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The missile appeared at Earl’s Salvage Yard & Formalwear on a Tuesday morning.

Nobody knew exactly when it arrived. This was unusual in Fort Stockton, where the arrival of anything unfamiliar generally became public knowledge before the person delivering it had located the correct address. A strange automobile could rarely make it from Interstate 10 to Dickinson Boulevard without somebody determining where it was from, who was driving it, what they had paid for it and whether they ought to have bought the V8.

But sometime before eight o’clock, a bright red object approximately three feet long appeared near the front of Earl’s yard.

It looked like a torpedo.

There was really no getting around that.

It was streamlined at both ends, glossy red, trimmed in chrome and equipped with a curved chrome handle across the top. Along the bottom were four tiny chrome wheels, suggesting that whoever designed it had anticipated either frequent movement or an exceptionally small landing gear requirement. Painted neatly on the side were the words:

BANTAM PORTO-POWER

Beneath that:

A Product of BLACKHAWK

Hairless B29 saw it first.

This did not help.

He was driving past Earl’s on his way to the Grounds for Divorce when the flash of red caught his attention. Hairless slowed his Impala, looked through the fence and saw what appeared to be an unusually cheerful piece of military ordnance sitting among three transmissions, a refrigerator without a door and the remains of something Earl insisted had once been a Studebaker.

Hairless continued another hundred yards.

Then he turned around.

He drove past again more slowly.

By the time he reached the Grounds for Divorce, Earl owned a rocket.

“Earl’s got a missile,” Hairless announced as he walked through the door.

Angus Hopper continued buttering his toast.

“How big?”

“Three feet, maybe.”

Angus stopped.

“That ain’t much of a missile.”

“It’s streamlined.”

This seemed to restore some credibility.

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Rex Hall lowered his coffee and looked over his glasses. Trixie turned from the front window. Lucinda, who had heard Hairless announce enough important developments over the years to understand their approximate relationship with reality, continued filling coffee cups.

“What kind of missile?” Rex asked.

“Red.”

Rex waited.

“That’s not a kind.”

“It’s got wheels.”

Angus frowned. “Missile got wheels?”

“Four of ’em.”

“What for?”

Hairless pulled out a chair. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Nobody knew what he was saying, but Fort Stockton had been built largely by people unwilling to allow that difficulty to interfere with a discussion.

Within fifteen minutes, Hairless, Angus and Rex were standing outside Earl’s fence.

The object was still there.

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Up close it looked even more suspicious. The sleek steel body tapered to a point at one end and rounded off at the other. The four little wheels were barely large enough to qualify as wheels at all. They looked more like something Wile E. Coyote might order from Acme shortly before discovering that the braking system had been sold separately.

Hairless put his hands on his hips.

“Tell me that ain’t a rocket.”

Rex read the lettering.

“Bantam Porto-Power.”

“Code name,” Hairless said.

“Blackhawk.”

“Manufacturer.”

Angus walked slowly around it.

“What’s this handle for?”

“Carrying it,” Rex said.

Hairless shook his head. “You don’t put a handle on a missile.”

“That would seem to support my position.”

“You don’t know that.”

Earl knew exactly what it was.

He was standing thirty feet away.

Nobody asked him.

That was the first important decision in what would become known, briefly and inaccurately, as the Fort Stockton missile incident.

The three men returned to the Grounds for Divorce with more information than they had possessed when they left and considerably less certainty about any of it.

Angus thought the little wheels suggested equipment designed to be moved around a hangar. Hairless believed BLACKHAWK sounded military. Rex pointed out that Blackhawk had manufactured hydraulic equipment for automotive repair shops.

Hairless countered that Boeing manufactured airplanes but had also made missiles.

Rex explained that this proved nothing.

Hairless agreed.

Then Mayor Goodman arrived.

There are moments in the life of any community when history approaches a fork in the road. One direction leads toward facts, documentation and a reasonable understanding of events.

The other leads toward Mayor Goodman.

He entered halfway through Rex’s explanation and caught three words:

“Military.”

“Rocket.”

“1945.”

Mayor Goodman stopped beside the table.

“Forty-five?”

Hairless nodded.

The mayor pulled out a chair.

“Well, that makes sense.”

Rex looked at him.

“What makes sense?”

“The testing.”

There was silence.

“What testing?” Angus asked.

Mayor Goodman glanced around the table with the faint surprise of a man discovering that everybody else had somehow missed an important chapter of local history.

“The rocket testing.”

Rex slowly set down his coffee.

“What rocket testing?”

“Out west of town.”

“How far west?”

Mayor Goodman thought about this.

“Several miles.”

“Where?”

“Can’t remember exactly.”

“Who was doing it?”

“Government.”

“What branch?”

The mayor took a sip of coffee.

“Classified.”

That should have killed the story.

Instead, it gave the story credentials.

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By ten o’clock, Chad at the Piggly Wiggly had heard that Earl possessed an experimental Army rocket from 1945.

By ten-fifteen, Trixie had heard it had been discovered south of town.

By ten-thirty, somebody at Rex Hall Drug had been told that ranchers had uncovered it while digging a stock tank.

At eleven, Brother Bob stopped by the Grounds for Divorce and cautiously mentioned that somebody had told him German scientists were involved.

“German scientists?” Rex said.

“That’s what I heard.”

“From who?”

Brother Bob considered this.

“I probably shouldn’t say.”

This was how Fort Stockton protected confidential sources.

New Guy, who had lived in town long enough to know better but not quite long enough to stop trying, made the mistake of asking the obvious question.

“Has anybody looked up what a Blackhawk Bantam Porto-Power actually is?”

Everyone looked at him.

New Guy looked back.

“Just wondering.”

Rex went to the pharmacy and did precisely that.

The answer was disappointingly terrestrial.

The Blackhawk Bantam Porto-Power was a portable hydraulic body-repair system dating from around the end of World War II. Inside the streamlined steel case were hydraulic cylinders, extensions, fittings and hoses. A body man could use them to push damaged sheet metal back into position, straighten bent structures and persuade wrecked automobiles to resume approximately the shape Detroit had intended.

The tiny wheels were there so the equipment could be rolled around a shop.

The chrome handle was there so somebody could pick it up.

The torpedo shape apparently existed because there was once a time when even a hydraulic body-repair kit was permitted to have style.

That part interested Rex.

By modern standards, there was something almost extravagant about it. Somebody had designed a toolbox to look fast while sitting still. They could have put the equipment in a square steel case with a handle. Instead they gave it curves, chrome, wheels and a profile suggesting that at any moment it might depart for Mars.

Rex returned to the Grounds for Divorce with the facts.

Nobody particularly wanted them.

“It’s a body tool,” he announced.

Hairless looked disappointed.

“What kind?”

“Hydraulic.”

“For fixing wrecked cars?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s not a missile.”

“No.”

Hairless studied his coffee.

“Could’ve been based on one.”

“No.”

“You don’t know.”

“I do know.”

Mayor Goodman nodded thoughtfully.

“A lot of civilian technology came out of wartime research.”

Rex removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“You said they tested rockets west of town.”

“They did.”

“You didn’t know that two hours ago.”

“I hadn’t thought about it in years.”

“You didn’t know what the thing was two hours ago.”

“That’s what reminded me.”

Rex put his glasses back on.

There are battles worth fighting.

He had apparently decided this was not one of them.

Meanwhile, the story escaped.

A customer carried it from Rex Hall Drug to Bluebonnet Loan & Trust. Someone from the bank mentioned it at the Piggly Wiggly. A Piggly Wiggly customer told her husband. Her husband knew a man at the county barn.

By lunchtime, the red object had acquired a guidance system.

By one-thirty, it had a warhead.

At two, somebody said the Army had been notified.

At two-fifteen, the Army had supposedly told everybody not to touch it.

This was unfortunate because Earl had already moved it twice.

Sheriff Ray Vickers finally drove over because three people had called his office.

He found Earl sitting beneath the shade beside the office.

“Where’s the missile?”

Earl pointed.

The bright red Porto-Power sat twenty feet away.

Ray stared at it.

Then he stared at Earl.

“That it?”

“That’s it.”

“What is it?”

“Body-shop tool.”

Ray walked over and read the lettering.

“Explosive?”

“Only if Hairless gets hold of it.”

Ray nodded.

“You planning to invade anybody?”

“Not before lunch.”

“It’s after lunch.”

“Then I’ve missed my window.”

Ray returned to his cruiser.

He did not issue a press release.

This created an information vacuum, and Fort Stockton filled it.

By late afternoon, Mayor Goodman remembered that the postwar testing program had been connected somehow to Operation Paperclip.

Rex asked how.

Mayor Goodman said records had probably been destroyed.

Rex asked why.

“National security.”

“Whose?”

“Ours.”

“From what?”

Mayor Goodman looked toward Hairless.

“Apparently Germany.”

“Germany surrendered in May of 1945.”

“Which explains why they stopped.”

Even Lucinda had to turn away at that one.

The next morning, Earl decided to end the matter.

He loaded the Porto-Power into his pickup, drove to the Grounds for Divorce and carried it through the front door.

Every head turned.

Lucinda stopped pouring coffee.

“No.”

Earl looked at her.

“No what?”

“I don’t know yet. But whatever that is, no.”

“It’s the missile.”

That brought Hairless out of his chair.

Earl set the sleek red object on the floor beside the regular table. In person, beneath the fluorescent lights, it looked less dangerous but somehow even more ridiculous. The brilliant red paint gleamed. The chrome handle shone. Its four miniature wheels made it resemble a torpedo designed for a dachshund navy.

Mayor Goodman leaned closer.

“Looks different than I remember.”

Rex stared at him.

Earl unscrewed the end, released the cover and lifted away the upper shell.

Inside were hydraulic cylinders, extension tubes, fittings and coiled black hoses, all packed neatly together.

Everyone looked.

Angus nodded.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Rex smiled.

“Hydraulic body equipment.”

Hairless leaned closer.

“So where’s the warhead?”

“It doesn’t have a warhead,” Earl said.

“Probably removed it.”

“Hairless.”

“Government would’ve required that,” Mayor Goodman said.

Rex took off his glasses again.

This time he did not rub his nose.

He simply placed them on the table.

There are occasions when a man decides he has seen enough.

Earl spent several minutes explaining how the equipment worked. A hydraulic ram could push bent metal apart. Extensions gave it reach. Different fittings allowed a body man to work against damaged sections of a car. In an era before computerized measuring systems and insurance companies declared anything with three deployed airbags economically deceased, tools like these helped craftsmen take automobiles that had been bent, twisted and crumpled and make them useful again.

Angus understood immediately.

“My daddy had a ’49 Ford got hit in the side by a cattle truck.”

“How bad?” Hairless asked.

“Could see daylight through both doors.”

“Fixed it?”

“Drove it six more years.”

Rex nodded toward the Porto-Power.

“With something like that.”

For perhaps thirty seconds, the little red machine recovered its dignity.

It was no longer a missile or a rocket or a secret weapon. It was a survivor from a time when men repaired things. Cars were straightened. Radios were taken apart. Toasters received new cords. Shoes got new soles. If something broke, the first question was how to fix it, not whether the trash ran on Tuesday.

The Bantam Porto-Power had spent its working life forcing damaged things back toward the shape they were supposed to have.

There was something admirable about that.

Delgado emerged from the kitchen and looked down at it.

“What’s that?”

“Hydraulic body-repair equipment,” Rex said.

Delgado looked at Hairless.

Then Angus.

Then Mayor Goodman.

“Still work?”

Lucinda answered immediately.

“No.”

Earl laughed and began putting the equipment away.

By then a small crowd had gathered outside because someone had reported that the missile had been moved to the Grounds for Divorce.

Earl replaced the upper shell, tightened the end cap and rolled the Porto-Power toward the door.

Lucinda watched the little red torpedo cross her floor.

“What are people saying it is now?”

Rex sighed.

“A secret postwar missile tested outside Fort Stockton.”

She nodded toward Mayor Goodman.

“He involved?”

“Apparently he remembers it.”

“How old was he in 1945?”

Mayor Goodman answered before Rex could.

“Records from that period are incomplete.”

Lucinda looked at him.

Then she returned to the coffee pot.

There are battles worth fighting.

By lunchtime, everybody in Fort Stockton knew Earl had acquired a secret postwar missile.

By supper, it had been German.

By Wednesday morning, it had been discovered buried on a ranch west of town.

By Wednesday afternoon, the ranch belonged to Mayor Goodman’s uncle.

By Thursday, the mayor had been present when it was recovered.

And by Friday, he remembered helping load it onto the truck.

Earl eventually put the Porto-Power in the front window of Earl’s Salvage Yard & Formalwear with a handwritten sign:

BLACKHAWK BANTAM PORTO-POWER
HYDRAULIC BODY REPAIR TOOL
NOT A MISSILE

Someone added beneath it:

THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK.

Earl left it there.

Some things simply cannot be repaired.

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