But then the time came that we did a one-to-five over to the state pen and it was an education. We both of us came out of there knowing the right people and the right way to operate. One thing we swore was to swear off nickels and dimes. The man who pulls quick-dollar stickups like that, he works ten times as often and takes twenty times the risks of the man who takes his time setting up a big job and scoring it. I remember Johnny Mack Lee saying it takes no more work to knock over a bank than a bakery and the difference is dollars to doughnuts.
I looked up and saw the dude with the hat poking around under the hood. “What’s he doing now, Newt? Prospecting for more gold?”
“Checking the oil, I guess.”
“Hope we don’t need none,” I said. “ ’Cause you just know he’s gotta be charging two dollars a quart for it.”
Well, we didn’t need any oil. And you had to admit he did a good job of checking under there, topping up the battery terminals and all. Then he came around and leaned against the car door.
“Oil’s okay,” he said. “You sure took a long drink of gas. Good you had enough to get here. And this here’s the last station for a whole lot of highway.”
“Well,” I said. “How much do we owe you?”
He named a figure. High as it was, it came as no surprise to me since I’d already turned and read it off of the pump. Then as I was reaching in my pocket he said, “I guess you know about that fan clutch, don’t you?”
“Fan clutch?”
He gave a long slow nod. “I suppose you got a few miles left in it,” he said. “Thing is, it could go any minute. You want to step out of the car for a moment I can show you what I’m talking about.”
Well, I got out, and Newt got out his side, and we went and joined this bird and peeked under the hood. He reached behind the radiator and took ahold of some damned thing or other and showed us how it was wobbling. “The fan clutch,” he said. “You ever replace this here since you owned the car?”
Newt looked at me and I looked back at him. All either of us ever knew about a car is starting it and stopping it and the like. As a boy Newt was awful good at starting them without keys. You know how kids are.
“Now if this goes,” he went on, “then there goes your water pump. Probably do a good job on your radiator at the same time. You might want to wait and have your own mechanic take care of it for you. The way it is, though, I wouldn’t want to be driving too fast or too far with it. ‘Course if you hold it down to forty miles an hour and stop from time to time so’s the heat won’t build up—”
His voice trailed off. Me and Newt looked at each other again. Newt asked some more about the fan clutch and the dude wobbled it again and told us more about what it did, which we pretended to pay attention to and nodded like it made sense to us.
“This fan clutch,” Newt said. “What’s it run to replace it?”
“Around thirty, thirty-five dollars. Depends on the model and who does the work for you, things like that.”
“Take very long?”
“Maybe twenty minutes.”
“Could you do it for us?”
The dude considered, cleared his throat, spat in the dirt. “Could,” he allowed. “If I got the part. Let me just go and check.”
When he walked off I said, “Brother, what’s the odds that he’s got that part?”
“No bet a-tall. You figure there’s something wrong with our fan clutch?”
“Who knows?”
“Yeah,” Newt said. “Can’t figure on him being a crook and just spending his life out here in the middle of nowhere, but then you got to consider the price he gets for the gas and all. He hasn’t had a customer since we pulled in, you know. Maybe he gets one car a day and tries to make a living off it.”
“So tell him what to do with his fan clutch.”
“Then again, Vern, maybe all he is in the world is a good mechanic trying to do us a service. Suppose we cut out of here and fifty miles down the road our fan clutch up and kicks our water pump through our radiator or whatever the hell it is. By God, Vernon, if we don’t get to Silver City tonight Johnny Mack Lee’s going to be vexed with us.”
“That’s a fact. But thirty-five dollars for a fan clutch sure eats a hole in our capital, and suppose we finally get to Silver City and find out Johnny Mack Lee got out the wrong side of bed and slipped on a banana peel or something? Meaning if we get there and there’s no job and we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, then what do we do?”
“Well, I guess it’s better’n being stuck in the desert.”
“I guess.”
Of course he had just the part he needed. You had to wonder how a little gas station like that would happen to carry a full line of fan clutches, which I never even heard of that particular part before, but when I said as much to Newt he shrugged and said maybe an out-of-the-way place like that was likely to carry a big stock because he was too far from civilization to order parts when the need for them arose.
“The thing is,” he said, “all up and down the line you can read all of this either way. Either we’re being taken or we’re being done a favor for, and there’s no way to know for sure.”
While he set about doing whatever he had to do with the fan clutch, we took his advice and went across the street for some coffee. “Woman who runs the place is a pretty fair cook,” he said. “I take all my meals there my own self.”
“Takes all his meals here,” I said to Newt. “Hell, she’s got him where he’s got us. He don’t want to eat here, he can walk sixty miles to a place more to his liking.”
The car that had been parked at the cafe was gone now and we were the only customers. The woman in charge was too thin and rawboned to serve as an advertisement for her own cooking. She had her faded blonde hair tied up in a red kerchief and she was perched on a stool smoking a cigarette and studying a True Confessions magazine. We each of us ordered apple pie at a dollar a wedge and coffee at thirty-five cents a cup. While we were eating a car pulled up and a man wearing a suit and tie bought a pack of cigarettes from her. He put down a dollar bill and didn’t get back but two dimes change.
“I think I know why that old boy across the street charges so much,” Newt said softly. “He needs to get top dollar if he’s gonna pay for his meals here.”
“She does charge the earth.”
“You happen to note the liquor prices? She gets seven dollars for a bottle of Ancient Age bourbon. And that’s not for a quart, either. That’s for a fifth.”
I nodded slowly. I said, “I just wonder where they keep all that money.”
“Brother, we don’t even want to think on that.”
“Never hurt a man to think.”
“These days it’s all credit cards anyways. The tourist trade is nothing but credit cards and his regular customers most likely run a monthly tab and give him a check for it.”
“We’ll be paying cash.”
“Well, it’s a bit hard to establish credit in our line of work.”
“Must be other people pays him cash. And the food and liquor over here, that’s gotta be all cash, or most all cash.”
“And how much does it generally come to in a day? Be sensible. As little business as they’re doing—”
“I already thought of that. Same time, though, look how far they are from wherever they do their banking.”
“So?”
“So they wouldn’t be banking the day’s receipts every night. More likely they drive in and make their deposits once a week, maybe even once every two weeks.”
Newt thought about that. “Likely you’re right,” he allowed. “Still, we’re just talking small change.”
“Oh, I know.”
But when we paid for our pie and coffee Newton gave the old girl a smile and told her how we sure had enjoyed the pie, which we hadn’t all that much, and how her husband was doing a real good job on our car over across the street.