I finished up the oil change, and then worked on a dent I acquired at the grocery store. Poor Lucy, my sixty-nine Chevy Camaro, didn’t stand a chance against the wayward grocery cart.
She was a gift from my dad. When I got her, she was just a big heap of junk, wouldn’t even crank. My dad wasn’t one for gifts, but being a mechanic had its perks every now and then. When a customer couldn’t pay for the new transmission my dad dropped in his truck, a trade for the cash was offered and I got Lucy. To me, she was worth every minute we put into that man’s piece-of-shit truck. Dad might not agree with me on that, but what can I say, I got the better part of that deal.
Lucy was the epitome of beauty. You couldn’t buy the kind of character that an old muscle car had these days, and Lucy had it in spades. I’d rather be out there, secluded in the garage with her, than any other place in the world. I’d spent hours overhauling my car and I’d spend every dime on the project, if I had a dime.
At my age, I should have had a steady woman in my life, but cars were better than women were. They were gorgeous, powerful, and they purred when you handled them. They did all that without the mandatory attachment that women required.
“Devin! Are you gonna stay in that garage under that car all day? I need ya to come in for a minute, boy!” Dad yelled from the back door of the house.
“I’m comin’!” I hollered back. “Is this man ever gonna give me a break?” I sighed to myself.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I actually made some money working in the shop with Dad. Since I made such a crappy paycheck, the least he could do was give me five minutes to dwell on my less-than-stellar life. Instead, he pushed me harder and harder every day. You’d think he’d appreciate the fact that I haven’t ran off and left him high and dry, but oh no… not Harold Michaels, aka, the town drunk.
If my dad could fix a car as fast as he could take out a six-pack of beer, I swear we’d be rich. Even drunk as a skunk, the man knew his way around an engine. That fact kept the people in our small town from caring that he did business with Budweiser on his breath. One of the plus sides of living in a town full of truck owners was the fact that once the good ole boys found a decent mechanic, they stuck with him. Who cared that he couldn’t stand up straight or speak without a slur as long as the job got done, right?
That was the biggest reason our small father-and-son shop stayed afloat. The other reason, of course, was because I was a whiz at the books. Last year alone, I saved Dad three grand in taxes. I should’ve stayed in school, and then maybe I could’ve gone somewhere else in this world.
Instead, here I was, twenty-two years old, stuck with Renee, a wannabe girlfriend, who drove me nuts, and a father who was a slave driver. Let’s not forget my fifteen-year-old sister, Jenny, who should’ve been born a boy. I guessed things could’ve been worse; I could have been all alone in this big bad world.
I pulled myself out from under Lucy and stood there for a minute before running out of the garage and across the yard to the house.
The screened door snapped back, making a loud slamming noise when I walked in. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through a massive stack of bills. He shook his head in disgust. For as much business as we made at our little shop, it never seemed to be enough. We barely kept our heads above water.
The last couple of months had been the worst we’d had in a long while though. A new mechanic shop just opened on the outskirts of town. Even though I knew all the customers would come back once the new place got old, I couldn’t help but worry about us until then.
It happened in our line of business. Some new shop with bright paint and fresh tools would pop up and stay open just long enough to make us financially uncomfortable. Another advantage to living in a small town… people didn’t like change. They always came back to what they knew, and the people in Walterboro knew my dad.
“What’s up, Pops?” I said as I tapped the top on a cold Mountain Dew.
“Son, we got ourselves a bit of a problem. It seems we’re a little behind on some loans. We gotta come up with some cash, fast.”
“Okay. Which loans are we talking about and how much?” I pinched my lips together like a disappointed mom.
I knew exactly which loans we were talking about, or maybe I should have said which loan. The one we were talking about was the loan on the house and the garage. Back before I started taking care of the books for Dad, he’d gotten so deep in debt with the IRS that he actually had to take a loan out on anything he had of value. From the look on his face, I could tell the amount was going to chap my ass.
“What’s the damage and what can we do?” I asked impatiently.
“Well, it’s along the lines of eight grand, and there’s nothin’ comin’ to mind. You got any ideas?”
Eight thousand dollars! I switched out my Mountain Dew for a beer.
“How long do we have?” I sighed.
“The final notice says ninety days. I don’t see how we can come up with eight grand by then. I just hope somethin’ comes up.”
It pissed me off that he kept saying “me” and “us” like I had something to do with it. He was the one who let it get this bad. He was the one that needed to go back to school and learn basic math, not me!
I stared back at Dad for a minute and let the last few sentences he uttered fill my brain and make sense.
“Dad, I’m gonna take a drive and try to figure some stuff out. You want me to grab you anything while I’m out?”
“No, don’t be gone long, though. Morgan’s bringin’ over that Ford that’s been tickin’. I want you to look it over for me,” I heard him say as I walked back out the door—the screened door snapped back and made an even louder banging noise.
All the work I put into this stupid shop trying to save it, and all the time I spared in the garage with him, were a waste. I could have had a real job somewhere far from here. I could have had my own place and taken care of myself. I had always been a hard worker, and I had always hated the fact that I was stuck here, going nowhere fast.
I had been working in Dad’s garage ever since I was twelve or so. I used to come home from school, eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then head straight out back, where I’d spend the rest of my night under the hood of something. That was back when Mom was still around. She left when Jenny was six.
The year I turned thirteen was the hardest year of my life. Not only was I officially a teenager dealing with all the new hormones and growth spurts, but also my mom left me like I was nothing. You’d think she would have at least stuck around to see Jenny grow up. What kind of woman left a six-year-old girl behind with two males? Leaving me with Dad could almost be excused, but a young girl needed a mom to teach her girly stuff.