by Ralph Moody
“I’m not surprised at that,” I told him. “For some crazy reason he seems to have fallen in love with that old rattletrap.”
Mr. Larsen hunched his shoulders and spread his hands. Then he smiled and said, “Maybe you’re not too bad off. He knows more about engines than I’d expected, and if he loves that old flivver he’ll nurse it. I’ve advised him to tear the motor right down to the block and replace every worn part. It’s risky business to drive into the back country with a bum engine.”
“Did he say he’d do it?” I asked.
Mr. Larsen spread his hands and said, “Just froze up and wouldn’t talk.”
I think Lonnie was afraid of what Mr. Larsen might have told me. All the way to our room he walked along with his head down, and I couldn’t get two words out of him. I unlocked the door, then held it back for him to go in. He took two steps, then stopped as if someone had been in there pointing a gun at him. For fully a minute he stood looking at the outfits as if he couldn’t believe what he saw. He didn’t move until I said, “The one on the far side is yours. This one of mine wouldn’t be big enough for you to get your fat butt into.”
Lonnie made it to the bed in a single leap, dropped to his knees, and rubbed his hands over the smooth leather, across the Navajo blanket, and along one leg of the chaps. When he looked up at me his eyes were swimming. Then he looked back at the saddle and said, “Honest-a-God, buddy! Honest-a-God! You’ll never be sorry you done it. I’ll never leave you down. I’ll give you every dime out o’ my pay checks till . . .”
I never would have guessed that Lonnie could bawl about anything, but he seemed on the verge of it, so I said, “You wait here a few minutes. I’m going over to the livery stable and get some saddle soap. I don’t have an idea these old hulls have been soaped up since they lit in that hockshop.”
It was midnight before I could get Lonnie to stop working on his saddle, and he wouldn’t have stopped then if I hadn’t reminded him that he had a big job ahead of him next day.
By the time I’d known Lonnie two days I’d come to the conclusion that the hardest job he ever did was to wake up in the morning. Most cowhands are wide awake the moment they open their eyes, and unless they’ve been on night herd they usually open them at the first crack of dawn. But not Lonnie. He could have slept with a stampeding herd all around him. And no matter if he turned in at sundown he’d sleep through till noon unless someone shook the tar out of him. Even after I’d get him on his feet he’d still be more than half asleep, and it would often take him as much as an hour to get out of low gear.
When, the morning after we got our outfits, he shook me long before daylight, I thought the hotel must be afire. I flung the covers back and started to jump out of bed, but Lonnie whispered, “Take it easy, buddy. There ain’t no sense of you rollin’ out for another couple of hours. It ain’t much after five, but if I’m goin’ to get Shiftless fixed up and ready by nightfall I’d best to be gettin’ at her.”
That was the first time Lonnie ever called the old flivver Shiftless, and for a couple of seconds I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then, when the cobwebs cleared away, I said, “You’re out of your head, Lonnie. Joe won’t have his garage open at this time in the morning. And besides, there’s no sense in going out there till you’ve had your breakfast. The restaurant doesn’t open till six.”
“I don’t want no breakfast,” he told me. “I’ll go on out to the garage so’s to be there when Joe opens up. And look, buddy, when you go over to breakfast don’t let that Swede talk no foolish notions into your head. He don’t know nothin’ ’bout automobiles—leastways, not about flivvers that’s been wore a bit and has to be fixed up some.”
“Oh, I thought he did,” I said. “He told me we weren’t too bad off with Shiftless, and that you knew a lot more about autos than he’d expected.”
For a minute Lonnie stood there beside the bed with his mouth hanging open, then his face lighted up gradually—just as a mountaintop does when the morning sun first touches it. “Jeepers!” he said. “Maybe that old Swede knows more than I reckoned on. You know, come to think of it, I believe I could go for a bite o’ breakfast. We could finish soapin’ up our outfits while we’re waiting for the joint to open.”
Lonnie and I were waiting when Mr. and Mrs. Larsen came to open the restaurant, and we were there till nearly time for Joe to open his garage at eight o’clock. Of course, we weren’t the only customers, but Mr. Larsen told us to come back to the kitchen, and he talked to Lonnie as he fried eggs and sausages. And every now and then, when his face was turned my way, he’d let one eyelid drop. There wasn’t a cotter pin, nut, bolt, or gear in a Ford that he didn’t know about, and he must have mentioned every one of them and told Lonnie to check it. But the thing he kept harping on was that we shouldn’t try to hurry too much, and that every moving part that was worn should be replaced. When we left Lonnie wasn’t calling him the Swede any more, but Helgar.
“Know what we’re goin’ to do the first thing, buddy?” Lonnie asked as we left the restaurant. “We’re goin’ to pull that daggone engine, that’s what we’re goin’ to do! Like Helgar says, how’s a man to know them crankshaft bearin’s ain’t egg-shaped less’n he gets ’em out where he can put a pair o’ calipers on ’em?”
Joe was mad as the dickens when Lonnie told him we were going to pull the engine out of Shiftless. He shouted and yelled, and told us we were a pair of fools. “I ain’t goin’ to waste my time on no such nonsense!” he hollered at me. “All that little car needs is a shot o’ hot lead here and there—just enough to tighten up them loose bearin’s—and it would run like a rabbit. Sure I said I’d lend a hand and furnish the spare parts, and I would for any reasonable sort of a job. But if you go to haulin’ that engine all to pieces I’ll have to charge you for ’em.”
It took Lonnie and me all day to get the engine out and taken to pieces, and I didn’t need to be a mechanic to know why Joe didn’t want us to do it. The cylinder walls were worn a quarter inch bigger around than the pistons, and were scored so badly they looked as if a wildcat had scratched them. Every bearing was melted out, the valve stems were burned half in two, the combustion chambers were plugged with rock-hard carbon, and there wasn’t a shaft anywhere that wasn’t worn lopsided. But by quitting time we had nuts, bolts, and entrails scattered all over the floor, and a list six inches long of parts we’d need for making the repairs.
The next forenoon we found a 1914 Ford in a junk yard, and it was exactly what we needed. When it was almost new it had been hit by a train and smashed to smithereens, but the only trouble with the engine was that the cylinder block had been cracked and the magneto ruined. After a little haggling we bought whatever parts we wanted to take out of it for ten dollars. By borrowing a lantern from Mr. Larsen and tools from Joe, we’d stripped out everything worth taking by midnight—and I’d learned quite a bit about the inside of a Ford engine. Before we started, Mr. Larsen had told us not to take bushings, bearings, valves, rings, and gaskets, because we’d always have trouble if we tried to reuse them, and it was cheaper to buy new. But they weren’t very cheap at that.
In the four days it took us to put that engine back together the money leaked out of my pocket as if it had been water. The first list of parts we bought at the auto supply store cost more than twenty-three dollars, and I had to pay Joe about half that much, in quarters and half dollars, for little things we’d forgotten to put on the list. Even at thirty-five cents apiece, our meals had amounted to nearly fifteen dollars, the groceries I’d promised the doctor we’d take along had cost $14.10, and the hotel had gone up half a dollar a day on my rent when Lonnie moved in.
Mr. Larsen knew I was worried, but he kept telling me we’d only make trouble for ourselves by cutting corners or hurrying, so we scraped every bearing to a tight fit, ground the valves till they shone like glass, and made sure that everything fitted snugly before we put it back together. With each new piece we put into place the crankshaft turned harder unti
l, finally, it wouldn’t turn at all, but Lonnie said not to worry about it, that it would work all right when the engine was filled with oil.
It was almost closing time on Friday night when we got the engine back into Shiftless, a gallon of oil in the crankcase, and the tank filled with gasoline. Lonnie was too excited to keep quiet. While I was paying Joe for the gas and oil he climbed in behind the steering wheel and shouted, “Twist her tail, buddy! Wind her up tight! And don’t get scairt when she starts up with a roar; I’ll cool her right down with the throttle.”
I engaged the crank handle and jerked up on it with all my might, but the engine wouldn’t turn an inch. “You know what, buddy?” Lonnie called, “we might of got a couple of them bearin’s a smidgen too tight. Well, that don’t make no neverminds. They’ll loosen right up, time the engine’s been turned over a few times. Oh, Joe! How ’bout givin’ us a little pull with your truck?”
“Well,” Joe said with a broad grin, “I reckon that could be took care of after we get settled up. The way I figure it, you boys owe me fifty dollars for the work I done that first day, along with the use of my garage and tools. You can have the car when I get the fifty.”
I had to hold Lonnie to keep him from going after Joe with his fists, but I knew that fighting would only get him arrested, so I told him, “There’s only one way to do business with a crook, Lonnie, and that’s through a lawyer. Let’s go see Mr. Larsen.”
Joe laughed as though he’d never heard anything so funny. “That’s the ticket!” he told me. “Go crack your whip and listen to the noise it makes!”
Our whip didn’t make much noise. Mr. Larsen phoned a lawyer, but when he was through talking he told us, “There isn’t much he can do beyond trying to get the bill cut down, and he can’t do that till morning. If he took the case to court it would cost you a lot of time and money, and you’d probably lose anyway.”
I didn’t sleep worth a dime that night. As near as I could figure, Shiftless had already cost me over a hundred and fifty dollars—counting in meals and room rent while we were fixing her up—and another fifty would leave me in a bad way. I’d had to take one fifty-dollar bill out of the cuff of my britches when I bought our outfits, another before we were through buying parts, and there was only $13.90 of it left. After Lonnie went to sleep I took out the third fifty and put it in my pocket, but I made up my mind that I’d sell our outfits, or Shiftless, or anything else we had before I’d spend the last one. After writing Mother the big yarns I had about my fine job and sending her fifty dollars every month, I couldn’t write and tell her a bunch of different lies. I’d just keep right on with the story I’d begun, and I’d send her fifty dollars a month just as long as I could get hold of it without stealing—but if we didn’t get out of Phoenix pretty quick, it looked as though that time wasn’t far ahead.
The next morning each hour dragged like a week, because there was nothing we could do but sit around Larsen’s restaurant and wait for a phone call from the lawyer. I’d have forgotten all about the doctor if Mr. Larsen hadn’t reminded me that it was a week since I’d been to see him, and that I’d better get a report sent off before we left town. I did, and it cost two dollars.
It was after ten o’clock when the call came. Mr. Larsen answered the phone and said the lawyer wanted to talk to me. His voice sounded as if he were an old gentleman, and a kindly one. He said he had been out to talk to Joe, and though there was no doubt advantage was being taken of us, the best he had been able to do was to get the bill reduced to thirty-five dollars, but that included getting the engine started and running. When I asked him what we owed him he said there would be no charge, that he had done it as a favor to Mr. Larsen.
When we got out to the garage Joe had Shiftless chained to the back of his truck, and was as pleasant as if we’d never had a bit of trouble. “With all them new bearin’s and bushin’s and piston rings, she’s likely to pull a mite stiff till the oil gets worked in good around ’em,” he told Lonnie. “Might take two-three turns around the block ’fore she gets limbered up and runnin’ good, but that’s all right with me. I won’t make you no charge for my time, nor for the gas it takes neither. Just hold her in neutral till I get you out on a straightaway and to rollin’ good, then leave her into high gradual, and fish around a mite with the spark. If she don’t take right holt and go to firing in high, kick her into low. That’ll fetch her ’round in a hurry.”
I climbed in beside Lonnie, and he was as excited as a little boy at a carnival when Joe pulled us out of the garage. We started at a crawl, and every couple of feet Lonnie turned the wheel a little to one side or the other, but I couldn’t see that it made any difference. Shiftless seemed to have her own ideas about where she wanted to go, and wandered a little from side to side, like a cow following a crooked path through a pasture. And the more Joe picked up speed, the more Shiftless wandered.
When Lonnie let the clutch pedal up Shiftless sort of hunkered for a fraction of a second—like a horse getting set for a buck jump. Then I thought she was going to sunfish instead. Her hind end slewed around, and from under the floorboards there was a shriek that sounded as if we’d run over a hog. Shiftless bucked and switched her tail for a few lengths, then began bouncing, sort of like a little girl skipping down a sidewalk. After a hundred yards or so the skipping smoothed out, and I could tell that the engine was turning over, but no matter how much Lonnie jiggled the spark and gas levers Shiftless never fired a shot.
After Joe had pulled us around the block a couple of times, he stopped his truck, came back, took the engine hood off, and fiddled with the ignition wires a minute or two. Then he looked up at me and said, “Now wouldn’t that frost your eyeballs? This magneto has went deader’n a dodo. But that won’t make no difference to you. It’ll build right up again soon’s you’ve drove it a few miles. All you need is a hot-shot battery to get it started off with, and I’ve got an old one I’d leave you have for fifty cents.”
The hot-shot battery was all we needed to get the engine started. As soon as Joe wired it up, he pulled us again, and Lonnie had barely let the clutch pedal up before the engine backfired a couple of times and started with a roar. Old Shiftless acted as happy as I felt, and put on a shimmy dance that nearly rattled my teeth loose. The minute the engine started Joe stopped his truck and came back again. He didn’t pay any attention to Lonnie, but above the roaring, rattling, and backfiring, he shouted to me, “There she is—runnin’ like a top. Thirty-five fifty and she’s yours.”
Lonnie couldn’t get the chain unhitched fast enough to suit him, and by the time I’d paid Joe he was back behind the wheel. He didn’t wait for Joe to pull his truck out of the way, but backed Shiftless a few yards, reversed, and went around the old truck as if he’d been heading for a fire. As far as I could tell, the engine didn’t have any knocks in it, but it would have been hard to hear a blacksmith’s hammering above the rattle of the doors and fenders. Joe had folded the engine hood when he took it off, and had tossed it onto the back seat. The sides were slapping together like cymbals in a jazz band, and every few seconds the exhaust would backfire as though a sheriff’s posse were after us.
Lonnie’s face was beaming, and above the noise he yelled, “Got to expect a little backfirin’ till she gets warmed up! Listen to that engine, buddy! Ain’t she sweet! I’ll just take her a turn down the road till I get used to the feel of her.”
Warming up didn’t do much for the backfiring. By the time Lonnie had driven a quarter of a mile a wisp of steam was shooting out of the radiator cap, and by the time he’d gone a half mile anybody might have thought we were driving Old Faithful geyser, but Shiftless was backfiring as much as ever. Lonnie slowed to ten miles an hour, and we went down the street to Larsen’s, sounding as if we were celebrating the Fourth of July.
I don’t know how we’d have got out of Phoenix without the Larsens, and I hate to think of what might have happened to us afterwards. As soon as we drew up in front of the restaurant Mr. Larsen came out to m
eet us. He didn’t say anything about the geyser that was shooting up from Shiftless’s radiator, or the firecrackers that were shooting out of her exhaust pipe. He leaned over the engine, put an ear down toward it, and told Lonnie he’d done a fine job on the bearings. “Bound to heat up until they get worn in a bit,” he said. “Want to borrow my hose to set a trickle of water running through the radiator?” As he said it he reached down and moved the spark rod back to the retarded position. The backfiring stopped, and the exhaust sounded like the feet of a galloping pony.
“Nice job! Nice job,” Mr. Larsen said as he listened to it. “Hitting on all four.” While he listened he turned the adjustment screws on the carburetor a trifle, and the sound of the exhaust changed to the steady four-beat rhythm of a trot. “This needle point is in good shape,” he told Lonnie. “Honed it, didn’t you?”
I’d never heard Lonnie say “sir” to anyone, and I had to be careful not to grin when he said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Larsen, I honed it right to a fine point like you told me, and I leveled them distributor points with a platinum file. If you’d tell me where your hose is at I’d go get it.”
When Lonnie had started away for the hose Mr. Larsen winked at me and said, “You’ll be all right. He’ll take care of it, and he learns quick. He hasn’t wanted you to know it, but he’s been pestering me with questions all week. Don’t let him advance the spark more than half an inch when you crank it. The timing gears are set a bit forward, and it might kick your head off. You’ll get a spark knock on the hills, but don’t let that worry you. It won’t hurt anything. Decided yet where you’re going to head for?”
“Lonnie’s been talking about going east toward Globe,” I told him.
“That’s all right,” he said, “but go much farther east and you’ll run into Indian Reservation. You wouldn’t do any good there, and if you turn north toward Flagstaff you’ll run into mountain country. Thought about following the Gila? The river has some pretty good ranches along it, and the weather’s warmer down that way if you want to get lots of sun on you.”