Chapter 11 --- Wheels

WHEELS

         Treacher's car stopped by the side door. Jess got out, went into the house and upstairs. brushing by Joey.

         Lillian watched him then said, "How did the lesson go, Paul?"

         "Don't ask! I started out to give Jesse a driving lesson, but I was the one who got the lesson. And the lesson is, don't try to teach Jesse to drive."

         "Was he that bad?"

         "No, he's going to learn to be a good driver, if he doesn't kill the both of us first."

         Lil said, "Why do you think I asked you to do it instead of trying to do it myself?"

         "Well, maybe you'd do a better job. He wouldn't hit you."

         "He hit you?"

         "No, but I bet he wanted to."

         Lillian poured coffee and cut a slice of pie for him. "He really does need his own car, living all the way out here like we do."

         "Thanks, I need a cup of coffee about now. Walt Sheal says he's got a good car for him. I took him over there to see it today."

         Jesse came back down the stairs and poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. He said, "I'm sorry.

         Treacher said, "I didn't know you still knew them words."

         "I said, I was sorry, but I got rattled when you yelled at me."

         "I had to yell. You were about to run a stop sign."

         "I stopped," Jess defended.

         "Yeah, in the ditch."

         Jesse threw up his hands. "So are you giving up on me or what?"

         "If I had any sense I would. We'll try again."

         "I'm sorry about the language. I didn't know I still knew those words either."

         Treacher said, "Cussing is like riding a bicycle, once you learn ~ "

         "What words?" Joey demanded his mouth full of pie.

         Jesse gave him a look. "I looked at a car, Mom, I can afford it, but it's kind of old."

         "Ray and his dad worked on it; if they say it's all right then it is," Treacher said.

         "How old is old?" Lillian asked.

         "Eight years. But it's all right, it's safe and it's worth the money," Paul told her.

         "Eight years! That's pre war. Maybe if I cosign with you for a note you could get something newer."

         "No, Mom; this one is fine. I don't want a car payment on top of everything else. Thanks anyway."

         “Walt Sheal wouldn't sell you a bad car," she conceded.

         Jesse said "Some of the guys that have cars put all their money in them. I can't do that; I just need something to get around in."

         The idea of Jesse out there driving around scared her half to death but she knew it was part of the rites of growing up. She couldn't very well tell him he couldn’t drive a car.

         "Well you just wait until Joey's the one learning to drive," she said.

         Jesse almost choked on that.

         "When do I get to learn to drive?" Joey asked.

         "Maybe when you're sixty," Jesse told him, and gave his shoulder a push.

         "You'll be seventy-two then," Joey said and ran outside.

Looking after him, Jesse said, "That kid ~~ always has to have the last word."

         "Yeah. I wonder where he gets it," said Treacher.

*****

         That evening Jesse sat with Nyla on the porch swing at the house on Wake Street. She already had her license, which kind of tweaked his male ego. Going on a date with her picking him up instead of the other way around didn’t sit right, although when he thought of it there was no real reason to feel that way.

         He confessed to Nyla he hadn’t done too well on his first lesson.

         “Neither did I! Daddy yelled at me and made me cry.”

         “Paul yelled at me, and I swore at him.”

         Nyla said, “Teaching someone to drive must be really scary.”

         Jesse admitted, “Paul said, 'I made his life flash before his eyes.' But he did say that he’d keep trying."

         “You’re so good at everything. You’ll be a good driver.”

         “I’m going to keep at it. Everybody else learns. So can I.”

         “That’s the spirit. After my first lesson I just sat and cried. I said I'd never get a license because I wasn’t even going to try any more!”

         “I was afraid Paul wouldn’t try any more after I ran his car off the pavement.” He squinted at his watch and said, "I've got to get going; I've got to be to work early in the morning at the big poultry farm in Nottingham. I can make some money working there and learn a lot too. I’m going to have a place like that someday."

          "You’ll have the best poultry farm in the state!”

         He wished he were as sure of that as she was. Years of hard work lay between him and that achievement. He reached over and kissed her. “I have to go,” he said.

*****

         During the days that followed Jess got the hang of driving, and Treacher said that he might be ready to take the test. “You’ll do okay. From what I can see they give a license to any idiot that wants one.”

         Jess laughed. “So I stand a chance along with all the other idiots?”

         “I didn’t mean it that way.”

         Jess wasn’t so sure.

         The car he had bought from Walt Sheal was in the yard by then. Joey walked around it.

         “It isn’t very shiny,” he commented.

         “It isn’t very new. Someday I’ll go to Mr. Sheal’s and buy a new car right out of the show room. But I have to earn a lot more money before I can do that.”

         “When do I get a ride in it?”

         “Nobody gets a ride in it until it gets license plates." Taking the responsibility for driving with Joey in the car was something he took very seriously and approached with trepidation.

         “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to drive.” Joey ran down the driveway and back making car noises.

         Jesse thought, Well, I'll wait with great patience for that day!

         When he thought about Joey becoming a driver someday, he could understand Lil’s ill-concealed anxiety about his driving. As he watched Joey, he thought, It’s like that when you love a kid. You want to protect him from every possible danger; at the same time you have to let him live his life and do the things he needs to do. Keeping the child safe, that’s easy. Knowing just how many risks to let him take, that’s hard. One of these days Joey will be driving a car, and he will be out there on his own with it. I'm glad that's still far in the future. The only one way to avoid that, would be never to love a child.

*****

         The test went better than he had hoped. He asked, “Did I pass?”

         “You’ll get the answer in the mail."

         Later he asked Treacher, “Why wouldn’t he tell me? He must know if he passed or failed me.”

         “That’s them state cops for you.”

         He must think I passed, Jesse said to himself, when he saw Treacher getting into his car on the passenger side for the drive home.

         When Jesse finally got his license. Joey said, “Now I don’t have to ride on the school bus any more!”

         “ You think?”

         “Drive me to school today, please.”

         Jesse was about to say no, then he said, “Okay. Get in the back.”

         “I want to ride in front,” Joey said.

         “The back seat or the school bus. Take your pick.”

         Joey got in the back.

*****

         Jesse stopped the car in front of the house on Wake Street. He went up to the door and rang the bell. He was a little taken back when the door opened and it was Nyla’s father standing there. It crossed his mind that Jaffreys was not going to let her go with him but he stepped back and called, “Nyla!”

         She appeared then, wearing something that was sort of rose colored. He told her it was pretty and she thanked him. She looked beautiful, a single pearl on the lobe of each ear. She was wearing the gold locket he gave her for her birthday.

         Jaffreys told him to be careful and he told Nyla not to be late.

         He opened the car door for her and looked up at the house. Nyla’s father was looking out the window. “Your father doesn’t like me.”

         “Sure he likes you.”

          “I don’t know. That can’t be his ‘I like this guy’ face.”

         “He likes you. He just doesn’t like me going out with anybody, that’s all. He thinks I’m twelve."

         “That’s how Mom and your folks see it, they think we’re ten year olds trying to do grown up things. We have to be patient with them. Especially me, I have a lot to prove.”

         “What do you have to prove?” she asked.

         “That I’m not going to do the same things I used to do. You know.”

         “Ray Sheal told Daddy about what happened at the peach orchard.”

         Jess frowned. Was there anything that happened in Carthage that wasn’t known by everyone ten minutes later?

         “It made a big impression. Daddy said, ‘there must really be something to this born again stuff.’

         Jess stopped for the light on Main Street.
He was thinking Harley better believe there’s something to it!

         “You sure look pretty. I could fall in love with you all over again, if I didn't already."

         “You want to know when I fell in love with you?” she asked.

         “Last year when we started dating?”

         “Oh no,long before that. In eighth grade."

         “Eighth grade! I was thirteen!”

         “Well so was I. And you didn’t even notice me.”

         Didn’t notice her? That wasn’t exactly true, although falling in love had been several years away for him. He repeated, “Eighth grade."

         "I thought any boy who can be that sweet to a baby must be someone special. It touched my heart you were so good to him.”

         “Of course, I was good to him.”

         She started to say, “No, I mean ~~” but she decided he could not imagine treating Joey any way but tenderly. She said, “Even now when you have him with you, you never take your eyes off him for a minute.”

         “He’s a little boy, he’s quick as a rabbit. I have to watch him every minute. You don’t know what he can get into in a minute!"

         By this time they were in the parking lot at the China Pearl where they were going to eat

         He got out and opened the door for her.

         It was when they got back to the car after dinner that he said a word he had not used in a long time.

         “Jesse!” she protested.

         He slapped his hand on the car roof. “I locked the damn keys in the car!” he confessed. “Now what do I do?

         She said “I’ll call Daddy."

         “No! If he finds out I did a dumb thing like that he’ll never let you go out with me again!”

         “We have to call somebody. Your mom?”

         “She doesn’t have a car. I could call Paul I guess. Yeah I’ll call Paul. He’d love this! I’ll never live it down.”

         He came back from the phone booth and said, “Paul doesn’t answer. He must of got a call. Now I don’t know what to do.”

         “I could call Daddy, he’d come right over and get us.”

         “And still leave the car here? No, I’m going to have to break a window.” He looked around and found a rock and wrapped it in his coat.

"Wait, stop! When the window was broken on Daddy’s car they had to take the whole door apart to put on a new one.”

         Jess knew without asking he couldn’t afford that. He asked, “How did it get broken?”

         “Daddy locked the keys in the car.”

         “He did? Oh, all right then! Call him; at least he can take you home then I’ll have to figure out how to get my car home.”

         Jaffreys arrived a little later. In front of Nyla he couldn’t chide Jesse for doing what he’d done himself and she knew it. At least this boy had better sense than to break a window.

         The next day Treacher got a locksmith and the incident was closed as a lesson learned.