Whenever a motorist has delirium he mutters those lamentable words, "Telephoned to the nearest garage."
She had to wait a tedious hour before she saw a flivver rattling up with the garage man, who wasn't a man at all, but a fourteen-year-old boy. He snorted, "Rats, you didn't need to send for me. Could have made it perfectly safe. Come on."
Never has the greatest boy pianist received such awe as Claire gave to this contemptuous young god, with grease on his peachy cheeks. She did come on. But she rather hoped that she was in great danger. It was humiliating to telephone to a garage for nothing. When she came into the gas-smelling garage in Saddle Back she said appealingly to the man in charge, a serious, lip-puffing person of forty-five, "Was it safe to come in with the brake-band like that?"
"No. Pretty risky. Wa'n't it, Mike?"
The Mike to whom he turned for authority was the same fourteen-year-old boy. He snapped, "Heh? That? Naw! Put in new band. Get busy. Bring me the jack. Hustle up, uncle."
While the older man stood about and vainly tried to impress people who came in and asked questions which invariably had to be referred to his repair boy, the precocious expert stripped the wheel down to something that looked to Claire distressingly like an empty milk-pan. Then the boy didn't seem to know exactly what to do. He scratched his ear a good deal, and thought deeply. The older man could only scratch.
So for two hours Claire and her father experienced that most distressing of motor experiences—waiting, while the afternoon that would have been so good for driving went by them. Every fifteen minutes they came in from sitting on a dry-goods box in front of the garage, and never did the repair appear to be any farther along. The boy seemed to be giving all his time to getting the wrong wrench, and scolding the older man for having hidden the right one.
When she had left Brooklyn Heights, Claire had not expected to have such authoritative knowledge of the Kalifornia Kandy Kitchen, Saddle Back, Montana, across from Tubbs' Garage, that she could tell whether they were selling more Atharva Cigarettes or Polutropons. She prowled about the garage till she knew every pool of dripped water in the tin pail of soft soap in the iron sink.
She was worried by an overheard remark of the boy wonder, "Gosh, we haven't any more of that decent brake lining. Have to use this piece of mush." But when the car was actually done, nothing like a dubious brake could have kept her from the glory of starting. The first miles seemed miracles of ease and speed.
She came through the mountains into Livingston.