Not primer anymore. Red, a deep, glossy, impossible red, the red of a fire engine in a children's book, so many coats of it, wet-sanded and rubbed out by hand, that the bulb over the bench floated in the hood like a small moon in a pond. The chrome was back on the bumpers. The grille had its galloping pony. The windows were in. He bent and looked through the driver's window and saw black vinyl seats, new, the seams still stiff, and a dashboard with its gauges in, and the wood-rimmed steering wheel that he and Frank had found at a swap meet in Columbus in 1973 and argued about for an entire drive home.
"He painted it two summers ago," Lena said behind him. "Candyapple Red. He did it himself, in the backyard, in a tent he made out of shower curtains and two-by-fours. Mr. Kowalski called the township about the fumes. Twice." She came up beside him, not close. "The engine runs. He used to come out on Sunday mornings and start it and just sit there, listening to it idle. My mother wouldn't even come out to look."
"What's left?" Danny said. His voice came out strange.
"I don't know. He said it needed you." She nodded at the car. "I don't know what that means. I don't know anything about cars. I threw a wrench once and that was the end of my career."
Danny walked slowly around the Mustang, all the way around it, running his fingers an inch above the paint without touching it. When he got to the front, he unlatched the hood and lifted it, and stood looking down into the engine bay for a long time. It was immaculate, the way everything Frank touched ended up immaculate. The 289 sat in its cradle clean enough to eat off, the valve covers painted Ford blue, the hoses new, the battery new. But the steering column, where it came through the firewall, ended in nothing. The steering box was missing. The linkage was there and the tie rods were there and the steering box itself, the heavy cast-iron heart of the thing that turned the wheel into a turn, was gone, and where it ought to have been there was a clean, empty space, with the bolt holes waiting.
"There," Danny said quietly. "That's what's left."
"Is that a lot?"
"It's a weekend," he said. "Maybe two. If you've got the part." He looked over at the bench, at the empty silhouette on the pegboard. "He was going to wait for me to put it in. That's what he meant. He did every single other thing on this car alone for twelve years and he left the steering for me."