As Is

II

The little man had a ruddy-cheeked face, white hair so long it curled at the ends, and metal-rimmed spectacles. He glanced at the snow-covered autos in the used-car lot, scowled, and trudged toward the showroom.

“Came to pick up my car,” he announced. “Valve job. Delayed by business in another part of the world.”

The dealer looked uncomfortable. “The car’s not here.”

“So I see. Get it, then.”

“We more or less sold it about a week ago.”

“Sold it? Sold my car? My car?”

“Which you abandoned. Which we stored here for a whole year. This ain’t no parking lot here. Look, I talked to my lawyer first, and he said—”

“All right. All right Who was the purchaser?”

“A guy, he was transferred to California and had to get a car fast to drive out. He—”

“His name?”

“Look, I can’t tell you that. He bought the car in good faith. You got no call bothering him now.”

The little man said, “If I chose, I could drew the information from you in a number of ways. But never mind. I’ll locate the car easily enough. And you’ll certainly regret this scandalous breach of custodial duties. You certainly shall.”

He went stamping out of the showroom, muttering indignantly.

Several minutes later a flash of lightning blazed across the sky. “Lightning?” the auto dealer wondered. “In January? During a snowstorm?”

When the thunder came rumbling in, every pane of plate glass in every window of the showroom shattered and fell out in the same instant.

Sam Norton sat spinning his wheels for a while in mounting fury. He knew it did no good, but he wasn’t sure what else he could do at this point, except hit the gas and hope for the car to pull itself out of the snow. His only other hope was for the highway patrol to come along, see his plight, and summon a towtruck. But the highway was all but empty, and those few cars that drove by shot past him without stopping.

When ten minutes had passed, he decided to have a closer look at the situation. He wondered vaguely if he could somehow scuff away enough snow with his foot to allow the wheels to get a little purchase. It didn’t sound plausible, but there wasn’t much else he could do. He got out and headed to the back of the car.

And noticed for the first time that the trunk was open.

The lid had popped up about a foot, along that neat welded line of demarcation. In astonishment Norton pushed it higher and peered inside.

The interior had a dank, musty smell. He couldn’t see much of what might be in there, for the light was dim and the lid would lift no higher. It seemed to him that there were odd lumpy objects scattered about, objects of no particular size or shape, but he felt nothing when he groped around. He had the impression that the things in the trunk were moving away from his hand, vanishing into the darkest corners as he reached for them. Sut then his fingers encountered something cold and smooth, and he heard a welcome clink of metal on metal. He pulled.

A set of tire chains came forth.

He grinned at his good luck. Just what he needed! Quickly he unwound the chains and crouched by the back wheels of the car to fasten them in place. The lid of the trunk slammed shut as he worked—hinge must be loose, he thought—but that was of no importance. In five minutes he had the chains attached.

Getting behind the wheel, he started the car again, fed some gas, delicately let in the clutch, and bit down hard on his lower lip by way of helping the car out of the snowbank. The car eased forward until it was in the clear. He left the chains on until he reached a service area eight miles up the turnpike. There he undid them; and when he stood up, he found that the trunk had popped open again.

Norton tossed the chains inside and knelt in another attempt to see what else might be in the trunk; but not even by squinting did he discover anything. When he touched the lid, it snapped shut, and once more the rear of the car presented that puzzling welded-tight look.

Mine not to reason why, he told himself. He headed into the station and asked the attendant to sell him a spare tire and a set of tools. The attendant, frowning a bit, studied the car through the station window and said, “Don’t know as we got one to fit. We got standards and we got smalls, but you got an in-between. Never saw a size tire like that, really.”

“Maybe you ought to take a closer look,” Norton suggested. “Just in case it’s really a standard foreign-car size, and—”

“Nope. I can see from here. What you driving, anyway? One of them Japanese jobs?”

“Something like that.”

“Look, maybe you can get a tire in Harrisburg. They got a place there, it caters to foreign cars, get yourself a muffler, shocks, anything you need.”

“Thanks,” Norton said, and went out.

He didn’t feel like stopping when the turnoff for Harrisburg came by. It made him a little queasy to be driving without a spare, but somehow he wasn’t as worried about it as he’d been before. The trunk had had tire chains when he needed them. There was no telling what else might turn up back there at the right time. He then drove on.

Since the little man’s own vehicle wasn’t available to him, he had to arrange a rental. That was no problem, though. There were agencies in every day that specialized in such things. Very shortly he was in touch with one, not exactly by telephone, and was explaining his dilemma. “The difficulty,” the little man said, “is that he’s got a head start of several days. I’ve traced him to a point west of Chicago, and he’s moving forward at a pretty steady 450 miles a day.”

“You’d better fly, then.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking too,” said the little man. “What’s available fast?”

“Could have given you a nice Persian job, but it’s out having its tassels restrung. But you don’t care much for carpets anyway, do you? I forgot.”

“Don’t trust ’em in thermals,” said the little man. “I caught an updraft once in Sikkim and I was halfway up the Himalayas before I got things under control. Looked for a while like I’d end up in orbit. What’s at the stable?”

“Well, some pretty decent jobs, There’s this classy stallion that’s been resting up all winter, though actually he’s a little cranky—maybe you’d prefer the bay gelding. Why don’t you stop around and decide for yourself?”

“Will do,” the little man said. “You still take Diner’s Club, don’t you?”

“All major credit cards, as always. You bet.”

Norton was in southern Illinois, an hour: out of St. Louis on a foggy, humid morning, when the front right-hand tire blew. He had been expecting it to go for a day and a half, now, ever since he’d stopped in Altoona for gas. The kid at the service station had tapped the tire’s treads and showed him the weak spot, and Norton had nodded and asked about his chances of buying a spare, and the kid had shrugged and said, “It’s a funny size. Try in Pittsburgh, maybe you can find some.”

He tried in Pittsburgh, killing an hour and a half there, and hearing from several men who probably ought to know that tires just weren’t made to that size, nohow. Norton was beginning to wonder how the previous owner of the car had managed to find replacements. Maybe this was still the original set, he figured. But he was morbidly sure of one thing: that weak spot was going to give out, beyond any doubt, before he saw L.A.

When it blew, he was doing about 35, and he realized at once what had happened. He slowed the car to a halt without losing control. The shoulder was wide here, but even so Norton was grateful that the flat was on the right-hand side of the car; he didn’t much feature having to change a tire with his rump to the traffic. He was still congratulating himself on that small bit of good luck when he remembered that he had no spare tire.

Somehow he couldn’t get very disturbed about it. Spending a dozen hours a day behind the wheel was evidently having a tranquilizing effect on him; at this point nothing worried him much, not even the prospect of being stranded an hour cost of St. Louis.

He would merely walk to the nearest telephone, wherever that might happen to be, and he would phone the local automobile club and explain his predicament, and they would come out and get him and tow him to civilization. Then he would settle in a motel for a day or two, phoning Ellen at her sister’s place in L.A. to say that he was all right but was going to be a little late. Either he would have the tire patched or the automobile club would find a place in St. Louis that sold odd sizes, and everything would turn out for the best. Why get into a dither?

He stepped out of the car and inspected the flat, which looked very flat indeed. Then, observing that the trunk had popped open again, he went around back. Reaching in experimentally, he expected to find the tire chains at the outer edge of the trunk, where he had left them. They weren’t there. Instead his fingers closed on a massive metal bar.

Norton tugged it part way out of the trunk and discovered that he had found a jack. Exactly so, he thought. And the spare tire ought to be right in back of it, over here, yes? He looked, but the lid was up only eighteen inches or so, and he couldn’t see much. His fingers encountered good rubber, though. Yes, here it is. Nice and plump, brand new, deep treads—very pretty. And next to it, if my luck holds, I ought to find a chest of golden doubloons—

The doubloons weren’t there. Maybe next time, he told himself. He hauled out the tire and spent a sweaty half hour putting it on. When he was done, he dumped the jack, the wrench, and the blown tire into the trunk which immediately shut to the usual hermetic degree of sealing.

An hour later, without further incident, he crossed the Mississippi into St. Louis, found a room in a shiny new motel over-looking the Gateway Arch, treated himself to a hot shower and a couple of cold Gibsons, and put in a collect call to Ellen’s sister. Ellen had just come back from some unsuccessful apartment-hunting, and she sounded tired and discouraged. Children were howling in the background as she said, “You’re driving carefully, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.”

“And the new car is behaving okay?”

“Its behavior,” Norton said, “is beyond reproach,”

“My sister wants to know what kind it is. She says a Volvo is a good kind of car, if you want a foreign car. That’s a Norwegian car.”

“Swedish,” he corrected.

He heard Ellen say to her sister, “He bought a Swedish car.” The reply was unintelligible, but a moment later Ellen said, “She says you did a smart thing. Those Swedes, they make good cars too.”

The flight ceiling was low, with visibility less than half a mile in thick fog. Airports were socked in all over Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. The little man flew westward, though, keeping just above the fleecy whiteness spreading to the horizon. He was making good time, and it was a relief not to have to worry about those damned private planes.

The bay gelding had plenty of stamina. He was a fuel-guzzler, that was his only trouble. You didn’t get a whole lot of miles to the bale with the horses available nowadays, the little man thought sadly. Everything was in a state of decline, and you had to accept the situation.

His original flight plan had called for him to overtake his car somewhere in the Texas Panhandle. But he had stopped off in Chicago on a sudden whim to visit friends, and now he calculated he wouldn’t catch up with the car until Arizona. He couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel again, after all these months.