Billy Gonzalez And the Manifold Sorcery

by Jeff Baker

Billy Gonzalez stood in the corner of the garage and sighed. It didn’t feel like that long ago he was babysitting his little cousin Martin and taking him to ballgames. Now the kid was working on his own car in the family garage. Billy smiled to himself. He could check fluids and change a tire, but Martin was rebuilding an engine. With used parts he’d gotten from junk shops. He’d gotten a deal on a car that “didn’t run worth crap” even if it looked nice. Pretty soon it was probably going to be the best thing on the road.

“Hey, Billy,” Martin said looking up from the engine. “Can you hold this thing right here for me?”

“Sure,” Billy said, grabbing what looked like a pipe and holding it steady. Martin grumbled and swore under his breath as he tried adjusting a metal band around one end of the pipe.

“Damn!” Martin swore. “I’m gonna have to re-do the manifold. This pipe is cracked.” He wiped his hands on a rag which he tossed on the garage floor.

“Hey, I gotta go use the restroom,” Martin said. “Make sure nobody steals the car, okay?”

Billy waved as Martin went into the house.

“Not a lot of chance of that,” Billy muttered, glancing at the car’s wheels which didn’t have tires on them as well as the front bumper which was laying on the ground.

There was a whistle of air. Billy jumped back from the engine as a cloud of grey steam poured out of the dirty manifold. He was about to yell for Martin when the steam swirled to the back of the garage and formed into a tall, muscular man wearing nothing but an earring. He was bald and the same grey color as the steam. And he was real. Billy gave his abs and six-pack the once-over.

“Why the hell does the weird stuff always happen to me?” Billy grumbled.

“I am the Haunter of this place,” the man said. “Imprisoned by the Great King and his Sacred Seal. Doomed to only emerge briefly as I wander through the centuries.”

“Uh, are you going to grant me a wish or something?” Billy asked, wondering how it got in that car engine.

“I do not deal in trifles,” the man said. “I grant wisdom. Wisdom such as the Great King had.”

Billy had read his Granddad’s 130 year-old copy of The Arabian Nights, so he figured he knew who the Great King was.

“Where is he who summoned me by his ownership of my current prison, and his seeking of knowledge?” the man asked.

“Uh, he’s on the toilet,” Billy said, wondering how he was going to explain all this to Martin.

“Then let this be my decree,” the man said, his deep voice beginning to echo. “Let the wisdom be now imparted to my Liberator. Let it go forth and be appropriate.”

The man bowed low.

“And now, I must go. I have a brief time to view the world before I return to limbo and another prison to await another Liberator and brief freedom. Repentance! Repentance! Oh, Prophet of God!”

And the man vanished, like evaporating steam.

Billy stared. What wisdom had the genie—there was no other word for it—been talking about?

“Oh, man!” Martin said as he walked back into the garage. “It just hit me! While I was washing my hands! How to fix this! How to fix all of these! I mean, I’ve been working on cars for years and I just realized…”

Billy smiled as Martin went on. Definitely Martin was going to open up his own auto shop someday. Probably a chain of them. If he needed a name for them, Billy would suggest “Manifold Sorcery.”

—end—