Chapter 38

“Yeah, okay. What about him?”

“His name was Bob-Gunnar Meyerberger.”

“And he made fun of you?”

I laughed.

“Okay,” Thumper said. “And…?”

“And he drove this Cadillac, this Coupe de Ville. This land yacht the size of our high school, and that car was his baby. Man, he loved that car.”

“You mean that car?” Thumper asked, catching on and pointing across the street.

“That’s it.”

The Coupe de Ville’s great golden door swung open, and the wall of meat that was Bob-Gunnar Meyerberger unfolded himself onto the pavement. The shocks responded just the way I had always teased him about, and the undercarriage of the car raised up about two feet higher when Bob-Gunnar fully emerged; a one-man clown car.

“Big guy,” Thumper deadpanned.

“Biggest in Iowa,” I told him. “All-State defensive back all four years.”

Thumper slid me a glance. “He doesn’t strike me as your type.”

Fair enough. “Yeah, well, pickings were pretty slim back then.”