“What about him? He’s still up in Idaho. I got tired of it there. What about your father? Does he still believe you’re mentally defective?”
Ted blushed. He’d confided certain things to Cade and Jed Magnus years ago, when he was fourteen and curious about the White Crusade, badly wanting to do something about the 9/11 attacks. He couldn’t remember specifics but apparently his relationship with his father had been a topic. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
Magnus gave Ted a just-you-and-me smile. “Good for you, then.”
“Do you have a family now?”
“An ex and two down in Oceanside, another ex and two more up in Coeur d’Alene. No more children for this white supremacist.”
“I’m twenty-six.”
“I saw your brother at City Hall Tuesday and he told me to go to hell.”
“Pat’s capable of that. He just came back from Afghanistan a few days ago. Third Battalion, Fifth Marines. The Dark Horses. ‘Get Some.’ He’s got an edge.”
“You were sixteen when I left. Pat was just, what—”
“Twelve. Why did you come back?”
Magnus gestured with open hands. “I’m a good mechanic. Got plenty of child support to pay. So I’m going to pick up where I left off. And this was the last place where I really enjoyed living.”
“That’s funny because most people here don’t like you at all.”
“They don’t even like the idea of me. I’ve already pissed some of them off.”
Ted looked around the big room. It had brick walls with framed posters of the Fallbrook Classic Car Show hung perfectly straight, the glass as clean as the windshield of his taxi. The windows were the old-fashioned frosted mesh safety glass except for the front door glass, and the transom window over the door, through which Ted saw the neon Model T kicking up its red flames. He read EDIRP.
The pool table was there, just as he remembered it. He thought of seeing Jed and Cade playing one day when business was slow, and customers playing while they waited for their cars. The talk was all political. Ted remembered heated words about a new pseudoscience called global warming. He had always liked the sound of billiard balls hitting, so sharp and purposeful. Like the Glock. The cue rack, loaded with sticks, was bolted to the wall right where it had been. Ted saw the small blue squares of chalk in the bottom tray. Beside the rack stood the old jukebox, chrome with a wood-look trim.
In the far corner of the room stood a pile of rubbish — flimsy metal shelving, defunct tube lights and fixtures, old electrical line, scraps of particleboard, a wooden desk with two broken legs, a rat’s nest built of twigs and bits of paper and cloth. “Lots to do,” said Ted.
“Check out the bay.”
Magnus lifted the counter panel and Ted followed him through to the open double doors. The repair area was large, with three lifts and plenty of shelves for parts and a big roll-up door in the rear. Ted remembered the new tires stacked halfway to the ceiling, scores of them. He smelled them now, though this was impossible. The old-time vending machine was still there, whitened with dust. The couch sitting along one wall he also remembered, and the lamp next to it. One day when he was young — nine or ten, and riding his bike around town — Ted had seen, through the open roll-up door, Jed Magnus sitting on that sofa, reading. The lamp illuminated him in the darkened interior of the repair bay. Jed’s wife, Ellen, sat close beside him, also reading. Jed’s hand was on her knee. The Magnuses didn’t look as bad as his parents — and almost everyone else in Fallbrook — said they were. Ellen was pretty. When Ted pedaled his bike by, they had both looked up and nodded to him. The couch had been covered in red paisley upholstery then, and it still was today.
“I hear you drive a taxi. Bring your cab here for service so long as it isn’t Jap or Korean.”
“It’s a Ford. I’m also helping Dad and Pat put the farm back together.”
Magnus reached out to a wall panel and pressed a large black button. A motor groaned and one of the lifts rose on its great, grease-slicked piston. Ted looked at the steel stairs leading down into the workspace below, black with what looked like half a century of spilled engine oil and transmission fluid.
“I’m starting out on my own here, Ted. Then I’ll hire as I grow. A shop takes at least two people, and someone on the books part-time. My father never liked car repair but I did. At least he took the time to teach me his trade. Your father shut you out, right? Bummer. But you know what I think? I think our fathers maybe aren’t so different.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was a boy I could never really please mine. Then, when our civil trial got going up in Spokane, the prosecutors came up with a letter I’d written to a guy up there who had written me, and he wanted to join the White Crusade. I mentioned to him that a like-minded young man I knew was heading up his way and the next thing you know, that letter is the smoking gun that proves my father and I sent agents to Spokane to kill blacks. The letter didn’t say anything about killing anybody. Dad didn’t know anything about that letter until discovery. I’d pretty much forgotten it. It was written to an inconsequential man about another inconsequential man. I was trying to give some skinheads some positive motivation. You should have seen the look on my dad’s face when they read that letter. He looked at me like I was the stupidest human to ever walk the earth, you know? Like it proved something he’d suspected all along. Like he’d finally had enough. He got over it. We got over it. But ever since then, when he looks at me I still see a little bit of that expression in him. So I know how you feel.”
“I thought you two were tight.”
“I’ll tell you a secret, too. You know why I came back here, besides that I like Fallbrook and think it’s a great place to live? I came back here to do something my father could never do. Something bigger and more important than he ever dreamed of.”
Ted felt a ripple of energy inside him, a little bump of adrenaline. “Like what?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m working out some ideas.”
“I know that feeling. It’s my middle name.”
Magnus hit the red button and the lift went down and clanked into place. “Well, don’t be a stranger. Bring that taxi in any time after next Wednesday and I’ll do you right. Tell your boss to bring in the other cars.”
“There’s two other cabs, and a black town car for people who don’t want a taxi.”
“Black, huh? Just kidding. Bring them all. I’ll give you a fleet discount.”
They walked back into the shop. Night had fallen and through the windows he saw the Model T, still throwing red flames across the polished hood of the Chevy parked out front. Magnus took a flyer from the counter and handed it to Ted. It was a standard-size sheet of printer paper, white. The lettering was the Germanic Reich-style script favored by skinheads, death metal bands, and motorcycle gangs.
“I got held up by a Mexican guy last week, driving my cab. He had a gun and he pointed it at my face. I believed he would use it. I could tell he thought I was a coward. He took most of my tips. At first I was scared, then later, I was mad at him. And at me.”