Page 20 of Without You

Once I have my heart in control, I answer, “Eric, hey. What’s up, man?”

Eric is the country music video producer who first contacted me about getting vehicles ready to be in the videos after I worked on his own truck.

“Not much, B. You ready for this?” he asks, meaning the influx of business he keeps saying will come my way once word gets out.

“Of course.”

“Good. Good. ‘Cause shit’s about to get real.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Got a few shipments coming your way. The first is three trucks. One will have two muscle cars. And the third is a Jeep.”

My heart starts racing because I wasn’t expecting them so soon and the new shop that’s being built won’t be ready for a few more weeks. “Eric, I thought you were going to give me plenty of time before vehicles started arriving.”

“This is me giving you a head’s up. You’ve got six weeks before they get there.”

I breathe a sigh of relief because I know the new shop will be completed by then. When I signed the contract, my daddy sat down with me and told me to take a good hard look around my current shop, Benton’s Tire. It’s not a bad place, but it’s also a working shop. My guys do things like oil changes and tire rotations, regular maintenance on vehicles to keep them in top running order. What I’ll be doing to these vehicles will require a shop that’s set up for it. I met with Chad, because he’s a contractor, and he offered to get it up and going for me. I’m sure it helped that I’m paying him extra for the rush job.

He understands exactly what I need in the new shop he’s building for me. Once it’s ready, I’ll work completely out of that shop rather than taking up space at Benton’s Tire. Johnny will run the day-to-day operations there and I’ll pop in when I’m needed.

I’ll have to double check with Chad that the building will be done in time, but I’m not too worried. That will give us four weeks after he initially thought it’d be done to get it organized and set up. That’s more than enough.

“Six weeks. That works. You gave me a heart attack, man. I was afraid they were coming in a few days.”

“Ha! I’m not that much of a jerk. You got some time right now to go over the details?”

“Yeah, I’ve got time.”

For the next fifteen minutes, we discuss the specifics for each vehicle. Lucky for me, nothing he’s talking about is out of my wheel house. As he’s talking, I type everything into the computer program Chad set up for me. All products that I need to order link directly to my suppliers, even though most of what we put onto the vehicles is custom. It makes it easier to keep everything in order.

“The Ram pickup is the first priority. Luke’s video is scheduled to shoot in March and we need it ready to go and delivered a few weeks early.” March? That’s six months from now. I don’t know what I was expecting, but having this much time to work on the vehicles definitely wasn’t it. I’m not an idiot, though. I won’t admit that to him. I’m sure at some point he’ll tell me I only have three weeks to work on a truck and right now I’m not about to kick the gift horse in the mouth, so to speak.

“Got it. That works here.”

He goes over the timeline for the rest of the vehicles and we hang up with a plan set in place.

“Luke will be by in January to check progress.”

I try to mask my excitement over him coming to check on his truck by simply saying, “Just keep me updated so I know when to expect him.”

“Will do. How many are you able to work on at a time?”

“Right now we’re planning on two at a time but if the jobs increase then we’ll hire more people on and bump it up to three or possibly four.”

“That should work for now.”

“For now?”

He’s quiet for a second then, “Brody, you realize what this contract is going to do for your business, don’t you?”

I have a good idea but have been afraid to dream of it. Hell, I couldn’t even dream of signing a contract like this one so anything beyond that is truly unthinkable for me. Luckily, he’s not waiting for my reply and he continues with, “Once word gets out, everyone is going to be calling you wanting you to work on their vehicles, too.”

“Let’s just take it one project at a time, yeah?”

He chuckles. “That’s fine but what I’m telling you now is prepare yourself. Prepare your guys. Make sure whatever building you’re putting up is going to be big enough.”

“Eric, you realize who you’re talking to, right? The only thing I know how to do is work on cars and trucks.”

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