The Complete Collection. William Wharton

a bore.

      Renaldi is truly listening. He wants to hear. You get the feeling you’re doing him a favor by telling him things. He listens as if what you’re saying is interesting to him and he asks the questions you want asked exactly when the right time comes. This Renaldi is some kind of mental enema. I come close to spilling it all. I manage to hold back at the last minute. Maybe he seems this way because I need somebody to talk to.

      Renaldi starts by telling me how hard it is for his parents. He’s their only son and the only one in his neighborhood who went CO. His mother doesn’t get to hang a blue star in her window. Some ladies in the neighborhood sent her a blue banner with a yellow star on it. This was yellow, not gold. If you’re lucky enough to have a son or husband or brother killed in the war, you get to hang a gold star in your window and you’re a ‘gold-star mother/sister/father/wife’. These ladies call Renaldi’s mother the ‘yellow-star mother’. She writes Renaldi about things like this or how she found shit on the porch or spread on the doorknob. Renaldi tells how, a couple times he’s almost given in. His girlfriend keeps it secret that she writes to him and he writes her care of General Delivery.

      We agree the only crazy thing is wars. That’s where I should’ve gotten him off onto the crazy business but I missed it. Renaldi turns on the hot plate and pours some water in it from a jerry can. We talk some more.

      Renaldi’s twenty-five and was taking his master’s in philosophy at Columbia when they tried to draft him. He has the idea you can only stop things like wars one person at a time. He says, nobody’s going to outlaw them. He asks me if most of the guys in my outfit wanted to fight. I couldn’t think of one who was charging in there for the old war after the first artillery came in. He wants to know how it was back in the States before we went over. To be perfectly honest, the only person I could think of who wanted to get into combat was me.

      Then, we get on the atom bomb they’ve just dropped. This is something Renaldi’s all hung up on. To me, it’s what ended the Japanese war; probably one of the best things that ever happened. I couldn’t care less how many Japs got killed, or whether it was one at a time or a couple thousand. The best and easiest way as far as I’m concerned.

      ‘Yes, but think of it, Al. They bombed women and children who weren’t involved in the war at all!’

      ‘So what’s the difference, they’re all Japs. If we’re fighting Japs, we kill Japs.’

      ‘OK, Al, but soldiers choose to fight; these were innocent victims.’

      I tell him I can’t buy that. Sure, kill off nuts like me, hostile assholes looking for trouble, but most guys don’t want to fight any war; they’re victims like everybody else. They’re out there carrying guns because of how old they are and the kind of plumbing they have. Women, old men and even kids make wars happen as much as anybody. Everybody isn’t like Renaldi and Birdy; and they even got Birdy. You can’t build a world around them either, they’re too rare.

      Renaldi’s still giving me a fishy stare, so I decide to tell about Birdy and my old man. That’s a story I hope will give some idea what I’m talking about. Probably I could just recite the multiplication tables and Renaldi’d eat it up.

      He cuts us each a piece of fruitcake and pours out some more tea. Can you beat it? Tea! Six months ago, nobody could’ve convinced me this guy wasn’t queer.

      There was a used car lot on the way up Long Lane to Sixty-ninth Street. Every Friday evening, when we took our books back to the library, Birdy and I used to stop by there to look at the cars. We were both motor freaks. The cars themselves didn’t interest us much – in fact, Birdy swore he’d never drive a car – but the way motors worked did. We’d already played around with small airplane motors, and the motor from a bombed-out motor scooter, and we fixed Mr Harding’s lawn mower.

      My old man bought a new car every year and kept it parked in front of our house to show what a big shot he was. I had to wash and simonize the beast once a week; Birdy used to help. We’d read all the manuals that came with these cars. My father bought De Sotos because the mob had an agency in Philly, so with the trade-in, he got them for practically nothing. My mother’s brother is one of the big capos in Philly and he’s the one who arranged it. We were the only ones on the block who had anything like a new car. Birdy’s mother and father didn’t even know how to drive. Birdy’s father rode to school on the school bus.

      Anyway, we used to clean the sparks, check the timing, clean the points, adjust the carburetor more than those cars ever needed. We kept that motor looking as if it’d never left the showroom floor.

      Birdy and I were always shopping cars. We knew all the horsepowers and gear ratios, length of piston stroke and cylinder dimensions. Either of us could tell almost any car just by listening to the motor, not seeing the car at all.

      One Friday evening we were nosing around in the car lot, looking at the new trade-ins, and there was a fantastic car. It was a 1915 Stutz Bearcat. We couldn’t figure how it got there. It didn’t run at all and the tires were flat. Schwartz, that’s the name of the guy who ran the lot, said he had to tow it in. He gave twenty-five bucks on it to somebody who bought a 1938 Dodge. Birdy and I couldn’t keep our hands or minds off that automobile. It had an eight-cylinder engine and the frame was in perfect condition. We negotiated around for two weeks and got it for thirty dollars; it cost another three dollars having it towed to our garage. The old man said we could use the garage till winter came and it got too cold to leave his car outside.

      We worked like fiends on that machine. We tore the motor all the way down. The pistons were frozen in the cylinders. We unfroze them and milled out the cylinders. We put in new rings and rockers. Birdy tooled replacement pieces for ones we couldn’t buy. He did it in the machine shop at school where he made his wings. We took off all the paint, pounded out the dents and cleaned up the chrome. It had solid chrome, not plate. We got new inner tubes and inflated the tires; there were genuine wooden spoked wheels.

      After a thousand tries we got the motor to turn over. The clutch, transmission, everything else, were in great condition. We tuned that motor to perfection. We patched up, cleaned, and Neetsfoot-oiled all the upholstery and refurbished the wooden dash with sandpaper and varnish. God, it was beautiful. We sanded it down to the metal, then painted it silver-gray. We worked on it for three months.

      When we cranked her up, she made tremendous resonant, deep motor sounds; the whole garage vibrated. We rolled her out and drove her up and down the alley. Neither one of us had a driver’s license. The car wasn’t registered and didn’t have an inspection sticker. It was strictly illegal. We knew we had something valuable but we didn’t want to sell it. We loved that car.

      I used to dream about it; I still do sometimes. I dream we’re touring it through a beautiful warm landscape, maybe in some foreign country like France. There’s no billboards and the road is lined with trees and the fields are full of flowers.

      We decide to get it past the Pennsylvania state inspection and get it registered so we can have a license. My old man says he’ll take it down and go through the inspection for us. We’re too young to own a car. The car gets passed and put in my old man’s name. I remember the license number: QRT 645.

      While Birdy is over at his place that spring, taking care of the birds, I’m either in the garage with the car or down in the cellar working out with weights. I can already press over a hundred fifty pounds. I’m working on muscle control, too. I can make a rope with my stomach and twist it from one side to the other. I keep asking Birdy to punch me hard in the stomach so he can test me, but he won’t do it.

      About two months after we have it registered and licensed, I go down to the garage after school to put on a new steering wheel cover. The car is gone! I’m sure somebody stole it! I run upstairs and the old man is sitting in the living room reading the paper. He sits there with his legs crossed. They’re so short and thick at the thigh that the leg on top sticks straight out. He’s wearing black low shoes and white silk socks. He has something against colored or woolen socks.

      ‘Somebody stole the car!’

      ‘Nobody stole it. I sold it.’