Shaking the Nickel Bush (8 page)

My fingers were too rough to do a good job of smoothing the clay, but I whittled myself little tools that worked real well, and that afternoon got away from me as though it had been only a half hour long. When I went over for my supper I took the Larsens the horse I'd made—an old mare we used to have when I was a boy—and anyone might have thought I'd brought them a present worth a hundred dollars. Of course, it was worthless in clay, because it would crack and warp out of shape as soon as it dried, so I told them I'd take it back to my room and cast it in plaster of Paris.

The rest of that week was fun. I made a horse for the doctor and another for the hotelkeeper, and my plaster casts came out better than I expected. In Arizona the plaster dried a lot faster than in Delaware, and the matrix chipped off cleaner. In the middle of the week I sent Mother a money order for fifty dollars, with a long letter telling her that my boss had furnished me with an outfit, so I hadn't had to buy one, and that he'd given me a raise in pay. Then I told her a long story about his sending me around to the back country to inspect his cattle herds, and I said I didn't know just where I'd be but that I'd write often.

The Larsens must have spent hours in finding things I could eat and cooking them for me. Even with the few things on my diet, every meal was different, every one was enough for two men, and after I'd taken them the horse they wouldn't let me pay them a penny. Each day I went to the doctor the first thing after breakfast, and each time he said my heart sounded a little better. Each day my back ached less, the stiffness drained out of my arms and legs, the black-and-blue spots faded, and the scabs began peeling off the scratches on my face and hands.

I could have been happy to stay right there in Phoenix all winter, just fussing with the clay and going over to Larsen's for my meals, but of course I couldn't afford to do it. I'd told Mother I had a good job and could send her fifty dollars a month, my room was costing a dollar a day, I'd already told the Larsens they couldn't feed me any longer for one little plaster horse, and I had no idea how big my doctor's bill might be. I was already down to $364, and if I didn't find some kind of job pretty soon I'd go broke again.

6

Outfitting

E
VEN
though I knew that Lonnie was sort of a lazy bum, I wished he'd show up again. I didn't know how to drive a flivver, and he'd told me he knew all about them. Besides that, he was a happy-go-lucky boy and good company, and I didn't exactly like the idea of starting out into the back country alone, particularly with a flivver. If it broke down I wouldn't know how to fix it, and it seemed to me that a fellow would be in a pretty bad way if he were stuck like that, alone and out in the middle of a desert.

I waited until the doctor said he'd release me the next day, then I took another walk down to the stockyards. Lonnie was there, sitting in the shade of the weigher's shack and talking with some cowhands I'd never seen before. He seemed as glad to see me as if I'd been his long-lost brother. I'd just come around the corner of the shack when he jumped up and came running to meet me. “Jeepers Creepers, buddy!” he shouted, “I figured you'd lit out for home with all that dough you made up to Wickenburg! When you didn't show up for three-four days I moseyed on up there to find you, and a guy named Ted told me you'd done right good—only got skun up a little.”

I knew from what Lonnie said that he'd been to the movie lot, and I knew from the looks of him that he hadn't done any riding, but I asked, “Did you try your hand at the falls?”

“Uh-uh!” he told me. “I watched a couple of them runs, but that ain't my kind of ridin'! Don't mind getting spilled off a bronc, but I ain't about to let nobody tip one over on top of me. 'Course, if I'd been a trick rider the likes of you, I'd have tried it, but I ain't never took up that end of the business. How much dough did you make?”

I didn't think there was any sense in telling him, so I just said, “Not as much as I wanted to, but maybe enough to buy a secondhand outfit and a cheap flivver.” Then I told him what Jim Magee had said about driving out through the back country to find jobs, and asked if he'd like to go along. It didn't take him two seconds to decide that he would. The first thing we did was to take his bedroll from the stockyards to my hotel room, and on the way I told him how I'd planned things out—but I didn't tell him that I planned to leave four fifty-dollar bills in the cuff of my britches.

“The way I figure it,” I said, “is that we can go as much as $130 for a flivver, an outfit, and grub and room rent until we get started. I expect the doctor to charge me about twenty, and that would leave us with fourteen bucks for grub and gas on the road till we find jobs. Do you think that will do it?”

“Jeepers!” Lonnie shouted. “You bet your sweet life it'll do it, buddy! Man alive, that's a fortune! This town's full of broke-down old flivvers we could buy for forty to fifty bucks, and there ain't one of 'em so bad I can't make it good as new with four or five dollars' worth of spare parts—secondhanded stuff we can pick up at a junk yard. That would leave us eighty or ninety for outfits, and this time of year you can pick up a dang good outfit in a hockshop—saddle, blanket, chaps, and the works—for forty to forty-five bones. Jeepers, buddy, we're in the chips! You musta took the jackpot at Wickenburg!”

“No,” I told him, “only a piece of it. Not enough to buy more than one outfit till I'm sure you're right about the price of flivvers. Remember, it's going to cost money to live till we're ready to hit the road.”

“Look, buddy,” he asked, “do I get an outfit if I can find a flivver for fifty bucks and fix it for ten, all in one day?”

“You bet your life!” I said. “As good a one as I get for myself.”

We spent the rest of that day and evening looking in the secondhand lots and junk yards, and going to see every old jalopy that was advertised in the paper. But the only thing we could find for fifty dollars was an old Maxwell that wouldn't run and looked as if it had been caught in a tornado. At breakfast next morning I told Lonnie to keep on hunting while I made my last trip to the doctor, got a card filled out, and paid my bill, then I'd meet him at our room at ten o'clock.

When I told the doctor I was leaving for the back country in a day or two he went over me from head to heels. Then he talked to me for more than an hour—telling me he was still inclined to agree with my family physician, but that I mustn't ride any bucking horses under any circumstances, must get all the sunshine I could on my body, and must stick rigidly to my diet. He made me promise that I wouldn't leave Phoenix without at least fifty pounds of fresh cabbage, fifty pounds of gluten flour, a case of canned salmon, two dozen eggs, and ten pounds of peanuts. Then he charged me only ten dollars for all my visits. I think it was because I'd made him the little plaster horse.

Lonnie was waiting for me when I got back to the hotel, and so excited that he began talking before I had the door half open. “Listen, buddy,” he shouted, “I found a crackerjack of a bargain—1914 Ford tourin' car—one of them that's got the brass radiator. The bloke wanted a hundred bucks for it, but he'da took seventy-five, and there ain't scarcely nothin' wrong with it 'cepting a couple o' loose connecting-rod bearings. The tires is almost next to new, and with two bucks' worth of Babbitt bearings I could have that engine fixed up so's't she'd climb Pikes Peak on high. 'Twouldn't take no more'n a couple or three hours.”

“Even at that,” I said, “seventy-five dollars sounds like a lot of money for an old flivver. Couldn't we fix that Max . . . ?”

“Wait a minute there, buddy!” Lonnie broke in. “The transmission—the gears you shift with—they're all shot to the devil on that Maxwell, and that's what you got to watch out for when you go to buyin' an old jalopy. It would cost leastways twenty bucks for a secondhanded transmission, and it would take me four or five days to take the busted one out and put the other one in. And what would we have when I got done? Nothin', that's what! The tires on it ain't no good, Maxwells is always bustin' down and they drink up gas like a cow drinks water. Fords'll run all day on a gallon o' gas and a spoonful of oil. You
can't
wear 'em out, and if anything busts you can always fix it with a piece of balin' wire. Jeepers, buddy, I'd trust that old flivver out in the desert a lot quicker'n I'd trust a Rolls Royce. You come take a look at it and I'll betcha my life you'll see the light.”

The flivver was in a combination garage and blacksmith shop, way out at the edge of town, and when we got there it looked worse to me than the Maxwell had. It must have been a desert car all its life, and through a hundred sandstorms. A coat of yellow paint had been daubed on thick over the original black, and a coat of red smeared on top of that—with a broom, I think—then it had been sandblasted until it was speckled from radiator to tailpipe, with all three colors showing through. The top was turned back, but I could see that the covering was stripped to tatters, and there were holes in the seats big enough for a rabbit to hide in. In hunting for some excuse for not buying it I asked Lonnie, “How about the gearshift on this one? Are you sure it's all right?”

“Gearshift!” he hollered. “Fords don't have no gearshift! They're shiftless. Work off'n bands around a transmission drum.”

“Well, this one looks shiftless to me,” I said. “This corner sags down like an old nag standing on three legs!”

“That don't amount to nothin',” he told me, “just a couple of busted leaves in the spring. You can get all of them you want for a dime apiece in any junk yard, and it don't take no time at all to put 'em in.”

“Well, it still looks shiftless to me,” I said. “I'll bet it's been driven a hundred thousand miles.”

“No it ain't! Not a bit of it!” the owner of the garage told me. “This little car ain't been drove over five thousand miles. Just took it in on a trade with old man Henderson, up Cavecreek way. Trouble is he didn't have no place to keep it—left it stand out in the weather, so the paint got chawed up a mite by the wind. Some good-for-nothin' hired hand drove it over rough country, hunting strays. Busted a leaf or two in the springs, and left it run low on oil. 'Twouldn't take next to nothing to put it into apple-pie shape. Time you boys put a fresh coat o' paint on it a man couldn't scarcely tell it from new. Them wore places on the seats would patch up slick as silk with a few strips of oilcloth and a little glue—I'd throw that in as part of the deal.”

The flivver still looked like a tired old nag that was on its last legs, so I shook my head and told Lonnie, “Shiftless is sure the right name for it. It's even ding-toed. Look how the front wheels turn inward.”

Before Lonnie could answer, the garageman called out, “Bent radius rod, that's all. Couple o' swipes with a maul would straighten it right out. I told you that fool hired hand drove it over a bit of rough country.”

I'd heard people talk before when they'd been trying to sell something that wasn't any good, so I didn't pay any attention to the man but said to Lonnie, “There's no sense in buying this one. It would take you a week to fix it up and wait for the paint to dry, and we can't afford to hang around Phoenix that long. Besides, you'd have to buy tools for doing a job this big.”

Again the garageman beat Lonnie to the punch. “Not a bit of it! Not a bit of it!” he told me. “You boys could fix it up right here, and I'd leave you use my tools. Wouldn't cost you a penny. I'd even lend you a hand on it, so's't you could have it ready to roll by tomorrow mornin'.”

“That's kind of you,” I said, “and maybe we'll come back to see it again, but . . .”

I hadn't noticed Lonnie until he cut in, “Look buddy, let's you and me take a little walk.”

When I glanced around he looked as sad as a little boy who's been told he can't have a puppy he's fallen in love with, so I said, “Okay but I'm not going to buy it, Lonnie.”

As soon as we were outside Lonnie asked, “Look, buddy, didn't you ever take note how the best cuttin' horses usually looks the laziest and most no-account?”

“Sure I have,” I told him, “but what's that got to do with buying a flivver?”

“Plenty!” he said. “Plenty! To a man that knows flivvers like I do, there's just as much feel to 'em as there is to a horse. They're either all good or no good, and a man that knows 'em don't need nobody to tell him which. I knowed that speckled one was plumb good the minute I laid eyes on her.”

“I'm not saying it isn't,” I told him, “but for a hundred dollars I think we ought to be able to find a better one. That's a lot of money, and I'm not going to spend it till we've looked around some more and . . .”

“Listen, buddy,” Lonnie pleaded, “I can easy talk the bloke down to seventy-five, and you heard him say I could use his tools, and that he'd lend me a hand. With the both of us workin' on that engine we'd have it purrin' like a pussy 'fore suppertime, and the looks of the body don't make no difference to us now. What we'll need in the back country is a car with an engine we can trust. There's no sense stopping to do the paint job till we're on our way. I can do that and patch up them holes in the seats any time along the road. When I get through with her she'll look and run like she just come out of the fact'ry. How 'bout it, buddy? I'm tellin' you, we couldn't do no better if we was to waste a month's time huntin'.”

There did seem to be some sense in what Lonnie said, and it would cost money for every extra day we spent in Phoenix, so I told him, “All right, Lonnie, I'll tell you what I'll do. If you can buy that one for seventy-five dollars, and if you can have it all fixed up and ready to roll by tomorrow noon, I'll go along with the deal, but not for one penny more. Is that fair enough?”

Lonnie was hurrying back into the garage before I had the last words out of my mouth. “Fair enough! Fair enough!” he sang out. “I'll guarantee you'll never live to regret it, buddy. Now you watch your old uncle drive a sharp deal.”

I think the look on Lonnie's face ruined his deal the minute he stepped back into that garage. He haggled for more than an hour with the owner, and the lowest they ever got was eighty-five dollars. When I was sure that was the best deal he could make I said, “Come on, Lonnie. We've wasted enough time here.”

As I said it I turned and walked out of the place, but I hadn't gone fifty feet before Lonnie caught up with me. “Listen, buddy,” he said as he trailed along at my elbow, “I had him right on the edge of a deal when you busted it up. And besides, what's a ten-spot to a guy like you anyways? The work I'll get out of the bloke will be worth double that. You know these mechanics charge a buck and a half an hour for their time.”

“Sure I know it,” I said, “and he'd probably run us up a bill of twenty or more before we ever got out of there.”