Dolan's Cadillac Read Online Free PDF Page B

more I felt like a man who has. jumped out of the bay of a B-52 with a parasol in his hand instead of
    a parachute on his back.
    I carried the gasoline can over to the compressor and poured it into the tank. I had to use my left hand to curl the
    fingers of my right around the handle of the compressor's starter-cord. When I pulled, more blisters broke, and as the
    compressor started up, I saw thick pus dripping out of my fist.
    Never make it.
    Please darling.
    I walked over to the jackhammer and started it again.
    The first hour was the worst, and then the steady pounding of the jackhammer combined with the Empirin seemed to
    numb everything - my back, my hands, my head. I finished cutting out the last block of asphalt by eleven. It was time
    to see how much I remembered of what Tinker had told me about jump-starting road equipment.
    I went staggering and flapping back to my van and drove a mile and a half down the road to where the road
    construction was going on. I saw my machine almost at once: a big Case-Jordan bucket-loader with a
    grapple-and-pincers attachment on the back. $135,000 worth of rolling stock. I had driven a Caterpillar for Blocker, but
    this one would be pretty much the same.
    I hoped.
    I climbed up into the cab and looked at the diagram printed on the head of the stick-shift. It looked just the same as
    the one on my Cat. I ran the pattern once or twice. There was some resistance at first because some grit had found its
    way into the gearbox - the guy who drove this baby hadn't put down his sand-flaps and his foreman hadn't checked
    him. Blocker would have checked. And docked the driver five bucks, long weekend or not.
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    His eyes. His half-admiring, half-contemptuous eyes. What would he think of an errand like this?
    Never mind. This was no time to be thinking of Harvey Blocker; this was a time to be thinking of Elizabeth. And Dolan.
    There was a piece of burlap on the steel floor of the cab. I lifted it, looking for the key. There was no key there, of
    course.
    Tink's voice in my mind: Shit, a kid -could jump-start one of these babies, whitebread. Ain't nothin to it. At least a
    car's got a ignition lock on it - new ones do, anyway. Look here. No, not where the key goes, you ain't got no key,
    why you want to look where the key goes? Look under here. See these wires hangin down?
    I looked now and saw the wires hanging down, looking just as they had when Tinker pointed them out to me: red,
    blue, yellow, and green. I pared the insulation from an inch of each and then took a twist of copper wire from my back
    pocket.
    Okay, whitebread, lissen up 'cause we maybe goan give Q and A later, you dig me? You gonna wire the red and the
    green. You won't forget that, 'cause
    it's like Christmas. That takes care of your ignition.
    I used my wire to hold the bare places on the red and green wires of the Case-Jordan's ignition together. The desert
    wind hooted, thin, like the sound of someone blowing over the top of a soda bottle. Sweat ran down my neck and into
    my shirt, where it caught and tickled.
    Now you just got the blue and the yellow. You ain't gonna wire em; you just gonna touch em together and you
    gonna make sho you ain't touchin no bare wire wither own self when you do it neither, 'less you wanna make some
    hot electrified water in your jockeys, m'man. The blue and the yellow the ones turn the starter. Off you go. When you
    feel like you had enough of a joyride, you just pull the red and green wires apart. Like turnin off the key you don't
    have.
    I touched the blue and yellow wires together. A big yellow spark jumped up and I recoiled, striking the back of my
    head on one of the metal posts at, the rear of the cab. Then I leaned forward and touched them together again., The
    motor turned over, coughed, and the bucket-loader took a sudden spasmodic lurch forward. I was thrown into the
    rudimentary dashboard, the left side of my