The Car (5 page)

The Cat was a good teacher. It was responsive and tight and forgiving. If he oversteered, all he had to do was let the wheel go and it self-corrected, and though he sat low in the car he had enough visibility to see all around. It felt, he thought, like he was riding a four-wheeled motorcycle. He could hear and see things around the car as if he were out in the open.

The fuel gauge was wiggling between half and a quarter so Terry stopped at a small gas station to fill it up and check the oil and take a quick look at the engine.

“Nice car.” A man came out of the station and looked at the Cat while Terry was filling the tank.

“Thank you.” The gas cap was down on the side in the rear and it was hard to put gas in without dripping on the fiberglass.

“What kind is it?”

Terry shrugged. “I'm not sure what you call it. The name is Blakely Bearcat, but it's got all Ford parts. . . .”

“Oh. A kit car?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice job. You build it?”

Terry nodded. And for the first time he felt proud of what he'd done. He liked the car and was happy building it, but there was something about having somebody else like it that made him feel proud.

The gas suddenly squirted back out of the hole as the cut-off on the pump worked. Apparently the filler tube was too narrow. He'd have to watch that in the future.

He paid and checked the oil again. It was still up and there didn't seem to be any oil leaks or steam from the antifreeze, so he clamped the hood down with the side hooks and started the car.

He looked both ways, jerked the clutch a little getting out into traffic, and accelerated until he got to the highway entrance, then downshifted and headed up the ramp onto I-40 heading west.

He was in traffic, moving west at sixty miles an hour, before he realized three basic problems.

First, it was getting dark and he had never really checked the headlights to see how they lined up.

Second, it was starting to rain. There were huge, gray clouds piling up and drops of water hitting the windshield.

Third, the car didn't have a top.

Somehow he always thought of riding in the sun. Didn't think of it raining when he wanted to drive, only at night when he was ready to stop.

He had the plastic sheet but he couldn't stop out here in the open, and even while he was thinking of it the rain was increasing.

Large drops were spattering across the windshield now and he turned the wipers on. There were three small wipers and he couldn't help smiling as they kicked in. They looked silly. But they worked.

He would have to hole up, take the next exit and pull the plastic out and wait for it to clear.

It was a mile and a half to the next exit and by the time he turned off the highway he was soaked.

He steered the Cat off the highway, down the exit ramp, and pulled over to the side at the bottom near some trees.

It took just a moment to pull the plastic out from behind the seat and spread it over the car, with him underneath, the water slithering off to the side. He left the engine running and flicked the switch for the heater. It was small, a little one-speed motor, but he felt warm air blowing onto his feet and thought it would help dry him off.

Dry or not, it was warm and he had not slept properly for over a week, just catching a doze when he could, and now with the heater blowing and filling the car with warm air, and the rain pattering on the plastic and the darkness coming down he could not keep his eyes open.

They closed gently and sleep started to take him, would have taken him except that on the passenger side of the Cat there was a rustling sound and a round face with a beard poked under the plastic.

“The quality of mercy is not strain'd;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.

It is twice bless'd.

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

And Terry opened his eyes for his first view of Waylon Jackson.

“W
HAT . . . WHO
?” Terry was only half awake.

“Shakespeare wrote that. It's about rain. I need mercy and a dry place to sit so I thought it was appropriate. Do you mind?”

Waylon slid in beneath the plastic, hunkering down. He left a backpack outside but brought in a guitar case—which barely fit down between his knees—and smiled over at Terry. “Cozy, isn't it?”

“I . . . didn't plan on company.”

“Ahh, yes. A loner. I thought so. Me, too. But still, sometimes we have to work together or we fall apart, right?”

The guy is whacked,
Terry thought.
Completely nuts. He's probably a serial killer. I'm sitting under a piece of plastic in the rain with a serial killer.

But in some way he didn't feel afraid or threatened. The man looked friendly, crouched down, his face lighted by the glow from the instrument panel—Terry noticed that the light on the fuel indicator was flickering and he reached under the dash almost without thinking and pushed the light firmly into place—but still, he didn't want this guy sitting in the car. He didn't know him, didn't know anything about him.

“Clearly you're traveling. I noticed all the gear packed on the back luggage rack. Would you be going east or west?” Waylon asked.

“West,” Terry answered promptly, then shook his head. “I mean I'm not sure.”
I mean
, he thought,
it's none of your business,
but he didn't say it.

“Me, too. All the way to where the blue part starts. It's a long way to run alone, isn't it?”

Terry shook his head. “No, I don't mind. I do it all the time. . . .”

“Of course, of course. Still, a man gets lonely on such a long trip. And then, too, there's the expense. Gas, oil, breakdowns. Then there's the intellectual tedium.”

Breakdowns,
Terry thought. The possibility hadn't occurred to him. He had almost twelve hundred dollars left and it seemed like a lot of money. Still, if this man was willing to pay his way—he shook his head. He didn't know the guy.
Some weirdo gets in the car spouting Shakespeare and the next thing you know he kills you and chops you up and puts you in garbage sacks and mails the pieces to South America.
“Intellectual tedium?”

Waylon nodded. “It'll cause brain damage. That's what happened back in the fifties and then again all through the eighties. Tedium that led to brain damage. The whole damn world. You don't want that to happen to you, not driving across the country. You don't want to turn into something from the fifties or eighties—a lopped-out, intellectually dead piece of Republican manure—do you?”

“No.” Terry shook his head, then shrugged. “I mean, I don't know. I guess not.”

“Exactly. And I can keep that from happening.”

“You can?”

“Absolutely. I've done it before. Many times.”

“How?”

“It's complicated. There's music, and verse, and books, and just pointing at things. How old are you?”

Terry almost told him the truth, then caught himself and lied. “Eighteen.”

Waylon studied him in the soft light, then nodded slowly. “I thought so—in fact I actually thought you might be nineteen.”

“You did?” Terry asked hopefully.

“No. I'm lying there. You have to look for the lies—I'll be throwing them in from time to time. It helps to break the tedium. But you look older than your age, anyway. When I was your age I was on the road, except I didn't have a car. I thumbed it and rode some trains, worked here and there. Back in the early sixties . . .”

Terry frowned. “That was a long time ago.”

“Was it?” Waylon smiled. “It seems like just last week sometimes.” He lifted the plastic. “Look, the rain is stopping.”

Terry lifted the plastic and peeked out into the darkness. A breath of warm, soft summer air hit his face and he pushed the plastic farther back. It had indeed stopped raining. A quick summer storm.

“Shall we go?” Waylon peeled his side of the plastic back all the way, pushing droplets of water down the side of the car onto the ground. He reached out and got his pack, held it in his lap.

And Terry thought of all the things he should say but didn't; thought of telling the man, Waylon, to get out, thought of telling Waylon that he wasn't really taking a trip but that his parents were waiting at home, but none of it came out.

“Right,” he said. “West it is . . .”

The Cat was already running. He caught first, moved off the shoulder, crossed a small road, and caught second and third as the Cat nosed up the highway entrance back onto I-40.

Waylon shook the rest of the plastic off, folded it neatly, and put it down in the small opening behind the seats and leaned back, taking the summer night air on his face with the same soft smile he'd had earlier, when he first stuck his head in and spoke Shakespeare to Terry.

They moved onto the highway. Terry shifted the Cat to fourth and looked at the speedometer.

Sixty-five exactly. He had just seen a sign saying that was the speed limit. He didn't want to speed. If the cops stopped him they'd find out the plate wasn't really any good and that he didn't have a license and it would be all over. He'd have to take it easy.

But it was hard to think of problems.

He was heading west on a warm summer night. The stars were coming out. The headlights seemed to be adjusted about right. Waylon was humming some kind of tune next to him, and Terry didn't care about yesterday, tomorrow, last week, or next week.

Just tonight. And the road. And the car he'd made with his own hands.

The Cat.

T
HE HIGHWAY
he took west—I-80/90—was a toll road. He went through the booth, feeling the man inside was staring at him, and then drove for two hours, holding sixty-five, letting the warm wind coming over the top of the windshield and around the sides blow Cleveland somewhere to the rear.

When he'd put the dashboard together it had come with a small map light that had given him problems. It hadn't fit the hole made for it, and he had finally used a round file to enlarge the hole. Then the wire in the harness that came with the kit hadn't been long enough and he had spliced a piece in to make it fit and the splice hadn't been good enough and now the light flickered.

He turned the light on and worked a hand up in the area of the splice and squeezed it and the light glowed steadily.

Waylon was dozing, and Terry took a moment to study his face in the glow.

He seemed happy. Even sleeping he had a smile in his eyes somehow, some look that made Terry want to smile as well.

Terry was still concerned. He was setting out on a trip across the country with what amounted to a complete stranger. It was crazy. But the whole thing was crazy anyway. What was one more crazy part?

Waylon's eyes opened suddenly and he was looking directly into Terry's eyes. He smiled, or rather his sleeping smile widened.

“I have done this for so many years it all seems like one car, one highway, one country.” He rubbed his face, looked at his wrist—there was no watch there but he nodded. “About three in the morning. This is the worst time to drive as far as sleep is concerned. You want me to drive awhile?”

Terry started.
Let somebody else drive the Cat?
“No . . . I'll take it.”

“I thought as much. So then, we'll talk. What do you want to talk about?”

Terry shrugged. A truck moved past him on the highway and the wind from the trailer of the semi buffeted the Cat around. He held it in the center of the lane.

“How about how we should leave the highway?” Waylon asked.

“Why? It's good road and goes the direction we want to go and . . .”

“And it's patrolled heavily and you're underage, driving a car with invalid license plates, and if you get popped I get popped. It's not new for me. I was detained a few times back in the sixties and seventies—when getting arrested meant you cared. But it might not be so much fun for you.”

“How did you know all that?” Terry had actually jerked the wheel in surprise at Waylon's words.

“I know you're underage because of how you look and how I see things. If you're too young to have a driver's license, the plates probably aren't valid. I know you haven't been arrested because we've met three state patrol cars and you didn't notice any of them. If you've ever been arrested you always see police.”

“We did?” Terry turned and looked back. “Are they still around?”

“No. They were going the other way. But it might be a good idea to get off the toll road and travel the back highways. Toll roads suck.”

“I kind of like them,” Terry said. “They're so nice and wide.”

“You don't see anything. Don't learn anything.” Waylon put his arm out to the side and directed a stream of air against his face. “You don't learn, you die.”

Terry said nothing, thought about what Waylon had said. A sign said there was an exit for a state highway in one mile. “How about that road? Will that take us where we want to go?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“West.” Terry gestured with his chin. “To Portland, Oregon.” He pointed across Waylon. “There's a small road atlas in that pocket on the door. Why don't you check on the map and see?”

Waylon nodded. “Take the exit, we'll work it out from there.”

Terry turned off the toll road and came to a booth. He paid fifty cents and drove through—feeling this man was staring as well—and after a mile and a half pulled off onto a side road.

“What have you found?”

Waylon had the map under the little map light, tracing a line with his finger. “It goes for eight or ten miles and then turns into a county road, but if we cut west for twenty miles or so it becomes another state highway. Not a toll road. It all seems to work west.”