He said, “We’ll all be kilt.”

When they started to take the curve, the Model-T was going nearly fifty-five—and then just as they got there, all of a sudden it slowed down as if it knowed what it was doing, and went around the curve as gentle as a day-old kitten. Uncle Benny had eased his foot off the accelerator. Doc drawed a breath again.

It’s a wonder to me that trip didn’t make Doc a nervous wreck. On every straightaway the Ford would rare back on its haunches and stretch out like a greyhound. Every curve they come to, it would go to it like a jack-rabbit. Then just as the sweat would pour down Doc’s face and the drops would splash on the wheel, and he’d gather hisself together ready to jump, the Ford would slow down. It was a hot spring night, but Uncle Benny says Doc’s teeth were chattering. The Model-T made the last mile lickety-brindle with the gas at the hand-throttle shut off entirely—and it coasted down in front of Will’s garage and of its own free will come to a dead stop.

It was nine o’clock at night. Will was just closing up and I had locked the candy and cigarette counter and was waiting for him. There was a whole bunch of the men and boys around, like always, because the garage is the last place in Oak Bluff to put the lights out. Doc climbed out of the Ford trembling like a dish of custard. Uncle Benny eased out after him and I looked at him and right away I knowed he’d been up to mischief.

Doc said, “I don’t know how he done it—but dogged if he wasn’t telling the truth when he said he had that blankety-blank Model-T trained to carry him home when he ain’t fitten.”

Will asked, “How come?” and Doc told us. Will looked at me and begun to chuckle and we knowed what Uncle Benny had done to him. I think maybe I would of let Uncle Benny get away with it, but Will couldn’t keep it.

“Come here, Doc,” he said. “Here’s your training.”

I thought the bunch would laugh Doc out of town. He swelled up like a toadfish and he got in his car without a word and drove away.

It’s a wonderful thing just to set down and figure out how many different ways there are to be crazy. We never thought of Uncle Benny as being really crazy. We’d say, “Uncle Benny’s cutting the fool again,” and we’d mean he was just messing around some sort of foolishness like a daggone young un. We figured his was what you might call the bottom kind of craziness. The next would be the half-witted. The next would be the senseless. The next would be what the colored folks call “mindless.” And clear up at the top would be what you’d call cold-out crazy. With all his foolishness, we never figured Uncle Benny was cold-out crazy.