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A Conversation with Albert Einstein

Computers and insurance companies call me Ruddick McCann—to everyone else I’m just Ruddy. I work for a collateral recovery agency run by a guy named Milton Kramer. When people can’t make their car payments, I help them get back on their feet.

I’m a repo man. Get it? “Back on their feet.” That was repo humor, there.

Milton does some financing—mostly people from our small town of Kalkaska, Michigan, who can’t get credit anywhere else—but usually our business comes from banks and finance companies. We’ll get assignments to repossess folks who can’t pay, won’t give up their vehicles voluntarily, and who usually hang up on collectors who are calling to try to work something out. It makes collectors mad when you hang up on them, so they pay me to go out and express their displeasure in person.

I’ve been relieving people of the burdens of automobile ownership for more than six years and I still don’t understand why it is necessary. If you can’t afford to make your car payments, why not just drive it back to the dealership and hand over the keys, instead of making Ruddy McCann come after you?

Of course, a better question might be, “If you aren’t making any money, why don’t you move someplace where you can find a job?” Most of the time my customers give the impression that having their vehicles repossessed is far from the worst thing to happen that week. When they invite me into their homes to hear their complaints about life, I have to shed my coat—they always keep it hot, their wood stoves pumping out heat and carbon monoxide in equal measure. Their TVs are always on. The local economy has been stuck in a recession since the term was invented. Nine months of the year it’s cold and wet, and then it turns hot and humid. No rational person would stay here longer than the time it takes to pack up his belongings and leave.

I should know. I’ve lived here all my life.

Today I was looking for a twenty-five-year-old man named, of all things, Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein Croft was his full name, though I suspected everyone called him Einstein—how could you resist? He worked on the assembly line at a place called PlasMerc Manufacturing—something told me he wasn’t exactly living up to his parents’ expectations regarding his intelligence. Einstein didn’t feel morally or ethically bound to pay for his used pickup truck anymore and had crudely suggested to the woman from the bank that she go somewhere to have anal sex with herself.

When I met up with Albert Einstein Croft I’d ask him to explain the physics of how that was supposed to work.

The PlasMerc factory had only been open a few years and I’d never been there before. I was surprised, when I located the place, that the employee parking lot was fenced and paved, with a guard in a booth, no less. Most companies in northern Michigan were more considerate, leaving their workers’ cars out in the open where the repo man could easily get to them. I pulled up in Milt’s tow truck and nodded at the guard, hoping he’d figure I was from AAA and punch the button for the gate to swing open. Instead, he gave me a stony stare, so I sighed and rolled down my window.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked in what sounded to my ears like a falsely cheerful voice. I’m not really known for doing “cheerful.”

“Help you?”

I had to make a quick decision on how to play it. I decided to shrug and look dumb. “Got a call, guy named Croft, an employee here? I’m supposed to pick up his truck, haul it in.”

He didn’t move to open the gate. “Yeah?”

We looked at one another. The guard was my age, around thirty, and had my build—solid and big. It was obvious we didn’t care much for each other’s attitudes.

“I know who you are,” he said finally.

It was my turn to say “Yeah?” So I did.

“You’re Ruddy McCann. Everybody used to look up to you, and then you let us down.”

“Well, sometimes that’s how these things go.”

“Now you steal cars for a living.”

I had to admit, it sounded less glamorous when he said it.

“You had everything anybody could ever want, and you pissed it away,” he continued. His eyes were cold and pitiless.

I sighed. “So could you let me in?”

“Get out of here. This is private property. You show up here again, I’ll have you arrested.”

We looked at each other for a little bit more. I thought about getting out of the truck and reaching into that booth and pulling him out by his shirt, and he could see me thinking about it and his gaze never faltered—that’s how much he hated me. So I threw the truck in reverse and backed away, my face burning.

There was nothing to do for the next couple of hours except fantasize about punching the guard in the nose. I was sort of driving aimlessly and after a few minutes I was in what passes for a downtown in East Jordan—a tiny, clean little main street with a few shops and no people, as if they were filming a zombie movie.

My idle thoughts eventually drifted around to the nightmare I’d had a couple of nights ago, my sleep disturbed by the violent windstorm that wound up knocking out power all across the county. The memory of it was more like something real, as if it had really happened. I clearly remembered the two men, the guy swinging the shovel, and running down the road, thinking I was going to get away.

He’s dead.

No, I’m not.

The dream seemed like it happened in the fall, but right now it was April in northern Michigan, a balmy forty degrees with a light drizzle starting to film my window. I flipped on the wipers and with the first sweep my vision cleared and there she was.

Attractive, midtwenties, curly red-brown hair falling to her shoulders, wearing a bulky all-weather parka and slacks, smiling. And waving. At me.

This was not the sort of thing I expected to happen to me, either in East Jordan or in my lifetime, but despite my disbelief, I stopped. She trotted over to my window, which I hastily rolled down.

“My car won’t start,” she told me. “Could you help me?”

“Why won’t it start?” I asked, as if reading from a book of Stupid Responses for Men.

She shook her head, wiping her wet bangs out of her blue eyes. “I don’t know.”

I swallowed down my disappointment over how I’d been conducting my end of the conversation and finally came up with the right thing to say. “I’ll see if I can jump it.”

I swung the tow truck into the parking space next to her little Ford and in short order determined her battery was dead. She stood in a doorway and blew on her hands while I pulled out my jumper cables. “Your battery looks pretty old and the posts are corroded,” I advised, wanting to talk about anything else but her car. “I can probably get you started, but you’ll want to get a new battery.”

“Oh, great. How much does something like that cost?”

“Maybe fifty, sixty bucks. I...