Page 19 - The Myth and the Moment

Morning

And why? Freed from his demanding wife, from the pressures of
high office, from an incarnation too heavy for any Ivy League
playboy to bear? No, says dear old Madame Mystic; he was rejoicing
at his liberation from chronic back pain. Free to fly, and not giving a
damn at all for the earthbound mourners. Boy, is that what I
remember best from the assassination? Must touch a chord; perhaps
the E-flat blues.
Whump-whump-whump-whump-whump.
What’s that thumping? Left front—oh, no: a flat! Got to get off
Doheny onto something level. Cross-street’s narrow. Steering’s great
fun with a flat in front. Place to park. Okay. Options: (a) abandon
vehicle, walk or take bus home; (b) call Hodges—no, he won’t be
available; and (c) fix the goddamned tire myself. Yeah. In the heat.
Ah, but think how hot it will be standing at a bus stop for an hour,
inhaling the exotic effusions of German and Japanese internal
combustion engines. Prerequisite to (c): spare tire and tools to change
it. Get out and take a look.
Hm. ‘Eagle’ tire: more like a bald eagle, to me. But pressure’s okay
and here’s the jack.
“Oomph!”
That’s not as light as it looks. Now which is the jack handle and
which is the jack and which is the base? All folded and screwed and
probably stuck together. Pool chemicals must have spilled on it in
years gone by. Knock it with the pipe wrench, Nate; don’t be bashful.
Be full of bash.
Wham!
It moved! Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, the ancient astrolabe
creaked and groaned, ejecting tiny plumes of rusty dust, its circles of
bronze yielding to the expert manipulations of the trained
archaeoastronomer. Now, said he, let’s reconstruct the Ptolemaic
cosmos from this crumbling artifact.
There goes my clean shirt. The rag is ineffectual, Nate; why bother
wiping your hands? Okay. Got to loosen these lug nuts first. But no
lug wrench. Just this ill-designed jack handle. Detroit, home of
advanced mechanical engineering, has lost the arcane secret of
leverage. Perhaps an orangutan could undo these nuts with just this
short crooked socket-handle and his bare hairy hands, but not I. Cars
used to have decent jacks. The cars weren’t bad, either. I must have

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