Cold Rain

Chapter 18

I sounded like a bogue. Bogues can always get you the money next week. I didn’t blame Gail for worrying. We were bailing out of our property. My job was in jeopardy. With a divorce Molly was likely to get most of the cash, and that left the lawyer standing in line with the bankers and credit card companies.

I decided not to worry about it for the time being.

I had enough worries on my mind just going home.

Home always made me think about Tubs, because even dead the old bastard wasn’t finished with me.

My mother hadn’t collected on Chrysler stock, of course. That was just typical David Albo bullshit. The thing I told Buddy happened, though. Up to a point.

Tubs had predicted a comeback. The salespeople had laughed their asses off, and he had called his broker ordering five thousand shares! The broker talked Tubs out of it.

Mom had a pension and a big old house in the downtown that wasn’t worth much more than what they paid for it forty years ago. She imagined herself a poor old widow, though she was mostly just afraid to spend her money. She had plenty, actually, but her fears let her miss out on the cruises her friends were taking. She drove an old car she was afraid to trade because Tubs always took care of the cars, and even with four sons, well, they didn’t know cars like Tubs, did they?

When Mom wasn’t worrying about her own finances, she liked to scold her prodigal sons for the debts we took on so blithely. We all lived in nice houses and drove nice cars, and charged whatever we liked on our nice credit cards, the typical American family.

Suddenly, I wasn’t in the mood to hear her scolding, because her dire predictions had come true for me. I was in trouble, and beginning to imagine everything I had juggled for years would come crashing down on me. But there was no way out of it once I’d called: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: the smothering embrace of home.

It wasn’t quite as bad as I anticipated. A lot of TV, a lot of beer, a couple of late night escapes from the nieces and nephews down to our favourite watering hole, and, on the last night, a heart-to-heart with my oldest brother in which I suggested it was maybe time for me to change careers. If not now, I said, it was never going to happen. What was I looking at? The question hung between us until we both grinned: Anything but cars!

‘The old man,’ my brother told me with a shake of his head, ‘stayed at it too long. With the money he made, Tubs could have bought his own dealership.

Instead, he just kept trudging down to that Ford lot until it killed him.’

I shook my head. ‘Tubs was a lousy manager. As a dealer he would have lost his shirt.’

I was the baby in the family, my brother reminded me. I didn’t know how it was when Tubs was still fairly young. He remembered hearing Tubs talk about how much he hated the car lot. His comments sparked a memory: a long morning in the sun, Tubs making a rare offer to buy me lunch. He drove us out to a little restaurant at the edge of town famous for its pies.

Tubs was not a serious drinker. He might hold a drink all night, then set it down untouched. He would drink a beer on the Fourth of July and talk about how good it tasted, but that was it. He never went back for a second bottle and might not even touch another until the next Fourth. Pie was different. The man lived for pie. Sometimes his lunch was a store-bought apple pie.

Sometimes he would raid the vending machines with a stack of quarters and take every pie in sight. Given a choice, he naturally preferred freshly baked pies. He could talk about hot apple pie the way poets of old crooned about unrequited love.

On the afternoon that he took me to lunch, the air was rich with the odour of apple pie. The waitress knew Tubs just like bartenders know the alcoholics.

‘Fresh out of the oven this morning, Tubs!’

Tubs ordered a whole pie for each of us without asking me what I wanted. As we walked toward an open booth, he said to me, ‘The car business, Davey, is just too hard on a man. One of these days, I’m going to buy a little place like this and sell pies! You don’t have to twist a man’s arm to get him to take a piece of pie!’

I was still young. I hadn’t finished my undergraduate degree. I could make more money in three months than some people made in a whole year, and all because of what I had learned at my father’s knee. Tubs was, in my innocence, a man who could teach the world.

He knew the truth about people. He knew the words that could move a person to action. He read the hearts of people even if their words masked their intentions.

He could lead people to a crossroads and show them how to let go of their fear. In five minutes, sometimes in five seconds, Tubs could tell you who made the decisions in a marriage, the small ones and the big ones. He could wreck the tranquillity of the happiest couple without them understanding what he had done, if it would move them to a decision. He could neutralize the brother or cousin or meddling aunt if one or all of them were sitting in the closing booth and stopping a couple from making a decision. He could tell you a story and make you want to drive a brand-new Ford because of it, or even a used Chrysler if that was your heart’s desire. He had that power, and the only thing Tubs wanted from it was to settle his fat ass in front of all the pie he could eat and not have to pay retail for it.

The man’s fantasies broke my heart. I thought he didn’t love his talent, and it was a talent. I never saw the like of it, but if it was only to keep his fat belly full, as if he thought he might really go hungry if someone walked away from him, it was a waste of genius.

It was against family policy to defend Tubs. We had it written in the family handbook. He had left the house early every morning and come home late every night. Saturday was a workday. Sunday he went to church to pray to God to keep the Bogues away. When he bothered to deal with any of us at the house, it was usually something that got us fighting among ourselves so we would leave him alone. What worked at the lot worked at home. All Tubs wanted was to have his own way.

Old habits kicked in. I couldn’t tell my brother he was wrong about Tubs. I was not going to say Tubs did what he loved until the day he died, but I could disagree with the cause of death. ‘It wasn’t the car lot that killed the old bastard. It was the pie!’

The next day, Saturday, I wandered out to the Ford dealership. Milt was still the manager, the only face on the lot I knew. Though it had been a while, Milt recognized me at once and broke into a smile. ‘You need a job,’ he called out to me as I walked up, ‘I’ve got one for you! All I’ve got here are order-takers!’ A few heads turned, salespeople bristling at the insult or maybe just checking out the competition.

I shook his hand. Not today, I said. ‘I just came by because I wanted to give you something.’ I handed him an autographed copy of Jinx. Milt handled the book with the enthusiasm of a boy who has just received a pair of socks on Christmas morning.

His words were kinder. ‘Well that’s… that’s real thoughtful, David. I don’t read much, but I’ll give it a shot.’

‘It’s about us,’ I said.

Milt looked at me without quite getting it.

‘Life in the wastelands,’ I said, gesturing toward the lot, using Milt’s own phrase.

He flashed his big yellow horse teeth at me. ‘You wrote a book about us? Is it X-rated?’

‘You remember Debbie?’

‘Debbie does DeKalb? You put that in?’

‘Her name is Connie Q.’

‘What’s the page?’

‘Start at the beginning.’

‘Is Tubs in it?’

‘Tubs is Jinx. You’re Stitch, and Larry the Liar…well, he’s Larry the Liar.’

‘Hey! That lopsided set of duck nuts has himself a little church down in Peoria! Can you believe it?

Preaching Jesus once a week and raising hell the rest of the time!’

I shook my head for Milt’s sake, but I wasn’t surprised. Larry had always had a soft spot for the Baptist girls.

We talked about the car business. Milt asked me about school. I expect we both lied. While we talked, different sales people approached with deals or troubles. Milt ran the place and never lost track of what he was telling me, but it was obvious he was busy. I said that I had better go. I had a plane to catch. Milt kicked the tire of one of the cars in the showroom.

‘Ol’ Tubs,’ he said nostalgically, the first mention of my dad since I had handed him my novel. ‘I mean but that man could sell cars!’

‘Did he like it, you think?’ I asked. I wanted to believe Tubs knew the gift he possessed. I wanted assurance that the thing with pie, that was just a moment of weakness.

Milt grinned at me with his horse teeth. ‘You remember the first time you turned a hard case around, David? The very first tough sale you brought in with no one’s help?’

‘The first sale I made,’ I answered.

Milt nodded. I knew he wasn’t thinking about my first sale, though he had been there. He was thinking about his own. ‘Every sale was like that for your dad.’

He thought about it for a moment. ‘The day he died he said to me, “I got some folks coming in tomorrow, Milt. If I’m not here, you take them yourself. They’re buyers. I don’t want them to get away!” So I asked him why he wouldn’t be here. Tubs never missed a day of work in his life. He said he thought he had a touch of the flu. Hadn’t felt good all day. David, your old man sold three cars for me thinking he had the flu. Turned out he’d had a heart attack that morning!

Most people can’t sell three cars on their best day.

And all he could think about was making sure we got the next one. Did he like it? He lived it, brother! You had his talent, too. Tubs said so himself.’ Milt shook his head with a bit of sadness. ‘But I could see after the first couple of summers you weren’t going to stay with it. Your skills got better but your heart wasn’t in it!’

‘I guess I just realized I was never going to be as good as the old man.’

Milt shook his head, but he wasn’t disagreeing with me. ‘Tubs used to say God calls the preachers, but the Devil calls the salesmen, and the worst of us peddle cars. You don’t spend your life out here in the wastelands unless it’s your calling. Not that I wouldn’t trade places with you! You go into that classroom and even if you’re not having a good day they hand you a pay check! Huh? Am I right? They ever cut your check back for a bad lecture?’

‘It’s a hell of a gig,’ I said.

‘Just don’t let it turn you soft, friend. You lose the edge, you lose everything. Your dad taught me that!’