The Deal (pt. 2)

We arrived at what seemed to be a fae vehicle graveyard to inspect an RV that we really couldn’t tell what it looked like from the pictures. After climbing around it for nearly an hour with a looming storm overhead, we still couldn’t really tell what was going on.

But we felt drawn to it.

So we texted the owner and said we’d like to schedule an inspection with a mechanic and do a test drive. She said that would be fine, sooner was better than later. It took a couple of days, while we kept looking over other options, but nothing was really grabbing us like this one did. Certainly nothing in the same price range. This was worlds bigger than any other RV in our price bracket because of the slides, but it would require a lot more work. Many of the motorhome ads I looked at appeared to be road-ready, fully furnished and decorated and ready to go. This … was not. But I’ll get to that.

On June 30th, 2 days later, I messaged her again asking when would be a good time to test drive the vehicle. She asked if we could make it that day. I reminded her that we could, but that it was a 3 hour drive for us. The people she had scheduled for 4 PM that day had just cancelled and she said it was fine to arrive in the afternoon.

As usual, the afternoon Florida skies loomed heavy above. Franklin felt it was an ominous sign. I suggested he look around while I drove to find a mechanic who could do an inspection. He called one mechanic, who could not see us that afternoon, and reported back to me that we could not get it inspected that day. But, already on the way, we decided to at least test drive it.

The first rain drops fell as we pulled into the fae vehicle graveyard to see a young woman who didn’t look any older than 13 years old, surrounded by half a dozen children. She took us through the RV and pointed out some features, and then handed us the keys to test drive. I carefully negotiated the vehicle out of its resting spot, around trees and tow dollies and listing food trucks and feral children running through the tall grass. Eventually we got it out onto the road. I pressed on the brakes as I approached the end of the driveway, to turn onto the road, and the pedal went all the way to the floor before encountering any resistance.

“Um, Franklin, if you didn’t like the asshole’s brakes, you’re really not going to like these brakes,” I said.

“Why?” he asked me suspiciously.

“Because there aren’t any.”

I got the vehicle onto the road and up to a decent speed to listen to the engine. It purred. Franklin loved the engine sound. But now the deluge started and we were in a very large and heavy vehicle tearing down the road with no brakes. Well, that’s not true, it had SOME brakes left. But we’ll get to that. I drove for months on a car with failing brakes, so I was able to control the RV just fine without even making Franklin nervous.

Until I asked him if he wanted to test drive it.

Franklin took over, got the RV up and going, and then tried to stop. He immediately pulled into a parking lot and gave over piloting back to me.

Reclaiming the captain’s seat, I once again took control of the beast. She seemed to respond well to my handling. While the torrential downpour continued to beat upon our heads, I got her turned around and headed back to the graveyard. She stopped when I asked her to, but in protest each time.

Pulling into the lot, this poor young woman and her kids were drenched, awaiting our return. With Franklin’s directional assistance, I backed the chariot into its spot, cut the engine, and opened the door to let all the waterlogged into some dry relief.

I told her that we love the RV but that it had no brakes. That would have to be rectified before we could agree to anything. While we were test driving, I had asked Franklin if all the mechanics in the area were unable to see us, and he said that he had only called one place. So I instructed him to call around until he found a place that could see us today. By this point, the rain was letting up, and we arranged to have Franklin drive my car with the woman and her passel of children, and I would drive the RV with no brakes down the street to a nearby mechanic.

While the mechanic was looking things over, I would drive the whole lot of us around getting a bill of sale notarized and getting cash. First we drove to my bank, which notarizes documents for free to bank customers. However, as it turns out, they don’t notarize documents for bank customers, they notarize signatures for customers. Which means that they would only notarize my signature, not hers. Which defeats the purpose of getting the bill of sale notarized.

We found an Amscot, a check-cashing place, that would notarize for $10, but after packing up all the children and driving to yet another location, we learned that they would not allow her to sign on behalf of someone else without further paperwork legalizing her as his signatory (and the RV was in her boyfriend’s name, so we put his name on the bill of sale).

This is when we discovered that the vehicle was completely out of oil and that one of the brake calipers was bad and had air in the system. She said that was no problem, her boyfriend who owned it was a truck driver and would fix everything before we picked it up. But the mechanic said it should not drive without an oil change, so we took $200 off the sale price to have him change the oil.

When we could not get the bill of sale notarized, I told her that we would have to finalize everything when her boyfriend arrived in town and could make the transaction himself. She begged to have us pay half the price and she would give us whatever reassurances we wanted such as the keys and title to the vehicle, etc. if we just gave her some money today.

That sounded sketchy so I called Franklin back and he said he was not comfortable with that arrangement at all. So I went back to the lady and said we did not feel comfortable handing over cash without a notarized bill of sale or title transfer.

She broke down crying then, and told me more of the story. It turns out that her boyfriend owns this RV, and that she with her kids and he with his kids (9 in total) were each staying in separate halfway houses that would not allow them to stay together because of the legal limitation of “unrelated persons” staying in one residence. They were planning on all moving into the RV and going up north where he has some property to build a home and all live together, but he had just gotten arrested and she had to sell the RV to get bail money. He could not be available to sign any documents or complete the sale without getting the money first.

I’ve been in similar dire straits. I’ve been so poor that I did not have enough money to buy gas to get me to a gig that would have paid me plenty of money for the gas. I told my employer that I was turning down the gig because I couldn’t afford to get there. He asked me if I had enough gas to make it to the venue, and I said yes but I could not get home. He said he would buy me a tank of gas in addition to my regular wages if I could just get up to the town where the gig was.

I also was once so poor that I was living in my car with my 2 cats and had them sitting in the car in a parking garage while I worked because I needed to earn just one day’s wages for the deposit for a new apartment. When my boss found out that my cats were outside in the car, he advanced my paycheck to get me into the apartment immediately.

Everywhere I have ever lived, I have had to rely on talking to a live human person to explain my situation and to have someone take enough pity and a leap of faith on me to give me a place to live, because I do not have a w2 job that I can “prove” my income. So I immediately felt for this woman and her situation.

I called Franklin to ask his opinion, even though technically it’s all my money and the RV would be in my name. He was less moved than I was, but I explained to him that I felt emotionally attached and wanted to help, and that I felt like I could pay things forward for all the help I’ve been given over the years. So Franklin said that he was uneasy but he would back my decision, whichever way I went.

I went back to the lady and told her that we would rewrite the bill of sale to her name, making her responsible for this transaction, I would give her half of the sale price (which was the amount of her boyfriend’s posted bail), she would hand over the keys and the title, then I would drive her across the street to the bail bondsman to pay her boyfriend’s bail, we’d get the oil changed, then return the RV to the lot where her boyfriend would fix the remaining problems once he was released.

Trepidatious, with Franklin half-convinced I had just been scammed, I set about driving a whole litter of children all over the neighborhood to first meet back up with Franklin to get a new bill of sale printed from his computer (the mechanic’s receptionist helpfully printed it for us so that we did not have to also find a nearby Kinko’s), head back to Amscot, then to the bail bondsman, then back to the mechanic.

By this time, the mechanic was closing, but they agreed to complete the oil change. So once more we bundled the children into my car with Franklin driving while I helmed what was quickly becoming a mythical quest incarnate complete with side quests and challenges, back to the graveyard. The woman insisted the whole time that she would “do right by [me]” and make sure the transaction went smoothly, that her boyfriend was a “good man, a teddy bear!” and would take care of us, and that she was so grateful for the help.

We dropped them all off, once again, in the dirt lot surrounded by surreal vehicles and took the long drive back home. I texted my boyfriend that I should know in a day or two if I just bought a new RV or if I was just scammed out of several thousand dollars. Franklin was less optimistic. We rode into the sunset wondering what just happened and what was about to happen.

Next week, we meet the boyfriend.