LITMIR.BIZ

      4

       Piper, Florida

      July 1964

      The man Lester Ray found to work on the car was named Lyman Duck. He found him in Saddler’s Lounge. Lyman Duck was a little, extremely slim man with thin black hair cut vaguely—as near as he could manage, probably—in an Elvis cut, with long sideburns and greasy ducktails in back. He had showed up at Saddler’s Lounge a couple of years ago, and he always sat at the same table and nursed a six-pack of Falstaff (Saddler’s was a package store as well as a bar, and beer was slightly cheaper by the six-pack on the package store side, so Lyman Duck would buy his over there and bring it in, which Gerald Saddler allowed, since it was his beer sold either way, and if somebody wanted to drink their last four beers lukewarm it was all right with him). Lyman Duck always brought along his ugly daughter, a diminutive, dwarf-like girl not much more than three feet tall, in a faded red dress, which she must have washed out at night—when, if ever, she washed it out and hung it up to dry—because she always had it on. She was buck-toothed, with hair the color of a boiled carrot, cut ragged and shoulder-length like somebody had chopped it off with a hatchet. She sat at the table with him, drinking Dr Pepper and gnawing on a plate of pickled pig’s feet. Nobody ever sat down with them, because they stank, and nobody knew where they lived. Gerald Saddler, the owner and bartender, a big man with a bullet head and thick neck and elephantine shoulders, said—laughing—that he bet they lived in a culvert under the railroad tracks outside town. One that raw sewage leaked through.

      Lyman Duck claimed to be a mechanic who could fix anything. He was always bragging about it. He claimed to have worked on Patton’s tanks in France back during the war, but nobody much believed him. He was a blowhard, and he might be a challenge to keep quiet, but he seemed to be Lester’s and Mrs. McCrory’s only choice, short of pushing the car into one of the local garages, who would probably get all suspicious and notify Orville McCrory that Lester Ray was stealing his mother’s car. Lester Ray knew virtually nothing about cars, just enough to worry that the old car would need parts that might not still be available, but Lyman Duck had winked at that and told Lester Ray not to fret, that he knew where to find any part he needed. Lester Ray offered him fifty dollars to get the car up and running, and keep it a secret, and Lyman’s daughter chimed in and said, “Seventy-five!” Lester Ray agreed.

      The two of them showed up at Mrs. McCrory’s garage the next morning, Lyman toting a rusty tool box. “What’d you bring her for?” Lester Ray asked him.

      “She’s my helper,” Duck said.

      “What of it?” the girl said, glaring at Lester Ray. Her eyes were such a pale green they almost disappeared, and her nose was flat, as though it had been broken some time in the past.

      “Nothin,” Lester Ray said. “I was just askin.”

      “Curiosity killed the fuckin cat,” she said. She spat on the ground and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

      “Yeah, well,” Lester Ray said, “y’all better get started, then.”

      Lyman Duck raised the hood and peered inside. “Yes, sir,” he muttered. “Where’s the key at?” Lester Ray handed it to him. It was on a chain with an old yellowed rabbit’s foot. “I ain’t superstitious,” Lyman said, wiggling the rabbit’s foot in the air, “but we are gonna need some luck.” He tinkered around under the hood, tapping at the engine with a wrench. “You tried to start this sucker?” he asked.

      “Yeah, it won’t turn over.”

      “Battery’s dead as a doornail,” Duck said, “sucker’s three days older than God. We gonna need a new one. And some new spark plugs. And ain’t no tellin what all else.”

      “No problem,” Lester Ray said. “Whatever you need.”

      “Where you gettin all this cash, if you don’t mind if I ask.”

      “I do mind,” Lester Ray said. “Now shut the hell up and get to work. And remember, this gets out, I’ll beat the shit outta both of you!”

      They worked on the car for three days. When they needed a part or something, Lester Ray would go to the auto parts store out on the highway and buy it. When they didn’t stock it any more—the parts manager turned the rusted generator over and over in his hands; “Where in the hell did you get this damn antique thang,” he asked—then Lyman would send his daughter somewhere to fetch it; she might be gone two or three hours, but she’d come back with whatever they needed.

      “Where you gettin this stuff?” Lester Ray asked.

      “That’s for us to know and you to find out, buddy,” the girl said.

      “Stealin it, I reckon,” Lester Ray said.

      The girl glared.

      “Well,” Lester Ray said, “they better be good parts, cause I’m gettin my money back if it don’t run.”

      “It will,” Lyman Duck said.

      Lester Ray stayed in the garage with them, to see that they kept working and to make sure they didn’t make off with anything. The girl mostly watched. The two of them sat on a couple of stacks of old National Geographics that had belonged to Mrs. McCrory’s husband. Lyman was on his back under the car, banging away on something. Then it was quiet again.

      “What’s your name, anyway?” Lester Ray asked the girl.

      “What’s it to you, son?” she asked, cutting her eyes at him. She was flirting with him. He hadn’t thought she was the flirting kind. For the first time he noticed she had pretty big breasts. It looked strange seeing breasts on a girl no bigger than an eight- or nine-year-old. If you could just get by her face she might be all right.

      “I was just wonderin,” he said.

      “My name is Virgin Mary Duck,” she said.

      “You’re shittin me,” he said.

      “No, I ain’t. My mama was a religious Catholic nutcase. She named me that, and don’t say anything about it or laugh at it because I like it.”

      “Okay, I won’t,” he said. “Virgin Mary Duck,” he repeated. “Is that what they

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