Car Sinister

by Robert Silverberg

  Lincoln Rockwell X leads me to wheels. It’s in the basement of an abandoned Afro-Methodist church. We have to maneuver around upended and broken pews. To get to the car we have to go down steps behind what’s left of an altar. We pass office doors with broken windows. You can see only junk inside.

  He takes me to a recreation room. No electricity, he says, I’ll light candles and you get the Big Show, dig? He makes an elaborate thing out of placing the candles on the stage. Lights each one with a swishy hand move. He sings a trumpet call through his nose as he opens a curtain that’s got burn holes all over it.

  And there you go, he says. Wheels.

  Which is so, though it’s not exactly like I imagined it. All the cars you see on the street are shined-up no matter how old they are. Safedrys think a glossy car’s better than a big prick. And they don’t allow any bumps anywhere on the body of the car. If anything happens, they quick get to a garage before anybody finds out and they get points against them. They’ll pay anything to keep their record clean, to keep their license.

  But this car! This car’s got pain in every curve. It’d choked to death and gone to hell. It looked menacing. Like if you touched it, you’d get cancer.

  Five hundred dollars, says Lincoln Rockwell X.

  Five hundred dollars? I say. For that?

  You got a better deal, you go make it. No small talk on my time, man.

  I know better than to argue. I’m deep in his territory, more than five hundred bucks in my pocket. Lincoln Rockwell X’s got blades for teeth. Sight unseen I’d already bought this baby.

  Still—I make like a reluctant buyer. I walk around the car. I kick a tire; it wraps rubber around my foot. I grab a door handle which almost comes off in my hand.

  What do I know about cars? Nothing. But I pretend.

  What year? I ask.

  ’67, he says.

  ’67 what?

  ’67 Mustang. Saved from a graveyard and reconditioned in ’75. My granddaddy did the job himself.

  ’75. That was the year they stopped carmaking altogether.

  No, man. Ford kept going till ’79. Went down fighting.

  I brush away a layer of dirt. The car is dark green underneath. Dark green where it’s not rust. I run a finger along the fold-line of a dent. Dark-green flecks come off onto my fingertip.

  Jeez, how’m I gonna drive this heap around? Look at all the dents. Cops’ll crack me in a minute.

  Your PR with the fuzz is your business, baby. You wanted wheels, these’re the only bootleg wheels left in town. You got five hundred dollars, you got wheels. You can leave the small talk in your wallet.

  Okay, okay, but how’m I gonna get this junkpile on the street? Drive it through the ceiling?

  You got five hundred, I’ll open sesame for free.

  I open the door real easy and get in. Dashboard’s in scarred leather. Seats are ripped bad, too. A part of the steering wheel’s missing, making it look like a broken-off piece of pretzel. I try out the accelerator. Creaks on the down motion, cries on the up. I move the automatic floor shift, the only undamaged part of the car.

  I tell Lincoln Rockwell X okay HI take it, and hand him the five bills. He takes over the driver’s seat. He produces the key with another swishy flourish and puts it in the ignition. The car moans, gurgles, trembles, threatens suicide, but doesn’t start.

  Don’t worry boy, Lincoln Rockwell X says. Cars’re like this when they’re not used every day.

  He invokes a tribal curse and re-presses the accelerator. The car curses back but gives in.

  He gets the car out of the building through use of a freight elevator at the back of the stage.

  Up a ramp and out in the light, I get my first good look at my wheels. I see all the bumps and dents I missed in candlelight. The thing looks like a crumpled piece of paper. Front and back windows both have cracks in them. Headlights point in opposite directions. Fenders are separating at the seams. Bumper’s rippled like sea waves. The mustang on the insignia’s laid down and died. Another hole in the roof and it’ll be a convertible.

  How you ever had this heap on the road I’ll never know, I tell Lincoln Rockwell X.

  Around here cops see a car in this condition riding the asphalt, they lay off cause they know the driver’s got blades for fingers.

  But how’m I gonna get it across the police lines?

  You own the car now, man, you make it run wherever you want to make it go. There’s gas cans in the trunk. Call me when you need more.

  But where’ll I take it?

  Take it anywhere but keep it moving. Only white allowed around here gotta be blurred.

  You have a responsibility to me.

  Shove that, man. I put you in the motherfucker seat and that’s all is necessary.

  He walks away, waving the five bills like a flag. I locate the horn, push it in to get his attention. It wheezes shyly but makes no other sound. I’ll get out, run after him, snatch the five bills, run like hell. The door handle comes off in my hand.

  I’ve had the course. What can I do? Stay in the ghetto, dodge between blades? Race cops around the city? Drive only on moonless nights?

  My Mustang, motor running, has a coughing fit. I quick depress the accelerator, run it hard to keep the engine from dying out. The accelerator pedal vibrates. The whole car begins to shake.

  I better get this car moving before it really gets angry. I shift to D, press the accelerator pedal. A delay before the car responds, then a growling jump forward. Spinning tires set gravel flying, striking the underside of the car with hollow clanging noises.

  Ghetto streets make good practice runways. I see only two other cars, each dilapidated, though in better condition than the Mustang. The streets are filled with obstacles—potholes, chunks of broken pavement, jagged trash. People jump into doorways when I drive along the sidewalk.

  The Mustang is reluctant. When I try to gun the motor, it groans and waits a second before granting the speed increase. None of the dashboard gauges work right. The gas gauge doesn’t work at all. Maybe I should just joyride, let the gas run out and abandon the car. Kiss the five bills goodbye.

  Getting through the police line is easy. Both cops’re busy beating up a spade rummy. They got him backed up against a piece of building and they’re trading off who slams the club into his gut. The black man shouts out old militant slogans. A carful of white kids parked on the safe side of the line call out ratings for each blow. I speed by them and they hardly glance at me.

  The Mustang, which rattles a lot at slow speeds, quiets down with acceleration. I never drove a car before, but my father described driving to me and one time I rode with a social worker and watched everything he did. I make a few mistakes now but I learn fast.

  I can’t go home now with no place to hide wheels. If I keep driving around the city, I’ll have fuzz scrambling around the windshield in an hour or two. Or the nightroamers’ll run me off the road once they see the car’s illegal.

  It took almost three workdays to get the five bills, so I might as well get some value for my money. Ill take a chance, drive around till something happens. What can happen? I can get the shit beat out of me, that’s what. I can get five to twenty for driving without a license, another rap for the illegal vehicle itself. I can get sliced up. I can die.

  Still—what’s a few risks if you got wheels?

  Suddenly I’m in the country. Open fields, overhanging trees, telephone poles, soft shoulders, road signs—the works. I look in the rearview mirror to make sure the city’s still behind me, that it hasn’t disappeared. The change is too fast, too abrupt. I’d expected a police line, or some barrier, a sign saying This Is the Countryside.

  I begin to notice signs at the side of the road; around a circle each says To the Expressway. Inside the circle is an arrow pointing the way. We got expressways in the city, great cracked-up roads with their entrances blocked off with walls. Kids play on them ’cause they’re safe. I decide to check this expressway out.

&nb
sp; I give the Mustang its head. I slam down on the accelerator. Gradually the car picks up speed, I don’t know how much because the speedometer needle jams at 50 mph. At a certain speed the car begins to vibrate menacingly. I slow it down to the fastest safe speed.

  The car has a tendency to veer to the right. I have to clutch the steering wheel to keep the car on the road. I’m learning that the Mustang does what it wants to do. I have no control over it, I just make suggestions and hang on.

  I pass another car, wheels screaming. Scared, I look in the rearview mirror. The other car kicks into action and begins to follow me. I push the pedal to the floorboards. Vibrating like hell the Mustang goes faster, reaches its top speed. It is not enough. My wreck of a Mustang is no match for the sleek tuned-up model chasing us. I try evasive tactics, hogging the middle of the road so that our pursuer can’t pass. Around a curve he glides to the outside, comes alongside, and convinces us to pull over.

  You can read fuzz all over his face. He’s skinny but he walks like a fat man. His little eyes look out between the only bulges in his face. Cram-course muscles hang from his thin shoulders like meat on hooks.

  He pulls open my door. It makes a loud snap like it’s going to break off. He grabs my collar with huge hands and drags me out of the car. My feet get tangled and I start to fall. He tosses me the rest of the way. I hit my head against a rear fender. The pain makes everything blur.

  You pukes’re getting braver all the time, he says.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  I’m talking, you asshole, about how far you’re willing to venture from the Cloverleaf. Which group of bums you belong to—the Roadrunners, the Mechs, the Hundred-plussers?

  I tell him I don’t understand. I stand up. He gives a kind of nasal grunt and slaps me across the face backhand. He grabs my shoulders, twists me around, pushes me against the trunk. I double over, a sharp fender edge caving in my stomach. He frisks me, takes away my wallet. I start to stand up. He pushes me down. Pinpoints of colored light flash like TV interference and I black out.

  As I wake up, I hear the cop saying:

  Get your ass here pronto. I can’t sit on the lid all day just for this jerk. Okay, okay. Ten-four.

  I’m laid out on the ground, on my back. He must’ve put me there, arranged me carefully like an undertaker with a corpse he really likes.

  You okay, old buddy? he says.

  I test all my breakable parts.

  Yeah. Okay.

  Stupid, you shouldn’t take such chances.

  Chances?

  When you got a gang, stay with them. You guys that think you can go it on your own—why, that car of yours couldn’t outrun a fat nurse pushing a baby buggy.

  I don’t get it.

  What are you trying, getting off on a schmuck defense? Stupid’s not an excuse. We’re not going to baby you jerks any more. Any day now, we’re going to tear up the roads and pour your skulls into the new cement.

  His voice is strange. Like, he’s telling me how his side is going to brutalize me and he sounds like he’s giving me friendly advice.

  I sit up. He leans against a car door, puffing on a joint.

  Funny, you don’t look like a jerk. You’re not scruffy enough.

  He hands me the joint. I try not to look surprised. I accept it and take a big drag. It makes the pains better.

  You look like a guy who used to be my partner on a city beat. We’d go off to a coop and rap about things. He didn’t know shit about being a good cop but he read a lot and could tell me in a few words what he read.

  I pass back the joint. His fingers are so big he can hardly take it out of my hand.

  He’d been one of you jerks, maybe that’s why you remind me of him. He could explain the radical line so it almost made sense. Shit, I think he figured on revolutionizing the force.

  He takes another drag, holds it for a long time.

  Nice kid. Got sliced from hairline to heel by some punk out looking for wheels to cop. Ain’t run with a partner since.

  I hold onto a fender of the Mustang and pull myself up. The fender almost breaks off under the strain of my weight. My gut feels like it’s ripped to pieces.

  You’ll be okay, kid. Just be glad I didn’t give you my patented Sergeant Allen special. They can’t get up from that—they beg for amputations.

  You Sergeant Allen?

  Yeah. You heard of me?

  No.

  He seems disappointed.

  You ain’t been on the road long then, he says.

  I look around. We’re in the middle of the curve. You can’t see far either way.

  You got any information, I can see you get off easy.

  He seems embarrassed to be saying it.

  No. I don’t know shit. Really.

  He gives me a strange smile, like he likes the answer.

  Ah, you jerks, he says, and I think he means something good.

  I wonder if he’s jazzing me. He talks like no pig I ever heard. I mean, he makes me want to talk to him. I decide to.

  You like being a cop?

  He laughs. An explosion.

  You really are a dumbass from the word go. Shit, I bet if we still had to read off the rights for you jerks, I’d have to spell out every word for you.

  I don’t understand, but I’m learning it’s better to keep my mouth shut. He takes a last drag on the joint, then crushes it between his big fingers and throws it away.

  I hear the sound of an approaching car. I wonder how long I’ve been hearing it. Allen’s body tenses. He reaches in his glove compartment and pulls out a gun. I haven’t seen a gun up close since I was thirteen. This one has a short barrel and a thick grip. Allen holds it like he wants to use it.

  Squad car’s coming from town, he says, ain’t nobody else out here on patrol. So that must be buddies of yours. You got something arranged, jerk?

  I can’t tell him the only arrangement I ever made is buying this screwjob of a car.

  The sound stops just around the curve. Car doors open and slam. Feet glide across gravel. Moving shadows through a clump of trees.

  I hear you, you stupid bastards, Allen shouts. I don’t know what you’re up to but I got four clubs joining me any minute.

  As if to prove his statement, a siren begins to sound in the distance. I see something on the other side of the Mustang, a dark blur in the bushes. I look to see if Allen noticed. No, he’s watching the other side of the road. His body’s crouched. The siren gets louder.

  Rescuing this dummy’s not worth your time, Allen shouts.

  Something flies out of the bushes at me. It comes at me chest-level and I catch it. I look down. It’s a monkey wrench. A flying monkey wrench. I look at Allen; he hasn’t seen. The siren sounds very close. The dark blur jumps silently out of the bushes and crouches beyond the Mustang. I walk three steps to Allen. He hears only the last step and turns. I swing the wrench backhanded, hit the side of his head, scrape the wrench across his forehead, hit him a second time cheekbone level.

  Get moving, calls a voice behind me. The siren sounds like it’s next door. I run to the Mustang, climb in, too panicked to look at the dark blur, who now occupies the other front seat. I turn the ignition key. The motor wheezes.

  Get moving, you dumb shit, says the dark blur, hitting the dashboard with both fists. I can tell by the voice it’s a girl. The Mustang must be scared of her, ’cause it starts up right away.

  I push the Mustang to its limit. Every time I think it’s having its death rattle, instead it finds a new resource of power and keeps going. The other car, the one from around the curve, joins us and we ride side by side down the highway. Four guys are in the other car. They wave and make odd signs at me.

  This car’s out of sight bad, my companion says. What you got under the hood, a rusty sewing-machine motor?

  I look over at her, try to examine what can be seen of her. Which isn’t much ’cause she’s so small. She’s black. Very dark, so I suspect she wears a darkening makeup, t
he kind they advertise as AfroBlack.

  Keep your motherfucking eyes on the road, she says. Up ahead it’s all broken up and you got to ride the shoulder. It’s only a mile to the Cloverleaf.

  I continue to sneak looks at her.

  Where’d you guys come from? I say. How’d you know Allen had me?

  She has white-girl-texture hair and she ties it back as if ashamed of it.

  We keep tabs, she says. We got a good lookout post up in the hills with a highpower telescope. They saw Allen beating up on you.

  She has a white girl’s small-nostril nose, but the lips are right.

  What’s your name? I say.

  She has childlike shoulders and arms, a series of round pipes with ball-bearing joints.

  Cora. Cora Natalie Townsend. What’s yours?

  She has practically no tits at all, just a hint of nipple beneath a tight sweater.

  Lee Kestner.

  She has thin but well-proportioned legs.

  I want to see her eyes but she won’t look at me.

  We come to the Cloverleaf. The other car speeds ahead and leads me through its maze. We cross a bridge. Down below are eight lanes of highway, four on each side of a center mall. I see at least three abandoned cars at the sides of the road but not a moving vehicle from one horizon to the other.

  This the Expressway? I say.

  Shit, you really don’t know. Where you come from, a cave?

  No, I just never been out of the city before.

  You mean to tell me you never rode the Expressway?

  Yes.

  Well, you’re about to now. I should’ve known when I saw this rotten car that you were a dumb-shit newcomer. Because it’s so slow. Newcomers’ cars’re lucky if they do 75 on a straightaway.

  I just bought this car.

  You paid for this wreck? Boy, you may be the Newcomer of All Time.

  The other car stops by a Merge sign. Its driver rolls down a window. Cora tells me to stop.

  The Savarin? the other driver shouts.

  The Savarin, she shouts back.

  As the other car pulls away, picking up speed fast, she says:

  Chuck’s impatient. Doesn’t want to drag along at your speed. He doesn’t believe in wet-nursing other vehicles, leaves them on their own. C’mon, let’s see how fast this horsecart can go.