The Yellow Jalopy: Part II
The Yellow Jalopy: Part II
Bolts, Core Plugs, and Gaskets, Oh My!
Haven’t read Part I? Catch up now:
Part II:
The '65 Ford Lotus Cortina recoiled over crumbled potholes as Bernie sat in the passenger seat and glanced up at pastel grey etched across cold autumn skies. The last brilliance of orange burst on maples. Buckeye stood tall, stiff, some barren of lush palmetto hands along the back roads of Dover, Ohio. Hickory dominated and fenced the road into a jetty streaming to the horizon.
"How much farther? Car can't take much more." His father, Benedetto, said.
"Just up the road here. Not much farther." Bernie replied.
"She better be worth it 'cause my car sure ain't."
"Just up here, to the right."
The split-level came into view foremost a curtain stretched from rung to rung of towering hickory. Chromed amber buffed through a small cloud break and sent sparks of saffron glinting off a brass arrow weathervane mounted on the roof's ridge. Peach and coral foliage scattered across the ground in droves and swept under the Cortina as Benedetto parked on the street.
"You can pull in the driveway," Bernie said.
"No one pulls in my driveway. I don't pull in theirs."
"Okay."
"What time are you coming home?"
"I'll be back tonight. Not sure."
"You make sure to thank him, Bernie, but listen here—"
"Here we go."
"You're damn right here we go! You don't accept any favors from him after this. You understand? You don't owe nobody nothing."
"He's a good guy. Just trying to help."
"No. I don't like it. You're dating his daughter. He fixes your car? No. No. You say thank you, but no thank you next time. Capisci?"
"I ate dinner with her parents since he wouldn't let me drive to the movie. Not sure what that makes us."
"Even more suspicious. He knows your last name. He knows who I am. He knows the family."
"That was a long time ago, Paps. We aren't a part of that family anymore."
"People don't forget. Try and be home before supper, huh?"
"Yeah. Thanks for the ride."
Bernie watched his father's car turn around and drive back down the road, past the steepening grade of hickory before he turned to the brick split-level. No vehicles were anywhere to be seen, especially his yellow TR6.
Draft whistled through skewed hickory that veiled the perimeter; their wooden core moaned awry. The front screen door banged its light aluminum frame in cadence and drummed off the inner sill. Glass and ceramic fragments of a wind chime shattered in a twisted melody.
Bernie walked up the front steps and across the freshly sealed front porch, the pine sheened and smelled of soapy, rancid metal. Honeysuckle vines ran up a lattice and cuffed the front door in lush supple. He lifted the ringed metal door knocker brushed in a nickel finish and let it fall.
Silence.
He knocked with the edges of his knuckles, whitened from an autumn flurry.
Nothing.
He caught the screen door swinging. The bottom corner bent with impact. He knelt down, took the corner with his thumb, and applied the opposite force with his foot until the corner bent straight. He let the screen door shut.
"Shut, dammit," Bernie said. And it did.
He walked down the pine-sheened front porch steps and across the laid gravel path until he got to the side of the brick split-level. He peered around the front of the house before he walked around the side. Pinewood planters of fresh soil are ready for the coming season's sow.
Rounding the corner, a clothesline strewn across the lawn harbored a line of linen hanging by wooden clothespins. They puffed out and lifted as the wind breathed down the extended hill that curved up behind the house to a crown of leaf-stricken buckeye. A downy woodpecker knobbed away, and flashes of rose flittered through the coral sun break as a northern cardinal dashed through branches. The sole surge of life in sight.
Around the far side, he continued across the back lawn. Peach begonias and vibrant asters smoked in. Cosmos blushed in salmon-pink under an arrange of lobelias blooming cobalt and ivory-pearl that hung in a small tin water can off the corner post of the back porch.
Fresh-mowed Kentucky bluegrass seared his nostrils of tilled earth and verdant. A shed built of thick fir stained in crimson. Black slanted roof shingles dripped with dew. A gravel driveway in front indented with round tire grooves wedged through the soil. Rain sat abandoned in the muddy ruts and grooves.
Bernie's eyes gleamed in the light that radiated out between fissures and seeped into the graying mist that danced in front. A black metal latch hung, unlatched. His trembling hand reached into the glowing orange vertical crevice and pried the fir door back.
His jaw fell agape.
His eyebrows melted off the sides of his face as tears welled in his eyes.
There she was.
The soft convertible top on the hard floor. Reflective strips beside it with the rear windows zipped out and placed on top of each other. A splash guard next to the window regulator. The external engine asunder of core plugs, gaskets, and pan gasket sets. The Alternate mountings were disassembled in at least ten pieces. Gearbox mountings mixed with the rear engine mountings. The internal engine's crankshaft spines in the middle of the carnage jumbled with a handful of sprockets. A labyrinth of bolts, half-inch fan belts, aluminum flywheels, and an 8-blade plastic yellow fan. Rocker shaft springs, shortened pushrods, and locknuts grouped with rocker cover studs for what once was the cylinder head. His eyes drifted up the metal workbench to the accelerator pedal in screws, bearings, and cotter pins. The control lever was wedged in a six-inch swivel vise, and the support bracket and bell crank lever were dumped in a metal trash bin off to the side.
Bernie slumped over and picked up the thin, slick, wooden steering wheel encircled with the pearl inlets and white-knuckled it. The smooth wood squealed in his palm as he twisted it. He dropped it to the ground and it clanked off an oil pan near his feet before it rolled into a fire-truck-red workbench.
A shadow cast behind Bernie as the fir planks creaked open. Bernie spun around. The Man stood in front of the shed. Black oil slicked up his arm and smeared across his face. His hands were jumbled into a towel as he tried to wipe off grease.
"What the hell did you do to my car? You said you’d fix it!"
The Man crinkled his nose and spat. His forearm wiped his mouth and left greasing across his cheek before he stomped inside. Eyes bore in stalemate before the Man reached for a rusted torque wrench atop a small ice chest.
To be Continued…
