Free How To Steal a Car by Pete Hautman Page B

think I can afford it,” I said. Not that it made any difference, since there was no way I could bring a dog home, but it bugged me that he didn’t offer to give me one for free, especially since I distinctly remembered him offering me one. At least I thought at the time that was what he meant. Maybe if his mom hadn’t yelled down the stairs the dog would have been for free. Even though there was no way I could have taken it.
    “I think my dad would sell you Limpy for less.”
    Limpy was the one with the crooked foot.
    “No thank you,” I said.
    I had been looking at the photo of my grandma Kate a lot. I tried to imagine Grandpa John holding the camera and saying “Smile!” But the girl in the photo had only a sleepy half smile. You could see a little of her teeth, bright white against her dark lips and tanned skin.
    Her cutoff jeans were tight and frayed, and she had a pale L-shaped scar on her right thigh. Or it might have been a birthmark. Her halter top looked like a T-shirt that she had taken scissors to. Kate—her name had been Kate Unger back then—had probably left her home in Michigan wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and maybe a jacket, but by the timeshe met Grandpa John in Monterey she’d cut off and thrown away half her clothes. She had been just seventeen—I looked up her birth date and figured it out—seventeen years old on May 10, 1967. She’d taken off for California the summer after her junior year.
    In the photo she looked much older than seventeen and very erotic, like maybe right after Grandpa John snapped the picture they’d had sex right there in the middle of the day on the beach.
    The Volkswagen in the picture was faded green—or maybe pink, or pinkish green, if there is such a color—with a yellow hood. I wasn’t sure if the two-tone effect was intentional, or if it was a junkyard patch job, or even if it was their car. The words in the margin of the photo— Kate—Venice Beach—1967 —were maddening in that they did not give the month. The photo could have been taken anytime after the Monterey Pop Festival, which was in June—I looked that up too. My dad was born April 17, 1968, so Kate must have gotten pregnant in July. But when exactly had the photo been taken?
    It was driving me crazy.
    I realized as I was dialing that I had never called Grandpa John on the phone before. I think that was because I was afraid Grandma Kate would answer and I’d have to listen toher raspy, whispery whining. I know that makes me a bad grandkid. I was so bad I was even a little bit glad she was gone. But I would have loved to have met the girl in the photo.
    “Hello?” Grandpa John sounded angry.
    “Grandpa? It’s me, Kelleigh.”
    “Kelleigh!” His voice changed. “Is everything okay?”
    “Everything’s fine. How are you?”
    “Staying busy. That’s what they tell me I should be doing. I was just boxing up some of Kate’s clothes. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in going through them?”
    “Uh, sure…” I imagined box after box of saggy oldlady clothes. And then I imagined a pair of cutoff denim shorts. She might have saved them. Grandma Kate had been a little pack-rattish. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
    “I’ll set ’em aside for you. Anything you don’t want, which I imagine will be most of it, I’ll give to the church ladies for their sale. When are you coming up for a visit?”
    “I don’t know. Dad’s been sort of busy trying to get this rapist out of jail.”
    Grandpa John bellowed laughter. “Who’da thought a couple of peacenik hippies would end up raising a kid like that!”
    For a second I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me or my dad; then I figured out that it was Grandpa John and Kate who were the “peacenik hippies.”
    “You going to law school too, Kelleigh?”
    “Actually, I’m thinking of becoming a criminal. To give the lawyers something to do.”
    He laughed again.
    “Hey, thanks for sending me that picture,” I said.
    “Your