Ashes (2 page)

So women were allowed in his meat wagon. But
not on his midnight runs. Those were reserved strictly for him and
his Cammie, a bond that was far more sacred than any relationship
of mere flesh. This love was truer than motherly and was right up
there with religious love. This was a man and his car racing
against themselves.

For that same reason, he never dragged in the
Saturday night specials with the hot rodders. There was a brisk
betting business going on in this two-factory Iowa town because
there wasn't much else to get excited about if you didn't invest in
hog futures. The local cops were under orders to steer clear of the
four-lane east of town when the muscleheads fired up their engines.
But solo riders like J.D. were cracked faster than a powder-dry
engine block.

If they did blue-light him out here, he could
easily outrun them. They had those little pussyfoot cruisers that
whined if they even got within sniffing distance of triple digits.
They were driving damned imports, made in Korea even if the label
said American. Ought to be a law against that.

J.D. closed his eyes and gave the gas pedal a
little boot leather. His bucket seat shivered and he shivered with
it, even though it was April. He was joining with the car. The
spoiler was his open and gasping mouth, the carburetor throat was
sucking oxygen, his crankcase belly was growling, hungry for
petroleum, and the tires itched like his moist toes. The muffler
was backfiring brimstone.

He popped the clutch at the same moment he
popped open his eyelids. The asphalt squealed in agony as he left a
fifty-foot scar up its spine. He straddled the dotted white line as
he power-shifted into second, leaving another mist of scalded
rubber hanging in the air behind him. J.D. glanced at the
tachometer, saw that he was at 7,000 RPM, and he booted into third.
Cammie was already at sixty and they'd not yet begun to party.

This was better than sex. This was red-eyed
adrenaline, a spark in the old plug, a rush that made the small
hairs on the back of J.D.'s neck stand up and dance. Fence posts
blurred past both quarter panels as the Camaro's grill chewed up
moths and the slipstream set the sawgrass swaying along the
ditches. The G-force pressed J.D. against the seat. An excited
sweat gathered under his eyes and his tongue felt like a gasket
between the valve covers of his teeth.

He squinted at the small fuzzy dot ahead
where the headlights petered out, at the murky oblivion that was
always his destination. He was getting there, he felt it in his
bones, he glanced down and saw the needle tacking toward one-ten
and his bowels had gone zero-gravity. He was reaching down to glide
into fourth when he saw the pale shape, a small figure that grew
large too soon, from nothing to five-feet-six in only three
seconds, and J.D. barely had time to see the face in the sweep of
headlights.

Later he would tell himself that there was no
way he could have observed all that detail in a fraction of a
second. It was his imagination that must have painted the portrait.
Eyes like a spotlighted deer's, wide and brown, impossibly deep.
Eyebrows frantically climbing the white slope of forehead. Mouth
open, choking on a scream that could fill the Holland Tunnel.

It was a glancing blow. J.D. didn't remember
doing it, but he must have nudged the wheel slightly and his
virgin-tight rack-and-pinion responded instantly. Otherwise the
Camaro would have bucked and rolled, tumbling through the shin-high
corn and strewing vital organs and steaming spare parts across the
stubbled fields. At over a hundred, mistakes got amplified. But in
that overdriven moment, J.D. was more car than man, high octane in
his blood as he manipulated the automobile back onto course.

His foot had instantly left the accelerator
but he had resisted the impulse to lock down on the brakes. The
braking instinct was natural, but the resulting fishtail would have
had J.D. ending up with a drive shaft necktie. The muffler growled
as he downshifted and when he reached sixty he began working the
brake pedal. He pulled to the side of the road and felt his heart
beating in time to the idling pistons.

"Damn, Cammie," he said, when at last he was
able to take a breath. "That was a close one."

He left the engine running while he opened
the door and stood up, disoriented from the abrupt change in
motion. He walked to the front of the car and knelt at the right
fender. There was a crumple in the panel and the headlight chrome
was dented and hanging loose. He took off his glove and ran a
gentle hand along the fender and a few chips of candy-apple red
paint flaked onto the shoulder of the road. He saw a smudge on the
bumper and wiped at it.

Blood.

He looked back up the highway, but under the
veiled moon, he couldn't see anything on the pavement. J.D. got
behind the wheel and shifted into reverse.

"I'm so sorry, Cammie," he whimpered. The
closest thing he’d ever had to tears tried to collect in his eyes.
"It was just an accident."

He held the horses in check as he backed up,
keeping the revolutions steady. The crankshaft turned quietly in
its pit of golden thirty-weight. He'd damaged her flesh, but he
could take care with her heart. J.D. pushed the gas pedal gently as
he cut a U-turn and drove up the road.

He killed the engine when he reached the
body, but left his headlights on. The first exhalation of night fog
swirled in the low beams as he loomed over the figure.

She was wearing a dress. The cotton was
tattered, but it was a pretty dress, butterfly yellow, the kind
that should have been easy to see at night. Her slim legs were
sticking out below the hem at an obtuse angle, a scuffed sandal
dangling from one big toe. The other foot was completely bare, a
red sock of blood where the skin had peeled away.

Her arms were accordioned under her chest and
she was face down. Her hair was brown, and the big curls fluttered
in the breeze. A pool of crimson was spreading out from under her
belly. She was leaking like a busted oil pan.

He touched her skin where the dress had slid
down one creamy shoulder. This was a dairy girl, J.D. was positive.
Must have crept out her window and met some little boy blue behind
a haystack. Come blow your horn. She had no business being out on
the road at that time of night.

He turned her over and wished he hadn't. That
split-second portrait before the accident had been of a pleasant
face, one with round cheekbones and plump ruby lips and strong
nostrils. But this, this was like a bag of beef soup that had been
dropped on the highway from a helicopter. This was roadkill.

"You shouldn'ta been out so late," J.D.
whispered. "Now look what you gone and done to yourself."

He glanced at one white exposed breast that
had managed to avoid visible harm. Then he let her roll forward
again. Her bones rattled like lug nuts in a hubcap.

"Now what am I going to do with you?" he
said, licking his lips. He looked both ways but there were no
headlights in sight.

"Can't leave you out here, that's for sure.
Might get yourself run over, and then where would you be?"

That, plus J.D. didn't want his ass behind
bars for second degree murder. A few speeding tickets were one
thing, but this deal meant some hard time. At state prison, a
pretty boy like him would be up on the blocks in no time, and the
grease monkeys wouldn't wait for every twenty thousand miles to
give him a lube job, either.

He stood up and looked around. He could slide
her into the ditch, but that would be leaving things up to luck.
She might be found before morning if some gap-toothed farmer came
out early to get a fresh squeeze of swollen udder. And who knew
what the forensics boys would come up with? He thought of the paint
flakes up the road. They could look into those little microscopes
and say whatever they wanted to, and the cops had been after him
for years.

"Nope. Can't leave you here."

He walked behind the Camaro and unlocked the
trunk. He unrolled a tarp that was stowed in one corner. He didn't
want to mess up his trunk carpet. He took off his leather jacket
and tossed it on the passenger seat, but he kept his gloves on.

The night smelled of cow manure and car
exhaust and sweet, coppery body fluids. Cammie's engine ticked as
it cooled. He patted her on the hood as he went past. Then he
stooped and lifted the broken body.

It hung like a rag doll, with too many
universal joints in the arms and legs. It was light, too, as if all
its gears and cogs had slipped out. He put her in the trunk,
hearing the largest chunk of her skull ding off the wheel well. He
walked up the road until he found the other sandal, then he tossed
it in and closed the trunk.

He drove back to town without breaking
fifty-five. It was raining by the time he hit the outskirts.

Mama must not have heard him come in. She was
already gone when he woke up, down checking side stitches on boxer
shorts for five-and-a-quarter plus production. He was glad he'd
slept through her coffee and butter toast. That made another
half-dozen hundred questions she'd never get around to bugging him
with.

He winced when he saw Cammie in daylight.
There was a dimple on top of the fender and the chrome striping was
peeling away from the side panel, damage he hadn't noticed the
night before. He drove down to the shop and pulled into the middle
bay.

Floyd was smoking a cigarette and wiping his
hands on a greasy orange rag. Floyd owned the shop, and liked to
let everyone know it. He glowered at J.D. with oil-drop eyes.

"Yo, Jayce," he said. "What you doing here so
early?"

"Got a ding on the shoulder. Need you to
hammer it out."

"Had you a little bender, did you? Demolition
derby with a mailbox?"

Floyd snickered and then started coughing. He
pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and spat a wad of phlegm onto
the greasy concrete floor.

"Just get me a rubber mallet, wouldja?"

"Sure, I'll help. Thanks for asking," Floyd
said.

"You don't have to be a smart-ass."

"And you don't have to work here if you don't
want to."

Floyd could be a real pain in the plug hole.
But he was a body-work pro. He'd worked the pits for Bobby Allison
about twenty years back. When he got down to business, he was an
artist, and steel and fiberglass and primer were his media.

And J.D. could tell Floyd loved Cammie almost
as much as he did. They pounded out the dents and replaced the
headlight frame and put on the primer coat before they started
taking care of the customers’ cars. Then at lunch, Floyd feathered
out a coat of red so that it blended with the color of the rest of
the car's body.

J.D. was up to his elbows in an automatic
transmission when he saw Floyd put down his airbrush and step back
to admire his work.

"That's gooder than snuff," he proclaimed.
J.D. nodded in appreciation. The quarter panel didn't have so much
as a shadow in it.

"Preesh, Floyd. Nobody can fix them like you
do," J.D. said.

"Nope. Throw me your keys, Jayce. I need to
change my plugs, and I left my good ratchet in your trunk
yesterday."

"Hey, buddy. After all you've done for me?
You got to be kidding. Let me do it."

Floyd frowned around the black fingerprints
on his cigarette butt. Floyd didn't like other people tinkering
under the hood of his '57 Chevy. But J.D. moved quickly, before
Floyd could say no.

J.D. popped the trunk and there she was, Miss
American Pie. Mincemeat pie. The blood had clotted and dried and
she was starting to smell a little. Her left arm was draped over
the toolbox. As he moved it away, he noticed that it had stiffened
a little from rigor mortis.

He clattered around in the toolbox and found
the ratchet. He was about to slam the lid when he saw that her eyes
were open. Damned things weren't open last night, he was positive.
Her eyes didn't sparkle at all. They were staring at him.

"What's the matter, J.D.?"

J.D. gulped and slammed the trunk. "Nothing,"
he said, holding up the ratchet. "Found it."

"Make sure you gap the damned things right.
Don't want you screwing up my gas mileage."

"You got it, Floyd."

J.D. drove out to the trailer park after work
to pick up Melanie, his Thursday girl. He thought he heard a noise
in the rear end as he pulled into the gravel driveway. Transfer
case was groaning a little. He'd have to check it out later. He
honked his horn and the trailer door opened.

Melanie slid in the passenger side and J.D.
watched her rear settle into the bucket seat. She smiled at him.
She was a big-boned redhead with lots of freckles, but her aqua eye
shadow was so thick it quivered when she blinked.

"What you want to do, J.D.?"

He looked out the window. In the next yard,
two brats were playing with a broken Easy-Bake oven. "Ride around,
I reckon."

"Ride around? That's all you ever want to
do."

"What else is there to do? Would you rather
sit around the trailer park with your thumb up your ass?"

Melanie pouted. She was a first-class pouter.
J.D. had told her that her lip drooped so low you could drive up on
it and swap out your oil filter.

"Okay," she said after a moment. "Let's go
circle the burger joint."

That wasn't a bad idea. Everybody hung out at
the burger joint, the muscleheads and the dope peddlers and the
zombie teens. And that meant everybody would see that the Camaro
was unscratched. J.D. didn't have a damn thing to hide.

Later, after they'd split two burgers and a
six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, J.D. had driven out to their
favorite dirt back road. The sun was just going down by the time
he'd sweet-talked Melanie into the back seat. He was wrestling with
her double-hook D-cup when she suddenly tensed underneath him.