Let me tell you about the best mechanic I've ever found. She is very gifted when it comes to engines and knowing when something needs to be tweaked, or left alone. Her name is Tommi, but the day I met her, I had no idea she was a girl. Tommi was just another one of those faceless rug-rats that run up and down the street where I live. I ignore them, or least I try to. They play soccer in the street, and every now and then, one of them manages to hit my truck, or my car, if it happens to be out of the garage when I'm tinkering on it. I jump out from underneath the car and yell at those little bastards to stop playing in front of my house. There's the usual grumbling and cursing under their breath, but none of them has ever disobeyed me when I did it.

Once in a while, one of the parents comes over to piss and moan about how I yelled at their kids. I politely tell them to fuck off and go teach your worthless offspring to behave themselves. I don't have kids, never wanted to. They are a drain on the pocketbook and I don't need that. I have the one and only love of my life in the garage, my 1971 Dodge Daytona. Well, now I have two loves, but we're getting to that.

The thing about the Daytona, and the more widely known Plymouth Superbird, is that most car buffs either hate them or love them; mostly hate. They are huge cars, over twenty feet long, with a sloped nose and a three-foot tall wing on the back. The ugly ducklings of the muscle car genre. However, they are two of the fastest cars ever made by the Chrysler Corporation, due to one of the two best engines ever made--the 426 Hemi or the 440 Wedge powerplants. My Daytona has the 426 Hemi and I love her. She's midnight blue with matte black racing stripes and has a black leather interior. Well, enough about my first love.

I met Tommi on a warm spring day. It was absolutely beautiful, not a cloud in the sky. That meant kids running and screaming all over the place while I was going to be working on Baby. I had her parked outside in the driveway and I was underneath her, changing the oil and getting her ready for the Spring Fling Muscle Car Rally. I always manage to win something when I take her, and I get to talk to all the other MOPAR nuts out there. Well, just as I was reaching for the grease gun, I heard the fight start. I cursed and pulled myself out from under the car and went to go see what crap I was going to have to deal with this time.

There were about five or six teenage boys pushing and shoving a smaller boy around, I guessed his age at around ten or maybe a year older. I was about to shout at them when the biggest of the bunch hauled off and sucker punched the little blonde haired kid. That really pissed me off; I hate bullies, especially chickenshit ones who use tactics like that. I raced over to the group and hollered at the top of my lungs,

"Get your sorry fuckin' asses out of my street!" I grabbed the bully by the scruff of the neck and shook him. "If I ever see you do that again, I'll give it right back to you twice as hard. Do you understand me you little shit?"

Well, needless to say, he did. He and his pals went tearing off to do what ever it is they do when they get caught. I reached down and helped the small kid up and that's when I found out that it was a girl. That bastard was so lucky that I hadn't known when I had him in my hands. Well, maybe I was the lucky one; I'd have been sitting in jail for beating the shit out of a minor if I had.

I helped her up and brushed her off and made sure she wasn't bleeding anywhere. She was crying and didn't show any signs of stopping.

"Hey, are you all right? Do you want me to call your mom and dad?" When I said that she shot me a look of pure terror and shook her head.

"NO! Don't do that, please, sir." Sir? Well now, the kid had manners.

"Okay, I won't. Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah." Whew! I didn't need to baby-sit some rug-rat. But, that's what ended up happening anyway.

"Good." I stood up and started walking back to my driveway when I heard her follow me.

"Look kid, I'm glad you're okay, but I have things to do and you need to find some other place to go play."

"Um, sir? I can't. Can I just stand over there? I won't bother you at all." Shit! Well, why not? She can't hurt anything if she stands next to my mailbox.

"Okay. Fine, you can stand over there. Just don't bother me, okay?"

"I won't, sir. I promise."

The kid sounded sincere. Fuck it. I went back to my Baby and resumed putting the grease into the joints. I forgot about the kid and just kept working. Eventually, I got thirsty out in the heat and I crawled out from under the car and went inside to get me a giant glass of iced tea. I never drink beer when I'm working on my Baby; I might make a mistake or forget something. When I came back outside, I noticed that the kid was still standing next to my mailbox and she was looking at my iced tea as I walked back to the car. Shit. I'm not a mean person, really.

"You want something to drink, kid?"

"Please, sir, if it's not too much trouble." There went that 'sir' stuff again. Well, for a kid, she had manners and that made her okay in my book.

"Yeah, okay. Why don't you come over here onto the porch and sit in the shade and I'll get you some ice water." I turned around and went to get her a glass. When I came back out, I spotted the group of bullies lurking around the house up the street and they were looking in my direction.

"Here. What's your name kid?"

"Tommi, sir. Thank you for the water."

"Hi, Tommi, my name's Charley." We shook hands, her tiny hand disappearing into mine. "What's up with those other kids? Why were they picking on you?"

"I don't know, Mister Charley." Mister? Damn, the kid does have manners. I looked up and saw that the group was still hiding and waiting.

"Bullshit, Tommi. Those boys are hiding over there just waiting for you to leave." She looked at the ground and started to sniffle. Oh, crap. I hate crybabies.

"It's because my dad sells drugs and they think he short changed them." HOLY SHIT! I don't need this kind of crap around me. I did feel sorry for the kid, though.

"Well, I'm not sure what to do about you, Tommi. I don't want to see you get beat up, but you can't stay here for much longer."

"I'll sneak away like I normally do, Mister Charley." Crap. Well, at least the kid knows how to take care of herself.

"Okay, Tommi. Just stay up here on the porch." She nodded and I went back to work. An hour later I was done and cleaned everything up, put the tools away, and I was ready to give Baby a spin. The bullies were still waiting and Tommi hadn't left yet. I knew if I drove away, they'd be on her in a second. Crap.

"Come on, Tommi, I'll give you a ride." Her eyes lit up and she smiled.

"Thank you, Mister Charley." She scooted off the porch and came over to the car. I opened the door and let her in. She crawled into the deep bucket of the race seat and looked very confused at the complicated racing harness seatbelts. I flipped the five-point harness straps over her shoulders and cinched them down tight against Tommi's small frame. She looked up at me with nervous eyes when I reached down and pulled the fifth strap up through her legs, but when I simply latched it into the center connector, she relaxed. She looked so small sitting in that bucket seat. The straps were almost too long to effectively hold her in place.

I glanced over at the others and they were giving me an evil look. Fuck'em. Little bastards. I slid in behind the wheel and fired up Baby. She rumbled to life and the neighborhood was no longer quiet. I let her idle for a minute, warming up the engine. I went about strapping myself into my seat as the engine warmed up. I flipped the arming switch on the fire suppression system that sat in place of the center console. I revved her a few times, making her roar and cackle as she let everyone know, there was massive horsepower under that hood itching to be let loose. I pushed in the clutch and put her into reverse, slowly backing her out of the driveway. I straightened the wheel and lined her up with the stop sign four blocks down. I revved her up to about 6500 RPM and popped the clutch.

We slammed back into our seats and twin tails of white smoke trailed behind us as we shot down the street. Tommi was hollering something but I couldn't hear her over the sound of the Hemi throwing us through 120 mph and faster. When we got to the second block, I took my foot off the gas pedal and started feathering the brakes. We had hit 150 mph before I let off. The cackle and popping from the exhaust pipes echoed off the houses. When I got her slowed down and I pulled up to the stop sign, I looked over at Tommi. She was giggling and hopping in her seat.

"WOW! That was FUN!"

"Yeah, that was, wasn't it?"

I did it to show off, of course, and to let those little pricks that had been waiting for her, know to piss off. I normally don't do that with Baby on public streets, but every now and then, I let her loose and show her stuff. Plus, that burned up four gallons of 115-octane race gas and probably took off a quarter inch of rubber from the tires. At that moment, I didn't care. The sound of Tommi giggling and the look on her face was worth it all. Damn, am I getting soft in my old age? Screw it, that really was fun.

"Well, Tommi, where to?" The smile faded from her face and she looked down at the floor mats.

"Mister Charley, I don't want to go home. They'll be looking for me there." Damn.

"Alright, Tommi. I'll let you ride shotgun with me while I take Baby for a cruise around town."

"Thank you, Mister Charley." I just nodded and off we went. I gave her the grand tour of cruise spots and she was full of questions about all the different cars. We chatted about Baby and compared her to some of the other muscle cars out on the strip that night. None of the other drivers ever questioned me about Tommi being in the car. I never offered any explanations. I didn't feel guilty about her being there; I just didn't feel like explaining it all.

Well, after that night, Tommi was over at my place every time I had Baby out of the garage. She asked questions and I taught her about taking care of a high performance hotrod. She would hand me tools and eventually she got to the point of getting her hands greasy and doing some minor work that I would allow. Tommi was a natural at being a mechanic. She was meticulous about how the tools were arranged in the toolbox. She always put things back right where she had gotten them. I rarely had to explain things more than once. She became invaluable to me doing work on the car. Her tiny hands could get into places where mine could not. She saved me from hours of frustrating piecework when she could do things like that.

As hard as it seems to believe, we became friends. I stopped looking at Tommi like a little rug-rat and started treating her like an equal. I found myself talking to her like an adult, not a kid. She would sometimes revert to child-like behavior if I reprimanded her for something, usually for trying to sneak sips of my beer when the work was done and clean up was in progress. For the most part, we just talked about the car or an upcoming race. She never mentioned her father again, and I never asked.

I did have to periodically yell or rough up one of the neighborhood bullies for pushing Tommi around; they eventually got the hint that she was untouchable. By the end of the summer, I had a sidekick at the car shows and a mechanic in training. She was a regular in my pit at the track. She impressed the other drivers with her knowledge of car types and mechanical ability. She would occasionally help out with another mechanic and earn a pat on the head and thanks. I didn't mind really, she was a nice kid and she was always polite to everybody. She would return sometimes with a pouting lip and a bad temper when someone would treat her like the child she looked like, and not the mechanic that she was becoming.

Some of the people we talked to at the car shows would assume that Tommi was my daughter and compliment me on how smart and pretty she was. After the first time of trying to explain how Tommi wasn't my kid and why she was hanging out with me, well, let's just say the looks I got weren't polite, but suspicious. That was the first time I had ever given any thought to how it looked for her to be around me like that all the time and not be my daughter. So, I stopped correcting them and Tommi seemed to be happy about it. After that, Tommi would occasionally call me 'Daddy'. At first I was uncomfortable with that. ME? A father? Shit on a stick, I never wanted that. After the first few times, I mellowed out about it and decided if it made things easier for people to accept about Tommi and me together, well, it couldn't be all that tough to get used to hearing.

When I won a local race and was being escorted to the winner's circle, I picked up Tommi and sat her on the fender. When the TV cameras and reporters were asking me how I had won, I pointed to Tommi and told them that if it hadn't been for my awesome mechanic and pit boss, I wouldn't have won. I let Tommi hold the trophy while they took our picture. You should have seen her. Her chest was pushed out, her chin in the air, and the most satisfied and proud smile on her face. It wasn't false praise on my part. She really had helped me win that race and she deserved all the praise and credit where it was due.

The only time I had trouble out of Tommi was when I would have a date and I would send her off to go home. She was sullen and very petulant for a couple days after I would have a woman over at my house. I just chalked it up to the fact that she didn't like competition for my attention. Since I didn't let any of my dates stick around for very long, it wasn't that big of a deal to me how Tommi acted. She would ask me about them a few days later. I wouldn't say much; just that I had fun and that was that. I didn't feel comfortable talking about such things with Tommi. Yeah, she was my friend, but she was still a kid and I didn't like talking about that subject with her.