"God damn it!" I cuss as I drop the wrench for the fourth time in as many minutes.
"Watch the language young man." I hear my Mom say from above me. Looking up past the engine block I see her leaned over into the car looking down at my face. "God doesn't need a dam, David. He made beavers for that."
"Sorry Mom."
"It's okay just stop doing it. Your language has gone into the gutter ever since you went to work. Just because those Neanderthals you work around don't know any better doesn't mean you have to be the same way. Now what are you cussing God for?" She asks.
"I can't get the wrench and the filter to line up. I've got to hold one with two hands and then get to the other at the same time." I pick up the wrench and start trying to fish it up past the muffler pipe and maze of other pipes that are I think part of the cooling system. Hell they could be part of the air-conditioning for all that I know.
"And you're trying to change the oil filter why? David, It's only been about two months since it was changed last." I see her set a bag of groceries down next to the tire by my hip.
"The fuc...the car won't crank. I don't know why it won't start...so I'm trying everything I know how to fix." I get the wrench on the filter again I reach my other hand up again to try and hold the filter steady when I turn it. I see Mom's eyes narrow down then I have to bite my lip as the wrench clatters down through the pipes and hits the concrete next to my side.
"Come out of there." Mom tells me.
I look up past the engine to her, then nod. I push off against the underside of the car and dad's old creeper rolls me out from under the car. As I sit up I see Mom eying the jack under the front shock.
"Okay first off don't you ever get under any car ever again using just the jack to hold it up. Do you hear me?" I look up at my Mom seeing a fire of anger in her eyes. I nod that I understand. I see her face slowly settle into the expression I know means she's missing my dad.
"Mom?"
She shakes her head after a second.
"Your father should have taken more time to show you how to work on a car. By the time you were old enough to know a spark-plug from a dipstick he was already getting sick though. I'm sorry I never though about getting one of my brothers to teach you a bit. Here you are eighteen and you can barely change your own oil. Damn."
I look at my Mom shocked. I have only heard her cuss maybe three times in my life.
"Well." She reaches down and grabs back up the grocery bag. "No time like the present. Let me go and put this in the kitchen I'll go get into some old clothes and we will see what's wrong with your car.'
I watch my Mom walk towards the kitchen door. I follow like I've been hit by a hammer.
"You know how to work on a car?"
She looks back over her shoulder at me. Then remembering my manners I get the door for her.
"All my brothers are ten to fifteen years younger than me. Dad wanted someone to teach how to do mechanics works. He didn't know if he would live long enough to teach my brothers."
I know that grandpa had died very young. Somewhere in his late forties I think. Mom's family has a bad history of cancer problems in the men.
With Dad's family it's heart disease.
Like what took him from me before my fourteenth birthday.
Washing the grease from my hands with some dish soap I help Mom put up the groceries. Taking a Coke from the fridge I go back out to the car, while she goes up to her room to change.
I am leaning against the side of it sipping the soda when she comes out the door. The screen hits with a slap.
"Okay. What's it doing?"
I look over at my Mom as she comes over to where I'm standing.
"It won't start." I tell her again.
She sighs.
"Okay, car basics 101 then. A car has an internal combustion engine. Right?"
"Yea." I say not appreciating the sarcasm.
Mom looks at me with an eyebrow slowly rising.
"Yes ma'am."
"Better. I was being serious. Now the main word you need to pay attention to in that name is combustion. Fire. Now a fire needs three things yes? Air, fuel, and heat to make the fuel ignite. A car need all of those things."
Mom leans over into the hood and starts undoing the wing nut on the top of the air filter. I watch her working amazed at this beautiful woman yet again.
Pulling off the air-filter she taps the thing under it.
"Okay, this is your carburetor. That's the source of your engine's air. It opens up when you hit the gas and lets air into the motor. That air mixes here with the fuel. Now if this gets out of balance it can need to be adjusted. Your fuel can get too rich or to lean. Either it doesn't have enough air or it has too much. If it's doing either one of those things the car won't start. When it's doing that the car will try to crank. It may even crank for a half-second or so then die. Is that what its doing?"
"No. When I turn the key I get nothing."
She looks thoughtful for a moment.
"Okay then that sounds like spark. Let's check the battery.'
I follow Mom into the garage and watch her looking around.
"I know, Frank, had one. Where the bless did he put it. Ah there it is."
My Mom walks over to the tall shelves dad built and stretches up onto her tiptoes trying to reach what she's after.
The T-shirt she's wearing lifts up past her waist and I see the bare skin of her lower back. Below that my eyes are drawn to the soft round curves of my Mom's ass. I blink as I realize I'm checking her out. It's been several years since that kind of though came to me about her.
Since before Julie.
"David, are you going to stand there all day or are you going to help a lady?"
"Sorry."
Walking over I reach up past her and take down the small metal box with the jumper cables and the plug wrapped around it.
I feel my mom pressed up against my chest for several seconds then I step back.
"Okay you bring that I'll grab an extension cord."
I watch mom roll out a long yellow cord to the car. Untwisting the cord from around the box I go to plug it in.
"Stop!"
I freeze.
"Don't plug it in till you separate the two wires."
Mom takes the end of the jumper cable looking wires and untwists them. She hooks the black to one pole of the battery and the red to the other.
"Okay now you can plug it in."
When I do the box start to hum.
I follow Mom's gaze down to the little needle on the front of the box.
It slowly drops from six back down towards two. It settles between zero and two giving little twitches.
"Hum. Well the battery is good." Mom taps her lip for a second then reaches over and takes screw driver from the tool box. I watch her touch two metal screws on the side of a square box next to the firewall.
I jump back from the sparks that arch a bit.
I see her step back and start tapping her lip with the handle of the screwdriver.
"Not the solenoid. Could be the starter?" She says after a minute.
"Can we test that? Like the battery?" I ask after a few seconds.
"I can't but they can down at the parts store. We'll have to pull the starter off. Help me find the jack stands."
It takes us about a half-hour to find them back behind a ton of Christmas boxes. By that time we are both dusty and sweaty. She finally spots them hiding behind the bag that holds the old plastic tree.
I jack the car up higher and she slips them under the front end. Turning the knob the jack slips down till the weight of the car is on the stands.
"Somewhere around here we have some tire ramps. If it was running, driving it up onto them would be a lot easier. Find them later if you can."
Mom grabs a large square of carpet from by the garage door and pushes it under the car. I lay back down on dad's old creeper and roll under the car next to her.
"Good lord what idiot engineered this mess."
Look up at the underside of the car I just see the jumble of pipes and wires.
"I'm looking where you're looking but don't see the problem." I say after a second. I notice as she turns to look at me how good she smells. I can make out the scent of her shampoo and the deodorant she wears. There is also a scent that is a woman sweating. I learned of it from Julie.
Mom reaches up to the side of the motor above my head. Her upper arm is nearly against the side of my face. The sweat scent grows.
"They put the starter on a plate under where the exhaust bolts on. You have to unhook the exhaust pipes and drop them out the way to get the starter off.'
I look down the length of pipes to the muffler and the pipes beyond.
"All of it?" I ask after a second's horror at the idea.
"No." she squirms across the carpet on her back a little and reaches further up till her finger touch a metal triangle that leads to a cluster of pipes that's hooked to the side of the engine. "We have to undo these three bolts here and these two at the starter. The rest ought to hang out the way enough to get the starter out."
I reach past her arm to the starter. My bare arm presses against hers. Her skin is warm.
"Where does this wire go?"
"It goes to your battery, but I want you to take off that ring before you do anything else."
I pull my hand back and twist around till I can get my other hand to my class ring. "Sorry I wasn't paying attention. I would hate to mess it up, I paid a lot for it."
"Yes you did." She says then turns over to her side looking at me. "But that's not why. My brother Chris touched his wedding ring to the hot wire of his battery. It superheated in like a second and melted its way down into your uncle's skin. When he tried to pull the hot ring off he yanked half the skin off his finger!"
I think about my uncle Chris and the large white scare on his left hand. Pulling the tight ring off, hard enough to hurt my knuckle, I stuff it into my pocket.
I notice then that Moms not wearing her wedding band either. It's probably the first time I've ever seen her left hand bare.
"In fact go disconnect the hot wire." She says after a moment. As I roll the creeper back out she call up to me. "That's the red one."
I know that much, I think as I twist the terminal free of the post.
As I roll back under the scent of her reaches me again. I see her working a ratchet on a bolt.
"Here you get the next two." She tells me as the first one comes off.
Reaching up past Mom I take hold of the wrench, she put it into place, our hands touching in passing. I strain to apply pressure against the heat stuck bolt. It moves with a snap pop then becomes a lot easier. When it comes free I try to move the wrench but again my hand is to big to get it seated right. Mom reaches up around my arm and moves the socket till it finds the right hole. I slip it in tight against the metal and starts turning it. Like the first one, the heat from the exhaust has all but fused it over the years.
