sideboards. Claude got out and raised the hood with an attendant squawk of protesting rusty hinges and propped it with a stick and stood peering down into its mysteries. One by one they got out and stood with him watching in commiseration or aiding him with their silent prayers and when he felt the weight of their eyes he turned upon them a confident gaptoothed grin.
Likely it ain’t much, he said. It ain’t never done this before. Likely it’ll hit here in a minute. He shoved his hand into the maze of wires and tubing and wiggled a few things at random. There now, he said professionally. He dusted his hands together. Try it, Drew.
Drew got behind the wheel and whirled the motor a few times. More of the same.
Timin may be a little off, he said. He turned the distributor cap an infinitesimal degree. Now try it.
Come on, Tyler prayed.
Nothing.
Claude turned upon them all his look of beaming benevolence and then back to the motor, staring at it fiercely as if he would brook no more insubordination or yet as if he could by the sheer force of his stronger will raise it from the dead likesome decrepit mechanical Lazarus and set it on the road to Ackerman’s Field.
We’ll just let it rest a minute, he said, his manner suggesting that the truck might be merely tired or had perhaps dozed off.
I ain’t standin out here in the rain like a fool, Claudelle said. I’m goin in the house.
Then get this chap in the dry, Pearl said.
The girl turned walking away and gave Tyler a sloe-eyed look back over her right shoulder. He stood looking at her retreating back and tried to think of an excuse for going back to the house.
More than likely the distributor cap’s just got water inside, he said. If I got a clean, dry rag and dried it out, more than likely she’d crank right up.
Not so much of a fool as he might have liked, the old woman gave him a look transparent with fierce malice, and Claude said, I reckon you been to mechanickin school. The edge of his smile jerked nervously, and his eyes looked harried.
Tyler just stared off to where the woods took the muddy road. The bowed trees stood bent like penitents under the windy rain and through the blowing water the horizon seemed in tumultuous motion, wavering like a horizon seen through fire and it seemed to be receding from him.
Likely it’ll just get well on its own, he said.
Claude ignored him. Nothin else works we can always push it, he said. Get her rollin down this grade and she’ll fire right up like a sewin machine.
This having occurred to him, nothing would do but they must try it right away. With Claude behind the wheel andeveryone else, even the old woman, leant with shoulders to the truck, it began to inch forward through the sucking mud to the slope. Tyler pushed with a kind of fevered desperate hope that the truck would start. He felt that his lungs would burst and funny lights flickered behind his eyes and his feet were slipsliding wildly in the slick gray muck. The truck rolled silently toward the downgrade.
We got her on a downhill run now, boys, Claude yelled. Halfway down the slope he popped the clutch and the truck slewed sideways when the gears meshed and the wheels threw great contemptuous gouts of mud back toward them, but it did not hit, nor did it the next time when he tried where the slope leveled out and where it ultimately ceased, sulking in the roadbed like some illformed creature with a malefic will of its own. When Claude leapt out he slammed the door so hard glass rattled in its panel and he kicked the door with a vicious broganned foot and looked wildly about for some weapon to strike it with.
You goddamned eggsuckin son of a bitch, he told the truck. I ain’t never in my life seen nothin so aggagoddamnvatin.
We ain’t goin, Drew said.
We goin too, Claude said. It’s done got me mad now. Let me think a minute.
I’m goin to the house, Pearl said. She was slathered with mud and anger smouldered and flickered in her eyes. You may as well quit on it. Like you do on everthing else. She started up the slope, skirting the worst of the mud.
Put on a pot of coffee, Claude called after her, but she didn’t say if she would or she wouldn’t.
Claude opened the truck door and sat with his feet on therunningboard. Sheltered so from the rain he began to build a cigarette but when he raised it to his lips to lick the paper water dripped from his hair onto it and he was left with half a shredded paper in each hand and brown flakes of tobacco strewn over his lap. He sat staring at it not in anger but a kind of bemused stoicism, set upon by all things mechanical and now by the very elements themselves, as if whatever god had plucked him from the midst of sinners was sorely testing his newfound faith.
Claude got out of the truck and dusted the tobacco flakes from his trousers. Boys, there ain’t but one thing to do.
Tyler dreaded hearing it, but there seemed no choice. Let’s have it, he said.
We’re goin to have to push her back up the grade and roll her off again. We’ll scotch her and take another bite and work her on up.
Hell, there ain’t no way, Tyler said.
Claude ignored him. Drew, you and Lost Sheep go get some big cuts of that heater wood and tote em down here. I aim to warm my hands and see about that coffee. Yins get the wood down here, come on to the house and warm. I believe it’s turnin colder.
They went lethargically back up the hill to the barn. Tyler could feel his wet clothes chafing his body. He could hear frogs singing somewhere below the barn where a pond might lie. Rain sang on the tin. Drew began stacking wood in his arms.
Don’t overload yourself, Tyler said. There is no earthly way we’re going to get that truck back up the hill.
Drew just shook his head and went on stacking his arm full. So bedraggled and mudslathered and absolutely wet heseemed set up as some cautionary symbol of such depths as human misery can descend to. Tyler was touched by a pity for Drew and a sorrow he couldn’t put a name to.
Hell, cheer up, Drew. There’ll be another day. They’re not goin to run out of town girls.
When they had the wood at the foot of the hill the thought of heat drew them to the house and they found Claude seated on the couch before the fire, his clothes steaming richly from the heat and a quart jar three-quarters full of a colorless liquid clutched in his lap that he stroked absentmindedly like an alien pet and a fey look of distances in his eyes.
She hid it in the picture box under the Bible, he said in answer to an unasked question. You boys ready to try it up the hill?
We about ready to warm, Drew said. We ain’t got no fruitjar. We have to warm from the outside in.
What about that coffee? Tyler said.
She never made none.
Then if we got to do it, let’s do it and get it over with.
Loath to lose the jar again, Claude slung it along in his hand and at the peak of the slope stopped and drank and stood studying the grade intently as if he were figuring angles and degrees of inclination and then went on down the hill.
Drew, you the least. Get you a stick of wood ready and me and Lost Sheep’ll push it as far we can up the grade, and you scotch it. Then we’ll get us another toehold and go again.
They tried, and the truck wouldn’t move. You goin to have to help us, he told Drew. Help us roll it and maybe we can hold it till you throw your block under it.
They locked their feet in the mud and leaned into it. The truck moved two or three feet and then no more. Drew threw awhiteoak cut under the wheel and they released the truck and stood hands on knees breathing hard.
Again. This time no more than a foot. With his breath exploding in his lungs Tyler stood staring up the muddy slope and it seemed to stretch to infinity. He turned toward the woods and the blue horizon lay beckoning like a promise.
One more time, Claude said, but the truck just rocked on its springs and the wheels would not move. No matter how hard they rocked it or lunged against it, it would not roll.
