Riding the Bullet (3 page)

I swung the door open and slid inside. As I put my backpack between my feet, an odor struck me, something almost familiar and a trifle unpleasant. “Thank you,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

The guy behind the wheel was wearing faded jeans and a black tee shirt with the arms cut off. His skin was tanned, the muscles heavy, and his right bicep was ringed with a blue barbwire tattoo. He was wearing a green John Deere cap turned around backwards. There was a button pinned near the round collar of his tee shirt, but I couldn't read it from my angle. “Not a problem,” he said. “You headed up the city?”

“Yes,” I said. In this part of the world “up the city”
meant Lewiston, the only city of any size north of Portland. As I closed the door, I saw one of those pine-tree air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. That was what I'd smelled. It sure wasn't my night as far as odors went; first pee and now artificial pine. Still, it was a ride. I should have been relieved. And as the guy accelerated back onto Ridge Road, the big engine of his vintage Mustang growling, I tried to tell myself I
was
relieved.

“What's going on for you in the city?” the driver asked. I put him at about my age, some townie who maybe went to vocational-technical school in Auburn or maybe worked in one of the few remaining textile mills in the area. He'd probably fixed up this Mustang in his spare time, because that was what townie kids did: drank beer, smoked a little rope, fixed up their cars. Or their motorcycles.

“My brother's getting married. I'm going to be his best man.” I told this lie with absolutely no premeditation. I didn't want him to know about my mother, although I didn't know why. Something was wrong here. I didn't know what it was or why I should think such a thing in the first place, but I knew. I was positive. “The rehearsal's tomorrow. Plus a stag party tomorrow night.”

“Yeah? That right?” He turned to look at me, wide-set eyes and handsome face, full lips smiling slightly, the eyes unbelieving.

“Yeah,” I said.

I was afraid. Just like that I was afraid again. Something was wrong, had maybe started being wrong when the old geezer in the Dodge had invited me to wish on the infected moon instead of on a star. Or maybe from the moment I'd picked up the telephone and listened to Mrs. McCurdy saying she had some bad news for me, but ‘twasn't s'bad as it could've been.

“Well that's good,” said the young man in the turned-around cap. “A brother getting married, man, that's good. What's your name?”

I wasn't just afraid, I was terrified. Everything was wrong,
everything,
and I didn't know why or how it could possibly have happened so fast. I did know one thing, however: I wanted the driver of the Mustang to know my name no more than I wanted him to know my business in Lewiston. Not that I'd be getting to Lewiston. I was suddenly sure that I would never see Lewiston again. It was like knowing the car was going to stop. And there was the smell, I knew something about that, as well. It wasn't the air freshener; it was something
beneath
the air freshener.

“Hector,” I said, giving him my roommate's name. “Hector Passmore, that's me.” It came out of my dry mouth smooth and calm, and that was good. Something inside me insisted that I must not let the driver of the Mustang know that I sensed something wrong. It was my only chance.

He turned toward me a little, and I could read his button:
I RODE THE BULLET AT THRILL VILLAGE, LACONIA.
I knew the place; had been there, although not for a long time.

I could also see a heavy black line which circled his throat just as the barbwire tattoo circled his upper arm, only the line around the driver's throat wasn't a tattoo. Dozens of black marks crossed it vertically. They were the stitches put in by whoever had put his head back on his body.

“Nice to meet you, Hector,” he said. “I'm George Staub.”

My hand seemed to float out like a hand in a dream. I wish that it had been a dream, but it wasn't; it had all the sharp edges of reality. The smell on top was pine. The smell underneath was some chemical, probably formaldehyde. I was riding with a dead man.

•   •   •

The Mustang rushed along Ridge Road at sixty miles an hour, chasing its high beams under the light of a polished button moon. To either side, the trees crowding the road danced and writhed in the wind. George Staub smiled at me with his empty eyes, then let go of my hand and returned his attention to the road. In high school I'd read
Dracula,
and now a line from it recurred, clanging in my head like a cracked bell: The dead drive fast.

Can't let him know I know.
This also clanged in my
head. It wasn't much, but it was all I had.
Can't let him know, can't let him, can't.
I wondered where the old man was now. Safe at his brother's? Or had the old man been in on it all along? Was he maybe right behind us, driving along in his old Dodge, hunched over the wheel and snapping at his truss? Was he dead, too? Probably not. The dead drive fast, according to Bram Stoker, but the old man had never gone a tick over forty-five. I felt demented laughter bubbling in the back of my throat and held it down. If I laughed he'd know. And he mustn't know, because that was my only hope.

“There's nothing like a wedding,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, “everyone should do it at least twice.”

My hands had settled on each other and were squeezing. I could feel the nails digging the backs of them just above the knuckles, but the sensation was distant, news from another country. I couldn't let him know, that was the thing. The woods were all around us, the only light was the heartless bone-glow of the moon, and I couldn't let him know that I knew he was dead. Because he wasn't a ghost, nothing so harmless. You might see a ghost, but what sort of thing stopped to give you a ride? What kind of creature was that? Zombie? Ghoul? Vampire? None of the above?

George Staub laughed. “Do it twice! Yeah, man, that's my whole family! “

“Mine, too,” I said. My voice sounded calm, just the voice of a hitchhiker passing the time of day—night, in this case—making agreeable conversation as some small payment for his ride. “There's really nothing like a funeral.”

“Wedding,” he said mildly. In the light from the dashboard, his face was waxy, the face of a corpse before the makeup went on. That turned-around cap was particularly horrible. It made you wonder how much was left beneath it. I had read somewhere that morticians sawed off the top of the skull and took out the brains and put in some sort of chemically treated cotton. To keep the face from falling in, maybe.

“Wedding,” I said through numb lips, and even laughed a little—a light little chuckle. “Wedding's what I meant to say.”

“We always say what we mean to say, that's what I think,” the driver said. He was still smiling.

Yes, Freud had believed that, too. I'd read it in Psych 101. I doubted if this fellow knew much about Freud, I didn't think many Freudian scholars wore sleeveless tee shirts and baseball caps turned around backwards, but he knew enough. Funeral, I'd said. Dear Christ, I'd said funeral. It came to me then that he was playing me. I didn't want to let him know I knew he was dead.
He
didn't want to let me know that he knew I knew he was dead. And so I couldn't let him know that I knew that he knew that . . .

The world began to swing in front of me. In a moment it would begin to spin, then to whirl, and I'd lose it. I closed my eyes for a moment. In the darkness, the afterimage of the moon hung, turning green.

“You feeling all right, man?” he asked. The concern in his voice was gruesome.

“Yes,” I said, opening my eyes. Things had steadied again. The pain in the backs of my hands where my nails were digging into the skin was strong and real. And the smell. Not just pine air freshener, not just chemicals. There was a smell of earth, as well.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Just a little tired. Been hitchhiking a long time. And sometimes I get a little carsick.” Inspiration suddenly struck. “You know what, I think you better let me out. If I get a little fresh air, my stomach will settle. Someone else will come along and—”

“I couldn't do that,” he said. “Leave you out here? No way. It could be an hour before someone came along, and they might not pick you up when they did. I got to take care of you. What's that song? Get me to the church on time, right? No way I'm letting you out. Crack your window a little, that'll help. I know it doesn't smell exactly great in here. I hung up that air freshener, but those things don't work worth a shit. Of course, some smells are harder to get rid of than others.”

I wanted to reach out for the window crank and
turn it, let in the fresh air, but the muscles in my arm wouldn't seem to tighten. All I could do was sit there with my hands locked together, nails biting into the backs of them. One set of muscles wouldn't work; another wouldn't stop working. What a joke.

“It's like that story,” he said. “The one about the kid who buys the almost new Cadillac for seven hundred and fifty dollars. You know that story, don't you?”

“Yeah,” I said through my numb lips. I didn't know the story, but I knew perfectly well that I didn't want to hear it, didn't want to hear any story this man might have to tell. “That one's famous.” Ahead of us the road leaped forward like a road in an old black-and-white movie.

“Yeah it is, fucking famous. So the kid's looking for a car and he sees an almost brand-new Cadillac on this guy's lawn.”

“I said I—”

“Yeah, and there's a sign that says
FOR SALE BY OWNER
in the window.”

There was a cigarette parked behind his ear. He reached for it, and when he did, his shirt pulled up in the front. I could see another puckered black line there, more stitches. Then he leaned forward to punch in the cigarette lighter and his shirt dropped back into place.

“Kid knows he can't afford no Cadillac-car, can't get
within a
shout
of a Caddy, but he's curious, you know? So he goes over to the guy and says, ‘How much does something like that go for?' And the guy, he turns off the hose he's got—cause he's washin the car, you know—and he says, ‘Kid, this is your lucky day. Seven hundred and fifty bucks and you drive it away.' ”

The cigarette lighter popped out. Staub pulled it free and pressed the coil to the end of his cigarette. He drew in smoke and I saw little tendrils come seeping out between the stitches holding the incision on his neck closed.

“The kid, he looks in through the driver's side window and sees there's only seventeen thou on the odometer. He says to the guy, ‘Yeah, sure, that's as funny as a screen door in a submarine.' The guy says, ‘No joke, kid, pony up the cash and it's yours. Hell, I'll even take a check, you got a honest face.' And the kid says . . .”

I looked out the window. I
had
heard the story before, years ago, probably while I was still in junior high. In the version I'd been told the car was a Thunderbird instead of a Caddy, but otherwise everything was the same. The kid says
I may only be seventeen but I'm not an idiot, no one sells a car like this, especially one with low mileage, for only seven hundred and fifty bucks.
And the guy tells him he's doing it because the car smells, you can't get the smell out,
he's tried and tried and nothing will take it out. You see he was on a business trip, a fairly long one, gone for at least . . .

“. . . a coupla weeks,” the driver was saying. He was smiling the way people do when they're telling a joke that really slays them. “And when he comes back, he finds the car in the garage and his wife in the car, she's been dead practically the whole time he's been gone. I don't know if it was suicide or a heart attack or what, but she's all bloated up and the car, it's full of that smell and all he wants to do is sell it, you know.” He laughed. “That's quite a story, huh?”

“Why wouldn't he call home?” It was my mouth, talking all by itself. My brain was frozen. “He's gone for two weeks on a business trip and he never calls home once to see how his wife's doing?”

“Well,” the driver said, “that's sorta beside the point, wouldn't you say? I mean hey, what a bargain—
that's
the point. Who wouldn't be tempted? After all, you could always drive the car with the fuckin windows open, right? And it's basically just a story. Fiction. I thought of it because of the smell in
this
car. Which is fact.”

Silence. And I thought:
He's waiting for me to say something, waiting for me to end this.
And I wanted to. I did. Except . . . what then? What would he do then?

He rubbed the ball of his thumb over the button on his shirt, the one reading
I RODE THE BULLET AT THRILL VILLAGE, LACONIA.
I saw there was dirt under his fingernails. “That's where I was today,” he said. “Thrill Village. I did some work for a guy and he gave me an all-day pass. My girlfriend was gonna go with me, but she called and said she was sick, she gets these periods that really hurt sometimes, they make her sick as a dog. It's too bad, but I always think, hey, what's the alternative? No rag at all, right, and then I'm in trouble, we both are.” He yapped, a humorless bark of sound. “So I went by myself. No sense wasting an all-day pass. You ever been to Thrill Village?”

“Yes,” I said. “Once. When I was twelve.”

“Who'd you go with?” he asked. “You didn't go alone, did you? Not if you were only twelve.”

I hadn't told him that part, had I? No. He was playing with me, that was all, swatting me idly back and forth. I thought about opening the door and just rolling out into the night, trying to tuck my head into my arms before I hit, only I knew he'd reach over and pull me back before I could get away. And I couldn't raise my arms, anyway. The best I could do was clutch my hands together.