I still had thoughts of punching him. “Look, please come out here. I appreciate you coming, but I don’t want you to fix the car, okay? In fact, I’d like you to leave.”
He pushed himself out on my creeper. “When Benjy called, he told me about his Ass Burgers or whatever the hell it is, and I apologized to him. Which I wanted to do earlier, but I didn’t have your phone number. So now I’m apologizing to both of you, okay? I ain’t perfect. But I’m dealin’ with stuff, and now I’m gonna really deal with it. The docs at the VA give me pills to take, and maybe now I’ll take ’em, cuz what I said wasn’t right. I want to make it up to you.”
“It’s Asperger’s,” corrected Benjy. “Asperger’s Syndrome. People with Asperger’s call each other Aspergians or Aspies sometimes. My dad is an Aspie too, but not like me. He’s more like a normal.”
Kenny grinned at me. “Well, ain’t we a threesome?” he chuckled. “So, Big Ben, let me do you this favor and fix this.”
I still didn’t like him. I still wanted him gone, even if Benjy did like him. Who knew if or when he’d blow up again? And I didn’t want Benjy around when he did. “Please—really—I accept your apology,” I said, “but you don’t have to fix the car. I screwed it up, I want to fix it.”
Kenny shook his head doubtfully. “I’ll tell you right now, you made a helluva mess. There’s too much damage to fix for amateurs. And you don’t want to go to some tire shop where you got a kid banging on it who don’t know a Corvair from a can of tuna. They won’t have the right wheel studs. They’ll torque it all wrong. Like you did. And don’t EVER ask them to align the wheels—you’ll be in a World of Pain. You’re gonna need a new wheel, by the way. All that wheel wobble grooved out the holes. Yeah, you did a serious number on this bad boy. You got a decent spare?”
I guess Kenny didn’t appreciate the way I was looking at him. He sat up from the creeper.
“What?” he challenged. “I said I was sorry. You don’t want to drive your Vair? You don’t like free? You cain’t forgive? Then, of the three of us, I’d say you got the biggest problem of all.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” Benjy said.
I finally relented.
“Now, if you could please get me the spare?” Kenny ordered. “It’s hard to get up off this creeper when your legs don’t work.”
“Don’t push my ability to forgive,” I shot back, as I opened the engine compartment and retrieved the spare tire. “Around our house, you better respect both of us.”
Momentarily chastened, Kenny nodded. Then he asked Benjy, with a wink, “Which was it you think got him? The forgiveness or the free?”
“Probably the free,” Benjy answered seriously. “He is cheap.”
“Benjy,” I cautioned, still steaming.
“It’s true,” he insisted.
“Don’t talk about private family stuff with strangers.”
“He’s not a stranger. His name is Kenny and this is the second time we’ve met him.”
“Look, Big Ben,” said Kenny. “I’ll be out of your way as soon as I’m done.” He turned to Benjy. “Kid, go to the World’s Coolest Car over there, please, and fetch my tool box. And the parts next to it.”
“My name is Ben,” I said coolly as Benjy hustled over to Kenny’s rust-splotched, down-in-the-mouth Early Model. “Not Big Ben.”
Kenny shrugged; he didn’t care.
“Uhhhh,” Benjy grunted as he lifted Kenny’s tool box. “It’s heavy!”
“Maybe the Ben that’s bigger will help you?” Kenny said, winking at me.
I should have been amused. Instead, I just wanted him gone.
“I’m okay!” Benjy insisted. He freed the tool box and waddled over with it. “This is really, really heavy!” he complained.
“Boy, where were you when they handed out muscles?” Kenny teased.
As Benjy hustled back to Kenny’s car for the parts, he noted, “Human beings all have the same number of muscles.”
“I see,” nodded Kenny, sending a look my way that said he was starting to understand a little more about Benjy’s Ass Burgers.
“I can read the directions, if you want,” offered Benjy. “I did that for my dad when we installed the seat belts.”
“You installed those seat belts in the rear?” Kenny asked me.
I nodded. Proudly.
Kenny shook his head. “Good thing I’m here. You need some rust preventer to cover those bolt heads. You drill holes through the bottom of a Corvair, you’re just beggin’ rust to come inside and eat it for lunch.”
My pride turned to cluelessness. Of course, he was right. Why hadn’t I thought of it?
“That wasn’t in the manual,” Benjy insisted. “The manual says —”
I interrupted, telling Benjy he didn’t have to recite the manual anymore.
“That’s okay. Nobody’s born a mechanic,” said Kenny, trying hard to show he’d turned over a new leaf. “Look at the bright side, you didn’t kill nobody.” He giggled to himself—so much for the new leaf. “I got a spray can of rustproofing in my car we can use. It’s just common sense, that’s probably why they don’t put it in the manual.” He put a hand on the brake drum to pull himself upright. “Hand me that hammer, please, Big Guy. It’s time to inflict some damage on this bad boy.”
“Do you want me to read the manual to you?” Benjy again offered, eagerly handing the hammer.
“I think I got this one covered,” said Kenny, maneuvering himself on the creeper. He banged the brake drum loose while schooling us on the art of replacing broken wheel lugs on a Corvair. Benjy was enthralled, concentrating hard, soaking the information in, memorizing.
With night coming fast, I watched from my office window while Benjy shouted “Bye!” and waved to Kenny as he drove off. After a few minutes of their nonstop Corvair chatter, I realized I was a third wheel. I wasn’t sure they even noticed when I’d returned inside.
Annie used to say, “Any friend of Benjy’s is better than no friend at all.” Clearly, she had never met Kenny. Still, he had taken Benjy’s mind off the catastrophe with Lydia, and I was thankful for that. And, reflecting back now, I couldn’t remember the last time Benjy and I had yakked for two hours about anything, as he had just done with Kenny. And I couldn’t recall the last time Benjy had waved goodbye to me without Mavis prompting him. I was jealous.
Polynomials, linear equations, factors, radicals, logarithms—I hadn’t crossed paths with these terms, symbols, and formulae in decades. Once upon a time, I must have known all this stuff, because I had graduated from college and knowing it was required to enter college. (There was a mathematical term for that kind of logic, but I’d long forgotten it.) So, as Benjy prepped to take his math assessment, I was useless to him. It didn’t matter, though; after weeks of taking the online tutorials, his practice assessment scores were high enough to avoid retaking the math courses he’d already passed in high school. He was ready to take the real test.
We drove the Corvair over to James Monroe, where Katie had reserved a private room in the school’s Learning Center for Benjy so he would not be distracted as he took the test. She and I made certain he had all the tools he was allowed: pencils, erasers, scratch paper, and a calculator. He was eager and confident. We high-fived, then he entered the private room. He had three hours to finish the test.
An hour later, he called. He was done. “It was easy,” he said. “I finished early.”
As I pulled the Corvair into the James Monroe circle, he was pacing to and fro, flapping his hand and reciting.
“Congratulations,” I crowed as he climbed in. “You want to celebrate?”
“No, thanks,” he said dourly.
“Maybe go to the McDonald’s drive-thru?” I urged, hoping he’d reconnect with Lydia.
“No, thanks,” he said more dourly.
“So what was your score?” I asked as we pulled away from the school.
“It wasn’t all we had hoped for,” he said, repeating the very same words he’d used
to inform me he’d been rejected by Wheeler.
“I thought it was easy,” I said.
“So did I. When I called you, they hadn’t scored the test yet.”
He told me his score; it certainly wasn’t “all we had hoped for.” In fact, it was so bad that he now faced taking two and a half years of remedial math before he would be allowed to enroll in his one required college math course. Or, he could sign up for intensive tutoring at James Monroe, then retake the assessment. He quickly agreed to the tutoring.
“I thought I did good,” he said, perplexed. Then he asked, “Dad, why do I need to know more math than you?”
“I don’t know.” I pulled onto the main highway and suggested we go to McDonald’s, hoping to cheer him up. “We might see Lydia,” I said, foregoing subtlety.
“No, thank you,” said Benjy tersely.
“We could apologize again for what happened. Show her the car’s fixed.”
“She hates this car,” he erupted. “You always tell me to pick up on the social cues! She called it a Deathmobile! Wasn’t that a pretty obvious social cue?”
“Maybe we can change her mind,” I said calmly. “The same way you changed your mind about this car.”
“She has a boyfriend, Dad!”
“That doesn’t mean she can’t be your friend. I think she really likes you as a friend.”
Benjy shook his head from side to side. Absolutely not.
“Okay, so what do you want to do?” I asked. “Eat lunch someplace else? Go home?”
“I want to go to Kenny’s,” he said.
I sighed. Loudly. Disapprovingly. He picked up that social cue right away.
“He said I should come by, he had something he wanted to show me.”
“When did he say that?”
“Before he left our house.”
I sighed so long that I ran out of air and coughed. The Mother of all Social Cues.
“You and Mom told me I should try to make friends,” said Benjy. “I did. Kenny is my friend. I’m old enough to choose who I want to make my friend.” He fixed his brown eyes on me.
I sighed again. Because he was right. I set the Corvair on a course toward Kenny’s.
CHAPTER 10
As we stepped out of the Corvair, Manny, Moe, and Jack charged, barking wildly. But Benjy was prepared; he clenched his teeth, shut his eyes, and merely turned crimson, not purple. “Stop it, ya damn dogs!” Kenny yelled from the barn door. Manny, head down, suddenly quieted, looking disappointed he wouldn’t be able to maul us, then led the other two hounds over to sniff us as if we were doggie treats.
“Will they jump?” Benjy anxiously called to Kenny.
“They damn well better not,” Kenny threatened, which did not answer Benjy’s question. He whistled, and the dogs trotted back over to him. “I guess you don’t smell like a bill collector,” he joked.
Benjy’s face slowly gave up its crimson flush.
“Looks like yer wheel stayed on this time,” Kenny needled as we joined him. I thanked him for his house call and praised his mechanical savvy, but I’m sure he also picked up on my I Don’t Like You and I Don’t Want to Be Here social cue.
In the garage, Kenny’s Early Model was up on jack stands, its rear wheels dangling down like Humpty Dumpty’s legs just before he fell. “You’re working on the World’s Coolest Car,” Benjy said.
Kenny nodded. “That Early Model has the rear axles Nader didn’t like. Said they’d make the car spin or roll.” He wheeled over to the accused axles and mused, “I got history with these cars, Kid. No real problems and lotsa good times, real good times. You reminded me of that. And if I told ya about them times—” He winked toward me. “Yer Ol’ Man would blow a head gasket.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Benjy said, wanting to hear the stories.
Kenny smiled. Since we’d met him, it was the first time I’d seen him smile, and it made him look 10 years younger, as if he could have been Benjy’s older brother. “My Ol’ Man and me always went deer huntin’ the day the season opened,” he said. “We went up to the woods at three in the mornin’. I’d skip school. I was never much for school—now I sorta wish I had been. Anyway, we went in our truck. Four-wheel drive, huge wheels and tires, practically needed a ladder to get in it. It could go anywhere. Except one year, opening day, middle of the night, and it wouldn’t start. Just flat would not go.”
Kenny rolled over to his dimly lit work bench, and we followed. “So Dad and me put all our huntin’ stuff in the World’s Coolest Car over there. Drove through mud, swamp, streams…. We beat that thing like a government mule. I bagged a twelve-point buck that day. We tied it to the Vair’s roof, drove it to the check station. Man there laughed his head off, then took that picture.”
From his chair, Kenny couldn’t reach the back end of the bench, so I brought the framed picture to him. Yellowing and crooked inside its frame, it showed Kenny, perhaps 10 years old, the spitting image of his father beside him, standing proudly in front of their Early Model with the buck tied to the roof. Kenny choked back tears. “After that, we only hunted in Corvairs. We wuz a sight.”
“Corvairs have excellent traction in mud and snow,” Benjy said, “with the weight of the engine, transmission, and differential all in the rear.”
Kenny nodded and handed the photo to Benjy. “I expect you prob’ly ain’t hunters,” he said. “Maybe it’s a terrible thing to you. But that’s what Dad and me did, hunted and fixed Corvairs.”
Benjy noted that hunting was the primary means of food-gathering in many cultures.
“My father had a Corvair, too,” I said. “He drove his carpool to work in it—four big men. They loved it because it had so much room inside.”
“Roomiest compact car in the world,” Kenny said.
“And economical,” I added. “No antifreeze. No radiator. Easy on gas. Didn’t need power steering or brakes with all the weight in back. My dad loved all that.”
“Grandpa was cheap,” Benjy added. “It runs in the family, like Asperger’s.”
Kenny slapped his thigh and cackled gleefully. “Never met a Corvair owner that wasn’t tight with a dollar. Including my pa and me. But here’s a secret.” Benjy leaned in to hear the secret. “Don’t ever call Corvair owners cheap. That offends them. They’re ‘frugal.’”
“I think they’re smart,” said Benjy.
“Oh boy,” exclaimed Kenny. “You’re askin’ for a fight there. Most people out there think Corvair owners are dumb as door knobs.”
“Those people are like the bullies on the long bus,” said Benjy. “People need to accept and accommodate differences in cars and not reject or stereotype them, just like they need to accept and accommodate people with differences, and not reject or stereotype us.”
“If you’re runnin’ for office,” said Kenny, “you got my vote.”
“It’s not right when people call it a Deathmobile,” Benjy went on. “That’s what my Dad’s friends called it when he was growing up.”
“Deathmobile?” exclaimed Kenny. “That’s funny.” He gestured that we follow him to the back of the barn. “I need to show you somethin’,” he said as he wheeled. “The reason I asked you to come down.”
The disembodied mannequin legs lay lifeless in the dirt before the shark Corvair, just as we’d left them a few weeks earlier.
“I told ya my daddy and me, we wuz buildin’ this car to race,” said Kenny, his mischievous grin lifting and lighting his face. He barely looked older than Benjy now. “But I joined the Army and stuff happened and he died, so that was the end of that.”
“In what kind of race do you paint your car up like a shark and pretend to have dead bodies sticking out of its mouth?” I asked.
“Well, sir,” he explained, “it’s a famous race in France. The Grand Prix du Gar-bahhhge,” he said in a phony French accent.
Benjy drew a blank. “Garbage,” I told him. “The Grand Prix of Garbage. It’s a joke. A race for cars that are garbage.”
; “A Corvair is not garbage,” Benjy insisted. “It had many innovations, such as—”
“Stop! I know!” Kenny held up his hand like a traffic cop and Benjy halted his sermon in mid-sentence. “In this race, you cain’t spend more than five hundred dollars on yer car, max, other than for safety stuff—tires, brakes, safety cage and seat,” Kenny explained. “And then, part of the fun of the race is everyone decorates their garbage car. So it’s sort of like racing parade floats.” Kenny signaled with his finger for Benjy to come close. When Benjy did, Kenny lowered his voice, sharing a secret. “We got this car for free, all we had to do was haul it away. So it’s perfect for the Grand Prix, we can spend all five hundred bucks to fix it. Then we painted it up to be a killer shark. Get it? Cuz the Corvair is a killer car. Right?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Benjy said.
“In people’s minds,” I chimed in, seeing Benjy was taking Kenny too literally.
Benjy digested that, then asked Kenny, “Were you making a joke? Based on the stereotype of the Corvair as an unsafe car that was deadly?”
“Bingo,” said Kenny.
Benjy solemnly nodded.
“My dad and me, we had a name for this car that we were about to paint on its side,” Kenny continued. “You know what it was?”
Benjy shook his head No.
Kenny motioned to him to lean down and whispered it in his ear.
“Deathmobile?” said Benjy.
Kenny slowly nodded, then grinned mischievously.
Benjy solemnly nodded yet again.
And then he started to laugh. Big laughs. Body heaving laughs. “HA, HA, HA, HA! HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!”
Kenny slapped his thigh again and again. I thought I saw tears come to his eyes, he was laughing so hard.
“HA, HA, HA, HA! HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!” Benjy turned purple again, this time from laughter. I hadn’t seen him laugh like that since Grandpa had tickled him silly.
It was contagious. I laughed at their laughing, and now we were all giggling like naughty school boys.
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