Humpty Dumpty in Oakland Read online

  A terrible fantasy came to him then. One that he had made up before. He lay under a car; he felt it on him. He tried to breathe, to yell for help, but the weight flattened his chest. All he could do was lie, like a turtle or a bug, on his back. And then Al came along, into the garage as he always did, wandering through the side door with a part of a distributor.

  Al came up to the car. He looked down. He saw the old man flat on his back, pinned under the car, staring up, unable to speak.

  He stood for a minute. He did not even put down the part he carried. His eyes roamed around; he saw that the hydraulic jack had slipped, the most terrible thing possible. It had slipped out from under the differential or the hose had come loose or something; anyhow it had let the car down on the old man, and it might have been a couple of hours ago. The old man could only stare up at him; he could not even talk. His chest was completely broken. The car had crushed him, but he was still alive. He pleaded silently to be released. To be helped.

  Al turned and walked off, carrying his distributor part. He went out of the garage again.

  Seated at his desk, Jim felt the fear, the crushing. He kept his eyes fixed on the Volkswagen lube chart; he turned his attention to the dusty window, the nude-girl calendars, the invoices, the list of parts suppliers. But he still saw himself; he saw from outside his own prone, dying, smashed, bug-like body under the car, under the—what was it?—the Chrysler Imperial. And Al walking out.

  All my life, he thought. As long as I’ve been in the garage business; I’ve been scared of it. Of the jack slipping. Being alone here, nobody coming in for hours. Maybe last thing in the day, around five p.m. And nobody coming in until next day.

  But then his wife would call. Worse if it was early.

  Nobody would do that, he said to himself. Leave a man pinned under a car. Just to get even. Not even Al.

  I can’t tell about him, he thought. He doesn’t show his feelings. He could go either way.

  And then, thinking that, he had another fantasy, one he had never had before. He saw, as clearly as before, the same scene, with Al coming in and finding him. But this time Al running, Al pulling the car off him, running to phone; then the ambulance coming, all the noise and excitement, the doctors, the stretcher, the trip to the hospital. And Al hanging around, seeing that they all did right, seeing that he was given the right medical treatment and right away. So he recovered. It was in time.

  Sure, he might do that. He can work fast. Thin guys like that, who don’t carry much weight—they can really move.

  But this fantasy, of Al finding him and saving him, made him feel no better. In fact it made him feel worse. But he did not know why. God damn it, he thought. I don’t need him to save me; I can take care of myself. I’d a lot rather he did walk off. It’s none of his business.

  He put down the Volkswagen chart and opened the indexed pad by the phone. In a moment he had dialed his broker, Matt Pestevrides, and had the secretary on the line.

  “Hello,” he said, when he had got hold of Matt. “Listen, how long am I stuck here? Now that the sales gone through.”

  “Oh, you can figure on about sixty days,” Matt said in a cheerful voice. “That’ll give you plenty of time to wind up your affairs. I imagine you want to say goodbye to all your customers, all your old customers who’ve been coming in for so long. Like myself.”

  “Okay,” he said, and hung up. Two months, he thought. Maybe I can come in just part of the day. And I won’t take in anything heavy. Just easy stuff to do; the doctor said so.

  2

  In front of Al’s Motor Sales, Al Miller walked back and forth, his hands in his pockets.

  I knew he would, Al thought. Sooner or later. He couldn’t just turn it over to someone else to run. Once he couldn’t run it himself he had to dump it.

  What now? he asked himself. I can’t patch these old jalopies up without him. I’m not that good. I’m a tinkerer, not a mechanic.

  He turned and faced his lot, and the twelve cars on it. What are they worth? he asked himself. On the windshields he had written, in white poster paint, various enticing statements. “Full price $59. Good tires.” And, “Buick! Automatic shift. $75.” “Spotlight. Heater. Make offer.” “Runs good. Seatcovers. $100.” His best car, a Chevrolet, was only worth a hundred and fifty dollars. Junk, he thought. They ought to be scrapped for the parts. Not safe on the road.

  Next to a ’49 Studebaker, the battery charger worked away, recharging, its black wires disappearing into the open hood of the car. It takes that to start them up, he realized. A portable battery charger. The batteries, half of them won’t hold a charge all night. They’re down in the morning.

  Each morning when he arrived at the lot he had to get into each car and start it up and run the motor. Otherwise when someone came to look he would have nothing running to show them.

  I ought to call Julie, he said to himself. This was Monday, so she was not at work. He started toward the entrance of the garage, but then halted. How can I talk from there? he asked himself. But if he crossed the street to the café and phoned from there, it would cost him ten cents. The old man always let him use the garage phone free, and so it was hard to face the idea of paying out ten cents.

  I’ll wait, he decided. Until she shows up here at the lot.

  At eleven-thirty his wife drew up to the curb in a lot car, an old Dodge with the upholstery hanging from the roof, its fenders rusted and its front end out of alignment. She smiled at him cheerfully as she parked.

  “Don’t look so happy,” he said.

  “Does everybody have to be as gloomy as you?” Julie said, as she hopped out of the car. She had on faded jeans, and her long legs looked thin. Her hair was tied back in a pony-tail. In the midday sunlight her freckled, slightly orange-colored face beamed its usual confidence; her eyes danced as she strode toward him, her purse under her arm. “Have you had lunch?” she said.

  Al said, “The old man sold the garage. I have to close up the lot.” He heard his tone; it was as dire as possible. It was obvious even to him that he wanted to destroy her mood; he did it without guilt, too. “So don’t be so jolly,” he said. “Let’s be realistic. I can’t keep these heaps working without Fergesson. Christ, what do I know about car repair? I’m just a salesman.” In his most depressed moods he thought of himself that way: as a used car salesman.

  “Who’d he sell it to?” she said. Her smile remained, but it was cautious now.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” he said.

  She started at once toward the entrance of the garage. “I’ll ask,” she said. “I’ll find out what they’re going to do; you don’t have sense enough to find out.” She disappeared inside the garage.

  Should he follow her? He did not feel much like seeing the old man again. But on the other hand, it was his job to discuss the thing, not his wife’s. So he followed along, knowing that her quick, long-legged stride would get her inside well before him. And sure enough, when he entered the garage, and his eyes had had time to adjust to the dim light, he found her standing with the old man, in conversation.

  Neither paid him any attention as he came slowly up.

  Speaking in his usual hoarse, low voice, the old man was explaining what he had explained to Al; he went over the same ground, in almost the same words. As if, Al thought, it was a set speech he had put together. The old man told her that the choice was not his, as she well knew, because his doctor had told him he could no longer do the heavy kind of work that auto-repairing entailed, and so forth. Al listened without interest, standing so that he could look outside, at the bright midday street and the cars and people going by.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” Julie said in her brisk voice. “This might turn out to be a good thing because possibly now he can go back to school.”

  At that, Al said, “Christ.”

  The old man regarded him, rubbing his right eye, which had become red and swollen; it had something in it, evidendy. Reaching into his hip pocket he brought ou
t a large handkerchief and began touching the corner of it to his eye. He regarded both Al and Julie with what seemed to Al to be cunning and nervousness mixed together. The old man had made up his mind; he had decided on his position, not only regarding his garage, but regarding the two of them. Whether he felt he had done right or not by them did not matter. He would not budge. Al knew him well enough to know that; the old man was too stubborn. Even Julie, with her authoritative tongue, couldn’t affect him.

  “I tell you,” the old man mumbled. “It’s a lousy life, working in this damp drafty place. It’s a wonder I didn’t die years ago. I’ll be glad to get out of here; I deserve a vacation.”

  Julie said, her arms folded, “You could have included a stipulation in the sale that the new owner had to continue the lease of the lot to my husband for the same figure.”

  Ducking his head, the old man said, “Well, I don’t know. That’s up to my broker; I let him handle all that.”

  His wife’s face had become red. Al had rarely seen her as angry as this; her hands were shaking, and that was why she had folded her arms. She was hiding her hands. “Listen,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “Why don’t you just die and will the garage to Al? I mean, you don’t have any children, any family.” She was silent then. As if, Al thought, she knew she had said something bad. And it was bad, he thought. It was unfair. The garage was the old man’s. But of course Julie would never admit that; she would not be bound by facts.

  “Come on,” Al said to her. Taking hold of her arm he forcibly moved her away from the old man, who was mumbling something in answer, toward the entrance and the street.

  “It makes me so furious,” she said, as they came out into the sunlight. “He’s really senile.”

  “Senile, hell,” Al said. “He’s a smart old man.”

  “Like an animal,” she said. “Without regard to others.”

  “He’s done a lot for me,” he said.

  “If you sold all the cars on the lot,” she said, “how much would you get?”

  “About five hundred bucks,” he said. But it would be a little more than that.

  “I can go back on full time,” she said.

  Al said, “I’ll shop around for another location.”

  “You told me you couldn’t do it without his help,” she said. “You said you don’t have enough capital to buy cars that you can put up for sale without—”

  “I’ll make a deal with another garage,” Al said.

  Julie said, “This is the time for you to go back to school.” She halted and faced him firmly.

  In her mind, he needed a college degree. He needed to go three more years—he had gone to the University of California for one year—and then he would be able to get what she called a good job. His degree would be in a practical subject; business administration had been her choice. In his one year he had had no major. He had taken only a general course, a little of this and that. It had not appealed to him and so he had not gone back.

  For one thing, he did not like to be indoors. Perhaps that was why the used-car business attracted him; he could be outside all day long, in the sun. And of course he was his own boss. He could come and go as he pleased; he could open the lot at eight or nine or ten, go to lunch at one or two or three. Stay half an hour, or a whole hour, or even eat his lunch in one of the cars.

  He had built a little building in the center of the lot, out of basalt blocks. It had aluminum window units which he had picked up wholesale; in fact, the wiring, too, had come wholesale, and the roofing, as well as the fixtures. It was almost a house, and he thought of it as such, a house he had built with his own hands, which belonged to him, in which he could go whenever he wanted and stay, out of sight, as long as he wanted. In it he had an electric heater, a desk, a file cabinet; he had magazines to read, and his business papers. Sometimes he had a typewriter which he rented at five dollars a month. Formerly he had had a phone, but that was gone for good.

  If he moved, if he gave up the lot, he would take the house with him. It belonged to him; it was his personal property, as were the cars. Unlike the cars, it was not for sale. One other object which was not for sale and which belonged to him would go along, too. Like the house, he had built it. In the rear of the lot, out of sight, he had a car he had been working on for months. When he had any spare time he turned to it.

  The car was a 1932 Marmon. It had sixteen cylinders and it weighed over five thousand pounds. In the days when it had been in running condition it had gone up to a hundred and seven miles an hour. It had been, in fact, one of the finest autos in the United States, and it had originally cost five thousand five hundred dollars.

  A year ago, Al had come across the old Marmon in a shed. Its condition was deplorable, and he had, after several weeks of haggling, been able to pick up the car for one hundred and fifty dollars, including two extra tires. From what he knew about cars, he believed that when it was fully restored, the Marmon would be worth between two thousand five hundred and three thousand dollars. So, at the time, it had seemed to be a good investment. But for the past year he had been at work on the task of restoration, and it was by no means finished.

  One afternoon, while he had been working on the Marmon, he had looked up to see two colored men standing watching him. A good deal of the sidewalk traffic on the street was colored, and he sold as many cars to Negroes as to whites.

  “Hi,” he said.

  One of the Negroes nodded.

  “What that?” the other asked.

  Al said, “A 1932 Marmon.”

  “Man,” the taller of the two Negroes said. Both men were young. They wore sports coats and white shirts, without ties, and dark slacks. Both seemed well-groomed. One smoked a cigarette, the taller one who had spoken. “Listen,” he said. “Maybe I bring my father to look at that. He like something like that to drive him in, when he got to go to visit in Florida.”

  The other Negro said, “Yeh, he old dad like to ride in a car like that. We go get him; you see.”

  Getting to his feet, Al said, “This is a collectors car.” He then tried to explain to them that the car was not for sale; at least, not in the terms that they would understand. This was not transportation, he explained. This was a treasured heritage from the past, one of the superb old touring cars; in some ways, the finest of them all. And, as he talked, he saw that as a matter of fact they did understand; they understood perfectly. It was just what the taller Negro’s old dad wanted to ride to Florida in. And, thinking about it, Al could see their point. It was just that this car was almost thirty years old, and not in running condition. It had not run in fact since before World War Two.

  The taller Negro said, “You get that old car to run, and maybe we buy it from you.” Both men were very grave; they nodded again and again. “How much you want?” the taller Negro asked. “What you asking for that car, once you get it runnin’ again?”

  Al said, “About three thousand dollars.” And that, certainly, was the truth. That was what it was worth.

  Neither of the two men batted an eye. “That about right,” the taller said, nodding. They exchanged glances, both nodding. “That about what we expect to pay,” the taller Negro said. “Naturally we not pay that all at once. We work through our bank.”

  “That so,” the other agreed. “We put about say six hundred down and the rest on time payment.”

  The two Negroes left presently, again telling him that they would return with the taller Negro’s father. Naturally, he had not expected ever to see them again. But sure enough, the next day there they were again. This time they had with them a short, stout old Negro with vest and silver watch chain and shiny black shoes. The two younger men showed him the Marmon and explained, more or less, the situation that Al had put forth. After deliberation, the old man had come to the conclusion that the car would not do after all, and for what seemed to Al to be a supremely logical reason. The old man did not think that they would have much luck finding tires for it, especially along the highway, bet
ween major towns. So in the end the old man thanked him very formally and declined the car.

  The encounter had stuck in Al’s mind, possibly because after that he had seen a good deal of this particular group of Negroes. They were a family, named Dolittle, and the old gentleman with the vest and silver watch chain was well-to-do. Or at least his wife was. Mrs. Dolittle owned rooming houses and apartment buildings in Oakland. Some of them were in white neighborhoods, and she rented, through a building custodian, to whites. He had found out about this from the two younger men, and after a time he had been able to get a much better apartment for himself and Julie through these people. He and she were living there now, in a renovated three-story wooden building on 56th Street, near San Pablo; they had an upper floor, and it only cost them thirty-five dollars a month.

  The reason for the low rent lay in two conditions. First, this particular building was in a non-exclusive neighborhood, which meant that there was a Negro family on the bottom floor and a Mexican boy and girl with their baby on the top floor. It did not bother him to live in the same building with Negroes and Mexicans, but the other condition did bother him; the wiring and the plumbing in the building were so bad that the Oakland city inspectors were on the verge of condemning the building. Sometimes shorts in the walls kept the power off for several days. When Julie ironed, the wall heated up too hot to be touched. All of the people in the building believed that eventually the building would burn to the ground, but most of them were out of it during the day, and they seemed to feel that because of that they were somehow safe. Once, the bottom of the hot-water heater rusted through, and water leaked out, snuffing out the gas jets and spilling across the floor so that it ruined most of Julie’s rugs and furnishings. Mrs. Dolittle refused to make any sort of refund to them. They had all gone without hot water for almost a month, until at last Mrs. Dolittle had found some part-time plumber who could put in another worn-out hot-water heater for ten or eleven dollars. She had a staff of inferior workmen who could patch up the building just enough to keep the city from closing it on the spot; they kept it going day by day. It was her hope, he heard, to sell it eventually to be torn down. She thought that a parking lot might go in; there was a supermarket around the corner which was interested.