I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the wet circles under my eyes.
It was quarter to ten by the time I made it out to Johnny Pomberton's place. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing green gum-rubber boots and a heavy red-and-black-checked hunting jacket. An old hat with a grease-darkened bill was tilted up on his balding head as he studied the grey sky.
'More snow comin, the radio says. Didn't know as you'd really be out, boy, but I brung her around forya just in case. What do you think of her?'
I got my crutches under me again and got out of my car.
Road salt gritted under the crutches' rubber tips, but the going felt safe. Standing in front of Johnny Pomberton's woodpile was one of the strangest-looking vehicles I've ever seen in my life. A faint, pungent odour, not exactly pleasant, drifted over from it to where we stood.
At one time, far back in its career, it had been a GM product - or so the logo on its gigantic snout advertised. Now it was a little bit of everything. One thing it surely was, and that was big. The top of its grille would have been head-high on a tall man. Behind and over it, the cab loomed like a big square helmet. Behind that, supported by two sets of double wheels on each side, was a long, tubular body, like the body of a gasoline tanker truck.
Except that I never saw a tanker truck before this one that was painted bright pink. The word PETUNIA was written across the side in Roman gothic letters two feet high,
'I don't know what to think of her,' I said. 'What is she?'
Pomberton poked a Camel cigarette into his mouth and lit it with a quick flick of his horny thumbnail on the tip of a wooden match. 'Kaka sucker,' he said.
'What?'
He grinned. 'Twenty-thousand-gallon capacity, he said. 'She's a corker, is Petunia.'
'I don't get you.' But I was starting to. There was an absurd, grisly irony to it that Arnie - the old Arnie would have appreciated.
I had asked Pomberton over the phone if he had a big, heavy truck to rent, and this was the biggest one currently in his yard. All four of his dump trucks were working, two in Libertyville and two others in Philly Hill. He'd had a grader, he explained to me, but it had had a nervous bustdown just after Christmas. He said he was having a devilish job keeping his trucks rolling since Darnell's Garage shut down.
Petunia was essentially a tanker, no more and no less. Her job was pumping out septic systems.
'How much does she weigh?' I asked Pomberton.
He flicked away his cigarette. 'Dry, or loaded with shit?'
I gulped. 'Which is it now?'
He threw his head back and laughed. 'Do you think I'd rentcher a loaded truck?' He pronounced it ludded truck. 'Naw, naw - she's dry, dry as a bone and all hosed out. Sure she is. Still a little fragrant, though, ain't she?'
I sniffed. She was fragrant, all right.
'It could be a lot worse,' I said. 'I guess.'
'Sure,' Pomberton said. 'You bet, Old Petunia's original pedigree was lost long ago, but what's on her current registration is eighteen thousand pounds, GVW.'
'What's that?'
'Gross vehicle weight,' he said. 'If they pull you over on the Interstate and you weigh more than eighteen thousand the ICC gets upset. Dry, she prob'ly goes around, I dunno, eight-nine thousand Pounds. She's got a five-speed tranny with a two-speed differential, giving you ten forward speeds all told ... if you can run a clutch.'
He cast a dubious eye up and down my crutches and lit another cigarette.
'Can you run a clutch?'
'Sure,' I said with a straight face. 'If it isn't really stiff.' But for how long? That was the question.
'Well, that's your business and I won't mess into it.' He looked at me brightly. 'I'll give you a ten per cent discount for cash, on account of I don't usually report cash transactions to my favourite uncle.'
I checked my wallet and found three twenties and three tens. 'How much did you say for one day?'
'How does ninety bucks sound?'
I gave it to him. I had been prepared to pay a hundred and twenty.
'What are you going to do with your Duster there?'
It hadn't even crossed my mind until just now. 'Could I leave it here? Just for today?'
'Sure,' Pomberton said, 'you can leave it here all week, I don't give a shit. Just put it around