splat chapter twelve

The wheel wouldn't turn again the next morning. Suzie put the last of the power steering fluid into the reservoir, intensely annoyed. That does it, she thought. I'm going to get this fixed. Good thing this is my day off. So she drove down to Nelson's in total clarity. He had to fix it; it had to be fixed. She couldn't drive like this, with her car falling apart around her.

It was just after noon when she pulled into the garage parking lot. All the bay doors were open; there didn't seem to be too many customers waiting to get their cars seen to. Suzie was hopeful. She parked next to the lake of putrid fluids at the lowest corner of the back lot, carefully avoiding the green and purple sludge gleaming in the sun, and made her way to the back of the shop.

She'd called ahead, using Alex's cellphone, which still had a few minutes. Nelson was expecting her, so he didn't look surprised. He looked haggard, instead, and she immediately felt sorry for him.

'Hey Baby wuzzup,' he said, sidling up to her and slinging a long arm around her shoulder, looking like some rail-thin, seven foot tall baboon. If there were ropes attached to the ceiling, he could use them for working on cars. 'Did you bring me your car to fix the air conditioning?'

'Um,' she said, 'I just came by to see you for a couple of minutes.' She gave him a hug, her head resting somewhere low on his ribcage, trying to reach up so she could hear his heart beating. 'But it's my power steering. It's broken. It leaked a whole quart yesterday.'

'Yes, yes,' he said, magnanimously, 'we'll pull it right on in there after we finish with that one,' pointing to a blue minivan in the southeast bay near the air conditioning machine. He wasn't specific about when they'd be able to get to her car, and it would of course turn out that the car he pointed to had nothing to do with why they couldn't get to it right away. Nelson looked weary and hassled. 'Just let me slam down this lunch somebody brought me.'

'You just do whatever it is you need to,' she said, feeling badly for him. 'I'm just grateful that I've got you around to help me when my car falls apart.'

'You know I'd do anything for you, Sweetie,' he said. And she felt momentarily warm and protected.

Nelson went off to look at the progress on the blue minivan, and she wanted to follow him, but held back because she didn't want him thinking she was dogging him. So she took herself off to sit in her car in the back lot. She could see the sky off to the north from there, and was watching a low scuddy purple line of murk starting to get thicker. In the South, stuff rolls over from the Mississippi valley every couple of days in the late spring, sopping up all that damp air from the Gulf and slopping it over Atlanta's foothills in buckets. She loved rain. As long as she wasn't driving in it.

After a few minutes, she went back into the garage and sat on the stool in front of the emissions testing equipment. She was very near the absolute center of the garage, and could see over the toolboxes and car hoods to where Nathan and Abercrombie, a sometime helper, were poking around under the hood of some green car in the southwest bay over the oil pit. Over in the southeast bay, the blue minivan sat up on the racks, four feet in the air with its wheels off. It was getting its brakes done. The noise of the rotor grinder drowned out whatever Nelson was telling Nathan and Abercrombie, but she could tell just by his arm movements that he was pissed.

He came back shaking his head. 'Those boys have cornmeal mush for brains,' he said. 'They're doing everything wrong, and if I don't keep a close eye on them''

I hope they don't fuck up working on my car, she thought.

'We've got to get out of here on time, today, so they'd better not fuck up,' he said like a mind-reader, stalking off like he was on stilts, and disappearing into the office to make a phone call.

Nathan broke away from doing something with a long breaker bar under the green car's hood, walked over to the blue minivan, and picked up a hammer. Then he went over to the wheel and started whanging on the brake housing, rhythmically cursing with every blow. Finally a piece flew off and clanged on the floor. He peered closely at it, and, satisfied, lay the tool down in the box, kicked the part into the corner, and went back to the green car.

Twenty minutes goes by slower in a repair shop than a doctor's waiting room. There's only so much to hold your interest, even though the place is full of interesting things. But once you've thumped a fifty-gallon drum of motor oil, and inspected the quarter-inch thick layer of grime on the wash-up sink next to the emissions bay, and leafed through various stained and soiled parts manuals, you lose any interest in ongoing inspection, and just do like the boys do and ignore the filth. Suzie spent this particular twenty minutes watching ants devour the remains of Nelson's lunch, sitting on the worktable.

The blue minivan was still hanging listlessly with its wheels off when Nelson decided it was getting late and it was time to deal with her car. He couldn't put it into the northwest or southwest bays, because both of them had pits underneath them for oil changes, and they were getting a lot of oil changes that day. And he couldn't put it in the northeast bay because of emissions, which were the lifeblood of the business. The south bay was occupied by a completely unattended car with its hood up, which meant that there was a part on order and they were waiting for the delivery guy.

So he had her pull up behind the GTO in the north bay, with her rear wheels out in the parking lot. She popped the hood, and everyone stopped what they were doing and came over to inspect her car, standing around like EMT technicians arriving at the scene. Hmm, is it going to live, should we move it, what happens if we lift its head?

They were trying to determine exactly where the leak was coming from, so they all stuck their heads in and peered into the grime for clues. She could see the drip from its underside, and kept pointing it out, but they ignored her because of course she knew nothing about engines. Suzie who grew up in the copilot's seat of a big rig.

'We're not going to be able to tell what's leaking until we take it off,' Nelson finally pronounced. Everyone stood around looking at each other as he thought through the logistics of the job.

'Aight. We've got to move this bottle,'' he pointed at the plastic radiator-fluid container that was squeezed in next to the leaking reservoir, 'and take off this strap,' his finger brushed a three inch chunk of metal that was holding down hoses, 'and get this out of here,' this being what looked like a tieback cleat for a living room curtain, and the purpose of which was never made clear to her.

'Then there are bolts inside this pulley,' he pointed to a round wheel thing underneath the reservoir, 'and maybe we'll have to take the belt off, or not. And that's it.' He backed off from the engine, looking pleased that he'd figured out how to handle this.

He looked at the clock. It was almost two. 'Simple. Aight, Nathan, get to it.' And he stalked off into the office.

Suzie felt a little anxious suddenly, after watching them attacking the green car. They tended to be pretty fast and free with the well-being of any car in their hands, and she wasn't all that sure she could make them careful by her will alone.

She wandered back outside to have a look at the sky. The garage had all six bay doors open most of the year, and in the spring it was breezy and cool inside. She'd been feeling gentle zephyrs calling her for the last few minutes, but hadn't wanted to leave her car in case she missed Nelson's prognosis. Once the pressure was off, and Nelson had everything settled, the boys had gone back to what they were in the middle of doing before. So she wandered back outside, worried that they might not get it all done today, and she would be without a car.

It was starting to look like more than just a matter of lifting, twisting, unpinning and replacing. It was more like take this off to get at this to take it off to get at that, before you can get to the things holding down the thing you want to replace. She shivered with fear.

The sky was becoming interesting. The dark band at the horizon had progressed to a dark band taking up a third of the sky. Completely overcast now, the sky was the color of skim milk, with only a vague generality of a sun. To the southeast, the sky was white cotton candy spread out like hair on a pillow. To the northwest, the sky was dark purple, smooth and featureless, and at the horizon it was deep black. The approaching rain was about an hour away. How exciting, she thought. There'll be lightning. Probably not enough cloudbase for a tornado, though.

When she went back in, Nathan was busy undoing small bolts with an extension ratchet and putting them into a metal tray sitting perched on the front of her engine. Abercrombie was standing beside her poor car holding an airhose, fixing to connect it to a drill so they could take off more bolts quicker. Suzie wasn't certain, but she didn't think Nelson had meant for him to take off anything in other parts of the engine compartment.

'So, Nathan, whatcha going to do now?' she asked, hiding her suspicions. Where was Nelson?

'Well, if I take this off, then all I have to do is take that off,' pointing to a nerve plexus of electrical wiring, 'and we've got it.' He tried to look like Nelson, but that look of wisdom and lordly beneficence was believable only if you already had a noble-looking face and it was perched on a 7'8½'' frame. On Nathan's round head and stumpy body, it looked like a clown face. He looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a guy with Down's Syndrome. Except for he had bright yellow dyed hair, and a red face, and a way of looking around with sly eyes to see if you were looking back. And then he'd flash a debonair grin at you for noticing.

She couldn't dismiss her suspicion that Nathan was inches away from doing real damage to her car, especially when he went over to where he left the breaker bar and brought it back to rest on the edge of her engine compartment. She got up from her perch at the worktable and went off to find Nelson.

He was on the phone in the office, having a conversation with someone. It looked personal. Maybe it was his sister, who called him a lot. He was always kind to his sister; they had a close relationship. Suzie waited until he finished, watching him twist his toe into the floor under his desk while murmuring his affection and promising to speak with her later.

'Nelson, I just thought I should tell you. I think Nathan's doing something he probably shouldn't with my car.'

'Nathan, you complete idiot,' Nelson said after a short inspection of his work. 'I never for one minute told you to go over and disconnect the radiator. And what's this, you're over here taking shit off the front of the engine? Nathan, what am I gonna do with you?' He was screeching. 'Why don't you just do what I tell you and live an easy life?'

Nelson sounded hopping mad, but wasn't acting like it. His face was composed, he was being gentle, patting him on the back, acting like Nathan was simple in the head and just couldn't process things very well.

Suzie could see that Nathan was fiercely intelligent, in his own mind. His sly looks were not because he wanted to see people admire him, but to catch them jeering. All his life people had laughed at him for being stupid. But they'd never laughed at him for being lazy. To his way of thinking, unbridled enthusiasm was every bit as valuable as skills and common sense. He'd show them, and they'd appreciate him in the end - this is what kept him going.

Nelson yelled at Nathan for a few more minutes, waving the bolt tray around and making the bolts rattle and jump. He told Nathan to put back all the bolts that he'd taken off, and screw whatever it was back in real tight. And then Nelson dashed off to another part of the shop to see what Nubby was up to. But now Suzie was worried, and so she watched every step.

The moment Nelson's back was turned, Nathan went back to unbolting something deep in the engine, pulling the bolt out of the end of the ratchet and putting it in his pocket. And continued unbolting. And got the flat of Nelson's hand upside his head and another talking-to while putting them back on again a couple of minutes later.

Nathan bent over the engine compartment, ratchet in hand. ''Give me that socket,'' he said to Abercrombie.

'Which one?' Abercrombie asked, looking around bewildered.

'The eleven.'

Abercrombie looked around at the sill of the hood where bolts, tools and disassembled car parts were being stashed. 'I already gave it to you.'

Nathan searched the engine compartment, then took the hang light off its perch on the air cleaner, sweeping several loose bolts into the depths as he did so. He heard them clinking against the motor and grinned sheepishly. 'Guess I'll have to get that,' he said, ducking under the car.

He knelt down on the floor, in shorts and socks and ugly black workshoes. He had hairy puffy legs, and he was on his knees in a mixture of grime, filth, grease, oil, power steering fluid, and green radiator blood. He looked like some demented yellow-haired satanist praying, as he went fishing under the car for all sorts of stuff that had dropped into the engine compartment during the first thirty-seven minutes of the repair. Suzie averted her eyes.

The sky was advancing nicely. Suzie edged out into the parking lot for a moment. She could see the rain line about ten miles off; maybe half an hour, the way the clouds had been creeping along. There were definite mammatus bulges happening in the dark purple sections. Maybe there was more to that line of clouds than there looked. Maybe a tornado. Suzie's hopes lifted.

The air was looking mighty dim under the base of that line, boding well for a convincing downpour. The wind was starting to pick up, and it felt six degrees colder than it had the last time she went outside. The half of the sky that was dark cloud before was now three quarters of a sky of purple gray cloud bottom, and the folds and swirls of thick air changed quickly enough to watch, so she stood there for a little while, experiencing the approach of the weather, feeling the wind in her hair.

She'd forgotten to watch over her car, and suddenly remembered, and scrambled back inside when she heard Nelson yelling. She felt guilty to discover that Nathan had removed the hubcap and had started unbolting lug nuts on the righthand wheel. She hadn't noticed the Xeeem of the airgun they used to remove tires, but unless it was musical, she didn't tend to notice noise.

Nelson leaned into the car with both hands, wrenching at something that Nathan had only partially freed, cursing 'You goddamn idiot, you're dumber than a sack of potatoes.' Nathan stopped to think over that image, and the rest of what Nelson had to say went into his potato-head ears and came right out the other side. Suzie could see it. Like she could see puffs of smoke coming out of his ears when he was really thinking hard.

What was so cool about Nathan was that nothing ever fazed him. No matter what horrible thing he'd done, like when he unscrewed the radiator cap while the car was hot and shot boiling green liquid all over himself. The radiator vomited steaming fluid all over the engine compartment and all over the floor, and he had to put down a bag of clay to soak it up, ducking and grinning and saying, 'Oops,' and trying to explain why it wasn't his fault, and hoping this didn't mean you didn't like him no more. He was like a Wookie with puppy dog eyes and a blond wig.

Like a broken record, Nelson told him, 'Just finish taking this retainer off here,' he said, leaning in to wrench the bolt free himself, 'and lift this off. See how simple? Give me the breaker bar.' And Nathan stood there handing Doctor Nelson his instrument and watching as the master levered the engine up and away from the motor mount.

'I think you should lever it from there,' Nathan said, pointing at the alternator.

Nelson ignored his suggestion. 'Go on, get on in there and get that bolt,' he ordered. Nathan took the ratchet and reached for the bolt. The socket was the wrong size. It was always the wrong size. He smiled shyly as he admitted his predicament, grabbed another socket, and bent into the engine, grinning; doing a little shimmy on the way down and wagging his butt in the air while everyone stood around watching him, the center of attention. Not in a good way, but Nathan didn't care. Negative attention is like a hot Krispy Kreme when you're used to being ignored.

Slowly the correct parts of Suzie's car came off. Then there was a little complication. When Nathan was mostly through unbolting a cable retainer, Nelson discovered that there was a vital electrical connection running back further into the engine compartment that had to be dealt with first.

After much ado, Nelson grabbed a wrench and tackled it, looming over the engine. He fought valiantly with several bolts and tore a clip harness clean off the side of the engine and threw it onto the ground with a curse, then went back in for more, and finally wrenched enough slack into the wires to be able to lift the power steering pump off its moorings.

All this went on in a tense atmosphere, as the interns piled up to watch world famous Doctor Nelson accomplish the first ever brain transplant. Tension, concentration. Silence. He demanded silence. 'How can I be the only one working?' he complained on noticing their big eyes.

'I'm working my ass off, with all y'all standing around jawing and gabbing. Aight, y'all can get on back to work now.' And everyone turned suddenly, pretending to be doing something else - combing their hair, checking their zipper, picking up a tool - and slunk noiselessly off.

Then there was another little complication. There was a pulley attached to the pump, and it had a belt going between it and the alternator. To get it off, Nathan had to pull on the belt while Nelson lifted the engine with the prybar. 'You got to pull it straight up,' Nelson insisted. Nathan kept pulling it off to one side, scraping it against the sharp edge of the pulley. 'You've got to pull it straight up. Straight up. Up.' And finally the belt was off, and when they tried it, the reservoir and pump lifted up with a sucking sound, slick and gleaming.

Nelson did a little celebration dance and then left Nathan to disconnect the reservoir from the pump, and went to wash up and see what was going on in the office. Suzie watched him lumber off and then glanced outside, and turned and marched smartly to the back parking lot, where she'd just seen lightning in the purple clouds.

The cloud base was about 1,500 feet, scud clouds glopping under the clouds like used frying oil, a reddish rim on the horizon and thick black clouds boiling up maybe 30,000 feet. What looked like a little bitty toy 747 cut sharply aside to avoid the turmoil. She could feel the building electricity in the air, on her arms, in her hair, in the itch in her big toe.

She went back inside. There was a lull, while Glenda called the parts store for a replacement reservoir and they waited for delivery. Nelson broke out a huge bag of weed from one of his toolboxes and pulled off two enormous buds. 'Here, Sweetie, break this up,' he said, concerned that she not have to sit around being bored. He left her to pry the leaves off the stem and crunch them into small chunks. He always got her to clean the pot. But she couldn't roll them the width of his thumb the way he liked them.

She always rolled joints for one person to smoke, joints shaped like Peachtree Ridge; more paper than pot, squirrely and full of kinks. It doesn't take a lot to get high; people smoke the whole joint out of habit, not realizing how stoned it's going to get them because it takes a few minutes to come to full strength, and by the time you realize you're high you could have put the joint out and saved the rest for a couple of hours down the road. Suzie was homeopathic about weed because she never bought any, and so never had any.

Nelson came back from overseeing the work the boys were doing and stood at the table next to her, rubbing elbows. 'You know, in some places they consider that foreplay,' she said, leaning into him and bending her head to rest on his chest - all the closeness she wanted to display in front of the boys.

She rolled as fat a joint as she could, and after fifteen minutes of checking on the boys and up front in the office, he met her in the back parking lot and they got into a customer's car to go for a ride.

Nelson and Suzie drove off in a mostly new Nissan sedan with a black interior, still smelling a bit like a new car. It was immaculate inside. Nelson fiddled with the radio dial and casually lifted the console cover to have a look at whatever the customer kept there. 

'Did you know that Bush and his henchmen were behind the attacks on September 11?' Suzie rolled her eyes. 'No, I'm serious. It's downright stupid to think a bunch of hijackers trained on itty bitty propeller planes were able to disable four jet crews before they could contact the ground, and then fly four precision attacks simultaneously.' He gripped the steering wheel fervently. 'No, Bush was behind it.'  

Suzie looked at the sky. It was getting thicker. 'This was in the paper, right? I didn't read it.' In fact, she hadn't been able to read the front page of the newspaper, because it was in the bathroom covering a sinkful of pot Nelson had gotten in earlier in the day, and Suzie didn't want anything to do with it.

'Yeah. The passenger manifests didn't include any Arabs, but the government maintains there were nineteen of them. and they were supposed to have flown around U.S. airspace for two hours without any notice by the intelligence agencies. Like nobody's got radar.' He harrumphed, then paused to light the joint and take a few hits off it before passing it over, cringing to avoid the inevitable coughing fit. 

'The big problem is that the planes all blew into smithereens when they hit the building. And planes just don't do that. There's always lots of pieces left over, and the NTSB always puts the plane back together in some hanger somewhere. But there was nothing left of three of the planes.'

He took another hit and started hacking, deep wrenching coughs that made Suzie picture the blackened lungs she'd been shown in a stop-smoking class in high school. 

'But I heard the fuel was hot enough to vaporize the planes, the floor, everything,' she said.

'No, that's nonsense,' he said, taking the joint from her. 'Jet fuel only burns at about 1500 degrees, steel melts at a much higher temperature, so it wasn't the fire that brought the towers down.' He leaned over and waved the joint in her face. 'And tell me why the towers came straight down instead of twisting and buckling, and why they fell way too fast to be crashing thru every floor to the one below it all the way to the ground. It was a controlled demolition, as professional job as I've ever seen.'

He passed her the joint and turning off onto a side street to cruise down Camelot Parkway into a fake medieval neighborhood between Tara Boulevard and Valley Hill Road. Suzie looked at the sky.

'And the Pentagon was hit by a missle that left a twelve-foot hole that went thru three buildings before evaporating.' He nodded approval, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. 'Not a plane.' He coughed. Suzie was beginning to tire of the coughing.

She looked for another topic. 'This car thing is turning out to be a much bigger job than I thought.'

He looked pained. 'I told you it was a motherfucker.'

'At least I have enough money for the part,' she offered, feeling really guilty about making him spend so much time on her for nothing.

His pained look grew deeper. 'At least you're only paying cost. Oh, Baby, you know I'd never ask you to pay for nothing.' This was true. Sometimes when she was broke he slipped her gas money, and he always fixed her car for free, because he loved her. But he was a little short right now. Suzie understood that. Especially if he had a pile of weed sitting in the bathroom. He probably spent all his change on it just this morning.

On reflection, most of the things Suzie got him to fix were things that didn't need replacing with new parts. Things like fixing a broken bushing with thick twisted wire. Like dumping pound after pound of freon and stop-leak into her air conditioning system, like a case of radiator fluid and half a dozen bottles of steering fluid.

He look exhausted, frazzled and overburdened. 'You work so hard,' she said, showing her sympathy. 'And those boys you have working for you...'

'They're unbelievably stupid,' he sighed. 'I can't let them alone for a minute. You've seen how Nathan goes right back to doing the wrong thing even after I tell him exactly what to do. If he wasn't family, I'd get rid of him in a second.'

He turned into the back parking lot and gave her the joint, getting short now. 'Put that out and keep it, Sweetie. We'll get back to work on your car as soon as the part gets here. I've got to get home on time tonight.'

He abandoned the car and raced back into the shop, each stride taking him six feet or more. She sat in the car and watched the storm coming on. It still had a few minutes to get there, and there was no way she'd be on the road by then, so she hiked over to a cash machine in the mall to get money for the part, and then stood around watching the sky some more.

She went inside when she saw the parts truck pull up. A little aging black man with a work belt had a box about the size of her reservoir, so she followed him into the office and dug around for her money. Eighty bucks. Nelson took the replacement and gave it to Nathan.

'We'll have to take off the pulley,' Nelson told him after a cursory examination of the new part. Nathan looked suspiciously at it, and started figuring out how to get the round spinny thing off, and slipped away into the shop with it while Nelson was still dealing with the parts guy in the office.

She waited for the parts guy to draw her up a receipt and went back out into the shop. Nelson was squatting over a fuel tank they'd removed from someone's car that morning in order to replace the fuel pump. 'Goddam pumps used to be on the engine,' he fumed. 'They were easy to fix. Now they're inside the fuel tank and that means you've got to pull the whole tank off the car. And let me tell you it's dangerous. Nobody better be smoking nothing around me when I got to do this. Any little spark and you're sitting on one big motherfucking grenade.'

She looked over to where Nathan had the reservoir and pump assembly inserted in a vise, and he was whacking away at the pulley with a hammer. Nelson looked up too.

'No, Nathan, no,' he yelled across the shop, but it was too late. Nathan couldn't hear him because at that moment the pulley made a lot of noise exploding into thirty-eight pieces all over the worktable and the floor.

Nelson got up off the fuel tank and strode over to Nathan, his hands in fists and the tendons showing on his neck. If he hadn't been mad before, he was furious now. 'Nathan, you goddamn ignorant fuck. You've got absolutely no common sense. I told you not to do this kind of thing. You're always messing with people's cars and breaking them. Why can't you just listen to what I say instead of trying to think things out for yourself?' He sounded to the point of tears.

Nathan stood there grinning, ducking his head, turning red. 'I was just trying to'

'I know what you were trying to do. But you don't go hitting things without knowing what you're doing. See, there's a screw here,' pointing to the middle of the pulley, 'and all you have to do is take a screwdriver and unscrew it. Nathan, I swear...'

Nathan looked impatient. 'I know about the screw. I was just trying to insert the airhose and ratchet it off, and the thing exploded into a million pieces.' Like it was the airhose's fault.

'You goddamn fool,' Nelson shouted in his face. 'You don't blast it. And I've told you a million times that you don't hit parts, especially not plastic parts. You're going to pay for this out of your own pocket.' He pointed to the phone. 'You better hope to God they got another one.'

Nathan went over to the phone and called the parts store, looking like he was doing the hero thing in his mind Nathan locates the needed part and saves the day. Nelson spent time at the sink, shaking his head and washing his hands with orange goop. He was muttering under his breath.

There was another short break, everyone avoiding Nelson because they could tell he was really mad this time. He was hunched over the green  car's engine compartment, his arms flying and his back heaving as he unfastened part of its wiring harness and jerked it out of the car. He threw it on the floor, pieces of it breaking loose and scattering. They'd stay there and never get back into the car, either, and would be dumped in the 50-gallon drum they kept for ex parts and excess pieces.

It started to rain. Suzie had been paying attention to what was going wrong with her car, and hadn't paid any attention to the weather. But the wind had been picking up, and the air had been getting cold. She rolled up her windows, scanning the back seat for a sweatshirt and discovering that she'd cleaned her car out recently, and that all her spare clothes were lying on the bedroom floor ready to be washed real soon now. She thought, silly me. I'm fucking freezing. She folded her arms over her chest and ducked her chin, and went over to stand behind the worktable, which didn't help much.

Her Doohickey was parked very close to the Goat, barely enough space for the boys to get in there. The engine compartment was pulled just inside the door, because Nelson knew damn well that a thunderstorm could blow up any time. It was still spring in Atlanta, still late tornado season, and he was a very proactive type of person when it came to his own personal interests.

As the rain grew heavier, Suzie found herself edging further in under the protective roof. But the wind was coming from the north and shoving the rain in sheets right into the building. The car was being pelted, and only the raised hood protected the area where they were working. Or would be, as soon as the part arrived.

Nelson called for Nubby to drop the bay door. The rain had begun to run in streams from the edge of the roof and twined inside with the wind, depositing gallons per second on the greasy clay grit covering the floor, which instantly turned into slime mold. Nubby yanked on the rope, and the aluminum door came crashing down on the upraised hood of Suzie's car and scraped down it to the bottom of her windshield. Oh well.

Glenda, the woman who worked the front desk when Cindy wasn't around, came out of the office with a clipboard and stood at the door, yelling, 'Awl change,' and waiting until Nelson came over to her and took the clipboard, looking around to see who was less busy. He didn't want to do an oil change, it would mean stuffing his 8'3'' frame into the bottom of an oil pit, and he'd brush the greasy ceiling if he did. Nubby was helping him work on the green car. Nathan was fucking with Suzie's car. So Abercrombie got to do it.

'Pull that car up and do an awl change,' he said, plucking at Abercrombie's elbow. He was over watching Nathan struggle with someone's gas cap for an emissions test, now that Suzie's car was again waiting for a part.

'But I'm helping Nathan,' He protested. He didn't like getting dirty. Or wet.

'Just do it!' Nelson almost shouted, a nervous edge to his voice, as if he were on his last nerve and about to explode. Things got done when he was like that, because nobody wanted Nelson blowing up at them. He was caustic and mean when he was upset, and gave his opinion in a way that made people feel stupid.

So Abercrombie disappeared into the rain to get the car. He drove it around to the southwest bay, put up its hood and disappeared down the ladder into the pit. She could hear the oil pan bolt dropping, and a muffled yell as maybe a lot of hot motor oil spilled all over the floor because he'd forgotten to put down a pan or something.

The rain continued to get heavier. For the first time all day, it was brighter inside the shop than outside. Thunder had been coming closer for a few minutes, but now it was right on top of them. Suzie was thrilled. She used to get as close to lightning as she could, like a zombie on a mission: climbing onto roofs, to the tops of ridges, sitting in fire towers in the woods. And the thunder. It went right through her; she could feel her internal organs shimmy.

Kaboom. Whoohoo! That one was close. Crack. Aw, this is so cool. Almost no time between strike and sound. Frizzle Pop Bam. God damn that's something. Right across the street. This storm's going to close down the airport.

In fact, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport had been closed for thirty minutes by the time it started raining on Suzie's car. The storm came down from Rome, Georgia, where it had felled trees; rolled over Marietta, where it had felled trees; and hit Atlanta, where it felled trees and rated an Evening News Moment for what it did to traffic. Airport officials said Fuck That when it reached Vinings, and stopped all takeoffs and landings until the traffic controllers down in Griffin got a visual on it heading well away toward the coast.

Planes arrived anywhere from two to six hours late that evening, and a whole bunch of outbound flights were cancelled until the next morning, their passengers bussed to hotels. Details at six.

Nathan was bending over her car again. Suspicious, she went to see what he was doing. Something with a socket wrench in the front of the engine. 'So,' she said, trying not to sound accusatory, 'whatcha going to do now?'

Nathan straightened up, removing the wrong socket from the extension and inserting another, and reached back into the engine.

'You're not going to hurt my car any more, are you?' she said hopefully.

'We hope for the best,' he said cheerily, and wiped water off his brow with a filthy hand, leaving tracks.

'Cuz, uh, Nathan, this is my car, and it's real important to me that it gets fixed right.' Perhaps he actually needed telling, if her standing there watching him didn't get the message across.

'Oh I know. And we'll get it fixed. Yes m'am.'

'What would this job cost if I was paying for it?' she asked, curious as to her value in Nelson's eyes.

'Three hundred dollars,' was the prompt reply.

'Really? That's incredible.'

He straightened up and looked her in the eye. 'Oh, I don't know. That was just off the top of my head. I have no idea how much it would cost. But you're pretty lucky to have us here to do it for you.'

'I guess so. It's worth what I paid for it, maybe.'

'Yeah, that's the idea,' he said, bending over the engine again.

'But what are you doing now?'

'I'm just taking off this gizmo here. You don't need it.'

'I think maybe you'd better leave it until Nelson has a chance to look at it,' she said, waiting for him to pull back and stop unbolting things. But he didn't, so she went off to find Nelson again.

And off went Nelson to berate Nathan some more, make him put everything back on, make sure everything was tight and he didn't strip any bolts. And then Nelson walked away again, still shaking his head, muttering. He disappeared into the office and shut the door. Suzie felt guilty. A several-hour job, a complicated procedure, and Nelson feeling put upon and losing money. It would have made her more confident if he was doing the work himself, but he was busy, and at least he was supervising and stepping in to do the complicated parts.

The rain had reached full force and stabilized at millions of gallons per second, much of it on the garage's metal roof. Now, there's a sound. You can hear an insect land on a tin roof. You can hear the slightest drop of rain standing under a tin roof. Nobody could hear anything else but rain under the tin roof of the garage. Nelson had to shout to be heard, Nelson of the booming voice and raucous laugh. Nobody else even tried. Suzie stood behind the emissions console and shut her eyes, listening to the roar. Like really loud, persistent static on her dad's CB radio. Punctuated by booming thunder. The sound varied, faster, slower, like turning the dial and finding no response through the frequencies, only crackles and pops and a buzzing, toneless whine.

The parts truck came and delivered Suzie's part, again. Nelson, with exaggerated patience, showed Nathan how to put it on the pump, not letting him touch it. Nelson was kneeling on the floor, the floor leaving greasy marks on his knees as he threaded the pulley onto the pump.

'Hand me a hammer and a screwdriver,' he ordered Nathan, and as he went to get them he shrugged at her. 'Hammers and screwdrivers. Not the usual tools for the job, but they work real good.'

Nathan brought him the tools. He started pounding on the surface of the pulley with a hammer, looking as if he were mad at it, trying to seat it as tight as it would go. The hammer bounced off the face of the pulley blades, and suddenly the plink sounded sour. 'Shit.' There was now a crack in the blade. So he stopped hammering on it, and finished seating it with the flat of his hand, saying nothing about the crack. Nobody else said anything, either. And nobody was looking Suzie in the eye. Maybe it's nothing, she thought. It probly won't affect the operation of the part at all.

He handed the assembled pump to Nathan. 'Now, you just put everything back and let me know when you've got it on,' he said, getting up and going over to the sink to wash his hands. He must wash his hands forty-seven times a day. And disappeared into the office.

She followed him. He was sitting with his elbows on the desk, his head in his hands, his long fingers clutching at his hair, which was thinning, curly and wiry, golden and red with a few strands of gray. She went around his back to massage his shoulders, his bones sticking out beneath her hands. If there was ever an 8'9'' giant who weighted less than 110 pounds, he was it. It was hard to find any muscle at all riding on top of the bone, but he was very strong anyway. He could lift a flywheel with one hand. He could lift her with a finger.

Nelson was wiry, always full of nervous intensity. He did a lot of crank around the shop - methamphetamine - and was always wired up, always on the go, unable to stay still for more than a few moments, filled with a burning intensity that was distracted and uneven. And of course no matter what he ate he lost weight. A body-mass fat score of seven. You could see through him if he was standing sideways. Except for his massive head, which was like a huge Saint Bernard's. It was a wonder the weight of his head didn't break his neck.

He popped up from his chair, giving her a quick arm around her shoulders and a kiss on the top of her head, and then he was out into the shop again, checking on the boys. Suzie followed. The rain was lessening, slightly. Water was cascading down the slope of the front lot and curling around the building toward the Swamp of Doom in the back. Water had piled up in the street, and cars sent up jet ski wakes as they passed, windshield wipers on high.

Suzie watched wave after wave being thrown into the front parking lot from the sky, surging toward the shop, collecting into a stream and curling around the building. Then she drifted toward the back of the shop to look at the slime pool, which was now a muddy gray waterfall overflowing into the erosion ditch and glopping off into the woods behind the parking lot. Then she went over to check on Nathan.

He was just ratcheting down the engine mount, the step before he would be bolting the coolant bottle back on. 'It's almost done,' he announced proudly. 'No more screw-ups like before, eh?' he winked. Suzie was appalled at his casual, no-fault attitude.

Then Nelson came over and took a casual glance at the work, and then did a doubletake, and then he started picking at the pieces Nathan had just bolted back onto the engine. 'Look here, Nathan, you're got the fluid lines underneath the thing. You're fixing to crush them once you tighten the bolts, and then it'll just start leaking again.' Suzie thought she could see cracks.

Nelson hit the top of the hood with the side of his hand, leaving a small dent. 'Why didn't you come get me before doing all this work? Now you're going to have to take it all off, take the strap back off, take the damn pump and reservoir back off, just to get these hoses out from underneath the weight of the goddamn engine. God, why do I let you do anything at all, Nathan? Will you tell me that?' He paced off out into the parking lot, and came reeling back in. 'Can I trust you to remove all these things and get those hoses out of the way?' Nathan ducked his head yes, and Nelson stalked back into the office.

So Nathan repeated the last twenty minutes of labor two more times, once in reverse. The rain finished faster than he did. Suzie watched him like a hawk, not speaking to him so he wouldn't lose his concentration. Watching him was enough this time. He performed like he was changing major parts on a race car at a pit stop, all grace and skill, looking exactly as if he knew what he was doing. But she knew he was probably thinking about what other modifications he might make to her car in order to show Nelson that he was a good mechanic. He eyed the front of the engine repeatedly, and Suzie could see him scheming to do something; anything.

When all the bolts were out and all the parts moved out of the way, Nelson came back over, and the two of them put the car back together; Nelson wedging the breaker bar while Nathan slipped the belt back on; Nelson pointing to one part after another and watching as Nathan bolted them into the places they came from. And then it was done, with very few extra bolts and only one or two plastic cable clips lying broken on the floor. Nelson had Suzie get in the car and crank it up. The starter went Rinna rinna rinna and she heard Nelson telling her to stop for a moment. He connected something, and it started right up.

She got out of the car to see Nelson doing a little victory dance in the bay, like Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, accessorized with grease stains instead of hay. 'You're so great,' she said approvingly, watching him prance around like a six year old.

'I'm so great, I'm so great,' he echoed. She gave him a big hug and acted happy, but she was really kind of tired of all the fuss and hassle, and almost wished she didn't have a mechanic boyfriend taking care of her car.

She looked into the engine compartment and saw a hole with no bolt where the coolant bottle attached to the engine. She pointed it out to Nelson, and he collared Nathan who was putting his tools away, and told him he'd found where one of the extra bolts goes. 'That's why you keep them in the bolt tray, so you know if you've got everything back on when you're finished,' he explained, and Nathan looked Well Duh at him and went to get the wrong size socket. Then returned to the tool cabinet to find the right socket. And to sift through the bolts looking for one that would fit.

'Look at the time! We've got to be out of here on time today. Come see me on Monday, Sweetie,' Nelson said as he walked Suzie to the driver's side and gave her a quick hug. It sounded like he was in a big hurry to close up the shop and wanted her out of the way to let him get the rest of his work done. So she got into the car, belted up, and drove home.

She drove on a wet, steaming road into a rainbow. When she was tired of gawking at the colors, she noticed a new light on the dashboard. Service Engine Soon.

Next morning, she there was a big clunk whenever she put the car into gear. She popped the hood and watched through the gap between it and the windshield as the engine reared up and rocked when she slipped it from gear to gear. Surely that couldn't be good.

So back she went, first thing, and Nelson didn't look very happy to see her. Maybe he felt that having her back so soon made him look bad, as if he couldn't be trusted to make a good repair. It diminished him when something went wrong with a job he'd done out of love and concern, and he acted almost insulted that she'd found fault with it so quickly.

'It's probably just the part settling in,' he suggested. 'But I'll have a look at it if you want me to.' When he inspected it, and saw the engine jump, he called Nathan over and yelled at him for a couple of minutes about not checking his work. 'Jesus, Nathan, whenever you have bolts left over after a job, you need to come and tell me.'

Suzie wondered. She'd seen him throw away engine parts himself, just pull them off the car and never bother putting them back on. Maybe he was just giving Nathan rules to go by.

There were two motor mounts missing, bolts that anchor the engine to the frame on top of the wheel. Every time she worked the gears, the engine flopped around like a bird nailed down by one wing. Nathan fished through the fifty gallon trash can at Nelson's insistence, banging around inside it with his ratchet, moving the contents around, looking for the bolts he'd tossed when he was cleaning up last evening. She checked the work after he replaced the bolts, and noticed that one was missing a washer. She could see the hole around the bolt, which meant that it would soon rub its way through the hole and make it bigger, and cause another problem.

So she went and got Nathan herself. He was already in the oil pit taking parts off the bottom of a step van. He came out to her car five minutes later, and put on a washer. Then she ran the car through the gears again, and it still surged, but didn't jerk anymore. Nathan peered into the engine while she changed gears, and finally took his ratchet and tightened the motor mount three or four turns.

Meanwhile, Nelson had taken a customer's car for a test drive by himself, to smoke a joint and who knows what else; taking care of business stuff. So Suzie waited for ten minutes until he returned, so she could say thanks again. And to give him a hug and act like sweethearts for a moment or two, after so much unpleasant business - after she had to witness the incompetence of the entire shop - after he had to drop everything and tend to her damn car. 

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next, a surprise at work