This is the third installment of a series that will run all week.

“You know who told me the filthiest joke I’ve ever heard in my cotton-pickin life?” Justin Carlson asked his best buddy.

“Had to be your ol’ Aunt Pauline!” Slim Tuckerman said.

“Damn straight!”  Justin guffawed.  “That woman could tell the funniest damn jokes, cook like a chef, and make anybody in Texas bust a gut with either of those God-given talents.  The woman was a 38D miracle, I tell ya.”

Slim was just a trifle bit put off that his friend would refer to his favorite aunt’s bust size when singing her praises, but then, the two of them had been pretty close for a long, long time.  It was that closeness that eventually led the two of them to be talking about her out in the barn that evening in the first place.

“She was always my favorite aunt.  Nothing at all like her sister, my mom.” Justin had kind of a dazed, faraway look in his eye.  “Do you remember when I was in Fort Stockton Memorial Hospital and Animal Testing Facility for that hernia operation.  Back when I was fifteen?  Remember that?”

“Don’t reckon I could ever forget’” Slim said.  “You showin’ me that scar when you got home just about done me in.  Thought I was gonna lose my lunch!”

“Anyway, night before the operation, she come up to the hospital.  I was standin’ in the second floor window of the room, lookin’ out at the parking lot when I seen her pull in driving the Plymouth.  Jeez, I don’t know which of the two of ’em were more attractive, her or the damn Belvedere.”  Justin took a minute to compose himself.  “Anyway, up she come.”

“She’d called ahead and told me not to eat any of that horrible hospital food.  Told me she was bringin’ me a double cheeseburger combo from the Dairy Twin.  ‘The Last Supper’ she called it.  You know, in case I died on the table.”  Justin giggled to himself thinking back on the whole thing.  “Anyway, up she comes.  Walks into the room with the greasy brown bag from the Dairy Twin in one hand, and one of them 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles in the other.”

“When in the hell have you ever worked a jigsaw puzzle?” Slim asked.

“I know, right?” Justin explained.  “That’s the exact same thing I asked her.”  She tells me she stopped by the Ben Franklin and picked it up just for me.  She knew I’d enjoy it.  Said to not open it till after my parents left, later.  Said it would help me sleep, what with the operation the next morning, and all.”

“One of those damn puzzles would put me right to sleep, I guarantee you.”  Slim replied.

“So I eat the double cheeseburger combo.  The grease is runnin’ down both arms to about my elbows when my parents walk in.  They give her hell for bringin’ outside food into the hospital and whatnot.  Then she says she has to skedaddle, she’s meeting someone at the Lucky Lady who was gonna have a say in how lucky a lady she was gonna be that night!  I swear that woman was a caution.”

Slim was enjoying the beer out in the barn with his old buddy, but had to admit that sometimes his stories went on forever.

“So anyway, my folks finally leave,” Justin went on,  “I’m in the room all by myself.  Watching the Beverly Hillbillies or some damn thing, and the nurse comes in.  Has to take my temperature, and all that.  By the way, you know what the difference is between an oral and a rectal thermometer?”

“Not a clue.”

“The taste!”  Justin obviously got Pauline’s gift of humor.  “Anyway, after the nurse is all done, she sees the puzzle box.  Puts it up on the tray table and says I ought to work on it instead of watching so much TV.  Then leaves the room.”

“So did you work the puzzle?” Slim asked.

“I opened the box, and there it was.  A PLAYBOY.  Could.  Not.  Believe.  My.  Damn.  Eyes.”  Justin said.  “I mean those girls left not a thing to the imagination.  From their tooters to their cooters.” Justin recalled.  “And Aunt Pauline was right.  It did help me go to sleep!”

Slim laughed and finished his beer, then grabbed another one from the styrofoam Piggly Wiggly ice chest over on the workbench.

“Only trouble was, after the operation I damn near ripped my stitches out ‘bout a half dozen times just admiring Miss February!”

The two of them each had another one while they swapped stories, like friends do who’d known each other forever, but didn’t talk that much anymore.  The Plymouth had been in the barn for seven, maybe eight years. Looked tired when Justin inherited it from Aunt Pauline.  It looked exhausted by that night.  But Justin still loved the damn thing.  Always had.

Pauline got it when it was only a year or two old.  Got it from a boyfriend of some kind, although the details or the title transfer and their relationship were always sketchy and subject to change, depending on how many wine coolers Pauline might have had to drink.  What never changed was the fact that it was a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere 2-door hardtop.  “It’s only a Belvedere,” Pauline told Justin when he was about ten and falling in love with the car.  “If it was a Fury I’d a had to do things that might have affected my pride.”  He had no idea what she meant, but chuckled along with her.  “Probably would have still done ‘em.  Glad I didn’t have to.”

When he got older and thought about the conversation, Justin remembered what she’d said and had a better understanding of what she might have meant.  He had a better understanding of Pauline by then, too.  He understood why she’d go missing for a while without anybody hearing from her.  Then she’d just show up at Christmas, out of the blue, with gifts for him and his siblings.  He’d catch snippets of the conversation when she and his mother would be doing the dishes in the kitchen, thinking nobody was listening.

“It’s not the years, it’s the mileage,” Justin’s dad used to say.  Aunt Pauline had a lot of mileage.  But the Plymouth still looked damn good.  “Funny she can let everything else in her life go to hell in a handbag, but that old Belvedere still looks showroom new,” his dad said.  “It’s not even a Fury.  Then he’d look at Justin and smile.  “But Aunt Pauline sure is!”

One day when Pauline showed up after one of her ‘vacations’ it was obvious she wasn’t well.  By then Justin had married Tina Lee and they’d had a couple kids.  They had a place out on FM 666, just down from Tina Lee’s mom and stepdad’s place.  Their little homestead was big enough to let the kids out so they could run around while Justin and Tina Lee played hide-the-bishop, and nobody worried about ‘em wandering off.  The place had an old barn back behind the house that quickly filled up with projects that would never see the light of day again.

A year after that, Aunt Pauline died.  Justin heard it had something to do with her liver, but never heard for sure if it was the drinking or the cancer.  About five months later, the Belvedere showed up.  Sonny from the ESSO station dragged it out to Justin and Tina Lee’s and was pulling up the gravel driveway just as Justin’s mom called to tell him it was his.  “Pauline was adamant you have the car.  If it was me, I’d sell the damn thing.  But you do what you please.  It’ll probably piss off Tina Lee that you got it.  That girl’s always been a tad on the high strung side.  Don’t let the car cause any ruckus between the two of you.  Life’s too short.”

Justin’s mother was right about Tina Lee, she was high strung.  And she was peeved about the Plymouth.  But by the end of the day the Belvedere was tucked into the barn next to the John Deere and behind an antique bedroom suit that was never going to get refinished.  The kids were wandering around in the pasture while Justin and Tina Lee were batter-dipping the corn dog.  Out of sight, out of mind.

“I’m going to fix the ol’ girl up,” Justin told Slim not too long after.  Get the dents knocked out and a fresh coat of Tahitian Coral on her.  Bring her back to life.  When she’s all done, take her up to one of them Cars-N-Coffee shows at the Grounds for Divorce.  Show her off and make Aunt Pauline proud.”  Justin looked around to be sure Tina Lee and the boys were nowhere around, then whispered to Slim, “I found the old Playboy she brung me to the hospital.  Keep it in the glove compartment.  Kind of makes the whole thing like one of them time capsules.  Can’t put a dollar value on that, but I had to try.”

Slim looked at him with an expression that was even more quizzical than usual.

“Took out one of them classic car insurance policies on the Plymouth.  Had to come to an agreed value and finally settled on twenty-five grand.  Can you believe that!  Tina Lee would crap her Calvin’s if she knew this thing was worth that kind of dough, or that I convinced somebody it was, anyway.

Slim thought about Tina Lee in her Calvin’s for a minute or two longer than he should have, and then the two of them headed back to the house to throw some steaks on the grill.  Slim had a new girlfriend named Tanya, who lived in Marfa. He was making the rounds with her, getting friends’ opinions as to whether she was worth the extra gas money to date or not.  “It ain’t like Marfa is just a hop, skip and a jump from Fort Stockton,” Slim was not hesitant to point out.

By the following spring Slim and Tanya had gotten past the initial butterflies that go along with new relationships.  They had gone from commuting back and forth to Marfa for the pleasure of bumping uglies and Tanya had moved in with Slim out at the Modern Manor Mobile Home Park.  Slim said it was just to save gas money, but Tanya knew the emotions were much deeper than that.  Slim was a man who played his cards close to his tattooed, hairy chest, but had emotions that ran deep.

“Don’t know why a man would want to buy the cow when he’s gettin’ the milk for free,” Tanya’s mother kept telling her.  It was not lost on Tanya that her mother hadn’t bothered to marry her father till Tanya was about to graduate kindergarten, so she was not in a position to offer opinions on cows, milk, or any other dairy products.

It must have been in March, maybe April that spring when Slim and Tanya were out at Justin and Tina Lee’s again.  The girls were at the kitchen table sipping wine coolers and talking about wedding plans.  Justin and Slim were out in the barn, leaning up against the Plymouth and swapping stories about girls they could have had in high school, and whether a Mustang or Camaro was the best pony car of all time, and how many Lone Star Longnecks each of them could drink before they passed out cold.  The kids were somewhere out in the pasture.

It was when Tina Lee got up and walked over to the Frigidaire for another wine cooler that she glanced out the kitchen window, past the gun rack, and out towards the west.  She saw a wall of clouds blacker than the governor’s heart.  She froze in her tracks.  Finally. she grabbed the bottle opener and ran out the back door towards the barn.

“Justin!  JUSTIN! Grab them kids and get to the house.  There’s a storm coming!”

Justin and Slim were about three sheets to the wind at that point, but managed to sober up pretty quick when they looked at the clouds heading right for Fort Stockton.  They grabbed Little Justin and Dustin from the pasture and ran towards the house, Slim right behind picking up empties as he ran for cover.

Inside, Tanya had already made her way to the bathroom on the interior of the house and got into the bathtub like she’d learned in school.  Everyone thought it was odd that she’d stripped down naked before getting in the tub, but Little Dustin ran to her arms and hugged her tight as he got into the tub with her.  What happened next later became known as ‘The Twister that Missed Her’.  The F-4 tornado took a hard right to the south and completely avoided Fort Stockton, like it didn’t want to get involved.

The town was able to dodge that bullet, but not the hail storm that followed.  It started off as dime sized stones, then quarter sized.  By the time the storm was over the heart of downtown, the frozen chunks of ice were like soft balls.  Becky over at the Ben Franklin, normally a prickmedainty, was screaming for her life and cussing like a drunken sailor during the worst of it.

Let’s just say that when the storm finally passed, there wasn’t a car, truck, metal shed or mailbox in Fort Stockton that hadn’t endured some damage.  The body shops at Cactus CHEV-Olds and Frontier Ford, “Home of the Straight Shootin’ Deal”, were booked solid for a year after that.  So much so that Slim and Tanya had to book another venue for their nuptials.

A week or three after the big storm Slim and Tanya were back out at Justin and Tina Lee’s place again, things having settled down accordingly.  Leaning up against the rear left fin of the Belvedere, Slim muttered the words he’d later regret, “Shame the old Plymouth wasn’t parked outside the barn when the hail storm hit.  The insurance would be payin’ for all the bodywork and a fresh coat of Tahitian Coral.

About fifteen minutes and four beers later, Justin and Slim were pushing the big pink beauty out into the sunshine for the first time in years.  Armed with old red shop towels and ball peen hammers from the workbench, the two of them went to work on the Plymouth.  They wrapped the head of the hammers in with old red shop towels.  Slim started at the rear bumper, Justin on the hood.  “We better do a window air two to make it look real,” Justin said.  Slim hit the back window of the Belvedere like it was personal.  By the time the brisket in the smoker was ready to be brought in and sliced, the Belvedere looked like it had driven through the Apocalypse and stopped at every rest area.

Justin and Slim admired their work and then got the brisket out of the smoker.  Justin made plans to file a claim the following Monday.  He couldn’t help but smirk at the idea of finally getting the better of the insurance company.  And to finally get Aunt Pauline’s old Plymouth looking in tip top shape again was going to be a dream come true.

The next morning, Justin still had a smile on his face, something rare when the kids hadn’t just been sent out to play in the pasture.  He showered, got dressed, and made his way to the kitchen where Tina Lee was just finishing the sausage gravy on the stove and pulling the biscuits out of the oven.  Justin was running  late for his job out at the Proving Grounds, but could never turn down his favorite breakfast.  He wolfed down three biscuits and headed out the back door before turning around and telling Tina Lee, “By the way, I need you to grab the insurance policy on the Plymouth for me.  I have no idea where you filed it.”

Tina Lee didn’t have to think twice.  “I cancelled that a couple years ago,” she said.  “Nothing was ever going to happen to that old car in the barn, and the policy was just about the same amount every month as Mother’s Day Out for the boys over at Second Baptist Church.”

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