Yellow Packard

by Ace Collins

  “Ah, no,” she replied. “And don’t you dare light one of those nasty things up in my hospital. You hear me?”

  “Yes,” he almost sang out. “I don’t smoke anyway!”

  “Yeah,” she groaned, “that’s what they all say before they see their new kid. Then they all light up like a five-alarm fire. But not in my hospital! If you do I’ll ring your scrawny neck.”

  “Sure,” he laughed, “not inside the building. I’ve got it.”

  “You’d better!”

  The pair rounded a corner in the wide hall and quickly made their way to a large plate-glass window. On the other side was a nursery containing ten tiny cribs. Seven of them were serving as the resting place for newborns. A white-clad, older nurse sat to one side of the room keeping watch on each of these welcomed additions to the world. For a few minutes George’s eyes roamed from one infant to the next wondering which one of the little ones was his Rose. He was about to pick one on the far right when the nurse elbowed him in the ribs.

  “She’s not one of those. Look toward that door in the back.”

  George lifted his gaze to the oak entry. Just as he did it swung opened and another nurse, this one thin, redheaded, and not more than thirty, carried a tiny bundle into the room. Looking their way, she smiled. Several quick but gentle steps later she was on the other side of the glass from the new father and the veteran nurse.

  “There, Mr. Hall, is your Rose.”

  As he took in the wonder of the moment, studying the hairless head, the wrinkled, red face, and the tiny hands, he sighed in wonder. “She’s so small.”

  “And your wife is more than glad she’s not bigger,” the nurse added. “Now, take one more good look, and then I want you to go grab your suit jacket and those nasty cigars, get into your car, go home, and get some rest. And that’s an order!”

  “Can’t I see my wife?”

  “Not now,” she barked. “She needs to get her rest, too. Now go home!”

  Like an obedient child, Hall nodded, and, after watching his baby placed in her crib, he waved his hand, whispered, “I love you,” and moved back down the hallway to the waiting room. With a hundred different emotions flooding his soul, each of those varying and often conflicting feelings pointed out to him that his life would never be the same, he slipped on his suit jacket and headed toward the exit. He was almost to the door when he yanked a cigar out of his pocket, hurriedly unwrapped it, grinned, placed it in his mouth, struck a match against the wall, and lit it up. From the hallway behind him a woman’s voice yelled, “Mr. Hall, I warned you!”

  Chapter 5

  George only slept a couple of hours. To save time the next morning, he opted to skip breakfast before driving the twelve miles from Oakwood to Danville. Though there was a new and special kind of sunshine in his life, the trip was made under cloudy, threatening skies. It was misting when he arrived at Danville City Hospital at nine thirty sharp. After parking his car in the visitor’s lot, he sprinted up the sidewalk and to the old brick building’s entrance. He took the dozen steps two at a time and jogged down the hall to room 134.

  George was hoping to hold Rose the moment he arrived, but that wasn’t to be. Thus it was an anxious Hall who was forced to wait in Carole’s room enduring a seemingly endless delay to what he sensed would be the biggest moment in all his twenty-six years of life.

  “George,” his wife scolded, “you need to quit pacing. You’re going to wear those shoes out.”

  “I know, honey,” he answered, his excitement shooting his words out like machine gun fire. “You’re not the first to say that. But I just can’t settle down. I barely slept at all. I can’t eat. Why haven’t they brought her in? You don’t think there’s something wrong? I don’t know if I can take anything being wrong!”

  Carole laughed. “No, Rose is fine. I saw her a few hours ago. She is strong and healthy. You just got here a bit too early. Now sit down and talk to me. I’m a part of this, too, you know.”

  He nodded, took a deep breath, and pulled a chair up to his wife’s bed. But rather than saying anything, he just stared at Carole as if he were seeing her for the very first time. Childbirth had done something to her, and whatever it was she wore it well. She still had the same round face, pug nose, blond hair, and gentle green eyes, but she looked different to him. Almost angelic. She seemed stronger, too. Finally, his words carefully measured and dripping in sincerity, George stammered out what his eyes had just stamped on his heart. “You are the most beautiful mother in the world.”

  Carole demurely smiled.

  After studying her for a few more seconds, Hall gently touched her cheek and traced her smile. Three years of marriage and things were even better now. He was more in love than he’d ever been. He felt like a schoolboy as he leaned closer and whispered, “I don’t know why you fell for me. You’re out of my league.”

  “That goes double,” she laughed. “Just remember I wasn’t the prize catch. Before me you went with Mary Cole, and she was not only the homecoming queen at Oakwood High, but she took that crown in college, too.”

  After patting his hand she added, “Maybe in your eyes I seem beautiful, but I’m really just another mousy, washed-out blond. My nose, with this bump, is too small, and my face too round. And look at my lips, they are too thin, and my teeth are not as large or white as the models in the magazines. And of all the girls you dated, I was the one who was not the prom queen. I wasn’t even considered for the court. So I don’t see what you ever saw in me.”

  He smiled. “A great deal more than you see in yourself.” He placed his hand on hers. As he did, a memory flooded his mind, he pushed out his lips. “That first moment I walked into the Methodist Church and saw you singing in the choir, I was smitten. When you sang it was like God was speaking to me. And when you’ve heard God talk, or sing in this case, you aren’t satisfied with a just any girl. I wanted the girl, and that was you.”

  Carole shook her head incredulously. “You heard God speak through me?”

  “Oh, Carole, I see Him in you everyday. The way you reach out to help others. The concern you show for your parents or even that brat of a kid who lives next door. The way you put up with us living in an old, drafty rented house, driving that beat-up Chevy. The love you show for me in your eyes and even in your touch. I’m not sure I really knew there was a God until I met you.”

  “George, do you mean that?”

  “You know that passage in the Bible you’re always quoting,” he softly replied. “That one about helping those who have less than we do.”

  “Matthew 25:35–40?” she asked. “The verses about reaching the least of these?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I watch you live that every day. In fact, if it wasn’t for you, I’d feel sorry for myself all the time. But you always make me realize that even though we don’t have much, we are somehow rich in so many ways.”

  He smiled as he thought back to the ad he’d read last night, “Now, we don’t have a Packard. That’s what you really deserve.”

  “No, I don’t.” She laughed. Then, shaking her head, she added, “We are rich today. No doubt about that.”

  His words now spilling out like water over Niagara Falls, George added, “Carole, I mean it, I lived on instinct, not faith, until you came into my life. When you came to me my whole perspective changed. I stopped worrying about what I didn’t have. I was just lucky to have you.”

  “Then the Lord did bring us together,” she solemnly assured him. “And if you see all that in me, He must have given you vision problems in the process.”

  She grinned. Then her voice became low and took on a much more serious tone, “When I was little, Mom told me to pray that God would bring a special man into my life. Well I started when I was six praying that prayer. And He did!”

  George was suddenly so overcome with emotion he’d almost forgotten why he was at the hospital. The only thing on his mind, in his heart, or in his eyes was Carole. She was the whole world. Nothing else mattered.
He was leaning down to kiss her when the door swung open and a fast-talking, short, energetic nurse belted out, “Anybody here want to hold a baby?’

  Twisting in the chair, George sat paralyzed as the woman quickly crossed the room and gently pushed Rose toward the completely unprepared new father. Instinctively, he opened his arms for the white-draped bundle and whispered, “I’m not sure I know how to do this.”

  “As long as you don’t drop her,” the nurse explained, “there’s not really a wrong way. Just cradle your arms, and I’ll place her in a spot right beside your heart. One look at your face tells me she already owns that anyway.”

  It was with unbridled excitement coupled with trepidation that he took the baby. He couldn’t believe how tiny and perfect she was. He’d never felt so overwhelmed or so humbled. His eyes misted and his throat closed up. As Rose rested there in the cradle formed by his left arm, George gently traced his index finger along her forehead and chin.

  “So what do you think?” Carole softly asked while laying her left hand on his shoulder.

  Never taking his eyes from the tiny life they had created together, he said, “Can we really do this?”

  “I think you already have,” the nurse joked.

  He forced a grin, but in truth he was suddenly deeply troubled. What kind of father would he be? Could he really keep this little girl safe? Could he really find the wisdom to guide her steps through life? Could he always be there when she needed him? Before this moment it seemed so easy. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  “Mr. Hall,” the nurse said as she leaned over and took Rose, “you have the rest of your life to spoil this child. Right now she needs her mother. I’m betting you could use something to eat as well. So you march yourself out that door, and don’t come back until later this afternoon.”

  George didn’t argue. After a single nod, a quick kiss planted on Carole’s forehead, and one final look at his new baby, he did as the nurse ordered.

  A minute later he was still lost in a fog of uncertainty as he pushed the door open. Standing on the hospital steps, he was rudely awakened from his contemplation with a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder. Ten steps beyond the door and a full fifty yards from where he’d parked his car, the skies let loose. By the time he threw open the old Chevy’s driver’s door, he was soaked to the skin. Pulling the key from his pants pocket, he inserted it and hit the starter. Nothing happened.

  “Come on, baby,” he pleaded as he mashed the button several more times. But the motor didn’t make a sound. He pushed hard on the horn. There was no sound. A combination of frustration and anger consumed him as he stepped back out into the rain, leaned over, and yanked the bottom front seat cushion forward to study the six-volt battery. It was with unfathomable disappointment he discovered the cables were tight. Hence the old battery was dead.

  “You having problems?” a voice called out from a police car.

  “Yeah, my battery’s shot,” George hollered.

  “And you’re getting mighty wet, too,” the cop noted. “I’ve got some cables. I’ll be happy to give you a jump, but before I do you might want to fix that tire.”

  George stepped back from the door and glanced toward the back of the car. The rear, driver’s side tire was so flat the rim was partially submerged in a puddle not more than an inch deep.

  Maybe this was a sign. Maybe God was telling him that as a father, he was in way over his head.

  Chapter 6

  It took George the better part of an hour to change and fix the flat and get the old coupe running. But it wasn’t running well. It limped along at twenty miles an hour the whole trip, the car wheezing like a ninety-year-old chain-smoker suffering from emphysema. It was just past eleven when the mechanical crate jerked into his drive and, with a final sputtering cough, died. As he stepped out, the back passenger-side tire, which had been fine, blew out with a bang loud enough to wake anyone within five blocks.

  “Great,” he sighed. “This is just what I need. Of all days for you to let me down.”

  Still consumed by automobile misery, he did note some good news. The rain—that had been falling in buckets ever since he left the hospital—quit. By the time he walked through the entry to the house, the sun pushed through the clouds and brought a bit of light and hope into his world. He quickly made a ham sandwich, chased it with a six-ounce bottle of 7Up, and headed to the bathroom. After drying off and changing his clothes, an exhausted George collapsed in a heap on the green divan. Though he was so tired his bones ached, he only tossed and turned for fifteen minutes without nodding off even once. Maybe it was because of the excitement of being a new father or the frustration of having a bum car, but for whatever reason, sleep evaded him. It was thirty minutes after the hour when he got up and walked back out into the front yard to take another look at the tired old Chevy.

  “Hey, George,” Glen Adams called out from across the street. “Heard you have a brand-new daughter. You must be one happy feller this morning!”

  Glen was a good man and a great neighbor. Outgoing and warm, he was the prototype for the person whose chief worry was not about the size of his paycheck but rather which lure to use when fishing the Middle Fork River. In his fifties, the stocky bricklayer and has wife had moved past the parenting stage and into the spoiling grandkids phase. From what he’d told George, it was the best time of his life.

  Waving, the new father nodded and laughed. “She’s the prettiest thing in the whole world.”

  “That can’t be,” Glen said as he crossed the street.

  “What?” George said, surprised by the man’s retort.

  “No,” the neighbor announced, “my new granddaughter already has that title. I’m guessing Rose will just have to settle for second place.”

  George shrugged. “Maybe we can call it a tie. What are you up to today, Glen? Now that it’s clearing up, I’m guessing you’ll be going fishing?”

  “Be a good day for it. Rob Martin caught a six-pound catfish down by the highway bridge yesterday. But I’ve got other things on my mind today. In fact I’m just about to drive over to the Watling sale and auction. Old Abbi had a bedroom suite my wife has been yearning to claim for at least a decade. I don’t care what it costs; I’m going to get it for her. When I do that I can finally tell her about that flat-bottom boat I bought and have hidden in the shed. She never goes in there. Once she has the four-poster bed she won’t care much that I bought the boat.”

  George laughed. “You didn’t tell her?”

  “Of course not,” Glen quickly replied. “She thinks the fact I already have two other boats would have made this one unnecessary. She just doesn’t understand fishing. But I understand her temper and what soothes it, so I have to get the bedroom suite. If I don’t, that boat is not going to do me any good at all.”

  “I’m thinking about going, too,” George chimed in, “nothing I probably need, but I would like to see what her car goes for.”

  “The Packard?”

  “Yeah. Be nice to have a car that runs like a watch rather than one that performs like a three-legged mule.”

  Glen rubbed his chin and glanced over to the well-worn Chevy. He grimly studied the beat-up car for a few seconds. “It has seen much better days.” He continued to take stock of the coupe before adding, “I don’t know how much ready cash you’ve got, but I’m thinking that Packard won’t go for as much as you might expect.”

  “It’s practically new,” the younger man shot back. “A car like that will likely go for more than nine hundred.”

  “A car like that would,” Glen agreed, “but that car has a strange legacy. Most of those here in Oakwood whisper when they speak of it. They think it’s cursed or haunted or something. At the very least it is the bearer of bad luck. Millie told me that if I came near it she would divorce me.”

  “What?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but counting Abigale, three different people who have touched that yellow beast have died. I heard a joke yesterday that the car
had seen more dead folks than Floyd Bacon’s hearse.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” George shot back, “cars don’t have souls. They don’t commit premeditated murder. They’re just pieces of engineering that get you from point A to point B. Now some, like that Packard, do it with a lot more style, but their function is the same. My car has gotten to the point where it only stays at point A. So I’ve got to do something.” He leaned closer and whispered, almost as if he was scared someone might overhear his question, “So you think it might go cheap?”

  “I think so!” Glen assured. He paused, took another look at George’s coupe, and added, “There’s more spit and bailing wire in your old heap than there is gas. I’ll admit you’ve got to get something, but that Packard’s not for a married man with a new kid.”

  “Are you kidding? That car has all the room a family would need. And it is barely broken in. It would last us until Rose went to first grade without missing a beat.”

  “Maybe that’d be true,” came the reply, “and if you were single I’d say go for it. But you have responsibilities now. You owe it to Carole and that baby to make a wise decision. And though I don’t buy into ghost stories, I’m still thinking that if I were in your shoes, I’d look at something other than that car. You know folks could be right; it might be cursed somehow.”

  George swallowed hard to keep from laughing. Trying to keep a straight face he noted, “You’ve never hit me as the superstitious type. I’ve watched you lay bricks six stories up on a windy day. Didn’t think anything scared you.”

  The middle-age man blushed, turning his pale green eyes to the street and pushing his hands deep into his brown pants pockets. He didn’t reply either, probably because he couldn’t come up with the words to justify his worries. Instead he started humming “When the Blue of the Night.”

  “Tell me this, Glen,” George asked, ignoring his neighbor’s feeble attempts at crooning, “would you buy a car that had been owned and driven by, say, John Dillinger?”