I sat in the back seat of the Model A with the door open and the organ playing the processional in the church, and I read the lawyer letter from the top down, while my daughter sat beside me and Travis hovered at the bumper. It was a single paragraph. It stated that the firm represented the heirs of Mr. Hollis Pruitt, deceased. It stated that the heirs held an undivided half interest in a 1931 passenger car of the make described. And it stated a figure. Twenty thousand dollars, the estimated value of the whole.
I knew that name. I had known it for fifty years. Hollis Pruitt had been the best friend of my Coy, a thin, laughing man with a gap in his teeth who worked the night shift at the cotton mill. In 1972 the two of them had gone together to a farm sale outside Falkville and bought a rusty pile of parts on a flatbed for eighty dollars, split down the middle. They had put her back together over nine years in our garage, with a coffee pot and a radio. I had brought them sandwiches.
I turned the title over. There were two names in the owner box with the word AND between them, as Shay had said. Coy A. Dunlap and Hollis R. Pruitt. I had never looked closely at the paper. Why would I? The car had lived in our garage for fifty years. Hollis had been to our house a thousand times and never mentioned it. “Travis,” I said, “who gave you the name of this lawyer in Decatur?” He stared at the gravel. “The fella who wanted to buy the car,” he mumbled. “He said he had checked the title.”
“Then your fella knew about Hollis,” I said, “and he did not tell you.” Travis said nothing. Shay put her hand over mine. “Mama,” she said, “I am so sorry. We found the title in the cedar chest when we were looking for something else. Travis got the letter on Thursday. He should have come to you straight away.” I looked at my son in law. For the first time in a year, there was no swagger in him. His shoulders were rounded, and he was very young.
A friendship made over a shared wrench is a title that no lawyer can ever draw up, but it holds all the same.
“Get in the car,” I said, “and drive me to see Miss Ona.” Ona Pruitt was the widow of Hollis, ninety years old, living in a brick cottage on Barkley Bend Road with a cat and a hundred African violets. Travis drove the Model A, slowly, with the bouquet of the bride on the seat beside him, since the wedding at Shady Grove had been postponed an hour and the planner had said that was perfectly fine. When we arrived, Ona was on the porch. She took one look at the car and put her hands to her face.
We sat in her living room and I explained. She heard it all without moving. Then she rose, a tiny woman with a cane, went to a secretary desk, and brought back a yellow envelope. “Hollis wrote this the summer before he died,” she said. “He told me to give it to Lurleen when the time came, and I forgot. Forgive an old woman.” Inside was a short letter in his sprawling hand. It said that he and Coy had made a gentleman agreement in 1981, on the day the car first ran. The last one standing keeps her.
I read it twice. My eyes were swimming. Ona said she had never wanted the car, only to see it run once more. “It broke my heart when I heard about the lawyer,” she said. “My grandson meant well. He read the old title and thought we ought to be fair. I told him that Hollis would roll over in his grave.” She called the grandson, a pleasant young man named Austin who worked at the bank, and within an hour he had come to the cottage, red faced, with an apology.
We settled it that afternoon at the kitchen table of Ona, with a pot of coffee and a plate of tea cakes. The heirs signed a release of every claim to the car, in writing, without a dollar changing hands. I asked for only one thing in return, and Ona said she would be insulted if I did not. She and her family would be the guests of honor in the car, at the front of the Fourth of July parade, in the back seat, with a sign. I insisted on the sign.
Travis spoke to me alone afterward, on the porch, with his cap in his hands. He said that the man in Decatur had been his idea, and the money, and that he had been in a hole for months. He had thought a dollar was a clever way to do it. “I did not look at the title,” he said. “I did not look at anything.” I told him that I too had made mistakes in my life, and that the worst of mine had all begun with a clever idea. We shook hands. He kissed my cheek.
The bride at Shady Grove waited forty minutes, in the car, in her veil, and when I explained why, she asked if she could meet Miss Ona. They embraced in the parking lot. The wedding went off without a hitch. On the way home, Shay took the wheel for the first time, with my hand on the dashboard. She parallel parked the old car in front of the Beauty Box in two tries, between a pickup and a mailbox, and the whole street gave her a cheer.
On the Fourth of July, the Model A rolled down Main Street with Ona Pruitt in the back seat, a flag in her hand, and the grandson at the wheel. Beside the door, on a small board painted green, were two names in white letters. Coy and Hollis, Builders, 1981. I rode behind in the Buick, parked it at the end of the route without scraping a thing, and cried into my handkerchief. It is a great deal to be proud of. A friendship, and a car.
