Just North of Nowhere (45 page)

He’d been in her, front and back. He’d been working, of course. The J was no club sedan like the Dragon. A little cramped in the back, still, she had headroom to spare. There was no fancy stuff, no padded dash or a dozen dials nobody looked at, no. Her steering column was a plain painted shaft—her shift leaver had a genuine Ivoreen knob on the end but that was the end of fancy. Even fresh off the line at Willow Run, the Vagabond was an economy honey. Family, that was her. Family with a little sass! Hell, she gave 35 miles to the damn gallon when she was young!

Einar! Will you get in!
wasn’t a question.

The driver’s seat back flipped forward. Einar climbed in. He draped a clean rag over her new back seat covers—special order right out of the catalogue from San Antonio, Texas, Einar paying from his own pockets – and he slid in. Slim but once settled, she was a comfortable sit: soft, friendly, giving. And there Einar sat, sat like a Goddamn passenger; like when mom and pop drove to the Drive In out past the banks. Hell, the J wasn’t a vehicle you’d want to grow up in, not like the Dragon, hell no, but she was a good old car. All that was running in Einar’s head.

Then,
You ever go anywhere?
she said.

Part five

NOT FOR THE LONG HAUL

Einar sat in the back.

The J buzzed across the bridge at Engine Warm. Her headlights swept black forest, back and forth, both sides. As they climbed, the river fell away below them. These times… He didn’t know. These times in second gear, when they rode upward, Einar felt they were going into damn whatchakallit? Outer space. They weren’t. That was crap—whimsical crap—but they were heading out, the road rising into the flatlands, the flatlands spreading, going places Einar had never been. Well, not on his own anyway, not without the Army. Karl was behind them now, Vinnie’s jurisdiction was crossed. Forget Goddamn Bunch, the Sons of Norway, Esther and the
Eats
, the Italian Lady, all of damn Bluffton—forget it all. Passed and past! Screw the
Good Service
, that too. Einar was fucking happy.

The J said nothing – highway hums and whispers was her—she ran young, rode the road like a song, a damn song.

Einar smelled her song: her too-hot oil, the whiff of uncombusted gas she trailed like a running fart, her seals and hoses on the edge of going tacky, the gamey stink she carried from the first day—that first Goddamned day he’d put his ass on her hood. And there was another, a fresher tang, now, a red scent she’d picked up in her night rambles with Karl, the chattering blood-fear that hung on her like honest sweat. But that was tailing off, all that being left behind, too. Ahead was… What the hell was ahead?

Einar licked his lips and eased into the ride. “Cripes, Pretty Pear,” he said, “That’s what! Should’a got you a radio. Radio’s for the long haul. Hell, I should’a got a fixed up radio all them years ago, back on the Banks with the Dragon. Something to settle down with. Yeah. Something for night.”

He’d get a damn radio. That’s all there was to that, another place, sometime soon. When he set down with the J, he’d pull out that piece of standard AM crap that had never worked anyway, p
e
ut in a nice one, something to pull stations from everywhere in the dark after midnight, when they were alone. Something from the catalogue.

The land settled to rolling hills. The road was banked just about right for the gentle curves that ran the lay of the land. He leaned into them with her, naturally, as though his body steered. Felt as though they were one, Goddamned one. Dancing, yeah. They danced, now, neither leading, him relaxed in the back, her rolling with the road.

Some miles shy of Cruxton, she started pulling to the right. Einar felt it in his gut first: a tendency. Cripes, he should have balanced her wheels better, hell he should have aligned her front end, tightened the suspension. Straighten her fucking frame again, why didn’t he? Cripes, he should have checked her out after she’d pulled that trick in the woods, that spell she had with Karl, making him think she…

But he hadn’t. He hadn’t done any of that, and that was that Goddamn story and something else for later.

“You got a shimmy, Honey,” is all he said, leaning his chin on the back of the driver’s seat.

The shimmy became an out and out wobble.

He crawled over the front seat and gripped her wheel. “Goddamn, I should’a figured. That two-by, all them hits to your frame!”

Her body quivered with every nudge of the wheel away from her rightward urge.

“What the hell, Pretty Pear?”

She purred and pulled more, jerking his wrist hard. Sure as shit, she wanted to go somewhere he didn’t.

Forget them being one! Her shimmy and quiver and that pull—always to the right, to the damn right – that ended that little tale. One? Whimsy. Goddamn whimsy.

The road straightened. The river disappeared to their left. As they caught the rushing distance, the dark woods drew closer, both sides. The J’s running scent mingled with something else. Soon he caught it: wet grass and leaves crushed to dust, roots, vines, the great dark green of the forest. Their speed dropped as the dark closed on them. Branches met overhead, touched and twined. Einar heard the trunks groan as they leaned, twisting. Firecrackles of Fall-dry branches filled the cab as the J rolled over them. Ahead and in the rearview, their way narrowed into a tight woven corridor, its end pinched to black nothing. In a little bit, they were rolling at man-pace through the scented dark. The J’s pull to the right eased but Einar kept his grip on the wheel. He never took his foot off the gas but she purred, she slowed. Then it was just them and night. They were still and her lights touched the dark ahead.

“Cripes,” Einar said. The first anyone had said for miles. “How many times I been to Cruxton and I never…?”

He shut his yap because at the moment he didn’t know what he never.

He never saw a main road slim to a still place in the forest. That was one thing. And, of course, no, they weren’t on the way to Cruxton, that was another thing. They were wrapped in trees and night. He was wrapped by the J. He never felt less alone. That was the third thing. He never saw night so pretty, that was four.

What say, Einar? I belong, you know. Running with them, here.

Huh? Einar looked where the headlights weren’t. The darkness filled with eyes. Eyes like stars in winter sky. The eyes waited.

Them lights in the dark. The legs and feet. The bodies soft and hard, furred and pointed. The wet chase. Come along, Einar. Take the blood.

“Cripes,” he said. “you and me’s going somewhere and live settled.”

The wind chuckled. Crushed leaves swirled in the headlamps and her body shook, a tremor, enough to make her loose parts rattle, one thing against another.

Honey, I been settled. I was pride and glitter. I was loved and buffed. I was whitewalls and Simonize. I shone for the neighbors. I was driven. I dropped off and picked up. I hauled to market and carried to the picture shows, waited in the flicker. Cripes, Einar. I gave and gave. Then I sat in a barn. Then I got hauled away and I rusted. Cripes, honey, I had love enough! You missed that time. I’m me, now and you take what I got!

He had enough. Goddamn enough. He grabbed for the door handle. Thunk-thunk, fast as that, the latches sucked shut. The window knob wouldn’t turn. Of course it wouldn’t. “You’re a machine” Einar yelled, “You do nothing I don’t make you, you bitch!”

A forest breeze carried over her roofline and down her back. Whispering air sent a chuckle up Einar’s spine.
You got a point Einar,
she whispered,
a Goddamn point. You are the pressing foot, the steering hand, the gas and parts.
She purred in the wind.
Come, take blood with me.

“You,” Einar said, “You? It’s that Sonuvabitch Karl as takes them deers. That’s Karl Dorbler and his use! His dirty work, not you, my Pear!”

The speaking breeze continued across and under her. It laughed for the J.
Cripes,
she said,
Karl? Karl led. He showed. Now it’s me. I’m for the world of night, the hunter not the weapon!

“Bullshit,” he cried in the wilderness, “you are a Goddamn nineteen hundred and fifty-two Henry J Vagabond family coupe and I’m driving!”

So drive me, Einar. I’ll Goddamn show you. Feed me,
she said,
I’ll feed you…

“Ain’t me! That Goddamn ain’t me!”

Alone in the J, Einar twitched, alone in the wood, another human soul nowhere on this world, Einar twitched more than ever he’d twitched his whole damn life. “I’m your mechanic for crineoutloud! I fix shit.” He looked for more in him. “I fix you!” he shouted.

She hummed. The eyes in the woods dimmed, withdrew into the black beyond their lights.

Einar…they’re going.
Her engine raged, her headlamps brightened with the revs.
The chase is on the go? You take my wheel…? Take me, Goddamn.

Einar felt her ass-end shimmy with the racing engine.

“I ain’t Karl.” He said. “I’m Einar Lewissohn. That’s it. Take it or…”

It ain’t Karl
, she shouted in the brightness that bloomed in her revs,
it ain’t no one. It’s me. Cripes! It’s me. I’m for the chase!

She dropped into first. Her wheels spun, dirt, dead leaves and branches kicked back and sprayed the trees behind. Einar slammed back against the seat, against the head-rest he’d put in, special order from Jackrabbit Teddy’s out of San Bernardino, California. He tried to take the wheel, his foot reached for her brakes. No. She swerved along the forest path, tossed him across the seat against the passenger door.

Ahead were bounding whitetails, flashing legs, swerving antlers and bright, bright eyes, glaring back. Branches whipped out of the darkness, slapped across the windshield and screeched her skin. Night skittered by with Einar a passenger, a Goddamn passenger.

“I’m your mechanic for crineoutloud! And I ain’t gonna die, dragged through woods and behind a wheel!” Einar lay back and kicked at her driver’s side window. Took him three good two-footed whacks but she busted clean. “And you aren’t hunting tonight!” He dove out just as the J spun rubber and kicked a dirt-spitting donut-turn.

The engine roar and spinning wheel spatter, the lights and the chase faded into the night.

“Well, not with me, you ain’t!” he called to her tail. “You’ll see!” He yelled at the last of her taillight.

Karl stopped by a week later. After hours. Einar was ass-up in a two-year-old damn Chevy, didn’t see the Pauli Girl Karl smacked down on the bench. He heard it, though.

“I guess you figure you got something coming from me for getting that piece-a-crap Henry J outta town before Vinnie tied her to me.”

“Hand me that torque wrench, there” Einar said.

Nothing else was said for a time. Karl drained his beer then started on Einar’s.

“I reckon to get me something a little heavier, you know?”

“Goddamn,” Einar said, not to Karl, to the head gasket cover.

“I’ll bring her in next Sunday. I figure. Late. You know…”

“Naw. You get Bunch to do it. I’m finished with that.”

Wasn’t much to say after that. When Karl left, Einar turned on the radio and lay back to the static out of Cruxton and places south and west of there. He lay in the dark listening.

When he woke, night was over and the day half way shot. Damn. He should have put a radio in her. That’s what. Maybe he’d bring one, next time. If she didn’t want it, what the hell. That was her business!

Clifford was nuts, that was for sure. The worst monster ever chasing
him
, Bunch would have been asshole and elbows, no whimpers, hugs, and chatter. Despite his tale though, Cliffy looked like a regular guy who’d had a lousy day – okay, a lousy couple days.

Bunch had trudged home. Spring was coming, but what the hell
wasn’t?
By now the damn river should have been rolling but where the current should be flashing, a little water bubbled here and there around the ice, for cripes sake. Rolling and flashing? Nope.

The day hadn’t been one of Bunch’s best. He’d eaten but the grub stank. Even Esther’s coffee was grinds and soap. And no pie!
The Eats and out of pie!
That bit his ass.

Bunch had finally pried wages out of Karl: Bacon, spuds, a dozen mystery cans. Might have been about right, but the bacon was mostly fat and the potatoes had already sprouted. Fatty bacon, bud-eyed spuds and a clanking pile of who-knew-what for a week’s worth of stocking, cleaning, delivering, and, with Karl up the Bluff taking care of his old mom – the baby due any second now for crineoutloud – Bunch had been left pretty much in charge of, well, all of it. The works!

Bunch shuddered every time he thought about Egil’s Astrid ripening up there. Lightning or not, having a baby at 80-whatever wasn’t right. Not at all!

Then Karl hands him the grub, announces he’s shutting down the
Haus
completely until the kid is born, and there it is! No work today, nothing tomorrow, no promise for the day after, week after or forever after for that matter! Made Bunch feel, well, kind of small and unconsidered.

And spring stuck off somewheres.

Trudging to the bridge, Bunch sucked cold. Places that weren’t Bluffton were already sprung, he knew that damn-much. And here he was, still wintering, a long freeze still shining the bluffs. Nights ran down in chill sighs from up in the Driftless. Tremoring winds still laid low both bird and beast, bare branches clacked sharp and sap-dry like nasty little feet, and tonight the burrs had come down in a fog that exhaled full-bore winter.

AND
the Cheap or Free keg at the Wheel was flat! That was usual, but it capped a crappy day, so it bore sitting on.

Bunch squinted over it all – the day, the lousy grub, dim future, Karl, Karl’s ancient Mom ready to squeeze a kid, the sour beer, and chill, chill weather – as he passed Cristobel’s place.
And there.
Now she needed painting, her chimney needed tucking, and her sills? Cripes, he’d run into her three times that day. Did she even once say, “come on over and putty my windows!” so he could say back, “Hell, woman, I’ll re-
hang
your windows and your doors, but for your drafts, it’s your sills need jacking, for crineoutloud!”? Hell no, she hadn’t! So he didn’t even pause in the trees across the way from her place – that’s how lousy the day had been! He put the stockpens behind him and trudged the last quarter mile to Engine Warm.

Then, the guy!

Bunch had pretty good night-eyes so he saw him right away, squatted up under where the bridge’s roadway met the bank, wedged under a truss, bent almost to his crotch.

Bunch didn’t say anything at first; figured it wouldn’t be polite. He dropped his grub sack, rattled some pots, shook his rocker. Nothing. A guy caught borrowing another man’s piece of river, curled up on another fellow’s squat ought to say something. “Hello,” you might expect, or “sorry, buddy, this place yours?” Some damn thing.

This guy? Not even, “Hey, sorry I’m whimpering here!” Only right, Public Land or not!

Finally, Bunch put his eyes right onto the guy for a couple, three seconds.

Guy stared back like a doe in the Henry J’s headlights. He wore a suit and tie, both dirty.

Terrorists’ suits and ties weren’t.

The guy was dirty.

Terrorists not.

His hair hung in greasy strings.

Not so, your terrorist. Guy also looked as though he hadn’t eaten in a year. A lot of terrorists from the cities were pick-scrawny at first look but see them trotting along the hike trail in those underpants outfits they wore, you saw how bubbled up with store-made muscle they were.

The thin, dirty guy just whimpered.

Bunch laid his fire. Greasy bacon and sprout-eyed spuds it might be, but the grunts weren’t going to make themselves. Soon as the flame raised fingers, the guy gave a yelp on top of the whimpers and clamped his peepers tight – so tight his face wrinkled all the way to his ears.

Bunch had it. “I can’t toss you out of my house, here but...”

At the first words – Bunch never even got to, “...all the same you ought to go away pretty quick” – the guy pulled his head between his shoulders and raised his whimper to a scream.

“Screw it,” Bunch muttered and went back to fixing dinner. Soon as the bacon started to curl and sizzle, the scream slid into a wail that bounced back and forth between abutments.

“Cripes!” Bunch yelled, “this damn rasher’s earned by sweat and labor work and I ain’t got enough! Specially, I ain’t sharing with terrorists in muddy suits! Ought to be ashamed of yourself!” Bunch was pretty sure he hadn’t meant what he said, but he had to say it and hoped the guy would scram before the eggs came out. He’d been saving those eggs.

“Please don’t!” The guy turtled his ears a couple inches further south of his shoulders. “And don’t talk!”

Bunch didn’t.

“Sound brings it too,” the guy whispered.

The fire crackled. Water bubbled under the ice. Stillness chilled like winter wind.

“Every sound is a discrete quantum. It nears with every...”

“See what you mean,” Bunch said after a moment.

The guy shivered and Bunch stood like a doofus.

Finally, the guy eased off. In another slow minute, he unwrapped and slid down the bank and collapsed at Bunch’s feet. “Please,” he whispered to his toes, “just stay, stay very still. Please.”

“Get on there, let me get you some grub!”

The guy kept on so Bunch dragged him to his feet, shoved him toward the crackling fire, and folded him into his own damn chair! Bunch was pretty sure he didn’t want the guy hugging his ankles like that. “Cripes!” Bunch said. That about covered the matter.

The grub could have been worse.

The bacon crisped pretty good, the eggs bubbled brown in the drip and the spuds were sweet, even if sprouted. For once, Bunch’s coffee was better than Esther’s! Surprise, surprise. And there had been enough for the two of them, Bunch and Clifford – the guy’s name was Clifford and he was from around here but not for a long time. Bunch pieced that together from all the talk. That and it was coming on to the guy’s birthday. What the hell, night was long and listening was sometimes useful.

As they ate, Clifford settled. Not to how a regular guy might be, but he wasn’t flopping and screaming whenever Bunch got up to stir the fire, or if the ice creaked out on the river or when some critter shouted doom from the fog in the woods across the way. When Bunch asked Clifford if he had the time, the guy nearly heart attacked, so okay, so much for being settled. And after some minutes of silent slobbers, the guy said the worst monster that ever was, was coming for him.

“It’s taken everyone I ever knew; ground their bones to make its bread!” Clifford hugged himself and let out a shrill giggle. Then he grew serious again and squeezed his eyes shut till his face got small. “I watched it,” he said. “Will watch it.”

“That the monster that comes when called?” Bunch asked, making conversation.

“What?” Cliffy said.

“Something you said. Something about sound calling it.”

“Oh,” he said, finally, “It comes closer with everything, sound, movement. Every particle of the universe has a mass/energy quantum. Every move dissipates that, brings us nearer to the heat-death of the universe.” He giggled again. “What you might call an ancillary component of my personal bête noire!”

The fire flickered his face. He sat like a landed fish gulping. Then his eye blazed. “You, whomever you are – and don’t tell me, because I don’t want to know – you are statistically dead. You know that?”

“Huh,” Bunch said. He hadn’t known but wasn’t surprised.

“Probability. Ninety-five point two-something percent of everyone who ever was born is now dead and dust! So...” he shrugged.

Bunch’s butt puckered. He’d dug graves at the Lutherans, the Catholics, at Fatty Borgos’s. Dead folks were underfoot, for sure. And there he was, sitting on bone-heap mud while Clifford, ass warm and easy, squatted on Bunch’s own chair, the pretty good rocker Elton Holmgren had swapped him for rodding out his clogged sewer line – and what a lousy job that had been!

“Almost everyone’s in the cold, cold ground. Why not you?” Clifford said.

“Well, I’m
on
it anyway. See, now that’s my chair...” Bunch started.

“Point is: mathematically, you are dead! Okay? But you’re not! You defy the universe just by breathing! Okay? That’s just background!”

Bunch took a breath.

“Hey! Tell me when I’m lying, won’t you?” Clifford shouted. “Don’t answer. Just do that thing. Okay?” The rocker squished mud. “Ever wonder why the good die young?” he asked.

Before Bunch could say he hadn’t, Clifford shoved on.

“Shakespeare, Mozart, Freddie Prinz. All young, all dead. Millions more! Why? Don’t say, I’ll tell you what I think: I think it’s
us
.
We
come.
We
take them. They populate our world, fill it with genius, worth, excitement.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Maybe. We fixed the problems, maybe. We maybe come back here to loot your world of genius,” he leaned toward Bunch, “of humanity, because: we flat-lined. Maybe.”

“Bullshit!” Bunch called out.

Clifford rocked back and blinked. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, maybe it is. But
maybe
not. Maybe they do fix the gadget. Maybe they do that! Or will do. Maybe not me or mine, but maybe
because
of me and my kind they will.” He sagged for a couple seconds, then perked up. “Maybe I’m alive backward! That’s possible, don’t you think?”

Bunch drew another breath.

“Yeah,” Clifford said, staring at the underside of the span. “From what I know about the Monster, that may be! Maybe everything goes backward. I could have aggregated out of parts, already aged beyond reckoning and now am grown young because I’m near my birth! Maybe life, just narrows the options, makes the universe palatable and we go into Forever wide-eyed, innocent, simple, and bawling.”

He continued to stare at the bridge struts.

“Bullshit!” Bunch called out in the silence. It had worked before!

“Occam’s razor!” he shouted. “You’re right. Thanks. Simple’s best, maybe I just haven’t been born yet. I mean, I know I haven’t been. That’s later, but you know what I mean, right? Course you don’t.”

Bunch debated:
call ‘bullshit’ or nod in agreement?

“Ever seen a ghost?” Clifford yelled before Bunch decided.

Bunch pointed through the fog, “Engine Warm’s got...,” but Clifford kept right on.

“No, that’s nonsense, ‘bullshit,’ you might say. I can’t be a ghost. That would negate the whole reality of what’s to come. Without my mind working as it does, as it did, as it will do...I couldn’t be here. None of this...” he waved at the night, “the whole of the last, what? How many millennia of human history would be pffft!”

“Makes sense,” Bunch said.

“How many years has it been?” Cliffy stopped.

Bunch could almost hear gears turning in the silence.

“Never mind, no, listen. Tomorrow a kid will be born. Maybe the kid will be an ordinary kid – bad at games, won’t get anything right, two left feet, can’t get a date – to save his
life
he can’t – but maybe, maybe he’ll be really good at one thing. Don’t ask I’ll tell you: What he’s good at – will be good at – will be numbers. His talent. He’ll know how to shove numbers around instinctively, before the kid even gets to school, a natural. Okay? Don’t answer!”

Cliffy picked up the pace.

“Okay, so the kid grew, went to school. Will go. Nothing unusual. He studies. He becomes what? A mathematician of course; shoves numbers around till the world makes sense! Then he goes to work. Okay, he just goes to school until school
is
work but he gets together with a bunch of other grown kids, people like he who are lousy at life but are the best in the world at this one thing. And they’ll all shove numbers until...” Clifford hit a wall. When he spoke again, he spoke like he was praying, “until the numbers became real. That happens, they change the world. Everything.”

Bunch squinted.

“Sh, sh, sh,” Clifford, said. “Now, he’ll be part of this group. There’ll be other groups, and they do other things, but this guy’s part of it – the guy I’m talking about – and finally somebody fits together all their individually shoved numbers and – see? – this beautifully, intricate jigsaw number they derived, becomes a machine. A machine that moves.” The guy’s eyes widened. “And the machine will move time. Okay?”