The Language of Men (22 page)

"Actually I did talk to her about marching band. I went to camp with her freshman year."

T.J.'s eyes widened. I looked at Jim.

"No shit," T.J. said.

"Check the yearbook."

"Oh, I will," T.J. said. "And I'll beat my shit to it all night long."

I looked at Jim and he looked right back at me. The waitress broke in and asked us what we wanted.

On the ride home, I realized it was Father's Day. Of all the holidays I could have spent drinking spiked juice and throwing singles, Father's Day was probably the best choice since my father couldn't care less about his day. But after I dropped off Jim and T.J., I stopped at 7-Eleven anyway and bought him a few scratch-offs and a gift card for a week's worth of coffee. When I pulled into the driveway, he was just leaving for work.

"Well, well," he said, grinning. "What cat drug you in, boy?"

"I didn't catch her name," I said. "Happy Father's Day, dude."

"All right. Not bad." He dug his silver dollar from his pocket and held the tickets against the hood of the Monte.

"How's everything?" he asked.

"Good."

"Good."

I watched him scratch the rest of his tickets. They were all losers, but he held up the gift card and smiled.

"Least this one's a sure thing," he said, slipping the silver dollar back into his pocket. "Gotta run. I'll probably be asleep before you wake up."

"Probably," I said.

"Tough life, boy. Tough life."

"HER BODY'S in good shape," my father said, "no rot." His feet crunched on the gravel as he knelt down, running his fingers along the bubbled paint like he was reading Braille.

"'68?" I asked.

"'67." He slid underneath the chassis, muttering, his voice echoing up through the rotted floor. "Shit."

I poked my head through the broken passenger-side window and saw his finger wagging through one of the rust holes in the floor. "Swiss fucking cheese." He slid out from under the Mustang and pulled a Winston from his pack, his teeth clenched. "A rotted floor is the worst. You'd have to do a ground-up restoration, which we ain't gonna do." Lighter sparked into flame. "Even then you'd probably end up like Fred Flintstone, most likely in a rain storm." Sharp inhale and long exhale, smoke pouring from his nose. I was reflected twice in his black sunglasses, two miniature versions of myself, like in cartoons when, after a small puff of smoke, a tiny, angelic version of the character appears on one shoulder, a devilish one on the other. In cartoons, the angel and devil spoke and moved independently. In my father's shades, they moved together.

"Daylight's burning," he said. I followed him down the long row of rusted cars.

I knew we'd see Billy standing next to his '72 Olds, wolfing down his second sausage sandwich, telling Greg about "what a nice fucking day" it turned out to be. Greg had a red '66 GTO convertible, smoked little black cigars, and wore a heavy set of keys that protruded from his hip like a spiny chrome tumor. Not too far off was Reggie,
The Automotologist,
setting up his sign in front of his gold Lamborghini. It was a huge white sign with a glossy finish, displaying the specs and history of the car. A lot of guys made signs, but not like Reggie's. What made Reggie's special was he had a picture of himself on there—a scrawny black man in a tan suede coat and sunglasses—and in tight, flashy script it read:
The Automotologist.
No one ever asked for an explanation. Nobody gave a shit about foreign cars anyway.

"I wonder if that peckerhead with the blue 'Vette will be there?" my father said as he bit down on his Winston and turned the wheel. I could picture Eric in his monogrammed satin jacket cleaning the rear window of his Corvette.

As we drove to the show, my father and I rattled off names of whackos we knew we'd see there. Even though we pretty much kept to ourselves, we knew a lot of names. It was either on their license plates (JOE'S 55, MIKE'S 68) or they trapped us in torturous conversation. Mark wandered over and tried to sell us a rusted center hub off a '69 Vega. Fat Ricky's shirt inched up on his white belly as he sloshed across the field to mumble about his '56 Merc. Or else it was Billy with the '72 Olds, come to breathe his sausage breath all over us. These guys were at every show. But then, so were we.

A long line of gleaming cars and trucks growled at the entrance to the fairgrounds. My father pulled in behind a black '70 El Camino. Not even two cars passed through registration before five more rumbled in behind us.

My father glanced at the side view. "Good turnout."

The thick pine trees bordering the fairgrounds and the blue cloudless sky were more than just reflected in the red and black hoods, the chrome bumpers and rims. They were absorbed into the paint, swallowed by the chrome—each car a moving landscape. The peaceful union of nature and machine tarnished only by block letter bumper stickers stating "Big Tits Save Lives" and decals of skeletons 69ing. My father had a set of flashing, magnetic boobs stuck to the dash.

We pulled into the fairgrounds and, sure enough, Billy was waiting for a sausage sandwich, Greg's keys were sparkling, and
The Automotologist
was setting up. My father grinned like he'd bet on a rigged game.

"I told ya, boy. I told ya and I told ya."

After we set up—popped the hood, unfolded the lawn chairs, took out the cooler—we walked over to the swap meet. Initially intended to be an outdoor market for used car parts, the swap meet had mutated into a god-awful yard sale. Guys dumped rusty bicycles, broken lampshades, and dusty Nintendo games onto blue tarps next to milk crates full of cracked distributor caps and grease-caked carburetors. Some didn't even sell any car parts. One guy parked his truck up against the fence so he had a spot to hang his wife's old nightgowns.

My father shook his head. "Same shit, different show."

We found the guy who sold Matchbox cars and my father stopped.

"Any '67 Chevy pickups?"

The guy thumbed through a wad of cash.

"Doubt it. Don't think they made 'em."

Guys who owned Novas or Corvettes had no trouble finding original owner manuals, tin signs, posters, calendars, hats, t-shirts, pins, buttons, stickers, or Matchbox cars. My father had to settle for generic versions: ambiguous miniature red pickups or hats that just said "Chevrolet." For all anyone knew, my father was the proud owner of a '96 Lumina.

We grabbed a couple of sausage sandwiches on our way back to the truck. By then, dozens and dozens of cars and trucks had entered the show. Parked in long rows, they stretched across three acres of patchy grass and dirt. A lot of guys would talk about the way a car "sits." They'd see a Camaro SS or a Roadrunner with over-sized rear tires and a set of air shocks lifting the tail and they'd say, "Man, that just sits nice." I stared at the cars from the edge of the swap meet. Each one of them sat nice, as if they were here first, and the world had grown around them.

The judges ticketed each car with a yellow evaluation sheet and wrote the class number on each windshield with a white marker. I didn't understand that. Here were a bunch of tough dudes, many of whom had been brown-bagging beers or something harder since breakfast, each one watching their cars and each other so closely—and then this little judge came over and scribbled on the windshield. Some guys actually winced.

My father cracked open a ginger ale. He leaned back, pushed his hat up, and tilted his head to the sun. He groaned a little as he kicked his feet up on the cooler.

"How's ol' Mama Mia doin'?"

I laughed. "She's good. She wants to hang out all the time, though."

"They all like that, boy." He sipped his ginger ale.

We watched a '67 El Camino roll through the gates, followed closely by a '56 Bel Air.

"Hey, boy, check that out." My father stood up and pointed to the Bel Air. "Mom had the same one. I mean, exact same one. Color and everything."

I tried to imagine my mother peering out through the wide windshield, but all I could see was the fat man in denim behind the wheel. A small woman sat in the passenger seat. Now and then, a few more cool cars rolled in. One of us pointed, the other said, "Yeah." Soon, "yeahs" became nods, and then silence. My father dozed off.

Sometimes I wandered the swap meet while my father was asleep. One guy set up dozens of shallow glass cases full of patches and stickers. I liked looking at them; they reminded me of the baseball cards I used to collect, and the trips my friends and I took to the store, buying pack after pack as the owner rested his belly on the glass counter. The owner would point out valuable cards and give us little plastic sheaths to protect them.

There were Camaro stickers and Nova stickers and Corvette stickers. Super Sport patches, STP patches, Valvoline patches. There was a progression to the merchandise that I was aware of but didn't understand. Like a gradient scale, the colors of the stickers and patches began to darken, until they were just white letters on a black background. THESE COLORS DON'T RUN. A silhouette of a man beneath the arcing letters POW/MIA. One patch read: SPEAK ENGLISH OR GO HOME! A man in a sleeveless denim jacket with a Rebel flag patch on his chest leaned over the case. He knocked his greasy knuckles on the glass, and the man behind the counter nodded and gave him a sticker that read: I'D RATHER BE RIDING YOUR WIFE. I watched the man walk away, dragging two young boys behind him.

I understood the stereotypical masculinity in restoring a muscle car: using your hands to rebuild a machine, the sweat, the oil, sliding underneath a chassis while "Whole Lotta Love" blasts from the garage. This seemed safe. What I didn't understand was the seamless progression from automobiles to patriotism to xenophobia to screwing someone else's wife. It wasn't clear to me what came first. What was prerequisite? What was learned on the job?

1966 Dodge Coronet 500,

360, little rust, solid floors and trunk, great interior. $2,700.

"I can't picture it exactly, but. . ." My father circled the ad in the paper, then dialed the phone. He made all the calls. He called about the black '69 Nova, the blue '67 Camaro, the orange '70 GTO, and the pea-green '76 Mustang: all of which were too expensive or too fast, the latter more my father's concern than mine. That black Nova was a beast, though. Barebones, practically stripped to the frame except for the 454 sleeping under the hood. Straight out of
Mad Max,
that car could crush the Volkswagens and BMWs that filled the high school parking lot. But my father didn't go for it.

I sat next to him at the kitchen table, listening to him talk to the guy with the Dodge. Coronet didn't sound too cool. It was too feminine, like the name of a perfume or a piece of lingerie. I looked it up in the dictionary and found a picture of a woman wearing a small crown.

I wanted a car that everyone would recognize, a car that was classically cool, like the ones caressed by models in the old car commercials. A car whose slogan made you feel unpatriotic not to drive one. Chevrolet:
The Heartbeat of America.

"All right, so Thursday. Sounds good. Thanks, buddy."

My father scribbled something on the newspaper.

"Nice guy. I'll take half a day tomorrow and we'll check it out when you get home from school."

I agreed. I was skeptical, but curious. I was also getting impatient.

"I think it's similar to a Comet, or a Satellite," he said on his way upstairs to take a shower.

I heard the water beat down into the tub. I stared at the circled ad. While he was on the phone, my father had traced the circle so many times that it bled through the pages of the newspaper. I flipped ahead four pages and could still see the faint ring of ink.

Ron's screen door squeaked, then slammed behind him. He waved to us from the brick stoop and made his way across the lawn. He was always chomping on a piece of food you don't normally see people eating outdoors, like a handful of popcorn or a pork chop. Last week, when we first came to look at the Dodge, he introduced himself in between bites of corn bread.

"Back again, fellas?" He picked at a hunk of meatloaf wrapped in tin foil.

"Yeah, I think this is the last time, though," my father said.

I stood behind him, holding a large manila envelope containing every cent of my junior savings account.

Ron walked over to the car, popped the hood, the trunk, and opened the doors. The Dodge was a faded and bubbled cranberry color, but the original black interior gleamed like volcanic glass. Strips of chrome lined the dash. Chrome radio knobs, chrome gear shifter, chrome door handles and seat backs and ashtrays: all mirrors reflecting exactly who I wanted to be. The black leather creaked and pulled at my father's tank top as he adjusted himself in the driver's seat. He looked up. Ron poked his head in and pointed to the ceiling.

"Like I said, most headliners sag like an old broad. Not this one."

My father nodded. We got out and stood next to the car. My father and Ron talked for a little while about the car, then veered off into a conversation about upcoming shows, and soon they were talking about their first cars and spending all day and night in the garage and how sometimes they didn't know what they were doing—they just slid underneath with a wrench and poked around. My father lit a cigar and told Ron about the time he nearly burned Haggemeyer's eyebrows off.

"He looked into that carburetor like fuckin' Elmer Fudd. Backfired right in his face. Oh man, we were howling!"

I stood behind my father with the envelope. I had bent the metal clasp so many times that it had fallen off. When their laughter died down, I handed the envelope to my father.

"We'll take her."

My father passed the envelope to Ron. Ron folded it in half, and tucked it into his back pocket.

"Take care of her, son." He gave me the keys.

"I will."

My father grinned, and walked back to his Chevy parked in the street. Ron went back in the house and closed the door. The two gold keys dangling from the ring felt foreign in my hands. Our clunky silver house key was the only key I knew. The Dodge keys were sharp, like two little swords.