It was
raining and it was a
Wednesday. I had been spraying the front panel of a
Ford Taurus seafoam
green for a half an hour, and the transformation from
Bondo pink to minty green was
chief among my concerns. When I came in that morning, I found that Manny had swiped the filters from my
respirator mask again, so I gave his boots a shot with the grease gun on the way out to the garage. Cheap
bastard won't walk down the street and buy new ones. When I stepped out of the spray room, I felt this rumble coming through my
chest. It was a growl of something big. "
Detroit", it purred.
Old Detroit.
He was here again, for his yearly
checkup. He was the only car I ever seen that had a guy's name. Most guys, when they get a bit obsessive about something, name it after a
woman, you know, like "
Bombshell Betty" the Bomber or calling a
ship she. But not this car. This car was
pure balls.
El Heffe.
Just saying the name brought a
hush to the garage. It was a
legend, one of those stories that the new guy thinks is
bullshit when you tell him at the
bar after work. This car, man, it had stories. Like
Steven King shit. And when ever something crazy happened, it always ended up here at
Frank's Autobody.
It was an angry looking
monster of a car, a '66
Pontiac GTO in midnight
candy blue. It had about 90 coats of fine
metallic paint on it, polished like a
school teacher's apple and these big blazing orange
California flames on the front. The windows had the blackest
tint I ever seen. As I pulled up my
mask and walked out front through the
rolling door, I saw all the guys standing round, gob smacked as usual. All the other jobs got dropped on the spot, lonely on the
hoists. All the
pneumatic wrenches stopped when Heffe came to town. He was hand crafted, every inch of the way.
Frank, the owner, a
gray old man of
girth and
greed was up out of his office for once, leaning in the drivers side window and smiling
ear to ear. The driver gave the engine a few shots of
gas, and Heffe bucked on his
springs. The guys clapped and cheered and called for more, but the driver let Heffe rest, pulling the
key from the
ignition. Heffe actually grumbles when he stops. It's the coolest thing I ever heard. Sounds like the
wind popping across a million
coke bottle tops, real throaty, an
orgasmic gurgle.
Here's what I
know for sure about
El Heffe.
A long time ago, way back when Frank just opened this place, he was having a
hard time. He has a bit of a
temper, and nobody thought much about
drinking problems back then. So, as his dream of a
hotrod shop died
on the vine, Frank got mixed up in some shady business. Not murder or drugs or
nothing, just
chopping cars. He kept food on the table and his shop out of
bankruptcy by getting in deep with a
loan shark from across the tracks, and to work off the payments, he chopped cars for the guy's
gang. Clean, tidy, nobody gets
hurt. Well, as long as they didn't lose their car. That's how Frank met
Juan.
This is where El Heffe comes in. Juan is the
leader of the guys
rolling the cars to Frank, so they get pretty familiar with each other. Not friends, but they ain't
butting heads. Now Juan, he was a
wild man. He came up from way down South riding this big silver
chopper and rose
hell all over town. Frank says he had so many
tattoos it looked like he was wearing a
black shirt. To keep his poor
Catholic momma happy, Juan had this big
cross inked right on his
throat, his own little tribute to
religion. One day, Juan decides that he wants to throw Frank a bone. He snatches this
cherry ride off a dealer's lot and asks Frank to do it up
nice. A
whole garbage bag full of money nice. El Heffe was born.
Juan loved his car. It was
macho. It was
brash. It was his
middle finger smashed right up under the cops noses. It became a fixture in the local
dragracing scene and the object of more than a few police chases. Everybody knew Juan's
car.
Ultimately, it's what got him
killed. Some rival gang or some cop or some jealous boyfriend who caught Juan with his
hand in the cookie jar caught him at a
red light and stuck a
.38 in his
ribs. Nobody ever went to
jail for it. Somehow, by some freak coincidence or just cruel
fate, Juan lives long enough to drive Heffe half way across town while
bleeding to death, almost to the door of his brother's
church.
Padre Jose wakes up in the middle of the night to Heffe's horn screaming on the front stairs of his
church. He rushed from the
rectory and found Juan sitting in car breathing his
last. With bloodstained lips, Juan begged his brother to keep
Heffe running, his
dying wish. Jose swore he would, kissed his brother's
cross and gave him the
Last Rites while Heffe purred. Juan died with a
smile on his face and Heffe
stalled for the very first time.
The padre is much
older now, his white hair stark against his
cheap black plastic sunglasses. He steps out of the drivers seat and shakes Frank's
hand. Frank, either out of guilt or sense of duty, waves at Johnny to put Heffe in Bay one. "Give'r the works boys. No charge." The pair heads back to the corner office to complete their yearly
ceremony of remembrance. Jose nods gravely to us all.
Then he
winks. Every year it gets
me.