Seven Deadly Pleasures (25 page)

The Bobcat was obviously busted.

So was the chain. There was a broken link halfway up that was rusted through, cloven on one side and almost forced straight by the pressure of its neighbors. The whole affair was held together by what seemed no more than a thread.

"Do you know what this is, Jimmy?"

Across the hole, Kyle was standing with his arms stretched out wide. He had followed me down to see my reaction and then give a lecture. His old smile was back like neon.

"It's a footer, James. Before my asshole dad started his own asshole company he poured concrete for Molina Industrial. He always talked about footers and stuff. Bored me to freakin' tears."

The smile left him. He reached down to his sock for a cigarette.

"Want one?"

I shook my head. He straightened, puckered his face, lit up, and dragged. He spoke through the smoke, aiming and directing the cigarette as a movie professor would do with a pointer.

"Footers are good, James. Footers are our friends. They pour cement to complete footers, and we're lucky we found this one half-baked. They dig these things for big columns that hold up bridges and stuff, and you can see that this one was a mistake. All we've got to do is put Blondie and her piece-of-shit car down the hole. We fill the fucker with dirt, throw on a light cover of crushed stone, and when the new guys do show up, they'll think the first team filled it back in a long time ago."

My nose flared out.

"What if they think it looks like it wasn't done by a real contractor? What if they decide to dig it back up?"

He snorted.

"Too much money, my man! Contractors are cheap whores by trade! Why would they dig around into a mistake when the help costs over twenty an hour? If they don't think the little bow we put on it is nice enough, they'll swirl around the rocks on top more professionally or something."

I crossed my arms in front of my chest. I was not good at this riddle stuff, especially considering that I was not as technically minded (or as willing to roll the dice) as Kyle. The apparent ease of all this was more than disturbing, and I still wanted to weasel out some way of running off, or at least delaying any more interaction with the dead thing up there, without Kyle literally beating me to a pulp.

"What if it wasn't a mistake?" I said.

"It was."

"But how do you know?" My chin was out and I was pleading now. "It looks like they had every reason to dig here and the foreman or whoever just blew the whistle in the middle for some reason. What if the job starts up again and the same guys do come back and try to pick up where they left off?"

Kyle took a sharp drag. Blew it out hard.

"They won't."

"How do you know?"

"First, because you don't have extra-fine dirt ready on the side unless you brought it in for repacking. Look at the piles, Jimmy. This dirt didn't come from this hole. There are no rocks in it, and no roots. Also, why the crushed stone? That stuff goes on top of a repair. You don't use it when you're going to put in a pillar. And even if this turns out not to have been a mistake originally, it won't be the same guys working off those old plans that never came together in the first place. It's been eight months since this job shut down. Look at it, Jimmy!" He put up his hands. "I know you're not a diesel head, but look around. Doesn't this hole seem funny to you?"

"Yeah."

"And why?"

"Because it's in the middle of the woods. It doesn't fit."

"Right!" he said. His hands were both offered out to me now. "The guys digging the holes didn't work for the same company cutting the trees, or pouring the 'crete, or grooving the road. No one got along and no one ever knew what the other was doing. It was a big fucking mess and my dad used to laugh about it regularly. Every night. Believe me, I'm an expert on the subject even though I never wanted to be until right about now."

"Oh." It's all I had left, really.

"Let's go," Kyle said. "We've still got a lot of fun stuff to do."

I walked around and put my back to the hole. Kyle's arm was around me immediately. The smoke from his cigarette twisted up a hooking shape at the rim of my head and struck a chord of familiarity in me, the sensory trigger of my concept of "friend," of "not mom," of "other," of the "not me" that was becoming more of the latest "me" every second.

Side by side, each absorbed in thought, we made our way back up the incline toward the open air. Below our feet, the roots along the path pushed up and across, and I caught a toe at one point. Of course, Kyle held me up. It was nice and at the same time crushing, since it reminded me again of his superior strength. We turned the corner past the floating spiderweb and walked into the heat and the brightness, through the two elms that made Kyle's doorway. We stopped. The car was waiting for us. I noticed that from this angle I had to tilt my head up slightly to look at it. The path from it to the trees sloped downward ever so slightly.

"Jimmy."

"Yeah?"

"How ya doing?"

"'Kay."

"Do you think that you're strong enough to shove the back bumper and move the car by yourself? The right front tire is flat but the other three are OK."

My answer was automatic.

"No. I'm not big enough, Kyle. I'm sorry."

"No problem." He turned me to him and put his hands on my shoulders. He looked at me with full, sincere eyes.

"I can move the car or at least get it going, Jimmy, but the rest of this is on you. Just promise not to fuck it up, all right?"

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean, James, is that this whole thing will be fine if you can pull through."

"How?"

He glanced up at the Honda.

"I'm going to push. You've got to steer."

My breath hitched. I blinked. The picture became clear, and it was not pretty.

I was going to have to get in with her and shut the door. The space between the two elms was barely enough to fit the car through, let alone allow me the luxury of trotting beside with my hands reaching in to the steering wheel.

I was going to have to sit in her lap and feel her press against me. Or more realistically, I was going to have to sit in
its
lap and feel
it
press against me while I tried to maneuver the entry, pull the turn, hold it steady over the roots, and bail at the last second.

Suddenly I heard something, faint and sneaky like a whisper. It could have been the wind or the traffic droning past on the overpass, but I knew that it wasn't.

It was the corpse. She was waiting for me in that hot vehicle, baking, letting a horsefly run over her crushed lip, the gash in her head, an open eyeball.

And on some dark wavelength that only existed between sinners and the vengeful dead, I could hear her say something. It flickered between us but for a moment. A message in the static, barely on the radar.

"I dare you,"
she said to me.

I swear it.

4.

The right corner of the Honda's fender was turned up and embedded in the tree. At first, Kyle wanted to piston out his foot and kick it loose with the sole of his sneaker, but there wasn't quite enough fender to kick on the outside edge. He tried wedging himself between the tree and the crimped hood, but the car was too close. He could not summon the power needed for the push with his knees up in his chest like upside-down V's. We removed our shirts to be used as makeshift gloves for our fingers and actually crawled under the car. Kyle had the one-inch nub to the far right and I hooked my hands more toward the center where there was a lip in the steel to grab. We both straddled the trunk of the tree from under there like a horse, Kyle on ground level, my legs splayed above his. Something from the engine dripped on me three times, but it wasn't quite hot enough to leave burns.

There was a squeal and a stuttery moan like a door creaking open. The fender had come loose. It gave about an inch. We crawled out from under the car and brushed off. After a couple of misfires and determined "one-two-three's," we really put our backs into it and managed to push the car backward a few inches more from the tree in a hesitant, lumpy sort of progress. Now that there was a bit of room, we both mounted the hood, backs to the tree, shirts now used as buffer cushions against the hard bark. We pushed with the soles of our feet and actually managed to extend our legs.

The new placement had the vehicle about three feet from the tree's base, and I got a full frontal view of the corpse from between the shadows of overhanging branches.

Her head was facing downward. Blonde hair stuck to her jaw on the left side in a glaze that looked like matted red paste. Her hair band had been thrust a few inches backward and drew rakes of thin, red trails behind it. Bangs clumped with sloppy strokes of red hid the top of her face, but her mouth was in sight, burst open, swelled, and caught in a scream. Her tongue was out and dripping off of it, she had a long dangler, a spindle of blood, snot, and drool that went past her chin all the way to the chest.

I stepped down, turned away, and crossed my arms.

"I can't do it, Kyle."

He stepped in front of me.

"You have to."

"No way. You do it."

"Go ahead and move the car one inch by yourself and I will."

My mind raced.

"Why just me? We can both get it going and then you could jump in to steer."

He pointed at the car.

"There isn't enough room. One of us has to bang a hard right on the wheel from the start or it will end up back at the tree."

"Fine," I said. "I'll take the back and you lean in to the front through the open door. You can work the wheel and help me get it rolling too. As soon as you hit the patch of flowers there, it's downhill. You could take it all on your own."

He looked at the ground and shook his head.

"Won't work. The guy who leans in the front don't have the leverage. The bigger kid has got to be at the back. And once it gets moving there won't be time to switch places."

I went to the back of the car.

"Let's try it my way first."

"Fine." He shrugged, put his shirt back on, and walked toward the driver's side door. "Just hurry the fuck up."

"Fine," I mimicked, as if the last word really meant something. I retrieved my own shirt, threw my arms through the sleeves, and took a stance behind the vehicle. I started getting ready to get set, and my heart sank a bit.

Didn't matter. I had to try. I bent down and pressed my hands against the back bumper. I started to draw deep breaths. I pictured the thing rocking a bit in the starting groove, then making lumpy advance by the sheer force of my will. Think it—be it. Easy. No problem.

I heard the car door open up front.

"Ready when you are," Kyle said.

I tightened up and got ready for the push of my life. I counted it out really loud so there would be no false starts off the blocks.

"One, two . . . THREE!"

Nothing. No way. Dead weight going absolutely nowhere. I pushed again with every possible piece of strength and my back screamed with it. My face prickled and my eyes went scream-wide. Nothing. Nothing at all.

"Ready when you are," Kyle said. With a final gasp I dropped to all fours and hung my head. I pushed up on my fingertips and dragged through my feet to cross them Indian style. I sat in the dirt. I stared at the red cauliflowers left blooming on my palms and heard the approaching footsteps.

Closer, then halted.

"Door's open for you up there," Kyle said. "Now try it my way. Just to see, OK?"

I got up and brushed by him. Our shoulders knocked together a bit in passing and I held up my jaw. I was angry and enjoying the feeling. I was also aware somewhere beneath the surface that I was feeding off the anger to manipulate myself away from the idea of approaching the horror in the front seat. By the time I registered this idea I was there at the opening, so I continued as quickly as possible before the little that remained of the power of my anger blew off.

I stuck in my right hand. The steering wheel was hot and I curled my fingers tight. I braced my left palm in a pushing position against the door's armrest and had a sudden feeling that the woman was going to clamp down her broken teeth on my elbow and sink them in as deep as they would go.

The car started moving. Kyle had gotten it going on his own, and we bumped about two inches forward.

"Turn the wheel!" Kyle said.

I spun it hard to the right and heard the tires beneath me creaking and scraping in the dirt. The car slowly moved away. I sidestepped in to keep up.

"Aim it!" he shouted.

I straightened back the wheel and walked faster beside the moving vehicle. Every time the wound in the right tire rotated to the bottom there was a skip and a clump, and that combination was getting less and less pronounced as we gained speed. We bumped off the road and went through the wildflowers. I had thought this was just a test, just to see . . .

"Keep going!" he yelled.

Now I was running beside the car, almost struggling to catch up with it. The "doorway" between the trees was looming a few feet before me. All options vanished and it was now or nothing.

"Do it!" Kyle roared. "Do it for real!"

I did it.

I jumped into the hot car and reached for the door that was flapping out like a broken wing. My nails scratched at the plastic and I found the void in the arm rest. I pulled the door shut and all sound around me snapped off as if by a switch.

The woman was a hot envelope stuck to my legs and back. Her hair brushed along my right shoulder and my neck. I was moaning, bending in low for a view beneath the bloody cracks in the windshield.

The front end of the car made it between the trees for a bald second, and then there was a terrific yet muffled screaming sound as the flanks of the vehicle scraped against the bark on both sides. We jarred through and the light wiped dark. It felt as if we had gone under water, and the heavy smell of death and hot vinyl filled my lungs.