by Rick Ellrod
“Rent-a-car place closed?”
“In this small town? On a Sunday? How long have you lived here?”
Dana held up a small screwdriver in acknowledgement. “True.”
“Isn’t there some way you can make this thing run for, say, a five- or six-hour trip?”
“No way. It’d have to be adjusted almost constantly. You’d have to bring it back into the garage every hour or so.”
He laughed. “At that rate I’d never get to Marien, much less back again.”
Dana’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re going to Marien?”
“Uh-huh. I need to see a friend of mine—it’s sort of an emergency.”
She tossed the screwdriver into the air, watched it spin, caught it smoothly as it fell. “It might be your lucky day, pal.”
“Huh?”
Dana spoke slowly, as if she were unsure about what she wanted to say. “It happens that I need to get over to Marien, too. It might be possible to keep your engine running—if I straightened it out every hour or so.”
“You want to come with me to Marien?”
“ ‘Want’ may be too strong a word.” She eyed him skeptically. “But I can probably stand it, if you can. Then you can run me by where I’m going, on the way to see your friend.”
Jeff leaned back against the bench. Not the first traveling companion he would have chosen, with her sometimes-acerbic tongue. But the arrangement would get him to Marien. “Wait a minute. Why can’t you get there yourself?”
Was that a faint blush on her fair skin? “My car is in the shop at the moment. Can’t use it.”
He chuckled. “ ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ Does it need an exotic part also?”
“It needs,” she said a little resentfully, “some body work. Got into an argument with an SUV. It could happen to anyone.”
“Well, it seems a bit–” He paused. Her grimace suggested acute embarrassment, and he didn’t really want to make her uncomfortable. “Okay, it could happen to anyone. You’re really proposing to come along to Marien and exercise your magic touch as we go?”
“On the car.” She gave him a forbidding look.
But he realized there was also a hint of mischief lurking in her large brown eyes, and he laughed out loud. “Right. Right. That was what I meant. Okay, how soon can you be ready?”
She paused a moment. “Give me forty minutes. Can you pick me up then?”
“Here?”
“No, at my house. I don’t have time to be running back and forth.”
“Where is it?”
She told him.
“Got it. I’ll be there.”
“Good,” she said. “All right—off with you.” She slammed down the hood of the car and waved him back out of the bay.
****
Dana’s home wasn’t quite what Jeff had expected. A tiny cottage set among flowering bushes, green lawn glowing in the noon light, it was both more diminutive and more decorative than he had anticipated.
As he pulled up Dana came out the door, locked it, then strode to the curb. She was wearing a short-sleeved red blouse, open at the neck, and close-fitting jeans, flared at the bottom to accommodate glossy black boots. He had not seen her hair down before; it swung about her shoulders, deep brown with reddish highlights. One hand held an outsize black purse, the other a small toolbox. These she slung into the back seat with an audible thud-thud before sliding into the front passenger side.
“Dressy,” Jeff commented.
“Want to be presentable when I meet some people. Compromise between motor-fixing and meet-people duds.”
“I get the tools, but what’s in the purse? The way it hit the back seat, sounds like you’ve got bricks in there.”
“A few necessities.” Dana snapped her seatbelt. “I like to be prepared.”
Jeff glanced at the mirrors and pulled into the street. “I’d make some remark about purses, but I figured out some time back a man’s briefcase is just a purse writ large.” He tilted his head toward the brown leather case on the other side of the back seat. “Pens, paper, Tylenol, smartphone…”
“…Cough drops, flash drive, comb, glasses, couple of Shout wipes, yeah, we’ve all got it. So that’s where men keep everything.”
“Nobody has enough pockets for all this stuff. Did you say glasses?”
“Damn. Did I?…Okay, I admit to the glasses, but just for fine work sometimes. I suppose you stick with the unaided eye.”
“So far. But, yeah, the fine print is getting harder to make out—’specially late at night or early in the morning. My glassless days are numbered.”
A silence fell. Jeff maneuvered them out onto the highway and set them rolling toward Marien.
“It’s clouding up a bit,” Dana said, peering at the sky ahead.
“Too bad, it’s been a nice day so far.”
Are we reduced to talking about the weather? He searched for a topic of conversation.
Dana said, “Uh…How about some music?”
“Good idea.” Jeff raised a hand, then stopped. “I forgot my iPod. I think we may be stuck with the radio.”
“Hold on. I brought my player.” She turned half around to rummage in her purse.
“I didn’t bring the adapter, either. Gizmo that fits into the tape player and plays through the car stereo.”
“I saw it, but I couldn’t believe it. This car has a tape player?”
“It plays CDs, too,” Jeff said defensively. “But I use the tape connection for the iPod.”
“There are better ways.” Dana delved in her purse a bit further, emerging with an MP3 player, a tangle of cords, and a small screwdriver. She leaned forward to inspect the sound system critically. “No line-in jacks, of course, no mike jack…Let me see.”
Jeff was watching the road and couldn’t see out of the corner of his eye exactly what she was doing.
“Hmm. No…Right. There.”
She picked up the audio player, which was now jury-rigged into the sound system. A moment later a blare of horns commenced “Got To Get You Into My Life.”
“Ah! Good one.” He was pleased it happened to be something he enjoyed, and began tapping the steering wheel in time with the rhythm.
“Wait a minute. You like this?”
“You bet.”
“Hmm. I’d have thought you’d go for something, I don’t know, classical.”
“This is classic, if not classical.” He hummed along for a moment. Did she simply consider him stodgy across the board? A deflating thought. He glanced over at her. “If you didn’t think I’d like it, why did you put it on?”
Dana’s hand rose to touch her hair, half-hiding her face. “I didn’t—I wasn’t sure—Wanted to see how you’d react, I guess.”
“Well, I’m surprised you’d be interested in an old-time band like the Beatles. I thought you were into heavy metal stuff.”
“Not me.” She stared out the windshield, where clouds were piled high in a pale blue sky. “Too much noise, not enough music.”
“You had it on in the shop the other day. I remember because I was afraid my head was going to implode.”
“Oh, that. That was my henchman, Steve. His tastes are a little on the noisy side.”
“I don’t mind a little liveliness in a song, but pure noise is too much.”
“Personally, I’m not sure I believe you really go for anything newer than Beethoven. Let me see…” She dialed through the playlist, punching up another song when the Beatles finished. “Try this.”
“Yeah, ‘Through the Deep.’ Up and Out’s latest.” He started singing along, in a fairly melodious baritone.
Dana did not join in, but he could feel her foot tapping against the floorboards. So far the engine was running smoothly.
He cracked the window and let the spring air flow through. “Reminds me a little of Eddie from Ohio,” he said when the song ended.
“No kidding.” Her voice rose with a questioning sound. “I’ve only run into one other person around he
re who’s into them. Well, sort of ‘around here.’ ”
“Do you have ‘Number Six Driver’ on that thing?”
“Actually, yes, I do.”
“How about Emily Hearn?”
A number of songs later, Dana held up her hand and stopped the player. “D’you hear that? It’s getting to run pretty ragged.”
Jeff could hear the car’s engine laboring.
“Can you find a place to stop? A parking lot off the highway someplace?”
“There’s a rest area coming up in about three miles,” Jeff said. “I just saw the sign.”
****
Dana’s toolkit contained not only a diagnostic device and tools, but a neatly folded shop apron and a tan cloth to spread on the edge of the engine compartment while she bent over it. The adjustment could be made on the upper part of the motor and did not require getting deeply involved in the engine, but all the same she was careful not to get her clothes dirty. When she emerged from under the hood, she found Jeff had taken advantage of the delay to bring back a pair of sodas from the phalanx of vending machines. He handed her a cold-beaded can.
“Thanks.” She took it from him, then hesitated. “You didn’t ask regular or diet.”
“You’re not a diet drinker?” His eyebrows shot up, mouth pursed. “Curses, I thought that was a sure thing. I’ve met maybe three women in my life who don’t drink diet soda.”
“You’ve met another one. Could never get used to the aftertaste.”
“Yeah. You don’t need it, anyway.”
Dana peered up at him from under lowered brows. She was undecided whether this was too personal coming from someone she wasn’t even really friends with. Perhaps a counterattack was in order. “I see you’re drinking the regular, but you’re not quite as out of shape as professor types usually are.” It was true; he was wiry but fit, and he moved with a certain ease that suggested he was comfortable in his body. “What’s your secret?”
Jeff blinked. “Well, I practice karate two or three times a week. It gets me some exercise.”
“That I didn’t expect. Doesn’t go with the image.” She smiled. It seemed there was more to him than the professorial stereotype. “Been doing the karate long?”
“I took it up when I came to the University. One great thing about a college campus—they have lots of activities. You can find some class or group doing almost anything you want.”
She walked around him, inspecting him quizzically. “So you’re sudden death on two feet? The terror of the campus?”
He laughed. “Not hardly. I just dabble a bit.”
“I like the outdoors myself—don’t think I could hang out in a gym all the time.”
“Dojo,” he corrected.
“Like a gym, only fancier?”
“Actually it usually is the gym, with some mats laid down and whatnot.”
“I’d push you to get some fresh air instead, but the dough-joe seems to agree with you.” She began wrapping her equipment in the cloth. “Hey, where are you going?”
Jeff was trotting toward the little building. “Right back,” he threw over his shoulder.
Dana shrugged, put the hood down, went around the front of the car and replaced the gear carefully in her toolkit.
As she opened the front door to slide back into the passenger seat, Jeff came around the car, handed her a can of regular soda, and continued on around to the driver’s side.
“Thanks!” she said.
****
A light rain was spattering on the windshield half an hour later. Dana was tilted back in the seat, her knees propped up on the dashboard, frowning. “Look, if I wanted to ‘take a few courses in my spare time,’ I could figure out how to do it myself. Who says I want to?”
“But,” Jeff said reasonably, “at some point it’s going to be hard to make progress without your degree. Take a couple at a time, maybe some business classes, and in a few years–”
“You keep coming back to that.” Her voice was sharp. “Do they also have you on the career counseling staff?”
“No, I just moonlight when I see a need.”
“The people who need it are students. I’m not one of your frickin’ students. So you can lay off.” Who was he to lecture her? She’d been taking care of herself for years.
Jeff shifted restlessly behind the wheel. “I don’t mean to talk down to you…”
“You’re doing pretty well if you’re doing it by accident.”
“…I just hate to see good potential wasted.”
“ ‘Wasted.’ ” She turned her head and glared at him.
“I don’t mean what you do is a waste. It’s just–”
“I sure hope not, or you’re gonna be in trouble next time the motor conks out.”
Jeff glanced sideways at her.
She turned away and stared out the windshield at the monotonous road and the low overcast. Tension twisted her stomach, and her hands clenched. Why couldn’t he leave well enough alone?
“You’re right, I would be, ’cause I couldn’t do a thing about it myself.” His voice seemed calmer. “Ever hear about the ‘Technology and History’ class?”
“Not interested.”
“Not for you,” he said. “I’m bringing it up because I teach it. And you can’t do that without having some respect for auto mechanics.”
“You teach a course in auto mechanics?”
“About auto mechanics. And aqueducts, and the keels on ships, and Gothic arches. And stirrups.”
“You’ve lost me already.”
“What I’m trying to get at is, these things are important.” He waved one hand in the air as if to gesture at a wide range of objects. “The spinning jenny put hundreds of spinners out of work—but it helped make good clothing cheap enough for the average peasant to buy. Something as simple as the keel made it possible to sail upwind, and that changed the whole shape of sea travel. The vacuum cleaner ended a spotted fever epidemic in a World War I hospital. You can’t ignore these things if you want to understand what shapes lives.”
Dana glanced across at him. “Great inventions of history, sure. But I just fix cars—I didn’t invent them.”
“What use would one be without the other? Heck, half the time it’s the precision engineering that makes some wild idea into a solid industry. And once you’ve got it going, you still have to keep it going. That takes intelligence. It takes creativity.”
“It’s easy for you to say.” The tension in her body eased, though. “In a college town you can’t help feeling like a second-class citizen if you work with your hands.”
“Well, you shouldn’t feel that way. It’s important work and you should be proud of it.” Jeff’s voice was firm. “Without technology there’d be precious few people who had the time for studying history—or the other liberal arts.”
Dana shifted in her seat. “A lot of people don’t seem to get that.”
“The more fools they. The ignoramus who looks down on hand-crafts is forgetting that ninety percent of the human race through history spent ninety percent of its time doing manual labor so someone else could have the leisure to think, or write, or dream. It’s when you can hand over some of those tasks to machines that you can give everyone a chance to reach for the stars. And the people who know how to make them work deserve everyone’s respect.”
“Then why this push to get me back to school?”
Jeff’s response was slower this time. “You’re smart. You’ve got a lot of potential. Even I can see it, and I don’t know you very well.” He glanced over at her, returned his eyes to the road. “That’s where the waste is. What you do is great, but you can do more. You’ll want to do more, in the long run. Whether it’s history or IT, building bridges or building networks—I don’t want you to sell yourself short.”
“So you’re not a technology-hater after all. And here I’d pictured you living in a thatch-roofed cottage with oil lamps.” Dana found her voice was a little unsteady. In truth, she was curiously moved. Sh
e was used to feeling a little daunted by the intellectual environment of a college town. But she had not expected so quick and forceful a defense from Jeff. She sat up straighter and began combing her fingers through her hair.
“No way. In fact, I love my computer. Couldn’t live without it.”
“You just don’t love it as much as your car.” She gave him a slight smile.
“More, to tell the truth.” As he spoke, the car gave a lurch and intermittent choking sounds came from the engine. “Especially right now, drat it. Did you see how far the next exit is?”
Chapter 5
“Seriously, you should get some of these things taken care of. Take that back seat–” Dana jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Get the right color patch, some sealant—you can use a soldering gun to fuse the edges so you can hardly tell it’s been patched.”
Jeff felt harried. “You could, maybe. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“You can use a screwdriver, can’t you? Even if you just put a secondary cleaner on your air intake, the engine’d run way better.”
The car had been resuscitated twice more, and they were approaching Marien under cloudy late-afternoon skies. The conversation had, unfortunately, drifted onto the subject of Jeff’s vehicle and its manifold inadequacies. Dana seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of suggestions for improvement, and they were beginning to get on his nerves.
“If this car is such a classic,” she said, “shouldn’t you take better care of it?”
“Let it go. My valiant steed and I are getting along well enough. Aside from the current trouble, that is.”
“A knight who took this kind of care of his valiant steed would be thrown out of the, uh, order. Or boiled in oil, in his own armor.”
It was clear he wasn’t going to deflect her with subtle hints. “Let’s take this up later, okay? We’re getting close to Marien, and I need to know where to let you off.”
“Just hate to see good machinery go to wrack and ruin.” Dana peered out at a passing sign. “I’m headed for West Marien. Where are we now?”
“Just short of the city, I think.”
“It’s silly not to have GPS, this day and age.” She rummaged in her purse and extracted a device. “But I came prepared. Yeah. We cross the river, go through the city still on the highway. West Marien is on the other side.”