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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
December 4, 2005
Published as Fiction
in a WIP dated May 22, 2001.
© 2001 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Windmill (Blue), 2002
© 2002 by Bud Grossmann
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THE START OF A LONG DRIVE
FROM MAY UNTIL AUGUST
As the day’s light was fading, one Thursday late in May, Gilbert Lowden, reading Consumer Reports beside an open window in the living room of his suburban Baltimore home, felt a tremor in his chest and, at the same time, recognized the pleasing fragrance of incompletely burnt gasoline. Instantly euphoric, he rushed out the door, crossed the tree-lined street, and went straight to the home of his neighbors, Clayton and Kimberly Preston. Nice people, the Prestons, but, in the two or three years since they’d moved in, directly across the way, Lowden probably hadn’t engaged in ten minutes of conversation with either of them. The Lowdens’ girls were grown and gone, but the Prestons’ four sons were all at home, all under the age of twelve. Kimberly home-schooled the boys—that much Lowden knew—but he had no idea, for instance, what the dad did for a living.
“Hey, Clay, whatchu got here?” Lowden greeted his neighbor, who had the hood up on an idling Chevrolet. For the first time, only the day before, Lowden had seen the car, a two-door hardtop Impala, red with white trim. It was parked on the grass beside the Prestons’ driveway.
“You tell me,” Preston said with a grin.
“I’m going to say it’s a ’63.”
“Real close, Gil. ’61 she is. The year I was born.”
Lowden did the math. Geez Louise, this guy was only forty years old! “Man, it’s gorgeous!”
Preston hummed happily. “Mmm, hmm. Thanks,” he said. Then, to his son, his ten-year-old, who had opened the passenger door, he said, “Don’t go in there, Jason, with your baseball shoes on.”
“This a 283?” asked Lowden. “I don’t really know a lot about Chevies, or about anything, to tell the truth, but, man, this thing brings back memories!”
“Yes, a 283. It’s a show car, but it’s not all original. I’ve had it garaged, but I figured it’s time now to enjoy it. Bought it in ’93 when we lived in Philly. I let my friend put a different carburetor on it. That’s not stock. Neither’s the trans, four-on-the-floor. He put in a cam.”
“I can feel it,” Lowden said, his chest still vibrating with the ragged rumble of the V-8.
“Paint used to be blue,” said Preston.
“Blue! You got places where you can see the blue? My buddy’s dad, when I was in high school in Nebraska, had a blue ’62. Only a six, and three-on-the-column. Farmer’s car. Bel Air. Four-door, of course. Vinyl upholstery, AM only, no frills whatsoever.” Lowden looked across the street at his own home, where the closed garage contained a Caravan and a Lexus. Lights were on in the kitchen, but otherwise the house was dark. “He let me borrow it once, my high school pal....”
“Here’s the paint,” said Preston. “I had to take this trim off to replace the window rubbers.”
That was it, the blue of the farmer’s car, blue-gray in the glow of Preston’s porch light. Lowden’s palms dampened while his mouth went dry at the memory of a certain night, the one and only time he’d driven that Bel Air. When was that? Had to’ve been ’67 or ’68.
Preston closed the hood, kerchunk. “How ’bout we take it around the block, Gil?”
“Hey, Clay, okay! Sure! Give me a sec. Let me tell Celeste.”
Clayton Preston was already behind the wheel, revving the rough-running engine, when Gilbert Lowden climbed in on the passenger’s side. Before he brought his feet in, though, and placed them on the Impala’s red-rug floor mat, Lowden thumped his ankles together to knock off any grit that might be on the soles of his shoes.
“Whoa! Wide-open spaces!” he said, sitting back on the bench seat and stretching his arms to full length to touch his fingertips to the unpadded dash. “No belts. Imagine putting your teeth up against this ledge in a sudden stop.” He tapped a finger against the painted steel of the instrument panel, above the AM-FM-8-Track.
Preston chuckled. Looking back, over his right shoulder, as he backed cautiously out to the street, he nodded toward the rear seat and said, “Look at that, Gil. Big as a living room couch. Back bubble window’d let you look at the stars when you’re parked with some girl. Baby maker, car like this!”
In the street, Preston took two tries to find first gear. He eased the pedal out, but the clutch grabbed, and the Impala eagerly leaped. Lowden sank back in the seat, sank back through the dimness of decades, to a distant place on the prairie, to a borrowed blue Bel Air.
This is the first part
of a two-part story.
♦
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