Bubba walked out of the garage, not listening. He got into his Jeep and cranked the engine as anger pecked at him. He could not and would not believe that his buddy Smudge had cheated him. It couldn’t be that Smudge had sold him a piece of shit. The possibility of it resurrected other injustices as Bubba parked inside the garage, in the bay next to the Cougar, and climbed out.
‘I got to tell you right now, Scrat, there’s police brutality in this city,’ Bubba announced.
‘Oh yeah?’ Muskrat mumbled as he started looking at the windshield.
‘I think something’s telling me to do something about it.’
‘Bubba, something’s always telling you something.’
‘There’re reasons too complicated to go into that the new chief, that new woman who just moved here, needs my help, Scrat.’
‘And you always got complicated reasons, Bubba. I’d stay out of it if I were you.’
Bubba could not stop thinking about Chief Hammer. He had heard her name on his cell phone this morning. There was a reason for this; it was not random.
‘It’s time we mobilize, Scrat.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘Citizens like us,’ Bubba said. ‘We gotta get involved.’
‘I can’t find your leak,’ Muskrat said.
‘Right here.’ Bubba pointed to the top of the windshield, near the rearview mirror. ‘The water drips in from this spot here. Want a cigarette?’
Bubba pulled out a pack.
‘You need to cut back, boy,’ Muskrat said. ‘Chew gum. That’s what I do to kill the craving when I’m around gasoline and what all.’
‘You forget I got TMJ. My jaws are killing me.’ Bubba clicked them side to side.
‘I told you not to get all those damn crowns,’ Muskrat said as he retrieved a Windex spray bottle full of water and uncoiled an air hose. ‘You’d probably be better off if he just yanked all of ’em out and fixed you up with a pair of clackers like I got.’
Muskrat grinned, showing off his dentures.
‘I’ll get on the inside with the hose, and when I tell you to, you start spraying,’ said Muskrat.
‘Same thing we did last time,’ Bubba said. ‘And a lot of good it did.’
‘It’s like fixing those crowns of yours,’ Muskrat wouldn’t let up as he sat in the driver’s seat. ‘All you do is go to the dentist. I’d get new ones that don’t look like piano keys if I were you. And you sure as hell ought to replace this windshield. The car’s been wrecked.’ Muskrat had told him this before. ‘That’s why everything keeps going wrong with it, that and the fact that you’re always trying to fix it yourself, Bubba.’
‘It ain’t been wrecked, good buddy,’ Bubba said.
‘It sure as hell has. Where you think all that Bondo came from, the factory?’
‘I won’t have you talking about Smudge that way,’ Bubba told him.
‘I didn’t say a word about Smudge.’
‘Smudge has been my good buddy since we were in Sunday school together, way back.’
‘Way back when you used to go to church and listen to your daddy,’ Muskrat reminded him. ‘Don’t forget, you was the preacher’s kid.’
Bubba was shocked by another memory of name-calling. The flucking preacher’s kid. He had forgotten all about it. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. His bowels came alive.
‘I’m just pointing out, for your own good, Bubba, that it didn’t hurt Smudge one bit to be on the preacher’s good side. Not everybody has as high opinion of Smudge as you do.’
Muskrat had heard every tale there was about everybody in the city who had ever owned a car that needed fixing, including the Dodge Dart belonging to Miss Prum, who happened to be the director of Christian education at the historic downtown Second Presbyterian Church, where Dr. But Fluck had been the senior minister.
‘Look, it’s already six-thirty and I gotta start my shift early tonight, as if my day hasn’t been bad enough. So I guess we’d better get this leak taken care of,’ Bubba said as an Escort drove up and parked outside the shop.
‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ Muskrat said.
He peeled the Jeep’s headliner and its cardboard away from the ceiling and examined the rubbery black polyurethane in the pitch well.