Black Oldsmobile By Tom Coombe Matt drove to work every morning on Route 63, a two-lane road that snaked along the river through the Pennsylvania wilderness. He left his house around 7:40 to get to his office at 8:30, spent 8 hours writing website copy, then drove back home on Route 631. It was his first office job after 15 years of working at a series of slowly collapsing newspapers. On a good day, he could do the drive from his house in Riverton to his office in Hackmanville in around 40 minutes. But most days took longer. He’d find himself stuck behind a construction truck, a horse trailer, or a just someone who felt nervous driving the windy, narrow road. Matt learned to accept these slow drivers as part of the commute. Then the black Oldsmobile showed up. It was a Friday in late March. Matt had stopped at the traffic light a few blocks from his house, the intersection where Third Street and Philadelphia Road and Route 631 all came together. He saw the black Oldsmobile coming from the opposite direction, ready to make a left turn as he was about to turn right. Matt didn’t know cars, but he knew this was a Delta 88. His friend Craig had one in high school, a great warship of a car that seemed to take up the entire road. A green left turn arrow gave the black car the right of way, and it turned onto Route 631 before Matt could make the right. Matt groaned as he saw the massive Olds puttering down the hill leading out of the city.
He wished — the way he always did when this happened — that he had left the house sooner. He pulled into traffic behind the black Oldsmobile, hoping its destination was close by. Matt had a 27-mile commute. This stretch of Route 631 was two lanes all the way, with nowhere to pass. The black car was old but polished. The only sign of age was its license plate, dirty and caked in rust. Matt could only make out the second and third letters. “HI.” “Hi yourself,” he said. He looked at the clock: 7:55. Sometimes, when a slow car got on the road, and a number of other cars lined up behind it, the first car would pull over to let other drivers pass. But Matt saw no one in his rear view mirror, even though it was a busy time of day. They kept driving, the black Oldsmobile never topping 25 mph. In the other lane, traffic heading north seemed heavier than ever, drivers speeding by every 10 seconds. It was 8 o’clock now. If the car didn’t pull over and turn off soon, Matt would be late for work. No one expected him to be at his desk the minute the clock hit 8:30, but he hated being the last to arrive. 8:05. He realized he was almost bumper to bumper with the big black car. If the Olds braked now, he’d slam into it. He took a deep breath and slowed even more. They were crawling and he hadn’t even gotten to the halfway point of the drive. 8:15. They’d gotten through Kintersville, which meant Matt had 15 minutes to go about 16 miles. No way to get to the office on time. He thought about calling the office but decided against it. By the time anyone noticed he was late, he’d at least be pulling into the lot. They passed a yard sign. “Respect Our Village and SLOW DOWN.”
Matt let out a dry chuckle. “That won’t be a problem.” He realized he had never noticed the sign before, probably because he was usually going too fast. 8:20. The black car stayed in front of him as he prepared to turn onto Route 415, a shortcut he’d learned two weeks into the job. The car chugged along, its speed never topping 30 mph. 8:30. On a normal day, he’d still be 10 minutes out. “Oh no. Oh come ON,” he said. The Oldsmobile was turning left onto Route 415. It stayed in front of him all the way to the traffic light in front of his office. When the light turned green, the black car turned right, and sped away. It was 8:45. — Work was busier than usual. His boss, Sandra, was normally in meetings all day but saw Matt slip in the door 15 minutes late. “Sorry,” he said. “I got stuck behind a slow driver.” “No worries. It happens on 631.” They chatted for a bit, and then Matt got to work, writing, rewriting and editing. April would mark his one-year anniversary here, his first job following a nearly two-year work drought. It would a stretch to call this his dream job, but it was steady enough work. He liked his coworkers, and with luck, he might be able to replace his car (an old grey Mazda with a “Kerry/Edwards” sticker on the bumper) and even look for a new place with Abby.
He wrote, rewrote, edited, talked about his next project with his boss, drove home, cooked dinner with Abby, read a book about the Civil War. The next day he and Abby went grocery shopping and went to a new Mexican restaurant with some friends. He forgot about the black Oldsmobile until he found it waiting for him at the Third Street light on Monday morning. — It happened the same way. The Oldsmobile’s light changed before Matt’s did and turned left onto Route 631 just before he turned right. At first, he thought it might be a different car, until he found himself staring at the same dirty license plate, the same two letters: HI. “HI again,” Matt said. “Jesus Christ.” Not wanting to spend a second commute behind the black car, Matt pulled over at a dingy gas station. He filled his tank and bought a cup of what might have been coffee and a protein bar and got back on the road. When he rounded the next bend, the black Oldsmobile was just a car-length ahead of him. It stayed just in front of Matt all the way to the office, then turned right at the light and zoomed off. He must work around here, Matt thought. I’m just going to have to leave earlier. The next morning, he was in his car by 7:25. He left his neighborhood and drove into the center of the city where Third Street and Philadelphia Road and Route 631 all came together. The black Oldsmobile was waiting in the opposite lane.
This time Matt ignored the right-of-way rule. After checking for police cars, he made a quick right on red before the Delta 88 could turn left on green. He let out a laugh as he turned onto Route 631, seeing the Oldsmobile vanish in his rear-view mirror. He had the road to himself for the next five minutes. Then he rounded a curve outside of Oxford Creek and saw the black Oldsmobile up ahead. As he got closer, there was that license plate: “HI.” He’s doing this on purpose, Matt thought. He knows a shortcut and found a way to go around me. But that was crazy. It was just bad luck, two drivers with the same commute. The Oldsmobile might have needed to be at work early for some reason. It didn’t matter. Once again, Matt was stuck. They trudged along, the Oldsmobile never going faster than 35 mph. Once again, Matt expected the slow driver to collect a long line of cars behind him, but there was no one else on the road. He tried to breathe. He tried to relax. He lost his temper after 30 seconds. “Move!” he shouted, and began honking. “Pull over or fucking MOVE!” But the black Oldsmobile just kept going. Matt thought about ignoring the double yellow line and passing the black car, but the road was too curvy. There was no way to see what was coming the other way. He stayed behind the car all the way to work. When they got to the final traffic light, the Oldsmobile turned right. Matt turned with it, and saw it speeding away. He tried keeping up with it, but delivery truck pulled into traffic, and soon the Oldsmobile was gone.
— Abby got home from work and found Matt hunched over his laptop. “Hi. Still working?” She leaned over his should for a kiss. “Hi, and no. I’m looking for a different way to get to work.” He’d marked out an indirect route that would take him around most of Route 631, over a few back roads until he came out again closer to the Route 415 turnoff. “The commute’s still that bad?” Abby worked at the paper where they’d met six years earlier. She’d survived the wave of layoffs that had cost Matt his job but had taken a 20 percent pay cut. They were both looking at 40 and making less than they had at 30. A small consolation: Her commute was just five minutes. On nice days she could walk to the office. “I was getting used to it,” Matt said, “but the past few days there’s this big black car in front of me slowing down traffic. I’ve been late three times. It’s like…” He decided not to finish, knowing he’d sound paranoid. “It’s like what?” Abby asked. “This will sound crazy, but it’s like he’s trying to make me late.” “It’s probably just a little old lady. She’s driving this big car on a windy road and she’s nervous.” “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Matt said. “You’re probably right. It’s just frustrating.” What he didn’t say: How did the car get ahead of me so quickly? Why does it speed off after driving so slowly?
And then there was work that day. He’d been writing a blog post for a client named Delserro Catering. Only Matt hadn’t written the name “Delserro.” He’d called them “Delta.” When the account manager asked him about it, he chalked it up to spellcheck glitch. But instead of telling Abby any of this, he memorized his new route, and then they started dinner. They talked about vacation plans: California wasn’t in the budget this year. He tried to let the black Oldsmobile fade from his thoughts for the rest of the night. — The next morning he left the house even earlier. There was no black Oldsmobile waiting at the Third Street intersection, but just to be safe, Matt took his new detour. He found himself in parts of the county he had never seen before, winding past farmhouses that looked like they hadn’t seen fresh paint since World War II and housing developments that had gone up during the past year. He drove past tiny churches and ice cream stands and miniature golf courses and used car lots. He drove for so long that he worried he’d made a wrong turn and was heading north instead of south. But soon he began to see signs for Route 631 and relaxed. Then he turned onto the highway and found the black Oldsmobile just ahead of him. For the rest of the week and into the next, he tried different routes and different times. He thought about passing the car in the other lane, but the road was too
windy or oncoming traffic too heavy. Either way, he never felt safe. No matter what he did, he would wind up behind the black Oldsmobile. — On Thursday of that week, he dreamed of the black Oldsmobile and Route 631, only it was a different version Route 631 and a different version of him. In the dream he felt calm, as if driving behind the black Oldsmobile was what he was born to do. And instead of the river on one side and the mountain on the other, there was only flat highway, eight lanes instead of two, all of them moving in one direction. The traffic on this Route 631 moved even slower, and Matt realized he could almost see the face of the driver of the Oldsmobile in the black car’s rear-view mirror. Just as the driver was about to make eye contact, the dream ended. — While Matt dreamed, a spring windstorm knocked out the power to the neighborhood, meaning he and Abby didn’t wake until 7:36 a.m. Matt skipped breakfast and shaving, took a two-minute shower and was in his car by 7:45. The black Oldsmobile pulled out of a side street and in front of Matt before they even got to Route 631. Already behind schedule, Matt felt his stomach knot. Friday was a bad day to be late. It was staff meeting day, and Matt would be expected to outline his projects for the week ahead. Ever since the black Oldsmobile had shown up, he’d felt his work slipping. He got to the office tired and irritated. Putting words to paper felt like carving wood with a spoon.
“Not today,” Matt said, and began to go around the Delta 88. He had crossed into the other lane when he realized a garbage truck was coming the other way. He swerved back into his lane, into his place behind the black Oldsmobile. Work was miserable. Matt arrived at the office just as the staff meeting was dying down, and told his boss something close to the truth: their power had gone out, traffic was bad. Matt spent the morning writing blog posts for a heating and air conditioning company. He was feeling halfway good about when Sandra motioned him into her office. “Have a seat,” she said, giving him a slight, sad smile. She had his latest project, rewrites for a landscaping company’s website, open on her computer. “So…what can you tell me about this?” Sandra pointed to the homepage, and Matt read what he’d written that morning, his stomach folding in on itself. For more than 60 years, Davis Tree and Lawn has helped Deltas in the Philadelphia area take pride in their black Oldsmobiles. We are a family owned company and we strive to treat our Deltas like Black Oldsmobiles too. We understand that you Oldsmobile and we make sure we do everything to Delta your trust. It is our Oldsmobile that our expert, personal Delta has allowed us to earn the Oldsmobile of our customers. But don’t simply take our word for it: Visit our black Oldsmobile page. HI. HI. HI. HI. HI. HI… “I…I…I don’t know,” Matt said. “I don’t know what happened. I…I haven’t been sleeping.”
“We’re lucky Dina caught this,” Sandra said. Matt gave a numb nod. The office was quiet for awhile, then Sandra told him to go home for the rest of the day and get some rest. They’d talk on Monday. He walked out the door and into the parking lot in a fog. There was a piece of paper under his windshield wiper. Scrawled in black ink were three words: DO NOT PASS.
He needed to find the black Oldsmobile. Matt still had the password to the newspaper’s digital archives. When they laid him off, they’d collected his PRESS ID and his key card, cancelled his work-related Twitter account, but for some reason this had slipped their notice. Googling “Black Oldsmobile 88” would only turn up cars for sale. But the archives were different, containing things that ran in the paper but never made it online. Matt found stories about car shows and car accidents and car sales, none of which were any help. He found industry reports out of Detroit going back to the 1980s. He searched “Delta 88” and found more automotive industry stories, more car accidents, and a few items related to a local covers band. Then, near the bottom of the search results, a photo caption. “Raymond Grimes, of Riverton, poses with his restored Oldsmobile Delta 88 at the 7th Annual Great Valley Cruise Night.”
The caption had run five years earlier. Matt plugged the name Raymond Grimes into the reverse directory — another leftover tool from the paper — and found someone with that name living at 229 Reynolds Street in Riverton. There was someone driving a black Oldsmobile living two streets away.
It was a squat one-story brick building with a Virgin Mary statue on the lawn and some Easter decorations — cartoony rabbits and chicks — in the front window. There was a blue Toyota in the driveway. The woman who answered the door was a little older than Matt, in nurses’ scrubs. Matt tried for a smile. “Hi,” he said. “This will sound really weird, but does someone here drive a black Oldsmobile? An older one, a Delta 88?” Her voice almost broke as she said, “Why are you asking about this?” He swallowed hard. “Well…this will sound even weirder, but…someone driving a black Oldsmobile is… it’s like they’re stalking me, only instead of following me, they’re sort of making me follow them.” The nurse didn’t say anything, and Matt went on. “Every day, I drive to work on Route 631. And every day, the Black Oldsmobile is in front of me, going really slow. No matter when I leave for work or what detours I take, it’s there. And I know it weird, me showing up here like this, but this has been happening for weeks now and I feel like I’m losing it.” She looked away then, her eyes fixed on a little scooter on the front porch.
“It’s happening to you too then,” she said, almost under her breath. “What’s happening?” “Whatever happened to my dad. That’s his black Oldsmobile. No one has seen him since last year.” — Her name was Melissa Grimes, but she told Matt to call her “Mel.” They told their stories there on the front porch, both of them drinking coffee. Matt could hear cartoons inside. Mel’s children were home that day — it was Good Friday, he realized — and she didn’t want to talk in front of them. “This is him,” she said, showing him a framed photo she’d brought from inside. The picture showed an older man with thinning hair and a beard, his arms crossed, standing next to the trunk of a shiny black car. He seemed happy and proud, as if he’d built the car himself. Matt could see the license plate: “BHI-4388.” Cover most of it in dirt and you’d get “HI.” “My dad had wanted a car like that back when they were new, but we could never afford it. When he retired, and after my mom died, he decided to buy one. He called it his ‘late-mid-life crisis.’” Mel laughed a little, and Matt could hear a sob try to escape. He gave her time. It was something he’d learned as a reporter: You have to listen a lot more than you talk.
“He hardly ever drove it at first,” Mel said. “He had my mom’s Subaru and those things last forever. The Oldsmobile was for special occasions. He’d take it out to classic car events, stuff like that.” Then two things happened: Mel and her husband divorced, and the housing market crumbled. Mel found herself and her kids living in the tiny house where she’d grown up. Then her car died, and she couldn’t afford a new one. Mel inherited her mom’s Subaru, and the black Oldsmobile became Raymond’s primary car. “Dad decided to go back to work part time. He said it was because he was bored but I knew it was so there was more household income.” Raymond Grimes had been a teacher. He probably would have been happy as a greeter in a big box store or taking orders at a fast food joint, but a friend offered him a job as a dispatcher for a heating and air conditioning business. “He liked talking to people and helping them. Customers would call in, dad would take their information, and send out a repairman. He liked it. It kept him busy. He didn’t even mind the drive. ‘River Road is some really pretty country,’” he’d say. River Road was what some locals called Route 631 and Matt agreed. It was really pretty country. “Then the red pick up truck started showing up,” Mel said. — No matter when he left for work, the red pick up truck was there in front of him.
Just as Matt had, Raymond felt strange telling anyone about it. But soon people noticed a change. He slept less. He was irritable. Mel noticed him getting up earlier and earlier. “There were problems at work too,” Mel said. “He would write ‘Red pick up truck’ or ‘Dodge Ram’ on work orders. They thought he had dementia.” Mel asked him to get another job, something with closer to home. Raymond agreed, but said it wouldn’t be fair to just stop coming in. He had to give his two week notice. “He left for work that day and I never saw him again.” — Matt remembered the headlines. “Police seek help in finding missing man.” The articles had run for a few days and then the news cycle moved on to the next story. He couldn’t remember if the stories had mentioned the black Oldsmobile. “Did the police find anything?” he asked. “Nothing. There were sightings…I mean, his car was hard to miss…but nothing until you, today.” “I’m sorry,” Matt said. “I wish I had more to tell you.” “It doesn’t make sense,” Mel said. “Trust me, I know.” “No…I mean, I drive through the Third Street intersection at the same time as you. I think I’ve even seen your car. But I’ve never seen my dad’s.” “Well, it’s there. Trust me. Every day. It’s not like I’d make this up.”
“Oh, I know…no one else knows the story of the red pick-up. And even if my dad did…have some kind of breakdown, I don’t think it would make him cruel enough to send you to do this.” “What if you rode to work with me Monday? Maybe if he saw you, if we got his attention…” It was worth it, Mel decided. It was the first thing she had to hold onto in months. — Monday morning found Matt and Mel heading south on Route 631. He had called in sick the night before and picked her up at 7:30, and they had expected to see the black Oldsmobile as they headed out of the city. They had driven in silence for 10 minutes when Mel spotted the car, moving slowly around a bend in the road. “Oh god. It’s really him,” she said, almost to herself. They had no trouble catching up. Soon they were right on its bumper, with — once again — no other cars behind them. Matt began flashing his headlights and pressing the horn, three quick beats, over and over. Mel rolled down the window and stuck her head out. “Dad! Daaaaaaaaad! Pull over!” She waved her arms like someone directing traffic. The figure behind the wheel showed no sign he’d noticed.
Matt honked again, four longer, louder blasts. Mel shouted and waved. The black car kept driving. “Let’s pull alongside him. I want to see him,” Mel said. They had come to a rare straightaway on Route 631. Matt had been tempted to pass the black car at this spot before, but there had always been drivers coming the other way. Today the road was clear. Matt began to turn the wheel, and hesitated. He remembered the warning Raymond left on his car. But two other thoughts: “I told Melissa I’d help her.” and “I need to see him. I need to end this. I need to know why.” He took a breath and maneuvered his car around the Oldsmobile. In the few seconds they were side by side, he could see Raymond Grimes’ sunken face, his lips forming words. “Don’t pass. Don’t pass.” Then they were in front of him and Matt realized he could hit the brakes. He could slow all the way down and force the black Oldsmobile to stop. Mel could talk to her father and finally… But they weren’t in front of the black Oldsmobile. They were still behind it. And they weren’t driving on the wooded two-lane Route 631, but a new, fattened version, a massive eight-lane highway that had somehow toppled the mountain and buried the river.
The sky above was the color of ash, and Matt could see vehicles floating in the air, rafts manned by figures wearing black hoods. The Oldsmobile was still ahead, and in front of it the red pick-up and in front of that a tractor trailer and in front of that was a white sports car and in front of that…he couldn’t see an end to the line. There were cars on all sides of him, and bigger vehicles too, huge things that rumbled along on tank treads, and other things that walked on terrible metal spider legs. There was no one behind him, and Matt thought of backing up, away from this place and then he realized he didn’t want to back up. He felt calm, as if driving behind the black Oldsmobile was what he had been born to do. “Let’s keep driving,” he said. “Let’s keep driving,” Mel agreed, and they drove. — It was late July, and Omar Williams was feeling confident. He’d been out of college for nearly two months, and just landed his first interview, at a financial adviser’s office. It was 45 minutes from home, but he was young. He didn’t mind driving, and he could always relocate. He headed south on Route 631, enjoying the view of the river. He was rehearsing how he’d answer the “Why do you want to work here?” question when he nearly rear-ended another driver. The car was a beat-up grey Mazda with a “Kerry/Edwards” sticker on the bumper. Whoever was behind the wheel was a nervous driver, Omar figured. They were going way below the speed limit, even for this winding road.
He hoped they’d turn off the road soon. He didn’t want to be late.