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CHAPTER 6
1
The same chain-smoking cabbie picked me up the next morning, and when he dropped me off at Titus
Chevron, the convertible was there. I had expected this, but it was still a relief. I was wearing a
nondescript gray sport coat I’d bought off the rack at Mason’s Menswear. My new ostrich wallet was
safe in its inner pocket, and lined with five hundred dollars of Al’s cash. Titus came over to me while I
was admiring the Ford, wiping his hands on what looked like the same rag he’d been using on them
yesterday.
“I slept on it, and I want it,” I said.
“That’s good,” he said, then assumed an air of regret. “But I slept on it, too, Mr. Amberson, and I
guess I told you a lie when I said there might be some room for dickerin. Do you know what my wife
said this morning while we were eatin our pancakes n bacon? She said ‘Bill, you’d be a damn fool to let
that Sunliner go for less’n three-fifty.’ In fact, she said I was a damn fool for pricin it that low to start
with.”
I nodded as if I’d expected nothing else. “Okay,” I said.
He looked surprised.
“Here’s what I can do, Mr. Titus. I can write you a check for three hundred and fifty—good check,
Hometown Trust, you can call them and see—or I can give you three hundred in cash right out of my
wallet. Less paperwork if we do it like that. What do you say?”
He grinned, revealing teeth of startling whiteness. “I say they know how to drive a bargain out
there in Wisconsin. If you make it three-twenty, I’ll put on a sticker and a fourteen-day plate and off
you go.”
“Three-ten.”
“Aw, don’t make me squirm,” Titus said, but he wasn’t squirming; he was enjoying himself. “Add
a fin onto that and we’ll call it a deal.”
I held out my hand. “Three hundred and fifteen works for me.”
“Yowza.” This time he shook with me, never minding the grease. Then he pointed to the sales
booth. Today the ponytailed cutie was reading Confidential. “You’ll want to pay the young lady, who
happens to be my daughter. She’ll write up the sale. When you’re done, come around and I’ll put on
that sticker. Throw in a tank of gas, too.”
Forty minutes later, behind the wheel of a 1954 Ford ragtop that now belonged to me, I was
headed north toward Derry. I learned on a standard, so that was no problem, but this was the first car
I’d ever driven with the gearshift on the column. It was weird at first, but once I got used to it (I
would also have to get used to operating the headlight dimmer switch with my left foot), I liked it.
And Bill Titus had been right about second gear; in second, the Sunliner went like a bastid. In
Augusta, I stopped long enough to haul the top down. In Waterville, I grabbed a fine meatloaf dinner
that cost ninety-five cents, apple pie à la mode included. It made the Fatburger look overpriced. I
hummed along with the Skyliners, the Coasters, the Del Vikings, the Elegants. The sun was warm, the
breeze ruffled my new short haircut, and the turnpike (nicknamed “The Mile-A-Minute Highway,”
according to the billboards) was pretty much all mine. I seemed to have left my doubts of the night
before sunk in the cow-tank along with my cell phone and futuristic change. I felt good.
Until I saw Derry.