The Traveling Vampire Show

“Come on, Dagny, let’s see what she’ll do.”

Leaning toward the wheel, she looked at Rusty. “It’s Slim,” she said. “Slim, not Dagny.”

This was the first we’d heard of it.

“Slim?” Rusty asked. “All of a sudden you’re Slim? What happened to Dagny?”

She shrugged, smiled, and said, “Now I’m Slim, that’s all.”

“If you say so,” Rusty said.

I said, “Fine with me. Any name you want’s fine with me.” Rusty went, “Oooooo.”

Ignoring him, I said, “Anyway, Slim, want to come with us to the river? Maybe we can take a canoe out, or...”

“Forget it, man,” Rusty interrupted. “Let’s go for a spin!”

“Can’t,” Slim said.

“Sure we can.”

“A,” she said, “I don’t know how to drive. B, I don’t have a driver’s license. C, two of the tires are flat. D ...,” she twisted the ignition key. It triggered a few dismal clicking sounds, then nothing.

Rusty muttered, “Crap.”

“Dead battery?” I said.

Slim nodded. “That’s what I think, too.” Frowning, she stared out the windshield. One of her hands idly stroked the steering wheel, which was sheathed in leopard skin.

You don’t see leopard skin steering wheel covers too much anymore. In fact, the last one I remember seeing was on Slim’s grandmother’s Pontiac. Back in those days, steering wheel covers weren’t at all uncommon. Old people seemed especially fond of them. When you saw a leopard skin cover on a steering wheel, you could pretty much bet that the car was owned by an old woman.

Anyway, Slim lightly stroked the leopard skin along the top curve of the wheel while she concentrated on her thoughts. After a while, she said, “I don’t know much about cars.”

Rusty let out a laugh.

She leaned forward, looked past me and frowned at him.

“Thought you knew everything,” he said.

“I know more than you, numbnuts.”

“Hah!”

“But not about this.”

“Whatcha mean, J. D. Salinger don’t teach you how to fix a car?”

Ignoring Rusty’s crack, she gave the key another twist. Silence.

“How about Ayn Rand!” Rusty called out. “Why don’t you look up ‘dead batteries’ in Alice Shrugged.”

I gave him a shot with my elbow.

“Ow!” He grabbed his arm. “Damn it!”

“It’s Atlas,” Slim said. “Not Alice. Anyway, are you guys interested in helping me fix the car? My mom wants nothing to do with it. She’ll just let it sit here forever. But if we can get it running, it’s as good as mine. I can get my driver’s license and then we can drive all over the place.”

“I’ll teach you how to drive,” I said, really eager.

“Great.”

I pictured the two of us roaming the back roads together, just as Lee and I had done the previous summer when I was learning to drive in her pickup truck.

“What about me?” Rusty asked.

“You don’t have a license.” I pointed out.

“Who cares? I’m a great driver. We can both teach her.”

I’d seen samples of Rusty’s driving prowess a few times after he had “borrowed” his family car in the middle of the night. We’d been lucky to live. For various reasons, we’d never told Slim about the excursions, so she had no idea what a lousy, dangerous driver Rusty was.

Shaking my head, I muttered, “I don’t know.”

Slim patted my thigh and said, “If we get this baby going, you can both be my teachers. We’ll drive all over the place! It’ll be great!”

So we didn’t go to the river that day. We worked on the Pontiac, instead.

Apparently, Slim’s grandmother had kept it in fine shape while she was alive. Its troubles were mostly the result of the car not being used for almost a year.

Rusty really came through. He figured out all the problems as we went along. Slim and I provided money to buy whatever he suggested: some new belts and hoses, mostly, but also a new battery. He installed them. He also patched the flat tires.