The Last American Martyr by Tom Winton Read Free Book Online Page B

McDonald’s drive-thru, grabbed two coffees then drove the short distance to the first RV dealership. We got there fifteen minutes before they opened, so Elaina and I sat in the car sipping our coffee. Peering through the windshield and tall cyclone fence, we could not believe the number of travel trailers and motor homes on the lot.
    “My God,” Elaina said, “how will we ever know what to pick out? There must be two hundred of them in there.”
    “I don’t know, but like I said, we should definitely buy a used one. We’re only planning to keep it a year, tops. If we bought a new one, we’d lose a small fortune when the time comes to flip it. Plus, I’m sure there’ll be a lot more wiggle room when we begin to negotiate the price.”
    “I agree. We need to look for one just a few years old with low mileage,” Elaina said as she lifted her bottom off the seat so she could see into the visor mirror. Once she got high enough to see, she quickly finger-brushed her new pixie cut. As she fluffed the short black bangs, her face winced and her eyebrows furrowed. Looking at her now, both our spirits deflated. The fact that she’d been forced to cut off her long beautiful hair was a grim reminder of just how serious our situation was. Our happy respite was no longer so happy, but we knew we still had to move forward with our plan.
    Right then a man dressed like a Wall Street banker—three-piece, pinstriped suit and all—slid the huge, wheeled gate open. I gulped the last of my coffee and drove into the lot.
    Just a few minutes after we had begun wandering amongst the acres of RV’s, the fashion plate from the gate approached us. He was a fast talker who, like your basic run-of-the-mill doctor, acted as if his presence was an overly-generous, selfless gift. Right from the get-go the guy rubbed me the wrong way. He tried to lead us around by our noses but soon learned that wasn’t going to happen. He was tall like me, about six-two, but probably fifteen years younger. He had an athletic build, and his looks were as flawless as his outfit. Beneath a head of impeccable blonde hair, he had a handsome, yet smarmy face that always seemed too close to ours when he spoke. And did he like to talk. The biggest mistake any salesman can make is to not listen to his customer, and believe me this guy was tough to get through to.
    As full of himself as he was, and as much as Elaina and I wanted to bolt out of there, he had one unit we thought was perfect. It was an eleven-year-old, thirty-foot, Class A motor home. Forget about the age, this Winnebago was cherry, and it only had 31,000 miles on the odometer. It looked a streamlined, dressed up miniature bus on the outside, and the inside made our apartment look like a depression-era flat. Supposedly, it only had one previous owner. Whether it did or it didn’t, we could easily see it had been loved. On its huge, panoramic windshield they had a price of $18,999.
    After looking around it, inside it, and under it, we went for a spin. It felt awfully strange sitting so high off the road as I steered the big wheel, but the unit ran beautifully.
    I would have bought it on the spot. With the signals Elaina was sending me I knew she would have, too. But I wanted to check out that other dealer first. I also wanted to feel out our new friend , Ronald C. Kincaid, to see how flexible he was on the price. After telling him we wanted to look further (much to his obvious chagrin) I asked him what his best price would be. Of course, he tried to drag us into the office to “talk,” but I let him know I wasn’t yet ready for that charade. He said they might take $17,500, plus tax, prep fees, and this and that. When I told him we might be back in an hour or so to talk, instead of being hopeful that he might have a sale, he looked at us as if we’d just yanked a commission check out of his breast pocket. As much as his demeanor bothered the hell out of me, something else irked me even more. Twice,