The Front Porch Prophet by Raymond L. Atkins Read Free Book Online Page A

like its owner, had entered its final days.

CHAPTER 3
    I got the bus.

—Excerpt of posthumous letter from
Eugene Purdue to Slim Neal
    A.J. MADE QUICK WORK OF THE WALK DOWN THE mountain. He was unsettled. The afternoon had been like a trip into the Twilight Zone. So much so, in fact, he wouldn’t have been much surprised to find Rod Serling standing in the road, wearing a black sport coat with narrow lapels, chain smoking and eyeing him with intensity. He decided to stop at Billy’s Chevron for a Coke and some non-apocalyptic conversation. A dose of normalcy would do him good after the recent festivities up on the mountain. The establishment sat at the crossroads right outside of town.
    “You’ll be needin’ some tires soon, Will,” Billy said, peering at the rubber on A.J.’s truck. Billy called his male patrons
Will
and his female customers
Missus.
He was ancient and grizzled. At the moment he was shaking his head, as if he found it hard to believe that a grown man would run around on such a pitiful set of tires.
    “You sold me that set last month,” A.J. said, sipping his cold drink. Billy was an old country boy who had done extremely well for himself by adhering to the simple belief that every vehicle had some problem that should be repaired by Billy.
    “Well, they’re wore some,” Billy said stubbornly. “Maybe we need to line her up and rotate these front tires while there’s a little life left in them.”
    A.J. was now fully alert.
    “We ‘lined her up’ when we put the tires on,” A.J. noted. “Maybe your alignment machine was out of whack.” Billy was squatted down, looking at the tires. He scratched his head and lit a slightly bent cigarette. Confusion was etched on his grainy features. As A.J. watched, he saw Billy nod his head twice and look up with certainty in his eye. A resolution had been reached.
    “Here’s what we need to do, Will,” Billy said, standing and dusting his hands on his pants. “Bring her in next week and I’ll line her up and rotate those tires. You must’ve run over a pothole or something and knocked her out.”
    Actually, it had been a curb. A.J. had vaulted it while avoiding one of Estelle Chastain’s more erratic driving maneuvers. But he wasn’t telling Billy that.
    “Don’t you worry,” Billy continued. “I’ll fix her up good as new.”
    Ironically, at that moment, A.J. saw Estelle’s aged Ford motoring up the highway, running astraddle the broken white line in the middle of the road. All that could be seen of Estelle were two white gloves clenched on the steering wheel and the top of her head, complete with pillbox hat. She peered with myopic eyes in A.J.’s general direction, and he knew it was time to go. He exited after pointing out the danger to Billy, who was no fool and took cover. When Miss Estelle came to town it was every man for himself, vehicular Darwinism based on survival of the quickest.
    In his rearview mirror, A.J. saw Estelle swing into the Chevron in a long, slow arc that left her parked with her right front tire up on the pump island. Billy came out from hiding and squatted in front of Estelle’s car—elevated for convenience—and when the venerable mechanic began to slowly shake his head, A.J. knew the game was again afoot.
    It was dusk when A.J. arrived home, exhausted. He sat for a moment and gazed at Maggie’s Folly, his name for the family manor. He and his wife, Maggie, had bought it thirteen years ago, an abandoned Victorian dwelling that had seen better times. It was built during the days when the wealthy kept summer homes in cool mountain valleys to escape the heat of the city. This particular structure was built by a carpetbagging entrepreneur who had traveled to Georgia in 1866 with the intention of stealing a fortune and living the good life, both of which he managed to do before being shot fatally in a bawdy house by the estranged husband of one of the employees of the establishment. As A.J. sat, he remembered the