When Molly and Buddy Elder started talking I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the look in her eyes, and I definitely didn’t like the lazy way he looked at her. When they disappeared, I lost all sense of proportion and with it the last shred of decorum. Even while I scurried around, I had a new appreciation for such dramas, especially the attendant humiliation that comes with it. I knew people were watching me. I knew at least some of them could tell me exactly where my wife had gone and with whom, but I had to walk around like I had misplaced my glass. People pretended not to notice me. I kept a smile pasted to my face. Where did I put that glass anyway? I tried not to imagine the nudges they were giving one another the minute I was into the next room. It wasn’t possible. I knew what they were saying. David’s turn.
I found Molly at the barn after about ten minutes of running the gauntlet. She was standing a few feet from Buddy Elder in a pale light before one of the horse stalls. From outside the barn it wasn’t possible to see them, but once I stepped in, I could stand in a shadow and watch everything. At first it was just talk, then I saw him stepping toward her. I thought he was about to touch her, a finger to her chin maybe, possibly a kiss. Would she let him? I didn’t know, and I didn’t get to find out because he didn’t do what I expected.
He put both hands against the stall and looked in through the bars at Jezebel, my stepdaughter’s seven-year-old quarter horse mare. A flutter of jealousy and rage shot into my chest feeling like a two-penny nail driven down with a single blow. I thought about waiting them out to see what they were going to do next. It even dawned on me that I should leave, though I dismissed the idea as absurd. I ended up walking all the way into the barn like a man long familiar with a disappearing wife.
‘She’s not for sale,’ I said, and pointed at Lucy’s mare.
Buddy gave me a lazy smile that I found a bit arrogant under the circumstances. ‘And I was just getting ready to make an offer.’
Molly gave me a look I didn’t like, then pushed past me, brushing my shoulder as she went. ‘I’d better get back,’ she announced quietly. Then to Buddy, ‘If you want to come out for a ride sometime, just let me know. I’d love to show you the farm.’
‘I might,’ he said, smiling. ‘If you’re sure it wouldn’t be a problem.’ He glanced in my direction – the problem.
Molly gave me a cool appraisal. ‘No problem at all.’
No problem she couldn’t handle, she meant.
‘You mind me asking you a personal question, Dave?’ Buddy asked, when we were alone.
I minded, but I was also curious. ‘What’s that?’
‘How did you get this place on a teacher’s salary?’
I laughed. ‘I thought you were going to ask me if I’m a jealous man.’
Buddy and I had walked out of the barn. He leaned against the grey boards of our old barn, so he was looking up the hill in the direction of our house, the direction Molly had taken. ‘I think I know the answer to that.’
‘My father was a car salesman,’ I said, stooping down and picking up some pebbles. ‘The guy they warn you about. Tubs could sell space heaters in hell.
Probably is, come to think of it. The old bastard could pitch any car he had to, but he’d only ride home in a Ford. Any Ford. A matter of principle, though what exactly the principle was, I never quite understood.
Anyway, back in the late seventies Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy. The price of the stock was around three dollars and dropping by the hour.
Naturally, everyone at the car lot had an opinion. Tubs said he was looking for a comeback. He said the government wouldn’t let Chrysler sink. Now you have to understand, he was standing around a bunch of car salespeople who knew his prejudices and back in those days nobody but Lee Iacocca liked a Chrysler, so when he said that, they all laughed. I owe this farm to their laughter, Buddy.’ I tossed a few pebbles toward our kennel, emptied out for the occasion of the party, and let Buddy wait for my explanation.
‘You see, Tubs could be wrong about a thing. Get him off the car lot, he was as wrong about things as the next man, but one thing Tubs could not abide was another salesperson laughing at him. The minute they did he walked into his office and called his broker and bought five thousand shares. In those days that was about exactly what a new luxury Chrysler would cost, and that’s what he said when he came back out, “I just bought my first Chrysler, gentlemen, but thank the good Lord I don’t ever have to drive it!’’
‘This wasn’t entirely out of character, you understand. My old man was a plunger, a gambler. Give him a horse, a deck of cards, the right kind of auto-mobile, and Tubs could drop serious money if the inspiration hit him. And over the years, the inspiration hit him fairly regularly. The truth is Tubs lost a lot more than he won. Usually when he made the right decision he would go too light or bail out too early.
Good times never ran a full course at our house, let me tell you. The man could screw up the Second Coming, but his one great move after buying Chrysler’s stock was to die.’ Buddy blinked in surprise and I knew I had him.
‘The first few times the stock split even a smart trader would have considered locking in his gains, but my mother didn’t know about such things. In fact, she was actually a little nervous about Chrysler sending her the dividend checks. She knew Tubs couldn’t stand Chrysler, so the only thing she could figure was they were sending money to the wrong Albo.
‘My brothers had no idea any of this was going on.
Me? I was just a kid. Thirty years ago I barely knew the difference between a Ford and a Chrysler. She splurged a little on clothes and jewellery, bought a new car now and then, took a trip every year. Got a new house. We figured the old bastard had a ton of life insurance because Mom sure wasn’t telling anyone where the money came from. This went on for years, and then one day she asked my oldest brother what was going to happen to Chrysler now that it had been sold to Mercedes. My brother wanted to know why she was worried about something like that.’
I handed Buddy a smile that told him we were at the end of the story. ‘She told him how many shares she had of it, and the next day we had a family meeting.’
‘You got the farm with your share of the stock?’
‘The farm, this quarter horse, that paint gelding, the restoration on the house, Molly’s new Ford truck, my stepdaughter’s Toyota Highlander, her choice of colleges…the mother lode, Buddy.’
Buddy handed me back a grudging smile. ‘Son of a bitch.’
I gave my lottery-winner shrug. ‘We were lucky.’
‘You should have put that in Jinx!’
‘You read Jinx, did you?’
‘I read it this summer. To tell you the truth, the minute I finished it, I wanted to go out and sell cars.
Did your dad have names for every one of his closes, like Jinx?’
A close is the last step of the sale. It’s cash on the table, a signature on the line. Feast or famine for the salesperson. Tubs had pet names for every close he used: Forbidden Fruit, Love or Money, Take my Advice (because no one ever does), The Bible Close, The Colombo Close. Tubs had a hundred of them. As many as he had faces.
‘He did,’ I told Buddy. ‘At least that’s what they tell me. He died before I ever got to work with him.’
‘He carry a Bible in his hip pocket like Jinx?’
‘Son of a bitch wouldn’t walk on the lot without it! He might not use it for a week or two, but then he’d meet the right folks and at just the opportune moment Tubs would pull it out like a gun and tell his customers, ‘Everyone else carries a price book, but I carry this so I won’t be tempted to lie!’