The Car (6 page)

Terry yawned. “I'm getting kind of tired.”

Waylon nodded. “Maybe we better grab some sleep, and then I'll cook breakfast and we can get started on a full stomach. It's nicer to run in the day. You see more. You lea—”

“Learn more.” Terry smiled. “I know.”

“See?” Waylon leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. “You're learning already.”

Terry looked at him for a moment, then leaned back as well and closed his own eyes. In less than five seconds he was asleep.

T
HE SMELL
awakened him; stole in over the door of the Cat, slid sideways and into his nose, and prompted a signal from his brain.

Food.

Food cooking.

Good food cooking.

Terry opened his eyes and found that he'd been sleeping with his head sideways over the seat, his mouth open. His neck was so stiff he couldn't straighten his head for a moment and he wiped drool from his chin.

Class,
he thought.
I've got real class. . . .

He had forgotten Waylon until his head popped up over the side of the car. “Morning. You ready to eat?”

That was the smell. Waylon was cooking.

“I have to pee,” Terry said, “big time.”

“Grab a bush.”

Terry went to a nearby stand of willow, waited while a car passed before finishing, then came back to the car.

“You sleep good?”

“I think so. My neck is still bent.”

“After a while you learn to keep your head straight.”

Terry came around the rear end of the Cat and stopped.

There was what seemed to be a kitchen on the ground by the car door. Waylon had spread a small red-and-white checkered tablecloth and set it with two plastic cups, two metal plates—both dented but clean—and two forks and two knives. Off to the side a small camp stove with an external bright red aluminum tank was cooking quietly. On top of the stove was a one-gallon aluminum pot, also beat up but clean, and something in the pot was cooking with a smell that made Terry's mouth water. He suddenly remembered that he hadn't had a proper cooked meal in over a week—just bits of junk food while he worked on the Cat. Next to the pot but on the ground was a small coffeepot, also steaming.

“What is it?”

“In the small pot or the big one?”

“The big one.”

Waylon smiled. “Beef stroganoff.”

“What's that?”

“Beef and sour cream over noodles. Or it's supposed to be. I kind of make my own from a recipe I learned in Vietnam.”

“What kind of recipe?”

“It's a can of beef stew on top of noodles with water and two tablespoons of nondairy creamer muted in. Sit down and have some coffee—that's in the other pot. I'm sorry there aren't any napkins.”

“Right.” Terry squatted. “It ruins the whole thing, not having napkins.”

I don't,
he started to say,
drink coffee. But then I don't build cars or take off across the country, either. It might be time to try something new. It might be time to try everything new.
Besides, the smell of the coffee seemed to make his mouth water as much as the beef stroganoff.

Waylon poured coffee in both cups. It had cooled somewhat but was still hot enough to burn Terry's mouth when he took a sip. It tasted bitter.

“Is there sugar?” he asked.

Waylon shook his head. “Ruins it. Coffee has to be taken black or not at all.”

Terry nodded but said nothing.

Waylon used a large spoon to ladle food from the pot onto the plates. “Eat up. We're wasting daylight.”

Terry took a bite and found it to be hot as well as delicious. So good he kept trying to eat it hot, wiggling his tongue.

Waylon let his cool, then ate carefully, chewing each bite slowly, looking at the trees, the birds that flew past.

Terry finally got it all down and leaned back, belched. “That was incredible—where did you get it?”

“From my pack. I live in the pack.”

“But a tablecloth? And two plates?”

Waylon cleaned his plate carefully, using a clump of grass. “It isn't necessary to be savage just because you aren't in a building.” He pointed at Terry's plate. “That needs to be cleaned.”

Terry nodded and used another clump of grass to clean his plate and fork.

“We'll use hot water on the plates when we stop for gas.” Waylon put the eating equipment away, carefully fitting the pans and cups inside the cooking pot, then folding the tablecloth and placing it gently in the pack. When he was done, he tied the pack on top of Terry's bag on the back of the luggage rack and then pulled out the atlas. “Let's see where we're going.”

Terry came around the car and looked at the atlas. “West,” he said. “On back roads.”

“Well, there's back roads, and then there's back roads.” Waylon traced a finger on the map. “If we go this way, work these smaller state highways, we'll see some country but there's a chance we'll get stopped and we can't afford to get stopped, right?”

“Right.”

Waylon studied Terry. “It isn't that you've done anything wrong, is it?”

Terry shook his head. “I don't think so. I just built the car and found the license plates in the garage to put on it.”

“What about your parents?”

“They left me.”

“Both of them?”

Terry nodded. “Sort of.”

“Booze?”

Terry shook his head. “No. They just aren't the types who make parents.”

“Are they going to be looking for you?”

Terry thought about it. “Maybe later. A lot later. In two weeks or so. If they find I'm missing. But not right away.”

“So we're just in a nonregistered vehicle.”

“I guess so. Yeah.”

“Which the police won't be looking for.”

“I don't think so—why should they?”

“Well, if they're not looking for you and they're not looking for the car and they're not looking for me, we can take the better state roads and make some time. Let's do that, shall we?”

Terry was already back around the car and he dropped into the seat “Just tell me where to go.”

He turned the key and the starter cranked, but the car didn't start. He let it grind for a while, until the battery seemed to be wearing down, then stopped. “I don't know what's wrong.”

“It cooled last night She needs a little choke—just a minute.” Waylon opened the hood and propped it on the rod braces, fumbled with the air cleaner on top of the carburetor, and removed it.

“Ahh, here. The choke isn't even hooked up.” He worked the choke manually, held it closed. “Try it now.”

Terry cranked the Cat again and it turned twice before firing off with a healthy roar.

Waylon smiled, let the engine warm before opening the choke and putting the air cleaner back on. He closed the hood and climbed into the car, holding his guitar in his lap again. “And away we go. . . .”

Terry made a mental note to fix up some kind of choke system, moved back onto the small highway, and headed west.

They drove steadily until almost eleven in the morning, then stopped for gas and to wash the breakfast dishes and buy more food because they'd used all the food in Waylon's pack. Waylon paid for everything—gas, food, a reserve quart of oil, though it didn't seem they'd need it because the Cat wasn't using any.

“You don't have to pay for everything,” Terry said as they left the station. “I have some money. . . .”

“I'll buy. It's your car; you're driving.”

Terry nodded, and the truth was, for the first time in his life he really
was
driving. He had been working at it since he'd started the day before, working at driving. And he had seemed to be doing it. The car moved forward, backward; he went fast, slow; he steered.

But through the morning he started to learn to
drive.
When they came to a corner on the narrow road—and there were many of them—he didn't just herd the car around the curve, he cornered it, decelerating on the way into the curve, keeping the nose of the Cat on the inside, shifting down if it was a sharp curve that slowed the car so the tachometer dropped below 2600 or so rpm, then powering out of the turn by accelerating until the next turn. He had read hot-rod books and car magazines since he was nine years old, had read about these things but didn't understand them fully until now; and they seemed to come to him naturally, as if he'd been doing them all his life.

He was completely lost in the driving, didn't care where they were going or where they had been, or how long it took to get there. All he cared about was the road and the sound of the engine and the small squeal from the tires when he made a turn correctly; and he learned on every turn, every downshift and upshift, every time he accelerated and felt the center of gravity shift.

He had wanted to try breaking the rear end loose ever since morning. In one of the hot-rod books he'd read they talked about popping the rear end loose and drifting on a corner until it lined up with the road coming out of the corner, and finally where the road went along a flat field—so he could see past the curve well ahead to make sure there was no traffic coming—he tried it.

Just as the car started to take the sideways pressure of the curve he jerked the emergency brake once, which stopped the rear wheels and they started to skid sideways, swinging the rear end around. At the same time he shifted down and when it was lined up on the road he powered out. It was rough, but it worked, and he kept a higher speed through the turn than he would have been able to hold driving normally.

Next to him he saw Waylon smile and nod.

“I never did that,” Terry explained. “I thought it was a good place to try. . . .”

“You learn fast.” He patted the dashboard of the Cat. “It's like one of the old MG-TDs. It even looks a little like one. Tighter, though, and flatter on the curves. People have lost this.”

“Lost what?”

“How to drive, the art of driving. Now they get in technological monsters and barf around. They don't know how to drive, just be driven.”

Terry nodded, though he didn't quite understand in what way Waylon meant there was a difference between driving and being driven. He was going to ask, or at least talk more, opened his mouth to say something, when a dark shadow seemed to cover him from the side and the world blew up.

H
E NEARLY WET
his pants.

Waylon was looking over his shoulder and his eyes went wide, then tightened at the corners and Terry turned.

There was a black Ford pickup next to him, painted in primer, flat black, and rocketing along on tires that seemed higher than the whole Cat.

It apparently didn't have mufflers, or if it did it had a cutout ahead of them. The noise was deafening, seemed to almost physically push at Terry as the truck roared alongside.

He looked up. In the right seat, looking down on him, was a man wearing a T-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up tight in the sleeve. He had short hair, almost none, and he looked down on Terry and flipped his finger and spit.

They were doing about sixty and the wind took the spit away, but his meaning was clear. He turned and said something to the driver—Terry couldn't see across the truck to the driver—then reached over in the seat and came up with a beer bottle. The truck accelerated until it was slightly ahead of Terry and Waylon. The man held the bottle up to his mouth, took a swig, and held the bottle upside down, smiling crookedly.

“Kick it,” Waylon said, yelling over the bellow of the truck. “Catch a gear and get out of here.
Now!
”

Terry floored the Cat and looked at the tach. They were near 3000 rpm now and it barely crawled forward; they were at too high a speed to accelerate without shifting down. If he dropped it a gear it would redline. He shook his head. “It'll blow the engine. . . .”

It was too late in any case. The man in the pickup flipped the bottle out of the truck window back at the Cat.

It seemed to come in slow motion, arcing back, and for a moment Terry thought it was coming straight at his head.

But at the last moment the bottle caught the steel top edge of the windshield and shattered back in Terry's face.

He had barely enough time to close his eyes before the glass hit him, and when it did reflex took over and he jerked the wheel of the Cat down to the right.

The Cat left the road at sixty, was airborne for three feet, then dropped into the ditch in a whipping sea of grass and dust.

“Damn . . .” Waylon reached for the wheel, trying to correct, but Terry had his eyes open almost at once and cut back to the left, then right, then left in decreasing swerves until the Cat came to a stop in the middle of the ditch, sitting on the grass.

The truck kept moving down the highway, and Waylon was out of the car almost before it stopped rolling and stepped around to Terry's side.

“Out.”

The whole thing hadn't taken ten seconds. Terry got out of the car and Waylon bent him over frontward.

“Are your eyes clear?”

“I think so. Yeah.”

“Brush all the glass out of your hair and off your clothing.”

“What's the matter with those guys?”

“Drunk rednecks, freaks—who knows? There are people in the world who don't want to be part of the race.” He looked down the road and his voice became quiet, almost a whisper. “There went two of them.”

Terry cleaned his clothes, then they went through the car and made sure all the pieces of glass were out of the seats.

“Let's get it up on the road.” Waylon moved around back. “You drive and I'll push.”

Terry slid back into the seat and dropped it in low. Waylon didn't need to push. The ditch was dry and the wheels grabbed and they were back up on the road in a moment. Waylon got back in and pointed down the highway.