‘On Hungary Springs Road.’ Fling was warmed by the memories. ‘You know, Godwin isn’t the only good school around.’
West walked back into the office, defiant in a khaki suit that complemented the darkness of her eyes and deep red of her hair. Her body was far finer than she deserved for as little as she did to help it along.
‘What?’ she asked impatiently.
‘You ought to go out to Hermitage, too. Talk with the students there, you know,’ Fling was going on and on. ‘That’s the thing about doing one school. What about the others?’
‘In case you’ve forgotten,’ Brazil said to West as he tightened the laces of his Rocky boots, ‘you’re supposed to go with me to Godwin.’
‘Shit,’ she said.
CHAPTER five
Muskrat’s Auto Rescue was Bubba’s home away from home, and today especially, he was grateful. It didn’t matter that Officer Budget had let Bubba go with only a warning. Bubba was traumatized. The cop had called Bubba names. The cop had brought back old injuries and humiliations and then had been so unfair and ugly as to accuse Bubba of being the one with prejudices.
Muskrat’s shop was behind his brick rancher on several junk-scattered acres off Clopton Street, between Midlothian and Hull. The fence bordering Muskrat’s garage and its outbuildings was built of old railroad ties piled like Lincoln Logs. Transmissions littered the hard-packed dirt tail housings covered with plastic quart oil bottles to keep out the rain. Cars, vans, pickups, a tractor trailer and an old fire truck used each year in the Azalea Parade were parked wherever Muskrat had left them last. Bubba pulled up to the shop’s open bay door, cut the engine and climbed out.
He was momentarily cheered by Muskrat’s automotive kingdom, which could very well have passed for a chop shop were most of the parts not rusty and from an earlier stage of vehicle evolution. Bubba stepped around an ancient air jack and a bearing press. He made his way through miscellaneous flowerpots, coils of garden hoses, fenders, headlights, hoods, bumpers, car seats, stacks of split firewood and fifty-five-gallon drums overflowing with junk parts.
Bubba was convinced, although he spoke of it rarely, that there was a Bermuda Triangle for vehicles. He believed cars and trucks swept up in floods and tornadoes, or perhaps gone and believed stolen, ended up in places like Muskrat’s shop, where they would be cared for and used to help humans continue their journeys through this life. Bubba intended to write this insight to Click and Clack’s Car Talk on the Internet or perhaps to his favorite, Miss Lonely Parts, a syndicated columnist who was really a man.
‘Hey Scrat!’ Bubba called out.
He walked inside the garage, where an old furnace burned a mixture of dirty motor oil and firewood.
‘Scrat? Where the hell are ya?’ Bubba tried again.
Muskrat wasn’t always easy to locate within the jumbles of heater cores, batteries, oil pans, grease guns, chains, tow ropes, bungee straps, gas lines, vacuum hoses, homemade jumper cables, stands made of old Ford wheels, clutches. Pressure plates were stacked like doughnuts on sections of exhaust pipes. There were grinders, a chain horse to lift out engines, and hundreds of American and metric wrenches, ratchets, pliers, chisels, awls, vises, presses, springs, drill bits, spark plugs, dead blow mallets and brass hammers.
‘How come you got the heat on, Scrat?’
‘To keep my joints from aching. What’dya try to fix this time?’ Muskrat’s voice was muffled under a jacked-up 1996 Mercury Cougar.
‘Who tried to fix?’ Bubba accused.
Muskrat was flat on his back on a creeper. He rolled out from underneath the car, suddenly there, a wizard in a mechanic’s blue work pants and shirt and a NAPA Auto Parts cap.
‘What do you mean, I tried?’ asked Muskrat, who was at least seventy, with hands rough and hard like horn.
‘Windshield’s leaking again,’ Bubba let him know. ‘You fixed it last, Scrat.’
‘Uh huh,’ Muskrat said blandly as he snatched toilet paper from an industrial roll overhead and began cleaning his glasses. ‘Well, drive her on in here, Bubba. I’ll take a look but I keep telling you to get the boys at Harding Glass to put in a new windshield. Or dump the damn thing altogether and get something that don’t break down every other minute.’