CHAPTER FOUR- Baa, Baa, Black Jeep

A/N: I love Joey. Sure, Australians really aren't that incoherent, but Joey's a rare breed, and since I like him so much, he'll probably be appearing again. Just a head's up. My friend says he should say "fair dinkum" a lot. Any Aussies out there want to explain what that means?

Summary: Everyone has had one. The car that you lovingly cared for, bought with your own money… sure, it was $500.00 on the side of the road and let out clouds of yellow smoke that may or may not have been poisonous, but it was yours. This is a story about that car.


"I had a homicidal car once. 1990 Jeep Wrangler, the Sahara edition. That's the one that's got beige seats and is khaki colored on the outside? Man, I loved that thing. I treated her right and she done me wrong.

The tape deck was busted, so I had to lug around an adaptor everywhere I went, and the rivets broke one day, so I had to keep the bikini top on after that. Let me tell you, that was a pain. Every time it looked like it might rain I had to put it up in the garage, and if I was on the road, it was all over.

Oh, right! The air conditioning broke once when I was in Houston during the summer. It was miserable. And then the gas tank stuck, so that it would work fine until it got to half a tank, then it would stick there until you got down to a fourth of a tank, and then suddenly plummet.

She would start acting like the transmission was going out every time I took her over 55 miles, you know, lurching forward and stuff? And the only way I could get it to go 70 was if I was downhill with a good wind and a blessing from a priest. My mom made me carry a little St. Christopher pendant whenever I walked out the door. She would look at me, look out the window at the Jeep, then back at me with this worried expression, then cross herself. My parents kept trying to offer to buy me a brand new car, but I wanted to be able to say I had paid for my car with my own money, even if it killed me, which, actually, it might have because as you pulled out of the driveway, she would die in the middle of the turn, blocking the entire road, and you thought you were going to die, because there were cars coming at you from both ways and neither were slowing down, and you'd be trying to start her, hoping you don't flood the engine, and whisper, "C'mon, baby, c'mon, I'll give you gas if you don't kill me, please, darling," until she worked.

Man, I loved that car."

There was a moment of silence, then one of the men at the table who had been staring in horrorat the person talking finally spoke.

"And you drove this thing?"


Special thanks to: Kam, Out of Phase, Saira ("And I totally understood every word Joey said" officially makes you my hero), three graces, Espiritu, and Dr. Dredd for reviewing!