“Mr LeBay, you said you’d hired someone to take care of your brother’s house until it was sold. Was that true?”
He shifted a little in his chair. “No, it wasn’t. I lied on impulse. I didn’t like the thought of that car back in that garage… as if it had found its way home. If there are emotions and feelings that still live on, they would be there, as well as in the car herself.” And very quickly he corrected himself: “Itself.”
Not long after, I said my goodbyes and followed my headlights home through the dark, thinking over everything LeBay had told me. I wondered if it would make any difference to Arnie if I told him one person had had a mortal accident in his car and another had actually died in it. I pretty well knew that it wouldn’t; in his own way, Arnie could be every bit as stubborn as Roland LeBay himself. The lovely little scene over the car with his parents had shown that quite conclusively. The fact that he went on taking auto-shop courses down there in the Libertyville High version of the DMZ showed the same thing.
I thought of LeBay saying, I didn’t like the thought of that car back in that garage… as if it had found its way home.
He had also said that his brother took the car someplace to work on it. And the only do-it-yourself garage in Libertyville now was Will Darnell’s. Of course, there might have been another back in the ’50s, but I didn’t believe it. In my heart what I believed was that Arnie had been working on Christine in a place where she had been worked on before.
Had been. That was the operant phrase. Because of the fight with Buddy Repperton, Arnie was afraid to leave it there any longer, So maybe that avenue to Christine’s past was blocked off as well.
And, of course, there were no curses. Even LeBay’s idea about lingering emotions was pretty farfetched. I doubted if he really believed it himself. He had shown me an old scar, and he had used the word vengeance. And that was probably a lot closer to the truth than any phony supernatural bullshit. Of course.
No; I was seventeen years old, bound for college in another year, and I didn’t believe in such things as curses and emotions that linger and grow rancid, the spilled milk of dreams. I would not have granted you the power of the past to reach out horrid dead hands toward the living.
But I’m a little older now.
13
LATER THAT EVENING
As I was motorvating over the hill I saw
Maybelline in a Coupe de Ville.
Cadillac rollin down the open road
But nothin outrun my VS Ford…
My mother and Elaine had gone to bid, but my dad was up, watching the eleven o’clock news on TV. “Where you been, Dennis?” he asked.
“Bowling,” I said, the lie coming naturally and instinctively to my lips. I didn’t want my father to know any of this. Peculiar as it was, it really wasn’t peculiar enough to be more than moderately interesting. Or so I rationalized.
“Arnie called,” he said. “Asked me to have you call back if you got in before eleven-thirty or so.”
I glanced at my watch. It was only eleven-twenty. But hadn’t I had enough of Arnie and Arnie’s problems for one day?
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Are you going to call him?”
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess I will.”
I went into the kitchen, slapped together a cold chicken sandwich, poured myself a glass of Hawaiian punch—gross stuff, but I love it—and dialled Arnie’s house. He picked up the phone himself on the second ring. He sounded happy and excited.
“Dennis! Where you been?”
“Bowling,” I said.
“Listen, I went down to Darnell’s tonight, you know? And—this is great, Dennis—he gave Repperton the boot! Repperton’s gone and I can stay!”
That sensation of unformed dread in my belly again. I put my sandwich down. Suddenly I didn’t want it anymore.
“Arnie, do you think taking it back there is really such a good idea?”
What do you mean? Repperton’s gone. That doesn’t sound like a good idea to you?”
I thought about Darnell ordering Arnie to turn off his car before it polluted his cruddy garage, Darnell telling Arnie he didn’t take any shit from kids like him. I thought about the shamefaced way Arnie had cut his eyes away from mine when he told me he had gotten lift-time to change his oil by doing “a couple of errands”. I had an idea that Darnell might find it amusing to turn Arnie into his pet gofer. It would amuse the shit out of his other regulars and his poker buddies. Arnie goes out for coffee, Arnie goes out for doughnuts, Arnie changes the toilet paper rolls in the crapper and loads up the Nibroc dispenser with paper towels. Hey Will, who’s the four eyes swamping out the toilet in there?… Him? Name’s Cunningham. His folks teach up at the college. He’s taking a shithouse postgrad course down here. And they would laugh. Arnie would the local joke down at Darnell’s Garage on Hampton Street.
I thought about those things, but I didn’t say them. I figured Arnie could make up his own mind about whether he was treading water or shit. This couldn’t go on for ever Arnie was just too smart. Or so I hoped. He was ugly, but he wasn’t dumb.
“Repperton being gone sounds like a fine idea,” I said. “It was just that I thought Darnell’s was sort of a temporary measure. I mean, twenty a week, Arnie that’s pretty stiff on top of the tools fees and the lift fees and all that happy crappy.”
“That’s why I thought renting Mr LeBay’s garage would be so great,” Arnie said. “I figured that even at twenty-five a week I’d be better off.”
“Well, there you go. It you put an ad in the paper for garage space, I bet you’d—”
“No, no, let me finish,” Arnie said. He was still excited. “When I went down there this afternoon Darnell took me aside right away. Said he was sorry about the ragging I had to take from Repperton. He said he misjudged me.”
“He said that?” I guess I believed it, but I didn’t trust it.
“Yeah. He asked me how I’d like to work for him part-time. Ten, maybe twenty hours a week during school. Putting stuff away, oiling the lifts, that kind of thing. And I can have the space for ten a week, tools fees and lift fees at half. How does that sound?”
I thought it sounded too fucking good to be true.
“Watch your ass, Arnie.”
“What?”
“My dad says he’s a crook.”
“I haven’t seen any sign of it, I think that’s all just talk, Dennis. He’s a loudmouth, but I think that’s all.”
I’m just telling you to stay loose, that’s all.” I switched the phone to my other ear and drank some Hawaiian Punch. “Keep your eyes open and move away quick if anything starts to look heavy.”
“Are you talking about anything specific?”
I thought of the vague stories about drugs, the more specific ones about hot cars.
“No,” I said. “I just don’t trust him.”
“Well… he said doubtfully, trailing away, and then came back to the original subject: Christine. With him it always got back to Christine. “But it’s a break, a real break for me, Dennis, if it works out. Christine… she’s really
