Send Down the Rain(31)
He interrupted me with a smile on his face. “Gallon of milk and some—”
“Oreos.”
He spoke softly. “A good Oreos-and-milk day.”
“We walked back out on the beach, swigging from that jug, licking off the cream-filled middle, flinging the cookies like Frisbees . . . and then we just sat on the sand as the tide rolled over our toes and the sun fell off the edge of the earth in front of us. The one day when all the world was good and right and nothing hurt us.” I paused. “The thing that stopped me was the thought, or hope, that someday we’ll get back to good.”
He touched my shoulder and left me standing with Momma.
17
Despite the inner turmoil at home, the Blue Tornado continued to prosper. Mr. Billy had been right. People drove from all around to sit on a bench, run their toes through the sand, sip something cold, and watch the sun go down over the Gulf. Business doubled, then doubled again, then doubled again. Six employees turned into two dozen, porches were expanded, more lights were strung. Bonfires maintained. More “honeymoon cottages” were built along the dunes, and stayed occupied most of the time. Weekends were filled with white dresses, live music, fresh shrimp boil, and good tips. Given the climate of the country, Cape San Blas became a vacation destination. Construction boomed. Allie’s folks had hit a gold mine. And to his credit, Mr. Billy stayed away from the bottle. For us, the Blue Tornado was one of the happiest places on earth. We were insulated and isolated from everything save the mail and an occasional hurricane.
Following my attempt at heroism in Allie’s bedroom, Mrs. Eleanor loved me and gave me free rein to do what I wanted at the Blue Tornado. I worked every time the doors were open. I bused tables, washed dishes, cut and nailed lumber to expand the decks, hung lights, ran speaker wire, waited tables, swapped out kegs, and backed the bar, which Bobby had begun tending. Given his easygoing style, his uncanny ability to hear the same story a thousand times, and the fact that he’d never met a stranger, he was a natural. While he stood behind the bar and made people feel better, I worked behind the scenes. If it needed doing, I did it. And I didn’t wait for someone to tell me it needed doing either. As a result, I learned to do most everything and I made money hand over fist.
I bought my first car when I was just barely fourteen. An old Ford pickup. Inline six. Three on the column. Bought it out of a junkyard. My mom thought I was crazy, but it was my money. In a week I had it rolling. And in another week I had it running. By the third week my mom was driving it to get groceries. We were walking out of the grocery store when a man stopped us. He said to my mom, “You wouldn’t want to sell that truck, would you?”
She looked at me. I said, “How much will you give me?”
After expenses, I quadrupled my money, and it didn’t take me long to learn how to “flip” cars. Given a rough economy and the fact that the bank’s prime interest rate was in the teens, folks were looking to stretch a dollar, and I was all too happy to help them. Take something dead and used up, find out what killed it, fix that—or replace it—and then move on to the next thing. I understood cars and could diagnose what was wrong with them. Sure, I read manuals and even bought my own set of Chiltons, but something in my brain was hardwired to understand machines and what made them work, and not work.
Allie was never far. Often, it was us three. Me, Allie, and Bobby. Scouring the beach became our version of a treasure hunt. Given the entrepreneurial spirit she’d inherited from her father, Allie began making shell-covered mirrors; her mom hung them in the honeymoon cottages and sold them at the restaurant.
If there was one place on planet Earth where the three of us were happiest, it was the shoreline of Cape San Blas. Nothing angry or evil or sad found us out there. Not Mr. Billy. Not the TV news. Not my mom’s tears. Not the pained looks on Mrs. Eleanor’s face. Not my father’s absence. Twice a day, the beach cleaned itself. Leaving no residue of yesterday. Maybe that’s why we liked it.
In the summer of 1970, when I turned fifteen, I bought myself a wrecked 1967 ragtop Corvette. Over the course of a summer I rummaged junkyards and pieced it back together. New rear end, gears, brakes, interior bucket seats, canvas top, electrical wiring.
One of my other junkyard gems was a wrecked Monte Carlo. It’d been rolled and then wrapped around a telephone pole. Wasn’t much left. Except the engine. It was perfect. To my great fortune, the guy running the junkyard didn’t take the time to pry back the hood and take a look at it. Had he done that, he’d have never sold it. Beneath the hood was a Chevrolet 350-cubic-inch engine. The technical name was LT-1. That designation meant several things: higher compression, angle plug heads, four-bolt main, larger exhaust, larger intake, two carburetors, radical cam. In English, that meant it produced a little over 500 horsepower with normal aspiration. Meaning, no supercharger. The guys at the auto repair shop were drooling.
Because I wanted to know what made it tick, I took it apart, then meticulously put it back together. But better. I then bolted that orange and chrome beauty into my Corvette, replaced the rear-end gears with .411 posi-traction, linked it to a Muncie four-speed rock-crusher transmission, and scared my mom half to death the first time I took her for a ride.
When I pulled back into the drive, she unlatched her white-knuckled death grip on the door handle, unbuckled, and shook her head. “Jo-Jo, you just made your mother pee herself.”