This past month, as has happened every
now and again over the course of the last few years, someone has come up
to me at a club event, complimented me on my columns and asked if I’m a
professional writer. Given the obvious level of taste and sophistication
that accompanies being a member of the Porsche club, I’m always very flattered,
but I have to confess, equally I‘m a little embarrassed. The embarrassment
isn’t caused by being confused for someone else who can actually write
a decent sentence, rather it’s that I happen to still cringe when recalling
my verbal SAT scores, not to mention the pained faces of English teachers
from my distant past. That coupled with the reality that I’ll actually
read a work of fiction only twice a decade makes me feel somewhat of a
charlatan. I mention this to you, not to encourage you all to heap further
praise or dung upon me, but rather to emphasize the notion that each of
us has hidden talents yet to be discovered. I never considered writing
anything other than a check until a few years back when Steve Ross asked
for a volunteer to write an article at the driver’s meeting of my first
autocross school. Interestingly, someone else volunteered, but for some
unknown reason, I felt compelled to produce one anyway. I’ve been annoying
you monthly ever since.
What might PCA help discover hidden within
you? Well neither of us will ever know if you don’t make a little effort
to get involved. As VP of Activities, I thought I‘d just take a brief moment
to point out that my participating in NER-PCA activities has had benefits
that no one, least of all myself, could ever have predicted. I suspect,
this is equally true for those of you sitting on the sidelines and not
taking full advantage of the great opportunities that the club has on offer.
Just something to think about.
While you’re contemplating the possibilities,
in the meantime I’ll mention that if you’ve missed any of the previous
installments of Scrapyard Lullabies, they can be found online at http://www.porschenet.com/mann.html.
Feel free to email me any time, on this or any other subject.
Chapter III.
The youngest Nelson lay quietly observing
the interplay between a neon Tetra and the lone spotted Puffer. As they
darted about within confines of a universe scribed within six cubic feet
each struggled to gain position over the other. Though little more than
an inch or two in length, in this world they were giants, unchallenged
in their authority, save by each other. The boy wondered which would ultimately
prevail. Within a few minutes, the Tetra had managed to maneuver close
enough to nip lightly at the other’s dorsal fin, but within a further moment,
they tired of the fight and retired to opposite sides of the tank. As the
guardian of their existence, he awarded the victory to the colorful little
hydro-missile and closed his eyes. The nine year old could sense the liquid
grief that filled the reality immediately outside his bedroom door, but
his lack of years protected him from being too closely engulfed by it.
The loss of his father was as of now only indirectly noticeable through
the distress of those around him. He would not escape though. The trauma
would arrive imperceptibly as if it were a rising tide felt on some distant
ocean’d planet whose moon’s influence increased inexorably as it slowly
swung through the heavens, waxing and waning over the course of half a
lifetime.
It had been quite a while since Route 901
had raised its’ game enough to achieve this level of carnage. A freak ice
storm a few winters back had stopped all motion for a few hours, but while
it produced a wealth of new victims for the scrapyard, most of the human
participants escaped with only minor cuts and bruises. Then, as now, an
event of this magnitude in so sleepy a county meant that half the emergency
personnel within twenty miles were either already on hand or on their way.
As the latecomers crept closer to the scene, lights and sirens blaring,
the tangle of innocent commuters grew deep and broad.
Walt, being a veteran of this sort of
catastrophe, possessed the good sense to loop around to Old County Road
and so managed to arrive on scene without too much difficulty. The last
few hundred feet forced him off the shoulder, tearing up the juvenile bluegrass
while weaving past clumps of stones and mailboxes as he went. He pulled
up a short distance from what remained of George Nelson’s cabriolet. The
clamor of diesel silenced, he gently kicked open the sticking door of the
Dodge, slid down from the cab and strode over to three officers who were
standing near the silvered wreckage which was half wedged under the side
of the garbage truck. One policeman was barking commands over his radio
as the tow man approached, while a second was looking rather ill. The final
officer waited for the man in the dirty coveralls to draw a little closer.
“Walt!” he shouted.
“Hey Ed. That ain’t George’s car?”
“’fraid so, Walter.”
“That George?” Walt pushed his left shoulder
in the direction of the blanket a few yards away.
The officer’s head barely bobbed twice,
“’fraid so, what’s left of him, anyway.”
“How fast you think he was goin?”
“Ninety, at least, maybe more. No need
to write him up this time, I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.”
“Wouldn’t be too sure Ed. Old George,
well, he was pretty damn certain he already knew everything that’s needed
to be known.” He paused, to take inventory of the damage. “Shame about
the car. Damn that’s a mess. ‘dcha know they only made nine hundred and
thirty-six.” Anyone who had ever sat on a bar stool next to Nelson was
painfully aware of this and several dozen other facts about the diminutive
roadster. “Wonder how many of ‘em was convertibles.” He gradually migrated
to the driver’s side door. “You know, that son of a bitch always said he
wanted to go out like his uncle Jimmy. Be damned if he didn’t just finally
go and do it.” As the words were leaving his mouth, Walt half consciously
began to wonder if Nelson had intentionally side-slammed into the municipal
slab of steel. Like most thoughts in his head, this one wasn’t fully formed
and as such it was easily dismissed. “Anybody else hurt?”
“Claude was shaken up a bit, but
he’ll be alright. That women in the gray Impala over there got cut up pretty
bad. Broke her nose something awful. The driver of the Corolla busted up
his leg pretty good too, but other than them, most of the groaning is just
over being late for dinner.”
Walt leaned on the car’s rear quarter,
resting his elbow on the frame of the folded top to get a look inside.
The windshield had been completely torn from the car, but although the
entire nose right up to the steering wheel was buried beneath the truck,
the interior was surprisingly intact. The red leather glistened in the
low sun, still wet with blood, looking as if it had just been freshly detailed
with liquid wax. Pinkish clumps of flesh garnished with crystals of shattered
glass were scattered lifeless about the cockpit. A truly sensitive soul
would certainly have vomited or swooned at such a sight. Barely noticing,
Walt straightened, turned and walked calmly back toward his rig for the
chains with which to drag the car out from underneath the metal elephant
still perched upon its nose.
The scrapyard’s boatman had acquired most
of his indifference to human misery in the sixties, when he was touring
the jungles of Viet Nam in the service of U.S. Military. He had signed
up believing that he had he not done so, he would bear the mark of a coward
for the rest of his life. His physical went reasonably well, but there
had been a few interesting details picked up in his psychological profile.
The shrinks, having recognized him for what he was, a loner and borderline
psychopath, recommended him for the sniper corps, but basic training had
proven firearms weren’t his specialty. He did, on several occasions demonstrate
tremendous tenacity and discipline in the face of his shortcomings as a
soldier. After a brief stint in the regular army, his sergeant, realizing
the depth of Walter’s gift for detachment, recommended him for demolitions
training, something to which his unique profile proved to be well suited.
Walt thrived in the funhouse, as he called
it. The ARVN were generally too scared to go into the maze of tunnels that
crisscrossed the underbelly of Nam. Given the incentives provided by the
B52s, both the Viet Cong and the infiltrators from the north had become
particularly adept at living in extremely tight spaces several feet under
foot. The invisible entrances, camouflaged by the jungle floor, lay in
every direction, the extent of any given network almost impossible to ascertain
while at the surface. Whenever a complex was detected and initial resistance
eliminated, a call would come in for his squad. Walt was the star of the
show. Before he could take to an unseen, unobservable center stage, the
junior members of his unit would first comb the underbrush identifying
each of the tunnels access points. Then, under armed escort, they’d run
hoses into the mouths of the entrances and seal them up with whatever fell
to hand. When all was ready, they’d make up connections back to series
of barrels containing several thousand cubic feet of gas. Spigots opened,
the toxic concoction would creep silently through the maze, discovering
and securing every nook, leaving no space unfilled, ultimately imposing
its will on any inhabitant, forcing them to drink of its death vapor. The
squad would wait at the surface, guns at the ready for any sign of escaping
Viet Cong. If one did somehow manage to drag itself from its’ burrow, they
shot his head off. By the next afternoon or so, all would be quiet and
it was time for Walt to do his thing.
Before he went in, he’d suit up in the
90 degree heat of the morning. It was a pleasure for him to finally get
underground where it was a few degrees cooler. The insurgents were extremely
frugal in the construction of their underground labyrinths, preferring
to focus on quantity rather than luxury. The connecting tunnels were never
more than a couple of feet in diameter. Every so often they would open
upon a small grotto, large enough to contain a few cases of supplies and
two or three guerillas. Walt rarely encountered the enemy head on, not
that he would or could have shied away. Most of the enemy had slipped away
into the jungle shortly after the initial skirmish was ended. When he did
come across combatants, generally they were already dead or dying. Nevertheless,
when a body was encountered, he would always be sure to deposit a single
slug in its’ skull just to seal the deal.
As he belly crawled through the pitch
black passages, weapon in hand, every dozen or so yards he’d gently lay
the .45 caliber M1911 on the cool earth in front of him, pull a small spade
from his belt and twist himself onto his right hip. Facing the sidewall,
he would carve out a shallow ledge in the moist dirt to place his charges
and secure his wire. Every few feet between charges, he’d secure the detonator
cord to the wall with a u-shaped spike tapped home with the butt of his
gun. Everything was laid out with great care, being always mindful to keep
one eye down the tunnel and one hand close to the pistol. After a day or
two of this, with the complex wired and cleared, the honor fell to his
lieutenant to push the plunger and blow everything straight to hell. Needless
to say, taking pleasure from a job which required crawling all alone through
a hostile and alien netherworld, carrying nothing but a semi-automatic
.45 to shoot half dead gooks while ferrying several pounds of plastic explosive
on his back qualified Walt as one crazy-ass mother fucker. In those days,
no one messed with Walt.
The rusty chains rattled as Walt wrestled
them from the dented tool box and dragged them over the back deck of the
wrecker. He hoisted them over his shoulder and returned to the roadster.
Kneeling down near the rear exhaust, crouched low, he slipped underneath
to try to figure out just what he could wrap his chains around. After a
minute or two, he could sense the officers were getting impatient. Nothing
was going to get any better for anybody until the car was freed and the
damaged vehicles cleared. From underneath the car, Walt could sense their
irritation. He called to them from below, “Draggin this son of a bitch
out is gonna be one helluva a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, we know Walter. Ed, go get
the hydraulic out of the back of my cruiser.” |
