Chapter 42: I Made an Amigo
Chapter 42: I Made an Amigo
“Jason, Noah told me everything that happened yesterday. We really owe you so much…”
Rachel called early in the morning.
Her voice carried her guilt toward me, her guilt as a mother, and an exhaustion she could not conceal.
“You don’t owe me anything, so you don’t have to think that way. You must have been badly shaken too, Rachel. You sound tired…”
“I had a lot of things on my mind, so I didn’t sleep very well. Raising a child really isn’t easy. Haha…”
Rachel’s laughter sounded almost like a sigh.
She rarely talked about how difficult things were, which made her words hurt all the more.
“…Speaking of which, did Noah tell you about the offer I made him?”
I cautiously brought up the part-time job assisting with repairs that I had offered Noah.
“Ah, that… Are you really okay with it, Jason? If you’re only forcing yourself to do this because of Noah…”
“No, not at all. I told Noah the same thing, but I didn’t make the offer just to force help on him. I’ll make him work properly for every dollar I pay him.”
I spoke with certainty.
I meant every word.
“Hehehe. Hearing how confident you sound somehow puts me at ease. All right. I was thinking that I should support Noah’s dream too. I’ll tell him he can start after his exams are over.”
Laughter returned to Rachel’s voice.
The fact that she could still laugh in such a difficult situation made me think once again that she truly was an incredible person.
“Yes. I’ll make sure it doesn’t interfere with his schoolwork. And Rachel… don’t worry too much. Everything will work out from now on.”
After ending the call, I sprang to my feet and washed my face with cold water.
Everything will work out from now on.
It was a positive statement about the future that I normally would never have allowed myself to say. Yet somewhere deep inside, I was determined to make those words come true.
Noah’s grin is going to stretch from ear to ear.
The corners of my own mouth rose as I pictured his smiling face.
“Wow… this really is going to be a whole new challenge.”
Mateo spoke as he dismantled the GT Hawk’s interior inside the small garage attached to his workshop.
From the age of twelve until now, at twenty-seven, he had accumulated an astonishing fifteen years of unofficial experience restoring automotive interiors.
Even for him, encountering an interior damaged this badly was rare.
Mateo had immigrated from Mexico to the United States with his parents when he was young.
To survive in an unfamiliar country, his father drove trucks day and night, while his mother accepted every sewing and alteration job she could find.
It was only natural that Mateo picked up a needle and thread after coming home from school.
While his friends swarmed around a single ball like a pack of dogs, Mateo quietly rolled spools of thread.
He had been ashamed.
Ashamed of their poverty and of the countless needle marks covering his fingertips.
Then, by chance, his life changed completely after he repaired the leather seat of the Camaro owned by the coolest older boy in the neighborhood.
Vroom, vroom, vroooom—
The Camaro’s rough V8 engine note and sleek body instantly captivated the young Mateo.
But what left an even deeper impression on his heart was a single remark from the older boy he had idolized.
“Wow, you can’t even tell it was repaired. It looks factory-made. Marty, don’t you think you’ve got a talent for this?”
Talent? Me?
That was the moment simple repetitive labor gained a purpose.
From then on, Mateo became a local celebrity among the young men in the neighborhood.
“Mateo! Can you replace this gearshift boot?”
“Mateo, the leather on my dashboard is torn…”
“Mateo, can you replace the headliner too?”
The rumors continued spreading, and by the time he came to his senses, he had gone so far as to open an automotive upholstery shop.
For some reason, however, he had never again felt the same intense satisfaction he had experienced when repairing that first Camaro seat.
More and more people praised his skills, but their compliments only sounded hollow.
Then, in the middle of all that, a car he had never seen before—a Studebaker—appeared before him.
Its interior was truly appalling.
An animal… smell?
A faint odor of barn straw drifted from somewhere inside.
The headliner was so ruined that there was no point in leaving it attached.
The gauge bezels and aluminum panel were dented and rusted.
And the seats—or rather, what had once been seats—had been reduced to bare frames.
“Heh. This is insane.”
At the same time, however, he could see the car’s potential.
Its restored appearance seemed to overlap the current wreckage before his eyes.
Mateo smiled quietly like a climber standing before a towering mountain peak. Then he immediately got to work.
The seats came first.
Judging by the shape of the frames and the remains of the foam, this car did not have the straight, bench-like seats common in American cars of its era. Instead, it had been designed in the style of a European grand tourer.
In other words, they were far more three-dimensional, more contoured, and far more difficult to reproduce.
Fortunately, the frames were sturdy. None of the S-shaped springs were broken, and the slightly sagging sections regained their tension simply by tightening the connections.
Now that he had repaired the bones, it was time to restore the flesh of the seats.
He planned to replace the original sponge material with high-density polyurethane foam.
Mateo picked up an electric carving knife and began trimming away the corners.
The rectangular block of polyurethane foam gradually took the shape of a seat.
Once the general form had been established, he continued carving it delicately, almost as though he were slicing thin pieces of raw fish.
He used foam of different densities for the seat cushion, backrest, and side bolsters that held the occupant’s body in place.
Next came a task Mateo particularly enjoyed: creating the leather covers, a process that required a subtle sense of aesthetics.
He held countless small leather sample patches against the car’s carpeting, spending a long time searching for a suitable color.
The color he ultimately chose was a bright Cardinal Red.
(Translator’s Note: Cardinal Red — A bright, saturated red named after the plumage of the male northern cardinal. The term is widely used as a color description in textiles, paint, and automotive interiors.)
It’s going to look incredible when it’s finished, isn’t it?
The corners of his mouth rose automatically as he imagined how much presence the completed seats would have.
Flap—
After placing a large hide on the workbench, he carefully inspected it for any flaws he might have missed.
Then he lightly ran his hand across it to determine the direction of the grain.
If the leather was cut without accounting for the grain, it could twist later. It would also look unnatural.
Next, he placed his prepared pattern pieces over the leather and drew long lines with a silver marking pen.
This was the process of transferring the patterns before cutting.
In areas where pieces of leather would overlap or form curves, he used a skiving machine to shave the underside thin, as though slicing off delicate layers.
Skipping this tedious step would cause the stitched seams to bulge out thickly.
Whirrrrr—
The sewing itself was finished in no time.
Pressing the sewing machine pedal with one foot, Mateo steadily guided the leather through with both hands.
Like an experienced driver shifting a manual transmission through muscle memory without conscious thought, Mateo completed the stitching with practiced ease.
Finally, he fitted the leather cover over the seat, pulling it in different directions and striking it with firm pats so the foam would settle correctly.
Once he confirmed that it fit perfectly without any loose sections, he hooked C-shaped hog rings beneath the seat to pull the leather taut.
“Whew…”
Mateo placed the completed seat on the workbench and slowly walked around it.
“Perfect!”
There was still a long way to go—the dashboard, door panels, headliner, and more—but this job had felt right from the very beginning.
Instead of my beloved Chevy truck, I was currently driving a 2011 Ford Ranger toward Lordsburg, New Mexico.
I had purchased the vehicle a few days earlier for five thousand dollars for Noah to use when commuting to work.
I had just finished replacing its basic consumables and performing the necessary maintenance when Mateo called to tell me the work was complete, so I had brought it out for a test drive.
“Hello, Jason!”
Mateo was already outside the workshop waiting to greet me.
With his round build and a beard covering half his face, he reminded me of a bear I had once seen waving at people on a safari.
“Mateo, have you been well? You finished sooner than I expected.”
“Yes. It had been a long time since a job stimulated my desire for a challenge, so I became somewhat absorbed in it.”
Mateo scratched the back of his head as he spoke.
Considering the GT Hawk’s interior when I had entrusted it to him, it certainly must have been stimulating.
“Then please take a look at its condition. I am confident in the result.”
Mateo boldly opened the car door for me himself.
Hearing him say that made my heart pound with anticipation.
But the moment I saw the interior he presented, I realized just how inadequate my expectations had been.
“Whoa… What is all this?”
Overwhelmed by the shocking sight before me, I was briefly at a loss for words.
“What do you think?”
“What do I think? This is easily the best interior restoration I’ve ever seen.”
I quickly leaned my head inside.
The first thing that caught my eye was the instrument panel, which resembled an aircraft cockpit.
The aluminum panel, once covered in scratches and corrosion, now had a subtle satin sheen from perfect engine-turning work.
The smooth gradients that appeared depending on the angle of the light looked extraordinarily luxurious.
All seven circular gauges of varying sizes mounted in the panel had been repainted, down to every numeral and needle.
It was the very essence of analog charm.
When I lowered my gaze, I found vivid red carpeting fitted perfectly across the floor without a single gap. The door panels and every other surface within reach had been wrapped in luxurious leather.
“Try sitting in the seat too.”
Like a robot responding to a voice command, I climbed inside as though entranced and sat down.
“Ha… Hahahaha…”
For the next several seconds, I did nothing but sit there and laugh.
The seat cushion was soft without being too soft. The backrest enveloped my body, while the sturdy side bolsters would prevent me from sliding around on curves.
The subtle balance among those three densities made me feel as though I were sitting in a zero-gravity chair.
“Mateo. Did you really do all of this by yourself?”
“Of course. A car entrusted to me must be worked on entirely by me from beginning to end. Otherwise, I cannot maintain consistency.”
Mateo spoke clearly in his usual stiff tone.
But his manner of speaking no longer bothered me in the slightest.
They say he may be young, but his experience isn’t.
His work possessed an artistic sensibility that could never be reproduced through repair manuals alone.
“Yes. There’s no need to look any further. It’s perfect. I’ll pay the remaining balance immediately.”
Apparently, despite having created a piece of work this exceptional, he had still been nervous about my reaction. Only then did Mateo’s stiff expression brighten completely.
After paying the full balance, I loaded the car onto the trailer and sincerely thanked him.
“Mateo, thank you for doing such an excellent restoration. The customer who entrusted this car to me is going to be thrilled when he sees it.”
Mateo’s dark eyes widened slightly as he stood there seeing me off.
“In all the years I have done this work, you are the first person I have seen smile so sincerely at the thought of a customer being happy.”
He sounded surprised.
“Haha, is that so? Then, perhaps…”
I was about to climb into the truck when I turned around and finally voiced the words I had been hesitating over the entire time.
“How would you feel about forming a proper partnership with me instead of remaining ordinary business contacts?”
It was something I had kept in mind ever since I first arrived at his workshop and saw his sample seat.
One of us operated a restoration shop converted from a small warehouse on the outskirts of Arizona.
The other ran a sewing machine inside a makeshift building beside an abandoned railroad where no trains passed anymore.
We were both small-time operators, but I had a feeling that if we joined forces, the day might come when we accomplished something extraordinary.
“A partnership? I still cannot lower my estimates very much. Good leather is expensive.”
“Haha, I know. I’m not saying this because I want to pay you less. I simply want to be able to send you work from now on without going through complicated procedures every time. I’d also like priority when assigning jobs.”
If I had to name the two greatest limitations in restoring automobiles, they would undoubtedly be cost and time.
Mateo’s skills were no longer in doubt, but even those skills were only useful if the work could be completed when it was needed.
“…I do not like people interfering with how I work.”
“Good. I’m the same way.”
“I want to choose the type and color of leather, the carpeting, and every other material myself.”
“That is actually what I would prefer to ask you to do.”
It was a field I knew nothing about even when I looked at it myself.
Nor did I have any confidence that I could choose well.
“Hmm… Very well. I will accept your proposal, Jason. As it happens, I have also been thinking that it is time for a change.”
After considering it, Mateo extended a tattoo-covered hand.
“Good. Then we’re partners now.”
I took his hand without hesitation.
“Partners? No. Amigos—friends.”
Mateo grinned broadly and pumped my hand vigorously up and down.
[Studebaker Interior]
CC BY 2.0, photograph by Greg Gjerdingen
[Studebaker Instrument Panel]
CC0