In God We Trust (23 page)

I was in the garage, working on the front bumper. It was Sunday. The family was going out that night, and I was about to surprise everybody with a spectacular job on the chrome. I polished the rims on the headlights, and it’s a tough job. My knuckles were scraped, my fingernails torn, the pink stuff soaking into my skin, but the grille was beautiful, just beautiful. And then I decided to back the car out of the garage by myself, to really surprise them. So that when they came out on the back porch they would see this blinding vision flashing chrome. In my mind’s eye I could hear them say:

“Why, what has happened to the Graham-Paige? It looks better than new!”

And I would just stand proudly, modestly by and wait for the praise and the honor that would be due me.

I finally finished the job. The Graham was glistening. I scrunched down in the driver’s seat and started the engine. What a sense of Power! I checked the ammeter. It was flickering slightly on the “Charge” side. Gas gauge—quarter full. Oil pressure—forty pounds. Normal.

I eased the clutch in and gently moved the gearshift lever into “Reverse.” Already I was a master of gear-shifting. “Ease out on the clutch gently,” and I began to roll backward out of the garage.

Screeeeeeaaaa.…

I slammed on the brake and the clutch and hung in midair for a split second.

My God! I had scraped the left rear fender on the garage door! I put her in First and tried to roll forward.

Eeeeaawwwrrrrr.

It was stuck! The fender was dragging against the door. My God! I was sweating. And sick with fear. I had
really
done it this time, all the way!

I quickly scrunched over to the other side of the seat, and out. I was going to push the car into the garage. I couldn’t move it. It was really stuck! I had to drive it in again.

I got behind the wheel and put it into First. I was going to do it real slowly. Reeeal sloww.…

EEEEEEEAAARRRHHHHHH. BOING!

I could hear the door scrunching and ripping. I got out again and looked. I could just see the edge of a huge scrape mark on that beautiful midnight blue fender. The paint was peeling off in long curls. It was jammed, and I didn’t know what to do. I knew that if I moved any further I’d strip off more paint. I had to do it!

I eased out on the clutch.

RRRRRRRR

It was stuck!

I could hear people moving in the house, doors slamming. Any minute now somebody was going to come out! I just knew it. My father! He was going to come out in the backyard to look in the trunk, or to pick up a football or something.

The screen door slammed open, and it was my kid brother. My God! I head him off.

“Hey Ran, hey. Would you go down in the basement? See if you can find my old … ah … my … remember that old skyrocket I had? See if you can find my old skyrocket, will you, Ran? Go on, Ran, see if you can find it for me.”

He looked at me and then went back in the house and down in the basement.

I didn’t want anyone to know what I had done, and time was running out!

I leaped in the car. Any minute now my Old Man was going to come out. I knew it. I slammed it in gear.

EEEEEEEEUUUNK
!

It was free!

I turned the key off and got out. There it was! The back fender neatly peeled, a long scratch the entire width of the fender and then some. What was I going to do!?

I knew what to do. Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

Five minutes later I was two blocks away, knocking out fly balls and pretending I had never seen a car in my life.

That night we were all dressed up and in the Graham. I was in the back seat, and worried sick. Nobody had even noticed that the back fender was scraped. I was keeping my mouth
shut, and I was sweating: a thirteen-year-old Rascolnikov sizzling with guilt, fighting against the urge to blurt out:

“Stop the car! Look at the left rear fender! I did it! I am guilty! I am unworthy to exist in the bosom of such a wonderful, innocent group on its way to see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers! I am guilty and despicable!! Rotten to the core!!”

But what did I do? The same thing that modern man always does. Plays it cool. At least as cool as it is possible to be while shuddering under wave after wave of fear and guilt.

We parked the car and went into the movie. I was still safe. Darkness had obscured the raw wounds of my crime.

I squirmed through the movie in a cold sweat, barely able to concentrate on my taffy apple. All I remember was that this guy Astaire kept wearing a high silk hat—like Jiggs—and hopping around on the tops of pianos.

Another crucial moment came when we approached the Graham in the parking lot. I hung back, waiting for the thunderclap.

It did not come. The Chief merely got in the front seat and said:

“Pile in. Let’s go.”

I scrunched down in the back seat and in my relief and nervousness talked a blue streak all the way home.

But later, in bed, the old icy sweat came back. He would
have
to see it tomorrow, and he would know! There was no escape! I squirmed and sweated for half an hour or so, and then developed a gigantic gut-heaving stomach ache. My mother dragged me into the John, limp and wan, and hung my head over the bowl. Taffy apples of years past squirted out of my nose, my ears.…

“That’ll teach you to listen to me about all that junk you always eat.”

I finally fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

The next morning for a few brief rapturous minutes I had completely forgotten that I was a doomed man. And then, halfway through my Wheaties, it all came back. My spoon hung in midair. The sun streamed through the kitchen windows.
My mother’s Chinese-red chenille bathrobe hunched over the stove, making coffee. All the old familiar things of my former carefree life lay about me. The cracked plastic radio on top of the refrigerator, the old kitchen table, my Little Orphan Annie shake-up mug, the blue glass Shirley Temple sugar and cream set which meant so much to my mother, all part of a Better Time.

After school that day I went through the motions of ball-playing, a wizened, care-bent figure at second base, knowing full well that retribution was inevitably drawing nigh. It
had
to come tonight!

My father usually got home from work about six, just in time for supper. We were expected to be in the house no later than five-thirty, washed up, and ready to eat. Tonight I lagged in the gloom, trying to forestall the inevitable. My fellow ballplayers had long since melted off into the twilight. In the distance I could hear my mother shouting for me through the kitchen door, and finally, painfully, I dragged myself home.

Staring out at me from the bathroom mirror—hollow eyed, lined death’s head of a face, covered with Lifebuoy suds.

And then it came. A great angry roar of flying cinders, the Graham-Paige booming up the driveway, roaring around the back angrily, and then—silence.

The water trickled feebly in the sink. My kid brother blabbed somewhere off in the distance. I clung weakly to the towel rack, waiting for the fatal blow.

The kitchen screen door slammed. There was now no escape! A brief thought of drinking iodine passed through my tortured cranium. They’d feel sorry then! But would they? They would probably welcome it, after what I had done!

I hear my mother’s voice from the kitchen:

“What’s the matter?”

And then a bellow of inchoate rage. I knew any minute thunderous footsteps would head for the bathroom. Already I could feel the sobs welling to the surface.

And then my father’s voice, booming in rage:

“Those bastards down at the parking lot! They banged up the fender on the Graham and the bastards
deny
it!!”

I clung to the sink, bells ringing in my skull. I had been witness to an actual miracle. I would never again be an Unbeliever!

The voice angrily continued:

“I drove it in that lot absolutely perfect! Not a scratch on it!! Come on out and look at it!”

Again the door slammed and silence reigned. I tottered into the kitchen, weak and shuddering with relief. I peeked out of the back window and I could see my mother and father angrily stalking back and forth around the rear fender. They came up the back porch, with my mother saying:

“That’s terrible. Isn’t there something you can do with the Better Business Bureau? Why don’t you call the Better Business Bureau? Don’t let them get away with it. You’re just too easy on people.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘EASY’!? I HOLLERED FOR TWENTY MINUTES
! The guy says that car wasn’t touched! The lying bastard!!”

“Well, I’m going to call them myself. I’m going to call them.”

She sweeps past me into the dining room, to the phone. My father plumps down at the kitchen table, white with rage. Off in the living room, the sound of my kid brother crying could be heard. He always did this when there was trouble.

I did nothing, just looked innocent. My mother slammed back into the kitchen.

“You’re going to get satisfaction now. I really told them. It’s that lot across from the Real Estate office, right? Across from the Real Estate office?”

“Yeah.”

Never in my life, before or since, have I enjoyed meat loaf so much. Mashed potatoes and peas and carrots—a magnificent repast!

The next day my father came home from work beaming, radiating victory from every pore.

“They paid off, the bastards. Ten bucks for a repaint job! The guy said he’d paint it himself. I said ‘No.’ In a pig’s ear. I want the dough. I’ll get it fixed myself. I’ve got to admit you were right. They called up that phony and really burned his ear. He paid up!”

Once again I felt at home at the kitchen table. I belonged in this well-ordered, virtuous environment. Justice had been done, and I could proceed again along the great highway of Life, sun shining, birds singing, with a clean windshield and a full tank of Phillips 66.

XXIII
FLICK BAITS THE HOOK

“You remember the time I stripped the second gear in my Old Man’s Pontiac? He kicked me three times around Harding School without stopping.”

“Yep, we’ve all been through it, Flick.”

He reached behind him and flipped a switch. An orange-red neon sign hanging in the window flickered and sputtered into life:

BEER

Flick was baiting his trap for the Swing-Shift crowd who probably already were nursing a fierce thirst. A pair of the vanguard had just clumped in, their safety shoes thumping the floor loudly. They had settled into one of the booths. Life in Flick’s Tavern was picking up.

Flick took a couple of schooners over to them. They laughed together for a few moments, and he returned, wiping his hands on his clean apron. The phone behind the bar rang. He picked up the receiver.

“Hello, Jake? You’ll handle the bar yourself tonight. Yeah. I’m going to the game tonight. Okay, Jake. I’ll see you later.”

He hung up. He explained to me:

“That was Jake.”

“So I heard.”

“Going to the game tonight.”

The Game, of course, meant Basketball, which in Indiana is far more a mystique than an athletic contest. Basketball has been responsible for suicides, divorces, and even a few near-lynchings. I well remember one coach who left the county heavily disguised in dark glasses, beard, and the trappings of a Talmudic scholar after a disaster in a Sectional tournament. In recent years I had not kept up with the Basketball fortunes of our mutual high school.

“Who are they playing?”

“La Porte Slicers. It’s a breather.”

“La Porte? Do you remember the time we went to the Marching-Band contest at La Porte? And we took First Place in the Class A Division?”

“Your spit valve stuck halfway through the “National Emblem” and you damn near drowned when your sousaphone backed up on you.”

I chuckled:

“And Duckworth told you what you could do with your trombone after you screwed up on a countermarch and knocked over three clarinet players. He damn near did it
for
you!”

“It wasn’t my fault. Schwartz swung left. He faked me out.”

“You know, Flick, some nights even in New York, when I wake up at three in the morning, I can still hear Duckworth’s whistle. It scares me.”

“You’re not the only one!”

“Flick, there’s no doubt about it. Duckworth was a genuine, absolute, gold-plated Gasser!”

“In spades!” Flick capped me.

XXIV
WILBUR DUCKWORTH AND HIS MAGIC BATON