The Complete Collection. William Wharton

Neither Pat nor Rita will believe this car’s going to the address we have. We’re delivering to a swarming, seething, black slum, one of the most dangerous sections in Philly. They say they wouldn’t even drive a tank into that neighborhood. Dad and I look at each other; this is something we hadn’t counted on.

      Rita also hands me a letter she forgot to give me yesterday. It’s from Debby; I dash upstairs to read it in private.

      She’s coming to meet me in Paris on the point of the island the way we said. She’ll be there July 10th, wants to be with me in Paris to celebrate Bastille Day. She says in the letter ‘celebrate breaking out of my own personal prisons, too’. I read that letter over about ten times. Holy shit, all my dreams are coming true. We’re really going to do it. I realize Dad and I missed the Fourth of July in there somewhere without noticing; it could explain the heavy traffic after St Louis.

      When we try starting the car, it looks as if we won’t deliver at all. We turn the motor over until the battery runs down. Pat has a charger, so we take the battery into the garage for a quick charge.

      It’s got to be all the rain and humidity has fouled the electrical system. For some reason, Dad’s convinced it’s the carburetors. Pat stands on the porch and makes suggestions of things to check. I can almost hear the relays clicking in his brain. It’s still raining like hell and we’re soaking wet. The trouble is, if we don’t deliver today, the fifty-dollar bond is forfeited, even with the extra two days.

      I take out the sparks and clean them. Dad’s blown all the jets on the carbs; he smells like a fire-eater. This car is not only gigantic, but all the parts are tucked in the most impossible places. With Pat’s help, I find the points and clean them. We put the battery back in and give it another try. Nothing. We turn it over till it’s obvious the sparks are flooded again.

      Dad tries calling Scarlietti to tell him his car’s in Philadelphia, but can’t get anybody. Things are screwed up as usual.

      Rita comes out on the porch with a blue-and-white striped umbrella. She looks under the hood with us. I’m wondering if it might be the timing. But how could the timing get off overnight? Rita says she read somewhere, when everything’s wet and humid so a car won’t start, you should take out the electrical parts and bake them dry in an oven at a slow heat.

      We look at her as if she’s crazy. There’s something hard to handle about putting automobile parts in an oven where you bake cakes, or roast beef.

      But it makes a kind of sense; besides, we’ve run out of things to do. We twist out all the sparks again, unhook the coil, the lines from the sparks to the distributor, the distributor, the condenser and the brushes for the generator. We take off the distributor cap and rotor. We spread all these parts on a piece of aluminium foil and stick the whole mess into her oven.

      We bake them slowly for fifteen minutes; according to Rita, about the time it takes for a batch of cookies; then we take them out. They’re not only dry, they’re red hot. We have another cup of coffee while they cool. I’m enjoying myself. Pat’s stayed on. He says this is more interesting than anything going on at the lab.

      Dad’s more relaxed than he’s been in months. This is his hometown and probably geography, geology, everything works on the body so you’re most comfortable where you’ve grown up. Maybe Grandpa’s Coriolis effect has something to do with it, too; the body’s a sort of hydraulic system, when you think about it. We should ask Pat.

      Pat’s explaining some of the decisions they’re making about what to engrave in gold on the next satellite as a message to beings in outer space. It’s complicated but it makes me think of all the bottles with messages in them I’ve thrown into oceans since I was a kid.

      After everything’s cooled off, we put the parts back in, take the charger off our battery and turn her over. She booms into life with the first try – as if nothing had ever been wrong. We all take turns dancing with Rita and congratulating her. Any excuse. She needs to go change because we get grease over the back of her dress. The rain’s stopped, the sun’s out and it’s hot, humid again.

      Dad and I wash up, put on clean shirts and take off. Rita says she’ll throw our clothes in the washer and they’ll be clean when we get back.

      We drive through Fairmount Park, heading north. The farther north we go, the grimmer it gets. As soon as we pass Broad Street and tour past Temple University, it turns totally black. There are people standing around staring blank at this monster of an automobile going by. I know if we don’t keep up speed we’ll be jumped. Almost simultaneously, Dad and I push down the locks. Dad smiles; I wonder if he’s scared as I am. I’ll tell you if I were one of those people living out there, seeing this car driving down my street, I’d sure as hell be throwing things.

      There’s an elevated train here over the street, just like the Paris Métro out by Bir-Hakeim and through Passy. Only this is nothing like that, this is desolation! It looks as if there’s been a war. It’s worse than just slummy and dirty. There are burnt cars in the streets. There’s garbage, old furniture, refrigerators and broken, rusted washing machines on the sidewalks. There’s trash over everything. The curbs are packed tight with debris so they’re rounded off between street and pavement.

      The farther along we go, the fewer and fewer women we see, and the men begin looking meaner. They’ve started stepping off curbs toward us, and twice guys stoop down and pick up bits of junk to throw. I’m wishing we didn’t look quite so much like Captain Haddock and a bearded Tin Tin.

      All the houses here are row houses. The windows are broken out and the railings on porches are splintered and hanging. The tiny bits of lawn in front of each house are only packed dirt, with holes dug into them and more garbage strewn around.

      There are kids and women hanging out of windows, mostly broken-paned windows, but the houses look as if nobody lives in them. There are no curtains or drapes. Junk wrecks of cars are pulled up on lawns and in alleyways. Boy, I never knew what a real black slum looked like. There’s nothing like this in California or Paris.

      I’ve been to Watts, but at least there it’s individual houses, not these walls of broken windows. There it looks temporary; here it’s as if it’s been this way forever and is going to stay that way.

      People are stretched out on the streets and on pavements, like Paris clochards – only young people, some of them wearing jeans, T-shirts; and nobody’s paying any attention.

      Now we’re starting to run red lights because every time we slow down or stop, the car’s covered with people. They jump on the hood, knock on the windows, thump on the sides of the car with fists or open palms. If we stop two minutes, goodbye car; goodbye hubcaps, aerial, anything that can be torn off. So we’re carefully running red lights and staying away from the sides of the car. I’m working over our map trying to zero in on the address. Dad’s hunched around the wheel as usual.

      The wild thing is most everybody’s laughing. They think it’s the funniest thing in the world seeing these two whiteys in blue driving this wet dream of an automobile straight through their territory. I don’t think they actually believe it. Maybe they’re only trying to be friendly and aren’t being threatening at all, but it looks threatening and we’re both scared shitless. The car’s beginning to stink from our fear, even with the air conditioning.

      There’s another thing that’s weird. Out there, everybody’s in undershirts or without shirts and the sun’s beating down after the rain. Pavements and streets are steaming, steam is coming out of manhole covers; it’s all filthy and disordered. But inside the car, we’re sitting on smooth leather seats. We’re surrounded by clean, canned car air; the radio’s playing stereo with soft background classical music. It’s hard putting it together. We’re astronauts, tearing through a hostile environment, only able to exist because of our support systems. If one thing goes wrong, if we make one mistake, we’re goners.

      The kings of France must have had the same feeling. Poor old Henry IV, with some nut jumping into his carriage in the Place des Vosges and doing him in. No wonder Louis XIV built that château out in Versailles; he was probably one of the first people moving to