A Set Of Wheels

by Robert Thurston

  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. The front of the stage is littered with the pieces of broken light bulbs and torn-up hymnals. 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. Harold does a spit-shine on his Pontiac every Saturday. I’ve seen him polish the car in the rain. 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. I nudged a tree once with Harold’s Pontiac and he had a heart seizure right there, further complicated by a stroke when he examined the tiny scratch on the fender. Scratches like that, bumps, they’re the end of the world for safedrys. If anything happens they quick go to a black market garage before anybody official 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 looks 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 and he’s not one to let old friendship stand in the way of profits. 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, my granddaddy did the job himself.

  Shit. Shit, that’s an old fucking car then, qualifies as antique.

  Don’t say that. Antique makes it all the more valuable, man! I might be tempted to add a c-note to the list price.

  Okay, okay. Don’t get your back up, old buddy.

  Soon as I say it, I know that old buddy is a mistake. Lincoln Rockwell X glares at me, but says nothing. The glare is enough. Forget the old days is always his message. I make mistakes, but I do respond to communication like that.

  I just, I don’t know man, I just expected something more recent.

  This is as recent as is on the market these days, friend.

  The way he says friend does not sound anything like the way I say my old buddy. But he’s right. None of the late models, the ones put out just before they stopped carmaking a decade or so ago, when Ford went down fighting, were ever available. Hell, you hardly even saw them on the streets. They were all protected, guarded, kept behind barriers. Their owners couldn’t afford chancing them in open territory. That was the kind of attitude Harold had and, hell, he didn’t even have a late model. His Pontiac was only a few years younger than this Mustang. He’d reconditioned it himself right after the New Enlightenment laws that drove the auto companies right out of existence.

  Well shit, this Mustang’s my car, going to be when the formalities are terminated. 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, I say, 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 on the driver’s side 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 I’ll take it, and hand him the five bills. Motioning me over to the passenger side, with an imperious hand-jerk, he takes over the driver’s seat. He produces a 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. Just need to find the right touch. Cars’re like this when they’re not used everyday.

  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, short thin cracks yes but it looks like with a little nudge they’d spread wider. 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.

  I look over at Lincoln Rockwell X, try to screw my face into the kind of subtle anger he’s so capable of (but fail, I know) and I tell him:

  How you ever had this heap on the road I’ll never know.

  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 police lines?

  You own the car now, friend, you make it run wherever you want to make it go. There’s gas cans in the trunk. Filled. A bonus for prompt payment. A gift for old Master Lee—I don’t forget anything, man. Call me when you need more. Lowest prices in town.

  Drive it, sure. Where the fuck can I take it?

  Take it anywhere but keep it moving. Only white allowed around here by dusk’s gotta be blurred.

  It was a long while till dusk but I didn’t want to stay around anyway. Still, I didn’t know what the hell to do.

  You got a responsibility to me, I say to Lincoln Rockwell X.

  Shove that, friend. 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.

  I pass Lincoln Rockwell X at the end of the block. In the rear-view mirror I see him bounce the five bills off his forehead, tipping them to me like a hat.

  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, traffic lights laying ac
ross intersecting roads, bricks from fallen buildings, the twisted remains of old newsstands. 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, abandon the car, leave it for some kids to have a lift to their day by burning it. Kiss the five bills goodbye.

  Getting through the police line is easy. Both cops’re busy beating up a 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.

  — 3 —

  The Mustang, which rattles a lot at slow speeds, quiets down with acceleration. I realize how inexperienced I really am at driving. Harold’s Pontiac handles. Driving it’s not driving at all. I try to remember all the times I rode with the social worker—that slouchy old man with a car almost as beat up as this one—and studied the way he drove, trying to learn driving by osmosis. Memory doesn’t help. I have to just make the mistakes. Okay. 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. Or I’ll make some dumb wrong turn and wind up back in the ghetto just at dusk,

  It took almost three workdays to get the five bills—the longest job I had this screwed-up month and I suffered for it—so I might as well get some value for my money. I’ll 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 rear-view 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.

  Instead, there’s just country! All around me, nothing civilized to break up the pattern of country. Well, a couple signs ordering me to eat at a couple homey restaurants, but the signs are old and peeling with stuff growing all over them, I doubt these eateries still exist. Trees, all the trees I’ve seen in the past few years, at least in the days since Dad lost his safedry status, have been scrawny, growing out of little squares of earth in the cement, held up by rusty wires attached to sticks with spinal conditions. But these trees, these trees are frightening. Some arch backwards like they’re avoiding contact with the road. Here and there others bend forward, crowding the road, ominous. I edge out to the middle of the road to avoid them. In between the crouchers and the leaners are some straight fir trees, the kind we used to have at Christmas before Dad’s habits cancelled Christmas. I pass a whole field of dead trees, still standing but barren. Wonder what did them in.

  I begin to notice signs at the side of the road that have nothing to do with eateries. 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, The Expressway after all, out.

  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. Well anyway, at least I’ve topped my best speed in Harold’s Pontiac. 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 rear-view mirror. The other car kicks into action and begins to follow me. I know right away I’ve broken some code; maybe I’ve challenged and now I got to play out the fight. 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 Hundredplussers?

  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. He looks inside, there’s nothing in it but the left-over money from my great wheels transaction, a few bucks. He counts it, and it looks for a minute like he’s going to pocket it, but he puts it back inside. I start to stand up again. He pushes me down again, harder this time. Pinpoints of colored light flash like TV interference and I black out.

  — 4 —

  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, sure, okay. Ten-four and other great numbers of the western world. Over and out. Goodbye. À demain.

  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 asks.

  I test all my breakable parts.

  Yeah. Okay, seems.

  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.

  You jerks, he says, wish I could nail you all. Then I’d get myself taken back onto the city force. They’d stop all their chickenshit excuses about how valuable I am to them out here, how I make so many outdoor collars, all that shit. Outdoor collar! Jesus! I hate cop talk.

  I shake my head to clear it. But there’s still a dizzy wavery layer that makes it hard to focus my eyes. The cop looks at me and his face edges an inch closer to kindness.

  It’ll go away. I’m well-trained, never killed anybody yet. Not with my fists anyway.

  With a gun?

  He doesn’t like me asking, that’s clear.

  Old buddy, that’s for me to know and you to shut up your face abou
t.

  He looks off toward the hills, takes another puff. Across from us is a field where thin stalks, most of them with spotty leaves, move about erratically as if there are at least five different breezes stirring them up.

  Jerk, he says, exhaling.

  He looks my way again.

  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 know who you look like, old buddy?

  No idea.

  No, wouldn’t’ve. 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. Rap was his word; he used it like it was still in style. He didn’t know shit about being a good cop but he read a lot and was real good at talking about it. In a few words, a few words, he could tell me the gist of what he read. Always amazed me, that.

  I pass back the joint. His fingers are so big he can hardly take it out of my hand. Little clumps of hair grow on the wide backs of a couple of his fingers, looks like you could hide contraband in them.

  He’d been one of you jerks, or at least a jerk like 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 the 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.