Alison's Automotive Repair Manual

by Brad Barkley

  She and Max had spent half the previous day in her garage, working on the last two wheel assemblies. Max did most of the work, without effort, ignoring the Haynes manual, while she stood behind him and watched. After her late night with Mr. Kesler, a gauze of sleepiness had settled behind her eyes, but she cleared it away with coffee and the small quickening of her breath that came when she thought about the night before, the feel of Max’s whiskered jaw under her lips, his tongue alive against hers. They worked by way of silences and occasional touches, brief glances. Progress was quick; Max knew what he was doing. He’d offered to come back again today to help with the master cylinder rebuild, but she’d declined. They’d already finished up the last two wheels, so that now all four spun with that smooth hiss of newness. She was glad, but what good was undertaking the whole project if she ended up letting Max do all the work? She’d felt a little foolish telling him, “I want to do it myself,” sounding like an eight-year-old fixing a peanut butter sandwich. But still, that was what she wanted, and besides, underneath everything we were all probably eight years old anyway.

  After leaning for a full hour under the hood, banging her head on it twice, fitting her hand and a ratchet under and in between everything, and dropping three bolts down somewhere into the bowels of the car, she finally had everything disconnected and had labeled all the hoses and wires with little flags of masking tape, to make sure she put it all back right. The master cylinder now sat on the bench, clamped in the vise. She loved the size of it, smaller than her own two hands, and the way it was all of a piece, so self-contained. It came apart easily, a jumble of springs, retainers, and pistons that dumped out on her bench. The rebuild kit went in just the way the diagram showed it, every piece right there. Too bad they didn’t make a kit for the entire car. All of the new parts had to be bathed in brake fluid, like bathing a baby in a washbasin. The fluid was a bright, pale yellow, almost fluorescent, and covered her hands so thickly, it felt as though she’d slipped on a wet pair of woolen gloves. When she finished and everything was back together, she reinstalled the master cylinder, connected it to the brake booster, reconnected the lines, and finally filled the reservoir with fresh fluid. The brakes, she realized as she wiped her hands, were done, except for the bleeding, which Max had promised to help with. Better know you can make it stop before you make it go. Well, okay—now she knew.

  That night was rehearsal for the Founders’ Day Parade, and the van from Seven Springs arrived while Alison was still at the kitchen sink, cleaning her hands with some product called Go-Jo, which Mr. Beachy had sold her, telling her that your ordinary bath soap couldn’t handle real dirt. “Not a man’s dirt,” he’d said without thinking, then quickly added, “In a manner of speaking.” She’d smiled and bought two tubs of the hand cleaner. And he was right: The stuff worked. The grease and brake fluid were up to her elbows, and she had just lathered up like a surgeon when the dancers walked in, bringing with them their smells of White Shoulders and cedar chests and aftershave. Mr. Rossi found her quickly, before, she guessed, someone else engaged him in regular conversation. All week long, he’d been talking about the Founders’ Day Parade, and tonight he was decked out in his denim vest with the silver buttons, his face red and shining. He nodded, said “Hello,” and then got stuck.

  “Arthur, you look like a million bucks,” she told him.

  “And you as well, Miss Alison.”

  She smiled. She was wearing her very worst clothes, the ones she usually wore in the garage: a pair of jeans patched with pieces of red bandanna, and a T-shirt she’d bought at Goodwill, which said across the front SCHULTZ FERTILIZERS MAKE IT HAPPEN. There was a picture of a squirrel in an apron, holding a flowery watering can and tending a small mound of grass. The squirrel now wore a beard of grease.

  “So, what do you know about Go-Jo hand cleaner?” she asked him.

  “Well, it’s a soap, essentially.…” He hesitated, never quite trusting that she actually wanted to hear him spout trivia.

  “Tell me more,” she said.

  “I think most people know that soaps in general date back to about 1000 B.C.”

  “The Egyptians?”

  “You might expect that, but it was the Romans, in fact. In the midst of some animal sacrifice, fat boiled off the unfortunate animal, mixed with potash from the fire, and found its way into the Tiber River. Women there, washing clothes, found, that these strange gobs made the job go a bit more expeditiously. Voilà.”

  “That was easy,” she said. She rinsed off, dried on the dish towel.

  “Indeed it was.” He looked at her, blushing, a vending machine waiting for its next quarter. Too bad the single women in the group all found him at best tolerable. He really was a sweet man, and brilliant, in his narrow way. Sarah tooted her whistle to signal the start of dance lessons. Mr. Kesler gave a loud sigh to signal his annoyance at having been reduced to pushing the button on the boom box, which they were using to make sure it would work during the parade. They did a walk-through of some new twisty arm move that Sarah called “the bread box” (where did she get these names?), and then they all took to the floor, the Harmons wearing matching Hawaiian shirts, Lila Montgomery, in her penny loafers and jeans, dancing with Mrs. Skidmore, who had already downed the first of her usual two beers. Mr. Rossi stood by, watching, almost leaning toward the dance floor in his eagerness to get out there, tapping his toes and snapping his fingers like some hipster member of the Rat Pack. The poor man. Alison wiped her face with the dish towel, then tapped Mr. Rossi on the shoulder.

  “If you don’t mind a little dirt and grease, let’s go.”

  He looked at her, puzzled, until she took his hand and pulled him onto the floor. She felt a little shock wave of hesitation through the room, especially from Sarah; for two years now, Alison had watched these lessons, and not once had she danced. Too clumsy, she always told them. That was true, and even more so now with her dancing grown rusty, but so what? Mr. Rossi took her hands in his big doughy paws and began rocking back and forth. She followed his lead, the gravity of his impressive bulk looming over her, and he handled her as though he believed her arms were thin sticks that might snap off in his grip. She felt the floorboards flex under their movements, Mr. Rossi getting into it now, lifting her arm to turn her, the speakers of the boom box squeezing out a tinny “Cal-donia” by Louis Jordan. It was a fast one, and Alison kept missing steps, landing once or twice on Mr. Rossi’s wide feet. “I’m so sorry,” she said, in that close-up way peculiar to dancing, but he seemed too happy to notice, smiling as though he couldn’t help himself, his face shining with effort. She’d forgotten how much fun this was. Marty had never been much of one for dancing on those infrequent occasions when they went out. He was like so many guys, waiting for the slow songs and then feigning dancing with an extended hug and that tottering Frankenstein side-to-side movement that men seem to prefer. Mr. Rossi surrendered himself to motion, spinning her quickly now, so that her own dancing was reduced to mostly hanging on. On each spin the shark’s tooth she wore on its silver chain kept flying up and tangling in her hair, until she paused long enough to take it off and toss it onto the coffee table, and he grabbed her up again, spinning her twice, finding her hand somehow behind his back as he turned, her face locked into a smile that mirrored his own as they both forgot now to watch their feet, her hair swinging out in splayed curls that whipped her cheeks. So good it felt, all of it, the music and the motion and the timing a kind of liquid ribbon spooling through her bones. Then the song ended. The Harmons, standing next to her and Mr. Rossi, smiled and clapped for them. She hugged Mr. Rossi, and he patted her shoulder.

  “You’re so good,” she said. “Really, you are.”

  “One is only as good as one’s partner,” he said, slipping back into his awkward formality. His face looked baked, scarlet. Alison was out of breath, her muscles warm and loose. He kissed her hand and gave a little bow.

  During the first break Sarah pushed out of the swinging kitchen door so ha
rd, she almost hit Mrs. Skidmore. Bill followed, both of their faces darkened with whatever argument they’d just had inside. Sarah got herself a Dixie cup and made a show of popping it down on the table, filling it with chardonnay, and taking a long gulp.

  “Hey, Tyra,” she said, “about time for your smoke break, is it not?”

  Tyra said that anytime was time for a smoke break. Since she’d been off the oxygen tank, she seemed to be celebrating with cigarettes. She and Sarah headed out onto the back porch, passing the shiny pack between them. Alison followed Bill through the swinging door back into the kitchen.

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  Bill shrugged. His face looked haggard, his eyes dark-circled. All those late nights putting food on the house. “I told her I was taking a little break.”

  “From the pregnancy…project?”

  “No, no. Lord, no. From work.”

  “You’re quitting your job?”

  “Nah, not quitting.” He reached in his shirt to finger a necklace, one Alison had never noticed before. Not like her simple shark’s tooth, but some kind of talisman on a leather cord. God knows what strange rituals Sarah had been putting up with in bed all these months. “I’ve got three weeks’ sick leave saved up. Three weeks I can focus on the project, as you call it.”

  He worried the necklace, not looking at her. Probably steeling himself for another round of common sense. Bill was forty-two now and had always been prone to sickness, so of course Sarah was angry. Alison felt bad for him, trying to hold out hope in the face of what everyone else regarded as stupidity. Maybe hope always looked stupid, like the people lined up last week at DISCOUNT RAGE, buying up Powerball lottery tickets even though the evening news kept telling them they had a better chance of being struck by lightning while being stung by bees. Or the people from Seven Springs, a handful of years away from dying, but still trying to learn to dance. Or Mrs. Harmon, who in addition to dance had recently started piano lessons. Or the town itself, building a lake and waiting for tourists. Or Marty, with his projects, his Yellow Pages business plan, his perpetual-motion machine.

  Or her.

  Of course, that must be how she looked, pouring money and months into a basket-case Corvette—not brave or dauntless or spirited, just stupid. Stupid to Max, stupid to Sarah, to Ernie, to Mr. Beachy (who, like some TV drug dealer, supplied her habit), to all of Wiley Ford. But what amazed her was how lavish that stupidity felt, the best kind of self-indulgence. It felt big, expansive. Like Noah hammering away in the desert, Napoléon finding his way off Elba Island, Edward VII chucking the throne for some divorcée from Pennsylvania. Pessimism seemed easy, if you thought about it, a thin black string you could tug with your little finger, drawing down some heavy curtain. The optimists had it hard, thrumming along on hope, enduring the world’s sad stares. All those times she used to berate Marty, was that what he’d felt, a kind of buried exhilaration? She looked at Bill, his tired eyes. Naturally he wanted to ditch his job; he was having the time of his life.

  “Hey, laugh all you want,” Bill said, mistaking her smile. “My mind is made up.”

  “We’re both so stupid,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Afraid I don’t follow.”

  “Nothing. It was a compliment.”

  He smiled, only because she was. “You’re losing me, Al. What’s your point?”

  Just then, the music started up again, and she heard Mr. Rossi calling her name.

  “My point is,” she said, “you better just take half of that sick leave. Save the rest for when the baby comes.”

  Late, late that night, something woke her up. She lay in bed, listening for the muffled arguments of Bill and Sarah, or for the distant noise of the men in the lake, but heard nothing. When she got up and parted the curtains, she saw the Seven Springs van rolling to a silent stop on the gravel, the headlights out. Though she saw only his gray shadow, she knew immediately that the figure exiting the driver’s door was Mr. Kesler. Poor man, he really was sick, maybe Alzheimer’s or an early senility. As she pulled on her sweatshirt and shorts and considered phoning Max, Mr. Kesler began moving not toward the front door of the house but toward the garage door.

  Alison cupped her hands to the window to watch as he walked along the side of the garage and cupped his own hands to the narrow window, looking in. It made her think of being a kid and going with her father to Swauger’s Barbershop, seeing herself reflected in those opposing mirrors, an infinity of pale green light. Mr. Kesler turned and stood in the driveway with his hands on his hips, looking up at the house. She instinctively pulled back. Was he looking for Max? Her? The riders for his van? She thought of those stories on the nightly news every so often, elderly people wandering off alone. He opened the passenger door of the van where he kept his records, closed the door, then walked around the back of the van, carrying his wooden box. Instead of making his way to the house, he turned and headed toward the lake, across the dewy lawn, picking his way slowly over the stands of weeds and cattails, then stepping down the steep bank into the mud. Alison turned quickly and padded downstairs in her bare feet, avoiding the squeaky stairs so as not to wake Sarah. Her brain went into panic mode, sifting half a dozen thoughts before she reached the bottom stair tread. Maybe he was throwing his records into the lake, his confusion twisting to insult the decision to use the boom box for the Founders’ Day Parade. Or maybe he was looking for his car, finally believing his own lies. Or, God forbid, he might be throwing himself into the lake.

  By the time she made it to the edge of the mud, he was halfway out, trudging along with faltering steps, sometimes uttering a curse word. She stepped in after him, aware of her bare feet in the muck, half-expecting a nail or glass shard to pierce her foot.

  “Mr. Kesler,” she said in that whispery shout people use in movie theaters. “Gordon!”

  He paused briefly, listening for what he must have thought he heard, then resumed walking. Alison rolled her eyes. “Gordon!” she said, louder this time. He stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn to her until she called him again, then waited until she caught up with him.

  “Mr. Kesler, are you okay?” She fought to catch her breath. “What are you doing out here? The dance—”

  His appearance stopped her. He wore a black knitted watchman’s cap, a black sweater, and dark pants, instead of his usual jumpsuit, and some kind of black makeup—grease, or that stuff football players wear—around his eyes. He looked like Alice Cooper committing burglary.

  “What night is this?” he said. “Where is everybody?”

  “Oh, for godsake, Gordon. I might be naive but I’m not a moron.”

  He looked at her for a long space of time, his eyes like crude drawings of eight balls. “Well, then, I won’t insult your obvious intelligence.”

  “You probably already are, but go ahead. Explain yourself.”

  He drew a long breath, drumming his fingers on his lips. “No doubt you’re familiar with the Japanese concept of losing face? Suffice it to say, I’m about to lose mine.”

  “Well, the way your face looks right now, it wouldn’t be a huge loss.”

  He smiled. The box he clutched on his hip was not his wooden record box, but a plain cardboard one that had once held Jack Daniel’s. “If you remember, we discussed how that car has sunk into the mud. I believe you said it could be twenty feet under by now.”

  “No, actually I never said any such thing.”

  He pointed at her. “Yes, right you are. I believe your prediction was eight to ten feet. In any case, as I told you then, with all the buildup and everyone looking to me as their big hero, I hate to let everyone down.”

  “Not your fault if that poor car got lost in the mud, is it? How could anyone blame you?” She was letting him dangle and spin a bit. Easy to see how Max found this so enticing. And he was right: She had missed the point of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

  “We always blame those who let us down, Alison, even if it’s not their fault. The town expec
ts to find a car down there, take pictures, the whole nine yards.”

  “Well, maybe they just will. You said yourself, and the paper agrees, it’s probably in that deep middle part. Soon as Max drains that, I bet it’ll be sitting right there. All polished up. In fact, I bet the engine is still running.”

  He licked his lips nervously. “Now you’re pulling my leg.”

  “Yeah? How’s it feel?”

  He looked at her as though he were genuinely puzzled. He shifted the box, then set it down.

  “Gordon,” she said, “I heard about the Lou Gehrig baseball you bought for your son.”

  He shook his head, smiling. “Wouldn’t believe what I went through to track that one down. Paid out the hummer, too. Then some collector tries highway robbery—”

  “Listen, Max and I are kinda-sorta dating, Gordon. He’s told me lots of things.”

  “Sure, sure. Beautiful woman like yourself. He’d be a fool not to be dating you, if you give him the chance. Yessir.”

  She laughed. “You’re amazing. Truly. You should start your own religion or something.”

  “Well, there’s money in it. So what if I did?” This sudden anger struck her as odd, as though he really were starting his own religion and she’d stumbled across his plans. But he was probably just like nearly every other man she’d ever known—backed into a corner, they get defensive to the point of idiocy. She recalled an argument with Marty where, to make some now-forgotten point, he’d taken his only two good dress shirts and cut the sleeves off.

  Alison tapped the whiskey box with her muddied toe. “What’s in the box? Sunday collections?”

  He gave a long, heavy sigh, rubbing his eyes with thumb and finger, accidentally swiping the greasepaint into sad-clown makeup. He pulled off his cap, his silver hair dented in a ring.