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.’
He doesn’t even look up from the newspaper.
‘Aw, come on! Quit kidding! You didn’t sell it! Who’d you sell it to?’
‘Your Uncle Nicky came over with one of his “friends” and the friend wanted the car; he thought it’d be a real gag and offered me a C note. What’d ya think I’m gonna do anyhow; get myself in trouble over some junk heap of a car?’
He looks up at me for the last part, then he turns his paper again, bangs on it to straighten it, and looks away. Uncle Nicky is my mother’s capo brother. I turn to her.
‘Is that really true? Did he actually sell our car to one of Uncle Nicky’s gangster friends?’
My mother’s ironing in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. I don’t know why she always irons there. She couldn’t be more in the way. Come to think of it; I do know why. She wants to keep an eye on the cooking and at the same time be able to talk with the old man.
She starts talking in Italian, actually in Credenzia, the Sicilian dialect. She always does this when she has something to say. It’s stupid because I understand everything she says. I can’t talk the stuff, but I understand. They know that. She tells my father to give me the money.
‘He don’t know what to do with no hundred dollars. He’ll just get in trouble again. I’ll put it in the bank. When he wants money he can ask me for it. I don’t want no more of this running away stuff.’
He crosses his legs the other way at the same time he opens and closes the newspaper again. He reads a newspaper folded in quarters like he’s riding in a subway or something and doesn’t want to take up too much space.
‘Half of it isn’t even my money. Half of that car belongs to Birdy.’
He doesn’t look up at me. My mother comes in from the ironing board.
‘Give him the money, Vittorio. It’s stealing to take somebody else’s money.’
This is in Credenzia again. The old man looks up at my mother. He’s enjoying being the big shit.
‘I don’t have to give him or anybody nothin’. That car is mine; it’s in my name. I can sell it to anybody I want.’
He pauses to let that sink in. Then he shifts his weight and pulls out his roll. He keeps his money like that, in a hard roll in his side pocket, big bills on top. He peels off five tens. He has that hundred dollar bill on the outside, but he pulls the tens off from underneath. He has a piece of elastic, not a rubber band, he keeps it wrapped in. It’s the kind of elastic my mother makes her garters with. He holds out the fifty bucks to me.
‘Here, give this to that wiggle-eyed friend of yours. I’m warnin’ ya, he’s gonna get you in trouble yet. That kid ain’t right in the head.’
I hold back. What a shitty thing to do. He re-rolls his roll, slips the elastic over it, tilts and slides it back in his pocket. He’s holding out those curled bills in his hand. I don’t want to take them. I stand there. My mother turns away; she’s done all she can and she knows it. My old man’ll bop anybody if he takes a mind to it. He looks at me hard. He’s not really mad yet but he’s annoyed.
‘Ya don’t want it? Well, don’t tell your friend I didn’t try to give him something for his share of that junk heap.’
He’s shifting to reach into his pocket. I know if he puts it back on the roll and in his pocket I’ll never see it again. I reach out and take the fifty bucks. He doesn’t even pay attention, just grunts like I’m robbing him and goes back to reading.
I take off for Birdy’s. When I tell him, he asks me to tell the whole thing again. He keeps making me repeat parts. His eyes are wiggling like crazy. I try to give him the money but he’ll only take half. He actually takes twenty, tells me to get the ten changed and he’ll get the other five then. He’s thinking about something else.
Then he asks me if I can find out who it is who bought our car. I tell him there’s no chance; if this guy’s in the mob, we’ll never find him. Birdy says he’s going to
