---

There are certain possessions a family considers priceless right up until somebody asks who is going to take them home. Photograph albums seldom present much difficulty because they fit on a shelf, while wedding rings, military medals and Grandpa’s pocketknife can pass through several generations without anybody having to surrender a parking space. Even Grandmother’s china can eventually be divided among grandchildren who have no intention of using it but are nevertheless comforted by knowing that twelve place settings of Noritake remain safely distributed across three states.

Automobiles are different, mostly because automobiles require somewhere to put them, and this was the fundamental problem with the 1965 Mercury Montclair that had belonged to the Pritchard family for sixty-one years.

The Mercury was an enormous Carnival Red four-door hardtop with a Polar White roof, enough chrome to interfere with radar and sufficient sheet metal between its bumpers to qualify for its own congressional district. Under the hood was a 390-cubic-inch Marauder V8 connected to a three-speed automatic transmission, while the interior consisted primarily of red cloth, red vinyl and an enormous power front bench seat upon which a family of five could have eaten Thanksgiving dinner without anyone asking somebody else to move an elbow. It was a magnificent example of the period when Detroit believed the average American family required roughly the same amount of interior volume as a Baptist fellowship hall.

Howard Pritchard had bought the Mercury new in 1965, when a new automobile was still something a family discussed for several weeks before buying and then showed to neighbors afterward. Howard was thirty-nine, had two children at home and had reached the stage of life where he wanted something nicer than a Ford but had neither the money nor the inclination to explain a Lincoln. The Montclair occupied that broad middle ground Mercury understood particularly well in those years: respectable without being ostentatious, powerful without requiring explanation, and large enough that nobody riding in the back seat needed to know anybody else particularly well.

Howard drove it for twenty-three years.

It went to church. It went to weddings. It went to funerals. It went to Odessa for doctors and Midland for shopping and San Angelo when somebody had convinced Howard there was something in San Angelo worth driving two hundred miles round trip to obtain. It carried children to school, teenagers on dates, groceries home from the Piggly Wiggly and luggage considerably heavier than anything airlines would now permit without extra charges.

The Mercury crossed Texas in every direction.

It also spent an extraordinary amount of time parked.

Howard was one of those men who could keep an automobile for two decades because he considered oil changes a moral obligation and believed any unfamiliar noise should be investigated before it developed voting rights. When something wore out, he replaced it. When something leaked, he fixed it. When the Mercury became old enough that mechanics began suggesting he buy something newer, Howard regarded this as evidence of declining standards in the automotive repair profession.

By the time he finally stopped driving it regularly, the Mercury had become part of the family scenery.

It passed to his son Ray, then eventually to Ray’s brother Milton. After Milton died, it found its way to Ray’s daughter, Ellen Pritchard Mercer, who thus became the fourth custodian of an automobile nobody in the family had deliberately requested since Lyndon Johnson was president.

By then the Montclair had accumulated approximately ninety-three thousand miles, which was not much for sixty-one years but was considerably more mileage than Ellen intended to add herself.

Ellen lived in Fort Stockton with her husband, Mark, and drove a six-year-old Toyota Highlander possessing automatic climate control, heated seats, a backup camera, Bluetooth and enough cup holders to accommodate a traveling softball team. The Toyota had no sentimental significance whatsoever, which Ellen considered one of its more attractive features.

The Mercury, by comparison, had air conditioning that no longer conditioned anything, a broken antenna and a radio whose cooperation depended upon atmospheric conditions and the personal intervention of God. Several mice had discovered the car during one of its extended periods of storage and apparently found portions of the red biscuit-pattern upholstery sufficiently appetizing to recommend to friends.

Mechanically, however, the old car remained surprisingly sound. The carburetor had recently been rebuilt, the master cylinder had been replaced, and the Mercury would reliably start, stop and turn, which Ellen regarded as the three principal qualifications for operating an automobile manufactured before men walked on the moon.

Her problem was not that the Mercury was a bad car.

Her problem was that it was a very large car, and she had nowhere to put it.

For four months it occupied the driveway because half of the garage already contained boxes belonging to Ellen and Mark’s two adult children, neither of whom had retrieved anything since college despite repeated assurances that they would “get that stuff next time.” Apparently the preservation of childhood trophies, obsolete electronics and three Rubbermaid tubs labeled MELISSA MISC. was sufficiently important to prevent the preservation of a nineteen-foot family automobile indoors.

Mark had remained neutral longer than Ellen thought humanly possible.

He did not dislike the Mercury. He had driven it several times and admitted that there was something satisfying about looking across six feet of red hood before reaching the windshield. He also liked the 390, although he had learned not to express this enthusiasm around Ellen because admiration was dangerously close to volunteering.

By September, Ellen had finally had enough.

On a Tuesday morning she announced on the Pritchard family group text that she intended to sell Grandpa Howard’s Mercury.

Her cousin Gary responded thirty-eight seconds later.

“You can’t sell Grandpa’s Mercury.”

Ellen looked at the message for a moment before typing the only question that seemed relevant.

“Do you want it?”

Gary lived in Midland and had a three-car garage, facts Ellen considered important but Gary apparently did not, because his response took considerably longer than thirty-eight seconds.

Before he could formulate one, Ellen’s older brother David called to ask whether she was really going to sell Dad’s car. Ellen reminded him that it had not technically been Dad’s car since 1988, but David explained that she knew perfectly well what he meant. Ellen agreed that she did and asked whether he wanted it.

There was a pause.

David’s garage, it seemed, was full.

Ellen pointed out that one side contained a bass boat he had not used since 2019, whereupon David explained that the bass boat was completely different.

It was.

The bass boat belonged to David.

By noon, nine members of the extended Pritchard family had contacted Ellen. Eight were adamantly opposed to selling the Mercury, while none was prepared to assume possession of it. The ninth was Ellen’s daughter Melissa in Dallas, who wanted to know how much her mother thought they could get for it, causing Ellen to briefly consider revising her will.

An aunt in San Angelo called that evening to remind Ellen how much Grandpa Howard had loved that car.

Ellen knew that.

She had known Grandpa Howard too.

This seemed occasionally to escape the attention of the rest of the family.

She remembered sitting in the back seat as a little girl and looking across an expanse of red upholstery that seemed wider than her bedroom. She remembered Grandpa’s hands on the steering wheel and the particular way he adjusted the rearview mirror before backing out. She remembered Dairy Twin stops and family trips and falling asleep across the rear seat because adults in the 1970s regarded seat belts as decorative suggestions.

Later she remembered her father driving it. She remembered her mother complaining that the air conditioner could not keep up with August. She remembered learning to drive in it and discovering that the hood ornament was useful because otherwise there was no reliable way to determine where the front of the automobile ended.

She remembered all of it.

That did not mean she wanted the Mercury in her driveway.

There was a distinction between loving a memory and storing the machinery associated with it.

---

---

The controversy might have remained a private family matter if Ellen had not driven the Mercury to the Grounds for Divorce the following morning. She was not attempting to make a public statement; she merely wanted coffee, and the Mercury needed exercise, which was the expression owners of old automobiles used when they wanted mechanical uncertainty to sound therapeutic.

The Montclair rolled into the parking lot with the quiet authority of a county courthouse, and Angus Hopper stopped talking in the middle of a sentence when he saw it through the window. This was sufficiently unusual that Rex Hall turned around to see whether someone had shot him.

“Mercury,” Angus said.

Rex looked outside and congratulated him.

“Sixty-five.”

“I’m proud of you.”

“Montclair.”

By then Hairless B29 had left the regular table and joined Angus at the window, giving the Mercury what amounted to a quorum.

When Ellen walked through the door, Angus immediately asked whether it had the 390, followed by whether it was the Marauder engine, and his solemn nod after receiving two affirmative answers established that she had brought something important to breakfast.

Lucinda poured Ellen a cup of coffee while she explained the situation. She told them about her grandfather buying the car new, about its progression through her father and uncle before eventually reaching her, and finally about the family revolt that had erupted when she announced her intention to sell it.

“How many of them offered to take it?” Rex asked.

“None.”

Rex took another drink of coffee.

“That sounds like family.”

Angus objected that Ellen could not possibly sell a one-family car, which prompted Ellen to ask whether he would like to buy it. Angus said no, and Ellen pointed out that this seemed to suggest she could.

Hairless B29 was still looking through the window and wanted to know what she would take for the engine.

“The engine comes with the car.”

“I don’t need the car.”

Ellen nodded. “That is becoming something of a theme.”

By the time Trixie arrived fifteen minutes later, the Montclair had acquired the status of a threatened landmark. Trixie loved the Carnival Red paint, loved the Polar White roof, loved the enormous chrome bumpers and especially loved the pillarless hardtop, which allowed all four side windows to disappear and left an uninterrupted opening from the windshield to the rear roof pillar.

---

---

Then she looked through the window and noticed what several generations of mice had done to the upholstery.

“You ought to have those seats redone.”

“I’m selling it.”

Trixie looked genuinely offended.

“You can’t sell that.”

Ellen looked at her without saying anything, and Trixie recognized the question before it arrived.

“I don’t have anywhere to put it.”

Lucinda, who had been listening to the entire conversation while making another circuit of the counter with the Bunn-O-Matic pot, observed that they had now established the essential facts: the Mercury was too important for Ellen to sell but not important enough for anybody else to own.

Nobody had an answer for that.

“Just checking,” Lucinda said, and topped off Rex’s coffee.

By Thursday, the Mercury had become a Fort Stockton preservation issue, which was inevitable once enough people learned about it without acquiring any financial responsibility for the outcome.

Mayor Goodman heard about the situation and arrived at the Grounds for Divorce shortly before lunch wearing a dark suit and the red necktie that extended considerably farther below his belt than either the manufacturer or gravity had originally intended. He walked around the Montclair twice before announcing that automobiles of this sort represented “the tangible automotive heritage of ordinary West Texas families.”

---

---

Ellen asked whether the city wanted it.

Mayor Goodman explained that there was currently no line item in the municipal budget for tangible automotive heritage.

Ellen then asked whether he wanted it personally.

The mayor said his wife had recently made her position on additional vehicles “unusually clear.”

He nevertheless believed something should be done.

This was a popular form of civic participation.

Brother Bob believed the Mercury should remain in the family because families too easily discarded their history. Pastor Peterson agreed that continuity between generations was important, although he stopped somewhat short of declaring ownership of a 1965 Mercury a theological obligation. Sister Thelma thought everyone was overlooking Ellen, who had already preserved the car for years and might reasonably be permitted to decide what happened next.

Rex asked Brother Bob whether he wanted it.

He did not.

He asked Pastor Peterson.

He did not.

Sister Thelma smiled and continued drinking her coffee.

Chad from the Piggly Wiggly proposed displaying the Mercury inside the store as a piece of local history, possibly beside the seasonal merchandise. Lucinda asked how he intended to get a nineteen-foot automobile through the automatic doors.

Chad admitted he had not yet reached the implementation phase.

---

---

Earl eventually came over from Earl’s Salvage Yard & Formalwear, walked around the Mercury once, looked under the hood, glanced through the mouse-nibbled interior and asked Ellen whether she was selling it.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

This caused almost everyone to look at him.

Earl shrugged.

“Cars are for people who want ’em.”

The statement was considered unnecessarily radical.

By Friday morning, the Mercury had acquired a handwritten sign beneath one of its windshield wipers.

SAVE THE MONTCLAIR.

Ellen had not put it there.

Nobody admitted doing so.

Mayor Goodman denied municipal involvement.

Trixie denied making the sign but complimented the penmanship.

Sheriff Ray Vickers examined it, concluded that no criminal statute had been violated and returned to matters more likely to involve handcuffs.

Ellen removed the sign.

Another appeared after lunch.

The Pritchard family, meanwhile, had escalated its campaign. Cousin Gary sent Ellen three online articles about rising collector-car values. David sent photographs of beautifully restored 1965 Mercurys, apparently believing Ellen would become more enthusiastic about storing hers after seeing examples into which other people had invested forty thousand dollars.

Aunt Louise called from San Angelo again.

“Your grandfather would turn over in his grave.”

Ellen had finally had enough.

“Grandpa had sixty-one years to leave instructions.”

Aunt Louise did not find this respectful.

Ellen did.

That evening she placed the advertisement.

Carnival Red. Polar White roof. 390 Marauder. Automatic. Power steering. Power bench seat. Ninety-three thousand miles. Air conditioning inoperative. Broken antenna. Interior showing age and rodent damage.

She included photographs.

The first response came from someone offering half the asking price without seeing the car.

The second wanted to know whether Ellen would trade for a bass boat.

She sent the message to David.

He did not respond.

The third was from a man who wanted the 390 for another project.

Ellen began to understand Hairless B29 better than she wanted to.

Then, three days later, a man named Walter Beasley called from Alpine.

Walter was seventy-six and asked sensible questions. Did the 390 smoke? No. Did the transmission shift properly? Yes. How bad was the rust? Not bad. Did the power seat work? Usually. Did the air conditioning work?

“No.”

Walter laughed.

“That makes two of us.”

He asked whether he could come see it Saturday.

Saturday morning, the Mercury was once again parked outside the Grounds for Divorce. Ellen had chosen the location because Walter knew where it was and because conducting the transaction at her house might result in three Pritchard relatives throwing themselves beneath the tires.

By nine o’clock, Angus was at the window.

So was Rex.

Hairless B29 had moved his chair for a better view.

Trixie had arrived despite normally considering nine o’clock Saturday morning an unreasonable hour for civilization.

Even Mayor Goodman appeared, although he insisted he was there for breakfast.

Walter arrived in an ordinary pickup driven by his son.

He was a tall, slightly stooped man wearing jeans, boots and a pale western shirt. He did not arrive with a trailer. He did not carry a clipboard. He did not begin by criticizing the paint or enumerating every flaw in preparation for negotiating the price downward.

He simply walked around the Mercury.

He crouched beside the rear quarter panel and looked underneath. He examined the chrome, ran one finger along the edge of the roof and opened the hood.

Inside the Grounds for Divorce, Angus leaned forward.

Walter stood in front of the 390 for a long time before closing the hood. Then he opened the driver’s door and looked at the red interior.

He smiled.

“My dad had one.”

Ellen had heard variations of that sentence several times since advertising the car, but Walter continued.

---

---

“Same year. Same colors.”

That changed something.

Walter sat behind the wheel while his son remained outside. His hands rested lightly on it, and for several seconds he did nothing except look through the windshield.

“I was fifteen,” he finally said.

His father’s Montclair had not been a collector car. It had simply been the family car, which in 1965 meant it went everywhere the family went and waited wherever the family stopped.

Walter learned to drive in it.

He took his driving test in it.

He borrowed it for his first date with a girl named Margaret, whom he eventually married.

They had gone to a movie and then spent twenty minutes afterward sitting in the Mercury because neither wanted the evening to end. Walter said his father had sold the car in 1974, and he had not seen it since.

Margaret had died three years earlier.

Walter looked around Ellen’s Mercury again.

“This one even smells the same.”

Ellen laughed.

“Mice?”

Walter smiled.

“No. Old Ford.”

Inside the Grounds for Divorce, nobody was saying much.

Even Angus had temporarily exhausted his expertise.

Walter asked whether he could drive it.

Ellen handed him the keys and climbed into the passenger seat. The 390 started immediately, settled into its deep idle, and the Mercury pulled onto Dickinson Boulevard with Walter behind the wheel for the first time in more than half a century.

They went east.

For the first mile Walter barely spoke.

Then something changed.

His hands relaxed on the wheel. He discovered the power steering again. He laughed when the transmission shifted. He lowered the window and rested his elbow on the door.

Ellen watched him.

She had spent four months seeing the Mercury as an obligation and one week defending her right to dispose of it. Walter had been inside it less than five minutes and had somehow become fifteen years old.

They drove past the edge of town before Walter finally turned around.

When they returned to the Grounds for Divorce, the audience had made almost no effort to conceal itself.

Walter parked carefully and shut off the engine.

“I’d like to buy it.”

Ellen had known this moment was coming. She had spent months wanting it to come.

Now that it had arrived, she looked at the Mercury.

For the first time in years she saw Grandpa Howard standing beside it.

Not literally.

Memory is usually more courteous than that. It does not materialize the dead in parking lots. It simply rearranges the furniture inside your head until someone who has been gone thirty years suddenly seems close enough to ask what you are doing with his car.

Ellen saw her grandfather’s hands on the steering wheel.

She saw her father.

She saw herself at nine, then sixteen, then twenty-three.

She remembered her own children climbing into that enormous back seat.

Four generations had left fingerprints on the Mercury.

Now she was about to hand the keys to a stranger.

Walter apparently understood.

“You don’t have to.”

That nearly did it.

Had Walter been pushy, Ellen could have sold him the car without hesitation. Had he criticized the upholstery, complained about the air conditioning or tried to knock five hundred dollars off the price because of the broken antenna, she could have signed the title with a clear conscience.

Instead, the old man gave her a way out.

Ellen looked at him, then at his son, and finally through the window of the Grounds for Divorce, where approximately eight people immediately became fascinated with their coffee.

She handed Walter the keys.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

The paperwork took ten minutes.

The Pritchard family had owned the Mercury for sixty-one years.

It took three signatures to end that.

Walter’s son followed in the pickup.

Walter drove.

The 390 started immediately and settled into the same deep idle Ellen had heard since childhood. She stood outside the café with Lucinda as Walter backed the Montclair from the parking space.

Gary had come after all.

So had David.

Neither had offered to buy the Mercury. Neither had offered to store it, insure it, repair it, reupholster it or fix the air conditioning. Yet when Walter reached Dickinson Boulevard and turned east, both men watched the Polar White roof moving above the traffic until it disappeared.

Gary kept his hands in his pockets.

“I kinda wish we’d kept it.”

Ellen looked at him.

There were at least six possible responses, and she had earned the right to use every one of them.

Lucinda saved her the trouble.

“That’s generally when people start wanting things.”

Nobody argued.

They went inside.

Lucinda poured coffee. Angus announced that Walter had gotten himself a hell of a car, and Rex reminded him that he could have bought it himself. Angus explained that he already had enough cars.

Rex smiled.

There it was again.

Ellen sat near the window and looked at the empty parking space.

For the first time in four months, there would be an empty space in her driveway when she got home.

She expected that to feel good.

It did.

It also felt terrible, and both things could be true.

That was the problem with family possessions. Nobody warned you that getting rid of them did not actually get rid of anything important. The memories remained exactly where they had always been, except now there was no automobile sitting outside to blame them on.

Somewhere west of Fort Stockton, Walter Beasley was driving a red-and-white Mercury toward Alpine.

The air conditioning did not work, so both front windows were down. The antenna was broken. Mice had eaten holes in the seats. The odometer showed ninety-three thousand miles, the power seat worked when sufficiently motivated, and the 390 Marauder was carrying the car across West Texas with the effortless confidence Detroit once achieved by using displacement to solve nearly every engineering problem.

Walter’s left elbow rested on the door.

His son followed in the pickup.

And every few miles, without particularly meaning to, a seventy-six-year-old man became fifteen again.

Back at the Grounds for Divorce, Ellen finished her coffee and drove home in the Toyota Highlander.

The driveway was empty.

She pulled into the garage, got out and stood looking at the vacant concrete for a moment longer than necessary.

For sixty-one years, somebody in her family had possessed Howard Pritchard’s Mercury.

Now nobody did.

She discovered that this was not the same thing as losing it.

The Mercury was still Grandpa buying his first really nice car. It was still her father behind the wheel. It was still Dairy Queen and summer vacations and her mother complaining about the air conditioning. It was still Ellen at sixteen trying to judge where six feet of hood ended. None of that had driven away with Walter.

Only the car had.

Ellen went inside.

Some things are worth keeping.

Some things are worth letting go.

The hard part is that they are occasionally the same things.

---

---