“I’d be willing to pay very generously.”
Until then, Ernest had not seemed to fully comprehend the magnitude of the problem or to be personally concerned with finding a solution, but at the words “pay” and “generously,” his entire demeanor underwent a distinct change. “How much does a regular rented car cost you?” he asked, slanting her a speculative sideways glance.
Diana remembered signing a charge slip for a Lincoln Town Car she’d rented in Dallas for several days. “Two or three hundred dollars, I think. Why? Have you thought of a car I could rent?”
“I know just the ticket!” he announced with startling enthusiasm as he slammed down on the clutch and brake pedals, and swung the old truck into Gus’s repair yard, stopping behind the taxi and blocking part of the driveway with his back fender. “I’ll go see what kind of deal I can make for you.”
Diana was so grateful she nearly patted his arm as he slid out of the truck, leaving the door swinging on its hinge.
In a gratifyingly short time, a man emerged from the cinder-block building. He was wearing a light blue shirt and dark blue work pants with a grimy rag dangling out of a back pocket. The oval patch on his shirt pocket proclaimed in red letters that he was “Gus.” As he walked, he pulled the rag from his pants and began wiping his hands. “Pleased to meet you, miss,” Gus said a little uneasily. “Ernest says you’re interested in the Ford, and he’s bringing it around.”
From the rear of the building, Diana heard an engine crank followed by a mechanical cough and sputter, then silence. Another attempt to start it brought success, and Diana opened her purse, hoping Gus took credit cards. “There he is,” Gus said.
Laughter and horror left Diana gaping at a rusted orange pickup truck that was, if possible, in even worse shape than the blue truck she’d ridden in to Kingdom City. It was coated in a thick layer of dirt, with the front bumper tied on with a rope and the passenger window held together with duct tape. Speechless, she watched Ernest climb out of the truck, his expression pleased. “You’re joking,” she told him. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“You buy it!” Ernest exclaimed as if that should have been obvious as well as exciting. Stretching his arms out, he lifted his hands palms up in a gesture of absolute jubilation. “You buy it for five hundred bucks; then you keep it or sell it back when you leave.”
Diana knew she was trapped, but she couldn’t believe this was her only solution, and the idea of paying five hundred hard-earned dollars for a rusty, filthy, disreputable pile of orange junk was almost more than she could bear. “I can’t believe that thing is worth five hundred dollars.”
“She’s solid as a rock,” Ernest said, displaying a remarkable ability to overlook details such as loose bumpers, a headlight that was hanging by its electrical wires, and the taped-together glass.
Diana had no choice and she knew it. “I’ll take it,” she said in a small, miserable voice, reaching into her purse for her credit card. Still silent, Gus took the card and walked into the shop. He returned a few minutes later with a charge slip for her to sign and a handful of cash. While Diana signed the ticket, Ernest pitched her suitcases into the back of the orange derelict in the driveway; then he came around to make certain the proceedings were successfully concluded. “That does it, then,” he said, and to Diana’s confusion, she saw him hold out his hand to Gus, who then counted out $490 in bills into it.
“Where’s my other ten bucks?” Ernest said, scowling.
“You still owed me for that tire.”
Belatedly sensing a scam, Diana rounded on both men. Since Gus had never urged her to buy the damned truck in any way, she put the blame solely on Ernest and shifted her narrowed gaze to his impenitent, leathery face. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said in a low, indignant voice, “that you just managed to foist your own car off on me?”
“Sure did,” he said with a grin. Then he added insult to injury by nudging her in the side and confiding, “I’d have taken two hundred and fifty dollars and been glad to get it.”
Inwardly humbled, Diana looked him straight in the eye and told the larcenous old man a lie she hoped would keep him awake nights. “Yes, but I’d have paid a thousand dollars.” The expression of dismay on his face was so comical and so satisfying that Diana’s temper cooled considerably even before she heard Gus’s choked laugh.
Ernest followed her around to the driver’s door and held it open while Diana climbed gingerly onto a filthy, torn, vinyl seat; then he closed the door for her. The steering wheel seemed enormous, but Diana got a good grip on it; then she felt for the brake pedal with her toe and the gearshift with her hand. Her foot encountered three pedals, not two, and when she looked at the gear lever, she saw a diagram instead of nice little letters indicating Drive, Park, and Reverse. A stick shift. Her heart sank.
“Betcha can’t handle a standard transmission, can you?”
“Certainly,” Diana lied, looking over her shoulder while her heart bumped nervously. The only way out of the crowded lot was to back down the driveway, which sloped downward to the street. Pretending to wait for two mothers carrying babies to walk behind and past her, Diana glanced at the diagram and tried to remember the trick associated with using the clutch and the brake that Doug had taught her when she was sixteen.
Satisfied that no one was behind her, she shoved at the clutch and yanked on the gearshift, wincing at the metallic screech of gears; then she released the clutch with a jolt that made the truck shake and she slammed down on the accelerator. As the truck careened backward and gathered speed, Diana steered frantically, and Gus yelled a warning over Ernest’s roar of laughter, but somehow the truck landed safely on the street, pointed in the opposite direction. Pride and common sense made Diana decide to circle the block, rather than turn it around.
Chapter 47
WHEN THE TRUCK ACTUALLY HELD together for five full miles, Diana relaxed enough to take note of the scenery. This was a part of Texas she rarely saw but that everyone who watched westerns automatically identified with the state. Behind miles of fencing that separated vast pastures from winding county roads, newborn calves frolicked beside their mothers and gangly foals with flying tails scampered in short bursts on unsteady legs while watchful mares looked on.
She could imagine how it would look in springtime, when the bluebonnets and buttercups and Indian paintbrush would burst into bloom, spreading their blossoms like a fluffy patchwork quilt over the rumpled hills and shallow valleys.
She had to stop once at a filling station to make certain she hadn’t passed the turnoff to Cal’s house, because the addresses were usually painted on rural mailboxes that were partially covered by tall grass.
Up ahead, she saw what had to be the right place, and she gingerly slowed the truck, praying it wouldn’t die when she navigated the turn. It backfired when she slowed down, and the gears screeched horribly when she tried to shift into a different gear, but she made the turn. Once she had done that, she was confronted with a new series of problems in the form of a hilly gravel drive a mile long that twisted in and out among trees that no one had wanted to cut down apparently, and then rose sharply again.
* * *
“She should be here any minute,” Cole told Cal, glancing at his watch. “If she’s not, I’m going to go look for her.” He’d called his office, learned that Diana was on her way, armed only with Cal’s address, and he’d phoned the airfield immediately. The woman who worked there said Diana had arrived and gotten a ride with a local man who, she assured Cole, was “pretty respectable.”
“You should have gone after her,” Cal told him worriedly. “You can’t have a wife wandering over the countryside, lost and alone. That’s no way to treat a wife.”
“If I knew which road the man she’s with had taken, I would try to intercept her,” Cole explained patiently, surprised by the signs of unprecedented nervousness his uncle had been exhibiting ever since he realized Diana was on her way.
Cal’s next words were interrupted by
a loud boom that cracked like thunder from the direction of the driveway. “What the hell is that?” he said, following quickly after Cole, who was already heading for the front porch.
“I assume it’s Diana’s ride,” Cole said, staring in disbelief at an orange pickup truck with a loose bumper and a drooping headlight that was slowly lurching its way toward them, accompanied by the rhythmic screech of grinding gears and deafening backfires.
Cal watched for a moment, but he was more concerned with making a good first impression on his new niece. He smoothed his hair back carefully at the temples with both hands, squared his shoulders, and checked his tie. “Cole,” he said with a strange hesitation in his voice, “do you think Diana will like me?”
Surprised and touched by his uncle’s unprecedented nervous uncertainty, Cole said with absolute certainty, “Diana will love you.”
Satisfied, Cal directed his attention to the approaching vehicle just as it gave one more earsplitting screech and then shot forward in a burst of speed. “Looks like he finally found second gear.” Squinting, he added, “Can you tell if Diana’s with him?”
Cole was younger and his eyes were better. As the truck reached the level spot that led directly to the front door, Cole stared with widened eyes at the face of his wife. “It’s Diana,” he uttered, hurrying down the porch steps to the drive with Cal right at his heels.
When they stepped out in front of her, Diana was so glad to see them that she mixed up the clutch with the brake and stepped down on the accelerator.
“Look out!” Cole shouted, jumping out of her path and dragging Cal with him. The truck missed them by inches, rolled to a stop, backfired, and died.
Shaking with fear at having nearly run over both men, Diana dropped her forehead on the steering wheel while Cole ran around the truck to help her out. She straightened just as he grabbed the handle to open her door. “Who owns this pile of sh—junk?” Cole demanded. The door handle came off in his hand, and he reached through the open window, groping for the handle on the interior.