Ashes (3 page)

It hung like a rag doll, with too many universal joints in the arms and legs. It was light, too, as if all its gears and cogs had slipped out. He put her in the trunk, hearing the largest chunk of her skull ding off the wheel well. He walked up the road until he found the other sandal, then he tossed it in and closed the trunk.

He drove back to town without breaking fifty-five. It was raining by the time he hit the outskirts.

Mama must not have heard him come in. She was already gone when he woke up, down checking side stitches on boxer shorts for five-and-a-quarter plus production. He was glad he'd slept through her coffee and butter toast. That made another half-dozen hundred questions she'd never get around to bugging him with.

He winced when he saw Cammie in daylight. There was a dimple on top of the fender and the chrome striping was peeling away from the side panel, damage he hadn't noticed the night before. He drove down to the shop and pulled into the middle bay.

Floyd was smoking a cigarette and wiping his hands on a greasy orange rag. Floyd owned the shop, and liked to let everyone know it. He glowered at J.D. with oil-drop eyes.

"Yo, Jayce," he said. "What you doing here so early?"

"Got a ding on the shoulder. Need you to hammer it out."

"Had you a little bender, did you? Demolition derby with a mailbox?"

Floyd snickered and then started coughing. He pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and spat a wad of phlegm onto the greasy concrete floor.

"Just get me a rubber mallet, wouldja?"

"Sure, I'll help. Thanks for asking," Floyd said.

"You don't have to be a smart-ass."

"And you don't have to work here if you don't want to."

Floyd could be a real pain in the plug hole. But he was a body-work pro. He'd worked the pits for Bobby Allison about twenty years back. When he got down to business, he was an artist, and steel and fiberglass and primer were his media.

And J.D. could tell Floyd loved Cammie almost as much as he did. They pounded out the dents and replaced the headlight frame and put on the primer coat before they started taking care of the customers’ cars. Then at lunch, Floyd feathered out a coat of red so that it blended with the color of the rest of the car's body.

J.D. was up to his elbows in an automatic transmission when he saw Floyd put down his airbrush and step back to admire his work.

"That's gooder than snuff," he proclaimed. J.D. nodded in appreciation. The quarter panel didn't have so much as a shadow in it.

"Preesh, Floyd. Nobody can fix them like you do," J.D. said.

"Nope. Throw me your keys, Jayce. I need to change my plugs, and I left my good ratchet in your trunk yesterday."

"Hey, buddy. After all you've done for me? You got to be kidding. Let me do it."

Floyd frowned around the black fingerprints on his cigarette butt. Floyd didn't like other people tinkering under the hood of his '57 Chevy. But J.D. moved quickly, before Floyd could say no.

J.D. popped the trunk and there she was, Miss American Pie. Mincemeat pie. The blood had clotted and dried and she was starting to smell a little. Her left arm was draped over the toolbox. As he moved it away, he noticed that it had stiffened a little from rigor mortis.

He clattered around in the toolbox and found the ratchet. He was about to slam the lid when he saw that her eyes were open. Damned things weren't open last night, he was positive. Her eyes didn't sparkle at all. They were staring at him.

"What's the matter, J.D.?"

J.D. gulped and slammed the trunk. "Nothing," he said, holding up the ratchet. "Found it."

"Make sure you gap the damned things right. Don't want you screwing up my gas mileage."

"You got it, Floyd."

J.D. drove out to the trailer park after work to pick up Melanie, his Thursday girl. He thought he heard a noise in the rear end as he pulled into the gravel driveway. Transfer case was groaning a little. He'd have to check it out later. He honked his horn and the trailer door opened.

Melanie slid in the passenger side and J.D. watched her rear settle into the bucket seat. She smiled at him. She was a big-boned redhead with lots of freckles, but her aqua eye shadow was so thick it quivered when she blinked.

"What you want to do, J.D.?"

He looked out the window. In the next yard, two brats were playing with a broken Easy-Bake oven. "Ride around, I reckon."

"Ride around? That's all you ever want to do."

"What else is there to do? Would you rather sit around the trailer park with your thumb up your ass?"

Melanie pouted. She was a first-class pouter. J.D. had told her that her lip drooped so low you could drive up on it and swap out your oil filter.

"Okay," she said after a moment. "Let's go circle the burger joint."

That wasn't a bad idea. Everybody hung out at the burger joint, the muscleheads and the dope peddlers and the zombie teens. And that meant everybody would see that the Camaro was unscratched. J.D. didn't have a damn thing to hide.

Later, after they'd split two burgers and a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, J.D. had driven out to their favorite dirt back road. The sun was just going down by the time he'd sweet-talked Melanie into the back seat. He was wrestling with her double-hook D-cup when she suddenly tensed underneath him.

"Joo hear that?" she whispered. J.D. heard only crickets and the slight squeaking of leaf springs.

"Hear what?"

"A scratching, like. On metal."

J.D. looked up. He always parked away from the trees out on these country roads. Damned branches would claw the hell out of a custom paint job. He saw nothing but the gangly shadows of the far underbrush.

"I don't hear nothing, babe. Now, where were we?"

"There it went again. Sounds like it's coming from the trunk."

"Bullshit."

"Sounds like a squirrel running around in there."

J.D. strained his ears. He heard the faint rattle of tools. Then, fingernails on metal.

He sat up suddenly.

"What the hell, J.D.?"

"Nothing. Better get you back to town, is all."

Melanie whimpered. She was as good at whimpering as she was at pouting.

"But J.D., I thought—"

"Not tonight, I got . . . work to do."

She whined all the way back into town, but J.D. didn't hear her. All he could hear were the low moans coming from the trunk and the sound of fists banging like rubber mallets off the trunk lid.

After J.D. dropped off Melanie, he pulled out behind Floyd's garage and looked around the auto graveyard. Here was where
Detroit
's mistakes came to die.
Pontiacs
draped over Plymouths while Chryslers sagged on cinder blocks. A school bus slept in its bed of briars. A couple of Studebakers decayed beside the high wooden fence, and a dozen junk jeeps were lined in rows like dead soldiers awaiting body bags. The few unbroken headlights were like watching eyes, but they would be the only witnesses.

Back here, Miss American Mincemeat Pie could rust in peace.

He stepped out among the bones of cars, gang-raped engines, and jagged chassis. The moon was glaring down, all of last night's clouds now long-hauled to the east. J.D. gripped the trunk key between his sweaty fingers.

"Open it, J.D.," said the voice. It was a young, hollow voice, with the kind of drawn-out accent a country girl might have. The long syllables reverberated inside the tin can of the trunk space.

J.D. looked around the junkyard.

"Stick it in, muscleboy," the voice taunted. "You know you want to."

He unlatched the trunk and it opened with a rush of foul air.

She sat up and arched her back.

"Cramped in here," she said. The moon shone fully on her, like a spotlight. The raw flesh of her face was tinged green, and her eyes were ringed with black. She reached up to smooth her hair and her arm hung like a broken clutch-spring.

"You . . . y-you're dead." But that was dumb. He knew machines didn't die, they only got rebuilt.

"Now, do I look dead?"

J.D. didn't know what to say. It wasn't the kind of thing he could look up in the troubleshooting section of his owner's manual.

"Still got a few miles left on me," she said, tugging at the strap of her dress that had slipped too low over her mottled chest. Her eyes were wide but as dull as Volkswagen hubcaps. "Besides, all I need is a little body work and I'll be good as new."

"What's the big idea, screwing up my date like that?" J.D. angled his head so he could look at her out of the corners of his eyes.

"Your cheating days are over, rough rider. You've only got room in your heart for one girl now."

"Whatchoo talking about? And why did you dump over my toolbox?" J.D. couldn’t be sure, but it looked like radiator fluid was leaking from her eyes.

"A lady's always in search of that one good tool. What say we get it on?"

"No. I'm going to stuff you behind the seat of that Suburban over there, and you're going to stay until you're both a collector's item."

"J.D., is that any way to treat a lady?"

"Well, you ought to be glad I think enough of you to leave you in a Chevy. There's plenty of Datsuns out here."

She shook her head, and tattered meat swung below her face. "I don't think so, muscleboy."

Her finger flexed like a carb linkage as she beckoned him closer.

J.D. couldn't help himself. He was as captivated as he'd been by his first
Hot Rod
magazine. She smelled of gasoline and grave dirt, hot grease and raw sex. She'd oozed out all over the spare tire. He'd never get his trunk clean.