Authors: Andrew Vachss
“Well, that it surely
must have. Many’s the time the mechanic told Hiram he should get new
parts for it instead of fixing up the old ones. It would be much cheaper to put
a modern engine in, over the long run. But Hiram couldn’t bear to have
that. He just spent the money to keep her … he called that car
‘she,’ can you imagine? … running. Pride. Like I said,
pride.”
“Yes, ma’am. But what I’m saying
is—”
“If you’re going to be explaining things,
you better come on in and have a cup of coffee with me,” she said.
H
er house smelled a little bit like lemons. She took me through the
living room. All of it was wood, dark and light, and it all shined like new.
There was a big Bible, lying open on one of those things a preacher stands
behind when he preaches.
The old lady told me to sit down in the
kitchen. She brought me a cup of chicory coffee, and took one herself.
“Now,” she said, “what is all this about my
husband’s car?”
“It’s worth a lot of
money,” I told her. “I don’t know how much, exactly, but more
than I could pay, that’s for sure.”
“More than the
thousand dollars that other young man offered me?” Her eyes were brown.
Bright and sharp, not filmy, the way some old people’s eyes get.
“A lot more, I think,” I told her. “There’s places
you could find out from.”
“What places?”
“Well, I don’t know, exactly, myself. There’s magazines
about old cars, for people that collect them, that would be one place. I
don’t sell cars; I only work on them.”
“But
you’re sure it’s worth more than a thousand dollars?”
“Ma’am, I absolutely know it is. There was this one guy, he had
a car like yours—not exactly like it, his was a ’57—and he
paid twenty-five thousand dollars for it. Of course, his was all in perfect
condition, but, still.…”
“Are you a Christian, young
man?”
“I … I guess so.”
“What do
you mean, you ‘guess so’?”
“Well, I’m not
nothing else. You know, like a Jew or a Arab or anything.”
“Are you a churchgoer?”
“No,
ma’am.”
“You mean you don’t go regular, or you
don’t go at all?”
“I don’t go at all,” I
said.
“Hmpf!” she said, kind of to herself. “I was
sure you’d turn out to be born-again.”
“I’m
sorry, ma’am,” I said. “Thank you for the coffee.”
I got up to go.
“Hold on a minute,” she said.
“Would you pay a thousand dollars for my husband’s car?”
“Ma’am, I already told you—”
“And
would you want it to be driving it yourself, or to sell it?”
“If I had a car like that, I wouldn’t ever sell it,” I
said.
“All right. Let me go and get the papers.”
I
was still trying to figure out what was going on, when the old lady
came back.
“Here’s everything,” she said, handing
me a shoebox. “My husband kept it all in the same place.”
“Ma’am, I don’t understand.”
“My
husband was taken by cancer, young man. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.
His spirit was strong right to the end, and he died right here, in his own
home.
“We had a lot of time to talk, then. A long twilight before
the night came. I got to understand my husband better in that time than in the
fifty-four years we were man and wife.
“And do you know what he
said about that car of his? He said, ‘Ruth Ann, I want you to sell my
little jewel,’ … that’s what he called it, sometimes
… ‘I want you to sell my little jewel to someone who is going to
love her. Someone who will drive her around and show her off. Have pride in
her. Not some merchant, now. And not somebody who is going to make a hot rod
out of her, either. That’s what she deserves.’
“Well,
I said to him, ‘Hiram, how in the world am I going to read a man’s
mind? You know how people will dissemble when they want something.’
“And he said, ‘I’ve been praying over that one for some
time. And the Lord sent me the answer. Ruth Ann, that little car is worth a lot
of money. And that shall be the test. I want you to put my little jewel up for
sale, but don’t you put a price on her. And I want you to sell her to the
first person who doesn’t try and cheat you.’
“Well, I
did solemnly promise Hiram, young man. But I couldn’t bring myself to
sell his car for a long time. I was frightened that I wouldn’t be able to
tell when someone was trying to cheat me—I’m not sharp in those
ways.
“So I did what my husband did. I prayed on it. I
didn’t get a direct answer, but I was told that, when the right person
came along, I could count on the Lord to alert me.
“And
that’s what happened. Every single man who has come to my house and taken
a look in that garage has tried to buy my husband’s car. Some of them
asked me what I wanted for it, but I always said I wasn’t sure. Not one
single person ever so much as hinted to me that my husband’s car was
worth a lot of money.
“Then you come along and you say the truth.
So I know you’re saying the truth when you tell me you will drive my
husband’s car and keep it like it should be. Now, do you have a thousand
dollars?”
“Not with me, ma’am. But I do have it. In
fact, I have almost seven thousand dollars put aside.”
“Never you mind that,” she said. “You come back with the
thousand dollars, and you take Hiram’s car away with you.”
Her bright brown eyes were a little damp, but she didn’t cry.
I was jealous of Hiram, then.
T
he Thunderbird’s still in
primer, waiting. After I stripped the old, dull paint, I had figured on doing
it in the original color—“Torch Red,” it said in the papers
that came with it—but, when I thought about my dream, the one about the
car coming for me, I decided to make it all black.
It’s the
perfect car for my dream. It only has room for two people. They would even
share the same seat; it’s just a bench, not buckets.
Whenever I
drive this car, I think about what it means to be a getaway man. Not just for a
job, for always.
When this job is done, I guess I’ll find
out.
F
or this last job, we’ve got a secret weapon.
That’s what J.C. calls him.
His name is Monty. I never seen
him, myself. Everything I know about him, I know from J.C. and Gus.
The
job is an armored car. It makes the run from the Indian casino every Saturday
night. At four o’clock, so, Sunday morning, really. I never heard of an
armored car that picks up at night, but that’s the way the Indians wanted
it, is what Monty told J.C.
J.C. said the Indians have all the power
around here. The casino Indians, he means, not the ones who live on the
reservation. Those ones don’t have anything.
They keep the money
in a vault with big thick walls. In between the vault and the outside is
bullet-proof glass. Behind the glass, they have men with machine guns.
Nobody could ever get in there, J.C. says. But, sooner or later, the
money’s got to come out.
The way they do it is very slick. Every
afternoon, an armored car pulls up to the casino. It goes around back where
nobody can see, inside a special fence with doors in it, and another set of
doors behind that one. Like the sally port the bus that brings you into prison
goes through. After a while, the fence opens, and it comes back out. If you
follow it, you see it go right to the bank.
The only thing is,
there’s nothing in those cars. They’re empty. A decoy. The only
time the money actually comes out of there is that night run, once a week.
J.C. knows this from Monty. And Monty knows because he’s the man who
drives the armored car. An inside man, like Rodney and Luther had a long time
ago. Only this time, it was different—everybody was a professional.
M
onty doesn’t drive the special night run every week. He told J.C.
you never know when it’s going to be your turn. There’s a list of
guys who they let make that run, and Monty’s on it. He has to be by his
phone every Saturday at midnight. They always call him, even if he’s not
picked to go that night.
The armored car company is real strict,
Monty says. If you don’t answer your phone even one time when they call,
you get taken off that special list. There better not be a busy signal when
they call, either. You’re not allowed to give them a cell phone number;
it has to be your home phone. And if they catch you forwarding the calls, you
get fired.
Monty says you get paid for Saturdays whether you work or
not, just for being ready. Real good money. And if they do pick you, you get a
nice bonus. Monty’s been there a long time, to get that high up on the
list.
J
.C. told me I couldn’t steal a car for this job. What
we’re going to use, it has to be fixed up special. If you steal a car,
you have to use it right away. The longer you keep it, the better the chance of
getting spotted, even if you switch plates. Anyway, the car we need for this
job, you wouldn’t find one like it just lying around.
J.C.
bought the car a few months ago. He always fronts the money for things we need
on a job. That’s part of the planner’s piece, he says, the
financing.
I’ve been working on the car J.C. bought for a few
weeks now. “There’s no hurry,” he told me. “It’s
like a roulette wheel. If you wait long enough, every number’s going to
come up. And, if you
keep
waiting, that same number’s going to
come up again. The trick is not to go bust while you’re waiting,
see?”
“I think so.”
“That armored
car’s like the wheel, Eddie. And every time they give the job to Monty,
that’s our lucky number coming up, okay? We don’t want to jump the
gun. If they call Monty out one week, and we’re not ready, we just wait.
They’ll call him again.”
I
t’s
nice up here. Peaceful. Sometimes J.C.’s around, sometimes he’s
not. When he goes away, Gus goes with him, mostly.
I never leave.
Neither does Vonda.
She’s … I don’t know the right
word for it. Not pretty like Bonnie was. I mean, she
is
pretty, but
not the same way. Vonda has long black hair and eyes the same color as
turquoise. She’s real well built, and she’s got long legs even
though she’s not tall. Her skin looks like she just took a shower, and
her mouth looks like it was just slapped.
I don’t think
Vonda’s much older than me, but she knows a lot more. About all kinds of
things. Vonda’s smart. The only thing I know more about than her is
cars.
So I like it when she comes out to where I’m working.
Because she always asks me questions, and I know the answers for her.
V
onda found out about my movies by accident. Sometimes, when J.C. and
Gus are watching TV at night—they like sports, mostly—I go out to
the barn and plug in my VCR, and watch one of my movies. I guess I could just
go in my room, but the cabin is kind of small, and the noise would come
in.
I’ve got part of the barn all fixed up for when I watch my
movies. I found this huge old armchair behind the cabin. It was all rotten from
being left out in the weather, but I tore everything off, right down to the
frame, and then I laid some pieces of carpet I found all over it. After I put
enough layers on and wrapped it down tight with duct tape, it was real
comfortable. You could even turn sideways in it, and put your feet over one of
the arms, like a little couch. I made a footrest and a table out of some wooden
crates, and I was all set.
We had plenty of long extension cords, but I
didn’t need any light in that part of the barn. I always watch my movies
in the dark.
The way I have it set up, the VCR is in a far corner of
the barn, and my couch and stuff are set up to the side. So there’s a
wall to my right, and I can still see if anybody comes in out of my left
eye.
At least I thought I could. But, that night, first thing I
realized was Vonda, whispering in my ear.
“What are you watching,
Eddie?” she said.
I guess I jumped a little—I never saw her
come into the barn. “Nothing,” I said.
I pushed the button,
and the movie stopped running.
Vonda came around the side of my couch.
She was looking down at me. It was dark, but I could see her shape pretty
good.
“I’ll bet I know what you’re watching,”
she said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Don’t be
embarrassed, Eddie. All men like to watch those movies. It’s no big deal.
Some of them can be pretty hot, too.”
It took a second, but then
I understood what she was talking about. “No,” I told her. “I
wasn’t watching one of those.…”
“Well, what
were
you watching, then?”
“Just a
movie.”
Vonda sat down. On the arm of the couch, with only half
her bottom. She kept one foot on the floor.
“You wouldn’t
tell me a story, would you, Eddie?”
“I wouldn’t
… oh, you mean a lie, right? No, I’m not lying. It’s just a
regular movie.”
“Where I come from, if somebody challenges
you, you’ve got to show them your stuff. Do you know what I
mean?”
“I guess I do. Like in a race, right?”
“Well, that wasn’t what I was thinking of, but it’ll do.
So. Are you ready to show me?”
“Show you?”
“Show me the
movie
, Eddie. So I can see if it’s what I
think it is.”
I
t was
Moonshine Highway
, one of my
most special favorites. It takes place a long time ago, when people were
better, I think. The guy in the video store had been right.
When
Vonda had come in, the movie was near the end, where the guy in the Chevy goes
after the guy in the Lincoln and they have their final duel.
I thought,
as soon as she saw it wasn’t porno I was watching, Vonda would go away.
But she stayed perched right on the arm of the couch, watching until it was
over.