“Sure.” Parker knew he would. Chemy made cars do whatever he wanted them to do.
“Sure,” agreed Chemy. He turned away from the Volkswagen. “So what do you want? A car? Anything special?”
“Just a car. With clean papers.”
“How clean? To sell?”
“No. To show if I’m stopped for speeding.”
“Takin’ her out of the state?”
“Up north.”
“All right then.”
The garage door opened and Kent came in, carrying three glasses and a bottle of corn liquor as colourless as water. He glanced sullenly at his brother and Parker, then went over to the workbench, set the glasses down, and poured three drinks.
Chemy and Parker went over and they all drank. It was good liquor, leaving a harsh wood-smoke taste on the tongue and a bright burning at the back of the throat.
Chemy set his glass down and cleared his throat. “How new?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter. But I’ll be going maybe a couple thousand miles in it, so I don’t want one ready to fall apart.”
Chemy nodded. “When?”
“Now.”
“Always in a hurry.” Chemy grinned at his brother. “This Parker,” he said. “Always in a hurry, huh?”
“Huh,” said Kent. He was being surly, staring into his empty glass.
Chemy winked at Parker, finished his own drink, and said, “I got two in the barn right now, but not what you got to have. Both hot, both no good. I got to take a ride. How much you want to pay?”
“I’ll go a thousand if I have to.”
“Well, maybe you won’t have to. You go set on the porch a while. Come on, Kent.”
They went outside and Parker strolled over to the house while the two brothers went around behind the garage. He went up on the porch and sat on the other chair. The woman grinned at him, showing spaces where she’d lost teeth, and said, “I guess I must of heard about you.”
“Maybe,” said Parker.
A six-year-old Pontiac station wagon with Chemy at the wheel and his brother beside him appeared from behind the garage and went off down the rutted road. Parker sat and smoked, waiting. The woman tried to start a conversation with him once or twice, but he didn’t encourage her, so she quit. The dog got up again after a while, went down off the porch, and loped away around the house. A while later Parker got to his feet, went into the house, and walked through rooms of sagging furniture to the kitchen, where he got himself a drink of water. He didn’t see the boy. The woman followed him in, and stood in the kitchen doorway, smiling hesitantly at him, but not saying anything. When he started out of the kitchen, she murmured, “We got time.”
He shook his head, and went back out on the porch. She stayed inside the house.
He waited three hours, and the sun was turning red way off near the western horizon when Chemy and Kent came back. Kent was driving the Pontiac this time, and Chemy was following him in a four-year-old blue Oldsmobile with Alabama plates. Kent took the Pontiac around behind the garage, and Chemy stopped the Oldsmobile in front of the house. He got out and patted the hood and said, “Well? What do you think?”
“What do youthink?”
Chemy grinned, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know yet. I figure maybe. The car’s hot in Florida, and the plates are hot in Alabama, but the plates are off a LaSalle, so you got nothing to worry about.”
“LaSalle? There’s still some of them around?”
“Give me three days around here, Parker, I’ll find you a Marmon.”
“I don’t want a Marmon.”
“Sure not. I’ll check this out for you. She run good coming in.”
Kent had come around from behind the garage, and was now opening one set of doors in front. Chemy got back into the Oldsmobile and drove it into the garage, next to the Volkswagen. Parker walked over after him, went inside, and Kent followed, closing the doors.
The two brothers spent half an hour checking the car, mostly in silence. Every once in a while, Kent would say, “Look at this,” and Chemy would bend close and peer, and then say, “It’s okay.” A few times it wasn’t okay, and the two would work to make it okay.
Finally Chemy said, “She’s better than I thought. A southron car all the way, Parker, got none of your northern corrosion.”
“I thought it was from Florida. What about salt corrosion?”
“Stolenfrom Florida. She used to have Tennessee plates on her.”
“What about papers?”
“Right here. Just fill in whatever name you like.”
Parker had a driver’s licence in his wallet, from one of the poker players who’d been with Menner. It had the name Maurice Kebbler on it, so that was the name he wrote on the registration. Then he said, “Wait a minute,” and
