Ashes (3 page)

"Joo hear that?" she whispered. J.D. heard
only crickets and the slight squeaking of leaf springs.

"Hear what?"

"A scratching, like. On metal."

J.D. looked up. He always parked away from
the trees out on these country roads. Damned branches would claw
the hell out of a custom paint job. He saw nothing but the gangly
shadows of the far underbrush.

"I don't hear nothing, babe. Now, where were
we?"

"There it went again. Sounds like it's coming
from the trunk."

"Bullshit."

"Sounds like a squirrel running around in
there."

J.D. strained his ears. He heard the faint
rattle of tools. Then, fingernails on metal.

He sat up suddenly.

"What the hell, J.D.?"

"Nothing. Better get you back to town, is
all."

Melanie whimpered. She was as good at
whimpering as she was at pouting.

"But J.D., I thought—"

"Not tonight, I got . . . work to do."

She whined all the way back into town, but
J.D. didn't hear her. All he could hear were the low moans coming
from the trunk and the sound of fists banging like rubber mallets
off the trunk lid.

After J.D. dropped off Melanie, he pulled out
behind Floyd's garage and looked around the auto graveyard. Here
was where Detroit's mistakes came to die. Pontiacs draped over
Plymouths while Chryslers sagged on cinder blocks. A school bus
slept in its bed of briars. A couple of Studebakers decayed beside
the high wooden fence, and a dozen junk jeeps were lined in rows
like dead soldiers awaiting body bags. The few unbroken headlights
were like watching eyes, but they would be the only witnesses.

Back here, Miss American Mincemeat Pie could
rust in peace.

He stepped out among the bones of cars,
gang-raped engines, and jagged chassis. The moon was glaring down,
all of last night's clouds now long-hauled to the east. J.D.
gripped the trunk key between his sweaty fingers.

"Open it, J.D.," said the voice. It was a
young, hollow voice, with the kind of drawn-out accent a country
girl might have. The long syllables reverberated inside the tin can
of the trunk space.

J.D. looked around the junkyard.

"Stick it in, muscleboy," the voice taunted.
"You know you want to."

He unlatched the trunk and it opened with a
rush of foul air.

She sat up and arched her back.

"Cramped in here," she said. The moon shone
fully on her, like a spotlight. The raw flesh of her face was
tinged green, and her eyes were ringed with black. She reached up
to smooth her hair and her arm hung like a broken
clutch-spring.

"You . . . y-you're dead." But that was dumb.
He knew machines didn't die, they only got rebuilt.

"Now, do I look dead?"

J.D. didn't know what to say. It wasn't the
kind of thing he could look up in the troubleshooting section of
his owner's manual.

"Still got a few miles left on me," she said,
tugging at the strap of her dress that had slipped too low over her
mottled chest. Her eyes were wide but as dull as Volkswagen
hubcaps. "Besides, all I need is a little body work and I'll be
good as new."

"What's the big idea, screwing up my date
like that?" J.D. angled his head so he could look at her out of the
corners of his eyes.

"Your cheating days are over, rough rider.
You've only got room in your heart for one girl now."

"Whatchoo talking about? And why did you dump
over my toolbox?" J.D. couldn’t be sure, but it looked like
radiator fluid was leaking from her eyes.

"A lady's always in search of that one good
tool. What say we get it on?"

"No. I'm going to stuff you behind the seat
of that Suburban over there, and you're going to stay until you're
both a collector's item."

"J.D., is that any way to treat a lady?"

"Well, you ought to be glad I think enough of
you to leave you in a Chevy. There's plenty of Datsuns out
here."

She shook her head, and tattered meat swung
below her face. "I don't think so, muscleboy."

Her finger flexed like a carb linkage as she
beckoned him closer.

J.D. couldn't help himself.
He was as captivated as he'd been by his first
Hot Rod
magazine. She smelled of
gasoline and grave dirt, hot grease and raw sex. She'd oozed out
all over the spare tire. He'd never get his trunk clean.

"I think we're ready for a midnight run." She
slid her mangled tongue over her teeth.

He leaned over the back bumper. He felt a
cold limp hand slide behind his Mark Martin belt buckle. She put
the mashed blackberries of her lips to his ear.

"And from now on, I ride up front," she
whispered, and her words came out with no breath.

Three months, and J.D. was dragging.

The summer heat was wearing on him, and he'd
lost twenty of his hundred-and-forty pounds. But it was even worse
for her. She had gone from pink to green to gray and still the meat
clung stubbornly to her bones.

He hid her during the day, in a self-storage
garage he rented. Floyd had given him hell at first, asking him why
he walked all the time these days, was he afraid of putting another
dent in Cammie or what. But lately Floyd had quit the ribbing. This
morning Floyd said J.D. looked like he'd been run all night by the
hounds of hell.

"Something like that," J.D. wanted to say,
but he'd promised to keep the affair a secret.

And that evening, as he'd done every night
since he'd picked up his new passenger, he carried a five-gallon
can of gas to the garage and filled up the Camaro.

And when the sun slid behind the flat
Midwestern horizon and midnight raised its oil-soaked rags, he
backed the car out and pointed it toward the street.

"Where to tonight, Cammie?" he asked, as if
he had to ask.

She grinned at him. She was always grinning,
now that her face was mostly skull. "The usual, muscleboy."

He drove out to that three-mile stretch of
open black road and idled. Oblivion beckoned beyond the yellow
cones of the headlights.

"One-sixty-five tonight," she said.

He gulped and nodded. One-sixty-five. He
could do it. Probably.

Not that he had any choice. He could damage
her flesh, but couldn't break the timing chains of love.

"Okay, Cammie," he said to her.

As J.D. stomped the accelerator and jerked
his foot off the clutch, he wondered if this would be the night of
consummation. Would she let him release the steering wheel as he
wound into fifth gear, making them truly one, all blood and twisted
metal and spare parts?

He glanced at her. There was no sign of
requited love in the dim holes of her skull. She was as cold as a
machine, unforgiving, more metal than bone, more petroleum than
blood.

She was going to ride shotgun forever, as the
odometer racked up miles and miles of endless highway.

If only he could please her. But he was
afraid that he was nothing to her, just a vapor in the combustion
chambers of her heart.

He shifted into fourth.

####

DOG PERSON

The final breakfast was scrambled eggs, crisp
bacon, grits with real butter. Alison peeled four extra strips of
bacon from the slab. On this morning of all mornings, she would
keep the temperature of the stove eye just right. She wasn’t the
cook of the house, but Robert had taught her all about Southern
cuisine, especially that of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Before they
met, her breakfast consisted of a cup of what Robert teasingly
called a “girly French coffee” and maybe a yogurt. He’d introduced
her to the joys of an unhealthy start to the morning, along with
plenty of other things, the best of the rest coming after
sundown.

Even after two years, Alison wasn’t as
enthusiastic about the morning cholesterol infusion as Robert was.
Or his dog. About once a week, though, she’d get up a half-hour
early, drag the scarred skillet from beneath the counter, and peel
those slick and marbled pieces of pig fat. The popping grease never
failed to mark a red spot or two along her wrist as she wielded the
spatula. But she wouldn’t gripe about the pain today.

Robert would be coming down any minute. She
could almost picture him upstairs, brushing his teeth without
looking in the mirror. He wouldn’t be able to meet his own eyes.
Not with the job that awaited him.

Alison cracked six eggs in a metal bowl and
tumbled them with a whisk until the yellow and white were mingled
but not fully mixed. The grits bubbled and burped on the back
burner. Two slices of bread stood in the sleeves of the toaster,
and the coffee maker gurgled as the last of its heated water
sprayed into the basket. Maxwell House, good old all-American farm
coffee.

She avoided looking in the pantry, though the
louvered doors were parted. The giant bag of Kennel Ration stood in
a green trash can. On the shelf above was a box of Milk Bones and
rows of canned dog food. Robert had a theory that hot dogs and
turkey bologna were cheaper dog treats than the well-advertised
merchandise lines, but he liked to keep stock on hand just in case.
That was Robert; always planning ahead. But some things couldn’t be
planned, even when you expected them.

Robert entered the room, buttoning the cuffs
on his flannel shirt. The skin beneath his eyes was puffed and
lavender. “Something smells good.”

She shoveled the four bacon strips from the
skillet and placed them on a double layer of paper towels. “Only
the best today.”

“
That’s sweet of
you.”

“
I wish I could do
more.”

“
You’ve done
plenty.”

Robert moved past her without brushing
against her, though the counter ran down the center of the kitchen
and narrowed the floor space in front of the stove. Most mornings,
he would have given her an affectionate squeeze on the rear and she
would have threatened him with the spatula, grinning all the while.
This morning he poured himself a cup of coffee without asking if
she wanted one.

She glanced at Robert as he bent into the
refrigerator to get some cream. At thirty-five, he was still in
shape, the blue jeans snug around him and only the slightest bulge
over his belt. His brown hair showed the faintest streaks of gray,
though the lines around his eyes and mouth had grown visibly deeper
in the last few months. He wore a beard but he hadn’t shaved his
neck in a week. He caught her looking.

Alison turned her attention back to the pan.
“Do you want to talk about it?”

“
Not much to say.” He
stirred his coffee, tapped his spoon on the cup’s ceramic rim, and
reached into the cabinet above the sink. He pulled the bottle of
Jack Daniels into the glare of the morning sun. Beyond the window,
sunlight filtered through the red and golden leaves of maple trees
that were about to enter their winter sleep.

Robert never drank before noon, but Alison
didn’t comment as he tossed a splash into his coffee. “I made extra
bacon,” she said. “A special treat.”

Robert nodded, his eyes shot with red
lightning bolts. He had tossed all night, awakening her once at 3
a.m. when his toenails dug into her calf. He must have been
dreaming of days with Sandy Ann, walking by the river, camping in
the hollows of Grandfather Mountain, dropping by the animal shelter
to volunteer for a couple of hours.

Alison moved the grits from the heat and set
them aside. The last round of bacon was done, and she drained some
of the bacon grease away and poured the eggs. The mixture lay there
round and steaming like the face of a cartoon sun. She let the eggs
harden a bit before she moved them around. A brown skin covered the
bottom of the skillet.

“
Nine years is a lot,” she
said. “Isn’t that over seventy in people years?”

“
No, it’s nine in people
years. Time’s the same for everybody and everything.”

Robert philosophy. A practical farm boy. If
she had been granted the power to build her future husband in a
Frankenstein laboratory, little of Robert would have been in the
recipe. Maybe the eyes, brown and honest with flecks of green that
brightened when he was aroused. She would have chosen other parts,
though the composite wasn’t bad. The thing that made Robert who he
was, the spark that juiced his soul, was largely invisible but had
shocked Alison from the very first exposure.

She sold casualty insurance, and Robert liked
to point out she was one of the “Good Hands” people. Robert’s
account had been assigned to her when a senior agent retired, and
during his first appointment to discuss whether to increase the
limit on his homeowner’s policy, she’d followed the procedure
taught in business school, trying to sucker him into a whole-life
policy. During the conversation, she’d learned he had no heirs, not
even a wife, and she explained he couldn’t legally leave his estate
to Sandy Ann. One follow-up call later, to check on whether he
would get a discount on his auto liability if he took the life
insurance, and they were dating.

The first date was lunch in a place that was
too nice and dressy for either of them to be comfortable. The next
week, they went to a movie during which Robert never once tried to
put his arm around her shoulder. Two days later, he called and said
he was never going to get to know her at this rate so why didn’t
she just come out to his place for a cook-out and a beer? Heading
down his long gravel drive between hardwoods and weathered
outbuildings, she first met Sandy Ann, who barked at the wheels and
then leapt onto the driver’s side door, scratching the finish on
her new Camry.

Robert laughed as he pulled the yellow
Labrador retriever away so Alison could open her door. She wasn’t a
dog person. She’d had a couple of cats growing up but had always
been too busy to make a long-term pet commitment. She had planned
to travel light, though the old
get-married-two-kids-house-in-the-suburbs had niggled at the base
of her brain once or twice as she’d approached thirty. It turned
out she ended up more rural than suburban, Robert’s sperm count was
too low, and marriage was the inevitable result of exposure to
Robert’s grill.