The Yellow Jalopy: Part I
The Yellow Jalopy: Part I
Let's hit the road. In reverse.
Clouds smeared grey and spanned the firmament with dark cumulonimbus knots that drew down over Canton, Ohio. Palmated leaves on Buckeye turned upside down and reached like hands for rain. Gusts flurried through downtown's red-bricked buildings. People covered their faces and held their hats as newspaper clippings hurled across sidewalks lined with maple that kindled ablaze in autumn. A traffic light hanging on a span wire swayed in breezy cadence as the bulb flared carmine.
Round, smooth rubber sidewalls etched with white trim rolled to a stop. The brake clamps screeched under the wheel well arch. Yellow paint sleek in the damp, framed atop misted streets matted black with the first tatter of rain. Oil and savory earth plumed from asphalt to interior and infused with the tanned cowhide. Soft-top rolled back, thick and curly sandy-brown tendrils danced in the wind over Bernie's arm that rested atop the slick wooden steering wheel encircled with pearl inlets.
Behind the dark tint of aviators, his eyes fixated on the oval rearview mirror. He reached up to adjust it. Carmine pitched on the span wire. Bernie looked down at his wristwatch and shook his head. He took a deep breath and exhaled more time into the quartz tuning fork behind the amber face of his Movado.
His view shifted down and he looked straight out the front windshield at the faces of two strangers that sat in a blue car, waiting for the light to turn. A dumbfounded expression slathered across their faces. Bernie raised his hand and gave a quick wave. The two sets of protruding headlights almost kissed, a heterochromia mirrored image cast across a velvet lake of blacktop. Glass iris sockets beset upon canary skirmished with cobalt, coequal and analogous in the streets of downtown Canton.
People on the street slowed and pointed at Bernie at the stoplight in his yellow TR6 that faced the wrong way. They laughed and jeered. He waved them off, laughed himself, and smiled, then his eyes scapegoated for the radio. He looked back up in his rearview, willing the light to pop green.
Finally, emeralds shone across the sodden street. Bernie twisted his body and propped his right hand behind the passenger headrest. He glared over the retracted soft-top as his left hand steadied on the glossy steering wheel. His foot applied pressure on the pedal. Rain-soaked verdant camouflaged his face as he drove through the intersection in reverse.
A Clydesdale pulled a brown-topped buggy and looked just as confused as the Amish couple inside as Bernie drove past them, backward, down rural Dover, Ohio’s long, narrow backroads. Hickory stretched up the road to the last house before dense towers of more hickory and an expanse of oak took real estate on the horizon.
He rounded the hedge where the red metal mailbox had been poled into the soil and reversed up the long cement driveway that led to a scarlet brick split-level. An American flag swung pridefully over the garage door on the corner post.
As Bernie stepped out of his car and closed his door, he heard the screen door of the split-level screech open and then swing shut. Thin aluminum bounced off the wooden door frame before it settled like a spun coin. He turned on his heel and came face to face with a large man. The man's arms were crossed, and his white shirt was greased black. His large hands pulled a cigarette to his mouth and lit it. A black smudge was left on the rolled paper and seeped into the nicotine.
The large man's curious eyes looked Bernie up and down as the cigarette burned to ash in one pull before a fingernail covered in tar flicked it to the rocky gravel separating the front porch and driveway.
"You here for Mila?" The man said.
"Yessir, I sure am."
"You taking her to the drive-in down by 34th Street?"
"Yessir."
"Gonna be cold tonight."
"Yessir."
"That top come up, son?"
"No, no, sir. It does not."
The man's bottom lip pushed down by the top as his head nodded, eyes sightless through Bernie's skull. Then he spat.
"Yeah, I figured as much. How far'd you drive that jalopy here?"
"I—"
"In reverse, son. How far you drive that in reverse?"
"Well—” He paused to think. “You mean today?"
The man shook his head, turned, opened the screen door, and disappeared inside. Bernie watched the door frame come to a stop. Silence. He took a deep breath and hung his head.
"Great first impression, jackass." Bernie muttered to himself.
He grabbed the door handle to his TR6 and let it swing open hoping it would’ve ripped off and he could have left it here to remind the girl of him. The one he never got to take out to the movies. The one that got away.
Bernie's head swung back as he heard the garage door roll open. The man stepped out, holding a long metal wrench. He slapped it in his palm repeatedly as he took a few steps out of the dark garage and into the greyed sunlight. His eyes bore on Bernie, then the TR6.
"Back it in." He said.
To Be Continued…
Hope you enjoyed this first installment of this three-part story! Don't miss what happens next with Bernie and his TR6 Part II:
If you liked this, check out out some other stories!
