Shaking the Nickel Bush by Ralph Moody

driven a hundred thousand miles.”
    â€œNo it ain’t! Not a bit of it!” the owner of the garage told me. “This little car ain’t been drove over five thousand miles. Just took it in on a trade with old man Henderson, up Cavecreek way. Trouble is he didn’t have no place to keep it—left it stand out in the weather, so the paint got chawed up a mite by the wind. Some good-for-nothin’ hired hand drove it over rough country, hunting strays. Busted a leaf or two in the springs, and left it run low on oil. ’Twouldn’t take next to nothing to put it into apple-pie shape. Time you boys put a fresh coat o’ paint on it a man couldn’t scarcely tell it from new. Them wore places on the seats would patch up slick as silk with a few strips of oilcloth and a little glue—I’d throw that in as part of the deal.”
    The flivver still looked like a tired old nag that was on its last legs, so I shook my head and told Lonnie, “Shiftless is sure the right name for it. It’s even ding-toed. Look how the front wheels turn inward.”
    Before Lonnie could answer, the garageman called out, “Bent radius rod, that’s all. Couple o’ swipes with a maul would straighten it right out. I told you that fool hired hand drove it over a bit of rough country.”
    I’d heard people talk before when they’d been trying to sell something that wasn’t any good, so I didn’t pay any attention to the man but said to Lonnie, “There’s no sense in buying this one. It would take you a week to fix it up and wait for the paint to dry, and we can’t afford to hang around Phoenix that long. Besides, you’d have to buy tools for doing a job this big.”
    Again the garageman beat Lonnie to the punch. “Not a bit of it! Not a bit of it!” he told me. “You boys could fix it up right here, and I’d leave you use my tools. Wouldn’t cost you a penny. I’d even lend you a hand on it, so’s’t you could have it ready to roll by tomorrow mornin’.”
    â€œThat’s kind of you,” I said, “and maybe we’ll come back to see it again, but . . .”
    I hadn’t noticed Lonnie until he cut in, “Look buddy, let’s you and me take a little walk.”
    When I glanced around he looked as sad as a little boy who’s been told he can’t have a puppy he’s fallen in love with, so I said, “Okay but I’m not going to buy it, Lonnie.”
    As soon as we were outside Lonnie asked, “Look, buddy, didn’t you ever take note how the best cuttin’ horses usually looks the laziest and most no-account?”
    â€œSure I have,” I told him, “but what’s that got to do with buying a flivver?”
    â€œPlenty!” he said. “Plenty! To a man that knows flivvers like I do, there’s just as much feel to ’em as there is to a horse. They’re either all good or no good, and a man that knows ’em don’t need nobody to tell him which. I knowed that speckled one was plumb good the minute I laid eyes on her.”
    â€œI’m not saying it isn’t,” I told him, “but for a hundred dollars I think we ought to be able to find a better one. That’s a lot of money, and I’m not going to spend it till we’ve looked around some more and . . .”
    â€œListen, buddy,” Lonnie pleaded, “I can easy talk the bloke down to seventy-five, and you heard him say I could use his tools, and that he’d lend me a hand. With the both of us workin’ on that engine we’d have it purrin’ like a pussy ’fore suppertime, and the looks of the body don’t make no difference to us now. What we’ll need in the back country is a car with an engine we can trust. There’s no sense stopping to do the paint job till we’re on our way. I can do that and patch up them holes in the