.
“Thanks, but I know you have to get to work.”
“Do you even know what to look for?”
“I can handle it,” said Maria. She knew that with her mother along, she could not lose herself in what she had dubbed Rand-om: the kingdom of Randy not as he had been but as who he might have been. The sum of all the parts she had not recognized when he was with her. Occasionally she felt Randy’s presence in a way that was free of guilt and regret. Mostly she felt him in a way that was black and heavy. Today she needed him to come lightly to her and to leave proud of her fearlessness. She believed he would be with her, guiding her, but she’d not be able to feel or hear him with her mother there asking questions and making decisions for her.
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