Auto-De-Fe

by Paul Hawkins

well as would have liked but I figured he had to be sitting on a phone book. He looked over, and his face curled into a frown. He rolled down the passenger window, took the cigar out of his mouth, and shouted:

  "Hey! You kids stealin' that car?"

  People overheard him, and I responded hastily.

  "Naw, we bought it. We're gonna fix it up, make it run."

  He scowled, scanning the car from bumper to bumper, and scowled again. "Sounds like a tall order to me."

  I resisted the urge to jump on the comment with a tall joke.

  He continued. "I hope it doesn't keep you boys too busy. I don't like my employees to have second interests. Second interests make second-rate workers."

  "We'll do our jobs okay," Bill growled.

  "I know you will. I'll make sure you do," Walters said, "because I fire second-rate workers just like that!" He snapped his fingers.

  "Like that?" Bill said, repeating the gesture. Mr. Walters' eyes narrowed as he looked at Bill and I quickly intervened.

  "You don't have to worry," I placated. "We know our responsibilities to our job come, first."

  He glanced up at the traffic and then appraised us once more. "I still think you stole it," he said.

  "Goodbye, Mr. Walters," Bill said.

  He glared at Bill, and Bill stared back, and that exchange continued for half-a-minute, until Mr. Walters broke it off. His car lurched forward and rolled away.

  "You better watch it with him," I said. "He'll fire you."

  But Bill was calm. "No he won't. I know he won't. You saw us exchanging glances just then? Well, now he knows that if he crosses me, that some time, some way, outside of work, I'll beat the daylights out of him."

  I pondered this as we rolled on.

  "They say he's in the mob," I said at last.

  "With a name like Walters?"

  I shrugged. "Maybe he's an in-law."

  We rolled past a grocery store, and I had resumed my altar boy demeanor only to be startled out of it by Bill's sudden exclamation of "Hey Cathy!"

  I looked up and there she was, walking out of the store with a small package in her hand. She was surprised as we coasted by, and before she could control herself she'd gasped, "Oh, Bill!"

  He grinned. "Aint she a beauty?"

  And of course by that time her manner had reestablished itself. She acted like she hadn't said a thing, and Bill quite generously pretended that he'd heard nothing special. "Yes Bill," she said. "That's fine..." She sort of held up her package. "I've got to go," she said, "It's medicine..."

  But we were cruising past her anyway, so Bill wished her a polite goodbye, and she responded with a careful wave. But I, the steerer, looking in the rear-view mirror, saw her blue eyes linger as we passed.

  Eventually we made it home. By three o'clock that afternoon the car was strewn all over our driveway. We hadn't taken a break for lunch. Thinking that he'd have it running in an instant, Bill delved deeper and deeper into the engine, looking for the problem. By the time we had to leave for work Bill had discovered the real problem - he didn't know as much about cars as he'd thought. He helped me hide a lot of the parts in the garage. I looked up and saw my mother looking out the window, making the sign of the cross at us. It was awful. I left for work imagining what my dad would think when he got home.

  Bill was only marginally deterred. That night at work everybody had a suggestion to make about fixing it, and Bill consulted cheerfully with everyone. I kept to my work and watching Bill chatting I'd worry about Walters coming by, though after our little morning encounter I was actually kind of curious to see it happen. I wasn't disappointed.

  I was running the forklift - my favorite job - when I came to the end of this alley of boxes and there they were. Bill was lingering after his break, talking to Cathy near the time clock. I eased my forklift back into the corridor and watched. I don't know what he'd said, but obviously he'd been standing there and commented to her in transit. She was standing with papers in her hand. Bill's face was crossed with the smile of some recently imparted courtesy, and her expression mirrored his, somewhat demurely.

  Then the butterball came by.

  "Get back to work!" he shouted.

  Bill reluctantly withdrew from Cathy's gaze while Cathy burst into hasty animation, shuffling and reshuffling the stack of papers in her hands, then departing.

  Cathy walked away and Bill sighed, turning toward Walters very slowly. Mr. Walters' fists clenched and clenched again, but the red in his face sank slowly away, and he appeared to swallow the last of that color in one gulp, but he stood his ground.

  "Sure thing, Boss," Bill replied, but he just stood there, and after they stared at each other a while it was Walters who abruptly spun and left first.

  I almost backed over a whole row of boxes in my haste to tell somebody. The rest of the night went by quickly and somewhat pleasantly, but then I recalled the dormant hulk that occupied our driveway. My spirits sank like a rock. I left our little gathering with Bill's promise that he'd be by bright and early tomorrow. Swell. I plodded home.

  I made my way up our dark street, barked at by every dog for miles, and then I saw a faint gleam of light up ahead. I approached it cautiously, ascertaining that it came from our garage. The door was open, someone was inside. In no hurry, I finally made it to our drive. It was my dad. He had somehow moved the hulk part-way inside, and was looking under the hood.

  "Dad..." I said.

  "Yes?"

  "Uh, it's past midnight."

  He made it known that he was aware of the time. "It's not a bad car," he said.

  "It's not?"

  "Of course the engine's shot," he continued. "That boy know anything about fixing it?"

  I shook my head. "I don't think so."

  "It won't be that hard a job," he commented. "All it'll take are money, brains, and time. We'll let your friend provide the money. And I suppose you'll end up putting in a lot of time, so I guess I could supply the brains."

  I looked up from my perusal of the tank.

  "I remember a few things about fixing engines," he said. "And I've got some old books."

  "Well," I said. "It's an old car."

  "Then we should be able to handle it," he asserted good-naturedly. "I'll be as glad to see it running again as your friend will."

  I could believe that, but nonetheless the whole encounter with my father left me subtly impressed, and once again sleep only came reluctantly. If summer kept up like this, I knew it'd kill me.

  iii

  Of course the summer didn't slow its pace a bit. Day after day after day went by, always full and always hurried. With Bill's scarce money, and our spare time, progress on the car went slowly. But my dad did everything he could to make sure it wasn't a wasted effort. He planned things out for us, figured out what had to be replaced and what could stay, helping us through repairs when either my caution or Bill's fervor might've messed things up.

  But as fall approached my early summer easiness began to ebb. My commitment to join the Navy began to loom before me in my dreams, and it was with some sullenness that I realized I'd been hoping fall would never come. I'd been hoping something good would happen and some great opportunity would throw itself before me, ushering me away to a comfortable future, with my pledge to join the Navy becoming a cherished memory of how stoutheartedly I'd faced my unsure fate. But glumly I now realized that no good thing had come. I hadn't been saved, or blessed, or however you want to say it. The inevitability, the irreproachability of the whole situation started to eat at me. I guess I really dragged around when I started thinking like that, but everybody seemed too caught up in something else to notice.

  For one thing, Cathy finally began to be affectionate towards Bill. Everybody noticed that. How could you help it? It was as suspenseful as watching an iceman thaw, as magnificent and forceful as the march of a glacier. Every feint and blush and posture they exchanged was charged with awesome energy, and gave off little sparks as tell-tale of enormous force as the
twitching needles of a seismograph.

  One day it happened. I didn't see the first time, nobody'd seen it, and there were no scorch-marks on the floor or on the ceiling to tell where it had taken place, but somewhere sometime behind some mile-high mile-wide stack of boxes their eyes had met, and held, and confirmed their mutuality. And afterward their brushing glances became evocative of blissful smiles, and their sighs were synchronized indicative of some beatific shared ambition.

  The energy of their glowing affection was so strong that the whole atmosphere of the warehouse was vitalized, charged with vernal force as though the spring were just beginning. Minor romances began to establish their own orbits, and everybody seemed to receive a sweet aesthetic spirit that urged serene contemplation of every box and bolt. It was the sort of thing that makes normal industrialists uneasy, and it drove Mr. Walters nuts.

  After Cathy had become more of a confederate, an interesting fact about the boss came out. He had a crush on her! She revealed the secret with a nervous, guilty giggle. We all knew she was his office helper - his paper-filer, coffee fetcher and typist. He never tried anything with her, and anyway we never suspected him of anything like that. But the curious thing was that most of the time he was actually nice to her. He gave her a desk of her own, and she could take breaks whenever she liked. Now and then, can you imagine it, fresh flowers would adorn her desk. And then, one day, he showed her a picture of his mother. Cathy had felt extremely awkward during this moment of supreme sentimentality. 'It would