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The first person to accuse Jimmy Don Ventura of buying another ridiculous automobile was Melba at the DMV, and technically she had not even seen it yet.

That was how Fort Stockton worked. News did not travel so much as appear fully grown, wearing boots, carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee, and acting offended that you had not heard it sooner. By the time Jimmy Don walked into the county tax office with a manila folder tucked beneath his arm, Melba already knew he had purchased a car from California, that it had something to do with Hollywood, that it was orange, that it had a ridiculous fin on the back, that it was possibly famous, and that he had somehow convinced himself the State of Texas ought to be moved by all of this.

She looked up from her desk when he came in and sighed before he said a word.

“No.”

Jimmy Don stopped with one hand still on the door.

“I haven’t asked anything.”

“You walked in here with a folder.”

“That’s suspicious?”

“It is when you’re holding it like Perry Mason.”

---

---

Jimmy Don smiled and stepped to the counter. He had dressed for the occasion, which meant a clean pearl-snap shirt, a Stockton Telegram-Dispatch press badge clipped to his pocket, and the expression of a man who believed paperwork could be defeated by charm if the paperwork could only be made to understand cinema.

“I have purchased a historically significant automobile.”

Melba set down her pen.

“Of course you have.”

“A 1967 Plymouth Barracuda fastback.”

“That’s an automobile.”

“Customized for the motion picture Corky’s.”

“That’s a sentence.”

“Designed by Harry Bentley Bradley. Built by Korky’s Kustom Studios. Painted by Barris Kustom Industries.”

Melba leaned back.

“Does it run?”

“Yes.”

“Does it have headlights?”

“Custom rectangular headlights.”

“Does it have brakes?”

“Front discs now.”

“Then it sounds like a car.”

Jimmy Don opened the folder with theatrical patience. He slid photographs across the counter. The Barracuda, in all its tangerine, winged, side-piped glory, stared up at Melba from the glossy paper like a fever dream from a Sun Belt body shop.

Melba stared at it.

Then she stared at Jimmy Don.

Then back at the car.

“That is not a car. That is a personal decision.”

“It’s a movie star.”

“It is a Plymouth.”

“It appeared in Corky’s, a Sears DieHard commercial, and an episode of Knight Rider.”

“So did a parking lot, probably.”

Jimmy Don tapped the photograph.

“George Barris signed the interior.”

“I signed my casserole dish after the Second Baptist Thanksgiving supper in 1998. That does not make it eligible for special plates.”

“I’m applying for classic plates.”

“Fine.”

“And I would like the historical significance noted.”

“There is no box for ‘Robert Blake once leaned on it.’”

“He drove it.”

“That doesn’t improve your position.”

Jimmy Don took a breath, the way he did before beginning the third paragraph of a movie review nobody in town had asked for but several people would later admit they enjoyed.

“Melba, this car represents an overlooked chapter in American drive-in culture. It stands at the crossroads of teenage rebellion, custom-car showmanship, Southern-fried cinema, and Hollywood promotional excess.”

Melba folded her hands.

“If I went along with that theory, every Chevy panel van carrying props through town to film scenes for Dutton Ranch would qualify for special plates.”

Jimmy Don opened his mouth.

She raised one finger.

“That ain’t happenin’ on my watch.”

He gathered his photographs with dignity, which in Fort Stockton meant slowly enough for everyone in the waiting area to enjoy it.

“This conversation is not over.”

“It is from my side of the counter.”

By lunch, everyone at Grounds for Divorce knew two things. Jimmy Don had lost round one with Melba, and the Barracuda had not even arrived yet.

“That’s the best kind of trouble,” Hairless B29 said, buttering toast as though delivering legal analysis. “Trouble with advance publicity.”

Jimmy Don sat at the counter with his folder open between the ketchup and Lucinda’s pie case. He had already shown the photographs to Chad, Rex Hall, Hairless, Pastor Peterson, Delgado, and one confused couple from Marathon who had stopped for coffee and would now leave town believing Fort Stockton had some kind of municipal movie-car registry.

Lucinda picked up one photograph and studied it.

---

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The Barracuda was orange in the way sunsets are orange right before somebody says hail might be coming. Its factory modesty had been buried beneath candy paint, black accents, pinstriping, a hood scoop, fog lights, custom grille inserts, side pipes, and a rear wing that rose from the fastback like the car had grown opinions.

“It looks loud,” she said.

“It is loud.”

“I mean before you start it.”

Chad turned the photo sideways.

“What exactly is Corky’s?”

Jimmy Don froze.

That was the question he had feared, though he had prepared several answers, all of them too long.

“It’s a 1972 film starring Robert Blake as Corky Curtiss, a stock car driver with more ambition than judgment.”

Hairless nodded.

“I knew some men like that.”

“There are dirt tracks, bar fights, bad decisions, romantic complications, and a general sense that America had recently discovered bell-bottoms and was not yet sure who to blame.”

Rex Hall peered over his glasses.

“So it’s a teenage classic?”

“Not exactly teenage. More like the kind of movie teenagers watched at the drive-in when they told their parents they were seeing something else.”

Lucinda smiled.

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Jimmy Don warmed to the room. This was his favorite place to be, not physically, though he did admire the pie, but culturally. The counter at Grounds for Divorce was Fort Stockton’s screening room, courtroom, confessional, and emergency broadcast system. A movie could die in New York, be forgotten in Los Angeles, and still receive a fair hearing here between the lunch special and the third pot of coffee.

“The car is the thing,” he said. “That Barracuda gave the movie its swagger. Without the car, Corky’s is just a young man making poor choices in a shirt collar wide enough to land crop dusters on.”

Hairless nodded toward the photograph.

“That wing could land a crop duster.”

Jimmy Don laughed.

“That’s Barris.”

“Batmobile Barris?”

“The same.”

Delgado leaned out from the pass-through.

“He did Batman and then this?”

“Not immediately. But yes, eventually.”

“That’s like painting the Sistine Chapel and then getting hired to decorate a Dairy Queen.”

Rex pointed his spoon at Delgado.

“That may be the finest art criticism ever delivered through a kitchen window.”

Jimmy Don could not entirely argue. George Barris had built the Batmobile, and after that every car had to live under its shadow. The Monkeemobile came close for some people, but those were generally the same people who would stand in public and tell you Jaws 3-D belonged in the same conversation as the original, and polite society had limits. Still, Jimmy Don admired the Barracuda precisely because it was not trying to be the Batmobile. It was trying to be something else, something cheaper, wilder, and more desperate to be noticed. That had its own dignity.

When the transporter finally arrived three days later, dignity was not the first word anyone used.

The truck pulled onto Dickinson Boulevard just after four in the afternoon, and half the town materialized as if summoned by side pipes. Hairless came from the diner. Chad came from Piggly Wiggly claiming he was on break, though nobody had asked. Rex Hall locked the pharmacy for “professional inspection.” Trixie came from Klip-N-Dye with a comb still tucked behind one ear. Pastor Peterson appeared holding a cup of coffee he had not purchased at Grounds for Divorce, which Lucinda noticed and filed away for later.

---

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The Barracuda rolled down the ramps into the West Texas sun.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

The pictures had been accurate, but they had also been insufficient. In person, the car possessed a kind of glorious wrongness. The tangerine lacquer was cracked in places, the pinstriping showed its age, and the whole thing wore its history the way an aging lounge singer wears rings, not apologetically, but with stories attached to every sparkle. The hood scoop looked hungry. The wing looked proud. The chrome bumpers shone. The side pipes suggested that mufflers had once been considered and then rejected on moral grounds.

Hairless walked around it slowly.

“It looks like a teenager’s notebook from 1971.”

No one improved upon that.

Jimmy Don opened the driver’s door and revealed the white-and-brown vinyl interior. There was a center console, a T-handle shifter, front and rear lap belts, a wood-rimmed steering wheel, and a column-mounted Dixco tachometer with Don Garlits’ name on it. There was no radio, which disturbed Rex more than the wing.

“No radio?”

“No.”

“A movie car with no radio?”

“It has side pipes.”

“That is not the same thing.”

Then Trixie saw the dashboard.

“Oh, honey.”

A fur-style dash cover lay across it, soft and absurd and perfect, as if somebody had shaved a Las Vegas throw pillow and given it a view of the road.

She reached in and stroked it with two fingers.

Jimmy Don stiffened.

“Careful.”

“I’m being reverent.”

Hairless frowned.

“Why would anybody put fur on a dashboard?”

Jimmy Don answered without hesitation.

“Because it was 1971.”

Hairless considered that.

“You know, that covers more ground than it should.”

The Blue Collar Pet Store made its move the next morning.

The owner, Earlene Pike, arrived at Grounds for Divorce carrying a legal pad, a sample bag of premium cat food, and the expression of a woman who had seen opportunity wearing orange paint. She found Jimmy Don at the counter, where he was explaining to Pastor Peterson why Corky’s was not technically immoral, merely overconfident.

“I want to rent your dashboard,” Earlene said.

Jimmy Don turned.

“Good morning to you too.”

“The fur. I saw it yesterday.”

“The dashboard is part of the vehicle.”

“I don’t want to remove it. I want to feature it.”

“In what?”

“Commercials. FS On Demand. Thirty-second spots. Maybe fifteen if Hank at the Lucky Lady keeps buying ad time.”

Lucinda wiped the counter.

“What’s the pitch?”

Earlene looked ready. “Blue Collar Pet Store. For pets who know comfort. We show a Persian cat lounging across that fur dash while the announcer says, ‘If it’s good enough for a Hollywood star, it’s good enough for Mr. Pickles.’”

Rex Hall winced.

“You’re putting a cat on the Barris Barracuda?”

Earlene shrugged.

“Only if Mr. Pickles clears his schedule.”

Jimmy Don tried to remain stern.

“The car is not a prop.”

“It literally was.”

That stalled him.

Lucinda smiled into the coffee pot.

Jimmy Don recovered. “It is now a preserved artifact.”

“Artifacts can have agents.”

“How much are we talking?”

Earlene slid the legal pad toward him.

Jimmy Don read the number.

Then he looked at the Barracuda through the window, parked outside in the sun like it was pretending not to listen.

“That is not a serious offer.”

“It’s Fort Stockton cable.”

“It needs another zero.”

“The cat won’t work for scale.”

“The cat is not the star.”

Earlene tapped the table.

“Then why am I talking to you?”

---

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The negotiations went nowhere, but they went nowhere for nearly an hour, which meant everyone at Grounds for Divorce got their money’s worth for the price of coffee. By the end, Jimmy Don had agreed to consider a future appearance if the cat was insured, the dashboard received proper billing, and nobody used the phrase “furry savings” in connection with a George Barris automobile.

The next great civic idea came from Mayor Goodman, which was where many great civic problems began.

He announced at Thursday’s city council meeting that Fort Stockton would welcome Jimmy Don’s Hollywood Barracuda with a special screening of Corky’s at the Prairie View Twin Drive-In. The event would celebrate cinema, automotive heritage, and “the kind of cultural tourism Marfa would kill for if they had not already convinced people to drive six hours to look at lights that may or may not be headlights.”

Half the proceeds would go toward maintenance at the old drive-in.

The other half would fund an informational campaign explaining why voters should amend the town charter to permit mayors to serve more than two terms.

Lucinda, attending because she had suspected foolishness in the wind, raised her hand.

“Mayor, is that second part why you’re calling this event ‘Corky’s for Continuity’?”

Mayor Goodman smiled.

“Branding matters.”

“Not always in your favor.”

Jimmy Don agreed to appear with the car because he was not made of stone. There would be posters. There would be popcorn. There would be a brief introduction in which he planned to explain the film’s place in drive-in history, the Barracuda’s construction, and why teenage classics often survive not because they are perfect, but because they remember the exact texture of being young and convinced the world is one good engine note away from opening up.

He wrote three pages of remarks.

Lucinda told him to cut it to one.

Hairless told him to cut it to half.

Delgado told him to start with, “This car has been in more movies than most of us have been in relationships,” and sit down.

---

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The night of the screening arrived warm and purple. The Prairie View Twin sign flickered. The Barracuda sat beneath it at an angle, candy paint glowing in the last light, wing raised against the sky like a dare. Jimmy Don stood beside it in a sport coat. Trixie arrived with popcorn. Hairless brought a lawn chair. Rex Hall came with binoculars, though no one understood why. Pastor Peterson arrived late and asked quietly whether this was the movie with the chariots.

“No,” Lucinda said.

“I may have misunderstood the flyer.”

By showtime, attendance stood at eleven, counting the projectionist and a stray dog that wandered in behind Chad’s pickup.

Mayor Goodman surveyed the nearly empty lot with statesmanlike optimism.

“I’d call this intimate.”

Lucinda looked across the darkness.

“I’d call it evidence.”

The movie began.

The Barracuda appeared on screen, and for a few minutes everyone understood Jimmy Don a little better. The film was not great in the way marble monuments are great. It was great in the way certain songs from high school are great, not because they hold up under inspection, but because they still know where the nerve endings are. There was dust, speed, bad judgment, hopeful foolishness, and that tangerine Plymouth tearing through scenes as if it believed stardom could be achieved through throttle position alone.

Hairless leaned toward Jimmy Don.

“I get it.”

Jimmy Don did not look away from the screen.

“You do?”

“The movie?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Jimmy Don sighed.

“The car.”

“That’s enough.”

It was enough.

Afterward, Mayor Goodman announced that the event had raised eighteen dollars and fifty cents for charter reform, most of which had come from Jimmy Don buying popcorn twice. The drive-in fund received the same amount, plus Chad promised to bring back the speaker he had accidentally removed from its post while backing up.

Trixie waited until people began leaving before she approached Jimmy Don.

“You still owe me a ride.”

“I do?”

“You do if you want that beard shaped properly before the Telegram-Dispatch prints your picture with this thing.”

Jimmy Don touched his beard.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It currently suggests you’ve been sleeping in the glove compartment of a Chrysler Cordoba.”

He unlocked the passenger door.

“Lake Leon?”

She held up the popcorn bag.

“I came prepared.”

They drove west with the windows down, side pipes burbling, the Barracuda’s nose pointed into the dark. Trixie rode with one hand resting near the fur dash, not quite touching it this time. Jimmy Don shifted carefully, partly because the car deserved respect and partly because he was aware that Trixie had brought both popcorn and expectations.

At Lake Leon, they parked beneath the stars. The Barracuda ticked as it cooled. The big wing cut a strange shape against the night. Trixie trimmed his beard by the glow of a small flashlight she kept in her purse, because Trixie believed a woman should be prepared for emergencies, weddings, and disappointing sideburns.

Neither of them said much for a while.

That was unusual for both of them, but not unpleasant.

Finally Trixie leaned back and studied her work.

“There. Now you look like a movie reviewer instead of a man who lost a bet at a bus station.”

Jimmy Don smiled.

“You think the car’s ridiculous?”

“Of course.”

He looked wounded.

---

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“But it’s also a star,” she said. “Dom DeLuise was ridiculous. Craig T. Nelson was ridiculous in the right light. Didn’t stop either of them.”

Jimmy Don considered that high praise.

On the drive back, he took the long way through town.

Fort Stockton was mostly closed by then, except for the Lucky Lady, a few porch lights, and Grounds for Divorce, where Lucinda was finishing the books. She stepped outside when she heard the Barracuda coming. Hairless emerged behind her. Delgado appeared at the window. Rex Hall paused beneath the pharmacy sign. Chad stood beside his pickup with a grocery sack in one hand.

Nobody had shown up for Corky’s.

Everybody showed up for the car.

Jimmy Don eased along Dickinson Boulevard, the tangerine paint catching storefront neon and courthouse light. The Barracuda did what it had been built to do more than fifty years earlier. It made people look. Not because they understood the movie. Not because they cared who had signed the sun visor. Not because Melba would ever create a special category for Hollywood glory.

They looked because it was impossible not to.

Hairless watched it pass and shook his head.

“‘Cuda.”

Lucinda crossed her arms.

“‘Wuda.”

Rex Hall adjusted his glasses as the side pipes rumbled away.

“‘Shuda.”

No one asked what it meant.

It meant Jimmy Don probably should not have bought it.

It meant he absolutely would have regretted not buying it.

It meant Fort Stockton had received another story it did not request, could not explain, and would be repeating by breakfast.

The Barracuda rolled toward the courthouse and disappeared into the warm West Texas dark, still orange, still excessive, still convinced it belonged on a screen bigger than the life it had been given.

And maybe, Jimmy Don thought, that was all any old movie car ever really wanted.

Not to be famous forever.

Just to find one town willing to believe it had been.

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