The Night It Ran
Three weeks to the day after we pulled it out of Elmer’s fencerow, we were ready.
A new distributor cap and rotor. New plugs, gapped by Micah, every one. A new fuel pump and new fuel lines from the tank. The carburetor he had built himself.
A fresh battery from the parts store in Centre Hall, which I paid for, and which Micah promised to pay me back for out of his lawn mowing money.
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It was a Saturday. The air had that heavy late July feeling, and the swallows were going in and out of the barn rafters. The barn door was wide open, same as always.
“You start it,” I said.
Micah looked at me like I had handed him the keys to the bank.
“Me?”
“It’s your truck.”
He climbed in behind the wheel. The seat was a torn bench with a horse blanket over it, and he had to reach for the clutch with the toe of his boot.
I stood at the fender and held the shop light over the carburetor.
“Pump the gas twice,” I said. “Then turn the key and hold it. Don’t give up on it too fast.”
He pumped it twice. He turned the key.
It cranked. It cranked again. It coughed once, a big sooty cough that blew a little smoke out the tailpipe and scared a barn cat off the workbench.
Then it caught.
That old 300 six came alive like it had just been waiting for somebody to ask. It ran rough for about ten seconds, and then it settled down into a steady idle that shook the whole cab.
Micah sat there with both hands on the wheel and his mouth wide open. And then, before I could say anything, he leaned on the horn.
We had fixed the horn the week before. I was proud of that horn. It was loud.
He held it down and didn’t let up. That honk went out the barn door, across the yard, across the road, and down the valley toward the ridge. I’ll bet they heard it at Elmer’s.
I was laughing so hard I had to hold onto the fender. Sabrina came running out of the house in her socks, thinking something was wrong, and then she saw his face and put both hands over her mouth.
Out past the barn door, on the road, a car slowed.
This time, it didn’t pick back up.