good one; Let's go, cocksucker has its merits, and sometimes just a good, hearty shit-FIRE! will turn the trick. Most guys I know would do the same; I think it's just one of the things you pick up from your father.
What your mother leaves you is mostly good hardheaded practical advice - if you cut your toenails twice a month you won't get so many holes in your socks; put that down, you don't know where it's been; eat your carrots, they're good for you - but it's from your father that you get the magic, the talismans, the words of power. If the car won't start, curse it . . . and be sure you curse it female. If you went seven generations back, you'd probably find one of your forebears cursing the goddam bitch of a donkey that stopped in the middle of the tollbridge somewhere in Sussex or Prague.
But Arnie didn't swear at it. He murmured under his breath, 'Come on, doll, what do you say?'
He turned the key. The engine kicked twice, backfired again, and then started up. It sounded horrible, as if maybe four of the eight pistons had taken the day off, but he had it running. I could hardly believe it, but I didn't want to stand around and discuss it with him. The garage was rapidly filling up with blue smoke and fumes. I went outside.
'That turned out all right, after all, didn't it?' LeBay said. 'And you don't have to risk your own precious battery.' He spat.
I couldn't think of anything to say. To tell you the truth, I felt a little embarrassed.
The car came slowly out of the garage, looking so absurdly long that it made you want to laugh or cry or do something. I couldn't believe how long it looked. It was like an optical illusion. And Arnie looked very small behind the wheel.
He rolled down the window and beckoned me over. We had to raise our voices to make ourselves heard clearly that was another thing about Arnie's girl Christine; she had an extremely loud and rumbling voice. She was going to have to be Midasized in a hurry. If there was anything left of' the exhaust system to attach a silencer to, that was, besides a lot of rusty lace. Since Arnie sat down behind the wheel, the little accountant in the automotive section or my brain had totted up expenses of about six hundred dollars not including the cracked windscreen. God knew how much that might cost to replace.
'I'm taking her down to Darnell's!' Arnie yelled. 'His ad in the paper says I can park it in one of the back bays for twenty dollars a week!'
'Arnie, twenty a week for one of those back bays is too much!' I bellowed back.
Here was more robbery of the young and innocent. Darnell's Garage sat next door to a four-acre automobile wasteland that went by the falsely cheerful name of Darnell's Used Auto Parts. I had been there a few times, once to buy a starter for my Duster, once to get a rebuilt carb for the Mercury which had been my first car. Will Darnell was a great fat pig of a man who drank a lot and smoked long rank cigars, although he was reputed to have a bad asthmatic condition. He professed to hate almost every car-owning teenager in Libertyville . . . but that didn't keep him from catering to them and rooking them.
'I know,' Arnie yelled over the bellowing engine. 'But it's only for a week or two, until I find a cheaper place. I can't take it home like this, Dennis, my dad and mom would have a shit fit!'
That was certainly true. I opened my mouth to say something else - maybe to beg him again to stop this madness before it got completely out of control. Then I shut my mouth again. The deal was done. Besides, I didn't want to compete with that bellowing silencer anymore, or stand there pulling a lot of evil fried-carbon exhaust into my lungs.
'All right,' I said. 'I'll follow you.'
'Good deal,' he said, grinning. 'I'm going by Walnut Street and Basin Drive. I want to stay off the main roads.'
'Okay.'
'Thanks, Dennis.'
He dropped the hydramatic transmission into D again, and the Plymouth lurched forward two feet and then almost stalled. Arnie goosed the accelerator a little and Christine broke dirty wind. The Plymouth crept down LeBay's driveway to the street. When he pushed the