---

Old Man Crenshaw came back to Fort Stockton in 1967 the same way a tornado rolls across the plains: loud, uninvited, and hauling parts from somewhere else. He’d left a decade earlier under murky circumstances involving an argument over a misspelled tattoo, a runaway circus llama, and an overdue meatloaf tab at the Lucky Lady Lounge. He returned with a questionable German wife named Ilsa, a trench coat stitched from what looked like old theater curtains, and the most unholy vehicle the town had ever seen.

It was red. Violently red. The kind of red that haunted conservative Baptists in their sleep. It sat low and wide, chrome-dipped and finned like a Cold War fever dream. The triple taillights blinked with purpose, even when the car was off, and a central nacelle-shaped light at the rear made it look like it could launch itself into orbit if provoked. On the nose, three staggered headlights blinked like a cyclops trying to wink. The grille was some sort of concave snarl, and the exhaust pipes exited through the rear bumper like it was puckering up to kiss the world goodbye.

The thing was called a Spohn. Not spawn, though folks said it like that anyway, as in, “Good Lord, where’d that spawn of Satan come from?”

Turns out it was German. Handmade. Commissioned by American GIs with more ambition than taste and built by a company that should’ve probably stuck with Maybachs. Crenshaw said it was called the DV-13, which sounded like either a secret government project or a cocktail you’d only order once.

The car was powered by a Cadillac 331 cubic inch V8 that had, according to Crenshaw, been “liberated” from a 1953 Eldorado and smuggled into Europe inside a crate of jazz records. That part might’ve been true. Everything about the car sounded like jazz: syncopated, off-tempo, improvisational, and too loud for comfort.

He parked it directly in front of Rex Hall Pharmacy every Thursday afternoon, just to pick up his ointments and let it idle. The thing had a lopey cam and a muffler that gave up sometime around Eisenhower’s second term. It roared and sputtered like a motorboat trying to do Shakespeare.

The car’s presence divided the town.

Rusty Hammer, from the hardware store, said it looked like a Studebaker got rear-ended by a bottle rocket. Lucinda, from the Grounds for Divorce, said it looked like something you’d draw on acid and regret when the drugs wore off. Thelma just crossed herself and refused to make eye contact with it.

Even the kids weren’t sure whether to love it or dare each other to lick it. One tried. Got a mild burn from the tailpipe and a talking-to from Sister Thelma about the wages of sin and foreign engineering.

Ilsa, Crenshaw’s wife, didn’t say much. She stood beside the car like a trophy won at a poker game in occupied Berlin. Her hair was bleached to the point of rebellion, and she wore sunglasses so dark you couldn’t tell if she was blind or just unimpressed. Every now and then, she’d lean against the car, smoking something long and French, and mutter in German.

Crenshaw claimed he’d had the car custom built in Ravensburg by a man named Eiwanger, who took one look at his sketches and said, “Ja, we can do zis. But why?” The result was what happens when you mix German precision with Texan imagination and leave it out in the sun too long.

He entered it in the Fort Stockton Fourth of July Parade.

Now, normally that parade consisted of cheerleaders in flatbed trailers, the fire department honking along in their best truck, and Mayor Goodman waving from the back of a golf cart with a BABE ON BOARD bumper sticker. But that year, the Red Menace stole the show.

The Spohn rolled down Main Street like a Cold War hallucination. It gleamed. It rumbled. It let out a sharp, thunderous backfire right as it passed the old folks’ viewing section, causing three spilled lemonades, one minor stroke, and a hip replacement to come violently undone.

But what truly set things off was the light show. Turns out Crenshaw had wired the triple taillights to blink in Morse code. He said it was patriotic. Chief Martin said it was treasonous. No one could prove whether the blinking spelled “USA FOREVER” or “LAUNCH SEQUENCE INITIATED.”

After the parade, it became a local attraction. People came from Pecos and even as far as Alpine just to see it parked out front of the Rex Hall Drug. Crenshaw charged five dollars for a Polaroid beside it and ten if you wanted Ilsa in the shot. She never smiled.  People still paid.

One evening, around dusk, something changed.

The car started glowing.

It began with the dashboard. A soft blue light pulsed from behind the speedometer like a heartbeat. Then the grille lit up, followed by the exhaust tips. A low hum filled the parking lot. The town assumed it was another prank, maybe something Crenshaw had jerry-rigged with leftover military surplus and moonshine.

Then it lifted.

Only two inches off the ground, but that was enough to cause Lucinda to drop her key lime pie and Thelma to slap a teenager who said it looked like aliens. Crenshaw just stood beside it, arms crossed, nodding slowly like he knew this day would come.

“She knows we’re watching now,” he said.

Chief Martin showed up with his flashlight and two deputies. They circled the car, took notes, then left in silence. The next morning, the sheriff’s cruiser had a bumper sticker reading I BELIEVE. Nobody mentioned it again.

After that, the Spohn became more than a car. It was an omen. A barometer. When it ran well, the cattle sold high and the plumbing held. When it sputtered or refused to start, marriages ended and crop dusters nosedived.

Ilsa left in the fall. No note. No suitcase. Just gone. Crenshaw claimed the car absorbed her. He said she was tired of human form and had returned to energy. Thelma said he probably buried her behind the ESSO station.

Eventually, Crenshaw stopped driving it. He just kept it under a tarp made from a defunct billboard for Black Angus Chili. He’d sit beside it on a folding lawn chair with a beer and a harmonica, waiting for something. He wouldn’t say what.

Then one morning, he vanished too.

All that was left was the car.

It still sits in Fort Stockton, in a glass garage funded by a local grant and one eccentric historian. Kids take field trips. Teens dare each other to touch it at night. The triple taillights still blink, though no one’s been able to decode the message. One high schooler claimed it translated to “HELP ME” but he also said Space Ghost was a documentary.

Lucinda swears it hums louder when it rains. Rusty won’t speak of it at all. And every so often, someone claims they saw Crenshaw in the driver’s seat again, just sitting there—motionless, eyes closed, like he’s waiting for launch.

Maybe one day it’ll lift again.

Maybe it already has.

---

---