The Old Man(12)

The next day he began looking through newspaper ads, visiting Laundromats and coffee shops to look at bulletin boards and pick up the latest issues of shoppers’ guides. In the afternoon he found an older Toyota Corolla in the parking lot of a grocery store with a sign on one of the side windows that said $1,500. RUNS GOOD. He found that the car was as advertised, and the young woman who owned it was reassured by the fact that he could pay in cash.

Late that night he left the dogs in the motel with some food and water, and they lay sprawled on the bed with the television going. He drove to the junkyard outside town. When he got there, he pulled onto the gravel driveway, and then turned to drive along the tall chain link fence until he came to the place he had seen the night before.

The coils of barbed wire at the top of the fence were uniform, but here the fence was made of wooden boards. He backed his car up to the fence until its bumper was against the boards. He stepped on the trunk and looked inside the yard. This was a forlorn area where most of the cars were in fairly bad shape. Some had front ends that looked as though a giant hand had swept across the metal and smeared it to the side. Others were not misshapen by accidents, but were old and out of style.

He looked carefully at the inner side of the wooden section of the fence and realized how his purpose could be accomplished. The wooden section consisted of a frame with a row of boards nailed vertically to it. He eased the car into the wooden fence, listened to the creaking sounds as nails were wrenched from two-by-fours, and kept adding power until one ten-foot segment toppled inward to the ground. The coiled barbed wire hung across the opening.

He got out of his car, dragged the section of boards aside, and drove his car under the barbed wire and inside the junkyard. He drove slowly and carefully through this area of the yard until he found a spot that looked right. There was a row of pretty good cars, all of them up on blocks and ready to be stripped for parts. He pulled up beside the last one, found a set of blocks, and went to work. He went to the trunk, took out the jack and the tire iron, jacked up the car, put the first block in place, removed the wheel, and lowered the car onto the block. He kept at it until all four wheels had been removed and the car was up on blocks like the others. He popped off the hubcaps and put them in the backseat, then rolled the wheels a distance away where there were some tires, and left them.

It took him a few minutes to restore the wooden fence and restring the looped barbed wire along the top. Then he began to walk. It took him about an hour to walk to the space in the parking lot of the grocery store where his replacement Toyota was waiting, and another half hour in the grocery store to fill the car with supplies for himself and the dogs. When he got back to his motel room he moved the other items he had left into the trunk of the replacement car. He took the dogs out for a few minutes so they could relieve themselves, and then the three climbed back onto the king bed and slept.





6


Early in the morning Caldwell went to the office to check out of the motel. The night’s work of scrapping his car without anyone’s knowledge had left him worn, but he had to begin the next phase.

He had known from the beginning that the only way to survive would be to drop out of sight completely for a while. He took out his disposable cell phone and texted Emily. “Can you talk now?”

The answer came back about a minute later. “With a patient. I’ll call.”

He opened the door of the new car and let the dogs examine it. They were a bit hesitant at first, because it wasn’t the car they considered theirs. Its smells were not their smells. But because he was holding the door for them they jumped up onto the seat, sniffed a little, flopped down, adjusted their positions, and then lay still.

He got in and drove out the far end of the parking lot so the motel owners wouldn’t see he had a different car. Then he headed west through Erie and turned south onto Route 6 toward Cleveland and Sandusky. After a few minutes the phone rang.

“Hi,” he said.

“Are you still all right?” Emily said.

“So far. You?”

“No changes yet.”

“I wanted you to know that it’s time to get rid of the phones we’ve been using. You can reach me on the second one from now on, if you need to.”

“Okay,” she said. “What prompted this?”

“I’m going to have to sink beneath the surface now. It will be months before I try to call again, so don’t worry about the long silence. Don’t ever go near the house. There’s nothing left there that you want.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re the only relic I have left.”

“If you get the feeling that somebody’s watching you, or anything like that, call. Otherwise, just wait. Don’t look as though you’re being watchful, but be watchful.”

“I know all this. I’ve known it since I was ten. I’m going to be thinking about you every day if this takes thirty years. We all will be. You have a family that loves you. Now go get lost. With your heart and lungs, you could live to be a hundred and six. Do it.”

“I’ll try. Bye, kid.”

“Bye, Dad.”

He could almost see her standing up from the big leather chair in her office in her white coat and striding along with that straight posture and determined walk, ready to see her next patient. She looked a bit like her mother did at thirty, only taller and straighter.