The Last Open Road

by Burt Levy

  I went over and sneaked in about three ayem, shinnying up the cherry tree and going in through the window, and next morning I knocked on my aunt's front door and made a deal to move myself in and pay her at the end of the month. Twenty bucks sounded a little steep, but I could afford it. After all, I had a job that paid . . . well, to tell the truth, I wasn't sure exactly what it paid. But I figured it'd be more than enough. As I remember, my aunt made the entire transaction without ever taking the chain lock off the door. Not once.

  That apartment over Aunt Rosamarina's garage was everything a young guy on his own could ask for. Oh, maybe it was a little strange that the shower and sink were right in the middle of the floor, but that's because the roof was shaped like the inside of a pup tent and it was the only place you could stand up straight to shave or brush your teeth. Well, almost straight, anyway. And I had to remember not to wake up real quick (like if I had a nightmare about that chemical plant job) because the bed was over where the ceiling was only a foot or so off the floor, and you could split your head wide open if you sat up in a hurry.

  But it was mine, and I couldn't believe how great it felt to be out on my own, enjoying the dignity and privacy of my own apartment. Why, I could drink a beer anytime I wanted to (so long as I could get one of the local rum-pots hanging around the liquor store to buy it for me, anyway) or even invite Julie over to share one with me if I had the notion. Not that I had the nerve to actually ask her, you understand, but you need the privacy of your own place to even think about doing that kind of thing. And speaking of that, I could think about being with Julie as much as I wanted, without worrying about somebody hearing me or waltzing in unexpectedly from the next room. You worry about that a lot when you grow up in a house with four older sisters. But now I was free! Independent! By God, in my apartment, I could do whatever I wanted, with whoever I wanted, and whenever the hell I wanted to do it.

  After the first couple weeks, I was bored a lot.

  Meanwhile, I kept filling in for Butch at Old Man Finzio's Sinclair through the winter months, and damn near froze my ass off doing it. We'd only put in a couple thin sheets of tar-paper insulation under the roof, and if I stoked the space heater up enough to take the frost off my mirror, the snow would start to melt and I'd get leaks. Serious leaks. They always seemed to be right over the bed, no matter where I moved it (not that you could move anything very far in the apartment over Aunt Rosamarina's garage), and it sure didn't help that I worked in a gas station every day. You ask anybody how cold it gets inside a con-crete-and-brick garage during the wintertime (especially when you're raising the damn overhead door all the time to bring in sick cars that have been sitting for three days with snow up to the hubcaps and icicles hanging off the grille). I swear, my body never thawed out until spring that year.

  Fortunately, things had smoothed out a little with my folks by then, and my dad would even pass the meat or vegetables when I came over for dinner on Sunday evenings. Of course, he wouldn't say much—just grunt now and then and mutter under his breath—but that still represented a major improvement. My mom naturally wanted me to move back home (what else?) but I'd counter with the old "how important it was for a young man to assume responsibility" gambit. It was one of my old man's favorites, but I sure wasn't above borrowing it when the situation demanded. Besides, my aunt's house was only a couple blocks away if the worst happened and the Commies launched an all-out missile attack on New York.

  Old Butch was doing better, too. Or at least that's what the doctors said. They'd moved him to the V.A. hospital near Iselin, and I went down to visit him there a few times. It was a long trip by bus (no way was my dad gonna lend me his Mercury to go see another grease monkey—not even in the hospital) so I didn't make it very often. But I'd call every week, and Butch'd tell me how the doctors and nurses were saying he was making progress, but that they were really all full of shit and didn't know what they were talking about. And I had to agree, since I couldn't see much change except that he could sit up and talk a little better. Then again, I guess that is progress when you start out like a busted bag of stew meat.

  2: BIG ED'S JAGUAR

  BIG ED Baumstein owned the first Jaguar sports car I ever saw. It was an XK120 roadster, creamy white with red leather upholstery, and my whole world stopped cold the first time he wheeled it into the station in the early spring of 1952. Big Ed was a rich Jewish guy from Teaneck who'd had three or four divorces and dealt in scrap industrial machinery. Actually, he was only half-Jewish, seeing as how his mother's side of the family was Italian. Calabraese, I think. Anyhow, Big Ed and his cousin Vincenzo (on his mother's side, natch) had this huge wrecking yard over by the Jersey shore, and although they never wore suits or ties except to weddings and funerals and stuff, they had plenty of money to throw around. Not that they made a big show of it or put on airs like those highly manicured jerks you see in the society pages.

  Big Ed had been a regular at the Old Man's gas station because he liked the way Butch took care of his cars, and far back as anybody could remember, Big Ed always drove Cadillacs. In fact, he had two of them when I started at the Sinclair: an enormous black Sixty Special sedan for the fall and winter, plus an absolutely gorgeous white-on-white convertible that he only drove in the spring and summer and never took out of the garage if it was raining. They were hardly a year old, either one of them, but Big Ed was forever dropping them off for an oil change and lube job or a full Simonize wax or maybe to fix a little squeak or rattle. Big Ed didn't trust the mechanics at the Caddy dealership and he took a real shine to me when I tracked down a nasty grating noise behind the dash of the white convert. It was just the speedo cable, for gosh sakes. Needed a little grease. But he was thrilled when the noise vanished and I only let Old Man Finzio charge him a dollar. I mean, it was nothing, you know? Big Ed flashed me a wink and palmed me a five-buck tip. That was one hell of a big tip in 1952.

  Big Ed could afford it. Sure, I'd heard the whispering about how his scrap business was somehow, umm, connected. Like how maybe a few ex–business associates of certain Influential People might have accidentally gotten mixed up with the blocks of crushed steel his workers sent back to the smelters for reprocessing. Perhaps even a key prosecution witness or two. But I never asked how Big Ed made the fivers he started slipping me every time I passed a wrench over one of his Caddies. I figured that kind of curiosity was for the people who work downtown in the federal building. Besides, I liked Big Ed, because he loved his cars and wanted them to be perfect. You had to respect a guy who felt that way about automobiles.

  As you probably figured, Big Ed Baumstein was a genuinely massive edition of a human being. He stood six-four and a yard wide, and could pretty much fill up your average doorway in all directions. Not that you'd figure him for that tall if you saw him standing out in the open, seeing as how he was shaped like an Anjou pear and favored bright, clashy clothes that broke up the landscape of his body. But standing right next to him, you'd all of a sudden realize that you were barely eye-level with his neck (or where his neck would've been if Big Ed had such a thing) and talking into his chest hairs. Not that you ever got to do much talking around Big Ed Baumstein. Listening was more like it.

  I'll never forget the bright spring morning Big Ed wheeled his shiny new Jag up to the pumps for the very first time. Jee-zus, I'd never seen a car like that in my life. The bodywork arched and curled from one end to the other like some huge steel jungle cat, and the sound was perfect, too: a rich, buttery growl that just seemed to purr its way out the tailpipes. Jaguarrrrrr!!! Boy, they sure picked the right name for that automobile. "Whaddaya think?" Big Ed grinned, his dollar cigar sticking up like an exclamation point.

  "Boy, it sure is something!" I said, running my eyes up and down the bodywork, trying to take in all the curves.

  "Wanna go for a ride?"

  "Jeez, I dunno," I told him. "Old Man Finzio'll have himself a conniption fit if I just take off...."

  "Ahh, screw him," Big Ed snorted. "C'
mon, climb aboard."

  Needless to say, I decided to chance it. Only I couldn't find the door handle! Big Ed let out a huge laugh—Haw-haw-ha-haw-haw-hawww—and reached over to open it from the inside. That's how you open the door on an XK120 roadster. Right away I could see this car was different from the Fords, Chevys, and even Cadillacs I was used to. I also noticed Big Ed was wedged in just about solid between the seat back and the steering wheel. Big as it was (and that XK120 was goddam big for a two-seater automobile) it didn't really have much in the way of gut, chest, or shoulder room for a guy the size of Big Ed Baumstein.

  To this day, I remember leaning back in that rich red leather upholstery for the very first time. It smelled like fine kid gloves, and felt just as soft against my skin. Warm, too, as if some elegant lady's hands were still inside them. Then Big Ed revved her up and dumped the clutch (he was never real arty with a stick shift) and we squealed away from the pumps in a haze of burning rubber. I caught a glimpse of Old Man Finzio out of the corner of my eye as we rocketed out onto Pine Street, and he just stood there and stared—dumbstruck, you know?—as if Big Ed's Jaguar was a naked blonde on roller skates. XK120s did that to everybody. They were so damn gorgeous it made your eyes ache just to look at them.

  Big Ed drove out past the edge of town and gave it a quick blast in second and third. Jeez, was that car ever FAST! "That's eighty!" Big Ed hollered over the wind noise, "and we're not even outta third yet!" Right at that exact moment, with hair whipping in my eyes and the howl of that big twin-cam six filling my ears and the white lines on the highway coming at me like tracer bullets, right then I fell in love with Jaguars.

  Old Man Finzio didn't say a word when we tooled back into the station a half hour later. Not one. He just eased his way over by the pumps—real nonchalant, you know—to get himself a closer look at Big Ed's new toy. I can't recall I'd ever seen so much white around the Old Man's eyeballs. "Say," I asked, "d'ya think we could maybe take a look under the hood?"

  "Suuure," Big Ed grinned. But then we couldn't find the damn hood release. I swear we crawled all over that car before I finally located a suspicious-looking knob that the Jaguar factory people had thoughtfully hidden under the passenger side of the dashboard, clear back against the firewall. I popped it and walked around front, pausing to wipe my hands on my coveralls before daring to lift that crocodile-snout Jaguar hood. Underneath was the single most beautiful automotive powerplant I'd ever seen, what with two long, gleaming aluminum valve covers fastened down with neat little rows of chrome-plated acorn nuts and these strange, stately S.U. carburetors standing at attention off the side like a pair of medieval guards in shining armor. It was like a piece of sculpture, honest it was.

  "Y'know," Big Ed mused while the Old Man and I drooled our way around the Jag's engine compartment, "I wonder if you guys could make it so's the seat moves back a little more. It's kinda snug in there, y'know? And maybe fix the turn signals, too. I can't seem t'get the damn things to work."

  "I don't know ...," Old Man Finzio started in, kind of shaking his head.

  But I broke right in: "Sure I can, Mr. Baumstein. I can fix it. No problem at all."

  Big Ed gave me one of his patented five-dollar winks. "I bet you can, Buddy. I bet you can."

  And sure enough I could.

  After a couple false starts, anyway.

  Big Ed's XK120 became a frequent visitor at the Old Man's Sinclair that spring and summer, since it always seemed to be needing a little attention. It was fussy, like some high-class woman who's used to silk clothes and servants and stuff. I even got Big Ed to buy me a special set of British Standard socket wrenches because nothing in Butch's tool-box fit properly except the sparkplug wrench. If you tried using them, they'd invariably slip off at an inopportune moment (like just when you're trying to torque that final quarter twist into a bolt head hidden down in the bottom of the engine compartment) and leave half the skin off your knuckles embedded in the radiator core like a smear of the suet my mom leaves out for her birds in the wintertime.

  Those British Standard wrenches were expensive, too, and it took our regular tool guy more than a week to get them. Plus no way would Old Man Finzio lay out his money so I could work on Big Ed's Jag. But I didn't mind. In fact, I was real glad to have Big Ed's XK120 dropping by for service every few days, because working on it made me feel pretty damn special compared to the Nash Ambassadors, Henry Js, and even Cadillacs and Lincolns I was used to. Not to mention that the Jag was nothing short of a gold mine for a decent automobile mechanic—and that's not even counting Big Ed's five-buck tips! Best of all, it intimidated the hell out of Old Man Finzio. Why, he couldn't even look in the Jag's engine bay without his eyelids starting to twitch and his jaw tightening up a few notches. Truth is, Old Man Finzio didn't understand or appreciate Jaguars one bit, and I did what I could to encourage the situation by sort of talking to that car whenever I had it in for service. Like my mom talks to her stupid birds, you know? I came up with this phony-baloney Lord-Earl-of-the-Sinclair British ac-cent, see, and every now and then I'd hold a dashpot dampener or voltage regulator up to my ear and pretend like it was answering me back. I guess it must've looked pretty loony, because soon I had Old Man Finzio creeping around the back of the shop on tiptoe every time I worked on Big Ed's XK120. In fact, sometimes he'd just give up and go hide in the can or hang around the gas pumps until he heard it fire up and roll out of the service bay.

  That sure beat hell out of putting brake shoes on some tax accountant's Plymouth.

  But there were a lot of mechanical secrets to learn about Jaguars, and at the beginning, I didn't know any of 'em. Like I'll never forget the day Big Ed's Jag staggered into the station with the engine popping and banging and huge, sooty black clouds blowing out the tailpipe. He'd only owned it five or six weeks then, and did he ever look pissed. In fact, Big Ed's face was about the color of a fresh radish, and you could tell by the droop of his cigar that he was well past merely disappointed. "This goddam limey piece of shit," he snarled, yanking the hood cable so hard it damn near came off in his hand. "Take a look at it fr'me, willya?"

  To tell the truth, I hadn't the foggiest notion what was wrong. But I pulled the sparkplugs (always a reasonable place to start) and it didn't take a rocket scientist to see they were all seriously gas fouled. So I sandblasted 'em and screwed 'em back in, and then just kind of stared at those weird S.U. carburetors for twenty minutes or so, trying to figure out how they worked. Can't say as I'd ever seen anything remotely like S.U.s before. They had these elegant-looking aluminum towers on top, and I had no idea what they had to do with mixing air and gasoline into something an internal combustion engine might want to swallow. Finally, I gave up and punched the starter button—just to see what would happen, right?—and of course the Jag fired up instantly and settled down to an absolutely perfect 550-r.p.m. idle. It was a miracle!

  Needless to say, my stock soared with Big Ed, and this time he slipped me a tenner. Honest to God he did. But my newfound stardom as a British car expert fizzled out less than twenty minutes later, when the Jag came stumbling back into the station again, its engine halting and bucking on maybe two live cylinders and even bigger, blacker-looking clouds belching out the back. There was a purple cast to Big Ed's face this time, and his cigar was dangling straight down his chin on account of he'd bitten clear through it. "Wh-What the hell's wrong with this g-goddam thing!" Big Ed sputtered, really on a boil.

  So I checked it over again—same thing exactly—and to say I was mystified just about covers it. "I'm sorry, Mr. Baumstein," I told him, sounding extraordinarily lame, "but your Jaguar is really, aah, different from the other stuff I've worked on. It's gonna take me a little time to figure it out." Then I fished around in my pocket and handed him back his sawbuck.

  To my everlasting surprise, Big Ed's face came down a few shades until it wasn't much more than a warm pink. "You'll figger it out though, won'cha, Buddy?" he growled, pushing the sawbuck back into my pocket.

 
; "S-Sure, Mr. Baumstein," I nodded.

  "Good fr'you!" he nodded, slapping me on the back hard enough so there was maybe a little hint of a warning in it. Like maybe I sure better figure it out.

  So I looked into the engine compartment again, and all those strange, foreign-looking pieces stared right back at me. "Y'know, Mr. Baumstein," I told him, "at the very least I'm gonna need a shop manual. You got any idea where I might find one?"

  "Tellya what, Buddy, I'll borrow y'the black Caddy tomorrow so's ya can drive over t'Manhattan an' buy us one." It was springtime, so Big Ed wasn't using his Sixty Special for much of anything. "And one more thing...," he continued, resting a hand the size of a calf's head on my shoulder.