Selling the Car

Selling the Car by Sally Harris The old man ambled out onto the lopsided wooden porch to see who was blowing a car horn. He shivered and rubbed his arms with his hands as the cool evening air pushed against him. He was tall and rail thin, and he felt the coming winter in the late October air. He walked across the porch to meet the young fellow who was getting out of a dented-up Ford. "Hello!" the young man said, pushing a dirty shirt sleeve up over his elbow as he came up to the porch. "I'm Winston Murphy." He extended his hand, and Jess shook it briefly. "Jess Benson." "Did you have a nice garden this year?" the young man asked, pointing to the fodder shocks standing in the small garden space. 42 "Yeah. Pretty good." "Looks like it." He turned to Jess. "A fellow in Maple Grove said you had a car to sell." Jess nodded. "Yeah. Right over there." He nodded again, this time toward a 1962 Studebaker Lark parked under a tree by the house. The weeds had grown up around the tires a little, and leaves had fallen all over the car. But its light-green paint was still shiny and the chrome was polished. "Mind if I take a look at it?" Winston asked. "Naw. Go right ahead." Jess rubbed his arms to ward off the chill, and the young man strode over to the car, giving his sleeve another push. He bent down to rub his finger along the bottom of the fender as he went by. He walked around the car and examined the outside. He opened the door and looked at the interior , touching a finger to a hole in the back of the driver's seat. Then he pulled the hood release, walked back to the front of the car, and raised the hood. He tinkered with the engine for several minutes. Jess moved close to the car and pushed a pile of leaves off. He ran his hand along the smooth paint of the car's top, thinking of the many years he and this old car had been together. "What're you asking for it?" Jess dusted his hands together. "Two hundred." "Hmm. Has to have tires. And the battery's gone." "Yeah." "You had it running lately?" "Drove it up 'til a couple a months ago." "Been started since?" "Once. About a month ago. Started okay." "Why'd you stop driving it?" "Well, one of the tie rod ends is ready to fall out. Besides, I'm getting sort of old to be driving." None of this young whippersnapper's business. I can't afford parts or insurance or tags or gas anymore, not since all Nellie's medical bills, anyway, he thought. "Why, you look pretty spry to me," Winston said. Jess thought he could hear the young man thinking, that oughta mellow the old guy up a little bit. He didn't answer. "I'll give you a hunnert for it." Jess thought for a minute. "Naw. Can't let it go for that." The young man started his examination of the car all over again. Need more'n a hundred, Jess thought. Nellie's present's eighty-five. And that insurance is eight a month. Gotta have at least one-fifty. If he'll give me onefifty . The young man came back. "Sure is pretty country out here," he said. But he was looking at the car. "Yeah." "I'll give you one and a quarter. There's not too much demand for a car like that." "Naw," Jess said. "Not too much." People don't know good cars when they see them no more, he thought. "Tell you what. I'll let you have it for one seventy-five." Now offer me one-fifty, and it's yourn, he thought. "It'll cost me a hunnert for tires and a battery," Winston said, looking toward the car. Jess said nothing, iust stood looking at the nearly bare tree branches that almost touched the top of the car. "What's the least you'll take for it?" "Well, I guess I...