Everlasting Love
Chapter 4
NOTE: This is a fictional biographic love story as Mason Strickland, his family and friends navigate their way through different stages of their lives. All of the characters in this story are fictional and resemblance to any one person whether dead or alive is purely coincidental. If you liked this chapter, please send me some feed back; I have a rough mental outline for how this goes but some extra details or inspiration along the way are always welcome. If you are offended by intimate male on male emotional and physical relationships, you should be questioning yourself why you are here in the first place. As always, please consider making a donation to Nifty to maintain this website.
My first conversation with Mitch Humboldt was a quickie, he literally said hello and good bye and managed to squeeze in something about staying home on Saturday night for his sister's 13th birthday and that he would call or text me back on Sunday to make plans.
Rita expected her men to dress nice for just about anything, after all, she came from a family of Italian tailors and I was not allowed to be any sort of an exception. So I found a dress shirt, knotted a double Windsor into the tie around the collar, slid into some ironed khaki trousers and polished my black shoes and went to the 8:00 am Mass at Immaculate Conception in Towson with my grandparents. And me being at church for the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am Holy Communion took my mind off of waiting for Mitch's phone call for at least an hour or so.
The Winterson's also attended Immaculate and Karen was there and gave me a little wave as we walked down the center aisle to sit a few pews in front them. After the service she found me outside and we talked while my grandparents exchanged pleasantries with her parents. "I hate to do this to you but I think Robbie is going to be driving me to school for the rest of the year," she said with a small glow, "I know you hate the bus; but, you know how it is."
"Yeah, I guess that's a good thing, I'll fall on that sword for you, this time" I said, emphasizing "this time" just as the adults began separating, "call or text me later, we got to study for Hardesty's final, I'm counting on an A there."
"Sure thing, Macy" she said as I walked with my grandparents towards Cal's upscale Lexus SUV.
The ride to church is always very silent and solemn, not so much the ride home, "Did that boy call you back Macy?" Rita asked.
"It's barely 9:00 am, and no, he didn't," I replied.
At the bottom of Joppa Road we turned onto Thornton and were home a few minutes later before I dashed upstairs, hung up the nicer pants and found a pair jeans to wear with my church shirt sans cravat. Cal was downstairs looking over the Baltimore Sun's Sunday business page as Rita made a frittata with spinach, mushrooms and feta cheese for breakfast. I applied the electricity to the bread to make toast as I poured myself a cup of coffee and warmed up Cal's before he asked, "besides waiting for that phone to ring, any big plans today?"
I shrugged my shoulders like any other teenager, "not really, might go to the Y and workout but I sense you got something else, probably better for me in mind."
"Arnie Hall, in the space next to me at the industrial park, is not going to renew his lease when it expires in a few months. It seems rebuilding and restoring cars has turned into more of an occasional hobby for him rather than a full-time vocation since they won a decent jackpot in the Maryland Lottery last year," Cal started telling me, "he wants to start liquidating his assets and then move to Florida because his wife hates winter in Maryland."
Somehow this impacts me was the look on my face as my grandfather tried to explain the bigger picture to me as I looked over the empty dishes on the breakfast table for a clue.
"And so I was wondering if you wanted to go over to the shop with me today and see what you think, you know," Cal paused and then stared at my hand with the phone in it, to emphasize, "if you can pry yourself away from looking at that screen once every other second to see if there is a message from Mitch."
One thing about Cal was he was always thinking, emphasis on always, it must have been the engineer part of his mind; always thinking how pieces would or should fit together and I liked that, in fact, I loved that about him. I wanted to program my own brain to think like that, with that kind of precision and logic. And damn, if I could make it to 63 in as good as shape as he is, that would be icing on my cake. Cal continued, "I want to grow the shop one more time then retire completely, maybe have you take it over if that's even on your radar."
"Me?" was all I could squeeze out.
"We know you are already looking, we've seen the brochures arriving in the mail from Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania and RPI and all are great engineering schools and we know you want to follow in your father's footsteps," Cal said.
"And Macy, you know and we know you got the brains for it," the one-time middle school science teacher chimed in, "you could easily earn academic scholarships to any of those schools."
When do they plan these ambushes on my high school years I asked myself as Cal took the lead again "Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland are partners helping to revitalize Baltimore. Their bio-medical engineering programs are going to need support from mechanical engineers like me and eventually you to design and manufacture prototypes of their future medical devices. See where I am going with this Macy?"
I smiled, it clicked and I wasn't looking at my phone anymore, "I like UPenn, mainly because that's where Dad went, met Mom."
The house phone rang and I nearly jumped out of my skin then realized it was the landline and not my own. Rita answered and passed the handset to my grandfather, "Hey Arnie, yeah, I think we can be there around 10:30 or so...fine, see you then."
"Wanna drive?" Cal asked, tossing me the keys, I guess he knew the answer.
The Lexus was a wee bit bigger than the Subaru so I took my time with it on the short trip over to the shop in a nondescript industrial park; beige concrete slab buildings with faded brown slatted metal overhead doors, each with a double wide glass front door protected by a roll-down metal grate and small set of windows to let light into the front office. I pulled up to the building with a small but well crafted steel sign announcing Advanced Engineering, LLC. All of a sudden, I wasn't coming to visit Cal, rather, I was walking into the place where I might work for the rest of my life.
On my previous weekend trips to the shop, I learned to wait for Cal to un-padlock the grate and roll it up, unlock the front doors and let himself inside to disable the burglar alarm. I looked around differently and imagined myself here, making decisions and working with my grandfather's employees on some sort of cutting edge lifesaving life-changing medical technology. A minute later an older white Ford pick-up truck arrived and Arnie walked into Cal's shop.
"Thanks for meeting us this morning Arnie, hope it wasn't too much trouble," Cal said, reaching out to shake his hand,"this is my grandson, Mason, Mason, Arnie Hall of Hallmark Restorations."
"Nice to meet you sir," I said, knowing my grandfather would have expected nothing less.
"Pleasure is mine Mason," Arnie said and then to both of us, "shall we go next door?"
"Of course," Cal said.
Something was up, I could tell, not sure what but something was definitely working here.
Arnie performed the same unlocking ritual as my grandfather did and we entered. A small office area with two desks, some computers, water cooler and a waiting area with a couple of couches that Goodwill would probably reject. Arnie walked us into the shop after flipping on the lights, announcing, "that's the final one we're doing" with a nod to a 67 Corvette, "we did a total restoration on that baby, she is soooooooo sweet."
I stared at the silvery `vette and then let my eyes wander around, a faded Chevy Suburban with its motor hanging on an engine crane half out of the engine compartment and in the corner was some sort of an older 4 x 4, the axles resting on jack stands and covered in plastic to prevent overspray from nearby painting of smaller parts. Arnie grabbed the handle of a
wheeled battery charger in one hand and a can of starter fluid in the other as Cal marched towards the 4 x 4 and snatched the lightweight plastic off of it one swift motion of his wrist revealing a faded green Land Rover with a white roof.
"She gonna start Arnie?" Cal asked.
Arnie nodded to the charger and spray can, "I'm pretty sure we can get her turned over, keys are in the center console."
"Climb up there Macy," Cal said, almost with a smile.
Smiling back I boosted myself up in the driver's seat and fished the keys out of the center console while Arnie propped the hood up, "go ahead and try to start her."
Holding the key in my right hand I looked for where the ignition key went as Cal looked at me in the driver's seat before he finally tapped on the keyhole on the left side of the steering column, "Oh," I said and turned the key.
The starter cranked a little but it wasn't enough to turn over the engine and it quickly died to a few sputtering clicks. Arnie hooked up the charger cables to the battery as I got out and walked around to inspect the dusty vehicle. Cal finished plugging in the charger into a nearby outlet before turning it on as Arnie introduced me to the 4 x 4, "She's a 1997 Land Rover Defender NAS 90; NAS for North American Spec hence left hand steering among other things, 90 for the 90 inch wheelbase; Land Rover also made a 110 also but there are fewer of those."
"This is a salvage vehicle, bought it after one of the floods that came through North Carolina as a project car over a year ago to restore and resell but couldn't really talk anybody into it and well, with other work always coming in, I let her sit." Arnie continued before kneeling next to the left rear wheel and pointing to a line of demarcation just even with the screwed on diamond plate trim, "you can see how far the water came up, almost to the door sill here. Insurance companies totaled cars left and right but the high stance on this Defender probably saved her from catastrophic damage."
"What were you going to do to her Arnie," Cal asked, trying to gauge how much work had to be done.
"Complete off-the-frame restoration. Defenders were never known for being marvels of modern engineering but they got good bones, if you know what I mean. There's a small firm up in Maine that does nothing but Defender restorations but you will end up needing a second mortgage to afford them but from what I have seen of their work, they are worth it."
Arnie continued his practiced but unnecessary sales pitch, "but if I really wanted to bust up my knuckles on something like this I'd redo the rust-prone areas with stainless, replace the current brake lines and fuel lines; go with some high-end stainless tubing and fittings rather than rubber hoses; and if I really wanted to do this all the way, I'd go ahead and replace the existing gas guzzling 8 cylinder 4.0 liter engine with a smaller diesel, say a 300TDI, but then you'd end up having to do some work to the rear end too. And of course, every inch of wire and every electrical component needs to be inspected, tested and replaced if necessary."
Cal encouraged, "climb up there again Macy, give her another try" as Arnie sprayed some starter fluid near the air intake. After a short fumble I turned the key again and she immediately kicked over and kept running. My brain was beginning to process what was going on here, this was not exactly all about expanding the existing shop.
"New tires all around, but you definitely got to double check those axle seals, they were clearly under water," Arnie added, "and, I'm willing to help out if you get stuck, just don't expect me to do the lion's share of the work, I don't care how much money you throw at me, Cal. Ellie wants to get out of Maryland and I promised her we would but I got a few months until her arthritis tells her that winter is on the way."
"What's a fair price?" Cal asked, my mind beginning to sense who's knuckles were going to get busted up and I was okay with the concept but when?
"I don't have much more than eight grand in her, that includes some of the parts I've already ordered," Arnie said with a nod to the different boxes in the cargo area and under the vehicle, "I'll hook you up with my paint guy and some other suppliers, they'll treat you right, hell, you can probably barter some sort of service with them."
"Eight sounds fair, I can write you a check tomorrow, maybe we can do the paperwork first thing in the morning?" Cal suggested then turned to me, "do you know what sweat equity is?"
While I certainly didn't know much about high finances, I quickly processed the concept and interpreted it out loud to the adults, "instead of making a financial contribution for a purchase, somebody contributes labor?"
Cal nodded approvingly as Arnie reached out to shake my hand, "Spot on Macy, spot on, I hope you like your Defender."
I looked at Cal for an explanation, "work for me this summer, I'll pay you double what the club will pay you to lifeguard. We'll find time between jobs to work on this and by the end of summer vacation she will be yours, is that a fair deal, something you can live with?"
"Yes!" I said enthusiastically, my mind rapidly processing the arithmetic; apparently I was going to be a better engineer than negotiator, "but what about expanding the shop?"
"That's all been worked out already," Cal explained, "some equipment has been ordered and should be here by the time you go back to school for the fall Just got to add some more security, expand the office space a little, knock out some blocks in the wall and add couple roll up doors between the spaces and we are good to go."
"Macy, it was great to finally meet you; Cal I got to run, Ellie and I are going over to see our newest granddaughter this afternoon," Arnie said as he began shutting everything off and locking up the shop.
"Thank you Mr. Hall, it was a pleasure meeting you," I said, shaking his hand and now shaking inside as I looked at the Defender again.
"Have fun Arnie, I'll see you first thing in the morning with the check," Cal said as we walked out and back into Advanced Engineering then turning to me, "this is a serious offer, I know I didn't give you much time to think about it but, I think I've come to know you much better over these last few months and if you got any doubts about this, about this commitment, I need to know now."
I hugged Cal fiercely and sobbed a bit, remembering how my father told me how he and Cal rebuilt an older BMW so that he would have a car to take to Penn. Somehow, this was going to be a defining moment for Cal and I and it excited me. And then my phone finally buzzed with a text, "Hey, I'll pick you up for school since Robbie is gonna be driving Karen, around 7:15 at your house; we can talk more then. Mitch"