The Old Ford in Mom’s Driveway

The Fifth Saturday

My brother called again that week. He said he had talked to Trace on the phone for a long time. He did not tell me what they said, and I did not ask.

“He wants to come Saturday,” my brother said. “If you’re doing anything to the truck.”

I was. A rebuilt engine needs its first oil changed early, to get the break-in metal out, and the ignition timing needs checked once it has run a while and settled in.

I called Lowell, Beryl and Arvid. They said they would be there at seven-thirty, which I already knew.

Trace pulled into the driveway at seven-fifteen. He was the first one there. He got out and walked over to me, and he had something in his hand, and he held it out.

It was three hundred-dollar bills.

“For the parts,” he said. “It’s not enough. I know it’s not enough. I’ll pay the rest.”

I looked at the money and I looked at him. “Did you sell something?”

He nodded. “The Mustang. Well, the body. I sold the body to a guy over by the state line.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yeah, I did,” he said. He looked over at the house, where the kitchen light was on and Mom was moving around in there making coffee. “Dad said I did, too. But I’d already done it before he said it.”

I took the money. Not because I needed it. Because he needed me to.

“Grandma’s not going to take that from you,” I said. “So I will, and I’ll put it in her coffee can for Friday cookies, and neither one of us will ever tell her.”

He almost smiled.

When Lowell and Beryl pulled in, Trace walked over to the flatbed. He did not wait to be asked. He took Beryl’s lunch bucket out of his hands and carried it to the lawn chair for him.

We drained the break-in oil. Trace held the pan. Beryl showed him how to tilt it to the light and look, and there was only a little gray in it, the way there should be, and no sparkle.

“That’s a good engine,” Beryl told him. “Those three old boys built it right.”

“Four,” Lowell said. “Gaylene counts double.”

Then Lowell got out his old timing light and showed Trace how to set the timing. Pull the little plug in the wire by the distributor. Clamp the light on number one. Chalk the marks on the balancer so you can see them flash.

“Ten degrees before top,” Lowell said. “That’s where Ford wants it. Now you loosen the distributor bolt, just a hair, and you turn it slow.”

Trace turned it. Lowell watched the light flash on the marks over his shoulder.

“A little more. Little more. There.”

Trace tightened the bolt. He put the plug back in. He stood up with grease on his hands and looked at the engine running smooth and even under the hood of his grandfather’s truck.

Mom came out on the porch with the thermos and five cups that morning instead of four. She saw Trace standing at the fender with the timing light in his hand, and she stopped on the top step for a second.

Then she came down and poured him a cup first.

He took it from her with both hands. “Grandma,” he said, “I’m sorry about the truck.”

“I know you are,” she said. And she reached up and patted his cheek, the way she did when he was small, the way she does to all of us. “Your grandpa used to let you steer it.”

“I remember.”

“Well,” she said, “next time you want to drive it, you can take me to the elevator.”

He laughed, and it came out sort of broken. “Yes, ma’am.”

He drove her there the next Friday. She let him. She made him honk twice.

That truck still runs. She still drives it to the elevator every morning at eight, when the roads are fit. And on the Saturdays when something needs doing to it, there are five of us now in the driveway, and one of them is 22 and does what the other four tell him.

Lowell says the boy has a good ear for an engine. I think he always did. He just had to learn what it sounded like when something you love is running right.