Battle of the Bulge

1960. I’m 15 watching Dad size up the used car dealer,
not a stalwart man but he does wear a vest, smokes Luckies
like my old man. We walk his lot; he carries a chamois

to buff the chrome trim of each car we pass until we
come upon a red ’57 Ford Galaxie. The guy opens
the front door, waves Dad inside. He slides the seat back,

takes the key, fires it up. The exhaust is a little blue,
but the interior, immaculate. Even the ash tray is clean;
I’ve never seen that before.

The guy offers to sacrifice the car, with seventy thousand
on the odometer, for a grand and a half. My old man scoffs
at first but then the guy offers a ten percent veteran’s discount,

which allows him to mention he was in the Battle of the Bulge,
spent a winter in a foxhole outside Bastogne. Young
as I am I can tell he’s sold a shitload of cars by introducing

that little fact, true or not. It’s obvious Dad believes him
and figures even if the car is a little overpriced General Eisenhower
would say this guy has earned the sale. Now, my old man

had a rough time in his Navy hitch, suicidal from malaria while
guarding the Panama Canal from U-boats, sent home early with
a general discharge that some folk look upon with contempt.

In the office Dad glances at me, trying to gauge if I
understand that the check he is about to write is part of a
far-off battle he will be fighting the rest of his life.

He seals the deal for the Ford and as we drive away I can see
the salesman throw his feet up on his desk and clasp his hands
over his belly, obviously no longer even thinking about that

foxhole, probably doing some mental math to see how close he
is now to a speedboat of his own he’ll name Battle of the Bilge.

*

Tom Barlow is an American writer whose work has appeared in many journals including Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, Hobart, Tenemos, ONE ART, Redivider, The New York Quarterly, The Modern Poetry Quarterly, and many more. He writes because he finds conversation calls for so much give and take, and he considers himself more of a giver. See tombarlowauthor.com.