A Set Of Wheels

by Robert Thurston

  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 seem to be in the middle of a curve, just off the road on the shoulder. Except for the nearby field and the hills beyond it, you can’t see far in any other direction.

  You got any information, I can get you 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 cop 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 to 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.

  Jerks’re the foundation of my whole goddamned life, you know that? he says. No, you wouldn’t. I gotta drive around twelve hours a day collaring jerks, I gotta listen to jerks tell me what to do, jerks jerking off, I gotta go home to—

  He stops talking, stands up suddenly, his body tense. I hear the sound of an approaching car. I wonder how long I’ve been hearing it. Allen reaches into his glove compartment and pulls out a gun. I haven’t seen a gun close up since I was fifteen. That was when mother first introduced me to her new friend Harold and he showed me all the firepower he kept in his cellar—better than Prudential for insurance, he called his guns. I haven’t been in his cellar since. Allen’s gun has a short barrel and a thick grip. He 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 rookies just testing out how to use their clubs joining me any minute.

  As if to prove his declaration, 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, the kind they advertise as AfroBlack. Lincoln Rockwell X told me all the real sisters, whatever he meant by that, were using AfroBlack these days, except for the few who were dark enough not to need it. I don’t know whether to credit him or not, since he was doing his darkie act while he told me.

  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 high-power telescope. They saw Allen beating up on you, sent out the message. Guys over there received. Lucky bastards, they got a working CB.

  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 is 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.

  The bigass cave. 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 must be the Newcomer of All Time.

  The other car stops by a Merge sign. Its driver rolls down his 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.

  She looks at me and I see her eyes finally. They are dark, expressive. They say, you fool with me and I’ll slice off whatever part of you I want.

  — 5 —

  We go to the Savarin, Cora cursing the Mustang all the way. The Savarin comes into view after a sign saying Service Area Ahead 1 mi. It is on top of a hill at the end of a long curved access road. Parked around it are more cars than I’ve ever seen at one time. Some of them are being worked on. Others have people sitting in them, on them, leaning against them, eating off them.

  A knock on the window by my head. It’s Chuck from the other car. I roll down the window.

  Need anything? he says.

  Since I can’t even figure out categories for what I’d need, I start to shake my head no. Cora says,

  Everything’s straight, Chuck. Check in with you later.

  Sure, Cora. Happy trails.

  Happy trails.

  He walks off.

  Chuck’s kinda the dutch uncle around here, Cora says. He’ll keep an eye on you for a while, probably. What’s the matter? You look startled.

  It’s the cars, all of them.

  Wha
t do you mean, all of them?

  With so many cars here, how come you don’t see any on the road?

  Cora gives me a dumb-shit look.

  Two reasons. One, to conserve gas and materials, which are becoming harder to get and more expensive all the time. The legal service stations that deal on the side charge an arm and a leg just to negotiate. So we have to do a lotta down-time whatever we do. Two, it’s safer to travel at night unless you’re in the mood for real joyriding and we’ve had to be cautious lately. In the daytime we’re more vulnerable to sneak attacks from the fuzz. Once we’re on the highway they see us as legal game and they get all kinds of plaudits when they round up a few of us.

  Why don’t they just come here and get a bunch of you all at once?

  Too many of us, not enough of them. It’s volunteer duty out here: the smart cops stay in the city and they can only get a few freaks like Allen to take country duty.

  That’s not the way he tells it.

  Oh?

  He says he wants to get back to city duty, didn’t sound like a volunteer to me.

  Who knows with him? He tells you one story one day, switches it around the next. Maybe he’s a volunteer, maybe they exiled him. Now you mention it, I might buy the exile jazz. Other cops hate him almost as much as he hates us. Might be. I don’t know, he’s got his points. Anyway, where was I?

  Volunteer duty.

  Oh? Anyway, the fuzz likes to keep us as far outside the city as they can, no room for us in the jails or those goddamned camps any more. So they don’t bug us much. They hide at the access roads and exits, and look for strays. They only attack when the odds are in their favor. Except Allen. He wants our blood and he wants it flowing. C’mon, I’m going to introduce you to the one man you need desperately right now.

  She takes me to a tall, heavy-set man in grease-stained coveralls.

  This is The Mech, she says, some reverence in her voice. If anyone can resuscitate that corpse you drive, he can.

  The Mech says he’ll get to it later. Cora and I go to the squatty building they call the Savarin. On the way I ask her:

  That’s his name, The Mech?

  Her eyes are both amused and angry.

  Shit, of course it’s not. It’s a name, that’s all. He hates his real one or he has to keep it a secret, people vote for both reasons around here. But he knows cars, everything that goes in between bumpers. Keep on his good side.

  In the Savarin Cora introduces me to a lot of people and then sits me down at the remains of a counter to eat. Chuck, in a nearby booth, waves to me. The room is crowded. Some people sleep in cots lined along the wall. Children run in and out. One man works on a long poem which he is inscribing in Magic Marker around an enormous coffee percolator.

  Cora, her eyes taking in everything, seems to look for an excuse to escape from me. I set traps to keep her with me.

  I want to touch her—but so she’ll know I touched her because I wanted to. Instead I brush against her arm reaching for a sugar shaker, graze knees while swaying the counterstool.

  This Allen, he’s mean, huh?

  Mean? Yeah. Yeah, I guess. He’s tough, I’ll give him that. He can scramble your brains with one punch if he wants to. But you got to respect him.

  I don’t understand.

  You wouldn’t. See, he’s a loner and they’re hard to come by out here. Most of the time, they cram four-five pigs into one car, but he comes after us all by himself. He digs it, taking us on by himself. He’s a spooky dude.

  You ever had a run-in with him?

  Once. Almost took a bunch of us in. He was pretty nice to me, told me some legal tricks I might use. When he got an emergency squeal and he had to go and leave us behind, he almost seemed happy he didn’t have to take us in for booking after all. Strange cop, like I say.

  Outside, a score of engines start up. Nervous laughter and fidgeting indicates the eagerness of the crowd to hit the road. The sun is low on the horizon—coming through the large front plateglass window it casts weird shadows over everything. A mock fight starts up between two of the guys. Children scamper around their legs. There is a steady flow of people coming into the Savarin to fill up thermoses with water.

  A tap on my shoulder. Chuck, a pleasant smile on his face.

  Call for you, he says.

  Call?

  Phone. Over there.

  I look over at a scarred pay-phone, its receiver dangling down, swaying from side to side.

  The phone works, I say. Out here? Out here the goddamned phone works?

  Sure, Cora says. The ones the phone company can’t maintain, we keep up ourselves. We need them. We need to keep up a network of phones so we can assemble in an emergency or suchlike.

  Who pays the bills? I mean, how can you—

  Again Cora’s eyes suggest the depth of my stupidity.

  God pays the bills, she says. Go on, you’re keeping somebody waiting.

  Two things go through my head. First off, who the hell could be calling me here? Who’d know my whereabouts? Second, if I go to the phone, will Cora be here when I return? I am so afraid she won’t that I’m almost tempted to have Chuck tell the caller I’ll call back sometime. But Cora gestures me away. It’s a gesture I know I better obey.

  I almost don’t know how to use a pay-phone any more. I mean we have a phone at home, but it’s just an old black table model. Wall models threaten me. Pay-phones are demonic. Especially ones that work when they shouldn’t. I speak into the receiver, feeling that it is absurd to think that the thing will talk back to me.

  Yeah, who’s this? I say.

  Are you, let’s see a moment, are you Lee Kestner?

  Yeah, that’s me.

  A pleasure to hear your voice again, old buddy.

  Who is this?

  You know.

  Okay, I know. Sergeant Allen, right?

  You got it.

  How’d you know where I was?

  Not hard to figure. Where else’d they take you?

  I don’t know.

  Got your name off your wallet. You want your wallet back? I can arrange to return it to you. A little meeting…

  Keep the wallet.

  That wouldn’t be ethical.

  Maybe not, but I’m not about to have a rendezvous about it. Why’d you call me?

  Just to let you know I’m alive, case you were hoping otherwise.

  I wasn’t hoping other—

  Maybe not, bastard! His voice has deepened, seems to come out of the phone hissing. Anyway, just wanted to say hello.

  Look, I’m sorry for what I—

  A click on the line. He’s hung up.

  — 6 —

  Who was it? Cora asks when I return to the counter.

  Wrong number.

  Do you have to be—never mind, keep it to yourself. Your right, rule of the road. Privacy.

  Chuck says, you need anything you let me know, and walks away from the counter.

  Let’s go check out your wreck, Cora says.

  We go out to see if The Mech’s revived the Mustang. He’s taken it inside the garage half of the Savarin building. Crouched over the engine, he’s taking pieces out and throwing them over his shoulder. Parts lie scattered all around him on the concrete floor. When he sees us, he says:

  Not ready yet. Got a lot to do before I can make this baby even run a straight line without wobbling.

  Is it salvageable? I say. Cora grunts. The Mech taps a screwdriver against the palm of his hand and says:

  It’s salvageable all right. But never expect it to chase rabbits. With new parts and a tune-up and a speed booster, it might hit 85 or 90 but you can give up any hopes of it being a hundredplusser.

  So long as it runs on more than wishful thinking I’ll be satisfied.

  I can do a salvage job on any make o’ car, the Mech says. Make it run good. Up to a point.

  Do your best, I say. But, man, you got to know I’m wiped out financially.

  Did I request an appointment with your accountant?


  Well, I just wanted you to know. Cop took my wallet, I got zilch.

  The Mech nodded his head.

  Well, you get ambitious, come and see me. I usually know where a reasonable profit can be turned. For now get out, okay? I don’t like people looking down my coveralls while I work.

  Cora pulls at my arm and we leave the garage. As we walk slowly back to the restaurant building, car motors all over the lot are being revved.

  Allen took your wallet? Cora says.

  Yeah.

  Not like him. He’s no ripoff artist.

  Well, give him his due, he was unconscious when we left him and the wallet behind.

  You shoulda taken the wallet from him.

  Yeah. I should’ve. Oversight.

  Oversight’s your way of life, sounds like.

  * * * * *

  As night falls, cars leave the parking area, usually in groups of four or five.

  Any more crowds their piece of road, Cora says.

  Where do they go?

  Anywhere.

  I mean, why go out on the road at all?

  The dumb-shit look again.

  They got to, she says.

  The Savarin restaurant empties, becomes barnlike in its emptiness. I decide to test out the phone, try to call my Dad. The connection is made, I hear the click of answering at the other end, but no voice. He’s just taken it off the hook, is probably just staring at it blurrily. Or blearily. I hang up.

  Cora and I sit in a booth. She wants to get out on the road, you can see that in her fumbling hands, her overeager smiles, her vacant look. Many people invite her to ride with them, but she says no.

  I hate being just a rider, she says. I had my own car but I totalled it, smashed it against an abutment. I’ll get wheels again, soon’s I find a deal.

  Many accidents along this road?

  Not many. Sometimes a spinoff or a car that dies completely. Not many fatalities. We take care of our own when anything happens. If only the cops’d leave us alone completely.

  Pretty soon there’s hardly anybody left inside the Savarin, just us, a few others who look like they’re not so eager to go traveling, a tall skinny old man who starts cleaning things up. The old man smiles at Cora. It’s a very toothy smile. He either has all his natural teeth, or a sensational job of bridgework.