Meanwhile the pump arrived and Eddie and Jones spelled each other on the tires.
Gay hummed, “Dum tiddy — dum tiddy,” as he worked. He removed the spark plugs and scraped the points and bored the carbon out. Then Gay drained a little gasoline into a can and poured some into each cylinder before he put the spark plugs back. He straightened up. “We’re going to need a couple of dry cells,” he said. “See if Lee Chong will let us have a couple.”
Math departed and returned almost immediately with a universal No which was designed by Lee Chong to cover all future requests.
Gay thought deeply. “I know where’s a couple — pretty good ones too, but I won’t go get them.”
“Where?” asked Mack.
“Down cellar at my house,” said Gay. “They run the front doorbell. If one of you fellas wants to kind of edge into my cellar without my wife seeing you, they’re on top of the side stringer on the left hand side as you go in. But for God’s sake, don’t let my wife catch you.”
A conference elected Eddie to go and he departed.
“If you get caught don’t mention me,” Gay called out after him. Meanwhile Gay tested the bands. The low-high pedal didn’t quite touch the floor so he knew there was a little band left. The brake pedal did touch the floor so there was no brake, but the reverse pedal had lots of band left. On a Model T Ford the reverse is your margin of safety. When your brake is gone, you can use reverse as a brake. And when the low gear band is worn too thin to pull up a steep hill, why you can turn around and back up it. Gay found there was plently of reverse and he knew everything was all right.
It was a good omen that Eddie came back with the dry cells without trouble. Mrs. Gay had been in the kitchen. Eddie could hear her walking about but she didn’t hear Eddie. He was very good at such things.
Gay connected the dry cells and he advanced the gas and retarded the spark lever. “Twist her tail,” he said.
He was such a wonder, Gay was — the little mechanic of God, the St. Francis of all things that turn and twist and explode, the St. Francis of coils and armatures and gears. And if at some time all the heaps of jalopies, cut-down Dusenbergs, Buicks, De Sotos and Plymouths, American Austins and Isotta Fraschinis praise God in a great chorus — it will be largely due to Gay and his brotherhood.
One twist — one little twist and the engine caught and labored and faltered and caught again. Gay advanced the spark and reduced the gas. He switched over to the magneto and the Ford of Lee Chong chuckled and jiggled and clattered happily as though it knew it was working for a man who loved and understood it.
There were two small technical legal difficulties with the truck — it had no recent license plates and it had no lights. But the boys hung a rag permanently and accidentally on the rear plate to conceal its vintage and they dabbed the front plate with good thick mud. The equipment of the expedition was slight: some long-handled frog nets and some gunny sacks. City hunters going out for sport load themselves with food and liquor, but not Mack. He presumed rightly that the country was where food came from. Two loaves of bread and what was left of Eddie’s wining jug was all the supply. The party clambered on the truck — Gay drove and Mack sat beside him; they bumped around the corner of Lee Chong’s and down through the lot, threading among the pipes. Mr. Malloy waved at them from his seat by the boiler. Gay eased across the sidewalk and down off the curb gently because the front tires showed fabric all the way around. With all their alacrity, it was afternoon when they got started.
The truck eased into Red Williams’ service station. Mack got out and gave his paper to Red. He said, “Doc was a little short of change. So if you put five gallons in and just give us a buck instead of the other five gallons, why that’s what Doc wants. He had to go south, you know. Had a big deal down there.”
Red smiled good-naturedly. “You know, Mack,” he said, “Doc got to figuring if there was some kind of loophole, and he put his finger on the same one you did. Doc’s a pretty bright fellow. So he phoned me last night.”
“Put in the whole ten gallons,” said Mack. “No — wait. It’ll slop around and spill. Put in five and give us five in a can — one of them sealed cans.”
Red smiled happily. “Doc kind of figured that one too,” he said.
“Put in ten gallons,” said Mack. “And don’t go leaving none in the hose.”
The little expedition did not go through the center of Monterey. A delicacy about the license plates and the lights made Gay choose back streets. There would be the time when they would go up Carmel Hill and down into the Valley, a good four miles on a main highway, exposed to any passing cop until they turned up the fairly unfrequented Carmel Valley road. Gay chose a back street that brought them out on the main highway at Peter’s Gate just before the steep Carmel Hill starts. Gay took a good noisy clattering run at the hill and in fifty yards he put the pedal down to low. He knew it wouldn’t work, the band was worn too thin. On the level it was all right but not on a hill. He stopped, let the truck back around and aimed it down the hill. Then he gave it the gas and the reverse pedal. And the reverse was not worn. The truck crawled steadily and slowly but backward up Carmel Hill.
And they very nearly made it. The radiator boiled, of course, but most Model T experts believed that it wasn’t working well if it wasn’t boiling.
Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept of private property disappeared. Pliers ceased to be privately owned and a tire pump belonged to the last man who had picked it up. Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo Saxon home become so warped that it never quite recovered.
The truck backed sturdily up Carmel Hill and it got past the Jack’s Peak road and was just going into the last and steepest pull when the motor’s breathing thickened, gulped, and strangled. It seemed very quiet when the motor was still. Gay, who was heading downhill anyway, ran down the fifty feet and turned into the Jack’s Peak road entrance.
“What is it?” Mack asked.
“Carburetor, I think,” said Gay. The engine sizzled and creaked with heat and the jet of steam that blew down the overflow pipe sounded like the hiss of an alligator.