Sadie Sommerville special-ordered her ’77 Grand Marquis Hardtop from over at Frontier Ford, “Home of the Straight Shootin’ Deal”, because she’d seen the ads for it on TV and thought it was the most beautiful car she’d ever seen. It was the biggest, nicest car she’d ever bought and she picked out just the two toned color combination she wanted, Cream and Medium Gold over a gold leather and cloth interior.

Granted, a single history teacher from Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern could normally have never made such a purchase on a school teacher’s salary.  But she’d recently received an inheritance from a favorite old aunt who’d shuffled off this mortal coil and left most all of what she had to Sadie, save for a little to the Almost United Methodist Church to help fund the Save the Homeless from the Heat initiative Pastor Peterson had unveiled earlier that summer.  A retired school teacher herself, Sadie’s aunt had stipulated she take $8500 of the money and splurge on a ride she could enjoy.  “One that you’d never be able to afford, otherwise, but that you have earned, my dear.”

Those instructions and the cash that went with it were all she needed.

T.J. Snively, the salesman she worked with over at Frontier, was the type that gave car salesmen all over a bad name.  Rather than listening to what she wanted to order and pay cash for, he tried to put her into a heavily discounted ’76 Thunderbird still on the lot, the last of the 76 models to be sold.  She had no interest in a Thunderbird, but T.J. was sure he could talk her into it and get the bonus the sales manager had put on the similarly deck out ‘Bird.

Finally convincing him she meant to purchase the Mercury, and wouldn’t hesitate to drive to Marfa to do it if she had to, he wrote up the order. Once it arrived, her experience with the service department was as frustrating as it had been with T.J. Snively. Her service advisor seemed more intent on trying to service Sadie than her Grand Marquis. His advances were rebuffed more than the forged aluminum wheels on the Mercury. As soon as the warranty period was up, she went to Grandy’s Honest Auto Service out near the highway into Fort Stockton hoping for a higher level of customer service.

Things started off well enough, mostly routine oil changes and tire rotations.  Sadie took the Mercury there for years.  A man of his word, and a magician with a wrench, Grady was almost a god-like figure in the local automotive repair world.

Then Grady started having trouble with his prostate and he brought his brother-in-law, Gus, on board to help out.  That’s when things began going south.  

Sadie brought the Mercury in for 18,000 mile service and when she came back to pick it up that afternoon, the invoice included blinker fluid, a new muffler bearing, rebuilding the radiator springs, replacing a malfunctioning ventilation regulator, and adding a quart of oil thinner.  She was shocked at the line item called “floor mat alignment”, as she thought they looked fine when she dropped it off.  Nonetheless, she had a stack of tests to grade so she paid the bill and headed back towards the school.  That’s when she noticed the Grand Marquis seemed to be running worse than when she’d dropped it off.

The following Saturday morning, Sadie stopped by the Grounds for Divorce for a coffee and was explaining the situation to Lucinda.  “I’d take it back, if I were you,” Lucinda told her.  “No reason in this day and time we women can’t expect full satisfaction.  I demand it from my men.”  The way she winked kind of threw Sadie off a little, but she took Lucinda’s point to heart and headed back to Grady’s as soon as she finished her Folgers.

Gus was out front when she pulled up and she explained her concern.  “Sound like you’ve probably had an EGR compression release valve go bad.  These big Oldsmobiles are known for those going bad as soon as the warranty expires,” he said.

“It’s a Mercury,” Sadie said.  “How much to fix it?”

“All depends on whether we have to remove the wiper timing belt to get to it, or not.  Won’t know till I get in there.  If it’s just a thermostat bearing we’ll probably get you back on the road for less than $400,” Gus said as he reached down and scratched his left testicle, none too discreetly.  “Also depends on parts availability.”

Gus had the Mercury a week and a half.  Sister Thelma gave Sadie a ride to and from school.  When Sadie mentioned on the way to school one morning that she wondered whether or not she should have considered one of those foreign cars instead of the Mercury, Sister Thelma assured her they were the work of the devil and that things would work out with the Grand Marquis.  “We didn’t win two world wars by producing inferior quality goods,” she explained.  Sadie, being a history teacher, knew there was little more to it than that, but nodded in the affirmative as they pulled into the parking lot.

When Gus called and said the car was finally ready, he didn’t say anything about the bill.  When Sadie arrived to pick up the Mercury, it was $987.  “Turns out it was the exhaust bracket rubbing up against the floor pan drain valve.  Had to weld in a whole new one, once the part finally came in from Odessa.”

“Have you ever heard of ‘Old Rough and Ready’ Sadie asked him.  

“You mean the ’62 Studebaker tow truck out back?” Gus asked her.

“No, I mean the President of the US, Zachary Taylor,” Sadie told him.  The history teacher in her was coming out.  “Probably one of the least memorable presidents.  He died 16 months after taking office.  Never had a chance to show whether he’d be worth a darn as a leader, or not.”

Gus just nodded while he tended to that persistent itch.

“Never even voted in an election, till he was in his sixties and voted for himself,” Sadie went on.  He was a military man.  Wealthy.  Southerner.  A strapping, healthy man of 63 years when he was elected.”  Sadie continued her story, not even blinking when Gus stopped to smell his fingers.  “In 1850, 4th of July, to be exact, he became sick.  He’d just eaten a big bowl of fresh fruit and iced buttermilk during the groundbreaking of the new Washington Monument about to be erected in Washington DC.”

“I was never much on history.  Spent all my time in the Auto Shop,” Gus said.

“He died four days later on July 9th, despite all the efforts of his doctor,” Sadie said, completely disregarding Gus’ claim of having been in Auto Shop.  “Right after his death, rumors began that he’d been assassinated by being poisoned. Despite being a wealthy slave owner and a southerner himself, he was despised in the south because of his position of expanding slavery into new territories.”

It suddenly dawned on Gus that perhaps it was actually the right one that was giving him fits and began working it to find relief from the persistent itch.

“If it was true that he’d been assassinated, that would have made him the first US President to have been killed in office rather than Abraham Lincoln, 14 years later,” Sadie went on.  “By the late 1980s a Florida college professor by the name of Clara Rising had tracked down Zachary Taylor’s closest living family member and explained her theory of how he might have been assassinated.  It took her a while, but the professor finally convinced the closest living Taylor relative to have The former president’s body exhumed, his remains tested to see if he’d been poisoned, and thus prove him to be the very first president to have been assassinated.”

Sure enough, the look on Gus’ face showed that it had been the right one all along.  A sense of relief washed over his face.  Until he smelled his fingers again.

Sadie ignored the breakthrough.  “They exhumed the former president from the family mausoleum in the summer of 1991.  The chief medical examiner of Louisville, Kentucky was tasked with gathering samples of what hair, fingernails, existing tissue, and other matter remained and sent it off for radiological testing.”

Gus struggled to determine which was the more irritating, the story Sadie seemed to be fixated on, the pungent aroma being emitted from the tips of his oil-stained hand.

“Turns out,” Sadie went on, “that there were trace elements of ipecac, calomel, opium, and quinine.  Also evidence of bleeding and blistering of the corpse.  Interestingly, it wasn’t assassination by poisoning.  It was death by complete incompetence on the part of the doctor treating him.”

Sadie stopped.  Gus looked up.  She stared into his eyes, looking for a soul.

“You’re doing the same thing to my Mercury.”