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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
January 4, 2009
Previously unpublished fiction.
© 2009 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Wrecked T-Bird, 1969
© 1969 by Bud Grossmann
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RESOLVING A MISUNDERSTANDING
WITH A TOUGH GUY
First time I ever saw my friend Nick’s ’53 Chevy, bronze below and cream on top, was in Oakland, California, on a sunny Saturday in May in 1969. I happened to be putting some stuff in the trunk of my VW parked in the alley alongside of the men’s dorm at the college where I was a sophomore. Nick and I were buddies from high school days in Wisconsin, but he was in the Navy then, assigned to the Hancock, home-berthed in Alameda.
The alley was dead-ended, with my car and a couple others parked parallel up against the three-story dorm and a few cars parked diagonally on the other side. There were empty stalls that day, but when Nick saw me, he stopped in the middle of the road, took the car out of gear, sat there with the engine idling. Six cylinders. A big step down, I was thinking, from the gorgeous black ’56 T-Bird he’d owned for a month and then smashed to hell in the Posey Tunnel.
I go up to Nick and say, “Hey, man, how you doin’.” I rap my knuckles on the door. “Yours?”
“Just bought it,” he says. He takes a last deep drag on a Marlboro and flicks the butt out onto the pavement.
“Nice,” I say. About the car.
Nick’s wearing sunglasses and so am I. He turns off the ignition, removes his sunglasses, lays them on the seat. He says to me, “Take off your glasses, man. Take ’em off.”
“What’s this about?” I say. I step back. He’s still in the car. He’s smiling, a teeth-together smile.
“Come over here,” he growls. “C’mere, man. Take off your glasses.”
I stay where I’m at, hold my hands up, palms out. “What’s the matter with you, Nick? I don’t want to fight you.” Oh, hell, no, this is not a guy I’d ever think of fighting. I’ve heard plausible reports of damage he has done.
“Take your glasses off,” he says once more. “Take off those shades, Dave, so you can see my eyes!” He smiles big now, opens wide his eyes. “Look at my pupils, man!” he orders me with joy. “I am on speeeeeed!” he sings. ♦
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