with a baleful sniper's glance, taking in the neat, gas-thrifty commuters cars now home from work, the children playing tag and jumprope, the people sitting out on their porches and having drinks in the first of the evening cool.
'I'd like to know who it was threw that rock,' he said softly. 'Yessir, I'd surely like to know who it was.'
Arnie cleared his throat. 'I'm sorry I gave you a hard time.'
'Don't worry,' LeBay said bridkly. 'Like to see a fellow stand up for what's his . . . or what's almost his. You bring the money, kid?'
'Yes, I have it.'
'Well, come on in the house. You and your friend both. I'll sign her over to you, and we'll have a glass of beer to celebrate.'
'No thanks,' I said. 'I'll stay out here, if that's okay.'
'Suit yourself, son,' LeBay said . . . and winked. To this day I have no idea exactly what that wink was supposed to mean. They went in, and the door banged shut behind them. The fish had been netted and was about to be cleaned.
Feeling depressed, I walked through the breezeway to the garage and tried the door. It ran up easily and exhaled the same odours I had smelled when I opened the Plymouth's door yesterday - oil, old upholstery, the accumulated heat of a long summer.
Rakes and a few old garden implements were ranked along one wall. On the other was a very old hose, a bicycle pump, and an ancient golf-bag filled with rusty clubs. In the centre, nose outward, sat Arnie's car, Christine, looking a mile long in this day and age when even Cadillacs look squeezed together and boxy. The spiderweb snarl of cracks at the side of the windscreen caught the light and turned it to a dull quicksilver. Some kid with a rock, as LeBay had said - or maybe a little accident coming home from the VFW hall after a night of drinking boilermakers and telling stories about the Battle of the Bulge or Pork Chop Hill. The good old days, when a man could see Europe, the Pacific, and the mysterious East from behind the sight of a bazooka. Who knew . . . and what did it matter'? Either way, it was not going to be easy, finding a replacement for a big wrap windscreen like that.
Or cheap.
Oh, Arnie, I thought. Man, you are getting in so deep.
The flat LeBay had taken off rested against the wall. I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the car. A fresh oil-stain was starting to form there, black against the brownish ghost of an older, wider stain that had sunk into the concrete over a period of years. It did nothing to alleviate my depression. The block was cracked for sure.
I walked around to the driver's side and as I grasped the handle, I saw a wastecan at the far corner of the garage. A large plastic bottle was poking out of the top. The letters SAPPH were visible over the rim.
I groaned. Oh, he had changed the oil, all right. Big of him. He had run out the old - whatever was left of it - and had run in a few quarts of Sapphire Motor Oil. This is the stuff you can get for $3.50 per recycled five-gallon jug at the Mammoth Mart. Roland D. LeBay was a real prince, all right. Roland D. LeBay was all heart.
I opened the car door and slid in behind the wheel. Now the smell in the garage didn't seem quite so heavy, or so freighted with feelings of disuse and defeat. The car's wheel was wide and red - a confident wheel. I looked at that amazing speedometer again, that speedometer which was calibrated not to 70 or 80 but all the way up to 120 miles an hour. No kilometres in little red numbers underneath; when this babe had rolled off the assembly line, the idea of going metric had yet to occur to anyone in Washington. No big red 55 on the speedometer, either. Back then, gas went for 29.9 a gallon, maybe less if a price-war happened to be going on in your town. The Arab oil-embargoes and the double-nickel speed limit had still been fifteen years away.
The good old days, I thought, and had to smile a little. I fumbled down to the left side of the seat and found the little button console that would move the seat back and