Kill Switch

by Chris Lynch

  “Ha,” Da says, looking sharp, lucid, and sly.

  “Ha, what?” I say.

  “Ha,” he says, pointing at me.

  I am driving. Da insisted on front seat, Jarrod is fine with the back. North is where I am headed, because it just seems to me that from here, north is where all the nothing is.

  “It’s kind of pointless at this point, I’m afraid,” I say.

  “What?” Jarrod says.

  “Driving anywhere. I mean, I don’t know where to go, they are bound to catch us within hours, and even if this were a muscle car, we’d never be able to get away from anybody who really wanted to catch us.”

  “Nobody wants to catch you two, so don’t flatter yourselves,” Da says. The in/out nature of his condition is far more like streetlights than ever before. He is with us and gone again just that quickly. “You’ve never done anything.”

  It is a statement both reassuring and cutting.

  Not to mention inaccurate.

  “I may have done a few things,” Jarrod says modestly.

  I sigh. “Do I want to know these things, Jarrod?”

  “You might not.”

  “Okay, then. Anyway, Da, we all agree you are the grand prize. But I am not looking forward to facing people at this point either. I just need… a little time and space to work out just what is the right thing.”

  “Ha,” Da says.

  “Ha, again?”

  “‘Right thing.’ Phrase always makes me go ha.”

  “I might know a place,” Jarrod says.

  “I thought you were out of places?” I say.

  “No, I said I was out of guys. But I know a place where you go to find a guy, who might know a guy…”

  “At this point, men, that sounds like our kind of place,” I say.

  Because they know our vehicle, we are traveling rural roads all the way. The place Jarrod described would have taken another three or four hours if we took the main highway, but the way we have to snake through the region will take at least two times that, possibly three. The radio crackles in and out, usually coming up with one form of hillbilly music or heavy metal, and if you didn’t know better you’d think we were one very alternative family off for a little backwoods vacation with the happy-clappy youngster in the back singing along to the tunes with his own made-up lyrics all the way. Suddenly he pipes up, “Oh, and did I tell you, Dan-o, you were wrong. When I went back to the college, those guys had not found the secret hiding place for my stash. Cool, or what?”

  So, as it sinks in that I am tooling the byways at the helm of what is now almost certainly an officially reported stolen car, transporting a fugitive secret-spilling spook of an old man, we cheerfully add to the gumbo the fact that we are carrying consignments from two distinctly different classes of controlled substances. Three if you count the prescription medications that we purchased with no prescriptions. And they probably will count that, so, three.

  “Congratulations, Jarrod.” What else is there to say, really?

  My Da cannot read my mind, though sometimes it does appear that way. He can, however, still read signs of a situation as well as anyone anywhere.

  “You have to lose him, you know,” he says icily.

  “What?” I look at him, the road, him again.

  “Watch the road.”

  “No. I mean I got the road. We’re not losing him.”

  If talking about Jarrod in highly worrying terms registers with him at all, he is not highly worried about it. He is even singing “Jolene” along with Dolly Parton, though he appears to believe it’s “Moline.”

  “Lose him, Young Man. He is useless, and probably going to compound everybody’s problems with that damn dope of his.”

  I grip the wheel hard and stare straight ahead. “No.”

  It starts to rain a little. It starts to rain sheets.

  “You’ve come this far. You have come a long way now. You know what it means, to do what needs doing. Ask yourself again, right now and all the time forever, “When what needs to be done needs to be done, can I do it?”

  I look at Jarrod’s battered and weathered and childlike mess of a face in the rearview, the watery wide eyes looking now out the windows at the endlessly passing same tree. At school he could be your show-and-tell if your topic was useless, and I bet at least one classmate tried it when he was at school, and I further bet he went along with it just to be accommodating.

  “When what needs to be done needs to be done, I can do it, Da.”

  “That’s my boy.”

  “But I will decide what needs to be done. And Jarrod stays with us.”

  My grandfather’s eyes go mental with more horror than when he saw his dead wife in my sister. Then the wide eyes narrow, a bit, and a bit, until it resembles more disappointment and distaste. Like he’s looking at a half-built structure already falling apart from shoddy workmanship.

  “That boy,” he says, pointing flagrantly at the passenger in back, “is going to be your downfall.”

  “Am I?” Jarrod says with majestically poor timing. I give him a quick quadro-shush.

  I do not reply to Da, just continue on the long, winding, watery road to our destination.

  12

  Who are you when nobody is watching? Da asked me.

  Is there ever nobody watching? I asked.

  Good answer, he said.

  13

  “I must have fallen asleep,” I say.

  The car is in a small ditch, with nothing but field visible for miles. It is a monotonous two-lane nothing of a road splitting farms that have corn growing like natural skyscrapers all along the right view, and some hip-high rag balls of common green whatever covering all the land to the left. It is the most boring scape of any land anywhere, and if it does not put you to sleep, then you are some kind of indefatigable driving machine.

  Anyway, it’s not as if there was any other consciousness in the car to help keep me alert at the time.

  “See, I told you this boy was going to be your undoing,” Da says as Jarrod climbs down to check the situation because it is after all his stolen car.

  “What did he have to do with it?”

  “Subarus suck” is Da’s logic.

  “It doesn’t look like anything’s broken,” Jarrod says, lying right down in the muck to look underneath. The pouring rain has stopped and been replaced by moderate rain that feels like many tiny knuckles rapping on my skull.

  The right front wheel has lost contact with earth where I tried to jerk the wheel back up in the direction of the road at the last second. The other three are in touch. There is reason to believe two of us may be horsepower enough to get the thing righted while a third one navigates the vessel onto the pavement.

  “Da,” I say, shaking my head as I say it, “with your hip and all you’ll be no good pushing, so you’ll need to drive.”

  “I love to drive,” he says, clapping once and crab-walking down the short embankment to the car.

  “Yeah.” I sigh. “I’m aware.”

  I make my own way down the slope to the rear of the car, where Jarrod waits, his entire front now lacquered in rich farming mud.

  “Feeling strong?” I ask, as the wind picks up and starts blowing sideways into our ears.

  “No,” he says.

  But we all do what we have to do. I explain to Jarrod the concept of rocking a car out of a predicament, rather than plowing it out. I try and coordinate with Da by shouting at him because he is old.

  “Da,” I say. “On the count of-”

  Revvv-revv-revvv.

  The man loves to drive.

  “Da!” A little louder. “We are going to try rocking-”

  Revvv-rev-revv.

  “Aw, hell, put it in gear!”

  He lets the clutch out, and drops it into first, and Jarrod and I start plowing with all our might.

  “Rock, Jarrod, don’t plow.”

  He tries rocking; we rock in opposite rhythm. I adjust, and so does he, so we rock in opposit
e rhythm. I believe I hear Da making revving noises with his mouth as the wheels throw ever more mud over Jarrod and me. He is enjoying himself so much, I don’t think he cares one way or the other whether we get back on the asphalt.

  I feel the wheels catch, grab, we fall back.

  “This hurts!” Jarrod says.

  “Rock, Jarrod.”

  Jarrod rocks. We push, back off, push, back off.

  Revvv-revvv-revv, and ka-fump, the car flops up there and rubber hits road.

  And keeps going.

  Jarrod and I are lying on the lip of the road, where we flopped with the last heave. We watch as Da lights out for the great unknown and his next adventure without a backward glance.

  “Isn’t he turning around?” Jarrod asks, as we stand up and watch. There is no brake light activity yet.

  “It does not appear he is,” I say. “And I don’t like the way the car’s looking, either.”

  The Subaru is doing a fast-motion little shimmy action all the way down the highway, like a very happy, motorized springer spaniel.

  The stretch of road between the farms is long and flat and straight, so we have a good long look at the end of this particular endeavor as Da leaves us definitively behind, in the rain.

  Until he hits what is probably a nice wide slick of water-oil mix, hydroplanes left to right clear across the road, down the ditch, and into the corn. It looked to go quite smoothly, as these things go.

  “Come on,” I say, starting at a full gallop.

  “That is a long, long way,” Jarrod moans, but follows.

  A few seconds later, we see this small figure, out of the corn fields, up on the embankment, and waving at us to come.

  I slow to a stroll.

  “Oh, look, he decided he missed us,” I say to Jarrod.

  “You think he did?” he says. “I bet he did.”

  I still feel bad for what I did to him before, so in a way he’s lucky now because a certain level of stupidity has to be punishable.

  “Why are you looking at me like that, Danny? Are you gonna do it again?”

  I put an arm around him and knock his head with mine.

  It feels like one day and two weather systems have passed by the time we reach Da. The sun is shining, and he’s smoking a cigarette and waving us in the last hundred yards like we’re in a marathon. A pickup truck has pulled over-after running right past us-and the driver is smoking and joking with my grandfather when Jarrod and I finally troop in.

  “Sorry, boys,” the man says, waving in a way that says feel free to not shake my hand. “I would have picked you up, but to be honest, you don’t look quite as pick-uppable as the elder gentleman here. Fact, there is an air of prison-break about your appearance just now.”

  “It’s okay, no problem. But I’ll tell you, you could really give us a hand by maybe towing our car up out of the ditch there.” It is strictly not in the ditch. It’s gone through the ditch and with some force into the field. The corn crop looks like a perfect door has been cut into it.

  “Well, um, no. But I tell you what, I could get my gun and go shoot it for you. Because, fellas, she’s gone to the great Japanese auto plant in the sky.”

  “Told them buy American,” Da says sadly.

  “Ah-huh,” the man says, nodding, nodding.

  He doesn’t even look countrified at all, like with the overalls and the chaw and the gun rack? In fact, he looks like one of those lunatic country club golfers with the pom-pom hat and the grape pants. Because that’s what he is wearing. And there are golf clubs in the back. Oh, and actually there is a gun rack in the rear window.

  “The frame is snapped, right in half.”

  I turn to Jarrod. “You said it looked fine underneath.”

  “I’m not a mechanic, Danny.”

  “It is in two pieces,” the man says, supremely amused. “Only thing holding front and back of that machine together is the transmission and the carpeting.”

  Da has begun walking in the direction we came from.

  “Go get him,” I tell Jarrod.

  Jarrod goes and I speak to the man, up close and personal.

  “Listen, I am sorry, but-”

  “Whoa there, death breath,” he says, and takes two steps back.

  And I realize how much further we have drifted from what I thought of as civilization just days ago. I haven’t brushed my teeth. As of this moment I don’t even think I technically own a toothbrush. We need some money. We need things.

  We need to get where we are going.

  “Can you possibly give us a lift?” I ask.

  My comrades have joined us now.

  The man crinkles up his nose.

  “Smoke?” Da says, offering one to the man.

  “Ah,” he says to Da as he gleefully takes the cigarette. “We are a dying breed, ain’t we? Dying by our own hand, but that’s another story. Where are you going to?”

  “Lundy Lee,” Jarrod says.

  “Ooooh,” the man says, raising his eyebrows comically. “Queers, artists, or outlaws?”

  “Actually,” I say, going for as respectable as I can muster, “I’m a philosophy student.”

  “Ah, all three, then,” the man says, making perfect laugh Os of smoke in the air. “I suppose,” he says, and we all scramble toward the front cabin, which has two whole benches of room.

  “Ah, no no,” the man says, looking across the top of the truck at us. “In the bed. And don’t touch my golf clubs.”

  Da heads back to climb in, and the man shouts, “Not you, sir. You’re up here with me. Let them filthy young pups roll around back there.”

  Da has a spring in his limp as he ambles back up front. I can tell he administered himself his afternoon dose while waiting for us to catch up. It reminds me. “One minute,” I say to the man as I hop out and run down to the hobbled Subaru. I get to the car, get inside, and clean out our sad little bag of belongings. If I cannot keep my team healthy, wealthy, wise, clean, housed…

  I can at least keep them on their meds.

  “What the hell is he saying up there?” I ask Jarrod as I peek up at the conversation going on in the comforts of the cab. The two of them are chain-smoking and laughing and shouting and wildly gesticulating their way through a nonstop Da-fest of tale-telling. That guy seems like the kind of man who holds his own in any exchange of stories, if he doesn’t dominate it, but there is no mistaking that this session is all singing, all dancing, Da. I only hope the guy doesn’t think turning us into the local law enforcement is in order, and if he doesn’t, then maybe he considers the whole thing worth a buck or two donation.

  A couple of times I get worried enough to bang on the cab’s rear window. When Da looks at me the first time, I give him a turbo octo-shush, which only makes him wave me off and launch right into another killer story to his new pal. The second time, after my knocking frantically, I figure it is futile when the two of them spin in my direction and give me dual, synchronized octo-shushes.

  They laugh so hard I fear we are in for the third crash of the day. So I slink back down low, under the big built-in storage chest behind the cab.

  The end of August is some of the loveliest weather of the year. If you are not in the open bed of a pickup truck going seventy, northbound when you are already north of probably forty of the continental United States. If you are not already weakened by exhaustion and unwelcome excitement you could only have ever dreamed of before. And especially if you are not a confused and stupid and fragile and helpful and helpless mess of a nowhere man who just happens to be badly in need of his self-prescribed medicine on top of all of the above.

  I lie down on the floor of the truck, in front of Jarrod. I back up into him so that as much of my body surface is contacting as much of his body surface as is decently possible. And then a little more. We huddle there that way, for dear life, for survival, for the duration of the trip.

  14

  Everybody has a kill switch, Da said.

  Same as a car with an immobil
izer. The power is there, it’s just interrupted. You just have to find the kill switch that reconnects that power.

  Once you flip your kill switch, you can do anything. Everything you thought you couldn’t do, and many things you never even thought of.

  What if I don’t want to kill anything, I said.

  You don’t know that until you’ve flipped the switch.

  15

  When the big truck finally stops, and the engine cuts, it still feels, underneath me, like the motor is vibrating. I suspect the left side of my body will feel like that for some time now, and my right side will feel like defrosting chicken. Jarrod clings to my back like a baby marmoset as we hear the doors of the comfortable part of the vehicle bang shut, one-two.

  Next thing, the two men are hanging over the side of the truck bed, observing us as if selecting tonight’s slab of halibut.

  I look up at the Golfer, and he looks the way you look when you get off the best carnival rides. Grinning, delirious, stunned, disheveled, possibly a bit nauseous but unwilling to admit it, and ready to sign up for more.

  “That is a great American,” he says, and I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about Buzz Aldrin.

  “You are right about that,” I say, creaking myself into an upright position. Without my insulation, Jarrod instantly goes into teeth-chattering mode, sits up, and clings again to my back. Every sinew of the boy quakes like an electric charge is being bolted through him.

  “Here,” the Golfer says, peeling off business cards for each of us, “I know a couple people in this town. Don’t know what you’re looking for here-don’t know if I want to know, either-but if you mention my name at the ferry office or at the pawn shop called Bread and Waters, these folks will treat you right.”

  “Thank you,” Da says, and the two men hug like two old war veterans parting ways.

  “Yeah,” I say, hopping over the side. “Thanks for this, and for the lift. You really bailed us out.”

  “Just being a good neighbor,” he says. “Pass it on, pay it forward, whatever.”

  I help Jarrod down as the Golfer ambles back to his cab, climbs in, and then takes off with a three-toot salute of his horn and a big wave over the gun rack.