Shaking the Nickel Bush by Ralph Moody Page A

seats any time along the road. When I get through with her she’ll look and run like she just come out of the fact’ry. How ’bout it, buddy? I’m tellin’ you, we couldn’t do no better if we was to waste a month’s time huntin’.”
    There did seem to be some sense in what Lonnie said, and it would cost money for every extra day we spent in Phoenix, so I told him, “All right, Lonnie, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you can buy that one for seventy-five dollars, and if you can have it all fixed up and ready to roll by tomorrow noon, I’ll go along with the deal, but not for one penny more. Is that fair enough?”
    Lonnie was hurrying back into the garage before I had the last words out of my mouth. “Fair enough! Fair enough!” he sang out. “I’ll guarantee you’ll never live to regret it, buddy. Now you watch your old uncle drive a sharp deal.”
    I think the look on Lonnie’s face ruined his deal the minute he stepped back into that garage. He haggled for more than an hour with the owner, and the lowest they ever got was eighty-five dollars. When I was sure that was the best deal he could make I said, “Come on, Lonnie. We’ve wasted enough time here.”
    As I said it I turned and walked out of the place, but I hadn’t gone fifty feet before Lonnie caught up with me. “Listen, buddy,” he said as he trailed along at my elbow, “I had him right on the edge of a deal when you busted it up. And besides, what’s a ten-spot to a guy like you anyways? The work I’ll get out of the bloke will be worth double that. You know these mechanics charge a buck and a half an hour for their time.”
    â€œSure I know it,” I said, “and he’d probably run us up a bill of twenty or more before we ever got out of there.”
    â€œUh-uh! Not a penny! That’s a part of the deal,” Lonnie told me. “He ain’t goin’ to charge us a nickel for nothin’—just the dough we pay him for the flivver, and he’ll furnish all the spare parts we need.”
    I kept right on walking, and said, “No deal! I wouldn’t trust that man any farther than I could reach him with a throw rope. He’s lied to you forty times and in forty different ways during the last hour. I’d walk before I’d pay him eighty-five dollars for that old pile of junk.”
    Lonnie caught hold of my arm and looked up at me like a puppy that’s begging for a cookie. “Listen, buddy,” he said, “leave me buy it and I’ll pay you back the extra ten-spot outa my first pay check when we get a job. I’ll do better’n that. I’ll go halvers on the flivver . . . and on the gas and oil . . . and on the grub bill. Look, buddy, I didn’t never mean for you to buy me no outfit and give it to me. Tell you what: I’ll just keep a fiver for myself each payday till you’re all paid back—clean as a whistle.”
    I didn’t expect Lonnie to pay me back, but he seemed to have fallen in love with that old rattletrap Ford, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him he couldn’t have it. I just passed him my roll and said, “That’s fair enough, and since you’re making the deal it’ll look better for you to do the paying, but have the bill of sale made out in my name. I’ll make a new one, putting Shiftless into partnership, when you pay me back the first five dollars.”
    Lonnie grabbed the bills and ran, and he was already peeling the eighty-five off our little roll by the time I got back to the garage. I don’t know which looked the happiest, he or the garage owner.
    It was noon by the time the bill of sale was made out, and the motor vehicle office was right near Larsen’s restaurant, so I told Lonnie we’d better go and have the flivver registered, buy a license, and eat our lunch right away.