“Tell your boy to put a new battery in.”
The florid man tried another smile. This one worked better. “Not a new battery, buddy, I wouldn’t try to snow you. But a better one than you got. Okay?”
“Good.”
“There you go. You see, we can get along.” He turned and shouted, “Hey, Willis! Never mind about that. Take that old battery out of there, and put that Delta in. You know the one.”
“And leave the engine off,” added Parker.
“Yeah, sure, buddy. Leave her off, Willis.”
Willis gathered up his battery and jumper cables and went back through the side door into the garage again.
Parker and the florid man went back to the office, and this time Parker sat down in the slat-bottomed wooden chair beside the desk. The florid man settled heavily into the swivel chair, making it squeal. “I can see you know about trucks, buddy.”
“I thought you wouldn’t snow me,” Parker said.
“Now, there’s that chip on your shoulder again.” He made a little tsk-tsk sound, and shook his head in a friendly sort of way. Then he pulled an order-blank pad and a pencil over. “Now, then. What else did you want?”
“Lube. Oil change. New plugs. Check the points. New–-“
“Points? Now, you keep adding something every single time.”
“Are you writing all this down?”
“I surely am.” The florid man wrote “points”, and asked, “What else?”
“New radiator hoses. And the legal minimum of lights.”
The florid man wrote, laboriously, chewing on his cigar. The cigar had gone out, but he kept chewing on it anyway. When he was done writing, he said, “Now, let’s see. Lube and oil change, I guess I can do that all right. And plugs, well, we can check ‘em out, clean ‘em up a little. But I don’t see any way we could give you new ones.”
“New ones,” Parker said.
“Now, buddy.” The florid man spread his arms. “I give a little, you give a little.”
“Tell me about that Delta,” Parker said. “The one you’re giving me.”
The florid man cocked his head and sucked on the cold cigar. Then he smiled again. “New plugs. I just might be able to do it.”
“That’s fine.”
“Okay, now, let’s see what else we got. The points. Well, sure, that’s no problem. And those hoses.” He nodded slowly, the cigar moving around in his mouth. “I noticed them myself, but I don’t think I got hoses like that in stock. I tell you what I’ll do, though. I’ll have Willis tape them up solid with friction tape. What do you say? You won’t leak a drop.”
“There’s an oil leak, too.”
“Now, there you go adding things again.”
“The breather’s gone.”
“I know I don’t have that in stock.”
“Cap it, then. I don’t want to keep throwing oil away.”
“Cap it? I can cap it, right enough. It’s just I don’t have that in stock.” He looked down at the list again. “Now, this about the lights. There sure are a lot of lights on there now.”
“Not enough. There have to be lights at all outer corners, top and bottom, front and back of the box.”
“I’m not sure the wiring’s there any more.”
“It won’t take much to wire. You don’t have to be neat about it.”
“Well, I’ll see what I can do.” The florid man looked at the list, studying it. “I do believe I can take care of all this for you, and still only ask the original price of eight hundred.”
“We’ll see what kind of a job you do.”
“Don’t you worry, my friend,” the florid man said. “I’ll take care of you right. You just leave everything to me.”
“One more thing.”
The florid man look up, frowning.
“I saw Alabama plates on her. Are they hot?”
“Not where you’re going, way up in New Jersey.”
“What about when I drive through North Carolina?”
“I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll smear some mud on ‘em, so you can’t tell the difference.” He took the cigar out of his mouth at last. “You know, safe plates are expensive. I got some, safe as a mother’s arms, but I just wouldn’t let them get tossed in on this deal. Safe plates aren’t that easy to come by.”
“All right. Smear mud on them.”
