Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [24]
After that first, interminable oil change, Lewis resolved to track down his own parts. His next project, the reconditioning of a recently donated, ice-cream-white ’65 Ford Fairlane, might require any number of parts orders. He wrote a preliminary list—points, plugs, spark plug wires, belts—and went in search of Red Ray.
A FEW hundred yards west of the garage, two shady cul-de-sacs branched off from the roadway, with nine small bungalows scattered between them. The former fieldworkers’ village looked like tourist courts Lewis had seen in Pasadena, although not as quaint or well preserved. Red’s house and the office, both painted a rustic redwood brown with ivory trim, had been landscaped with lawns and roses and house-swallowing bougainvillea. The other seven cottages were boarded up and sitting in hard dirt like studies in decrepitude: crumbling chimneys, listing porches, silvery clapboard shedding a few last flakes of paint.
Lewis’s knock and tentative “Hello-o” drew no response, but the office door was unlocked, and he let himself inside.
Another mess. Psychology and recovery books were shoved this way and that into shelves. Wastebaskets overflowed with styrofoam cups, the holey edges of computer paper. The desk was a thicket of stacked files, newspapers, and fast-food wrappers. A large calendar mounted on an easel displayed November, and this was the first week in February. Lewis cleared a space to sit on the plump green sofa, then plucked a brochure from the stack on the coffee table. A brief description of how Round Rock worked was followed by three lengthy testimonials by former residents. Lewis skimmed these, finding the usual earnest litanies of personal loss and physical decline followed by triumphal recovery. The back page featured a few shorter endorsements:
Until I came to Round Rock Farm, I thought nobody cared. How wrong I was! George L.
In my six months at Round Rock Farm, I found the freedom to become the person God intended me to be—myself! Bob K.
He flung the brochure aside—how corny can you get?—snuggled into the cushions, and sleep, his dearest ally, carried him off. The next thing he knew, Red Ray was standing over him, hands full of mail. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! How the hell’d you get in here?”
Lewis struggled into a sitting position. “The door was open….”
“Scared the wits out of me.”
“Sorry. I need some car parts picked up.”
Red tossed the mail on the desk. “Just came back from town.” He sat down, still breathing hard. “It’ll have to be tomorrow. Okay?”
Lewis nodded. Red slipped on a pair of half-frame reading glasses, pushed papers off his blotter, and began sorting through the mail. “Everything else okay?” he asked absently. “We treating you well enough?”
“Yeah….”
“Good.” Red gave him a quick, over-the-glasses glance.
Here he was, finally alone with Red Ray—and tongue-tied as a starstruck teenager. He recalled his mission, however: to let Red know that he, Lewis, wasn’t one more run-of-the-mill juicehead. He wracked his brain. “I was wondering,” he said finally. “Is there a typewriter or computer I could use?”
Red stacked letters in piles as if playing solitaire. “And what would you need a computer for?”
“I’m a Ph.D. candidate in cultural history and I have to give a paper at a conference in March.”
Red swiveled in his desk chair until he faced the calendar. Absently, he lifted the month of November, then the month of December. Behind December: empty space. They both gazed into it. The phone began to buzz. Red made no move to answer it.
Lewis said, “If you let me use this computer, I’d be happy to answer the phone for