‘Least you didn’t try to fix this one yourself,’ Muskrat observed.
‘Didn’t have time,’ Bubba said.
‘Good thing, since you’re always screwing up things worse,’ Muskrat said candidly.
They did not see the clean-cut kid walk in until he was so close he startled them.
‘Hi,’ the kid said. ‘Didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘Don’t go sneaking up on people like that, son,’ Muskrat said.
‘I got a stuck window,’ the kid told him.
‘Well, you just stand on back and hold your horses,’ Muskrat said. ‘I’ll get with you as soon as I wind up here.’
Bubba hadn’t finished arguing yet.
‘I did my own pigtail wiring on my trailer hitch,’ he said.
‘And you got the turn signal lights backwards,’ Muskrat countered.
‘So what, big deal.’
‘Well, I’ll remind you of a big deal. Remember the serpentine belt?’ Muskrat talked on.
The directions weren’t clear,’ Bubba answered.
‘Well, you fought it out with that one for five hours and still put it on wrong-ribbed against smooth instead of ribbed against ribbed and smooth against smooth, and next thing you’ve lost the alternator, power steering, water pump. You’re just lucky you didn’t lock up the engine and have to get a new one. Bubba, you can start spraying.’
‘Excuse me?’ the kid said politely. ‘You know how long you’ll be?’
‘You’ll have to hold off for just a minute,’ Muskrat told him.
Bubba worked the Windex bottle along the top of the windshield, spraying water near the rearview mirror while Muskrat blasted compressed air at the seal from the inside.
‘Before that,’ Muskrat picked up where he’d left off, ‘you replaced the mercury switch in the trunk and did that wrong, too. So the trunk light stayed on all the time and your battery kept going dead. Before that it was replacing your brakes and putting the pad in backwards, and the time before that, you left out the antirattle spring, the horseshoe clip in the emergency brake, and the lever fell into the drum.’
Bubba winked at the kid as if to imply that Muskrat was exaggerating. Muskrat walked over to a workbench, where the heater box was warming up several tubes of SikaTack Ultrafast polyurethane. He picked up a caulking gun and dropped a tube inside it.
‘Remember the time you forgot the cotter pin and the tire rod fell off and both wheels went out spread-eagle?’ Muskrat kept on.
‘He can tell a story,’ Bubba said to the kid.
Water trickled down the inside of the glass. Muskrat ran a thick bead of black polyurethane, licking his finger and pressing it flat. He stepped out of the car and ran a thin bead on the outside of the glass.
‘We need to wait about fifteen minutes to test it again,’ he said. ‘Truth is, none of the seals in this thing are tight. Bet you get a lot of wind noise.’
Bubba wasn’t going to admit it. Muskrat walked over to the solvent bin and dipped his hands in the murky fluid.
‘What’cha need?’ Muskrat finally said to the kid.
‘My left rear power window won’t work.’ The young man was courteous, but his eyes were hard.
‘The motor’s probably gone bad,’ volunteered Bubba the ace mechanic. ‘But you’re gonna have to wait. I was here first.’
‘We got a few minutes,’ Muskrat told Bubba. ‘Let me go on and take care of him.’
Muskrat dried his hands and walked outside to the Escort. He opened the back door and popped the panel off as the young man scanned his surroundings.
‘Bubba, how ’bout bringing me the wire strippers,’ Muskrat said. ‘You’re lucky,’ he told his young customer. ‘It ain’t the switch or the motor. You got a broke wire between the door and the jamb. All I gotta do is splice it. What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Smoke.’
‘Now that’s a new one,’ Muskrat commented.
‘What everybody calls me.’ Smoke shrugged. ‘Hope you get your problem taken care of,’ he then said to Bubba. ‘I’m new around here. People seem really nice.’
‘It’s the South,’ Bubba bragged.
‘I guess you’re from here.’
‘Couldn’t be from anyplace else. In fact, I’m even more southern than I used to be.’