Page 144 of Heresy

The tow truck pulls up in the grass behind us.

“I need to go. Tow is here. I’ll catch up with you once I’m in Georgia.”

Ending the call, I walk over to shake hands with the tow driver.

“Think we can get this repaired in the next few hours?”

He whistles in appreciation as we approach my car. But then the way he shakes his head is less than encouraging.

“Now that’s a classic,” he says, his accent so Southern, it’s difficult to understand him. “What I wouldn’t give to own that car.”

Walking over to the front passenger tire, he bends down to inspect the damage.

“That’s gonna be difficult to fix.”

Thank you, Captain Obvious…

“I’m a mechanic,” I tell him. “Just give me some space in a shop and I’ll do it my damn self. Hell, give me a parking lot, and I’ll take care of getting the parts, tools and everything else.”

Shaking his head again, he side-eyes me.

“Parts are tough to come by ‘round here. The nearest supplier is a few cities over and that’s for more common stuff. You’re sitting on a 1970—”

“I know what kind of car she is. I restored her. I can have the parts shipped by private plane if need be. Just take me to a place where I have space and an address.”

“Gonna need tools,” he mentions, clearly neither listening nor understanding how easy it is for me to obtain these things.

Money has a way of being quite convenient in little hick towns.

And that’s where we are, unfortunately. Clear out in the middle of banjo-country South Carolina. Where the only thing you smell is the exhaust from the interstate and the muck of the swamps.

“I just need space to work. Is there a shop that can give me that?”

I get side-eyed again, looked up and down, dismissed as a city boy with too much money and not enough grit to handle working on a car.

“You sure, boy? Seems you got yourself in a shitty situation when you restored this car the first time. What’d you do? Forget to tighten the nuts?”

Ignoring the boy reference, I decide that it’s a colloquialism, and I need to play nice with others to get what I want.

“I’ll tighten them this time. Just need the space, old man.”

He laughs at that.

“That won’t be a problem. I’ll take you to Shipley’s Auto. They got room. You’re gonna have to stay the night, though. He don’t open until nine in the morning. I can run you two by a motel and fetch you when the shop is running.”

I blow out a breath. It does nothing to relieve the tension.

“Yeah. That’ll work.”

Thirty minutes later and we’re riding up on a motel that looks like something out ofPsycho.

Brinley is nervous as hell, the two of us struggling to carry in our normal bags, plus the twenty shopping bags I refused to leave in the car.

Getting through check-in only took another few minutes, and thankfully, the desk attendant didn’t give much of a fuck about our situation to ask questions.

We were tossed a key, then after a wave of his hand in the general direction of the room, we lugged all our shit back outside and down a dark corridor filled with spider webs and fly zappers to the room.

Stepping inside the place wasn’t much better.

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