The man from Albuquerque was not the kind of man who needed to raise his voice. He stood in the vestibule of First Baptist Church in a camel coat, holding a folded newspaper, speaking in a low and friendly tone to Pastor Hal Dobbins, who nodded as though he were hearing a prayer request. I sat in the pew with my purse on my lap and the ring of car lot keys in my fist, seventy eight years old, with my son Jason beside me trembling like a leaf. We had come to church in the 1957 Chevy of Buck, to escape. Now the trouble had followed us up the steps.
His name was Vince Marquez. He had come from a private card club in Albuquerque, where Jason had lost two hundred thousand dollars over the course of a single year, and he had come to collect it from the lot of Parnell Motors, the car lot Ray and I had built with our hands. A buyer in Dallas had offered four million, one hundred thousand dollars for it. Jason had told Vince that his mother was about to sell, and that the money would be there by Christmas. I had heard this from my daughter in law Brittany only the night before, through the bathroom door.
Pastor Dobbins finished his conversation and walked down the center aisle to our pew, followed by a tall silver haired man in a Sunday suit. “Mrs. Parnell,” said the pastor, “this is Cal Dutton. Many of you know him as a deacon. He is also a Texas Ranger, retired last year, and he has been kind enough to look at the matter.” Mr. Dutton took off his hat. “Madam,” he said, “a debt from a private card game is not collectible in the state of Texas, nor in New Mexico. Mr. Marquez knows that. He was hoping you did not.”
A ring of car lot keys held up in a church gave one widow the Sunday to bring her son back to the lot in Amarillo.
I gave my terms in the pew with the whole congregation holding its breath. “Mr. Marquez, you will leave this church and this town, and you will not telephone my son or my lot again, or Mr. Dutton will see you in a courtroom. Jason, you will go home with me today and eat my pot roast. On Monday you will start the program in Lubbock that the pastor has arranged, and you will not touch a playing card until a counselor says you may. The lot stays in the family, and the keys stay in my purse, until the day I hand them to someone worthy.”
Jason bent over his knees. “Mama,” he said, “I told myself every Friday that I would win it back, and every Friday I lost a little more. I told Vince the lot was mine to sell, and it never was. I used your name, and the name of Daddy, and the name of the lot.” He lifted a face as gray as dishwater. “I took the ring of Brittany to a pawn shop. I took the watch of Daddy. I do not know who I am when I sit at that table. I am so tired. Please let me stop.”
Vince Marquez did not stay for the rest. He turned to go, and then, with a sudden grin, he reached over the end of our pew and snatched the ring of car lot keys out of my hand and bolted down the aisle, hoping the keys would buy him something, anything. He got as far as the vestibule. Buck, my brother in law, eighty one years old and as broad as a refrigerator, stepped out from behind the coat rack, planted himself in the doorway, and folded his arms. “Son,” he said, in a voice like gravel in a bucket, “you are standing in my light.”
Vince tried to shove past him, and it was like shoving a grain silo. Buck did not move an inch. Cal Dutton arrived two seconds later and took the keys out of the hand of Vince as gently as taking a toy from a child. A pair of Potter County deputies, who had been called at the first sign of trouble, led Vince out into the parking lot. The organist, who had not stopped playing through any of it, finished the hymn she was in, and the congregation said amen as one.
The money consequences were simple. Vince Marquez was charged with attempted extortion and unlawful restraint, and the card club in Albuquerque was raided the following month. The debt of two hundred thousand dollars vanished, as the Ranger had said it would. The offer of four million, one hundred thousand dollars for the car lot was refused, and I did not sell. Jason repaid Brittany the ring and the watch, in installments, working at the service bay of the lot at night.
In the name of Ray, who passed in 2018, I started the Ray Parnell Fund. It pays for repairs, tires and used cars for single mothers, veterans and recovering families, in Potter, Randall and Moore counties. In the first year we put forty seven families back on the road. One was a nurse aide in Dumas who walked four miles to work every day. When I handed her the keys to a blue Buick, she held them against her chest and said she would drive straight to the church and park outside.
Jason came home from Lubbock after four months and found me in the office of the lot on a Saturday morning. The 1957 Chevy of Buck sat out front, polished to a shine. He did not say much. He picked up a rag and went out to the lot, and I watched him through the window as he wiped down every windshield, one by one, in the cold light, whistling the hymn of that Sunday. When he came back in, I put the ring of keys in his hand, and I told him to lock up.
