Perhaps to Dream

It was nearly midnight and there was no one around the auto agency buildings except one lone boy who lingered in the shadows looking at the rows of brightly lighted new cars.  He had this time, as numerous other times, climbed undetected from his bedroom window.  No harm had ever come from it and he always got enough sleep later.

Stepping over to a car parked close up beside the building, he found the driver’s door unlocked.  Then he saw the key in the ignition and reasoned that the car must have been left outside, unlocked, by mistake.  He slid inside, grasped the steering wheel, and admired the view out over the long hood.

The key brought the powerful engine to life, then he moved the big car around the yard, maneuvering it easily with the power steering.  He thought how great it would be to really drive the car somewhere.  And then he remembered the crossroad, a quarter of a mile away, that ran for nearly two miles before it intersected with any other road.  He could drive all this way and back.  No one need ever know and there was no harm in it.

There were no other cars in sight when he drove out of the yard and soon he was driving down the crossroad.  The car, eager and responsive, moved along, the speedometer needle sliding across the dial.  And then, before he expected it, the road bent around out of sight.  All the wheels slid, tires shrieking, as he swung into the turn, too fast.

The back wheels cut loose first, sliding off the edge of the road, then the front wheels followed, as he tried to correct the skid, and he bounced along the ditch, stopping just short of a culvert, tipped up at a steep angle.

Sitting for a moment, shaking with excitement and relief that he hadn’t damaged the car, he realized he’d have to back away from the culvert before he could pull back up into the road.  The bank from the road down into the ditch was steep, but the car was low and wide.  It shouldn’t tip over.  As soon as he got the car back up into the road, he’d get it back to the garage before anything happened to it.

When he tried to back up, the transmission whirred, but the car didn’t move.  Were the wheels spinning? In drive, it moved forward.  So something was wrong with the transmission.  He’d damaged the car already, and now he couldn’t even get it back to the garage.  Getting out of the car, he backed up against the grille, grasped the front bumper with both hands, dug his heels in and pushed.  But it was useless.

Next, he got the key and opened the trunk, found the bumper jack and lug wrench for a handle, and brought them to the front of the car.  With the jack at an angle he raised it against the front bumper, inching the car backward.  He blocked a rear wheel with a stone from the ditch, then repositioned the jack.

Much later he’d worked the car backwards thirty feet.  When he was safely back up onto the road, he breathed a great sigh of relief.  No one had come along to see him in the ditch.  He was still in the clear.  Now if he could get turned around without needing to back up he’d have it made.  There were no cars in sight as he approached the road junction and he managed to make a tight swing around without stopping and head back.  At the garage he left the car where he’d found it and ran home.  When he’d climbed through the window and was back in bed and knew that now he was really home free, he breathed another great sigh of relief.  But he was too shook up to sleep.  He’d damaged the car and he was sorry, but of course no one knew.

In the morning he was very tired, but he got up in time for school and lasted for two periods.  Then he left school and walked to the auto agency.  A salesman spoke to him in the showroom.

“I want to see Mr. Griffith,” the boy said.

“He’s in his office,” the salesman said.  “Go to the second door on the right.”

The friendly looking man at the desk looked up from the telephone and motion toward a chair.  “You’re Ron Brown’s boy aren’t you?” he asked, when he’d put the phone down.

“Yes, I’m Jimmy?”

“I’ve got to tell you what I did last night.  I damaged a car.”

“How was that?” Griffith asked.

The story poured out under Griffith’s sympathetic gaze

“I’ll pay for the repairs someway,” Jimmy concluded.