Up Jumps the Devil

“A judge? Really? Hey, way to go, girl!”

Was it my imagination or were his congratulations a bit forced?

“How ’bout you, bo?” he asked Kidd. “You in the law business, too?”

Kidd propped one foot on the back of the van next to me, leaned an elbow on his knee, and gave Allen a lazy smile. “You could say so. I’m a wildlife officer.”

“A game warden?” Allen shook his head. “A game warden and a judge? I better watch my step, hadn’t I?”

“And what are you doing these days?” I asked suspiciously.

“Oh, some of this and a little of that. Still messing around with cars.” He held out his big square work-stained hands. “Ain’t got all the grease out from under my nails yet.”

“Still hanging around racetracks?”

“You race?” asked Kidd, showing me a whole different side that I hadn’t seen in the six months that we’d been together.

“Not anymore,” Allen told him. “It’s a young man’s game and I ain’t got the reflexes I used to have.”

He’d heard the quickened interest in Kidd’s voice and was giving back a regretful nostalgia for races run, for records set, for roses and beauty queen kisses in the winner’s circle. Charlotte and Rockingham were in his drawl. Maybe even Daytona and Talladega, too, for all Kidd knew. But unless things had changed a hell of a lot in the last few years, Allen himself had never raced on any track longer than a half-mile and had never won a purse larger than three or four hundred dollars.

“These days I do a little pit crewing to keep my hand in. Mostly though, I’m moving into restoring classic cars. Like your daddy’s T-Bird,” he told Kidd. “Or like that little Mustang there.”

His eyes moved speculatively from the dilapidated outbuildings to a cinderblock building sitting halfway between us and the road. It was encircled by even more wrecks rusting away in a thicket of ragweeds and sassafras trees.

“In fact,” said Allen, “I was thinking I might even open up Uncle Jap’s old garage. All these new houses going up, I bet Jimmy can’t keep up with them.”

He had that right. Bad as my battery needed checking, I’d have to call Jimmy first and make a real appointment and I kept forgetting.

I’ve been taking my cars to Jimmy White ever since the white Thunderbird my parents gave me for my sixteenth birthday slid into the ditch on the curve in front of his newly opened garage. He was standing right there in the open doorway, and after he made sure I wasn’t killed, he went and got a tow rope, pulled my T-bird over to his garage and hammered out the dent in my fender.

“You going to tell my daddy?” I asked.

“Ain’t Mr. Kezzie’s car, is it?” said Jimmy as he handed me his bill for fifteen dollars. “ ’Course, I see you take that curve that fast again, I might have something to say to my Uncle Jerrold.”

Jerrold White was one of the first black troopers in North Carolina and I knew if I got another speeding ticket, Mother and Daddy would take away my keys for a month.

So I still go slow when I drive past Jimmy’s and I still bring my car to him even though he has so many new customers I can’t just drop in and get it fixed while I wait anymore.

Intellectually, I know that people (and their cars) have to live somewhere, but selfishly I can’t help feeling that way too many houses are sprouting up on our fields and in our woods. All these new people looking for the good life—crowding up against us, taking up the empty spaces—they’re changing the quality of our lives.

That’s why I flinch every time I see orange ribbons. Seems like they’re all followed by dozens of Dick Sutterly’s For Sale signs.

“Gracious Southern Living in a Spacious Sutterly Home. ”

Right.

Twelve-hundred-square-foot cardboard boxes slapped down on a bare acre lot and built cheap enough to compete with double-wide trailers.

Car keys jingling in his hand, Kidd straightened up and said, “Well, I reckon we’d better roll if I want to make it back to New Bern before dark. Nice meeting you, Stancil.”

“Same here,” Allen told him. To me he said, “Now don’t you be a stranger, Deb’rah.”

With the dogs and the ornamental corn giving off familiar earthy smells, we drove down the rutted lane to the road and headed back to Dobbs.

“Stancil seems like an interesting guy,” Kidd said.

I made a noncommittal sound.

“Nice of him to come spend some time with his uncle.”

I was wondering about that myself, but all I said was, “Uh-huh.”

Kidd glanced over at me. “Been a long time since you last saw him?”

“Years,” I said.

“So how come you’re still so pissed at him?”

“Marriage’ll do that,” I said.

“Marriage?” he asked blankly. Then it registered, and the van suddenly veered so far into the passing lane that