Birdy

whether it was one at a time or a couple thousand. The best and easiest way as far as I’m concerned.
    ‘Yes, but think of it, Al. They bombed women and children who weren’t involved in the war at all!’
    ‘So what’s the difference, they’re all Japs. If we’re fighting Japs, we kill Japs.’
    ‘OK, Al, but soldiers choose to fight; these were innocent victims.’
    I tell him I can’t buy that. Sure, kill off nuts like me, hostile assholes looking for trouble, but most guys don’t want to fight any war; they’re victims like everybody else. They’re out there carrying guns because of how old they are and the kind of plumbing they have. Women, old men and even kids make wars happen as much as anybody. Everybody isn’t like Renaldi and Birdy; and they even got Birdy. You can’t build a world around them either, they’re too rare.
    Renaldi’s still giving me a fishy stare, so I decide to tell aboutBirdy and my old man. That’s a story I hope will give some idea what I’m talking about. Probably I could just recite the multiplication tables and Renaldi’d eat it up.
    He cuts us each a piece of fruitcake and pours out some more tea. Can you beat it? Tea! Six months ago, nobody could’ve convinced me this guy wasn’t queer.
    There was a used car lot on the way up Long Lane to Sixty-ninth Street. Every Friday evening, when we took our books back to the library, Birdy and I used to stop by there to look at the cars. We were both motor freaks. The cars themselves didn’t interest us much – in fact, Birdy swore he’d never drive a car – but the way motors worked did. We’d already played around with small airplane motors, and the motor from a bombed-out motor scooter, and we fixed Mr Harding’s lawn mower.
    My old man bought a new car every year and kept it parked in front of our house to show what a big shot he was. I had to wash and simonize the beast once a week; Birdy used to help. We’d read all the manuals that came with these cars. My father bought De Sotos because the mob had an agency in Philly, so with the trade-in, he got them for practically nothing. My mother’s brother is one of the big capos in Philly and he’s the one who arranged it. We were the only ones on the block who had anything like a new car. Birdy’s mother and father didn’t even know how to drive. Birdy’s father rode to school on the school bus.
    Anyway, we used to clean the sparks, check the timing, clean the points, adjust the carburetor more than those cars ever needed. We kept that motor looking as if it’d never left the showroom floor.
    Birdy and I were always shopping cars. We knew all the horsepowers and gear ratios, length of piston stroke and cylinder dimensions. Either of us could tell almost any car just by listening to the motor, not seeing the car at all.
    One Friday evening we were nosing around in the car lot, looking at the new trade-ins, and there was a fantastic car. It was a 1915 Stutz Bearcat. We couldn’t figure how it got there. It didn’t run at all and the tires were flat. Schwartz, that’s the name of theguy who ran the lot, said he had to tow it in. He gave twenty-five bucks on it to somebody who bought a 1938 Dodge. Birdy and I couldn’t keep our hands or minds off that automobile. It had an eight-cylinder engine and the frame was in perfect condition. We negotiated around for two weeks and got it for thirty dollars; it cost another three dollars having it towed to our garage. The old man said we could use the garage till winter came and it got too cold to leave his car outside.
    We worked like fiends on that machine. We tore the motor all the way down. The pistons were frozen in the cylinders. We unfroze them and milled out the cylinders. We put in new rings and rockers. Birdy tooled replacement pieces for ones we couldn’t buy. He did it in the machine shop at school where he made his wings. We took off all the paint, pounded out the dents and cleaned up the chrome. It had solid chrome, not plate. We got new inner tubes and inflated the tires; there were genuine wooden spoked wheels.
    After a thousand tries we got the motor to turn over. The clutch, transmission, everything else, were in great condition. We tuned that motor to perfection. We patched up, cleaned, and Neetsfoot-oiled all the upholstery and refurbished the wooden dash with sandpaper and varnish. God, it was beautiful. We sanded it down to the metal, then painted it silver-gray. We worked on it for three