The Missing Man
by Mark Herden
It happened thirty years ago. I left Milwaukee and ended up in New York State. A guy dropped me off in a town called Hamlin. I got a room and a job working at Jake's Garage. There were only two full-timers, me and Jake, the owner. I started calling him Torch Fiend, because he was wild with the acetylene torch. He'd no sooner have a car up on the lift, his torch would flash, and the exhaust system would crash to the floor. Jake was a big guy with a channel-like scar on his face that started below his right eye and disappeared into his beard. His voice was real low, and you had to wait for the words to come out. I'd joke with him and say, 'Why don't you go out and scare somebody, Torch Fiend.' He say, 'Okay, Don Juan.' He called me that, because I kept a comb and a little mirror in my toolbox.
On nice days Jake brought his mother to the station. She was in a wheelchair and would sit outside the front door between an orange Buick with no tires and a '65 Cadillac Jake was restoring. She'd just sit and watch traffic go by.
One night Jake and I stayed late to work on his Cadillac. Afterwards, we went to a college bar a couple miles away.
I noticed a booth full of girls in the back, and one really stood out. She had a smile that was always there.
A pinball machine stood beside her booth, and I got Jake to play. The girl I was watching caught me looking at her. We started talking, and the first thing I knew I was in her booth. Jake stood nearby looking like a wooden Indian holding a beer.
The one I liked, Kathy, had to tell him to sit. While Kathy and I played pinball I watched the five gold-colored bracelets on her right wrist click lightly against the glass.
I waited a few days and called. We went out every night, and after a month we decided to find a place together. We rented the top floor of a big house with pink siding a few blocks from the college.
On the nights she was at sculpture class–she was studying art at the college–I'd sit on the cool concrete of the front steps under a light and drink beers I got from the cooler in the porch.
One night she and her friends talked about some sculptor named Rodin. Their talk made me think of the yard-high carving of Jesus sitting on a rug-covered orange crate near the back door of the garage. It was dark mahogany and had delicate fingers carved to look as though they were reaching out to you. Those fingers made you feel uneasy, because they looked so real. Damn place for it, surrounded by car parts, a ripped-up Chevy seat on one side of it, cartons of oil filters on the other. Whenever new customers came in they’d look at it funny. I think Jake's mother wanted it there for some reason.
Kathy and I would lie in bed, talk and look out the window to the street where lights on poles lit the broken sidewalk. We liked to watch people pass beneath us. You could sometimes catch their words. When it rained the leaves on the big elms lining the street twisted and dipped, and the soft sound of water on the sidewalk took my cares away. Another thing I remember–you recall the strangest things. At work I often cut my hands up fixing the cars. When I touched them at night it felt as though I were touching someone else's hands.
After a few months things started to slide with me and Kathy—my own fault, really. It was hard for me to tell what she was thinking. She was something to look at. Her eyes were a light blue, and her skin was almost as white as porcelain. She slept with her face buried in the pillow, and I'd run my hand over her thick hair that flowed off the sides of her back. I can remember that room as clear as if I had a picture of it in front of me. At one window, on a wrought-iron stand, was a plant with thin shoots falling below the pot, making it look like a frozen fountain. Her stack of gold bracelets on the bureau top shone through the dark, and the soft blue and red lights in her aquarium shone like the watery lights in a tavern window.
In that room it seemed as though I was as far away from the rest of the world as I could get. For some reason I always had a feeling the whole thing couldn't last though, you know, with Kathy and me and the college town job. See, Jake got killed. Jake's sister called one Sunday night, and told me he'd died in a freak accident after I left work Friday. I wasn't surprised, because he was very careless. He was pulling a transmission from a Pontiac, had the front end lifted by a forklift. The forklift's hydraulic hose broke, and down came the car. It must have crushed him like a bug. I got together with the part-time employees, and we filled a coffee can with cash.
I drove to Jake's house with the money. His wife wasn't in any condition to talk to anyone, so her sister came to the door. She told me I could have Jake's Cadillac. Jake's wife must have told her Jake liked me. The next day I threw my tools in the trunk and wheeled it onto the highway.
by Mark Herden
It happened thirty years ago. I left Milwaukee and ended up in New York State. A guy dropped me off in a town called Hamlin. I got a room and a job working at Jake's Garage. There were only two full-timers, me and Jake, the owner. I started calling him Torch Fiend, because he was wild with the acetylene torch. He'd no sooner have a car up on the lift, his torch would flash, and the exhaust system would crash to the floor. Jake was a big guy with a channel-like scar on his face that started below his right eye and disappeared into his beard. His voice was real low, and you had to wait for the words to come out. I'd joke with him and say, 'Why don't you go out and scare somebody, Torch Fiend.' He say, 'Okay, Don Juan.' He called me that, because I kept a comb and a little mirror in my toolbox.
On nice days Jake brought his mother to the station. She was in a wheelchair and would sit outside the front door between an orange Buick with no tires and a '65 Cadillac Jake was restoring. She'd just sit and watch traffic go by.
One night Jake and I stayed late to work on his Cadillac. Afterwards, we went to a college bar a couple miles away.
I noticed a booth full of girls in the back, and one really stood out. She had a smile that was always there.
A pinball machine stood beside her booth, and I got Jake to play. The girl I was watching caught me looking at her. We started talking, and the first thing I knew I was in her booth. Jake stood nearby looking like a wooden Indian holding a beer.
The one I liked, Kathy, had to tell him to sit. While Kathy and I played pinball I watched the five gold-colored bracelets on her right wrist click lightly against the glass.
I waited a few days and called. We went out every night, and after a month we decided to find a place together. We rented the top floor of a big house with pink siding a few blocks from the college.
On the nights she was at sculpture class–she was studying art at the college–I'd sit on the cool concrete of the front steps under a light and drink beers I got from the cooler in the porch.
One night she and her friends talked about some sculptor named Rodin. Their talk made me think of the yard-high carving of Jesus sitting on a rug-covered orange crate near the back door of the garage. It was dark mahogany and had delicate fingers carved to look as though they were reaching out to you. Those fingers made you feel uneasy, because they looked so real. Damn place for it, surrounded by car parts, a ripped-up Chevy seat on one side of it, cartons of oil filters on the other. Whenever new customers came in they’d look at it funny. I think Jake's mother wanted it there for some reason.
Kathy and I would lie in bed, talk and look out the window to the street where lights on poles lit the broken sidewalk. We liked to watch people pass beneath us. You could sometimes catch their words. When it rained the leaves on the big elms lining the street twisted and dipped, and the soft sound of water on the sidewalk took my cares away. Another thing I remember–you recall the strangest things. At work I often cut my hands up fixing the cars. When I touched them at night it felt as though I were touching someone else's hands.
After a few months things started to slide with me and Kathy—my own fault, really. It was hard for me to tell what she was thinking. She was something to look at. Her eyes were a light blue, and her skin was almost as white as porcelain. She slept with her face buried in the pillow, and I'd run my hand over her thick hair that flowed off the sides of her back. I can remember that room as clear as if I had a picture of it in front of me. At one window, on a wrought-iron stand, was a plant with thin shoots falling below the pot, making it look like a frozen fountain. Her stack of gold bracelets on the bureau top shone through the dark, and the soft blue and red lights in her aquarium shone like the watery lights in a tavern window.
In that room it seemed as though I was as far away from the rest of the world as I could get. For some reason I always had a feeling the whole thing couldn't last though, you know, with Kathy and me and the college town job. See, Jake got killed. Jake's sister called one Sunday night, and told me he'd died in a freak accident after I left work Friday. I wasn't surprised, because he was very careless. He was pulling a transmission from a Pontiac, had the front end lifted by a forklift. The forklift's hydraulic hose broke, and down came the car. It must have crushed him like a bug. I got together with the part-time employees, and we filled a coffee can with cash.
I drove to Jake's house with the money. His wife wasn't in any condition to talk to anyone, so her sister came to the door. She told me I could have Jake's Cadillac. Jake's wife must have told her Jake liked me. The next day I threw my tools in the trunk and wheeled it onto the highway.
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