|
|
|
|
by Daniel Zabcik
Several negatives may be used in one sentence..." Harkins, Modern Czech Grammar, p. 83
illustration by AJ GarcesPomaly, jen pomaly. Man, I tell you, it's tough getting old. Sure, it hurts some. Your body never forgets when you hurt it, and when you get up in the morning it runs through all your past injuries for you, so there's no surprise there, you just got to constantly adjust. But then one day you can't remember what part you came into town for, or whether it's for the truck or the tractor already, and at the same time you take something that happened maybe thirty-five, forty years ago, and you remember it like yesterday. You can't even tell a decent story anymore without turning off every which way like a local bus.
Now, you take the time the brakes failed. I distinctly remember telling that one once to a Mikeska, not one of the barbeque Mikeskas, but the man who ran the Terminal Railroad in Texas City before the explosion, and I couldn't even remember which car the brakes failed on, much less why Daddy was in such a big hurry to get back to the farm again, or even what time of year it was. Only the important stuff.
But nowadays I remember it was around the end of spring. Since the first part of April it had been so wet we couldn't take the tractors into the field. The corn was almost three feet tall already, and the weeds and johnson grass coming up between the stalks I tell you those weeds didn't any more know about cultivators than maybe some poor bastard down there in the south pacific does about the mining company that's taken satellites and found gold on his land.
Well, at last it dried out enough to run the cultivators through. Your daddy and I knew that the next few days we'd be walking along behind the Farmall or the little Popping Johnny, picking out the weeds and grass the cultivators missed. Then we heard from somewhere that Melvin Harker had found a buyer for that old dump of his mother's.
And your great-uncle Bill told your grandpa just what a lien was, and how it was the way you got your money from someone like Harker. Didn't none of us know exactly how to go about filing a lien, but Uncle Bill knew this Judge named Weston already. Uncle Bill always has somebody who owes him a favor. Daddy, he was a little worried about not going through the usual channels. But Uncle Bill says, Don't worry about it, it's the natural course of the law. I'm just going to speed it up a little.
Now usually we'd let a trip to the next county to settle a seventy-five dollar debt wait if the weather was right for working in the fields. But Daddy had fixed Harker's bulldozer eighteen months before and had waited patiently for his money ever since. The house itself made the timing important, too, because if he found someone stupid or nearsighted enough to buy a fifty year old wood frame house that sagged in the middle like an iced up power line, Harker wasn't just going to try, he was going to make damn sure to close that deal before anybody got first thoughts, let alone second ones.
Uncle Bill, he had to go: Judge Weston was his buddy, but also, if Uncle Bill went, your grandfather wouldn't have to speak English in front of town folks. He could read and write three languages, and spoke a little Spanish too, already. But you know he never learned to speak English too good, like me and Uncle Bill had. Man, I tell you, I had to go, too. It was a chance to maybe see some town girls. And for once I wanted to have that same day's newspaper, instead of one two or three days old, even though in those days you'd almost rather pick up a snake than pick up that paper -- it'd say something like NAZIS SMASH FRENCH LINE ON FIFTY MILE FRONT or TOMMYS CLING DESPARATELY TO BEACHES. See, since that peace conference they had in Munich we were all like a cottontail in headlights. We wanted to look away long enough to scramble into a ditch, but we couldn't do it. Before long, we got hit, ale dob[[caron]]re.
But I didn't reckon with your grandma. The weeds were also taking over her tomatoes, which she had growing out behind the garage. When she married Daddy she had moved all of a mile, maybe mile and a half, from her father's place out near Meeks to your great-grandpa's. Same rainfall, same blackland clay, but she always said she couldn't grow decent tomatoes there, like we were at the far end of the Gobi Desert, already. That year she finally had her tomatoes coming along pretty good. They liked all that rain, see. She wanted I should stay there on the farm, and help her weed those tomatoes. She was also worried because Daddy was going to be off with the Chevrolet, and she couldn't turn over that old Ford truck we had, so she'd be stuck out there. She didn't care for that too much.
Well, at first Daddy thought it might be a good idea for me to stay home. But the more he thought about it, the more he decided I ought to go meet this Judge Weston. Somebody important like a judge, he could do you an awful lot of good if he liked you. We had a hard time making those kind of contacts back then. So your daddy got to stay home and weed instead. He wasn't but twelve years old then, weighed maybe ninety-five pounds, but he could crank that old Ford, already.
We promised we'd call mother and check on her, and she turned the worrying down to a sort of mumbling misgiving. You remember how she was. Then the next day we fed and watered and we ate, and we got into the Chevrolet and took off.
We got south of Granger, headed toward the river, and Father slows down. And I ask him, Tatinek, co je to? He says, man, this brake pedal's done gone almost to the floor, already.
So he pulls over and opens the hood and sure enough, brake fluid's dribbled all down the firewall. He gets a screwdriver so he won't get his hands dirty and pries the spring clip off the cap of the master cylinder. Then he takes the cap off with his handkerchief. There ain't hardly no brake fluid left. There we are, we all got our good clothes on to see the Judge already and we don't want to change out no master cylinder. We can't do it. There was a Sladecek had a garage in Granger, the natural thing to do would be turn around and go back there. We'd go in, ask him Jak se ma[[caron]]s?, drink some of his coffee and maybe eat any kola[[caron]]cy he had left from breakfast and he'd fix the car.
But Daddy, he pushed his hat back on his head and looked up at the sky. It was kind of a high summer sky, with maybe a few cirrus clouds. After weeks and weeks of seeing that low stratus cloud deck in the morning turn into thunderheads by sunset it was too much for him. He says, we'll go on into town, and get somebody to fix it there. It'll cost more, but they can work on it while we're talking with the Judge, and we don't lose no time, ne?
So Daddy takes off, going maybe twenty-five miles an hour, and he don't take his eyes off the road for nothing, already. The parking brake was mechanical, not hydraulic, so he could slow down with that. Just not too good.
Now, we got to find a mechanic before we get to the square, where they had traffic, although you wouldn't call it traffic now. We also want to be close enough to the Courthouse that we can walk. So as soon as we get to Georgetown, we start looking. We drove around a little, and then found this place, down there near campus. It was this big building looked like it had been a livery stable thirty years ago and maybe painted twice since then. There were these hand made signs that looked like an eight year old made them, said things like Flats Fixed and Valve Jobs. The only one looked like it was painted by someone who knew a brush from their behind said Saxon's Garage. Now, how long it'd been since they cleaned that front window I couldn't tell you, but they still had a blue eagle up there only about half scraped off. There was this big old chain-drive GMC truck with one of those hoods shaped like an upside-down wheelbarrow standing there. We looked around, and we didn't see nobody but this one man poking at the engine of that old truck. Tall man with red hair. He saw us and he smiled. He asked nice as anything what he could do for us. Daddy asked him if he thought he could get around to putting a new master cylinder in our Chevrolet that morning.
When the man heard Daddy speak, he didn't smile no more. He said, Sure, Mr. Bohunk. I reckon y'all must be in a sweat to get back to the farm before noon. I'll bet you'd have to drop all of four bits to feed this crew. But likely you thought of that already and brought lunch.
No, Daddy says, we never brought no lunch, serious like, and that Saxon, he starts into laughing. Daddy started to say he wished he thought of that, but I cut him off. I said Daddy, that's not important right now. Then he understood, too. Black, see, he thought this was real funny because town people thought we were all cheap. They used to say if a Bohunk brought money to town it was because he forgot to turn his pockets inside out before he left. We just didn't have a whole lot of money to spend. But they always thought it was funny to kid us. Saxon says, Sure, he'd have the car done by noon, just pick it up before twelve-thirty, he had someplace to be. He was still laughing.
So it was eleven already when we reached the courthouse. We walked up the stairs to Judge Weston's chambers. The judge's clerk, he was a wise guy. He just said, Bill Va[[caron]]sek to see you, Judge. Never even looked up.
Judge Weston came out and shook hands with Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill introduced us and we shot the bull around about crops and weather and whatnot. After awhile, Uncle Bill told him why we were there.
Judge Weston looked at that invoice and he says, Huh, eighteen months. And he asked us if we knew that Harker had just that week sold his Model A and bought a nice used Auburn. He tells his clerk, Dave, run downstairs and put a lien on Mrs. Adelaide Harker's place, will you? Don't file it, just have the clerk enter it and bring it back up here. Then we went into his office to call mother. You better believe Daddy never said one word to her about those brakes. After about thirty minutes the Judge's clerk hollers, Melvin Harker to see you, Judge. Out we went.
Harker was standing there like he was waiting his turn at the Chicken Ranch, his hands in his pockets. He was whistling. When he saw Daddy he grinned. Well, he says, you finally made it into town. And he pulled out his wallet and shelled out a fifty, two tens, and a five. Dad kept that fifty for months. But look, said Harker, I don't see how I can continue to do business with you if you won't let a man run a tab.
Daddy grinned, big, and handed the lien over to Harker. Learn to rebuild an injection pump, he said, and you won't have to. It was the happiest I'd seen him in days.
The Judge drove us over to the garage in his Packard and dropped us off. Well well, says Saxon, It's them Granger Irish. I saw you with the Judge and I thought maybe you was white folks.
No, not us, said Uncle Bill. What else could he say? He asks him, Our car ready yet?
Saxon says, sure, take it and go. You're making me late for my meeting.
Daddy, he heard the whole thing, he lifted the hood of the Chevy and looked. Then he paid the man with the two tens and walked off.
We got out of there pretty quick. I tried to stare straight ahead, but I just had to look back before we went around the corner. Saxon was inside already, and pulled down the shade in the big window with the blue eagle, but he left the door open just enough for me to see him pull something out of the closet. I'll be darned if it wasn't a robe made from a white bedsheet, with a hood hanging off the back. Well, I thought, that explains everything.
We almost made it home. We were going down fifty-three right there by the Ocker Church when somebody's hog ran out on to the road. Dad stomped on the brakes and nothing happened. Nic. He swerved the car into the ditch yelling, Duchy Boh! There was a culvert in the ditch maybe forty feet up, and although the bumper was turning a furrow neat as a sulky plow we wouldn't have stopped in time if Uncle Bill hadn't yanked the emergency brake, which he could reach as well as Daddy because on those old cars it was a handle coming up from the middle of the floorboard.
After about five minutes Daddy pried his fingers loose from the steering wheel, got out, slipped, sat down hard on the running board, got up again, kind of wobbled over to the hood, popped it open and had a better look. Sure enough, he saw a place where he had nicked the brass with the screwdriver getting that spring clip off. It was the same master cylinder we left the house with that morning. Saxon had just polished it up enough to fool us. He had charged us fifteen dollars for the part, plus his labor, and there was three of us, so we got a pretty good idea how much a human life was worth to his kind: about five bucks, already.
Well, we were there about ten more minutes. Finally Uncle Bill said, real quiet like, Marie's going to be worried. Daddy looked up like he could never have thought of that himself and said, Ano, je Pravda. Uncle Bill and I figured we'd have to get out and push, already, but Daddy got us back on the highway somehow. None of us ever even got dirty. No dent in the car, neither, because it was still soft in that ditch. That got daddy thinking. He didn't dare take his eyes off the road while he told us. He said, You both know what Marie would say about all this. When we get home I'll put the car straight into the garage and clean the mud off the bumper. I'll fix the brakes myself soon as I get the parts sent out from Temple and she'll never know no different. Uncle Bill and I knew a good plan when we heard one.
We made it home okay. Daddy told us, Remember, jako hrob! Uncle Bill and I got out and went to go change into our field clothes, while Daddy drove the car into the garage, through the wall, into the garden and stopped right in the middle of the tomato patch, maybe two feet from where your father was standing with his mouth hanging open, still clutching a fist full of johnson grass roots.
But you ain't said six words yet. How's your mother, already?
