Christine Read online

  After a few moments of eye-to-eye duelling (which Arnie totally ignored; he was running a slow and loving hand over one of the back fins), he said, "Can't drive anymore. Back's gotten too bad. Eyes are going the same way."

  Suddenly I got it--or thought I did. If he had given us the correct dates, he was seventy-one. And at seventy, this state makes you start taking compulsory eye exams every year before they'll renew your driver's license. LeBay had either failed his eye exam or was afraid of failing. Either way, it came to the same thing. Rather than submit to that indignity, he had put the Plymouth up. And after that, the car had gotten old fast

  "How much do you want for it?" Arnie asked again. Oh, he just couldn't wait to be slaughtered.

  LeBay turned his face up to the sky, appearing to consider it for rain. Then he looked down at Arnie again and gave him a large, kindly smile that was far too much like the previous shit-eating grin for me.

  "I've been asking three hundred," he said. "But you seem a likely enough lad. I'll make it two-fifty for you."

  "Oh my Christ," I said.

  But he knew who his sucker was, and he knew exactly how to drive the wedge in between us. In the words of my grandfather, he hadn't fallen off a haytruck yesterday.

  "Okay," he said brusquely. "If that's how you want it. I got my four-thirty story to watch. Edge of Night. Never miss it if I can help it. Nice chinning with you boys. So long."

  Arnie threw me such a smoking look of pain and anger that I backed off a step. He went after the old man and took his elbow. They talked. I couldn't hear it all, but I could see more than enough. The old man's pride was wounded. Arnie was earnest and apologetic. The old man just hoped Arnie understood that he couldn't stand to see the car that had brought him through safe to his golden years insulted. Arnie agreed. Little by little, the old man allowed himself to be led back. And again I felt something consciously dreadful about him . . . it was as if a cold November wind could think. I can't put it any better than that.

  "If he says one more word, I wash my hand of the whole thing," LeBay said, and cocked a horny, calloused thumb at me.

  "He won't, he won't," Arnie said hastily. "Three hundred, did you say?"

  "Yes, I believe that was--"

  "Two-fifty was the quoted price," I said loudly.

  Arnie looked stricken, afraid the old man would walk away again, but LeBay was taking no chances. The fish was almost out of the pond now.

  "Two-fifty would do it, I guess," LeBay allowed. He glanced my way again, and I saw that we had an understanding--he didn't like me and I didn't like him.

  To my ever-increasing horror, Arnie pulled his wallet out and began thumbing through it. There was silence among the three of us. LeBay looked on. I looked away at a little kid who was trying to kill himself on a puke-green skateboard. Somewhere a dog barked. Two girls who looked like eighth-or ninth-graders went past, giggling and holding clutches of library books to their blooming chests. I had only one hope left for getting Arnie out of this; it was the day before payday. Given time, even twenty-four hours, this wild fever might pass. Arnie was beginning to remind me of Toad, of Toad Hall.

  When I looked back, Arnie and LeBay were looking at two fives and six ones--all that had been in his wallet, apparently.

  "How about a check?" Arnie asked.

  LeBay offered Arnie a dry smile and said nothing.

  "It's a good check," Arnie protested. It would be, too. We had been working all summer for Carson Brothers on the I-376 extension, the one which natives of the Pittsburgh area firmly believe will never be really finished. Arnie sometimes declared that Penn-DOT had begun taking bids on the I-376 work shortly after the Civil War ended. Not that either of us had any right to complain; a lot of kids were either working for slave wages, that summer or not working at all. We were making good money, even clocking some overtime, Brad Jeffries, the job foreman, had been frankly dubious about taking a kid like Arnie on, but had finally allowed that he could use a flagman; the girl he had been planning to hire had gotten herself pregnant and had run off to get married. So Arnie had started off flagging in June but had gotten into the harder work little by little, running mostly on guts and determination. It was the first real job he'd ever had, and he didn't want to screw it up.

  Brad was reasonably impressed, and the summer sun had even helped Arnie's erupting complexion a little. Maybe it was the ultraviolet.

  "I'm sure it's a good check, son," LeBay said, "but I gotta make a cash deal. You understand."

  I didn't know if Arnie understood, but I did. It would be too easy to stop payment on a local check if this rustbucket Plymouth threw a rod or blew a piston on the way home.

  "You can call the bank," Arnie said, starting to sound desperate.

  "Nope," LeBay said, scratching his armpit above the scabrous brace. "It's going on five-thirty. Bank's long since closed."

  "A deposit, then," Arnie said, and held out the sixteen dollars. He looked positively wild. It may be that you're having trouble believing a kid who was almost old enough to vote could have gotten himself so worked up over an anonymous old clunk in the space of fifteen minutes. I was having some trouble believing it myself. Only Roland D. LeBay seemed not to be having trouble with it, and I supposed it was because at his age he had seen everything. It was only later that I came to believe that his odd sureness might come from other sources. Either way, if any milk of human kindness had ever run in his veins, it had curdled to sour cream long ago.

  "I'd have to have at least ten percent down," LeBay said. The fish was out of the water; in a moment it would be netted. "If I had ten percent, I'd hold her for twenty-four hours."

  "Dennis," Arnie said. "Can you loan me nine bucks until tomorrow?"

  I had twelve in my own wallet, and no particular place to go. Day after day of spreading sand and digging trenches for culverts had done wonders when it came to getting ready for football practice, but I had no social life at all. Lately I hadn't even been assaulting the ramparts of my cheerleader girlfriend's body in the style to which she had become accustomed. I was rich but lonely.

  "Come on over here and let's see," I said.

  LeBay's brow darkened, but he could see he was stuck with my input, like it or not. His frizzy white hair blew back and forth in the mild breeze. He kept one hand possessively on the Plymouth's hood.

  Arnie and I walked back toward where my car, a '75 Duster, was parked at the curb. I put an arm around Arnie's shoulders. For some reason I remembered the two of us up in his room on a rainy fall day when we were both no more than six years old--cartoons flickering on an ancient black-and-white TV as we colored with old Crayolas from a dented coffee can. The image made me feel sad and a little scared. I have days, you know, when it seems to me that six is an optimum age, and that's why it only lasts about 7.2 seconds in real time.

  "Have you got it, Dennis? I'll get it back to you tomorrow afternoon."

  "Yeah, I've got it," I said. "But what in God's name are you doing, Arnie? That old fart has got total disability, for Christ's sake. He doesn't need the money and you're not a charitable institution."

  "I don't get it. What are you talking about?"

  "He's screwing you. He's screwing you for the simple pleasure of it. If he took that car to Darnell's, he couldn't get fifty dollars for parts. It's a piece of shit."

  "No. No, it isn't." Without the bad complexion, my friend Arnie would have looked completely ordinary. But God gives everyone at least one good feature, I think, and with Arnie it was his eyes. Behind the glasses that usually obscured them they were a fine and intelligent gray, the color of clouds on an overcast autumn day. They could be almost uncomfortably sharp and probing when something was going on that he was interested in, but now they were distant and dreaming. "It's not a piece of shit at all."

  That was when I really began to understand it was more than just Arnie suddenly deciding he wanted a car. He had never even expressed an interest in owning one before; he was content to ride with me and c
hip in for gas or to pedal his three-speed. And it wasn't as if he needed a car so he could step out; to the best of my knowledge Arnie had never had a date in his life. This was something different. It was love, or something like it.

  I said, "At least get him to start it for you, Arnie. And get the hood up. There's a puddle of oil underneath. I think the block might be cracked. I really think--"

  "Can you loan me the nine?" His eyes were fixed on mine.

  I gave up. I took out my wallet and gave him the nine dollars.

  "Thanks, Dennis," he said.

  "Your funeral, man."

  He took no notice. He put my nine with his sixteen and went back to where LeBay stood by the car. He handed the money over and LeBay counted it carefully, wetting his thumb.

  "I'll only hold it for twenty-four hours, you understand," LeBay said.

  "Yessir, that'll be fine," Arnie said.

  "I'll just go in the house and write you out a receipt," he said. "What did you say your name was, soldier?"

  Arnie smiled a little. "Cunningham. Arnold Cunningham."

  LeBay granted and walked across his unhealthy lawn to his back door. The outer door was one of those funky aluminum combination doors with a scrolled letter in the center--a big L in this case.

  The door slammed behind him.

  "The guy's weird, Arnie. The guy is really fucking w--"

  But Arnie wasn't there. He was sitting behind the wheel of the car. That same sappy expression was on his face.

  I went around to the front and found the hood release. I pulled it, and the hood went up with a rusty scream that made me think of the sound effects you hear on some of those haunted-house records. Flecks of metal sifted down. The battery was an old Allstate, and the terminals were so glooped up with green corrosion that you couldn't tell which was positive and which was negative. I pulled the air cleaner and looked glumly into a four-barrel carb as black as a mineshaft.

  I lowered the hood and went back to where Arnie was sitting, running his hand along the edge of the dashboard over the speedometer, which was calibrated up to an utterly absurd 120 miles per hour. Had cars ever really gone that fast?

  "Arnie, I think the engine block's cracked. I really do. This car is lunch, my friend. It's just total lunch. If you want wheels, we can find you something a lot better than this for two-fifty. I mean it. A lot better."

  "It's twenty years old," he said. "Do you realize a car is officially an antique when it's twenty years old?"

  "Yeah," I said. "The junkyard behind Darnell's is full of official antiques, you know what I mean?"

  "Dennis--"

  The door banged. LeBay was coming back. It was just as well; further discussion would have been meaningless. I may not be the world's most sensitive human being, but when the signals are strong enough, I can pick them up. This was something Arnie felt he had to have, and I wasn't going to talk him out of it. I didn't think anyone was going to talk him out of it.

  LeBay handed him the receipt with a flourish. Written on a plain sheet of notepaper in an old man's spidery and slightly trembling script was: Received from Arnold Cunningham, $25.00 as a 24-hr. deposit on 1958 Plymouth, Christine. And below that he had signed his name.

  "What's this Christine?" I asked, thinking I might have misread it or he might have misspelled it.

  His lips tightened and his shoulders went up a little, as if he expected to be laughed at . . . or as if he were daring me to laugh at him. "Christine," he said, "is what I always called her."

  "Christine," Arnie said. "I like it. Don't you, Dennis?"

  Now he was talking about naming the damned thing. It was all getting to be a bit much.

  "What do you think, Dennis, do you like it?"

  "No," I said. "If you've got to name it, Arnie, why don't you name it Trouble?"

  He looked hurt at that, but I was beyond caring. I went back to my car to wait for him, wishing I had taken a different route home.

  2 / The First Argument

  Just tell your hoodlum friends outside,

  You ain't got time to take a ride!

  (Yakety-yak!)

  Don't talk back!

  --The Coasters

  I drove Arnie to his house and went in with him to have a piece of cake and a glass of milk before going home. It was a decision I repented very quickly.

  Arnie lived on Laurel Street, which is in a quiet residential neighborhood on the west side of Libertyville. As far as that goes, most of Libertyville is quiet and residential. It isn't ritzy, like the neighboring suburb of Fox Chapel (where most of the homes are estates like the ones you used to see every week on Columbo), but it isn't like Monroeville, either, with its miles of malls, discount tire warehouses, and dirty book emporiums. There isn't any heavy industry; it's mostly a bedroom community for the nearby University. Not ritzy, but sort of brainy, at least.

  Arnie had been quiet and contemplative all the way home; I tried to draw him out, but he wouldn't be drawn. I asked him what he was going to do with the car. "Fix it up," he said absently, and lapsed back into silence.

  Well, he had the ability; I wasn't questioning that. He was good with tools, he could listen, he could isolate. His hands were sensitive and quick with machinery; it was only when he was around other people, particularly girls, that they got clumsy and restless, wanting to crack knuckles or jam themselves in his pockets, or, worst of all, wander up to his face and run over the scorched-earth landscape of his cheeks and chin and forehead, drawing attention to it.

  He could fix the car up, but the money he had earned that summer was earmarked for college. He had never owned a car before, and I didn't think he had any idea of the sinister way that old cars can suck money. They suck it the way a vampire is supposed to suck blood. He could avoid labor costs in most cases by doing the work himself, but the parts alone would half-buck him to death before he was through.

  I said some of these things to him, but they just rolled off. His eyes were still distant, dreaming. I could not have told you what he was thinking.

  Both Michael and Regina Cunningham were at home--she was working one of an endless series of goofy jigsaw puzzles (this one was about six thousand different cogs and gears on a plain white background; it would have driven me out of my skull in about fifteen minutes), and he was playing his recorder in the living room.

  It didn't take long for me to start wishing I had skipped the cake and milk. Arnie told them what he had done, showed them the receipt, and they both promptly went through the roof.

  You have to understand that Michael and Regina were University people to the core. They were into doing good, and to them that meant being into protest. They had protested in favor of integration in the early 60s, had moved on to Viet Nam, and when that gave out there was Nixon, questions of racial balance in the schools (they could quote you chapter and verse on the Alan Bakke case until you fell asleep), police brutality, and parental brutality. Then there was the talk-all the talk. They were almost as much into talking as they were into protesting. They were ready to take part in an all-night bull-session on the space program or a teachin on the ERA or a seminar on possible alternatives to fossil fuels at the drop of an opinion. They had done time on God alone knew how many "hotlines"--rape hotlines, drug hotlines, hotlines where runaway kids could talk to a friend, and good old dial help, where people thinking about suicide could call up and listen to a sympathetic voice say don't do it, buddy, you have a social commitment to Spaceship Earth. Twenty or thirty years of University teaching and you're prepared to run your gums the way Pavlov's dogs were prepared to salivate when the bell rang. I guess you can even get to like it.

  Regina (they insisted I call them by their first names) was forty-five and handsome in a rather cold, semi-aristocratic way--that is, she managed to look aristocratic even when she was wearing bluejeans, which was most of the time. Her field was English, but of course when you teach at the college level, that's never enough; it's like saying "America" when someone asks you where you're
from. She had it refined and calibrated like a blip on a radar screen. She specialized in the earlier English poets and had done her thesis on Robert Herrick.

  Michael was in the history biz. He looked as mournful and melancholy as the music he played on his recorder, although mournful and melancholy were not ordinarily a part of his makeup. Sometimes he made me think of what Ringo Starr was supposed to have said when the Beatles first came to America and some reporter at a press conference asked him if he was really as sad as he looked. "No," Ringo replied, "it's just me face." Michael was like that. Also, his thin face and the thick glasses he wore combined to make him look a little like a caricature professor in an unfriendly editorial cartoon. His hair was receding and he wore a small, fuzzy goatee.

  "Hi, Arnie," Regina said as we came in. "Hello, Dennis." It was just about the last cheerful thing she said to either of us that afternoon.

  We said hi and got our cake and milk. We sat in the breakfast nook. Dinner was cooking in the oven, and I'm sorry to say so, but the aroma was fairly rank. Regina and Michael had been flirting with vegetarianism for some time, and tonight it smelled as if Regina had a good old kelp quiche or something on the way. I hoped they wouldn't invite me to stay.

  The recorder music stopped, and Michael wandered out into the kitchen. He was wearing bluejean cutoffs and looking as if his best friend had just died.

  "You're late, boys," he said. "Anything going down?" He opened the refrigerator and began to root around in it. Maybe the kelp quiche didn't smell so wonderful to him either.

  "I bought a car," Arnie said, cutting himself another piece of cake.

  "You did what?" his mother cried at once from the other room. She got up too quickly and there was a thud as her thighs connected solidly with the edge of the cardtable she did her jigsaws on. The thud was followed by the rapid patter of pieces falling to the floor. That was when I started to wish I had just gone home.

  Michael Cunningham had turned from the refrigerator to stare at his son, holding a Granny Smith apple in one hand and a carton of plain yogurt in the other.

  "You're kidding," he said, and for some absurd reason I noticed for the first time that his goatee--which he had worn since 1970 or so--was showing quite a bit of gray. "Arnie, you're kidding, right? Say you're kidding."