A Set Of Wheels Page 4

  Who’s that? I say to Cora.

  That? Oh, just Emil. He hangs around here. Cleans up, makes coffee sometimes. Stay away from his coffee. But he’s a fixture, never goes out on the road. This’s home, I guess.

  She clearly doesn’t want to talk about Emil, about anybody, about anything. We talk less and less. I watch the front of her sweater, trying to locate the shape of breasts behind the vaguely outlined nipples. She is so tiny. Standing up, she comes to chest level on me. She must weigh under a hundred pounds.

  The Mech comes in.

  All transplants’ve been made, he says, and the car still lives.

  Good, I say. I was thinking…

  Yeah?

  Like I said, got no money, but there’s gas cans in the trunk. Why’n’t you take some?

  He shrugs, says okay. Back at the garage I notice that he’d already taken half the gas cans.

  Shall we try her out? I say to Cora, patting the Mustang on the hood.

  We better wait. Till somebody can drive out with us.

  I don’t want to run in packs. Look, you heard what The Mech said, it can’t even go as fast as the other cars. Who’d drive out with us? Who wants to wet-nurse slower vehicles?

  I don’t know. There’s Allen and—well, it’s risky.

  Good, let’s go.

  She’s hot for it, I can see that. She looks at the Mustang like it’s a souped-up racer. I take her hand—a legal touch—and lead her to the car.

  — 7 —

  I SLAM down the accelerator. A roar shakes the whole car. I take it down the exit ramp and onto the main highway, giving it a little gas at a time, letting it speed up by degrees.

  The Mech’s done a good job. I can feel a thousand little differences. The steering’s steadier, the engine smoother, the car’s responses more immediate. It holds the road with sureness. Cora flicks a switch and the goddamned radio works. She finds a program of chant-rock. The heavy beat underscores the evenness of the Mustang’s ride.

  Finally I hit top speed, glancing sideways to see if Cora’s impressed. She isn’t. As The Mech says, the car’s not going to set any speed records, but it does glide along. We enter a stretch of road with woods on each side; shadow trees fly by. We pass several abandoned cars, some with their hoods up, many with windows broken, most apparently stripped of valuable items.

  The scenery flashing by, the car rumbling pleasantly around me, I think of making love with Cora. I glance over at her, trying to devise a way in which fantasy might meet reality. There’s a tingle in the tips of my fingers as I think about caressing those small breasts. Cora smiles at me, a hopeful sign. I reach out my hand. She squeezes it, but does not hold it, a gesture more like affirmation of brotherhood than love.

  Still—she’s here in the car with me, and we’re cutting a wide slice through the night. I’m better off than when I didn’t have wheels.

  * * * * *

  As we leave the wooded area, a metallic glint of light flashes through the last trees. Cora doesn’t see it and I don’t say anything. I alternate looking at the side-view and rear-view mirrors. Another ray of light, but this time not in the forest. Out on the road this time. The third gleam and whatever it is, is closer to us. The Mustang is already going as fast as it will go. I try to nudge the gas pedal further into the floorboards. A sign informs me it is twenty-three miles to the next rest area. Cora senses my tension. She twists around, looks out the back window.

  What’s back there? she says.

  I’m not sure.

  Dumb-shit look.

  It’s another car, I guess.

  You guess?! It’s a pig car. It’s Allen, it’s got to be. He’s the only one with nerve enough to buzz this stretch.

  What’ll we do?

  I don’t know, I can’t think—keep going straight ahead till something happens. He’s got the speed, but it’ll still take him a few miles to catch up.

  Maybe we should ditch the car, make a run for it.

  Shit, I got to be in a spot like this with an idiot who don’t know his ass from a crack in the road. It’s open country here. We’d never get far. We’ll have to chance what comes. Keep driving.

  It catches up with us quicker than she’d guessed. It slows down behind us, staying on our tail but far enough back to remain a black ghost. A black ghost, its headlights off, stalking us.

  It’s Allen all right, Cora says. He likes fun and games. We got to make the first move. Hit the brake.

  What?

  Hit the brake, shithead!

  We burn rubber in a long skid but hold our lane. The other car eases past us. He’s in front of us before he realizes what happened. His brake lights flash on, but we’re controlling speed now. He tries to slow but we stay right on his tail. With four lanes leeway he can’t set up a block or run us off the road. He guns his motor and pulls away from us.

  Okay, Cora says, we’ve got him taking a chance.

  This’s like a chess game to you.

  Yeah. You got it.

  Let’s turn around, head back.

  Can’t, too risky. He’d catch up. No, forward’s best. We have to wait him out.

  She’s tense. She hugs her legs to her chest.

  Maybe we should slow down and get off the road, I say. Maybe he won’t try to find us.

  No, if he did get to us, we wouldn’t have a chance. Shut off the headlights so at least he won’t see us coming for miles.

  I can barely see the road in the dim moonlight. Once I swerve around what I think is a tree across the road, but there’s no tree there. The Mustang hums steadily, going along at about 40 mph. A couple of times it slides off the road onto the shoulder but most of the time finds its own way as if it had built-in radar.

  Maybe you should pull over, Cora says, and let me drive.

  I don’t say anything, I just keep going. She mutters something that. I’m glad I can't hear. I roll down a window, listen to the night noises. A shadowy blur turns out to be nothing more than a shadowy blur. I slow down further. To my left we seem to pass the sound of a quiet engine idling. The sound skips and I hear tires against gravel.

  Open her up, Cora screams.

  I increase speed. I have to turn the headlights on again so I can see where I’m going. He flashes his on, too. So he can take aim, as it turns out. The first shot, although it doesn’t hit anything, is close enough to frighten the bowels out of me. I get a quick mental picture of Allen, leaning out the window and taking aim, a fat hand around the tiny gun, the other hand on the steering wheel. An anatomical absurdity, but if it’s Allen, it’s probably what he’s doing.

  I swerve but regain control, Next shot goes through the back window, leaving a circular area in white-lined little fragments. A third ricochets off the side of the car.

  Switch lanes, Cora shouts, and keep switching.

  I start zigzagging. He guns his motor and comes up even with me on the outside.

  Get out of his way, damn it, Cora shouts.

  He sideswipes me. A terrifying crunch of metal. I almost go into a spin, but the Mustang responds and I ease back into a lane. Through my side-view I see that he’s had the worst of the swipe.

  Body damage my Mustang can take in stride. He’s skidded sideways and has to straighten out.

  I feel a weird sense of satisfaction, but can only hold it for a second because he’s catching up again.

  I pass a sign. Exit, Food, Gas, Lodging, one mile. I keep dodging from lane to lane.

  Exit, ½ mile.

  We’ll get off there, I say.

  Cora looks terrified:

  No, you dumb shit.

  Why the hell not?

  He’ll cream you there. That’s his territory, man.

  What the fuck are we supposed to do? He’ll cream us here.

  I’ll think of something.

  I already have.

  I let him almost catch up. At the last minute I swerve onto the exit ramp. He overshoots it. His tires scream as he turns around. Cora screams at me, but I can’t make
out what she’s saying. I go around the long curve, over the bridge. Behind me I can see Allen’s car at the far curve of the exit ramp. I turn right onto the access road and floor the gas pedal. The Mustang makes the long curve. On two wheels, feels like. I mutter long, involved promises to it. Under the bridge I execute a skidding U-turn and stop the car.

  I grope for the monkey wrench which is behind Cora’s seat.

  What are you going to do with that? she says in a frightened voice.

  What do you think?

  She makes a grab for my arm as I get out of the car. No, she screams. Don’t! She says it again as I run across the road, the monkey wrench a dead weight in my hand. I hear his tires screeching around the curve.

  * * * * *

  It’s like my own death. Everything important flashes before my eyes. Not the events of my life—the events of the day. Maybe they are the events of my life. I see Dad wearing a doughnut. I see the car and Lincoln Rockwell X and Cora’s hidden tits. I see all the blurs and bumps and rising dust of the road. I see myself running scared. All the things I always wanted to do. I see the road stretching to its perspective point, trisected by the flashes of oncoming headlights.

  All this at once, as I watch the car round the last curve of the access road and come directly at me. I release the heavy wrench and my arm feels weightless. The wrench shatters the windshield glass, sails on across the side of Allen’s head, floats out through the rear side window.

  Inches from me the car swerves and heads across the four lanes. Cora screams, but it misses the Mustang, bounces off an abutment, hits another abutment broadside, and stops.

  I don’t want to look but I do.

  His left arm is part of the mangled steering wheel. The rest of his body is relaxed, leaning slightly forward like someone exhausted from heat. His head rests against the splintered glass of the window. I avoid looking at what the wrench did to the side of his head.

  I return to the Mustang. The wheels. Its motor throbs; the whole car shakes. I get in and turn off the ignition.

  I touch Cora’s arm and she slides away from me.

  You dumb fucking shit, she says.

  She begins to beat her fists on the scarred leather of the dashboard.

  Part II

  — 1 —

  Cora sleeping: her head twisted, exposing her skinny little neck. Her mouth open, releasing the most grotesque noises. Her eyes squinched tight, looking in pain.

  The blanket’s slipped down to her waist. She sleeps naked. Her tits are still hard to see, a pair of gently curved shadows. I know them better by touch than I do by sight.

  At least there’s touch.

  I lay back against a pillow, choke on the musty indoor odor clinging to its surface like an extra pillowcase. I don’t know how Cora knew about this motel, nestled so far back in what looks like woods that haven’t been pioneered yet. No wonder it went broke years ago. Even when cars were plentiful, how many’d find their way down that road? The road looks like it hasn’t been resurfaced since the administration of Calvin Coolidge. A bunch of small cottages at the back of what used to be a gas station, this motel looks Early American. Wood peeling all over the outside, wallpaper peeling all over the inside.

  Why am I awake so suddenly? I jumped up with a start, I remember. Probably that dream about Allen again. This time when I take the wallet out of his jacket pocket, his eyes open and he grabs at it and I hit him again with the wrench, which has floated out of nowhere back into my hand. It’s always some variation on going back to his car and searching for my wallet.

  Funny, that obsesses me and not the killing of Allen itself.

  Cora stirs in her sleep, rolls over onto her stomach, nearly crowds me off my side of the bed. Her spinal line is just barely curved, a straight ramrod up her back. I remember running my hand along that line over and over just—how long ago? A couple of hours. Running my hand along the line, afraid of going any further either with my touching or making love to her. She always makes love to me as if her mind were somewhere else. When I asked if she had orgasm a few days ago, she said of course. Aren’t you satisfied with our fucking? she asked. I said sure I was, I just wasn’t sure about her, especially the way she always seemed to submit instead of join. It’s my way, she said, don’t feel centered out, it’s the same with everybody, I am just reserved about fucking—but you can be sure I enjoy it.

  A noise underneath the floorboards. Some animal skittering from one side of the cabin crawlspace to the other. Happens three or four times a night. That many animal runs when I’m awake, who knows how many of them work their way through when I’m asleep? Cora’s left the porch light on and about forty different kinds of moths are flapping against the screens of the two small front windows. There are insects around us inside, too, but I don’t like to think of them at night. In a corner, a spider mother has recently given birth, or at least that’s what we think those tiny globules that look like a grey-blue galaxy are the result of. Another spider, a big black one, is hanging over my head right now. Him I especially don’t like to think of when it’s night and smelly creatures are foraging in the crawlspace.

  What was that? Cora says suddenly. She is lying on her side now, here eyes wide open. Her head is lifted from her pillow just an inch or so, and she’s straining to look at something past me. I look toward that wall, see nothing.

  What was what? I say.

  The noise.

  I didn’t hear any noise.

  It was a sudden thump, the noise.

  There was nothing, believe me, you were sleeping.

  No way. I’ve been lying awake here for hours.

  Wrong, Cora. I’m the one’s been sitting awake here while you’ve been in dreamland where no doubt you heard that noise.

  We got to get outta here.

  Thought you were the one liked it here.

  My taste for the pastoral has diminished. It always does after about four or five days. I still feel the muck from the pond all over my skin.

  Well, if you’d take a shower—

  I took a fucking shower, white boy. I still feel the muck. I like my swimming better at that Holiday Inn.

  Where all the creeps are hanging off the patio balconies.

  That was unfortunate, I admit. I can’t help the creeps, they’re interfering everywhere. Everything was so nice before—

  I don’t know about before. Wasn’t here then.

  No, you came ’bout the same time as the creeps.

  Cora, please lay off. I can take just so much of—

  Ah, sweetpea my darling, you’re still so sensitive. I didn’t say you were one of them. Only you just came at the same time. It’s different.

  What you say and what you mean aren’t always the same.

  Look, man, it’s you that puts creep into your own head, don’t lay it off on me. I thought we settled all that kind of shit already. Part of the truce.

  She’s right. It’s my part of the truce not to fly off the handle at her remarks, just as her part’s not to mention that first night and the killing of the cop. Okay, I’ll back off.

  Sorry, Cora. I’m getting edgy. Like you say, it’s time to move on.

  Fine. We’ll clear the grounds tomorrow morning. Any heat we’ve collected should be off by now. When we get to a working phone, I’ll call Emil or Chuck. They’ll know what’s safe. Between the two of ’em, they got a pipeline to everywhere.

  She snuggles up to me, a peace gesture, and kisses me lightly on my right shoulder. The kiss sends waves of reaction through me. I haven’t told her that she’s the first woman I’ve slept with for more than two consecutive nights, that all the rest were one-night stands, forgettable and interchangeable. I have to be careful what I tell her. If I told her that I’m at least halfway in love with her, she’d probably hop the next mail train out. If they have mail trains any more.

  How much money we got, hon? she says. She’s now kissing my neck and it’s all I can do to just let it happen, let her proceed her own way, which is t
he way she likes it most of the time.

  Not much. My wallet was pretty much cleaned out even before Allen copped it.

  He didn’t cop it. The money was still there, wasn’t it? He didn’t intend to keep it.

  Sure, he was just going to kill me, then give it back.

  She laughs, one of her rare laughs without a mocking undertone.

  How come you came outta the city with so little bread? she says.

  I tell her about Lincoln Rockwell X and the buying of the wheels. It’s the first time in our five days together I’ve had nerve enough to tell her about it. I mean, she mocked me out royally when she first heard I’d paid anything at all for the Mustang.

  So he put the swindle on me.

  Good for him. You were ripe for picking.

  But we were old friends and it was five bills he took from me.

  More power, baby. Anyway, you each got what you wanted. What are friends for?

  I suppose. I could use those five bills now.

  Well, we’ll figure something.

  What?

  I don’t know, we’ll ask around. There’s little jobs where we can pick up some loose change. Some doperunning, that sort of stuff.

  I don’t like to mess around with dope.

  Only suggest you run it, not use it.

  But that’s exploitative.

  Do what you want, I don’t care. I gave up all judgement shit when the law and order folks all started sounding like Marxists.

  Well, I hope we can get something better.

  Ah, who the fuck cares? Right now I need you inside me.

  Which is where I’m heading.

  — 2 —

  Turns out The Mech’s got deals up the ass. And some of them are doperunning deals. When the money comes in, I find I don’t mind the dope. I tell Chuck that and he just laughs, says:

  Course you don’t mind it. It’s high-class doperunning.

  Why high-class?

  Well, you notice what kind of vehicle waits at the pickup points.

  Usually a pretty classy one.

  And you notice that your packages get taken by functionaries, even uniformed chauffeurs?