The 1957 DeSoto Firesweep Sedan came off the line as an entry-level car, but nobody told it that. Sunlit Yellow with a sweep of Frost White curling down its flanks, it looked like it had been dipped in custard and victory. Tail fins like ambitions. Whitewalls that glared at the pavement. It parked like it expected applause.
Delbert Maxey hadn’t driven it in three months. Not since the parking brake incident outside the VFW fish fry where it rolled gently into a row of folding chairs and upended three Baptist women sitting next to Brother Bob and a cooler of tartar sauce. No one was hurt, but Mavis Pickering’s orthopedic sandals were never quite the same. She had a tendency to turn left even when she wanted to go straight.
Delbert blamed the slope of the parking lot. Others blamed the fact that he liked to park and leave the car running while he fetched his hearing aids from the glovebox. Either way, he’d sworn off driving for a while, only taking the DeSoto out on Sundays when he felt like proving a point to someone who wasn’t watching.
He eased into the driver’s seat now, whistling something half-remembered from a Slim Whitman album. The interior still smelled like the upholstery shop that had redone the seats in 2007—vinyl and ambition. The Firesweep fired up with a low, confident growl. The kind of sound that says, “I’ve been rebuilt but I remember what I was.”
He backed out carefully, using both fender-mounted mirrors and the cautious squint of a man who didn’t fully trust his cataracts.
His first stop was the Grounds for Divorce cafe.
Lucinda brought him a cup of coffee without asking. He nodded. She nodded. They had an understanding based on years of mutual tolerance and strong opinions about other people’s children.
“Still got the DeSoto?” she asked, glancing out the window.
“It asked for me by name this morning,” Delbert said.
She didn’t smile exactly, but the left side of her mouth tilted up like it was thinking about it.
“Careful with them brakes,” she said.
“They’ve had counseling.”
Over at table four, Rusty Hammer glanced over his copy of the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch. “You still got that speedometer that tells the truth only on Thursdays?”
“Better than your thermometer that says ‘HOT’ and then bursts into flames.”
Chad from the Piggly Wiggly stifled a laugh and spilled a little sweet tea.
After breakfast, Delbert cruised down Main with all the grace of a riverboat. The yellow paint caught the sun like it had something to prove. Teenagers stared. Old men nodded. One dog barked and then immediately looked sorry.
His destination was the Fort Stockton Museum, where he volunteered twice a month to correct the historical signage and offer unsolicited opinions about the cavalry. He parked the Firesweep right out front, where the statue of the giant roadrunner could keep it company.
Inside, Sister Thelma was organizing pamphlets.
“You’re early,” she said.
“My car needed the exercise.”
“You sure you don’t?”
Delbert grinned. “Too late for me. But that DeSoto? She’s just getting started.”
He spent the afternoon debating Civil War supply routes with a confused couple from Boise and fixing a loose plaque with a butter knife he’d brought from home. At 3:15, he left the museum and stood admiring the Firesweep for a good five minutes before realizing he’d left his keys on the exhibit labeled “West Texas Quilting Traditions.”
By 3:30, he was back in the car and headed toward the Lucky Lady Lounge, not for a drink, but because he liked to park nearby and listen to the jukebox through the open windows. He claimed it improved his mileage.
As he turned the corner onto Mesquite Street, he passed Eunice Netterman’s house. She was outside, fighting with a garden hose and losing.
He honked.
She waved the nozzle at him like it was loaded. “That thing still runs?”
He called back, “Better than your sprinkler system.”
She yelled something about chicken brooders and basil, but he was already out of earshot.
The Firesweep took him the long way home. Up past Jim Bowie High School where the drill team, The Pocket Knives, were practicing in the parking lot. Down through the little cemetery where the road buckled just enough to make the suspension whisper. The sun was dropping low, casting that Sunlit Yellow into something deeper—like an old banana or a forgotten trophy.
Delbert didn’t mind. The car still purred. The speedometer needle danced a little, unsure of itself, but hopeful.
When he pulled into the driveway, he let the engine idle just long enough to play the last few notes of the song on the radio. Then he shut it off and sat there a moment longer.
“Not bad,” he said aloud.
And though no one could hear it, not really, the Firesweep seemed to agree.
One response to “TWO DeSOTOS, Part II”
“He backed out carefully, using both fender-mounted mirrors and the cautious squint of a man who didn’t fully trust his cataracts.”
After the fourth funeral this week I stopped by my buddy’s house to see how work on his ’65 Impala was going. Nothing like a glorious fire engine red resto-mod in mid re-build to lift one’s spirits while the rest of town is headed for the cemetery. I left my Flex pulled up at the driveway but still in the street with flashers on. Standing there discussing tire/rim sizing for the Impala an approaching white pickup stopped halfway up the block. My buddy says, “Its Uncle Howard, he has a blind spot straight ahead for about twenty feet and anything outside of forty-five degrees, but after that he’s good. He sweeps his head like radar and your Flex just made a blip. He’ll be okay once he gets by.” We waited and as he passed his girlfriend waved. We waved back. My buddy says, “He probably shouldn’t be driving at all, but Hell, Margie rides with him so if she’s okay with it…”