Moonlight Motor Court

MOONLIGHT MOTOR COURT

by

Richard Authier Lee

A station wagon pulled off Route One, popping pea stone under its tires as it rolled down the drive and up to the rustic cabin where a neon sign hung, bearing a single word, "OFFICE." A young man in shorts, sandals, and T-shirt bounded out and scurried into the office. In a moment, he returned, a tired expression on his face. He shook his head at his wife and gestured "thumbs down" as he got back in. The car rumbled down the drive and back up onto the highway, trailing a cloud of fine white dust across the blacktop. 

    The older couple sat watching the scene from their car, a restored and gleaming "Packard Eight." They had pulled in first but hadn't stepped out by the time the younger couple roared in behind them.

    "Looks like the place is full anyway, Cam," she said.

    He nodded. "At least we didn't have those folks pluck off the last cabin while we made up our minds out here. Shame, though. It would have been perfect."

"A lovely way to finish our vacation," Liddy said. "Classic old car. Classic old motor court. Like our own little time warp hideaway for a night."

"It's back to the rat race for me tomorrow, anyway. Perhaps we need a more comfortable place--- big bed, good restaurant. Portland is just a few more miles."

An old man stepped out onto the office steps. He wore a long sleeve work shirt­ over a white tee and khaki shorts held up by suspenders. A peculiar cap---like a beanie with a long-billed visor was pushed back on his head. He smiled and gave them a little wave in.

"He waving at us?" Cam said. 

"He's just telling us he's full." 

"No, I think he's calling us over." Cam eased the Packard closer to the office. He slipped the clutch back in, dropped out of gear and sat with the engine idling its gentle throaty rhythms as the old man hobbled down the steps. The old fellow stopped at the bottom and looked the car up and down, before striking a wooden match on the railing and puffing up his pipe. "Nice 'cah," he said. "Restore her yourself?"

   "Well, yes, what needed doing," Cam answered. "She's spent most of her life in a garage up in Bennington, Vermont. There were barely fifty thousand miles on her when I bought her at an estate sale about three years ago." 

"Don't say? A real gem, looks like." 

"So, you're filled up for the night?•

"Nope. Got one left."

"Really?" 

Liddy flashed a small frown at Cam while the old man's gaze remained on the car. She shook her head with tiny motions which would have been almost invisible to a stranger. Sometimes, much to her frustration, these tiny motions were also invisible to Cam.

"What's the room rate?" Cam asked.

The old man still gazed at the car, which made Cam feel uneasy. Uneasy on vacation, at least. It was the cool approach of a speculator, one which Cam Booker saw daily. The disinterested demeanor and hidden intent of a speculator. 

"Eight bucks."

"Excuse me?" 

"The rate. It's eight bucks."

"Eight dollars a person?" 

"Eight dollars the night, the room." 

Cam turned to Liddy and shrugged his shoulders.

"You get what you pay for," Liddy whispered under her breath, looking away as she spoke.

"I don't know," Cam told the old man. 

"OK," the man said through a cloud of pipe as he turned to look directly at him. "How about ninety-eight fifty plus tax?" He reached in the window and dropped a key with a wooden tag into the pocket of Cam's shirt. "Feel better?" When Cam looked up he was gone. Cam held the key in his hand. The wooden tag read "Cabin 12-The Glade." Liddy shook her head again, this time with no effort to conceal her meaning. "No," she said. "Absolutely not. I want nothing to do with this place or that funny old man. He gives me the willies."

"We can at least look, dear." Cam slid the clutch out and the old Packard rolled along the U-shaped stone drive past cabins seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven. He turned into the drive next to twelve and tall, yellow-green grass embraced the long nose of the car. When he turned off the engine the air seemed cooler, sweeter, shaded by a small stand of trees and washed over by the rhythmic sound of the sea. 

"Cam, please." 

"What's the matter with us, anyway? That old man seems harmless enough. Country people are just a little different, that's all. What's wrong with being a little more trusting and open? We're making him out to be a monster because he has low prices and trusts us." 

   "Stephen King wrote his creepy novels just a little way up the road from here." Liddy said. "You and your little boy's sense of adventure. I do believe it's fogged your brain." 

   "One night in 1938,"Cam pronounced. "We rough it here one night and trust another human being again, just this once. Then we'll go back to being suspicious of everybody." 

___

   Cam was standing by the window, taking in the fresh morning sea air when Liddy woke. "Sleep well?" 

   She swept her hair from her face and said, "Actually, yes. Now you going to say, 'I told you so?" 

   "Nope. Just sorry we found this place on the last day of the trip. I don't really want to leave."

    "I can't believe this is you talking," she said. "What become of that Type A guy I drove in here with yesterday?" 

   "Lost him out on the road somewhere, "Cam replied. "In 2024. It's 1938 here, remember?"

   "I like 1938," she said. "I wish we could stay here forever." He kissed her neck softly and when she looked up, she thought his face appeared younger, his hair less gray, his skin the color of peaches in the morning light.

   He was alone in the cabin when she left him to check out while he loaded the car, and he stood a long time in the small room before carrying the bags out. It was such a simple place, rustic, almost crude. Plain white curtains on the windows, a maple bed at one end of the room, red and white oilcloth on a table near a red brick fireplace. There must have been a hundred names and dates carved into the soft wood of the door and surrounding frame, some going back almost a hundred years. Near the bottom he had found a space and with his pocketknife carved "C and E Booker---One Night in '38---July 5, 2024."

---

   The key clicked into the ignition, and Cam pressed the starter. The engine cranked, sputtered, and coughed. He 

turned the key off, then back on and pressed the starter---no joy. Again, this time a crank or two, then nothing at all. 

He checked but found no obvious problem under the hood. It just would not start. With grease on his hands and a puzzled expression on his face, he left their luggage by the cabin door and walked to the office. 

   "Morning, "the old man said. Liddy sat at a small table across from him. They each had white diner mugs filled with hot coffee. "Trouble with the car?" 

   "Apparently," Cam nodded. "Anyone around here who might look at it on a Sunday?"

   "Sunday?" the old man said, puzzled. 

   "Anyone you'd recommend who could get me going today?" I have to be in Boston for work in the morning." 

   "Most everybody's open by now, I guess. Hank Warden, just down the road, does all my work. Seven to seven, Monday through Saturday. I'll give him a jingle on the blower, if you like," the old man said, rising from his chair. 

   "On a Sunday?" 

   "Tuesday, "the old fellow said. "Tuesday, July fifth." 

   Cam shot Liddy a look, who shrugged it off, smiled and said, "Give old Hank a jingle on the blower, Cam." 

   He did. There was no answer. 

   Cam was back under the hood when the office screen door clapped, and the old man sauntered back over. "Can't figure where old Hank's got to. Being nine-thirty and all, he should be there unless he got another service call. You should try again in a few minutes."

   "It cranks, but it won't catch." 

   "Don't say?"

   "Suggestions?" 

   "Shoot, Hank knows these things cold." 

   "Do you have tools? I could check the points and rotor." 

   "Yeah, out in the barn, if you care to have a look. If this were one of them new cars, you'd need a computer, tech support from India and a soldering gun to get her going," the old man said with a chuckle.

   A worn, narrow path behind the cottage led down through a stand of pine toward the sea where the barn came into sight, lost amid the branches and camouflaged by its own weathered barn board. The old man tapped his pipe empty on the doorjamb, opened a rusty latch on the door and slid it open. On the sandy floor were shovels, rakes, and a toolbox near an automobile covered with blankets and quilts. 

   "That's a Packard?" Cam said, noting the emblem on one hubcap. 

   "Yep, runs good too." 

    "What the hell?" 

   "I got an idea, Mr. Booker. Don't suppose you'd want to swap?" 

   "Swap?" 

   "You're pressed to get home and yours ain't runnin'. Hank'll get her goin' next week for sure, and this old lady runs smooth as glass right now. What d'yuh say?" Cam's eyes narrowed as the old man spoke. The tool kit at their feet had an oil filter wrench, plug gapping tool, compression gauges, timing light, tools which could tune or detune an engine. Detune it badly enough so that it wouldn't start. 

   "Why, you conniving old coot." Cam snatched up a wrench, waved it at him and backed the old man across the barn. "Swap? What have you done to my car?" 

   "Look, I was just tryin' to help. You don't want to swap, fine." 

   "Swap my restored '49 for this piece of---" he ripped the blankets from the car and froze when he realized what lay beneath. He lowered the wrench. "My God." 

   "Same as yours, "the old man said, "But for the year, model and color. Mine's black. Yours is grey. " 

   "Black is the original color," Cam said as he touched the paint on the old man's Packard. "Mine's repainted. My God in heaven, this is a '41 VB." 

   The old man nodded and said,"1941 Packard VB sedan." 

   "Look, Mister---"

   "Floyd. Floyd Beecham." 

   "Look, Floyd, I can't swap my car for yours."

   "S'Okay. It was just a suggestion." 

   "I've acted rudely," Cam said, putting the wrench back in the toolbox, "and I'm sorry. "Floyd, that's a 1941 Packard VB sedan. It's worth five times my '49. At least."

   "To whom?" 

   "Collectors. To anybody who knows about these cars." 

   "Do I look like some big city collector? Besides, I don't plan to sell her. I just like the '49s. Makes me feel good. That's how I value 'em. I bought this one off Hank Warden's dad thirty-five years ago." He grabbed a stack of Maine license plates from a shelf. "Got thirteen sets of Maine plates from '49 too. One for each cabin. Got a '49 Ford beach wagon, '49 Pontiac, '49 Olds, '49---" 

   "The cars at all the other cottages? Are they all '49s? All yours?" 

   Floyd nodded. "Two more and I'll be full up." 

   "Floyd, surely you don't mean to say you've had them all these cars break down here by chance and traded them off their owners?" 

   "First nine were easy. A lot of '49s came by between 

'50 and '57. Course in thirty-two years I had a lot in here break down that weren't '49s too. Not so many in the sixties. One in the seventies. Before you folks came by, I hadn't seen one in eleven years." 

   "You could go out and buy them, Floyd. Hell, sell that '41 and you'd have enough to buy three old '49s."

    "Except I don't leave the motor court," Floyd said, pulling his pipe and tobacco from the pocket of his shorts. "You want to swap or not?" 

   "Floyd, your car is worth fifteen thousand dollars, easy. Maybe more, I don't know. Mine's worth maybe thirty-three hundred."

   "Key's in the ignition, if you want to check out her 

mill." 

---

   Liddy thumped the pillow into the space between the seat and the door where she liked to rest her head. "It looks just like the other one to me, Cam."

   "Trust me, it isn't the same. It isn't the same at all. I can't believe it."                                          

   "You still suspicious of the Mr. Beecham?" 

   "No, not really. I mean, sort of, but not really. I think he means what he says." 

   "So, what's the problem?" 

               Cam pulled out onto the highway and marveled at the smooth hum of the engine. The Packard VB rolled down the highway like she owned it.

   "What did the two of you talk about over coffee while I was trying to get my old car started?" 

   "Oh, music. He's fond of Glenn Miller, the Dorseys, Harry James, that sort of thing. He had a Portland station on that plays a lot of that sound. It was nice to hear it again." Liddy turned her face toward her window. "And his wife. We talked about his wife. How they loved to dance on Saturdays up in Portland." 

   "I didn't know he had a wife. He told me he never left the place. 'Ever."

   "Mm," Liddy answered. She shifted in her seat and turned her face deeper into the pillow, listening to the highway drone under the Packard's wheels before she said, "Did he tell you she died in that cabin--­ the one he stays in---New Year's Day 1950?" 

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