Between Wrecks (2 page)

I said, “Hey, man,” again, like an idiot. “You wouldn't mind if I walked around your property getting cigarette lighters, would you? How much would you sell me car cigarette lighters for?” I reached in my pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and put it in my mouth. There were six ashtrays scattered around the room, and I'd found out early while doing research for my low-residency master's degree in Southern culture studies that my particular lot of people felt more comfortable talking to strangers who cared zero about their health.

“You want the shiny silver ones from days gone past?” Bobby Suddeth said. “Doc can tell you where they located. Doc has a phonographic memory.”

I didn't acknowledge Bobby. I kept eye contact with Doc. Phonographic memory!

Doc said, “It's true that I have a phonographic memory. I've told this story many times. I've never seen you around, so I've never said it in your presence. It'll be something new. See, when a car comes in, the first thing I do, if the battery still works, is I turn on the radio. Whatever song's playing, I'll remember where that particular car's parked. You say to me ‘1968 Corvair,' and I'll remember ‘Bone Dry,' George Jones, Section 14. Oh, I keep a written record, too, just in case the Gift leaves me, but right on up till now I can still think back at songs and remember where cars are parked. My only problem is those times when I turn on the radio and it's a good year for a hit single, you know. Then it might take me some time seeing as I'll have about forty cars with, like, ‘Proud to Be an American' stuck up here.” He touched the hairless side of his upper forehead.

Bobby Suddeth said, “He's got a good rememory.”

Well, Goddamn, I thought. Anyone with that freakish mnemonic device won't think anything weird about my dream. I told it. I told it all, including how my missing wife always wanted to be a TV anchorwoman but that she had a bilateral lisp that kept her from getting jobs. It might've taken me ten minutes to complete the story. If either Doc or Bobby had the wherewithal to undertake a low-residency master's degree program in Southern culture studies, he might've perked up his ears and asked to interview me.

Doc said, “I've never priced those things out. I have no clue. Maybe I should just sell them to you at scrap metal price, what I get for scrap metal.”

Bobby said, “You should line a casket in cigarette lighters. You know, in case the guy went to Heaven and he was a smoker. Hell—you wouldn't need lighters in Hell. But Heaven, who knows about that place?”

I thought about a pine box covered entirely with car cigarette lighters. It would be cushiony. I wished that I had my notebook to write down such an idea, or maybe a radio playing a song so I could try out Doc's method. I thought about covering an entire car with lighters—one time I went to an art car show and saw a woman who'd glued her cats' toenails all over the hood of her Dodge or whatever—and then I started thinking about collecting the hotels and houses from Monopoly games and gluing them on, say, model airplanes.

I thought too much. I lit my cigarette.

“It seems like I should get at least a dollar each for a cigarette lighter, but if you wood-bored one down into a chair seat and sold it, who's going to pay two hundred dollars for an old-fashioned ladderback chair?” Doc said. “Shit. I can't imagine. Well, I can—there seems to be way too many people with way too much money down here these days, and way too many people with exactly zero money. Like Freebird. Freebird?—If I had a kickstand for your moped, could you pay for it?”

Bobby said, “It's not a moped. I like to call it a ‘Harley Light.'”

“Could you pay for it? If you say ‘yes,' then I'm gone think you the man talked me into taking pictures of my valuables, developed the things, then broke into my house, even though I'm pretty sure you've never held a job at One-Hour Snapshots.”

There were no flies around. This was mid-summer, and there were no flies. That says something. Doc leaned hard on his counter, keeping weight off of his bad leg.

“I've had jobs in the past, for your information,” Bobby said.

“You ain't part of this conversation,” Doc said to him. “Go find something to do. Go ride your moped down into the slope where I keep the Chevelle parts. There's a job for you. Bring me back the sound of a car horn. Not the horn itself, just the sound.”

Miss July 1972 on the S & M Towing calendar looked a whole lot like a really sexy Dorothea Dix. She was in a nurse's outfit, for one. To Doc I said, “What? Say that all again, about the man breaking into your house?” No matter how much I tried staying away from Southern culture studies, I couldn't help but notice a probable good scam. And in Southern culture studies, daily life pretty much depended on scams of one sort or another.

Freebird left the building. Doc said to me, “What did I do to deserve his hanging around every day? Listen, like I said, I'm about broke, so I'll do you a deal. In all these years—I worked here with my daddy, too—I don't remember anyone ever wanting to buy one car lighter, much less an armload. I'll sell by weight. There's got to be some copper in those lighters, so I'll sell you at the going rate of copper.”

I agreed to Doc's offer. He asked if I wanted to take along a pistol. I said I wasn't scared of snakes, and that I wasn't a great shot. He asked if I'd be willing to shoot Bobby Suddeth.

Doc didn't lock his office door. We started down a trail of Plym-ouths and Chryslers. With each step Doc pointed at a car hood and either sang out some lyrics or hummed. We went from “Achy-Breaky Heart” down to “Stairway to Heaven.” Doc stopped and looked down in a valley of dead cars, then said, “I think some of your best car lighters came out of your Oldsmobile, so let's walk on down this way.”

I picked up a stick along the way. Though I wasn't afraid of snakes, I wasn't all that familiar with the audacity of feral cats. Doc, I noticed, no longer limped. I said, “How long you had this salvage yard?”

“The thing is, you see, with Bobby Suddeth—you have to let him start feeling comfortable. He's a lot smarter than he comes off, you know. I'm just biding my time.”

As it ended up, there were forty acres of junk cars and trucks. In the distance I heard doors creaking open, slamming shut. Gulls circled overhead and mockingbirds flew by us at head level. I said, “He's a character.” I knew from experience that it wouldn't take prying to get back to Doc's housebreaking story.

“What happened was, I took photos of my valuables should there ever be a break-in or fire. I had double prints, you know. I got a set of prints in a fireproof lockbox, stashed in the trunk of an old Renault back thataway.” Doc didn't turn his head but gestured to the left. “Then I got the pictures hidden in a file cabinet in my house. I had the photos done, and I told people, I guess, all about it. I told Bobby Suddeth—or I told someone in my office, and Bobby was standing there like always.”

I veered over to a Saab, reached in, and pulled out a nice lighter. I put it in my pocket. “Sometimes I wish I didn't have dreams,” I said.

Doc slicked back his already slicked-back hair. He said, “I made Bobby believe that I believed that the photo shop boy developed my pictures, saw what I had, then came over and robbed my house. It was all made up. I said, ‘The guy had my phone number and address from having to fill out that little envelope where I dropped in the film!' So Bobby, he says, ‘That's exactly what happened. You need to tail the guy.' And I said, ‘I ain't got time to tail the guy, Freebird. But I know someone who does—you.' Next thing you know, Bobby's on his moped hanging out in the parking lot, waiting for the guy to get off work. Or that's what he says he's doing. Of course he doesn't have to, seeing as he's the one who broke in my house, and so on.”

I thought about how good poker players slow play a hand. Doc had that game plan down. I pushed aside some cobwebs on the passenger window of an MG Midget, reached in, and extracted the car lighter. “It's hot out here. It's got to be ten degrees hotter out here than in town. Is it all this metal?”

Doc looked up at the sky. He said, “No cover available.”

I tried to think of anything else to talk about. Doc didn't look like the kind of man who'd follow baseball stats. He didn't look like the kind of man with whom I'd want to bring up politics. I said, “No cover.”

He began laughing. “Listen, I've learned that to run a good scrap metal operation, you need to know how to act. I mean, you need to have some acting skills. I could've told you all about how car cigarette lighters is the new fashion, you know. I could've made up a story about three, four men and women coming down here weekly for car cigarette lighters. But I knew your daddy. Soon's you come in, I said to myself ‘That's old Looper's boy.' You look just like him. One time your daddy sold me some river rock for next to nothing. I used it for a fence”—Doc pointed to nowhere—“I thought I needed. I didn't. It's over there covered in kudzu, near where Bobby Suddeth's hidden three watches, my wife's engagement ring and wedding band that she should've been wearing in the first place, my silver dollar collection, two shotguns, most of my home tools, my collection of silver certificates, and a little urn with the ashes of my favorite dog, which Bobby Suddeth probably thinks is a genie.”

We turned, finally, to walk toward the Oldsmobiles. Along the way I reached in and pulled out anything metallic. I refrained from pulling out newer, plastic-handled lighters. I said, “I know what this is all about. I'm with you on this one, Doc.”

“You a smart man. I knew I could count on your understanding.”

“In a weird way you're not really that pissed off at Bobby Suddeth. He shined a light on something.” Let me say right here that I wasn't all that smart, and that I only tiptoed around hoping to set foot on solid purchase. I kind of wanted out of there. From this point on, I told myself, I wouldn't follow through on any dreams as being omen-worthy.

“Bobby Suddeth showed me my wife was having an affair, that's right. She wasn't home. She wasn't wearing her wedding band. I looked into the situation. She was out. Me, I work my ass off all day, grimied up, and there she is saying she's spent the afternoon at Wal-Mart or the Dollar General, when she's really going over to this tree farmer's nursery place, swishing her tail around amongst the Leyland cypresses. I don't see that fellow buying her a new refrigerator freezer. I don't see him putting in new flooring. But she's over there. She's over there right now as we speak, I'm betting. It's why she always says she doesn't want a cell phone. I mean, she says she doesn't want one because she'll always lose it. What woman doesn't want a free cell phone? I'll tell you—the kind of woman who won't pick up 'cause she's in the middle of laying down.”

At the Oldsmobiles Doc sang “Little baby born in the ghetto.” He sang, “We're caught in a trap.” He sang, “I turned twenty-one in prison.” I kind of wondered if his “phonographic memory” was just one more notion of “acting.” Those songs didn't come out at the same time, I thought. Wouldn't cars get parked one after another, day after day, kind of like soldiers at a national cemetery?

Doc said, “This is where I think we'll find what you're looking for, more or less. Tell me again about this dream. Why would you dream about car lighters? What a weird dream! Me, I always dream about getting sucked up into the sky by giant magnets. Always. Every night.”

I said, “No way. You're acting. I'm on to you.”

Doc nodded. Doc lifted his chin. He said, “Yup. And let me tell you another thing: I don't think the Oldsmobile car cigarette lighter is any better than the Cadillac or Buick or Dodge. It's certainly no better than the couple Hudsons I got lodged back here somewhere.” He walked over to the car next to the one where I stood. He lifted the trunk and pulled out a Mason jar. “I just wanted a drink, more than anything else. What with what's going on in my life, I just wanted a drink.”

Doc unscrewed the lid of what I knew was a particular favorite style of moonshine called Peach Bounce, what with the bloated piece of bruised fruit sagged to the bottom. He drank from it, then offered it my way. I said, “I got me a thermos of bourbon back in the truck, but what the hell.”

“You goddamn right, what the hell. What the hell! We might get seen, you know, what with no cover available out here in the fucking middle of dead Detroit, but I don't give a woodpecker's vibrating ass.” Doc handed over the jar. He reached in the trunk and got another. He said, “My wife's name's Gloria. G-L-O-R-I-A. That song came on one time when I backed a Duster in. I can't look at a Duster these days without singing that song.”

I said, “Abby's mine.” I said, “She might be cheating on me with a guy who likes hockey. She's been up in Minnesota for some time. What could I do?”

“Abby,” he said. “Women. I don't want to make any suppositions about your wife, but saying her name sounds like a type of blood. A blood type.”

I drank from the Mason jar and tried not to think of Southern culture studies, or what teleological connection Doc made with my wife's name.

“Teleological” is not a word I learned in my low-residency master's degree program at Ole Miss-Taylor. I got it either from the crosswords, or my short stint as a philosophy major way back before in undergraduate school. Three sips into the moonshine and I understood how I should've been a philosophy major. How many philosophers found themselves stuck at the back corner of a junk yard, drinking blind-worthy white lightning with a man destined to kill a tree farmer and a man without a kickstand?

Bobby Suddeth held his hands cupped together when Doc and I stumbled back to the office. Bobby opened them up quickly and said, “Uh-oh. I had that horn sound for you, but I guess the battery's dead.” Then he haw-haw-hawed a bunch. “Let me see the lighters you picked out.”