Second Hand Heart (27 page)

The World’s Tallest Thermometer

E
ddie asked me, “What’s that little book you keep writing in? Is it a diary?”

So then I took about twenty minutes to tell him all about Esther and the blank book she gave me, and the worry stone, and how she died (which made me cry again), and a bunch of other stuff he didn’t exactly ask about.

But I really needed something to do.

Eddie is the mechanic who is fixing Victor’s car. Only not right then, he wasn’t. Right then, when he asked about my book, he was fixing somebody else’s car. A nice blue BMW that belongs to some other poor fool who was just trying to get through the desert in one piece.

He can’t work on Victor’s car yet because he had to special-order a water pump and it hasn’t even shown up. It’s taking a long time. Longer than anybody thought it would.

And besides, even when the water pump shows up, he still needs to put paying customers first.

I like Eddie. He’s my friend.

He’s older than us. Forty or fifty. And he’s Indian. I don’t mean like an Indian from India, I mean like an American Indian. Or I guess I should say Native American. It’s probably more respectful and more right. After all, how long can you hold on to a name just because Columbus was an idiot out looking for spices who didn’t even get that he ran into something that wasn’t nearly India?

But I should be careful not to get too far off track. Anyhow, Eddie has a long ponytail that goes way down his back, and he keeps it tied in three places. He ties it with leather thongs. It’s tied close to his head, but the bottom of it is tied tight, too, and it’s also tied in the middle. So it’s thin. And black. And he has a great big stomach.

He’s also very nice.

He knows we don’t have much money, so he’s been sending Victor out on errands in his truck. Picking up parts and stuff. He’s been letting him work it off. And he let us put up Victor’s tent behind his gas station. But I can’t be out there until at least four in the afternoon, because that’s when the gas station gets in-between the sun and the tent, so there’s some shade. Otherwise, you could die out there. Literally. I’m not just being dramatic.

He also lets us take ice out of his ice-machine anytime we want, which may have saved my life, and definitely saved Jax’s life. About once an hour I hose Jax down with the hose at the side of the station, and then I feed him ice and hold some ice on his paw pads, and then he perks up a little, like a sad, droopy plant when somebody waters it.

Jax will be happier than anybody when we get back on the road. And Victor and I both want it pretty bad ourselves.

Victor isn’t here now because he’s off working, running errands in Eddie’s truck.

If I wanted, I could be in the little tiny snack shop that’s part of Eddie’s gas station, and which is air conditioned. (Because if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t stay in there long enough to buy anything.) But right now I don’t want to be in there because the bad cashier is on duty. And besides, there’s no place to sit. I have to sit on the floor, and the customers look at me funny.

The good cashier likes dogs, and she lets Jax lie on the floor behind her counter, where nobody even sees him except her. That way he gets to be where it’s cool. The bad cashier hates dogs (and actually, people, too, now that I think about it), and says she will report her own place of work to the health department if she sees that dog inside.

I asked Eddie once why he has her working here, and he said he would get somebody with a better disposition if he could, but it’s not likely that anyone will be looking for a job here in the summer.

I almost offered to do the job myself. At least it’s in the air conditioning. But we’ll be moving on soon.

I’m getting off track again.

So I was sitting in the shop area with Eddie, in a service bay, talking to him. My back up against the wall. Jax was lying on the concrete beside me, freshly wetted down and sleeping flat out on his side in a little shallow puddle, with his tongue hanging out on to the floor. It isn’t air conditioned in the shop, because the service bays are all open in the front. But at least in here we’re in the shade. And there are two big fans blowing, which is better than nothing.

So back to where I started.

I told him all about Esther and the book. And he listened, and nodded. He was leaning over the engine of this BMW. He had the hood off, and he had these vinyl drapes (printed with STP motor-oil company logos) over both sides of the fenders so he could set his tools down without scratching anything.

He said, “Victor told me you had a heart transplant. I wasn’t sure if he was lying or telling the truth.”

“Why would he lie?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “I don’t know why anybody would lie, but I know some people do. Don’t get me wrong. He seems like a good guy. But I don’t know him very well. I just never knew anybody who had a heart transplant before. It’s so rare.”

“It’s not that rare.”

“I thought it was really rare.”

“Not any more. Thousands of people have them every year. I’m pretty sure it’s something like between two and three thousand just right here in the US. Unless I’m remembering wrong. But I don’t think I’m remembering wrong, though. It’s a lot.”

I pulled down the collar of my tee-shirt a little, to show him the top of the scar. He winced, like it was his chest getting cut down the middle.

“Ouch,” he said. “How far down does that go?”

I pointed to the spot where it ended at the bottom, and he winced again.

“That must have been quite an ordeal.”

“Yeah. But better than dying. But I guess I really shouldn’t say that, though, because I’ve never died. But it sure seemed like a better idea than dying at the time.”

“Oh, you’ve died,” Eddie said. Going back to his BMW. “We’ve all died. Numerous times. You just don’t remember.”

“Maybe so, yeah. That could be. I’m going to go see how hot it is.”

“114,” Eddie said.

“Can you see the giant thermometer from here?”

“Nope.”

“Do you have a little one in here?”

“Nope.”

“Then how do you know?”

“I just know. I’ve lived here all my life, and I just know. Bet I’m not off by more than one degree. You don’t believe me, go look.”

I got up and walked out of the shop. Jax stirred, and got up, and came with me to the open doors of the shop, dripping all the way, but then he stopped before I got out into the sun. He wouldn’t walk out into the sun. He stopped and waited for me.

I walked out across the baking tarmac until I could see the giant thermometer. I could see and feel these waves of heat, shimmering all around me. Baking me. I knew I’d have to hurry up and get back in the shade before I got too crispy and well done.

The world’s tallest thermometer is sort of what Baker is known for. Seems like a strange thing to be known for, but I guess every place has to have something. It’s 134 feet tall. A foot for every degree it should ever have to be able to read. Because in something like 1913, it was 134 degrees at Death Valley. At the bottom, it says, “Baker, CA, gateway to Death Valley.” And then it has a lighted sign for every ten degrees, with lines in-between.

It was 114.

The Water Pump

M
aybe this is weird. No, definitely this is weird. But anyway, here goes.

I started thinking that a water pump is to a car what a heart is to a body. And then I started feeling like maybe there would never be a pump. Like we were in the hospital waiting for a pump, and maybe it would just never show up.

God knows, it hadn’t been showing up so far.

And then Victor’s poor car would never live and breathe and drive down a road and see the world again. And we would still be alive, of course, but pretty well stuck. Pretty stranded.

But then, the next day after I told Eddie about Esther and the book, there was Victor, standing in the heat waves outside the doorway of the service bays, freshly back from a parts run. And he was smiling really wide, just standing there with the sun beating down on his head, until Eddie said, “Hey, gringo, get out of the noonday sun.” Like I say, Eddie is Native American. Not Spanish. But he calls people gringo if they don’t know enough to get out of the sun, which he thinks is pretty funny.

By the way, I was wrong when I said Victor wears his Goth black trench coat even when it’s really hot. Not when it’s 114, he doesn’t. He just wears a tee-shirt. He’s getting one of those truck-driver tans from his upper arms down to his hands, and on his neck, but I better not get off track again.

Victor came in the shop, still smiling, and Jax got up and wagged like crazy.

And Victor said, “Guess what just came in today?” We knew it was the water pump. He didn’t even have to say it. Victor and Jax and I did the water-pump dance together for a minute, but then it got too hot for dancing, so we stopped.

Victor went out to unload all the parts and bring them in.

I sat back down with my back against the wall, and Jax lay down beside me with a big sigh — I call it his heat sigh — and Eddie went back to his BMW.

“I’m going to miss you when we move on, Eddie.” I said that. Even though I knew it would be another day or two before he put the water pump in. Or longer. A day or two meant figuring no more paying customers would break down near Baker.

“You’ll have to come back through sometime and say hi.”

“Maybe in the winter.”

And he laughed.

“Gringos,” he said.

On Finding the Someplace

E
ddie worked all next morning to finish the BMW so he could start on Victor’s water pump. He sent Victor out on one last set of errands, which worked out pretty well, because they both figured that would be just about enough work to pay off the job. I think he was giving us a little break, but he wasn’t giving it away or anything. He was being fair to everybody, I think, himself included.

I spent the morning in the air conditioning with the good cashier, Ellie, with Jax hiding behind the counter. But then I had to get him out the side door and into the service bay fast when she saw the bad cashier, whose name was Crystal, coming down the road for her shift.

The heat hit me like walking into a blast furnace. Not that I ever have, but I’ve read about them. But it was worth it. Because Eddie was already working on Victor’s big old American car. It made me really happy. I think it might have been the first time I really believed, for real, deep down in my heart — well, somebody’s heart, anyway — that we were going to get out of the desert and go someplace cooler.

“How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Oh, it’s not a very big job, now that I can finally get to it.”

I sat down on the concrete with my back up against the wall, as close to one of the fans as possible, and Jax paced back and forth and whimpered, which was his way of complaining because we couldn’t sit inside. After a while he gave up and flopped.

“Who are you going to have run your errands when we’re gone?”

“I guess it’ll have to be like the old days. If something needs doing, I have my three trusty employees. Me, myself and I.”

“I think you should make Crystal do it. That way she wouldn’t need to be around real people. She’d just be in the truck.”