Category: Every car is a story.
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EARL’S FORMULA ONE & FORMALWEAR
Earl had been selling the history of transportation and renting the appearance of respectability out of the same building for years, but it was not until he bought Max Verstappen’s racing suit that he realized the two departments could share inventory. The suit arrived on a Thursday in a box that looked disappointingly ordinary for…
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THE FIRST
I have reached an age where I can remember the exact location of the headlight switch in an automobile I haven’t owned in fifty years, but occasionally find myself standing in the kitchen wondering what I came in there to get. I can remember the sound of a particular engine turning over on a cold…
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MISTAKEN IDENTITY
B.J. Stepford had always believed that an automobile ought to tell strangers something about its owner before the owner was required to tell them himself. This was why he drove a Mercedes-Benz. The Mercedes was dark blue, expensive and German, three characteristics B.J. considered important enough that he occasionally managed to work all of them…
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THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Hank had been tending bar at the Lucky Lady long enough to know that a man studying his drink might be thinking about a woman, a bill, or something he had done before either one became a problem. He generally waited for the man to identify the category. It saved time and prevented unnecessary advice.…
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OH, ROB.
The morning smelled of bacon, warm biscuits, and the faintly scorched coffee Lucinda insisted was a characteristic rather than a defect. October sunlight lay across the Grounds for Divorce in long rectangles, illuminating the sugar somebody had spilled beside Chad’s elbow and a fly that had survived more attempted executions than a Tennessee prisoner on…
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A SHALLOW GRAVE
Halloween had fallen on a Saturday that year, which meant the Grounds for Divorce was staying open two hours later than usual because Lucinda had discovered there were apparently people in Fort Stockton who wanted pie after dark. She considered this evidence of declining standards. By nine-thirty, most of the children had disappeared from the…
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SHAG. NOT JUST A CARPET, A LIFESTYLE
Nobody knew exactly when the enormous green-and-white Ford arrived in Fort Stockton, which was unusual because Fort Stockton had long possessed an early-warning system for strange automobiles considerably more effective than radar. A questionable vehicle entering town on Dickinson Boulevard could ordinarily be detected before its driver had located a restroom. Chad might see it…
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SUV OF BROKEN DREAMS
The flatbed came east on Dickinson Boulevard a little after nine on a Saturday morning, moving slowly enough that everybody sitting around the big round table in the Grounds for Divorce had time to see what it was carrying. Conversation stopped. That was the first indication something serious had happened. Silence at the big round…
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NADA CHANCE
Manny had written RARE SOVIET CLASSIC across the windshield in yellow shoe polish, which was unfortunate because the car was also yellow. From the highway, the advertisement appeared to be a municipal warning about a lemon. It was a 1977 Lada Niva, a small, square, three-door four-wheel-drive that looked as though somebody had asked a…
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LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE
By the time R.C. Sullivan III checked into the Naughty Pine Motel, Leon had already asked whether he wanted a smoking room, a nonsmoking room, or a room that had recently become nonsmoking through the intervention of the Pecos County Fire Department. R.C. chose Number Seven, paid for two nights, and declined the complimentary continental…