Most of what Danny knew about the Gusterfield had been told to him several years earlier by Santiago, although since then he had heard additional–and sometimes contradictory–details from Santiago’s staff.
The Gusterfield, or, as it is properly called, the William T. Gusterfield Automobile Identify Exchange Challenge, has, in the modern competitive era, been held on the evening of the first school day after the Feast of the Vision of Jerome Tidswell of Worcester, which usually falls in early January.
The Feast of the Vision of Jerome, which is not recognized as a holiday by the Catholic church, but only celebrated by a humble sect of automobile mechanics, dealers, and related mystics, commemorates Jerome’s vision of the Virgin Mary, which came to him early one Monday evening in January, after the first major snow storm of the season. As is the long-established tradition in Massachusetts, during the morning of the first commute after the first major snow storm each year approximately half of the driving populace, self-selected by a mysterious process that some call fate, and others call destiny, remember that they have snow tires stored in the back of their garage, and go in search of someone with an impact wrench and a hydraulic jack who, for a reasonable fee, will mount them on their vehicles. And thus it was that Jerome, exhausted after a thirteen-hour day of wrestling tires, was surprised by the sensation of the small hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up. Complete silence fell over the garage, even though Jerome’s partner, Jessie “Squeaky” Lynn was working in the adjacent bay, because good mechanics know that it is dangerous to work alone. Jerome turned to call to Squeaky, but stopped, astonished. She was there. She seemed to float a few inches above the floor and radiate a soft yellow light. Jerome was ready to chalk it up to a waking dream, brought on by the monotonous but physically and mentally exhausting work, but then she began to speak.
They had a brief conversation, and then she was gone. The glow faded, and Jerome heard Squeaky working again. Squeaky hadn’t seen or heard anything. Jerome shook his head, and then asked Squeaky to join him for a cup of coffee.
Jerome told Squeaky of his vision, and later that evening he also told his girlfriend, but he didn’t tell anyone else. Nevertheless, word began to spread of Jerome and his vision, until one bright day in April, a few months after the incident, Jerome was visited by three gentlemen from the Vatican.
Two of the men were young, perhaps in their thirties, and reminded Jerome of the secret service men he had seen on television protecting the President. They did not speak very much, but seemed extremely alert and aware of their surroundings. The third man was middle-aged. In manner, he reminded Jerome of the priests he had had as teachers in his days as a student at Immaculata High School. He spoke English well, but with an accent that Jerome could only identify as European. He did not think that the men were Italian.
The older man asked Jerome a few questions about what the Virgin Mary had said to Jerome, but he did not have many answers. It had been a short conversation. When he ran out of questions, Jerome told the older man what he had missed.
“She didn’t tell me about world events, or prophecies, or anything like that. What she told me was that she wished her son had given her grandchildren for her old age, and that she was disappointed that he’d been so absorbed in his career that he never came to visit her. It was very disappointing to her.”
The two younger men exchanged meaningful looks, eyes wide.
“And then she gave me this,” Jerome continued, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a miraculous medal on a thin silver chain. “She told me you’d come,” he said, handing the medal to the middle-aged priest, “and she told me to give this to you. She said that you should give it to your mother, immediately. She said your mother misses her little Nico. I’m guessing that that’s you.”
There were tears in the eyes of Father Nicholas as the three men left Jerome. Two days later, there were more tears as he visited his mother in the hospital of his home town in Austria, and returned to her the medal she had traded for food to feed her son during the turmoil after the great war. There were more tears two days later, when it was discovered that she has passed away in her sleep during the night.
As the Vision of Jerome is considered by some to be evidence of the divine, the Gusterfield is unquestionably profane, but both are joined by a certain element of undeniable grace.
The origins of the Gusterfield are the subject of much argument and controversy, but a central and widely accepted canon has emerged. Some time in the early Fall of 1996, Thomas Gusterfield, a junior mechanic in the city of Utica, New York, was working on the power window assembly of a Chrysler Town & Country minivan belonging to a pleasant and well-regarded elementary schoolteacher. In an accident whose exact nature is as contentious as it is irrelevant, Thomas, or possibly one of his coworkers, dropped either seven or nine 3/8-inch locking washers through the window gap and down into the open door assembly. Whether Thomas knew that this had happened before he reassembled the door and reinstalled the window is a question that only Thomas can honestly answer.
At the end of the day, the schoolteacher picked up her minivan, and, having proven to her own satisfaction that the window was working properly, drove home.
The next morning, the schoolteacher reappeared at the garage in a somewhat less than affable frame of mind. The minivan, she explained with the careful diction and patience of an annoyed schoolteacher, had a new problem. It rattled, and the rattle was tremendously annoying. It seemed to get worse with each bump in the road.
“It sounds like someone dropped a handful of change into a blender,” she asserted.
A test drive proved that her metaphor was adequate, although not precise. Dominic, the senior mechanic, voiced an opinion that it sounded more like dried pinto beans rattling around in a kettle, and Freddy, the cashier, could not be swayed from his position that 1/4-inch ball bearings must be involved somehow. Chuck, the owner, and perhaps the most worldly-wise of the staff, thought it sounded like a pair of belly dancers hip scarves tumble-drying on low heat. In the moment, nobody thought to question the provenance of these theories, and the stories behind them have, unfortunately, been lost forever.
“I don’t care what’s making the noise. I just want it to stop. You broke it; you fix it,” the schoolteacher summarized.
Many ideas were discussed. Few were considered worthy of deep consideration. Years later, Santiago had explained, some friendships have still not completely recovered from the stress of those arguments.
Because Danny was not a mechanic, and did not have a deep understanding or appreciation of the difficulties involved, Santiago had elided most of the detail about the strategies used in the various attempts to removed the washers, although he did stress that the mechanics were clever, competent and professional, and their painstaking taxonomy of approaches could be used, in his opinion, as the basis for a case whose careful study would benefit every mechanic working in the milieu of Chrysler minivans, if not the profession as a whole.
But nothing worked. The washers were impossible to locate or remove. It was as if the door contained a hidden oubliette for small washers.
At the end of the afternoon, in the golden hour of the day, the schoolteacher returned to the garage to find that no progress had been made. When the schoolteacher overheard the mechanics seriously debating whether supernatural forces might be involved, she interrupted them and refocused their attention on the problem with a few carefully-chosen words.
“I want my car fixed, and I don’t expect to pay for your screw-ups. Have it done tomorrow, or I’m taking it to another shop and I’m taking you to small claims court for whatever it costs, plus whatever else I can think of. I don’t care how you do it. Just do it.”
Dominic, the senior mechanic, sent his workers home to rest, but not before asking them to spend the evening wracking their brains for new ideas. It had been a long day, and tomorrow would be even longer, because they had lost so much time that day. Only Thomas Gusterfield remained behind, haunted by the feeling that he had overlooked something.
The next morning, an exhausted Thomas called the schoolteacher and told her that her minivan was ready to be picked up. She arrived shortly thereafter, gave the minivan a test drive, pronounced it fixed, and drove off.
Exactly how the mystery of how Thomas had solved the problem was revealed to his coworkers is a point of impossible, endless debate, but what was revealed is a matter of agreement.
In the small hours of the morning, Thomas, having thought of an experiment he wanted to try, found himself sleepily preparing to disassemble the door handle assembly of the wrong minivan–another Town & Country that had been left overnight.
“It’s not that the two minivans were that similar,” Santiago had explained, “It’s that nobody cares about the difference. Minivans are not personal vehicles. They are anonymous. The differences between them are ignored or assumed to be unintentional.”
Thomas immediately understood the implication of his mistake, and the rest of the idea came quickly.
Thomas carefully exchanged the contents of the two minivans, including the ignition switches and keyless entry systems, and license plates. It required great attention to detail. After reprogramming the radio stations and updating the vehicle inspection histories and stickers, he felt confident that his deception would work.
The success of the exchange depended, as deceptions often do, on personal knowledge of the owner of each minivan. While the schoolteacher was intolerant of noises, the owner of the second minivan, a middle-manager at a local canning company named Laurie Jensen, might be described in the opposite terms. She was intolerant of quiet. She liked to listen to music while she drove, usually at the maximum sustained volume achievable by her vehicle. It was not an exaggeration to say that her arrival was anticipated long before her car was visible.
Laurie Jensen drove her minivan for years before changes in her musical tastes permitted the rattle to be noticed, and by then Chuck had been able to have prepared a suitable long-term solution. In the meanwhile, the story of Thomas Gusterfield slowly spread through the community of mechanics, until eventually the idea of basing a competitive sport on the exchange of automobile identities was developed, refined, and codified.
Thomas Gusterfield, however, never competed in the competition that bears his name. Not long after the events of the story, Thomas left his position in Utica, and moved somewhere out west. Nobody seemed to know where he had gone, or whether he was even a mechanic any more. Not even his parents knew his whereabouts.
As Santiago told him this, Danny half suspected that his leg was being pulled expertly, although Santiago was not the kind of person to take any joy from a joke at the expense of a friend or customer, and so he thought carefully before answering when Santiago ended his story with a question.
“Now, Danny, I would like to test your powers of observation. Did you notice anything about the story of Thomas Gusterfield that struck you as unusual or inconsistent? Some missing detail?”
Danny did not hesitate, because there had been something about the story that had seemed out of place.
“The schoolteacher. What was her name? All of the other people you mentioned in the story had names–even though the names were not really relevant.”
Santiago smiled. “Very good. Very good. Most people do not notice that, especially mechanics. It is a point of professional discretion that customers are not normally named in such stories.”
“But you mentioned the name of the other customer–Laurie Jensen.”
“Yes. I thought perhaps a clue would be necessary.”
“So, you don’t really know the name of the other customer?”
“Well, in this case I do. But it is irrelevant to the story.”
“But you said you gave me a clue. You wanted me to notice.”
“Yes, but I was not expecting the conversation to unfold so inelegantly. Now I am a bit unprepared.” Santiago shrugged.
“The thing that most people notice is that Thomas left. He left very soon after the time of the story. But why? That is the question most people ask. Perhaps it is a symptom of the entire story being bullshit–or perhaps there were further events? What do you think?”
“You told me that my observation about the schoolteacher’s anonymity was good. Therefore perhaps these two things are related.”
“Yes, very good again.” Santiago paused. “I think in a moment you will understand the collective shame many of my peers feel about the Gusterfield, and the reason why Thomas left the area so soon after.”
Santiago collected his thoughts. Danny gave him time.
“Danny, this is why I hate the Gusterfield. It is a terrible thing to deceive a customer, even for a harmless reason. But it is even worse… The name of the schoolteacher is Anna Gusterfield, and Thomas Gusterfield is her youngest son.”
