Unto the Sons (87 page)

Joseph said nothing, seeming hesitant, worried that things were moving too quickly.

“Look,” Smith said, with sudden urgency, “if you don’t take this car, somebody else will. You’ll never find a car like this for five hundred, believe me. It’s a fine car. The owner took care of it.”

“All right,” Joseph said. “Let me see it.”

It was a navy blue coupe that had obviously been well maintained. Its silver bumpers glistened in the sunlight of this clear wintry afternoon, and its tires were not mud-splattered like those of the other cars parked on the street. Harry Smith sat in the driver’s seat but leaned out the passenger-side window and he beckoned with a wave to Joseph watching from the store. As Joseph approached, Smith gunned the engine, honked the horn, and opened the door. Joseph already felt strangely possessive of the car that was his for the asking.

Five minutes after Smith had begun to drive him around in it, singing its praises while moving the gear stick like a baton, Joseph said, “All right, I’ll take it. But let’s get back to the shop.” In his excitement for the ride, Joseph realized, he had left his shop unlocked.

“Oh, you’re going to be happy with this car,” Smith reassured him, pulling up to the curb. “It’ll change your whole life.”

The next morning, Joseph gave Smith the five hundred dollars he had withdrawn from the bank; and after placing the ownership document
and bill of sale proudly in the drawer of his counter, he stood watching as Smith drove the car back to the agency’s garage—where, three days hence, on Sunday after Mass, Joseph would appear for his first driving lesson.

Even before this much-anticipated event, Joseph sensed the truth in Smith’s comment—Joseph’s life
had
changed. Just
owning
a car opened up a world of possibilities, extending the dream that had driven him across the sea. Recently he had read that the Ford company in Detroit, which had produced as many as two hundred thousand vehicles in a month, had sold its ten millionth car, and that someone had driven it from New York to San Francisco. No less thrilling to Joseph would be his motorized maiden voyage two miles across the bay to Somers Point.

Joseph attended the ten-fifteen Mass the following Sunday. There were fewer than twenty people in the church, which was not unusual for the parish in wintertime; but the Christmas decorations around the altar, and the wood-carved Nativity scene, served as a happy reminder of the holiday ahead. It would mark the sixth anniversary of Joseph’s arrival at Ellis Island. He remembered how distressed he had been at not being met by his uncles, who had not been able to come; but he would surely not forget the kindness of the interpreter who had escorted him through the stations at Ellis Island, and had finally put him on the train that had carried him into Philadelphia. But all that and Ambler now seemed as far away as Maida.

After Mass, Joseph had been offered a ride uptown by a retired fireman whom he knew from church. But Joseph preferred to walk. It was a brisk, sunny day. He was wearing for the first time a brown tweed overcoat he had recently made. After many months of parading around town, a solitary figure in his private
passeggiata
, he saw ahead of himself the end of his dependency on shoe leather.

He walked more than a mile through the center of town toward the Ford garage at the north end of the island, passing rows of boarded-up houses and closed shops, including his own. East toward the ocean, on the corners of Central and Wesley avenues, where the Methodist and Presbyterian churches were located, he saw crowds gathered on the sidewalks and cars moving slowly in search of parking spaces. Four blocks beyond the grounds of the Tabernacle, on a residential street of white Victorian rooming houses and bungalows, stood a two-story tan brick building with a fan-shaped façade and a Ford emblem in the brickwork. Despite the Sabbath restrictions, the large sliding doors were wide open, and as Joseph entered, he saw a mechanic leaning under the open hood
of a truck, and the feet of another man sticking out from beneath the bumper of a vehicle with its motor idling. The glassed-in office in the corner was unoccupied, and there was no sign of Harry Smith. But as Joseph paused and looked around, he thought he recognized his car parked among the models that were lined along the wall of the garage. In the rear he heard two male voices engaged in an argument; one man was dressed in gray overalls and a peaked cap, and the other wore a jacket and tie and was smoking a cigar. Joseph hesitated before approaching. But the cigar-smoking man stopped arguing as he noticed Joseph, and with a smile he came forward and asked: “And what can I do for you, young man?”

He had a jowly face with a pencil-thin moustache and black shiny hair combed straight back, and on the lapel of his jacket was pinned a card bearing his name in bold lettering:
Jack Ward, Mgr
.

“I’m here to meet Mr. Harry Smith,” Joseph said.

“He left,” said Ward.

“Left?” Joseph repeated with surprise and disappointment. “Well, when will he be back?”

“He won’t,” Ward said. “He left for good. Picked up his salary last night and quit. Said he was off to Florida.”

Stunned with disbelief, Joseph shook his head.

“But may
I
show you something?” Ward asked eagerly with raised eyebrows. “We’ve just received some terrific buys.”

“I already
bought
a car from you people!” Joseph cried out, pulling from his coat pocket his sales receipt and registration document, and handing them to the manager. Ward studied the papers momentarily, and looking back at Joseph he nodded and said, “Yes, indeed, you got yourself a terrific buy. You bought Harry’s old car.”

Joseph frowned.

“But I can’t drive it!” he said. “Harry Smith promised to teach me, and now he’s gone.”

“Yes,” said Ward, “and if that bastard ever returns, we won’t take him back. I can promise you that.”

“What do I care?” Joseph asked, becoming angrier. “I’m stuck with a car I can’t drive. Now what am I supposed to do?”

“That damned Harry Smith!” Ward exclaimed, wanting to be a commiserator, not a problem solver.

“Mr. Ward,” Joseph demanded, “you must help me.”

“But what can
I
do?”

“Help me drive it.”

“But you don’t have a license or permit,” Ward said. “You’ll need a driving instructor, and he’ll make the arrangements. I
do
know some instructors, and tomorrow I’ll give them a call and see what they can do.”

“I work tomorrow,” Joseph said. “I want to start today.”

“They don’t work on Sundays.”

Joseph felt the adrenaline rising in his body.

“Look,” Joseph said firmly, “this
is
my car, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” Ward said. “It’s fully paid for, and you’re the registered owner.”

“So why don’t you just start it for me, and I’ll learn by myself?”

“But you might kill yourself, and I can’t be responsible.”

“
I’ll
be responsible,” Joseph said. “You just start the car, and I’ll get in.”

“But if it’s on our property, I’ll
still
be responsible.”

“So drive it across the street, and leave it there. I saw how Harry Smith moved the gear stick and the pedals, and it didn’t look hard.”

“You know,” Ward said, reflecting in a wistful manner, “that’s how
I
learned to drive. Back in the boonies behind Somers Point, where nobody ever drove with a license—and
still
doesn’t—I took my brother-in-law’s tin lizzie one day when he was away, and I learned in a half-hour.”

“Fine,” Joseph said, “so let’s get going.”

Ward hesitated for a moment, then turned toward the mechanic with whom he had been arguing.

“Hey, Billy Bob,” he yelled. “Take that coupe parked there in number eight and leave it across the street for this young man.”

The mechanic glared at Jack Ward and muttered under his breath; but after taking a rag from a truck fender, and wiping his hands, Billy Bob slowly made his way toward Joseph’s coupe and did as he had been told. Joseph walked behind the car as Billy Bob drove it out, while Jack Ward, with a farewell wave, headed toward the rear of the garage, beyond view of what might happen in the street.

“You know where first and second is?” Billy Bob asked Joseph, after he had pulled the car against the curb and left the door open.

“Yes,” said Joseph. “First is up, and second is back, right?”

“Yep,” said Billy Bob, “and you know where the clutch and brake is?”

“I think so,” said Joseph.

Billy Bob then waved Joseph into the driver’s seat, closed the door behind him, and returned to the garage without turning back.

Joseph sat momentarily behind the steering wheel, feeling the vibrations of the engine, looking out the windshield toward an empty two-lane
macadam road that seemed to extend to infinity, but actually led toward the Coast Guard station along the sandy tip of the island. He also looked through his rearview mirror and out both sides of the vehicle to be certain there was no one in sight to witness his initiation into the motorized age. Resting his feet lightly on the pedals without applying pressure, and reminding himself that he had to push the clutch pedal to the floor and then let it up slowly as he stepped down on the gas pedal—fortunately Harry Smith had illustrated this before fleeing to Florida—Joseph quickly said a prayer and then accepted the challenge of trying to imitate his truant teacher.

The car bolted forward jerkily, choking and sputtering. Joseph slammed his foot down on the clutch and shifted to neutral while holding tightly to the wheel with his left hand, watching wide-eyed as the vehicle rolled on and on for nearly half a block on its own momentum. He sat expectantly until the car came to a halt, idling. After waiting several moments to regain his composure and review the routine, he again stepped down on the clutch pedal and applied the gas—and once more he felt himself being bounced as the car bucked itself forward indecisively. He gave it more gas, and, instead of choking, the engine gurgled as it ingested into its finicky funnels what sounded like the bubbly soda pop he saw squirted from the fountain behind the counter of his favorite restaurant. The engine, soothed by the liquid, hummed with a mellowness similar to what he had heard when Harry Smith had been driving.

Proceeding at a speed he believed equal to Smith’s, he looked up into the rearview mirror and saw the empty road behind him, and parts of white houses, and he realized that the Ford garage was now so far behind it was nowhere in sight. Redirecting his attentions to the road ahead, Joseph saw in the distance a little black box kicking up clouds of sand as it sped toward him. With a tingling sensation shooting up through his spine, Joseph braced himself, felt his palms moisten on the wheel, but did not slow down, for he feared he might slide on the sandy road if he applied the brakes at his present speed.

Not daring to look again at the oncoming car, but sensing its swift advancement from the rising sounds of its rattling engine, Joseph kept his eyes focused on the road’s center line; and except for veering slightly toward the shoulder to leave maximum room for the other vehicle, he left his fate in the hands of Saint Francis and the operator of the oncoming car, hoping that the latter was a licensed and qualified driver who had enough sense to stay on his own side of the line.

After a streaking black shadow, a great
whoosh
and a buffeting gust
of wind, and the lash of sand across his windshield and hood, Joseph realized that he again had the road to himself. Except for his surprise at being blown a bit closer to the shoulder—he quickly adjusted by taking aim behind his left fender and steering selfishly to the center of the road—Joseph felt himself fully in control; and with renewed confidence he proceeded northward along the road flanked by dunes and now overlooked by the skeletal steel tower of the local Coast Guard station. As Joseph followed the curved road that directed him west of the tower, passing along the way a wall of brown rocks being splashed by waves, he came upon a paved and abandoned circle, a recently completed roadway apparently built to accommodate a cluster of new homes perhaps already sold from the developer’s drawing board. Joseph adopted this as his training ground, and, in the splendid isolation invaded only by the swooping sea gulls, he practiced every aspect of motormanship. He abruptly stopped, started, and stopped again, getting the feel of the brakes. He learned to shift the gears back and forth with a minimum of grinding. And he also shifted into reverse, and moved slowly backward and parked along the wayside weeds between imaginary rows of vehicles.

Time passed quickly as he deepened his acquaintanceship with his automobile on this remote edge of the island; and as the light above the distant Coast Guard tower became visible in the early darkness of the wintry afternoon, Joseph discovered his own light switch on the dashboard, flipped it, and proceeded to test himself. He drove around the circle again and again, each time taking the turns faster, more sharply. Finally he continued on without turning and headed back to the main road and the more populated part of the island. He felt very daring, very illegal, very American.

42.

E
ach Friday at noon, Joseph entrusted his shop to Mister Bossum for at least an hour so that he might enjoy the leisurely lunch he allowed himself only once a week at the same small restaurant across from City Hall where he nearly always ate his breakfast at seven a.m. and his dinner at nine p.m.—except on Friday nights, when he did without dinner because of the demands of his business. On Friday nights the customers
who entered his shop represented seventy percent of his weekly income. Many were Suit Club members who waited until then to bring in their clothing for cleaning or alterations because at the same time they could wager a few dollars on the weekly drawing, which was held promptly at eight. On some golden Fridays in August, when the town overflowed with vacationers, Joseph’s glass vase was stuffed with about three hundred dollars’ worth of envelopes awaiting a vigorous shake and then the pick for a free suit that Joseph would have retailed for less than fifty dollars. In addition to club members, on Friday nights his shop was frequented by weekend visitors carrying in clothing to be cleaned and/or pressed by the following day—an overnight process for which most of them uncomplainingly paid twice the cost of the normal two- or three-day service. On Friday nights Joseph usually went to bed late, feeling very hungry but rich.