HLP week one

I began HLP Monday and have written six chapters (each one three or four drafts), one each day, almost 7000 words.

I have begun with an idea–the common good–and a business idea–HLP–and have already met quite a few surprises along the way.

Homer’s sister, nickname Poppy, was the first. What do you think?

One

The sale went way easier than Home ever expected. He almost wished the whole process could have lasted longer, or even fallen through, so he’d have to start over. Beginning again would have meant more time with his babe. But today would be the last day with her, a kind of death, but not really.

The Friday before he had entered the vital information on three websites.

Make: Porsche.

Model: 911 S.

Year: 2020.

Mileage: 31,009.

Color: GT Silver Metallic.

Interior: black.

Options: Sport Chrono, Sport Exhaust, Rear-Axle Steering.

Condition: Excellent, like new.

Of the three offers, CarMax was the highest: $118,000. The other on-line offer was $109,000 and the premium auto dealer was $112,000.

Home was doubtful the CarMax offer would hold, but the surprisingly young, surprisingly skimpily-dressed sales associate simply spent ten minutes taking pictures of the car, then another ten minutes making photocopies of his California license (he’d have to change it over soon), filling out forms and printing them, and then generating his check. All the while, he was expecting an, “I’m sorry, Mr. Logan, but upon inspection we have to lower that initial offer”—as if she actually knew anything about the car besides the clean interior and shiny paint—but that never happened. She handed him a check made out to Homer Logan for $118,000. Considering the out-the-door original price (with tax, title, and fees) and the interest he’d paid over five years, adding in the rent for the garage to keep it safe in, it had only cost him shy of $20,000 to own the Porsche. That came out to less than four-thousand dollars a year to enjoy the privilege of heads turning first at the car and then to get a look at the lucky driver, and of taking long Sunday drives on lovely-viewed, curvy Northern California roads, very often with a lovely, curvy gal in the passenger seat. Since he only drove it on Sundays—the business closed on Sunday—unusual in the City—it came out to about eighty bucks a ride, not counting gas and insurance. The Porsche had meant sleeping on a mattress in an otherwise unfurnished apartment, but what did furniture matter when you worked a seventy-two hour week?

The half-hour at the Springfield CarMax was more than enough time for Poppy to work the room. At first, the half-dozen salespeople gave Poppy I-don’t-know-you-but-I’m-glad-to-take-your-money smiles and then the why-are-you-hugging-me frowns. But by the time Homer and his little sister left, not only did Poppy know each of their names, never to forget them, they each enthusiastically hugged her good-bye. They were her besties.

All that sales-people bestie-goodbye-love was precipitated by the arrival of Linda, her best-bestiest of her whole life, who was going to drive them home, Home exchanging his Porsche for a piece of paper.

Linda was between Home and Poppy in age. Home was thirty, Poppy was twenty, and Linda was twenty-five. When Linda was fifteen, she often baby sat ten-year-old Poppy after school when Mom was on-shift at the Doller Holler and Home had moved to Chicago for bigger and better things.

Poppy knew the Interstate between Peacefield and Springfield, where she usually went when she needed a more sophisticated medical intervention, and she knew the Decatur Cracker Barrel you could see from the Interstate that always sent her jumping in her seatbelt, and they would stop by there for dinner. Home grew up with ‘lunch in the country is dinner’ and ‘dinner is supper’—but that had gotten rusty in Chicago, Boston, and finally San Francisco.

Linda drove a starting-to-rust Honda Civic, American-assembled in Indiana—important in Peacefield to drive American—a little piece of Home’s reason for selling the German work of art.

“Penny,” which Linda called Poppy, “Don’t forget about tomorrow.”

Linda made a rearview look back at Home.

“Will Old Doc be there?” Poppy asked.

“Probably just me.”

“And me,” Poppy added. “I’ll be there when I’m there.”

“You and yourself?” Linda laughed.

“And Home. I’ll go see Old Doc after. He needs some cheering up.”

Home had been back for Christmas each year: flew back from Boston and San Francisco. But now he had to be back-back. Mom’s sudden aneurism left Poppy with no one to watch over her twenty-four/seven.

Home tried logistically to find a way Poppy could live with him in the City.

He knew that would never work even before he thought it through.

So, he arranged for the car to be transported the 2111 miles. So, he explained to his boss he would not be back, could not be back, and why. So, he said he was sorry for all he had invested in him, but Gus, his boss, was free to carry on the idea Home had brought back from Naples, good-old Napoli.

Along with the doubts about the Porsche sale going through without a big, however, from the underdressed, overly young associate, and while keeping track of Poppy, Home noticed one of the employees, male, seemed to be slow in reading Poppy’s pretty, slender, petite self, with her huge microdontia smile. But another associate that Poppy had lavished her love upon earlier picked up on that and steered her away from him. People did that—got her back. Another reason why San Francisco would not work. In Peacefield, it seemed all ninety-five-hundred residents had her back. In the City, criminals, the insane, and perverts would be minding her business while everyone else minded their own.

The I-72 between Springfield and Decatur, as Linda drove them back, was wide, flat, and Midwest beautiful in its August still-green tall corn and soybean fields.

“So when will your wheels be ready, Homer?” Linda asked as they passed the Illiopolis exit.

“It’s ready now!” Poppy exclaimed, bounding in the Honda passenger seat. Home gave up shotgun for his sister, but her seat could be pushed all the way up, so his legs would not be so scrunched. Poppy laughed when he launched her forward.

“We picked it up this morning from Bill’s Tire and Repair! Walked in then rode out in style!” Poppy added.

“Penny, I never thought I’d see that old truck running again,” Linda said. Linda called her Penny. Both names were derived from Penelope. When she was mainstreamed that time in fifth grade, some nasty boys had called her ‘Lopey for the way she kind of walked and ‘Loopy for being supposedly dumb.

“Old and not runny but not rusty,” Penny said, laughing.

“This one starting to go,” Linda said.

“Your Soda-Pop gave Home that mouse house,” Poppy laughed, “and Billy My Buddy gave it a new gas tank, new brakes and tires, an engine rebuild, a new clutch. New, new, new.” On each ‘new’ Penny made an air-check mark.

Before they hauled it to Bill’s behind the Courthouse Square, Home had spent hours in Mitch Lovington’s barn de-nesting, vacuuming, steam cleaning, and otherwise detailing the truck’s cab and engine and washing its exterior. It was a 1970 GMC with a straight-six and three on the tree, Mitch’s first vehicle out of high school bought used, which he used as a real farm truck, trying to make a go of it on the family’s one-hundred-twenty-one acre parcel, before he went to work full-time at the prison for the privilege of losing money on crops.

Mitch gave the truck to Home, after Home told him his plans. “Just don’t make it into a planter,” he said.

At the Cracker Barrel, Penny hugged old friends and new.

Homer had fried chicken and thought some about Linda.