him. He went on to-ward the back of the lot where he saw the car. The boy came huffing behind him, cursing. The car he saw was on the last row of cars. It was a high rat-colored machine with large thin wheels and bulging headlights. When he got up to it, he saw that one door was tied on with a rope and that it had an oval window in the back. This was the car he was going to buy.
“Lemme see Slade,” he said.
“What you want to see him for?” the boy asked in a testy voice. He had a wide mouth and when he talked he used one side only of it.
“I want to see him about this car,” Haze said.
“I’m him,” the boy said. His face under the cap was like a thin picked eagle’s. He sat down on the running board of a car across the gravel road and kept on cursing.
Haze walked around the car. Then he looked through the window at the inside of it. Inside it was a dull greenish dust-color. The back seat was missing but it had a two-by-four stretched across the seat frame to sit on. There were dark green fringed window shades on the two side-back windows. He looked through the two front windows and he saw the boy sitting on the running board of the car across the gravel road. He had one trouser leg hitched up and he was scratching his ankle that stuck up out of a pulp of yellow sock. He cursed far down in his throat as if he were trying to get up phlegm. The two window glasses made him a yellow color and distorted his shape. Haze moved quickly from the far side of the car and came around in front. “How much is it?” he asked.
“Jesus on the cross,” the boy said, “Christ nailed.”
“How much is it?” Haze growled, paling a little.
“How much do you think it’s worth?” the boy said. “Give us a estimit.”
“It ain’t worth what it would take to cart it off. I wouldn’t have it.”
The boy gave all his attention to his ankle where there was a scab. Haze looked up and saw a man coming from between two cars over on the boy’s side. As he came closer, he saw that the man looked exactly like the boy except that he was two heads taller and he had on a sweat-stained brown felt hat. He was coming up behind the boy, between a row of cars. When he got just behind him, he stopped and waited a second. Then he said in a sort of controlled roar, “Get your butt off that running board!”
The boy snarled and disappeared, scrambling between two cars.
The man stood looking at Haze. “What you want?” he asked.
“This car here,” Haze said.
“Seventy-fi’ dollars,” the man said.
On either side of the lot there were two old buildings, reddish with black empty windows, and behind there was another without any windows. “I’m obliged,” Haze said, and he started back toward the office.
When he got to the entrance, he glanced back and saw the man about four feet behind him. “We might argue it some,” he said.
Haze followed him back to where the car was.- “You won’t find a car like that ever’ day,” the man said. He sat down on the running board that the boy had been sitting on. Haze didn’t see the boy but he was there, sitting up on the hood of a car two cars over. He was sitting huddled up as if he were freezing but his face had a sour composed look. “All new tires,” the man said.
“They were new when it was built,” Haze said.
“They was better cars built a few years ago,” the man said. “They don’t make no more good cars.”
“What you want for it?” Haze asked again.
The man stared off, thinking. After a while he said, “I might could let you have it for sixty-fi’.”
Haze leaned against the car and started to roll a cigarette but he couldn’t get it rolled. He kept spilling the tobacco and then the papers.
“Well, what you want to pay for it?” the man asked. “I wouldn’t trade me a Chrysler for a Essex like that. That car yonder ain’t been built by a bunch of niggers.
“All the niggers are living in Detroit now, putting cars together,” he said, making conversation. “I was up there a while myself and I seen. I come home.”
“I wouldn’t pay over thirty dollars for it,” Haze said.
“They got one nigger up there,” the man said, “is almost as light as you or me.” He took off his hat and ran his finger around the sweat band inside it. He had a little bit of carrot-colored hair.
“We’ll drive it around,” the man said, “or would you like to get under and look up it?”
“No,” Haze said.
The man gave him a half look. “You pay when you leave,” he said easily. “You don’t find what you looking for in one there’s others for the same price obliged to have it.” Two cars over the boy began to curse again. It was like a hacking cough. Haze turned suddenly and kicked his foot into the front tire. “I done tole you them tires won’t bust,” the man said.
“How much?” Haze said.
“I might could make it fifty dollar,” the man offered.
Before Haze bought the car, the man put some gas in it and drove him around a few blocks to prove it would run. The boy sat hunched up in the back on the two-by-four, cursing. “Something’s wrong with him howcome he curses so much,” the man said. “Just don’t listen at him.” The car rode with a high growling noise. The man put on the brakes to show how well they worked and the boy was thrown off the two-by-four at their heads. “Goddam you,” the man roared, “quit jumping at us thataway. Keep your butt on the board.” The boy didn’t say anything. He didn’t even curse. Haze looked back and he was sitting huddled up in the black raincoat with the black leather cap pulled down almost to his eyes. The only thing different was that the ash had been knocked off his cigarette.
