The carburetor of a Model T is not complicated but it needs all of its parts to function. There is a needle valve, and the point must be on the needle and must sit in its hole or the carburetor does not work.
Gay held the needle in his hand and the point was broken off. “How in hell you s’pose that happened?” he asked.
“Magic,” said Mack, “just pure magic. Can you fix it?”
“Hell, no,” said Gay. “Got to get another one.”
“How much they cost?”
“About a buck if you buy one new — quarter at a wrecker’s.”
“You got a buck?” Mack asked.
“Yeah, but I won’t need it.”
“Well, get back as soon as you can, will you? We’ll just stay right here.”
“Anyways you won’t go running off without a needle valve,” said Gay. He stepped out to the road. He thumbed three cars before one stopped for him. The boys watched him climb in and start down the hill. They didn’t see him again for one hundred and eighty days.
Oh, the infinity of possibility! How could it happen that the car that picked up Gay broke down before it got into Monterey? If Gay had not been a mechanic, he would not have fixed the car. If he had not fixed it the owner wouldn’t have taken him to Jimmy Brucia’s for a drink. And why was it Jimmy’s birthday? Out of all the possibilities in the world — the millions of them — only events occurred that lead to the Salinas jail. Sparky Enea and Tiny Colletti had made up a quarrel and were helping Jimmy celebrate his birthday. The blonde came in. The musical argument in front of the juke box. Gay’s new friend who knew a judo hold and tried to show it to Sparky and got his wrist broken when the hold went wrong. The policeman with a bad stomach — all unrelated, irrelevant details and yet all running in one direction. Fate just didn’t intend Gay to go on that frog hunt and Fate took a hell of a lot of trouble and people and accidents to keep him from it. When the final dimax came with the front of Holman’s bootery broken out and the party trying on the shoes in the display window only Gay didn’t hear the fire whistle. Only Gay didn’t go to the fire and when the police came they found him sitting all alone in Holman’s window wearing one brown oxford and one patent leather dress shoe with a gray cloth top.
Back at the truck the boys built a little fire when it got dark and the chill crept up from the ocean. The pines above them soughed in the fresh sea wind. The boys lay in the pine needles and looked at the lonely sky through the pine branches. For a while they spoke of the difficulties Gay must be having getting a needle valve and then gradually as the time passed they didn’t mention him any more.
“Somebody should of gone with him,” said Mack.
About ten o’clock Eddie got up. “There’s a construction camp a piece up the hill,” he said, “I think I’ll go up and see if they got any Model T’s.”
Chapter XII
Monterey is a city with a long and brilliant literary tradition. It remembers with pleasure and some glory that Robert Louis Stevenson lived there. Treasure Island certainly has the topography and the coastal plan of Pt. Lobos. More recently in Carmel there have been a great number of literary men about, but there is not the old flavor, the old dignity of the true belles-lettres. Once the town was greatly outraged over what the citizens considered a slight to an author. It had to do with the death of Josh Billings, the great humorist.
Where the new postoffice is, there used to be a deep gulch with water flowing in it and a little foot bridge over it. On one side of the gulch was a fine old adobe and on the other the house of the doctor who handled all the sickness, birth, and death in the town. He worked with animals too and, having studied in France, he even dabbled in the new practice of embalming bodies before they were buried. Some of the oldtimers considered this sentimental and some thought it wasteful and to some it was sacrilegious since there was no provision for it in any sacred volume. But the better and richer families were coming to it and it looked to become a fad.
One morning elderly Mr. Carriaga was walking from his house on the hill down toward Alvarado Street. He was just crossing the foot bridge when his attention was drawn to a small boy and a dog struggling up out of the gulch. The boy carried a liver while the dog dragged yards of intestine at the end of which a stomach dangled. Mr. Carriaga paused and addressed the little boy politely: “Good morning.”
In those days little boys were courteous. “Good morning, sir.”
“Where are you going with the liver?”
“I’m going to make some chum and catch some mackerel.”
Mr. Carriaga smiled. “And the dog, will he catch mackerel too?”
“The dog found that, It’s his, sir. We found them in the gulch.”
Mr. Carriaga smiled and strolled on and then his mind began to work. That isn’t a beef liver, it’s too small. And it isn’t a calf s liver, it’s too red. It isn’t a sheep’s liver — now his mind was alert. At the corner he met Mr. Ryan.
“Anyone die in Monterey last night?” he asked.
“Not that I know of,” said Mr. Ryan.
“Anyone killed?”
“No.”
They walked on together and Mr. Carriaga told about the little boy and the dog.
At the Adobe Bar a number of citizens were gathered for their morning conversation. There Mr. Carriaga told his story again and he had just finished when the constable came into the Adobe. He should know if anyone had died. “No one died in Monterey,” he said. “But Josh Billings died out at the Hotel del Monte.”
The men in the bar were silent. And the same thought went through all their minds. Josh Billings was a great man, a great writer. He had honored Monterey by dying there and he had been degraded. Without much discussion a committee formed made up of everyone there. The stern men walked quickly to the gulch and across the foot bridge and they hammered on the door of the doctor who had studied in France.
He had worked late. The knocking got him out of bed and brought him tousled of hair and beard to the door in his nightgown. Mr. Carriaga addressed him sternly: “Did you embalm Josh Billings?”
“Why — yes.”
“What did you do with his tripas?”
“Why — I threw them in the gulch where I always do.”
They made him dress quickly then and they hurried down to the beach. If the little boy had gone quickly about his business, it would have been too late. He was just getting into a boat when the committee arrived. The intestine was in the sand where the dog had abandoned it.