So I looked at Newt and he looked back at me and gave a great shrug of his shoulders. Close as we are we can say a lot without speaking.
We told the dude to go ahead and do the work.
While he installed the shocks, me and Newt went across the road and had us a couple of chicken-fried steaks. They wasn’t bad at all even if the price was on the high side. We washed the steaks down with a beer apiece and then each of us had a cup of that coffee. I guess there’s been times I had better coffee.
“I’d say you fellows sure were lucky you stopped here,” the woman said.
“It’s our lucky day, all right,” Newt said. While he paid her I looked over the paperback books and magazines. Some of them looked to be old and secondhand but they weren’t none of them reduced in price on account of it, and this didn’t surprise me much.
What also didn’t surprise us was when we got back to find the shocks installed and our friend with his big hat off and scratching his mop of hair and telling us how the rear shocks was in even worse shape than the front ones. He went and ran the car up in the air again to show us more things that didn’t mean much to us.
Newton said, “Well, sir, my brother and I, we talked it over. We figure we been neglecting this here automobile and we really ought to do right by it. If those rear shocks is bad, well, let’s just get ’em the hell off of there and new ones on. And while we’re here I’m just about positive we’re due for an oil change.”
“And I’ll replace the oil filter while I’m at it.”
“You do that,” Newt told him. “And I guess you’ll find other things that can do with a bit of fixing. Now we haven’t got all the time in the world or all the money in the world either, but I guess we got us a pair of hours to spare, and we consider ourselves lucky having the good fortune to run up against a mechanic who knows which end of the wrench is which. So what we’ll do, we’ll just find us a patch of shade to set in and you check that car over and find things to do to her. Only things that need doing, but I guess you’d be the best judge of that.”
Well, I’ll tell you he found things to fix. Now and then a car would roll on in and he’d have to go and sell somebody a tank of gas, but we sure got the lion’s share of his time. He replaced the air filter, he cleaned the carburetor, he changed the oil and replaced the oil filter, he tuned the engine and drained and flushed the radiator and filled her with fresh coolant, he gave us new plugs and points, he did this and that and every damn thing he could think of, and I guess the only parts of that car he didn’t replace were ones he didn’t have replacement parts for.
Through it all Newt and I sat in a patch of shade and sipped Cokes out of the bottle. Every now and then that bird would come over and tell us what else he found that he ought to be doing, and we’d look at each other and shrug our shoulders and say for him to go ahead and do what had to be done.
“Amazing what was wrong with that car of ours,” Newt said to me. “Here I thought it rode pretty good.”
“Hell, I pulled in here wanting nothing in the world but a tank of gas. Maybe a quart of oil, and oil was the one thing in the world we didn’t need, or it looks like.”
“Should ride a whole lot better once he’s done with it.”
“Well I guess it should. Man’s building a whole new car around the cigarette lighter.”
“And the clock. Nothing wrong with that clock, outside of it loses a few minutes a day.”
“Lord,” Newt said, “don’t you be telling him about those few minutes the clock loses. We won’t never get out of here.”
That dude took the two hours we gave him and about twelve minutes besides, and then he came on over into the shade and presented us with his bill. It was all neatly itemized, everything listed in the right place and all of it added up, and the figure in the bottom right-hand corner with the circle around it read $277.45.
“That there is quite a number,” I said.
He put the big hat on the back of his head and ran his hand over his forehead. “Whole lot of work involved,” he said. “When you take into account all of those parts and all that labor.”
“Oh, that’s for certain,” Newt said. “And I can see they all been taken into account, all right.”
“That’s clear as black and white,” I said. “One thing, you couldn’t call this a nickel-and-dime figure.”
“That you couldn’t,” Newton said. “Well, sir, let me just go and get some money from the car. Vern?”
We walked over to the car together. “Funny how things work out,” Vern said. “I swear people get forced into things, I just swear to hell and gone they do. What did either of us want beside a tank of gas?”
“Just a tank of gas is all.”
“And here we are,” he said. He opened the door on the passenger side, waited for a pickup truck to pass going west to east, then popped the glove compartment. He took the .38 for himself and gave me the .32 revolver. “I’ll just settle up with our good buddy here,” he said, loud enough for the good buddy in question to hear him. “Meanwhile, why don’t you just step across the street and pick us up something to drink later on this evening? You never know, might turn out to be a long ways between liquor stores.”
I went and gave him a little punch in the upper arm. He laughed the way he does and I put the .32 in my pocket and trotted on across the road to the cafe.
One Thousand Dollars a Word
The editor’s name was Warren Jukes. He was a lean sharp-featured man with slender long-fingered hands and a narrow line for a mouth. His black hair was going attractively gray on top and at the temples. As usual, he wore a stylish three-piece suit. As usual, Trevathan felt logy and unkempt in comparison, like a bear having trouble shaking off the torpor of hibernation.
“Sit down, Jim,” Jukes said. “Always a pleasure. Don’t tell me you’re bringing in another manuscript already? It never ceases to amaze me the way you keep grinding them out. Where do you get your ideas, anyway? But I guess you’re tired of that question after all these years.”
He was indeed, and that was not the only thing of which James Trevathan was heartily tired. But all he said was, “No, Warren. I haven’t written another story.”
“Oh?”
“I wanted to talk with you about the last one.”
“But we talked about it yesterday,” Jukes said, puzzled. “Over the telephone. I said it was fine and I was happy to have it for the magazine. What’s the title, anyway? It was a play on words, but I can’t remember it offhand.”
“ ‘A Stitch in Crime,’ ” Trevathan said.
“Right, that’s it. Good title, good story, and all of it wrapped up in your solid professional prose. What’s the problem?”
“Money,” Trevathan said.
“A severe case of the shorts, huh?” The editor smiled. “Well, I’ll be putting a voucher through this afternoon. You’ll have the check early next week. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do, Jimbo. The corporate machinery can only go so fast.”
“It’s not the time,” Trevathan said. “It’s the amount. What are you paying for the story, Warren?”
“Why, the usual. How long was it? Three thousand words, wasn’t it?”
“Thirty-five hundred.”
“So what does that come to? Thirty-five hundred at a nickel a word is what? One seventy-five, right?”
“That’s right, yes.”