Read Online You Only Get Letters from Jail by Jodi Angel - Free Book Online

Ruby, and those sharp eyes, and when he hit his cigarette, he curled back his lips and held the butt with his teeth so that I could see that they were straight, but not very clean. “He’s our savior, no doubt about it, we’re damn lucky we pulled in here. Of all the driveways we could’ve turned down, he’s the one who happens to be a mechanic. I’m telling you, my luck is always too goddamn good to believe.”
    â€œExcept for the fact that you bought a car that broke down,” I said.
    â€œOh, you,” she laughed. She pushed me away from her so that my tennis shoes kicked up loose gravel. “Always quick to point out every little thing. Mr. Negative. That’s what I should call you. Don’t you think, Casper? Mr. Negative right here, with his ungratitude and giving his mom a hard time when all she did was buy him a classic car just like he wanted.”
    Casper looked at me and blew smoke up toward the watery sky. I wanted to tell her that this wasn’t the car I wanted. I wanted a ’69 Camaro and what I ended up with was a 1970 GTO. It wasn’t even the right color. But the worst part about the whole thing was that I didn’t careabout having a car at all. It had been her idea and I had been forced to go along with it.
    â€œWell, broke down can be fixed,” Casper said. “This is one hell of a car. If I was a kid, I’d give up my left nut for one of these.” My mother covered her mouth and laughed like she was still in school and had never heard the word “nut” said out loud before. He flicked his cigarette and it landed at the edge of the gravel near a pile of bald tires. I watched the smoke trail and weaken and die. Casper turned back around and leaned over the open hood. “You’ve got the four-hundred cube engine that should put you at three hundred and fifty horses.” He leaned over farther so that his left work boot lifted from the ground and I could see that the laces were untied. “And a sixteen-valve V8.” He dropped back down and turned on me. His eyes measured me from my ragged shoes to the too-long hair that touched the collar of my shirt, and I knew the distance came up short. “One hell of a muscle car for a boy.”
    â€œBut can it be fixed?” my mother asked. Her arm was raised against the hardtop and I could see the sweat I’d smelled.
    Casper cleared his sinuses and tipped his greasy auto-parts cap back on his head. “To be honest with you, I don’t know much about Muncie transmissions. Don’t see ’em anymore, and never worked on one. But that’s where your grind is. The trannie’s dropped and you’re running stripped.”
    Reverse had gone out on us first, and then we were trapped in second gear for somewhere near forty miles,the engine wound high and my mother talking too loud, and me trying to keep my right foot balanced at forty miles per hour. That’s when we’d rolled up to Casper’s, looking for a phone, and instead we’d found a mechanic with a garage in the middle of acres of farmland, almost like a reverse mirage, the shimmering sheet metal throwing back solid sunshine in lush, green, water-heavy flatland—only to find that he didn’t know about my transmission and couldn’t fix the car.
    â€œToo good to be true,” my mother said. “The catch at last.”
    â€œSee, I wasn’t being negative,” I said.
    â€œNow hold up.” Casper eased back against the fender again and put a hand in his front pocket so that I could see him fingering loose change or scratching the left nut he was willing to give up for a car like mine. “I said I maybe couldn’t fix it. I didn’t say that it couldn’t be fixed. My boy, Boone, he’s real good with cars and knows a hell of a lot about these older ones. That’s all them guys drive up in Lincoln. I can get him to come over and take a look and