Chapter 2

“The 32? What’ll you give?”

“I asked you first,” I said.

“It’s got a rod right through the side of the block,” he said.

“That’s my problem,” I said.

“This is the best side.”

So ... I got out of the Van and hobbled my way over to the Ford. The off side had a dent in the fender ... I could lay the fender on the ground and bang it out with a sledge hammer.

I was already planning the conversion when he suggested two hundred dollars.

“Write me out a receipt.” I fished out the two bills.

“I noticed everything out here is Ford ... but everything in the shop is Chevrolet. Why?”

“Dad bought a lemon and Ford wouldn’t do anything about it,” he said. “Then the Ford Experimental Foundation bought a railcar load of our seed beans and didn’t like it ... the court made Dad replace it. Chevrolet ever since.”

“What do you do?”

“We grow navy beans for seed.”

“I noticed a pile of cows.”

“We feed our cows with the bean husks and stalks. We used to plow ‘em under but Dad died, I took over ... I’d been pushing cattle since I started college but he wouldn’t hear of it.”

“May I use your phone? I need to call a friend.”

“Sure,” he unlimbered a covered device on his hip. He held it with one hand and entered a series of numbers. He handed me a bulky heavy box with a rod sticking out of it. It had the standard pushbutton front of the normal kitchen wall phone and a several extra rows.

I had never seen or even heard of such a device.

“Hold it to your head like a normal phone.”

I did.

It buzzed like a normal hand set.

“This is a transmitter slash receiver that sends an electronic signal to a receiver transmitter on my kitchen counter. The counter unit is connected to a wall plug. It sends a series of tones to the phone company ... just like a handset wired phone. Call your friend by pushing the buttons for his number.”

I did.

“See the green button?”

“Yeah.”

“Push it.”

There was a pulse. I heard the phone at Davy Martin’s house start ringing. Somebody picked up...

“Hallo.”

“Davy ... it’s Karen.”

“Vot you do?”

Shit ... his tape machine.

CLICK

“Hallo.”

“Hi Davy.”

“What you do?”

“I need you and your car hauler in Burlington, Wyoming. I bought some cars.”

“Sure,”

“South of town ... one road past the Post Office turn left. Second crossroad ... turn right. Big white barn ... looks like metal. I’ll be waiting.”

“South of town ... one road past the Post Office turn left. Second crossroad ... turn right. Big white barn ... looks like metal. Got it. Three four hours?”

“Thanks, I owe ya.”

I hung up.

Mr. Bean Farmer looked at me. I handed him back his black box.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” I agreed. “That’s an interesting phone ... what’s its range?”

“Five miles.”

“Imagine that.”

“Yeah, I’ve been working on a smaller version. It will weigh a pound ... if it works. With a fifty foot antenna at the house, I will be able to “Line of Sight” call from ten miles away.”

“How about a hundred foot antenna?”

“FCC won’t let me put in a hundred foot antenna.”

“If you could... ?”

“If I could, I could cover the entire valley.”

“I thought you were a bean farmer.”

“Electrical engineer,” he blushed at admitting it. “Tell me about this friend?”

“Davy? He’s not my friend ... he’s Hairy’s friend.”

“Harry?”

And that started a line of questions that took us through a burger and fries lunch at the Burlington Bar for his whole crew, returning to the bean farm and wandering through the line of junk cars and trucks out in the back lot.

“I need to sit ... my ankle is killing me,” I said. My limp had increased by a magnitude of ten, so when Davy showed up, I was asleep with my leg propped up on a pillow in the passenger seat of the Dodge.

Mr. Bean must have stopped him from waking me because it was Davy rattling up to the Dodge with the 1938 Ford two door sedan loaded on his car trailer that woke me just coming on dark.

“Get up, get up, get up ... yer burning daylight,” Davy said.

I groaned. The front seat of the Dodge is fine sitting ... it sucks as a bed ... even fleshed out with a folded buffalo robe ... soft but lumpy.

I staggered awake ... not an easy thing to do laying down.

“Morning, Davy,” I said, not exactly sure what time it was.

“Evening, Karen. It’s evening. Give this kid a hundred bucks.” Davy nodded at a teenager standing outside the 1948 Ford pickup. “You’re following us up the mountain ... so let’s get cracking.”

“I need a pee and I’m with you.” I said. I opened the door of the van and jarred the living daylights out of my ankle stepping out.

“Fuck! That smarts.”

“Hairy said you’d hurt yourself at the shoot. Lean on me ... we’ll get you to the barn.”

Davy helped me to the john in the barn ... I did my business and he helped me back to the van.

We had a regular parade pulling out of Burlington.

It’s not far from Burlington to Greybull. Hawkins and Powers looked like they were doing a land rush business. The lights were on and crews were loading retardant into the bomb bay tanks of at least five PB4Y-2 Privateer aircraft. Must be a fire somewhere. The dash 2 is a better plane for fire fighting than the B17’s they used first. It’s newer and there’s more of them still flying. They had a field full of spare parts planes.

We, the three of us, needed gas so I was surprised when we gave downtown a miss and took North Fifth.

The hypotenuse of a triangle is always shorter than the sum of the two legs. We came out at US14 and the river. We headed east.

I was beginning to wonder about running out when we pulled into Shell and Shell. Shell the town and Shell the gas station.

Davy started pumping and walked over to my van window.

“Worried were you?”

“Yes ... I might have five miles left in the tank. I expected to fill at Greybull.”