Chapter 4

Six weeks passed with me becoming more familiar with how the shop ran. I was given more and more responsibility in my job assignments. I was becoming the best mechanic of our bunch, but I tried to fit in with the rest of the guys. They appreciated my attitude and were actually starting to ask my opinion on jobs that were giving them problems when Jay was not available. It looked like I was headed for Jay's position as shop leader when he finally retired.

The new mechanic that Bill hired was not the mechanic that Joey had been, but he was an experienced man who could hold his own if he was not pushed too hard. Even though he was twice my age, he started to ask my opinion on some situations. That was very gratifying to me, but I tried not to be an obvious smart-ass when he asked me a question.

On the other hand, my romance with Janice seemed to have stalled. I was completely ignorant of what was causing the problem. We had advanced to the stage of regular kissing, but she was reluctant to share tongues. She would let me touch her breasts, but it was always through her clothing. Frankly, I was beginning to think that I was the wrong man for her. She was not exactly frigid toward me, but something didn't feel right. I just did not know what it was. I tried to talk to Janice about it, but all I got were blank stares. Who the Hell could I talk to?

I finally got up enough courage to talk to Helen, Janice's mother, about my problem understanding what had gotten into Janice. Helen told me that Janice had once had a very bad experience with a boyfriend in high school. The boyfriend had been the type who was sure that he was invincible and indestructible. One night, he and Janice had gone to a movie and had been stopped by some muggers on the way home.

The boyfriend had tried to beat off the three muggers even though they had knives and he was unarmed. He just would not back down when Janice asked him to. Anyway, during the fight which he could not have possibly won, he received a fatal stab wound and died before EMS help could arrive. Helen was sure that Janice feared that the same kind of fate would befall me because of the way I was sure that I could not be permanently injured. The fact was, Janice was afraid of losing me, too.

Okay, now I knew what I was facing. Maybe I could make Janice understand that I did not envision myself as another Superman or even the Hulk. I set out to convince her that I was going to be just as careful as any other human male when it came to getting hurt. I figured that all I really needed was time to get through her fear. I was resolved to be as patient as necessary. I was in as big a hurry as any other lovestruck male to make her mine, but I was also smart enough to realize that I had to win through to her on her terms. Meanwhile, I would just live my life as Fate dealt it to me.

I continued to go into work regularly and to spend as much time as possible talking to Janice between spells of work. Jay was in no hurry to retire, so I kept my position as one of the mechanics in the shop, though the other guys did ask my opinion on jobs that were giving them problems.

One day, I was working on a tricky job that required me to be on the floor under the car. The clearance was so close to the floor that there was barely room for me to roll under while riding a dolly. Anyway, accidents sometimes do happen under that kind of confined conditions, and I was pushing too hard on a wrench when it slipped. My hand smashed into the edge of a piece of sheet metal and sheared off my right thumb! Blood squirted everywhere, but I did not panic, though I wonder why: a mechanic cannot work without his thumb, so I was headed toward a world of trouble. Without giving the matter a second thought, I picked up my thumb from where it was lying with my left hand and pushed it into position on the stub left on my right hand.

I felt a very strong tingle, and the thumb seemed to bond into place! The problem was, I was now covered with splotches of blood, and I was going to have to explain that to the other guys and, even worse, to Janice. Man, I had to come up with an excuse in a big hurry. The only thing I could think of was to bump my head on the bottom of the car hard enough to break the skin. That would produce some more blood, but the injury would be hidden by my hair. I was going to have to talk fast, but I couldn't see any other choice.

I banged my head and yelled with honest pain. I rolled from under the car and let everybody see me still bleeding as I sat up on the dolly. All of the guys ran to me to make sure that I was okay. When I assured them that I was fine, they started to kid me about being accident prone. What could I say? All I could do was to laugh with them at my foolishness, and not make a big deal out of it. Jay gave me a funny look, but didn't say anything.

I cleaned up a little before I went in to see Janice. I wanted to make sure that she heard of the accident from me, rather than one of the other guys. As expected, Janice chided me about not being careful enough, but she did laugh when I told her about the guys calling me accident prone. Apparently, I got away with it, and Janice forgave me for hurting myself.

A month or so later, Bill had brought a customer into the shop to explain in detail why the proposed repair was going to cost a lot more than the original estimate. The car was rather old and the man's pride and joy. It was almost as if he loved that antique car more than he did his wife! At first, we had all thought that the problem was a blown head gasket. The car was so old that it did not use computers, so there was no way to connect in the diagnostic machines. As the worst case, Jay figured that the valves needed reworking.

However, he found much more trouble than that when I pulled the head on that side of the V-8. As soon as the head came off, the cracked cylinder was obvious. Suddenly, the repair costs shot up by a factor of at least five, and it may even be more by the time we got through. Bill was called in, and Jay showed him the trouble. Bill ordered us to stop work right there while he talked to the car's owner.

The owner came in almost as soon as Bill hung up the phone. He was very distraught over the damage to his "baby," and even more so by the added cost to fix the problem. Bill suggested that they just swap the motor if the customer really wanted to keep the antique car. Bill figured that a replacement could be found at a scrap yard if the customer was not too fussy.

Well, the more that Bill talked, the more upset the customer got. He was totally irrational about the car and its problems. As he got more excited, the customer began accusing Bill of having his mechanic damage the car deliberately just so that he could run up the repair costs. Bill tried to calm the man down, but he was having no luck. Finally, the customer completely lost his head and attacked Bill.

The customer pushed Bill so hard that he fell backwards over the car's fender and banged his head on the engine. Naturally, blood gushed everywhere, and the customer truly went wild. He picked up a large screwdriver and tried to stab Bill in the gut with it. That was enough for me! I had been ordered by Jay to stay out of the discussion, but I could not let anybody do a serious job of harming my future father-in-law.

I grabbed the man's hand holding the screwdriver and tried to twist it away from Bill. I did manage to steer the blade of the screwdriver away from Bill, but the customer was stronger than he had any right to be. He continued coming down with the screwdriver, even though I was pulling him away from Bill. The descending blade did miss Bill, but it caught me in the side and slid along one of my ribs.

My God! Talk about pain! I guess I screamed with the pain: I have no idea. However, I did pass out from it. By this time two of the other mechanics were able to grab the customer and twist the screwdriver away from him. Jay was very close to the door to the office, so he opened it enough to yell at Janice to call 911 for EMS and cops. He said that we had two wounded men, and the attacker was acting crazy.

We were lucky and the rescue people and cops showed up within 10 minutes. By this time, I had stopped bleeding and waked up. My gash had begun to mend itself. Nobody noticed that but me, and I kept quiet. The cops hustled the attacker into cuffs and stashed him in the patrol car to wait for the arrival of the investigating detective.