$300 Car
By Brian Allen Carr.
The buses hadn’t run regular since the hurricane and I figured the noon wasn’t running at all. I don’t know why. We didn’t even take the brunt of it. We took a foot of water, and had tree limbs in streets for days, and fences that were near falling fell, and garbage gathered at the gutters that stunk the city mightily. The eye hit down the coast. Folks on the island weathered the worst. Winds shucked their cars like tin cans and flipped roof tops like coin tosses, but the storms passed, and summer’d reset, and now the sun pulled steam from the saturation, and I sweated at the bus stop as though sitting in breath.
I figured, fuck the noon. It wasn’t coming and I’d made my mind to walk. That’s when I spotted Rollins at the light. Sitting in a butchered car. The light was red and he was looking over his shoulder. Then the light greened, but the car stayed idle, and Rollins threw cagy glances all around, and drummed his hands against the steering wheel till the light went red again.
When I met Rollins he was a 16-year-old eighth grader, and I was a sixth grader, and 10. I made the mistake to sit aside him on the school bus, and he thumped a fist to my forehead, and told me the seat was saved. A knot the size of a pecan rose where his fist landed. It ached when I breathed, and I couldn’t sleep well for days. But the worst part was: I got detention for it. I went to the nurse’s office there at West Oso Junior High so I could ice the swell and the nurse said it looked like I’d been slugged, and she wanted to know the name of the slugger. I wouldn’t tell her, so she set me outside the principal’s office beneath a mounted bear. That was our mascot, because oso’s Spanish for bear, but the bear I was beneath was a grizzly that stood about ten feet tall with finger-length fangs and dice-em-up claws, and the bears that used to live in Texas, and that our school was named after, ate acorns and were no bigger than me. The principal got furious when I kept mum. He gave me a talk about everyone doing their part and about pride. Made me work in the office for an hour after school for five days to teach me discipline. He had me polish the grizzly’s teeth, and claws, with mayonnaise and a crumpled towel. He had me comb dust from its hair. Rollins did detention with me one afternoon, and I was worried that he was going to thump me again, but the principal handed him the jar of mayonnaise and led him to the bear fangs, but Rollins said he’d have not part of it - said he was “O-W-T out,” and then he left school and never came back.
It didn’t seem as though Rollins had gotten any smarter since West Oso. I gandered at him as he drummed the steering wheel, aloof. The sun was killing. My feet cooked atop the black asphalt. I could smell the tar loosening and taste the exhaust from Rollins’ car. There was a phone number written on all the windows of the car and the amount $300. I’d never thought about what a $300 car looked like. This one’s paint was textured like old scrambled eggs. Patches of Bondo on the fenders. Tires bald and muffler shaking with the idling engine. I figured it was worth $250.
The light went green again, and Rollins started honking his horn, and I looked around, but there wasn’t another car in the intersection, and no pedestrians, so I went to knock on Rollins’ window to see what the fuck.
Rollins jerked when I rapped the window. Looked through me with black sunken eyes.
“Cotter,” he said, but that isn’t my name.
“Sure,” I told him, and he opened his door.
“Get in.”
Rollins chucked the transmission in park and slid to the passenger’s seat. He crumpled like a plastic bag, dropping his shoulders so his eyes were level with the door lock. I sat in the driver’s seat, closed the door and put on my seat belt.
“What’s up?” I said, and Rollins reached for his left pocket clumsily. He pulled out a wad of bills, I don’t know how much. A couple of hundred? More. Less. Hard telling.
“You know Beth? Used to date Smiley?” he said, and with his fingers began loosening the wad.
“White Smiley?”
Rollins drummed a temple. “Nah, the Mexican one.”
I geared the transmission and slowed through the intersection. “Sort of. Real little girl.”
“That’s her,” Rollins said. “Can almost fit her in your pocket.”
“What about her?”
“This is her money. I’m on a run. But shit I’m turned round.” Rollins looked at the neighborhood I’d pulled into. His narrow face vacantly twitching. “It’s been a few hours I think. I’m gonna just keep the money.” Rollins shuffled the bills from one shaky hand to the next, trying to count, but messing the task.
“Who’s car’s this?” I said.
Rollins coughed. His lips were chafed and he licked them. “Beth’s too.” He looked around again. Frustrated. “Do you know where I live?” he asked.
He lived in a garage apartment behind my aunt’s stepsister’s house a couple of blocks away. “Sure,” I told him. “Why?”
“Take me home.” He handed me a 20, licked his fingers and folded the remaining bills.
The vinyl seat stuck to my back, and the steering wheel was smoothed from sun. There was a damp smell, and grime on the floor boards, and the glove box hung open, and the radio was gone. Wires swung loose in the spot it should’ve been.
“You know where Beth lives?” Rollins asked.
Beth lived in an apartment near Corpus Christi bay. “I do.”
Rollins handed me another 20. “Take back the car once you’ve dropped me off.”
“Okay,” I said, and pocketed the two bills.
I only knew where Beth lived because my old manager was always trying to pay me to kill her. I worked at a shoe store in the mall, and my manager, Dalton, lived with Beth, but Beth was always bringing a Mexican called Smiley around, and Dalton didn’t have the sack to put an end to it. Didn’t have the sack for much. His arms looked like raw turkey sausages, pale, hairless and marked with razor burns that looked like busted herpes blisters, and he would pick at the blisters, and lean against the wall in the storage room while I sorted shoes and ask me if I wanted to make a “quick couple thousand?”.
I entertained the idea of the offer. Drew up some plans. Found out where Dalton lived, and I’d walk out front his apartment, trying to hold hid, but Beth must’ve seen me there, and known the score, because she came out on the terrace, in nothing but an unbelted bath robe, and stood with her hands on the banister, and her feet slightly spread, and told me, “you ain’t got the snatch.”
We got to Rollins’ place, and he fumbled around for the door handle to get out. I don’t know why. The thing was in plain sight. I leaned over him to open the door. And I kind of had him pinned that way. Him against the seat and my hand across him. I don’t know what, but something struck me, so I told him, “Let me take the money back too?” And Rollins looked at the money. Then he looked at me. “How you gonna explain it to Beth?” I said, and he fidgeted the bills. His eyelids heavied. He licked his lips. “I ain’t never done you wrong,” I said.
“Guess not,” he said, and pulled a 20 from the wad and put it in his shirt pocket, then he handed me the rest slow. “Tell her I’ll call.”
“Sure,” I said, and I stuffed the wad in my pocket, shucked his door open and leaned back to my seat. Rollins flopped from the car, slammed the door and stumbled toward the garage. I fished the money from my pocket and counted it. With the two 20s Rollins already gave me I’d nearly $600. I didn’t understand how you could snatch a thing so easy.
I messed with everything on the way out of Southside. The air conditioning coughed up warm air and the wiper blades were missing, but all the lights worked. The blinkers, heads, hazards and dome. I pulled over to a pay phone and called the number written on the windows. Beth answered on the first ring and said, “Rollins.” Her voice thin as thread.
“No,” I said. “I’m calling ’bout the car.”
“Where’d you see it?”
“On the road,” I said. “I wanted to make an offer.” Beth was quiet. Static filled the receiver.
“It’s $300,” she said.
I said, “Hmm,” for a second or two, then, “I’ll give you $250.”
“$275.”
“Nope, $250 firm.”
“Shit,” she said. “Fine.”
“Good deal,” I told her. “I’ll call back in a bit to tell you when I’ll pick it up.” I hung up the phone. I walked to the car. I felt curious. I opened the trunk. There was nothing but an old towel crumpled in a corner. I pulled it out and slammed the trunk closed. Then I used the towel to wipe the phone numbers off the car windows. It felt like polishing fangs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Allen Carr lives on the Texas/Mexico border. His fiction can be found in Boulevard, Texas Review, Front Porch, Pindeldyboz, SmokeLong Quarterly and in other publications. He can be visited on the web here.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Tuesday, July 14th, 2009.
