Megan called Sunday night, which in October means Charlotte. Race week runs the whole lake side of the state loud from Monday on, and she lives for it. There is a cruise-in Thursday evening at the Signature Bar at Eleven Lakes, she said, and she had already told people we were coming. Then she got to the part she called about. Bring the truck.
The truck is the '54. Navy and cream where it isn't rust, five years into a project Caleb calls almost there every spring and a long way off every fall. It drives. That is the most anybody in this family has ever claimed for it.
He said no before she finished. Said it wasn't ready, that a cruise-in is a parking lot full of cars somebody already finished, and he was not driving an hour and a half to Cornelius to park a question mark between two answers.
Megan said fine and hung up, which is how she wins.
By Monday night he was in the garage. Not working on it, exactly. Standing at the fender with a coffee gone cold, the way Daddy used to stand at the back of a car on a Friday, deciding which of the things wrong with it mattered by Saturday.
So I called Daddy, mostly to hear what he would say. He was quiet a while. Then he said he never once took a car to Hickory that was ready. You fix what keeps it running and you go, and the rest of it is what you work on Monday. He raced that way for years and came home most nights.
Mama got on the line after and asked if we were really taking that thing in the driveway to a bar. I said maybe. She said in that case she wanted a picture of the people's faces when it pulled in.
Tonight he has the hood up and the trouble light hooked on the latch, and the Bustelo can is out on the fender, which is a sign. He has not said yes. He has not said no again, either. Crank is asleep under the bench like none of this concerns him, which it does not.
Here is what I know about Caleb. He will never call it finished. There is no finished. There is the version that starts in the morning and the version that does not, and on Thursday afternoon one of them is going to be sitting in the driveway.
Megan texted an hour ago asking what time we are leaving. I told her to ask him. She sent back a thumbs up, which means she already knows.
S