Sketch: Ben Nash, 1932

The story of a man and his remarkable recovery – and encounter – with the President of Nash Motors, a story of kindness and wonder.

(Note: This story was the fifth character sketch adapted from my novel Hiram Falls that was presented to live audiences by the Vermont Stage Company as part of its annual ‘Winter Tales’ production. Audio narration by the author.)

Ben Nash looks up from the pit, from beneath the car, and doesn’t know what to answer, doesn’t really understand the question even.

He knows Richard Foster’s face. Has seen it before. He thinks. Reminded, he remembers that Mr. Foster is the new owner of the newspaper, the North Country Gazette, the paper that arrives at his garage every Thursday that he opens, at lunch, to look at the photographs because he can’t make sense of the words.

Reminded, he remembers that Mr. Foster is from far away, from a large city. Reminded, he remembers that Mr. Foster has someone in the press room deliver end rolls to him, free giant rolls of white paper to spread out on his workbench so he can carefully lay each part, each nut and bolt and spring and gasket and washer onto the paper in the order that he removes them so he knows how to put it back together again.

And here is Mr. Richard Foster the newspaper man standing above the pit looking down at him.

“You want to do what?”

“I want to do a story about you, Ben. I want to do a story about your recovery, about your coming back to work. A holiday story, Ben. A story that will help people feel good.

“Would you like to do that, Ben?”

Ben doesn’t know what to say.

“I guess so. But you should ask Vera.”

“I already have. She says it’s fine with her, Ben.”

“Okay, then.”

In truth, Vera Nash had been a little cautious about it.

“He forgets things, Richard. Sometimes he doesn’t remember something he said a minute before. And some things he says don’t make any sense. Like the man who keeps visiting him.”

And that’s when Vera told Richard Foster the story about Ben seeing The Stranger, the man no one knows, the man only Ben sees. Or so it seems.

Vera tells Richard this:

“Ben says the man comes and visits off and on. Says he appears out of nowhere and they chat and then the man asks him questions about his past that Ben can’t remember. One time, Ben said he thinks the man tells is trying to find his own past.

“The first time it happened, Ben came home all rattled, said it scared him. But when I asked Lloyd about it, you know Lloyd Libby his helper, Lloyd said he didn’t see a thing. Just heard Ben scream, went in and Ben was just standing there his wrench on the floor.

“The more times he told me he saw the man, he calls him Mr. Stranger now, the more worried I got, so I took him down to his doctors in Burlington. All they could say was ‘the mind is a mysterious thing,’ and said his having an imaginary friend wasn’t that uncommon with an injury like he had. They gave him some pills but they made him all drowsy so he stopped taking them. I don’t blame him.

“While I’ve come to ignore his stories about the stranger man, I am not sure your readers would understand Richard. Some might even make fun of him.”

So Richard Foster doesn’t mention anything to Ben about Mr. Stranger, and it doesn’t come up. Until the end of his interview.

Richard had spent several hours with Ben, watching, listening, asking him a few questions, mostly about cars, so’s Ben doesn’t get all agitated and frustrated like he does with some of Richard’s other questions.

In the afternoon, after Lloyd Libby has gone home, Ben walks over to his workbench and stops, staring at the far end.

“Afternoon,” Ben says to the edge of the bench.

Richard Foster is momentarily confused. Then he remembers.

“He said good afternoon to you, Mr. Foster,” Ben says.

Richard Foster doesn’t know what to say. So he says nothing.

“Don’t you see him? He’s right there, leaning up against the bench.”

“He can’t see me, Mr. Ben Nash. He can’t hear me either,” the stranger says.

Richard mutters something about needing glasses, and Ben looks at Mr. Foster and then back at the end of his work bench.

“I know. I know.” Ben says.

“You know what, Ben?” Richard asks.

“He told me that other people can’t see him. Can’t hear him either. At least not usually.”

“But you can, Ben.”

“Yes I can. But Lloyd doesn’t. And Vera doesn’t believe me.”

Ben turns back to his bench, to the pieces of the carburetor all laid out nice and neat on the white newsprint.

“This is a from that 1918 Nash Quad over there in the second bay,” Ben says. “It’s a beauty. War surplus. Clyde…Clyde…Oh dang, can’t think of his last name.”

“Emerson.”

“Yes, Emerson. Clyde Emerson. Clyde Emerson. He said the thing hasn’t run right for months and last time he ran it he lost the top two gears. So I’ll tackle the transmission tomorrow.”

Richard pauses, then asks: “Is the man still here, Ben?”

“Nope. Said he’d maybe come back later.”

…

There is no mention of Mr. Stranger in Richard’s front page story on Thanksgiving Day. The headline is simple: “Ben Nash: Miracle Mechanic Returns to Work.”

It starts like this, though Ben has to have Vera read it to him:

“A year and a half ago Ben Nash, owner of Hiram Falls’ Nash Motor Cars & Repairs, came within an eyelash of death in an accident on the River Road. For months he lay in a coma at Fanny Allen Hospital in Burlington. After he awoke, he had to relearn everything: how to see, how to hear, how to speak. Physical therapists helped him learn how to walk and eat and use his hands.

 “Now Ben Nash is back at it, fixing cars and trucks with such speed and skill that it is a wonder.

“‘Ben amazes me,’ said Dr. Robert Fowler, one of Ben’s first customers when Ben returned to work two months ago.

“‘His head injury was life-threatening,” Dr. Fowler said. “It is a wonder that he survived. That he was in a coma that long, that he was able to re-learn all those things we take for granted — how to think, how to communicate, how even to get dressed — that’s just amazing.

“But that he was able to return to being a first-class mechanic, well that’s nothing short of a miracle.”

The article goes on to describe how customers drive in, and Ben asks them to keep it idled or to step on the gas or to take him for a drive down the hill and back and by the time they return to the garage he knows exactly what is wrong and how to fix it.

“‘He’s got a sixth sense,’ Clyde Emerson told The Gazette. ‘He just got that Quad of mine up and running inside a week. I’d had it in the barn for a year. He rebuilt the engine, the transmission. He said he would have done it quicker if he’d been able to get parts quicker.

“‘I simply don’t know how he does it.’”

Everyone in Hiram Falls reads the story. Everyone in Cumberland County reads the story. And people start to wave to him as he and Vera walk to and from the garage each day. Some even stop him on the sidewalk and chat. It is almost like the reading about it, learning what really happened to his brain, having things out in the open like that made it alright, somehow, to talk about it or even talk to with Ben himself, which most people hadn’t had the nerve to do. Now they don’t feel all squirmy when they bump into him.

Ben likes the attention. But sometimes they ask questions that confuse him. At least now people in town understand why he suddenly says goodbye and walks away.

The story is picked up by the Montpelier Bureau of the Associated Press and is soon carried in newspapers all over the country. When it appears in the Kenosha News in Wisconsin it is read by Charles Nash, chairman of Nash Motors Company.

 “Get Richard Foster on the phone,” he tells his assistant. “And find out how many of our cars this guy has sold.”

His assistant returns a short time later. “Mr. Foster is on line one. And that Vermont fellow has sold 38 cars in three years.”

“Thirty-eight? Good gosh. In Vermont? And for almost two of those years he’s been recovering from a car crash?”

Charles Nash sees an opportunity. He speaks with Richard Foster. He speaks with his staff. A visit is planned.

So in the second week of December, they set out in a caravan: A large truck hauling two Nash models and a Rambler. Following the truck is a Nash Ambassador wagon filled with a photographer and two executives. Charles Nash and a few executives are chauffeured in the lead in a 1932 Nash 1080 with spoke wheels and whitewalls. They drive all the way from Wisconsin, stopping at other Nash dealerships along the way.

“A good way to spread some cheer,” Charles Nash tells his staff. Everyone is glad to get out of the office, out of Wisconsin. Everything slows down during the holidays anyways.

When they finally get to Hiram Falls, they drive right up to Ben’s garage. Ben is confused by it. A bit frightened. He is glad Vera is there. She reassures him. She’d been telling Ben about it for the last several days.

“The head of Nash Motors Company? Coming to see me?” Ben had said again that morning. “Why?”

But Ben had forgotten.

Charles Nash hops out of the car, his slick city shoes slipping a bit in the snow, and introduces himself. He extends his hand to Ben who is frantically wiping his hands with his blue rag and then on his overalls before taking Charles Nash’s hand and giving it a firm shake.

“Nash, huh?” Ben says. “Are we related?”

“Could be, Ben, could be.”

They chit chat a bit and then Charles Nash tells Ben he wants him to diagnose some cars he’s brought along. On cue, the three cars are rolled off the truck; two are left idling, the third won’t start. Charles Nash and the entourage watch as Ben Nash circles each car, listens, opens the hoods and then reaches in the driver’s side windows and shuts them off. He tries to start the third car and then gets out. The photographer has been going wild.

“You’re taking a lot of pictures,” Ben says. He turns to Charles Nash: “You came all the way from, where was it again?”

“Wisconsin.”

“You came all the way from Wisconsin with three broken cars? Just to see me?”

“Yep.”

“Well then.”

Ben tells Charles Nash and the men and woman with him what is wrong with each car, what he would have to do to each to get them running right and how he’ll do it.

“I may need a few parts though,” Ben says, looking at Lloyd Libby.

“Don’t worry about that, Ben,” says one of the Nash executives. “We have all the parts you should need right here in the truck.”

“Imagine that,” Ben says, smiling. “Maybe you should stay. Save Lloyd all those trips to St. Albans.” The group laughs.

“Well we’ll leave you to it,” Charles says and the entourage drive down to have lunch The Hiram Falls Tavern.

When they return, Ben is out front, each car back out on the freshly plowed lot, all fixed.

Ben is smiling. “Where’d you eat?”

“The Tavern.”

“That’s too bad. You should have gone to Herb’s Diner.” Ben walks over to the cars and says, “I got each of these cars running as smooth as a flat piece of slate. Have to say, though, they were tricky. Now I know why you brought them to me.”

Charles Nash starts each one of them up. He opens the hoods and listens to each. His engineers huddle alongside of him.

“What do you think?” Ben asks.

“I think they sound perfect,” Charles Nash says. He then lets Ben in on a secret: His own mechanics had done something to each of the cars so that they weren’t working right.

“We do this all the time when we’re hiring new mechanics,” Charles Nash says. “It’s a way to see through all their bullshit to determine whether they actually know what they’re doing.

“But for you we made the problems in these cars as tricky as we could. And you figured them all out, Ben. Just like that.”

Ben doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why anyone would make a car not work right. On purpose. After he says that to Charles Nash, Charles shrugs and puts a hand on Ben’s shoulder.

“Ben Nash you may be the best mechanic I’ve ever run into.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. But they’re running good now,” Ben says, his smile betraying, in the corner of his lips, his lingering confusion.

They start to say their goodbyes, but Ben tells them they can’t get on the road unless they taste the best pie in Vermont.

“It’s Thursday,” Ben says, beaming, “Lloyd told me. And that’s the day Lavender Libby bakes wild blueberry pies for the Diner.”

So they all walk down the hill to Herb’s and sidle up to the counter and fill a couple of booths and eat every last piece of young Lavender Libby’s wild blueberry pies and with some strong coffee that braces them for the walk back up to the garage.

In the cool, crisp air, they say their goodbyes and Ben watches as first the two cars and the truck head down the hill and out of sight. Vera gives Ben a hug.

Two weeks later, Ben is featured on the January cover of Nash Motor’s monthly magazine. The company sends him a check, ten copies and a note from Charles Nash, President of the Nash Motors Company.

Vera reads it to him.

“Many thanks, Ben. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a trip so much and you were right, that blueberry pie was magnificent. But so are you, Ben. So are you. And I wish you and Vera Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Each of the next four years, Ben will get a Christmas card and a note from Charles Nash and Vera will read them to him. Over and over. And Ben will beam, and then forget.

In the 1936 card, Charles Nash will write, “I’m the most common cuss you’ll ever meet, Ben Nash, and I’ve had my fill of corporate life.” He tells Ben he’s merging the company with Kelvinator, the refrigerator people, and that he and his wife are retiring to California. He thanks Ben for all his hard work and wishes him well.

“I’ll never forget you, Ben. My best to Vera.”

Ben has Vera write him right back and tell him that before he goes he should figure out how to make a tiny Kelvinator refrigerator, tiny enough to fit in a car so driving in the summer could be nice and cool. And before he leaves for California, Charles Nash does just that. And in the spring, Ben receives a nice fat check for the idea. But he never hears from Charles Nash again.

Ben doesn’t remember that.

Vera does. And when she sees Ben get a little down or confused or anytime around the holidays, Vera tells him the story of how Charles Nash, president of the Nash Motors, came all the way from Kenosha, Wisconsin, to see what a great mechanic Ben is.

Ben likes that story. And it keeps him warm for days, even after he forgets it.

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