The truck arrived at the Grounds for Divorce at nine seventeen on a Tuesday morning carrying four thousand pounds of something that no longer had a name.
It had paint, certainly. Most of it was red, though patches of pale blue showed through where entire sections of automobile had been folded across one another like layers in an archaeological dig. It had chrome trim, pieces of glass, part of a tire and enough wire protruding from its sides to suggest that whatever had happened had not been negotiated peacefully.
What it no longer had was a front, a rear, a roof, a floor, a passenger compartment or any of the other features ordinarily useful in distinguishing one automobile from another.
It was a car reduced to its lowest common denominator.
A cube.
The flatbed driver used a small forklift to place it on two heavy timbers in the corner of the cafe parking lot, safely away from the entrance and far enough from the building that nobody could accuse Lucinda of blocking the fire lane. She had already been through that discussion with Sheriff Ray Vickers, who had arrived before the truck because news of an unidentified four-thousand-pound object travels faster through Fort Stockton than it does through most municipal emergency-response systems.
Ray watched the forklift settle the cube into place.
“What is it?” he asked.
“That,” Lucinda said, “is the question.”
The sign went up fifteen minutes later.
WHAT WAS IT?
GUESS THE EXACT YEAR, MAKE AND MODEL
$5 PER GUESS
WIN $500 AND FREE PIE FOR A YEAR
Below that, in smaller lettering:
NO CLIMBING
NO CUTTING
NO SCRAPING OFF PAINT
NO REMOVING PARTS
And beneath those instructions, added after Lucinda had considered the citizens involved:
YES, THIS MEANS YOU
By ten o’clock, Hairless B29 was lying on his stomach in the parking lot, attempting to look underneath it.
“There ain’t an underneath,” Angus Hopper told him.
“There’s always an underneath.”
“Not after they crush it from six directions.”
Hairless stood, brushed gravel from his sleeveless denim shirt and circled the cube again.
“I see a frame rail.”
“You see three inches of something rusty.”
“That’s a frame rail.”
“It might be a seat spring.”
Hairless leaned closer.
“It’s too heavy to be a car.”
“It weighs what the car weighed,” Rex Hall said. “Crushing something doesn’t make it lighter.”
“Depends what you squeeze out of it.”
Trixie arrived from the Klip-N-Dye, parked, got out and stared at the cube from twenty feet away. Then she walked around it once without speaking.
“It’s foreign,” she announced.
“What makes you think that?” Rex asked.
“Why the hell would they crush anything American, for God’s sake?”
Angus looked at the cube.
“History suggests we’ve crushed quite a few.”
“Not anything worth saving.”
“That standard would eliminate about half the seventies.”
The argument moved inside because Lucinda had coffee to pour and because the August sun was beginning to heat the exposed metal to temperatures usually associated with cookware.
Even Delgado did not know what the car had been. Lucinda had arranged the purchase herself, hired the transporter herself and kept the paperwork locked in the cashbox beneath the register. She had even covered the identifying information on the driver’s delivery sheet before asking Delgado to sign it while she dealt with a breakfast-table emergency involving Brother Bob, an overfilled syrup bottle and a sport coat that had recently returned from the cleaners.
Delgado had tried asking.
“Loose lips sink ships,” Lucinda told the regulars.
Most of the men at the table looked at hers instead of his while she muttered the words.
They then devoted a sudden and almost theological amount of attention to their coffee.
The contest was supposed to be a promotion for the Grounds for Divorce. What Lucinda had not anticipated was that within twenty-four hours it would become the central civic question facing Pecos County.
The first story appeared above the fold in the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch beneath the headline:
MYSTERY CUBE DESCENDS ON LOCAL CAFE
The photograph showed Lucinda beside the crushed automobile, one hand on her hip and the other holding a Bunn-O-Matic coffee pot. The caption identified the object as weighing “approximately two tons” and Lucinda as declining to provide further information.
The next day brought:
EXPERTS DIVIDED ON CUBE’S ORIGIN
The experts were Angus, Earl from Earl’s Salvage Yard & Formalwear and Rusty Hammer, who had once disassembled a 1972 Oldsmobile in his mother’s backyard and therefore considered himself credentialed in the field.
Angus believed the chrome fragments indicated the late 1950s.
Earl refused to offer an opinion without knowing whether the car had been crushed at a scrapyard in Texas, Oklahoma or New Mexico, although he could not explain why geography mattered.
Rusty was certain it had been a pickup.
“What kind?” everyone asked.
“I’m not saying.”
“You don’t know,” Hairless told him.
“I know.”
“Then say.”
“That’d just give it away.”
“What would?”
“The answer.”
Rusty’s refusal to identify the make, model or year of the alleged pickup became his primary evidence that he possessed this information.
By Friday, the Telegram-Dispatch had published a color diagram titled ANATOMY OF THE CUBE, with arrows pointing toward what might have been a bumper, a quarter panel, a seat frame and either part of a transmission tunnel or the lower half of an appliance.
Nobody knew where the newspaper had obtained the diagram. The illustration identified the reddish paint as “possibly factory original,” though no laboratory testing had been conducted and the reporter’s principal research tool appeared to have been standing beside the cube and squinting.
Business improved.
People who had not eaten at the Grounds for Divorce in years came in for coffee and pie, though several brought magnifying glasses and one carried a magnet tied to a length of dental floss. Lucinda made him put it away.
She kept the entry slips beside the register. Each contestant wrote down an exact year, manufacturer and model, along with a name and telephone number. The five-dollar bills went into a locked metal box. The guesses went into an empty glass Bunn-O-Matic coffee pot bearing a handwritten label:
CUBE THEORIES
Because Fort Stockton had never regarded ignorance as an obstacle to specificity, the entries quickly became impressive.
A 1963 Chevrolet Impala.
A 1971 Ford Pinto, which had not yet existed.
A 1959 Cadillac ambulance.
A 1948 Tucker.
A 1976 Volkswagen Microbus.
A 1965 Mustang convertible.
A 1982 Lincoln Continental belonging personally to Lee Iacocca.
Some contestants guessed vehicles that had never been manufactured. One entered “1957 Studebaker El Camino.” Another submitted “1962 Oldsmobile Mustang.” Mayor Goodman guessed a 1960 Chrysler Imperial Crown limousine formerly used by the governor of Chihuahua, then spent three days implying that he had access to restricted international records.
The contest spread through town.
Chad built a special display at the Piggly Wiggly featuring Mi-T-Fine Ice Cubes beside BIG MEAT Bouillon Cubes. A handwritten sign read:
CUBE FEVER!
WHILE SUPPLIES LAST
The supplies lasted.
Sales of both products remained almost perfectly unchanged, except for one additional box of bouillon purchased by Mrs. Drury, who had already intended to make soup.
At Skins & Needles, Indigo Dreamweaver announced half-price tattoos incorporating Cubist art. The offer applied only to artwork placed where it could be displayed publicly without prompting an official visit from Sheriff Vickers.
Indigo produced a sample design combining a steering wheel, a human eye and six views of a 1950 Mercury simultaneously. Nobody bought one, although Hairless spent twenty minutes considering a Picasso-inspired small-block Chevrolet across his shoulder blades before Lucinda reminded him that he already had a tattoo appointment he had failed to tell his mother about.
At the Dairy Twin, Orange Crush began outselling Dr Pepper for the first time in recorded local history.
The regular table became an intelligence operation.
Everyone wanted to know what everyone else had guessed, while each attempted to conceal his own answer through misdirection, false confidence and questions so transparent they might as well have been printed on glass.
Rex casually asked whether Chrysler products of the 1950s used more stainless trim than chrome.
Trixie began complaining loudly about Fiats despite never having expressed an opinion about Italian automobiles in her life.
Hairless claimed to be deciding between a Hudson and a Japanese pickup, which narrowed his actual guess to neither.
Rusty continued insisting it was a truck.
“What year?” Chad asked.
“The correct year.”
“What make?”
“The company that built it.”
“What model?”
“The one they crushed.”
Even Angus contributed to the deception. He spent three breakfasts discussing the structural differences between a 1958 Buick and a 1960 Mercury, then submitted his entry while everybody else was outside watching Mayor Goodman attempt to measure the cube using the ceremonial ribbon from a library dedication.
Jimmy Don Ventura was quieter than usual.
He walked around the cube twice on the first day, crouched beside a twisted patch of red sheet metal and studied a narrow piece of bright trim curled over the top. Then he went inside, paid five dollars and folded his entry slip in half before placing it in the pot.
“What’d you guess?” Hairless asked.
“A car.”
“We know it was a car.”
“Then I’m already closer than Rusty.”
During the second week, the contest stopped being a promotion and became a form of weather.
The Telegram-Dispatch published daily updates on the number of entries. Local businesses placed their own guesses in their windows. Teachers at Jim Bowie High School used the cube to explain volume, mass, compression, probability and the decline of American manufacturing. Vice Principal Lutz ended the educational experiment when three students tried to determine density by pouring water over the cube during lunch.
Brother Bob preached a Wednesday-night sermon titled “What Were You Before the World Crushed You?” It ran forty-three minutes and contained no automobiles, although the collection was unusually strong.
Sister Thelma countered with a short item in the parish bulletin reminding everyone that resurrection generally required the continued availability of the original parts.
By the final Friday, 697 guesses filled the coffee pot. Lucinda stopped accepting entries at eight that evening, carried the pot behind the counter and covered it with a clean dish towel as though protecting a casserole.
After closing, she locked the door, made herself one last cup of coffee and began sorting.
She checked every slip against the bill of sale.
There were twelve 1957 Chevrolets, nine of them Bel Airs.
Eight 1959 Fords.
Twenty-three Volkswagen Beetles spanning eleven model years.
Fourteen Ford pickups, including Rusty’s carefully printed guess of a 1956 Ford F-100 Custom Cab.
Trixie had selected a 1961 Renault Dauphine, proving that her belief in foreign guilt had survived all available evidence.
Mayor Goodman’s gubernatorial Chrysler appeared on three separate slips, all in his handwriting.
At eleven forty-seven, Lucinda found the first correct answer.
1957 Plymouth Fury Coupe — Angus Hopper
At twelve twenty-six, she found the second.
1957 Plymouth Fury Coupe — Jimmy Don Ventura
There were no others.
Saturday morning brought a crowd not seen since Mayor Goodman had called a press conference and half the town arrived expecting his resignation over whichever moral sin was then believed to be nearing publication.
People filled the cafe, stood along the walls and spilled into the parking lot around the cube. The Telegram-Dispatch sent its editor, both reporters and the photographer who normally covered livestock.
Lucinda stood beside the Bunn-O-Matic with the coffee pot before her.
“There were six hundred ninety-seven entries,” she announced. “Two were correct.”
The room reacted as though she had just disclosed the presence of survivors.
“Angus Hopper,” she said, “and Jimmy Don Ventura.”
Heads turned.
Angus remained seated with his hat pushed back slightly, trying to appear as though identifying an automobile after its conversion into compressed scrap was a modest and ordinary skill.
Jimmy Don looked pleased but not surprised.
Lucinda held up the empty drawing pot.
“I was going to put both names in here and draw one for the five hundred dollars and free pie for a year.”
Angus looked across the table at Jimmy Don.
Jimmy Don looked back.
“We’ll split it,” Angus said.
“Fine with me,” Jimmy Don replied.
Lucinda lowered the pot.
“You understand one of you could win all of it.”
“We understand,” Angus said.
“Two hundred fifty dollars each,” Jimmy Don said, “and alternate weeks on the pie.”
“You’ve negotiated this already?”
“We had eleven seconds.”
Lucinda nodded. In Fort Stockton, several municipal contracts had required less deliberation.
She stepped out from behind the counter so the crowd could see her.
“The cube is actually—or was actually—a 1957 Plymouth Fury coupe.”
There was a moment of silence as everyone turned toward the crushed red metal in the parking lot and attempted to reconstruct, through imagination alone, Virgil Exner’s long, low, finned automobile from something now shaped like an industrial ottoman.
Trixie folded her arms.
“They crushed a Fury?”
“They did,” Lucinda said.
“An American Fury?”
“There was no French one.”
Trixie looked personally wounded.
“How’d you know?” Hairless demanded of Angus.
Angus shrugged.
“Trim. Paint. A little of the rear quarter. The shape of what’s left of the wheel opening.”
Everyone looked out the window.
There was no recognizable wheel opening.
“What wheel opening?” Chad asked.
“The one that isn’t there anymore.”
This answer satisfied Angus completely.
Jimmy Don’s method had been different.
“I’d seen it before,” he said.
“As a cube?” Rex asked.
“On eBay. It was used in Christine.”
That got everyone’s attention.
Jimmy Don explained that the car had been among those sacrificed during the production of the 1983 film about a murderous 1958 Plymouth Fury. The movie cars had actually been modified Plymouths of several models and years because genuine Furys were too rare and expensive to destroy in sufficient numbers. This particular example had been represented as a 1957 Fury and later auctioned as a crushed film relic.
Lucinda had found the listing at two in the morning while looking for replacement chrome edging for a diner table.
Nobody asked how one search had led to the other. The Internet had already established itself as a place where innocent people could begin with restaurant furniture and end up owning two tons of Stephen King memorabilia.
The general manager of Tumbleweed Chrysler-RAM-Jeep was waiting near the door. He had spent the previous week watching more people gather around an unrecognizable Plymouth than had visited his dealership during the previous month.
He offered Lucinda $6,500 for the cube.
“For what?” Hairless asked.
“Showroom display.”
Angus looked toward Tumbleweed’s general manager.
“About the only interesting thing in the whole lot.”
He whispered it loudly enough to be heard in Alpine.
The sale was agreed upon before lunch.
Then Angus and Jimmy Don did something nobody expected. Each returned his $250 to Lucinda.
Angus believed recognizing a 1950s automobile by three inches of buried trim gave him an unfair advantage. Jimmy Don believed having seen the auction gave him a greater one.
They kept the pie.
Principles were principles, but coconut cream was coconut cream.
Angus would receive a free slice on the first and third weeks of each month. Jimmy Don would receive his on the second and fourth. Any fifth week would be settled through private negotiation, with Lucinda retaining final authority during leap years.
By Monday, Lucinda had totaled the entry fees, added the returned prize money and combined it with the $6,500 from Tumbleweed.
Then she donated all of it to the Fort Stockton Animal Shelter.
Mayor Goodman had recently converted the facility to a kill shelter under what he called a “necessary realignment of municipal priorities.” The mayor had never liked cats or dogs. Cats treated him as irrelevant, while dogs regarded him as something moving near the fence that ought to be barked at. The feeling had always been mutual.
Lucinda’s donation paid the overdue veterinary bills, funded food and medication, covered several emergency transports and bought enough time for every animal in the building to be adopted, fostered or transferred.
The Telegram-Dispatch ran the photograph above the fold.
This time the cube appeared in the background. In front were Lucinda, Sheriff Ray, three shelter volunteers, seven dogs, four cats in carriers and Mayor Goodman wearing the expression of a man who had been invited to take credit for being publicly reversed.
The headline read:
MYSTERY CAR SAVES SHELTER ANIMALS
The cube moved to the center of the Tumbleweed showroom, roped off between a Wrangler and a Ram 2500. A brass plaque identified it as a crushed 1957 Plymouth Fury used in connection with Christine, although Jimmy Don submitted a three-page letter insisting the wording distinguish between a screen-used car, a production relic and an automobile actually visible in the finished film.
Nobody at Tumbleweed understood the distinction.
Jimmy Don understood it enough for everybody.
The cube continued working.
During football season, the Jim Bowie High School Booster Club placed a banner behind it reading:
THE KNIVES ARE CRUSHING IT THIS YEAR
For ten dollars, fans could pose beside the Plymouth wearing jerseys, waving foam knives or pretending to hold up one corner. The photographs paid for new tackling dummies, although the team’s 3–7 record caused the banner to acquire a degree of optimism usually associated with religion.
Orange Crush sales at the Dairy Twin tripled.
Indigo Dreamweaver finally tattooed the cube on a mechanic from Monahans, rendering it in the style of Picasso across an area that Sheriff Vickers confirmed was publicly acceptable under all existing ordinances.
And in November, a couple from Waco arrived at Tumbleweed Chrysler-RAM-Jeep asking to be married beside it.
They had met at a screening of Misery. Their first date had been a Stephen King film festival. They considered the crushed remains of Christine romantic.
Brother Bob agreed to perform the ceremony.
“They may as well see what real misery is like,” he said as he made his way toward the taco bar in the Parts & Service Department.
The fixings were served from polished vintage hubcaps. The bride carried red roses. The groom wore a Plymouth necktie. They stood before the cube while the showroom’s inflatable finance-rate display swayed gently above the Grand Cherokees.
When Brother Bob asked whether anyone knew any reason the two should not be joined in marriage, the service manager’s impact wrench rattled in the adjoining bay.
Nobody regarded it as an objection.
The cube remained in the showroom after the wedding, still red in places, pale blue in others, with its chrome bent and its purpose repeatedly revised.
It had begun as a Plymouth Fury, one of the sharpest shapes Detroit ever put on four wheels. Then it had become a movie car, then scrap, then an online curiosity, then a cafe promotion, then prize money, then an animal shelter’s reprieve, then a dealership attraction, a football fundraiser and finally an altar.
The car in Christine had been hard to kill.
This one proved harder.
Of the nearly seven hundred people who studied it, only Angus Hopper and Jimmy Don Ventura could say what it had once been. But in the end, that was the least interesting thing about it.
Fort Stockton had taken a four-thousand-pound cube of ruined metal and turned it into food, pie, photographs, football equipment, veterinary care, newspaper circulation, a wedding and one of the few reasons anybody willingly entered the Tumbleweed showroom without needing a transmission repaired.
It took a village.
And, as Lucinda had demonstrated, the village occasionally needed to be compressed from several directions before all its useful parts came together.
2 responses to “CUBISM, FORT STOCKTON STYLE”
Next year there will be a PhD Dissertation at Texas A&M proving that the choice of pie, in a blind study will determine an American male’s age.
For instance, me as a youngster, – Chocolate Pie
Then as a young adult – Pecan Pie
As a older, mature man – Coconut Cream Pie
As a follow up, Lucinda will start a new contest: What hour and date will Rusty and the Captain announce that they have bought the cube and are going to re-assemble this historic Fury. Later the most famous dog in the county crawled through the fence gap, took a VERY long whiz (barking the canine name for Cube), and re-settled with a smile on his face.
I was going to guess the Porsche that Robert Redford gifted Paul Newman, but I couldn’t find the year or model. Guess it’s just as well.