By Jonathan B. Ferrini
“Speedy Gas” was a small, two-pump, single-bay gas station tucked into a forgotten corner of San Francisco. It was not the kind of station visited by those chasing the lowest price per gallon or making a hurried dash into a minimart, but to its old customers and to those who still valued personal service, Speedy Gas was a relic of a slower, more intimate relationship between driver, car, and service station operator, resembling a visit to a trusted family doctor.
Rita kept the Speedy Gas rituals: windshield wiped clean, hood lifted, fluids checked, tires tapped and filled. Rita approached quickly with the tools of her trade; window spray, clean rag, tire pressure gauge, and welcoming smile.
Below in the grease pit, Daniel lay beneath an aging sedan, his hands blackened with oil as he tightened the final bolts. The scent of motor oil, grease and cement walls of the pit surrounded him like family and was his sanctuary.
Rita stepped carefully toward the edge of the pit and looked down at him.
“Mister M, you’ve been working on that old car all day without a lunch break, and it’s nearing six o’clock.
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“This car is more than transportation to its owner.
“Joan Hobson’s long life is wrapped up inside it this old car and driving it to Christmas to be with family will make her feel at home just like this pit and garage makes me feel at home. When I’m done, I want you to run the car over to Maxi Waxi’s and pay for ‘The Deluxe’ service wash.”
“I look at the invoices and know you’re undercharging your customers. You’re a generous man, Mister M.”
“Rita, I’m four times your age. I own this place free and clear and live comfortably inside my shoddy apartment behind the garage. My ‘generosity’ is paying it forward for my long life. I’ve survived. What matters is we’re serving the people who depend on us.”
“The grease pit is too dangerous for a man your age.”
“I may be one hundred and two years old, but I can still lubricate a chassis.”
“It hurts me to see you down there and living behind the garage in a cramped apartment alone. Spend Christmas with my family.”
“I celebrate eight days and nights with candles which is enough celebration for me but thank you. I’m a lonely old man who finds solace working here. My son worked alongside me after school, weekends, and summers at this garage. Ben was a natural born mechanic just like you.”
“I know you miss them dearly, Mister M.”
“I never had a chance to say goodbye to Ben. His jet was taking off from Naval Air Station Alameda to join the carrier USS Constellation at sea. I was busy replacing a radiator hose for an old customer, so I sent Helen off and told her I’d join her after the repair. She called me from the air station and said I missed Ben taking off to join the squadron. Helen said Ben appeared disappointed by not seeing me saying, ‘Tell pop’s I love him.’ She mentioned a look in his eyes as if he knew…
“I lost my only child, Ben, when his F-4 Phantom jet was shot down over Vietnam. He’s still listed as ‘MIA’, but we know Ben didn’t survive and buried him posthumously at the San Francisco National Cemetery. When Helen died peacefully at home twenty years ago, I sold our home including all its happy and painful memories to live and work here where I can keep my mind on work and cherish memories of working together with my son. I’ll be here opening and closing for our customers every day including holidays until the day I die and join Helen and Ben.”
The grease gun slipped in his hand and Daniel fell holding his chest.
“Are you okay, Mister M?”
“I’m having a heart attack!”
The last thing Daniel remembered was a mask placed over his face and Rita holding his hand.
*
Lieutenant Daniel Mercer was flying straight and level through a gray morning over the Atlantic. Suddenly, the cockpit filled with the bitter smell of burning oil and hot metal. The instrument panel flickered, the engine sputtered and fell silent. He knew his P-51 Mustang was hit by a lucky shot from a fallen Messerschmitt.
“Blue Jay Two, you hit?”
“Still flying but no engine and falling fast.”
The engine temperature needle swung hard into the red. Smoke curled backward across the wing. Daniel tightened his grip on the yoke. Below him, the ocean was choppy and cold.
A bullet had passed through his upper flank, grazing the ribs and tearing muscles. He adjusted the trim and remembered home, San Francisco. He thought of the cable cars on California Street, the ringing bell and the slow climb toward Nob Hill. His father’s garage was on California Street, and he would inherit it and forever live his life in the “City by the Bay”.
War had changed his career plans, and the aircraft was descending quickly. He could see England now, and the white cliffs of Dover emerged slowly rising out of the sea with welcoming smiles.
“I’ve got Dover in sight, Blue Jay Lead!”
“Take it straight into any field you see and may God be with you, Blue Jay Two!”
*
He opened his eyes. The air smelled of starched sheets, chlorine, antiseptic, and pain. A woman stood beside him. She wore a white neatly pressed nurse uniform, her posture was erect, and her expression composed. Her hair was pinned neatly beneath her cap. One hand rested lightly against his wrist, fingers counting the rhythm of his pulse.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in a British Army hospital.
“I’m Lieutenant Nurse Stephanie Hall.”
“Let me out of here!”
“You’re wounded and require proper medical care.”
“Where are my clothes?”
“Sir, if we must strap you to the bed to ensure you receive proper care, we shall do so.”
“I can see you are going to be a difficult patient. Most of you Yanks are.”
“I need to get back to my unit.”
“Where is your unit, Lieutenant?”
“My squadron is the ‘United States Army Eight Airforce’ based in East Anglia, England.”
“A ‘Mighty Eight’, lad. We’re grateful for your service to Britain. How old are you?”
“My birthdate is on my dog tag.”
“I see a very brave, defiant, man-boy of no more than nineteen, correct?”
“I guess the truth no longer matters because the war is over for me. I lied about my age when I enlisted. I serviced the Packard Custom Eight Clipper at my pop’s garage owned by a Brigadier General who pulled strings for me. They rushed me through flight school in time to see action before the war ends. I’ll be twenty years old on Christmas Eve.”
“Your mother was very fortunate to receive a gift of a beautiful baby boy the night before Christmas. I expect you to write home and tell her and your ‘pop’s’ you’re receiving the best of care and will be home soon.”
He studied her face and saw beauty, confidence, and something else, buried deeper. He did not yet know what it was.
*
The hospital ward was filled with wounded men. At night, the air filled with murmured prayers, delirious whispers, and sometimes screaming. Nurse Lieutenant Stephanie Hall adjusted bandages, administered morphine, and checked pulses. Her presence was precise, efficient, and compassionate.
She rarely spoke more than necessary but he watched the way she leaned closely when listening, the faint crease that appeared between her brows when she concentrated, and how beautifully her figure filled out the uniform. He found himself waiting for her. He learned she worked the late shift ending at midnight.
*
He woke to find her sitting on the edge of his bed.
“I’m off duty. Care to chat?”
“Only if you move in closer; the crash made me hard of hearing.”
“Nonsense, but brilliant try. What’s it like where you’re from?”
“San Francisco is a slice of heaven. The fog rolls in low, like it owns the city. You hear the cable cars before you see them.”
“Cable cars?”
“The San Francisco cable car system hurdles up the hills. You hear the bell and their steel grip biting into the tracks. It’s a good sound. It means people are going somewhere. Going to work. Going home where I want to be. My father has a garage on California Street with one bay and two pumps out front. Before the war, I spent my days in a grease pit underneath a car or truck with oil dripping down upon me and grease under my fingernails that never quite washed out.”
“That sounds dreadful but delightfully masculine. You have long slender beautiful fingers resembling those of a pianist which contradict your profession.”
“Slide in closer and I’ll let you read my palms, too.”
“Just a few inches, Lieutenant but I warn you my scream will awaken this ward.”
“You’re bluffing, you’re a compassionate nurse and wouldn’t risk waking these poor wounded bastards.”
“I remind you that you’re also ‘wounded’ and an irreverent ‘bastard’.”
“Find me sexy?”
“Possibly, Lieutenant and you’re sex appeal may likely increase after talking more about the garage.”
“I enjoy repairing cars. A customer say’s he can’t get to work or his wife’s expecting soon and he needs it ready. You find what’s wrong, set it right, and witness the beautiful sound of the engine turning over again. I helped him and it made me feel like I mattered.”
“Your work is like that of a surgeon, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah, call me a car doctor! Ah, I made you chuckle…Your hands are soft and beautiful and don’t look accustomed to hard labour.”
“Before the war, I was an appendage to a man of position. That sort of vital national service.”
“I don’t understand a damn word you’re saying. Spell it out.”
“After graduation from boarding school, I was placed into an arranged marriage with a man I didn’t know. He was the first man I came to know. I didn’t love him and there was no romance. His family sorely desired a male heir to carry on his family line. We tried and failed repeatedly to have a baby. I was blamed for being infertile despite his private admission of impotence. I remained a dutiful wife standing beside her husband instead of close to him in the same bed. Now, I find myself helping broken men stand again. Helping them return to their lives. Just like the cars you made whole and sent them on their way.”
“Where’s home?”
She chose not to answer, knowing nothing she could say would translate across the caste and privilege gulf between them. Her world was a life he had never imagined, just as she could never truly appreciate the grease-stained certainty of his.
“Home is wherever I am needed.”
They remained there in the dim light, studying each other with the quiet curiosity of two travelers who had met at the crossing point of two lives. He saw refinement that both fascinated and intimidated him. She saw competence that steadied her, a man whose worth was measured not in title but in usefulness. She saw a man she ached for and dreamed about.
*
Night after night, they spoke. Their formality softened. He called her Steph and she called him Daniel. They recognised the war they shared brought them closer and freed them from needing to understand dissimilar worlds.
*
A distant chime signaled midnight awakening Daniel. Steph was no longer wearing her cap, and her long flowing blond locks fell softly around her face. She saw his eyes open and he smiled.
“I have a surprise for you, Daniel. But you must keep it a secret. I’m breaking hospital regulations.”
She handed him a paper bag. He opened it and found a bottle of Coca-Cola, a Hershey bar, and a pack of American cigarettes with a matchbook.
“What made you do this at your peril?”
“I wanted you to feel some small semblance of home.”
“You’re a wonderful woman, Steph. I wish I had met you under such different circumstances. Steph, what can I do for you?”
“Daniel, just be my friend and listen to me. I have no one else to speak to about these matters.”
“What do you have to tell me, Steph?”
“My husband Bernard was a pilot. I spent two years waiting for him to come home until notice arrived; he was shot down and killed.”
“I’m sorry for you, Steph.”
“I’m lonely, Daniel. I find meaning and purpose working here but I think I would like to find the passion and yearning absent in my marriage with you, Daniel. I also wish we met under different circumstances.”
*
The deceased were removed in the very early hours of the morning so as not to alarm the dying. Their beds were filled by morning. A priest came by each bed at dawn, whispered a prayer, and waved his hands in the form of the cross. He never spoke but Daniel muttered, “I guess one prayer is as good as another.”
*
Stephanie arrived just after midnight on a clear cold night. The moon’s light cast a faint but warm glow across the ward. She drew the privacy drape around his bed. She stood beside him, her hands trembling faintly, and they devoured each other with their eyes.
“Do I smell ‘Chanel No. 5’ perfume?”
“I chose a scent you might recognise from San Francisco and used so little only you would notice.”
“Why the perfume?”
“Because after midnight, near to you, I’d rather be a woman than a nurse, darling.”
She climbed onto the bed beside him; her movements deliberate, urgent, tender, raw, vulnerable, and filled decades of neglect, culminating in a glorious culmination of emotions. He held her close but neither spoke. The world beyond the drape ceased to exist.
*
Rain traced soft lines down the tall English windows. He lay awake, staring at the ceiling, his shoulder wrapped in stiff white bandages. Daniel noticed fewer beds were being filled, which meant the war was ending.
The curtain providing intimacy at midnight opened without haste. It was Nurse Captain Melinda Richardson. She carried herself like an officer accustomed to command. Her uniform was immaculate, her posture erect, and expression firm but not unkind. She pulled a chair close to him to speak quietly.
“I have come to speak with you about Nurse Lieutenant Stephanie Hall.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“It has come to my attention that the two of you have spoken intimately on more than one occasion. She has attended to you personally, even when such attention could have been delegated. I do not interfere lightly in the private lives of my nurses, but I am responsible for their well-being, particularly in matters where misunderstandings may arise. You are an American and come from a nation where distinctions of class are less formal and permanent. That is not the case in England. Nurse Lieutenant Stephanie Hall was married to the son of Lord Hall. She returned to his family estate a widow before she had truly become a wife. She is the daughter of a distinguished family, and her father holds influence at the highest levels of government. She could have spent the war in comfort and safety. Instead, she chose to serve Britain by becoming a nurse and entering the army. She will one day return to the family estate. Her father is ill and mother deceased. She is the last of her line.”
“In other words, she’s out of my league.”
“You’re blunt but on point.”
“I’m from San Francisco, Captain. My father owns a garage. I suppose that’s all there is to say.”
“You became an officer and crossed an ocean to defend a country not your own. That speaks highly of you. But there are worlds, Lieutenant, that do not easily join. Not because of character but because of obligation and history. Bluntly, Stephanie Hall’s Anglicanism and your Jewish faith present barriers to a union between you both. The fact that you have won her heart is not a trivial thing.”
“Steph never brought up religion although the letter ‘H’ for Hebrew was stamped on my ‘dog tag’.”
“I ask you to understand what it all means and what it may never be permitted to become.”
He looked past her, toward the dark window where the rain pelted reminding him of the bullets fired to kill him and this time, hitting his heart.
“I understand, Captain. Requesting your leave to process all of this.”
“I wish you the best of everything and a long life, Lieutenant.”
Captain Richardson left him, but he knew that survival, however miraculous, did not free a man from the boundaries of the world dividing people. War should have taught him that lesson, but for a moment in time, a beautiful woman from a stately manor and mechanic-turned-pilot fell in love.
*
The day came when he could stand, walk, and be discharged. They did not speak of it until the morning it arrived. He stood beside his bed, wearing his uniform again. Steph stood before him.
“You’re returning to your unit and then home?”
“Yes, to the life I had lived before the war.”
“I will miss you, Daniel.”
He attempted to pull her tight to him, but she resisted.
“You cared for me and I took you into my heart, Steph. I want to say more but there are no words which will suffice except a kiss which you’ll permit me, please.”
She entered his embrace and released the pent-up desire raging through her until Captain Richardson approached with his discharge papers. Nurse Lieutenant Stephanie Hall watched Daniel leave forever but knowing he left behind a permanent memento.
*
Their son was born in the spring and she named him Bernard. Steph raised him alone. She never wrote to Daniel and never spoke his name, but she was reminded of him in every feature of their beautiful son.
*
Daniel returned to San Francisco, resumed his life working inside his father’s garage and married. The war became memory. Years and decades passed. His garage on California Street was built with his hands and discipline learned in the cockpit, and watching the dedicated nurses complete their rounds with compassion which he shared with each of his customers.
*
Daniel awoke and found himself alone inside an ICU not resembling the hospital ward he recalled from the war. The war defining his youth was more than eighty years behind him and losing his son and wife faded into memory.
Rita was cautioned by the cardiologist,
“Say your goodbyes before it’s too late. His birthday is tomorrow. We didn’t think a birthday celebration was appropriate for a dying man. Nobody in this ICU can recall a birth and death on the same day particularly Christmas Eve.”
“Mister Mercer never shared his birthday with me even though I’m the closest thing to family.”
Rita held Daniel’s frail hand in one hand and a faded sealed envelope with foreign postage stamps in the other hand. Daniel’s eyes were hollow, but he recognised the aged envelope.
“I searched your office for somebody to contact and came across this envelope from England addressed to you many decades ago and never opened.
“Would you like me to open it?”
Daniel remembered his decision not to revisit the past by opening the envelope because he put the past behind him, but the memories and mourning were about to end, and he motioned for Rita to open the envelope.
Rita removed a photograph of a handsome young Royal Air Force aviator. She turned over the photo revealing a handwritten note suggesting a woman’s soft touch with a fountain pen which she read softly:
Dearest Daniel,
Please meet our son, Bernard Mercer Hall.
Bernard was told his father was an aviator killed in the war.
The night our son was conceived inside the darkness of the ward remains a blessed, romantic memory and a warm togetherness two young people shared inside the cold of war.
After graduation from Cambridge, he darted off to the RAF to become an aviator like his father.
I’m mailing this photograph and note in the final days of my life. I knew you as a sensitive young lad and you may be reticent to open it fearing to relieve the past which I fully understand.
Life was kind permitting our union during times of mutual need but also cruel in keeping the three of us apart.
I hope our beautiful son will bring you happiness and remove any grief life may have dealt you.
Goodbye, my love.
Daniel’s American son followed him into the sky and lost to it but here was another son; a son born of survival and two lovers from different worlds. Although Bernard walked beneath ancient, privileged towers, he, too, flew inside the same sky that had both spared and punished three pilots; a husband, and a father and son. Daniel was gifted with a second son, and his grief was replaced with pride in two heroic sons born from two magnificent mothers.
Rita held Daniel’s hand which gripped tightly and suddenly let go. A sound from the heart monitor resembling the bells of the cable cars Daniel warmly spoke about signalling his long journey ended. Daniel’s cable car reached the top of California Street and waited for him to climb aboard with a nonstop flight to a grand reunion of loved ones; a beautiful extended family all with eyes towards the sky.
Jonathan Ferrini has published nearly one hundred short fiction stories and poems. He is the host and writer of the weekly “The Razor’s Ink Podcast” where he discusses movies, television, and music.
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