"Okay." He climbed back over to the passenger side, sat down and hugged his knapsack.
And then it was my turn to look around and start worrying if we'd have to sleep in the woods. They stretched as far as you could see, pitching and rolling over the low hills that marched off to the horizon. Not a single restaurant, not one gas station, not one 7-Eleven, not a single goddam thing to eat except for the seagulls, and good luck catching one of those. I had been driving through this landscape for what seemed an eternity, and it had not occurred to me until that very minute what a desert the place could be. I mean, you can't eat the trees, can't eat the grass, can't eat the rocks. What else was there?
I cracked the hood of the van and propped it open. Might as well advertise.
I heard the sound before I saw the vehicle. From far off it was just a low rumble, but as it got closer it sounded like a farm tractor with a bad muffler. I saw it going down a hill in the distance, coming south, and it seemed to be moving very slowly for a motorized vehicle. I couldn't quite make out what it was, some kind of a pickup truck.
It was a Jeep, green, white, and rust-colored. I guessed it had to be from the early fifties. I leaned against the minivan and watched it make its calm and unhurried way down the road. It stopped when it reached us, right in the traffic lane, and a white-haired guy with leathery brown skin looked out the window.
"You evah notice," he said, "they nevah seem to break down anywheyah convenient?"
"I noticed it this time."
"Ayuh. Any idea what's wrong with her?"
"I think it's a CV joint."
"Now just what in the hell is a CV joint?"
"Constant-velocity joint. It's what this thing has instead of a front axle."
The guy shook his head. "Theyah making cahs too damn complicated anymowah. Too many things to get frigged up on ya. Computahs, plastic and metal thin enough to open with nail clippahs. You fellas like a ride?"
"That would be great."
"Well, lemme pull off the road heah fore I get run ovah by a pulp truck." He clunked the thing back into gear and pulled behind us onto the shoulder, tail to tail with the van, then he got out and walked back. He looked to be in his sixties, maybe five foot ten, lean, as though the wind and cold weather had eroded away all the superfluous parts of him. He had the letters "USMC" tattooed on his forearm in faded blue.
Nicky was standing up in the driver's seat. "Hey theyah, young fella," the guy said, going over to the window. "What's yaw name?"
"Nicky."
"Who's that guy?" He nodded his head in my direction.
"Poppy," Nicky said. "That's my dad."
"Well, I'm pleased to meet ya, Nicky. I'm Louis." He turned in my direction.
"Friends call me Manny."
"Well, Manny," he said, "I guarantee you ain't gonna find no CV joint noth of Ellsworth. I'll ride ya down ta see Gevier, an' we'll get him to come give yah a tow." I locked up the minivan and we climbed into the Jeep.
Louis's truck was even noisier from the inside, but I didn't want to say too much, since it was running and the minivan wasn't. I sat in the passenger seat and held Nicky in my lap. There were, needless to say, no seat beltssuch frivolities came along a decade or two after the truck was built. The ride was beyond harsh, and you could see the road going by beneath your feet through holes in the floor pan. And every so often the truck would hit a bump and take a funny sort of sideways hop.
"That feels a little weird," I shouted to Louis over the clatter of ancient metal. "You feel that, every once in a while, when you hit a bump just right?"
"Ayuh," Louis said. "She slides around a bit. The old girl ain't much of a piece anymowah. Body sits on the frame like a hat on a bald man's head. Long's we don't go too fahst nor the wind blow too hahd, she be fine."
"How'd you ever get this thing to pass inspection?"
"Inspection?" Louis looked at me like I was nuts. "This heah's a fahm vehicle. Kinda like a tractah. Don't need no stickah." He winked at Nicky. "She don't got no CV joints, though."
"Just as well," I said.
* * *
I suppose I really should say something about the way down easters, or some of them, talk, because it is a strange and anachronistic tongue which cannot properly be reproduced in speech or in ink, and if I continue to try, I will drive both you and myself crazy. It is one of those things which must be experienced to be appreciated, let alone understood.
The most basic element of this puzzle is the complete loss of the letter
r
, except in places where it does not belong. "Whore," for example, is no longer a simple monosyllabic term with a concrete definition, it is "ho-ah," and you, me, Richard Nixon, and Mother Teresa are all sons of whores, as is your minivan when it breaks down, and your decrepit Jeep pickup when it does not. No judgment, either good or bad, is implied. And while the capital of the state of Maine is Aguster and Hong Kong is part of Chiner, out-of-state yuppies tend to drive Beemahs and a man too tight with a buck is a pikah.
Certain expressions, as well, like endangered species that may be found here and nowhere else, are best understood in context. For example, if a Mainer tells you that last night he got "right fucking sideways," his meaning may be deciphered if you notice that he is severely hungover, and if you are too dim to figure that out, he may later refer to you as "nummah than a pounded thumb."
I could go on at length but I will not. From now on I will only reproduce the pronunciations when I can't help myself. One final word: While a family whose members exhibit a consistent lack of judgment, ambition, and financial acumen may be called "a bunch of swamp Yankees," a Yankee, by and large, is a baseball player from the remote and foreign isle of Noo Yok. You, however, are "not from round heah," and should pull yaw christless Winnebago over to the side of the road once in a while, you son of a ho-ah, and let people who got to get to werk go on past. Ya bahstid.
* * *
Gevier's garage was about ten miles south of where the minivan had broken down. I had driven past the place on my way north, but I had taken no note of it on the way by, apparently, because I had no memory of it when Louis pulled his wreck of a Jeep off the road and into the yard. The yard must have been paved once upon a time, because traces of the blacktop still remained, and crushed stone filled in the holes where it had worn away. The building itself was made of concrete blocks unadorned by paint or siding, the roof was galvanized metal, and there was one oversized garage door that fronted on the yard, with a personnel door off to one side. An amazing array of vehicles was parked on the fringes of the yard, along the sides of the building, and among the trees out back. Some of them looked repairableolder American sedans, station wagons, and pickupsand there was a big green amphibious assault vehicle on black tires. But for the fading paint, it looked untouched by time. A lot of the other stuff was done for, though still interesting, like the '57 Nomad that had weeds growing up through the empty engine compartment.
When I opened the door of Louis's pickup to get out, Nicky grabbed my arm and held on. I am the only thing in this kid's entire universe that looks familiar, I thought. If I were in his shoes I would be shitting my pants. I took him by the hand and helped him down out of the truck.
Gevier hadn't shaved or washed his face in a while, or changed his clothes, either. Forget about a haircut. He had his feet up on his desk in his amazingly cluttered den of an office while he watched an afternoon soap opera on a black-and-white television that used a long piece of wire for an antenna. He had a fire burning in a wood stove fashioned out of two fifty-five-gallon steel drums.
"Damned hot in heah," Louis said to him. "Gonna burn all your wood up before it gets cold. Whattaya gonna do when winter comes?"
Gevier did not move. "Don't you worry about me," he said. "End of September, you ain't got a stick of firewood cut yet. I'll bet you're gonna be burning green wood all winter long, just like lahst yeah. And the yeah before that."
"No, sir," Louis said. "I'm changing my ways, I'm gonna get it all cut in time this yeah. I got almost a cord left over, anyhow. Listen, I brought you a customah. This is Manny, and his van is broke down about five mile noth of heah."
Gevier dropped his feet to the floor and looked at me. "What happened?"
"CV joint," I told him.
"Get her off the road?"
"Yeah, I was lucky."
"No steerin', all of a sudden, and when you step on the gas she revs but she don't go nowheyah?"
"Yeah."
"CV joint," he said, nodding his head, "most likely. What is she?"
I told him the make and the model, handed him the spare key. "You want some money up front?"
"That's all right," he said. "If I got ya cah, I don't guess you'll get too fah off." He looked at Louis. "Where ya gonna put 'im up?"
"I was thinking he could stay up to Gerald's trailah. Won't be no one using it till hunting season."
"How is Gerald these days? I ain't seen him in a while."
"No, he don't get up to visit too often. He got laid off that air-freight place in Boston and had to go back doing long-haul driving. No telling where he is right now."
"Well, that's a hell of a note." He looked at me. "All right," he said. "I'll go get her, drag her back here, find out what we need. Then I'll call Ford, see what they say. I'll give a yell, tell ya the bad news."
We got back into Louis's pickup and headed back north. I looked over at him.
"Who's Gerald?"
"My son," he said. "Ain't no jobs up here, unless you want to work at the mill. Working at the mill can be discouraging, because you can see where yo-ah gonna be and how much yo-ah gonna make for the rest of yo-ah life, and it ain't enough. Gerald lives down in Massachusetts. I give him the sixteen acres next to my house, and we put a little trailah on it. We're gonna replace it with a cabin, but we can't do it until Gerald saves up the money." Louis shook his head. "He'll get a union pension in another twenty years, and Social Security, if there's any left. He had a 401(k), but the economy has ate that up. My grandson is going to college, so Gerald is gonna pay for that, too. It's hahd, you know. You have a little dream, you think it's just out of reach, but all the time it's running faster than you are, you lose ground on it every day."
"So you rent out his trailer?"
"Ayuh," he said. "Fishing season and hunting season, 'lantic salmon and deer. Gevier's daughter Edna takes care of the place, cleans it up and whatnot. You'll like it."
"I'm sure I will. Better than sleeping in the woods. Ain't that right, Nicky?"
Nicky was sitting in my lap, looking out the window at the trees going by, swiveling his head to catch the occasional patches of ocean visible from the road, not paying any attention to the two of us. He looked up at me, no suspicion, no wariness, no fear in his eyes. He was trusting me to take care of him. "Yeah," he said, nodding his head, unaware of what he was agreeing to. He was with his Poppy, and everything was gonna be okay. I felt uncertainty gnawing at my stomach, and I wondered if Louis's son Gerald had that same feeling, worrying about college tuition.
"You think Gevier can handle the van? I don't know how many CV joints he sees."
Louis grinned. "Well," he said, "he's a bit queeah, I'll give ya that. He was the smahtest person evah went to school round heah. Went off to college aftah high school, we all thought he'd be a rocket scientist or somethin', but he come back up after twenty yeahs or so. You think that garage was a sight, you ought to see where he lives. He's right downstreet from me, lives with his dottah Edna. Best damn mechanic I evah met, though, and I've met a few. He'll take good care a ya."
* * *
Nicky got very still when he saw the police cruiser. It was parked on the shoulder behind the van, lights flashing. Louis pulled his truck over and stopped behind the police car. "We shoulda grabbed yoah bags befoah," he said, staring out his windshield. "Now we gotta deal with this son of a hoah."
"I'll talk to him," I said. I felt Nicky tighten up in my lap.
"His name is Thomas Hopkins," Louis said. "He's got the disposition of a bay-ah with a bad case of hemorrhoids."
"All right." I gave Nicky a squeeze. "You stay here with Louis, okay?"
"Okay," he said, in a small voice.
Hopkins got out of his car when he saw me coming. His yellow hair was cut boot-camp style, and he had pale blue eyes in a square face. He was about a head shorter than me but he was not a small guyeven without the bulletproof vest he was a big son of a bitch. Some guys never get over the fixation with height, though. You can build strength, you can build quickness, you can do the martial arts thing, carry a cannon, stick needles full of steroids in your ass and turn yourself into a monster, but if the other guy is taller than you, you still gotta look up to him. Hopkins was doing that now, and he did not look happy about it. Maybe it's just the alpha male thing. "This yoah cah?"