Unpossible (38 page)

Lydia Mitchum stripped off her green t-shirt and stood between our headlights. I couldn’t take my eyes off her breasts. "On my mark!" she yelled, raising the shirt above her head. Zeke snarled under his breath. Lydia brought the green cloth down. "Go!"

We went.

I think I screamed most of the way down the track. And then I looked over at Zeke and saw that he was smiling. Maybe I should have realized then that I had no part in this, but with Zeke so confident and in control, I started to smile too. We beat the Ford to Busted Bridge by a quarter mile.

The Bobcat was furious. "Who the hell are you!? What kind of Engine is that?" He kept yelling. Zeke told him to keep his shitty car and go home.

Zeke grabbed me by the shoulders. "So what do you say? Do we hit the circuit or what?"

I was young. I had just won my first race with Zeke. I said yes.

I left a note for my Father telling him I would be back for the harvest in October. Then I hopped out my window, a sack of clothes in my hand, and headed out across the fields to Zeke’s house. When I got there, Zeke was taking an axe to a tin contraption behind the shed. "What is that?" I said.

"His still." He broke up the last of the tubing, dumped a big barrel of mash on the ground, and then tossed the axe into the field. "Maybe this will keep him alive ’til I get back," he said.

We drove the white highways, only getting off when the road was too ridden with holes or the bridges were out. Zeke the Lion became the new name on the circuit. "I refuse to lose," he’d say to me before each race. And he didn’t. We drove through Kintucky, Appalachia, Texas, Misery, taking on all challenges. We would sleep outside, or in the Chevy if it was raining.

There were always girls at the races. A lot of times I would have to walk around for a couple of hours while Zeke was using the car. Or he would gather a bunch of kids around, slowly strip off his bandages, and tell them what it was like to drive one of the Engines. Zeke loved every minute of it. I spent every minute horny as hell, but the Driver magic didn’t seem to rub off on me.

And Zeke was changing. By late August he was staying out later and later before each race. He’d get roaring drunk and then shake me awake. He always wanted to talk. Most of the time it was racing: about the cars he’d beaten, or was going to beat in the next town, and especially how he was going to take on the Brujo in Mexicana.

But sometimes it was weirder stuff. "Joey," he said to me one night in Texas, "the voice is getting louder. When I start a race, I can hear it screaming at me. It’s getting in, Joey." I asked what he meant but he only stared at his hands and mumbled again, "It’s getting in, I can feel it." Then he took another slug of corn-gin. After a while he shambled off into the darkness.

By September we were in Mexicana.

The Brujo was nothing like I expected. I first saw him standing near his big white Caddy, surrounded by a group of racers. He was talking in a loud high voice and when he laughed he sounded like an old woman. His face was fat, and he beamed at everyone around him like an idiot.

When he saw Zeke and me step out of the Chevy he walked over. His body was as fat as his face, much too soft for an Engine driver’s. He held out a big gloved hand to me and smiled. Long leather thongs hung from the gloves. "I am Phil Mendez! You must be Lucky Joe!" That had gotten to be my name on the Circuit. We shook hands but his eyes were already on Zeke. Those eyes were flat, professional.

His smile faded. "This is the Lion?" Zeke was in bad shape. His skin was pale from blood loss, his hands were shaky, and his eyes were bloodshot. He hadn’t eaten well in days. And he was still drunk from a binge last night.

"I want to race," Zeke said. His voice was raspy.

"My friend, Zeke," the Brujo said, "you aren’t well enough to shit on a rock." The Brujo’s gaze swiveled back to me. "No race. Get him out of here."

"No!" screamed Zeke, and he grabbed Mendez by the shirt. "You can’t chicken out on me, sucker." Mendez looked at him coldly. I suddenly realized that the Brujo was an old man, maybe older than Frank.

There was a few seconds of silence. Then the Brujo smiled. "Okay, little man. What kind of car you want to put up?" Zeke let go of his shirt and Mendez looked over at the Chevy. He studied it for a moment and then looked at me.

"Who painted that car?" he snapped.

"Zeke did."

"Bullshit." He walked up to the car and circled it once. "I know this pattern."

Zeke shouted at him. "So what’s the deal? We race?"

"You’re from up around Illini, aren’t you?" I nodded. The Brujo shook his head sadly. "I thought so. I thought so." He turned back to the circle of drivers waiting for him by the Caddy. "Okay, little man. You get your race."

We watched the Brujo take on three challengers that day, which was almost unheard of on the Circuit. Every time the Brujo’s big caddy beat someone to the two-mile marker Zeke would say, "I can take that. I can take it."

We were scheduled for the next morning. Racers and girls and local kids stopped by our car to wish Zeke luck tomorrow. Bottles were passed. Zeke wasn’t drinking that night, but for the first time I was. It tasted horrible.

"I need an edge," Zeke said to me after everyone had left. He passed me a bottle. "He’s got a bigger Engine in that Caddy."

"Forget it," I said. My voice was too loud. "There’s no way for you to get a bigger Engine."

Zeke leaned against the hood. "Not a bigger Engine, Joey. More fuel, that’s all that matters. Bigger channels."

I drained the last of the bottle. The world was spinning a little crazily and I just wanted to lie flat on the ground. I pulled my blankets out of the car. "Sleep on it, Zeke," was the last thing I remember saying.

The next morning I woke up and Zeke and the Chevy were gone.

From the direction of the white highways I heard the Chevy’s roar, and in a second I was up and running toward the sound.

As I climbed the embankment I could hear the Brujo’s Caddy starting up. Zeke was right, it was a much bigger Engine. I hopped over the rail in time to see Zeke easing the Chevy up to the line.

I ran up to him, my bare feet smarting from the rubble on the highway. I looked at his hands. The bandages were off and blood was already running down his arms. The Channels in the steering wheel were nearly twice as big as they had been. His hands couldn’t cover the gaps.

Zeke turned to me and smiled. "I’m gonna bury this sucker," he said. "Hop in, Joe. You’re my lucky piece."

"Are you crazy?" I screamed. "Don’t do this Zeke!"

I heard the Brujo’s voice. "Get out of the way, Joe. Tell Frank the Crank that I beat his son."

"What?" I turned around. I was between the Caddy and the Chevy. A big driver reached me and pulled me out of the way. The start girl raised the green flag.

The two cars took off. The exhaust smelled like sulphur.

Since I was at the starting end of the track I didn’t see how it happened. Spectators at the far end said they saw the Brujo’s Caddy was ahead the whole way, until the ¾ mile marker. There the Chevy suddenly put on a burst of speed and passed the Caddy. Everyone agrees that the Chevy crossed the finish line first.

Only a couple people said that they actually saw the Pattern blow, or that they saw a whirlwind of light spin into the cabin with Zeke. Even the Brujo, driving right behind him, said that he couldn’t be sure what happened. But everyone could hear that Engine roaring like the wind in their ears and screaming like a calf at the slaughter.

The Chevy never slowed down. It left tracks of blood on white cement.

I hitched my way across Mexicana, California, and Arizona. Some drivers wouldn’t stop for me, but the ones that did knew who I was and wanted to talk about Zeke’s race. Except for my last ride, Naomi.

Somewhere in the middle of Texas she looked at me through the rear view mirror, blew air through her lips like a baby, and then laughed uproariously.

"You scared of a woman driver, Lucky Joe?" she yelled over the roar of the wind.

Was I? Naomi was one of the few female drivers on the Circuit; she was in her mid-thirties. They made fun of her off the highways. On the highways they tried their damnedest to beat her.

I shook my head no, for safety’s sake.

"You should be, Lucky, you should be. I think women are going to dominate racing soon." She must have seen my disbelief. "Oh no? Tell me, Joey. What’s an Engine?"

"Everybody knows what an Engine is," I said. "A demon."

"A demon? An angry, vengeful spirit trapped in the pattern of a car." She shut her eyes to consider this. We stayed perfectly on course.

Her eyes sprang open. She smiled. "Exactly right. A demon. But what is an Engine before you trap it?"

"That’s stupid ... " I began, but then stopped. I remembered the beauty of the whirlwind spinning inside blue circles. "I give up. What is it?"

"An angel."

I snorted.

"Think about it, Joey. If you trapped a creature, made it do what you wanted, whenever you wanted, and then destroyed it, wouldn’t you feel more comfortable calling the thing evil? Torturing an ‘angel’ would bring so much guilt to our manly drivers."

I remembered Zeke, the tracks of blood. "You don’t know what you’re talking about lady. I’ve seen my friend ... a guy, go zombi. That was no ‘angel’."

"Even an angel might go insane." She gestured dismissively with one hand. "And you’re right, the name ‘angel’ is meaningless. All names are meaningless."

Naomi shut up suddenly. She was looking at me strangely. "Are you okay?"

I looked out the window and let the hot Texas wind blow tears off my face. Naomi drove on in silence. A long while later, when it was dark and we were half way into Kentucky, I only asked, "So why do women make better drivers?"

She chuckled. "Revenge."

It was a late afternoon three days after she’d picked me up when Naomi stopped the car and let me out near my father’s farm. She had driven the whole way without sleeping. The cold October wind whipped at my clothes, tugged at my bedroll. She smiled up at me.

"Here you are, Lucky Joe."

"Thanks, Naomi. I appreciate the lift."

"Any time. Take care of yourself, now. And do me a favor; stay away from the Engines. Fall in love, settle down and be a farmer."

"Okay, I promise." Then I said: "What about you?"

She patted my hand with one scarred palm. "Good," was all she said. Her eyes sparkled like no color at all. I watched her disappear before I turned my face to the wind and started down the embankment.

I walked the two miles from the highway breathing in the familiar smells of harvest. The corn was only half cut, though, and we were only weeks away from snow. A knot of fear cinched tight in my stomach.

I stepped up to the porch and pushed through the door. It was supper time. The family sat at the table, my Father at one end, Firstmother at the other, my two sisters and Sara in the middle. My place was empty.

My sisters swiveled in their chairs as I walked in, then quickly turned back to the table and dropped their eyes. Sarah looked up, smiled slightly, and started to get up. Her belly was hugely round beneath her dress.

Firstmother quietly said, "No." Sara sat down awkwardly.