The Car That Balked

by PATRICK MORGAN

IT WAS no longer an entirely new car, of course. Still, it was a good one.”Hyacinthe rested the scythe on a low branch of the apple tree, mopped his forehead, and took from his shirt pocket a package of cigarette paper and a little yellow bag of tobacco. Apparently we were to indulge in a conversational interlude. The sun was hot, and I moved into the apple tree shadow.

“This car belonged to a man from the South shore.”

In our parish, stories of the South shore had to

them a distance-a distance of fancy that outstrips

any measure of land or sea. The South shore is scarcely ten miles away, and the forest there smells also of spruce. The same sort of people live out similar lives. They hitch an old horse, or possibly still an ox, to the plow, and plant the ordinary grain in their fields. They harvest their lives under the same rugged dispensation of the North, yet they inspire tall stories.

From this exotic shore, then, came a car bought brand-new by some local character. “He was a commis voyageur,” said Hyacinthe, “who sold here and there along the road, and consequently traveled much of the time. His car was almost his store.”

I wanted to say something about mobile units but my French restricted me. I made a gesture instead, signifying mobility if not units.

“His affairs often brought him to the North. He could put his car right onto the St. Simeon ferry, and on this shore he sold as far as Mille Vaches. His selling covered broad territory.”

Mille Vaches was some fifty miles up the North shore. I had driven there once and found that stretch of country unwholesome. What towns there were, were jerry-built without tradition, and the townspeople had little pride in the land to which they had but recently come. This folk was the human residue of new industry. The industry had moved on. The people had settled on the cleared land and now earned money by working on the roads that would carry new people in the wake of advancing industry. “I have been there,” I said, “once, but I did not care much for that country and still less for the people.”

“It was justement from that country and of those people that the girl came,”said Hyacinthe.

“What girl?”

“The girl they found in the car with the commis. They were parked off the highway up an old lumber road. Beside them was a bottle with some whiskeyblanc still in it, unbroken. I do not think that stuff can freeze.”

“No, I do not think so either. But the people, were they frozen?”

“Yes. Luckily. They were both frozen, so they could still be accorded proper burial. It might have been much worse since they were found at the time of the thaw this spring. Some people maintain that the car had been there since the snowfall last November; others believe it might be only since the New Year. With so much snow in one season, how can one be sure?”

“I don’t suppose one can.”

“After the burial certain things began to declare themselves about these two. The commis had a bad character already discredited on the South shore. The girl was known there too. It seemed she traveled often with this man, to help, perhaps, with the selling. She held a not entirely virtuous reputation. If you understand, Monsieur, what that implies. I myself do not,” he added, and I believed him.

For our parish did not support anyone of unentire virtue. Once there had been an inroad of such an individual, whose stay was cut short by the combined and immediate action of the village curé and the young doctor. In less than a day they had run her out of town, and together on the station platform this physician and this metaphysician had witnessed her start back to the city, where harlotry was no concern of theirs.

Ilyacinthe reached down the scythe and began to sharpen the blade with a flint stone. “So,” he said, “it was this car that I wish I had bought.”

“But, Hyacinthe, you cannot drive a car, can you?”

“No,” he said. “Yet for a car so nearly new, it sold for temptingly little. I might have borrowed the amount, then learned to drive. But maybe I am better off.” He put the flint stone in his trouser pocket and began to cut again. The long, easy strokes laid the grass in orderly swathes. He always managed to have a passage clear for the next stroke.

I tried to think of him in a car, driving. I imagined he would talk to the gearshift as he did constantly to his horse: “Species of obstinate cogwheels . .”

2

SINCE his father’s death, Hyacinthe had taken over the land that the father and uncle had inherited from their father. The uncle, no longer young, helped part-time. This gave Hyacinthe a chance to work certain days for pay, elsewhere. He had little need for cash, except to implement his dreams of owning a car, for nearly everything he had was made at home or bought by barter. His clothes, his wife had woven or knitted of the wool from their sheep. His bottes sauvages were made by the cobbler, a neighbor, who accepted payment in potatoes. He grew his own pipe tobacco, and only invested in cigarette-makings as a luxury when he worked for pay. He had never had much cash at one time, certainly never enough to buy a car.

“Maybe I am better off,” he repeated as he came back up the orchard, sweating, “No one has been able to drive that car, regardless of experience.”

“Was it of an unusual make?” I asked.

“No, it was not unusual, except that it had been cursed.”

“Except that—what?” I said, wondering if I had quite understood.

“Except that it had been cursed,” he repeated. “Not by the fact that it had acted all winter as the tomb for those two corpses either. Their death may have been a result of this curse. But it was by no means the cause. Besides, about the dead, I am not superstitious,” he added firmly, then spat.

The car, Ilyacinthe explained, was sold to pay burial expenses for the dead commis. It was bought by a young man of the neighboring parish. Hyacinthe said he knew him and that he was a good hand with engines. He put the car in order, for which the bill had run high—over fifteen dollars. Consequently, with this expense as well as the time spent, Hyacinthe thought I could imagine the young man’s disappointment to find he had a car of no service. After going a short distance the car could not be driven further.

“Something,” I said, “must not have been in working order,” and suggested maybe the carburetor was too technical a contraption for the young man to adjust.

“It was no mechanical defect,” Hyacinthe repeated. “After a short distance the car would not seem to hold the road.”

“The steering wheel, perhaps,” I said.

“Nor that either, for it was not that the car sought to take the ditch. But, rather, that one sensed it would simply not respond. As is the case with some horses,” he added.

“Horses often have a will of their own while machines do not.”

“But this car has been given a terrible curse by the priest on the South shore. That is why the young man knew it would not hold the road.”

“So what did he do?”

“He had nothing left to do but to sell it. By then, however, the whole parish knew the shortcoming of the car and he could find no market for it. I could have bought that car very cheaply.”

“Then you would have had a car terribly cursed that you could never drive, even after taking lessons. It is just as well you had no cash, I should think.”

“Still, it was an opportunity. One which the mechanic who works at the village garage took. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” I said, “if it is Paul.” Paul was intelligent and had initiative. He had served an apprenticeship in Quebec, earned money there besides, and now had married and settled down in the village across the street from the garage. “Could Paul not run this car either?”

“You do not understand, Monsieur. No one could run it. Paul, however, who is not only a good mechanic but smart as well, has thought out how to overcome this matter. Of course, he will check the engine first, to make sure. Then he is going to do what I might have done, had I bought the car and been smart. He is going to ask Monsieur le curé to bless the car and thereby end the curse that now renders it useless. It may happen that Monsieur le curé will be unwilling to démancher what the other curé has done. It is too soon to know if the car was a real bargain or not.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Indeed,” said Hyacinthe, “everything depends on the bon Dieu. Does it not ?”