Chain Letter (5 page)

“It was a Saturday night,” Kipp began. “We thought the coach was gone for the evening,
you see, and we wanted to unhook his kitchen sink and put it in the attic so when
he called the cops he’d have to tell them that they took
nothing
but the kitchen sink!” Kipp laughed at the prospect and the rest of them laughed
with him.

“Give me another beer, Fran,” Brenda said.

“Have mine,” Joan said. “I’m full.”

They hit a bump and Tony’s head hit the ceiling. The road was uneven but straight
as an arrow and looked like it could stretch across the state. He decided to accelerate.

“At first he
was
out,” Kipp continued, burping. “We practically had the last bolt unscrewed and hadn’t
even scratched the blasted sink. Then we heard the garage door opening and we knew
we were in trouble. But we didn’t panic, we were cool. We raced upstairs and hid under
the bed in the master bedroom. We could have snuck out the back door—that’s how we
came in—but we knew we were on to hot stuff when we heard female squeals coming from
the garage.”

“Get off it,” Joan muttered.

“It’s true! It’s true! Now here comes the good part. When we were lying under the
bed, what do we hear but Coachy bringing the young lady upstairs. I tell you, my gut
almost split holding back the laughter. Especially when I remembered I had my phone.
When I pushed the record button, I knew I was capturing something for posterity.”

“What did they do?” Fran gasped.

The white strip disappeared from the center of the road. Tony was bothered at first
but then figured he now had the whole road to himself. It was nice not having to stop
for lights and pedestrians. All he had to watch out for were the tumbleweeds. A wind
must have kicked up outside; the big thorny brown balls kept bouncing across his path,
forcing him into
an occasional swerve. The dust was also a pain, the headlights straining through it
as they would have through filthy fog. But neither the weeds nor sand was a major
problem. Joan put a beer in his hand and he sipped it gratefully. They may not have
been heading in exactly the right direction but they were making excellent time.

“Everything,” Kipp said. “They did things I haven’t even done with Brenda.”

“Kipp!” Brenda said.

“Brenda!” Fran said.

“What a crock of B.S.” Joan said.

“Tony,” Kipp said, “have I or haven’t I spoken the sacred truth?”

“To the finest detail.” He yawned, checking his watch. It was two-fifteen and it felt
like it. He could have closed his eyes this second and gone to sleep. Maybe, he thought,
he should let Alison drive.

“Where’s your phone?” Joan asked.

“Huh?” Kipp said.

“If it’s true, I want to hear it.”

Kipp caught them all off guard. “All right,” he said, pulling his phone from his pocket.
“You’ll have the rare and exciting privilege.” After a quick search, he got the recording
started. “This is confidential information, you understand.”

There came a sound of sloppy footsteps, two pair, both anxious to get up the stairs,
overlaid with fuzzy male and female
voices. As the footsteps got louder, the voices grew clearer. To Tony’s inestimable
pleasure, the guy sounded like Coach Sager. The girl, also, seemed familiar.

“How old are you?” the coach was asking, his voice slurred as if he had been drinking,
the lousy no good tyrant. They hit another bump and Tony vaguely wondered if it had
been a rabbit.

“Eighteen,” the girl crooned.

“I thought you said you were a junior?”

“So I flunked.”

Wet kisses and lots of heavy breathing followed. Except for Fran’s heavy breathing,
the car was silent.

“Have you done this before?” Coach Sager muttered.

“Yeah, this afternoon.”

“With who?”

“Some jerk on your team.”

“All the boys on my team are jerks.”

The realization hit Tony with a wallop and he almost went off the road. It was Kipp!
He was a master at imitations. The others, except perhaps Brenda, didn’t know that.
Clothes rustled and stretched through the car’s speakers. Zippers slowly pulled down.
This was
soo bitchin’
!

“Let me do that.” The girl sighed. “Oh, that’s nice. Oh, I like that.”

“Ain’t I great?”

“I’ve heard you’re the best.” The girl groaned. “Ahhh.”

“You heard right, baby,” the coach whispered. “I love you, Joan.”

The pandemonium was instantaneous, louder than any of the chords pounded out during
the concert. The passionate couple continued their pleasure in relative private; who
could hear them? Naturally, Kipp was laughing the hardest, but Joan’s vehement denials—the
girl who had played her part could have been a twin sister—pierced through the uproar.

“I never!” Joan swore. “I hate that bastard! Kipp!”

“I love you, Joan!” Kipp shouted with glee, knocking Brenda off his lap onto the floor
where she sat giggling in a puddle of spilled beer. A tumbleweed somersaulted across
the road, and Tony swerved neatly to avoid it. The traction on the tires, he observed,
was superb.

“Wow, that’s neat, do it again, Tony!” Fran cackled, her personality having done a
one-eighty. “I knew it was you, Joan!”

“How was he?” Brenda yelled.

“Shut up!” Joan snapped. Kipp turned up the volume.

“We were meant to be lovers,” Coach Sager said.

“Destiny.” The girl moaned. “Ohhh.”

“Turn that off, dammit!” Joan shouted. Four tumbleweeds squaredanced in front of the
headlights, and Tony dodged them as he would obstacles on the arcade game, Pole Position.
Joan fought for the switch on the tape player.

“You should never wear clothes, Joany,” Coach Sager whispered loudly.

“Some jerk on your team!” Kipp jeered.

“Turn it off!” Joan swore, so furious she was unable to do it herself.

“Turn off the lights!” Fran cheered.

“Ahhh.”

“Stop this, Tony!” Joan yelled. “Stop it this second!”

“I can’t! I’m driving!” Tony yelled back, trying to stop laughing and failing miserably.

“You’re like me, Joan,” Coach Sager mumbled. “You’re the best.”

“Ahhh . . . ohhh . . . ”

“I said stop!!!”
Joan screamed. Then she did a very strange thing. She reached over across the steering
wheel and punched out the lights.

Had the circumstances been normal, Tony would have flicked the lights back on, found
his way to the freeway, taken everyone home and lived happily ever after. Unfortunately,
he had three strikes against him. First, at the instant Joan did what she did, he
was in the midst of avoiding still another scraggly tumbleweed and consequently was
not driving perfectly straight. Second, no matter how many touchdowns he had thrown
last fall, he was not such a tough dude that the forty plus ounces of beer in his
bloodstream had not dulled important centers in his brain. Finally, had there been
a speed limit in this godforsaken place, he would certainly have been in violation
of it. Nevertheless, despite these handicaps, the night
might have ended well if he’d had even a microsecond more time. His left hand had
actually closed on the light switch and was pulling it out when the front right tire
caught on the right edge of the road.

Tony did not know if he screamed, but if he didn’t he was alone. The sounds of terror
erupting from the throats of his friends signaled the beginning of the countdown of
the twilight seconds. Time went into a slow-motion warp. When the tearing of the rubber
against the asphalt started, he seemed to have all the time he needed to turn a bit
to the right to take the car slightly further off the road, where it would be free
of the sharp shoulder. But the edge must have had more drop than he realized, for
it prevented the front wheel from turning as it should have. He succeeded only in
trapping the back wheel. It was like riding a surfboard at midnight through a closing-out
twenty-foot wave. He had both hands fastened to the steering wheel and there was no
possibility of making another grab at the lights. At the first jolt, Alison’s flashlight
had smacked the dashboard and had gone out. Inside and outside, all was deathly black.

His friends began to scream his name. But so quickly, and so slowly, was everything
happening that they were only pronouncing the
T
and had not yet moved on to the rest when he developed an alternative strategy. It
was the exact opposite of the first one. He jerked the steering wheel to the left,
intending to jump the irritating right edge of the road. And it worked—too
well in fact. They tore off the shoulder and plunged right off the other side of the
road.

“Ahhh.”

That was pseudo-Joan in the arms of Coach Kipp, her sighs of ecstasy miraculously
making it through the howls of the others, at least for Tony’s ears. His mind went
right on assessing the situation and it was becoming more and more obvious it was
time for plan X. When the roller coaster had started, he had immediately removed his
foot from the gas, and the subsequent haggling with the shoulder of the road and the
current cremation of the shrubs under the front fender had killed a fair percentage
of their speed. A spinout now, so he figured, probably wouldn’t tip them over. He
slammed his foot on the brake.

The roar was deafening, made up of many ugly parts: burning rubber, shattering branches,
blasting sand, screams and more screams. Tony closed his eyes—they were of no use
anyway—and hung on for dear life.

Twice the car began to spin, but either because of his mastery of the steering wheel
or because of blind luck they did not go completely out of control. They were grinding
to a halt, heaving precariously in both directions, nevertheless looking as though
they would live to tell the tale, when they hit
it.

Soft
, Tony thought,
too soft.

The blow was nothing like impacting rock or tumbleweed or cactus. It felt bigger and
heavier and, at the same time, more
delicate. The shock wave it sent through the frame of the Maverick was one Tony would
never forget.

The car stopped and stalled.

I hate driving.

Fran and Brenda were whimpering like small scared children, the rest of them gasping
like big scared teenagers. The air stunk with sweat and the buzz had returned to Tony’s
head, only now it resembled more of a roar than a ring. He felt limp, the way he did
after games against teams with three-hundred-pound defensive linemen, when every muscle
in his body would cry not to be disturbed. The group’s collective sigh of relief hung
in suspension; it had been
too
close.

“Oh, Joan,” Coach Sager whispered, “you were born to be naked.”

Calmly and quietly, Joan turned off the recording.

Kipp began to laugh. It was such an outrageous thing to do that it was surprising
no one told him to shut up. But then it began to sound, as gaiety often does in the
worst of circumstances, strangely appropriate, and they joined in, laughing like maniacs
for several minutes, hysterics close to weeping, the tension pouring out of them in
loud gobs. When they were done and had caught their breaths and had thoroughly reassured
themselves that they were alive, Tony flipped on the headlights. They were only a
yard from the edge of the road, lined up parallel to the asphalt. Not too shabby for
a drunk,
he thought. He turned the key. The car started without a hitch.

“Anyone hurt?” he asked. No one spoke up. “Good.” He slipped into gear, creeping onto
the pavement. The frame was not bent, the wheels were turning free. All he wanted
to do was get a couple of miles away before the next person spoke, to where it would
make no sense to turn around and go back and look at . . .

What you might have hit.

“Don’t you want to check for damage?” Brenda asked, nestling back into her boyfriend’s
lap.

“No,” Kipp and Tony said simultaneously. They looked at each other, Joan sitting straight-faced
between them, and Kipp nodded and a thousand unspoken imperative words were in the
gesture, all of which could be summed up in a simple phrase:
Let’s get the hell out of here!

“I got to get home,” Joan said quickly. “My dad will be furious. He’ll take your head
off, Tony. Let’s go, let’s go now.”

“Right. Here we go.” Tony nodded, pressing down on the accelerator. Fifty yards. Don’t
turn around. One hundred yards. It was just a cactus. One hundred and fifty yards . . .

“Tony,” Neil said.

Tony hit the brake, threw the car in park and turned off the engine. His head fell
to the steering wheel. Neil was like his conscience: quiet and soft-spoken and impossible
to
ignore. Tony took a deep breath, clenched his fists and sat upright. “Give me the
flashlight.” Brenda slipped it into his hand. “All of you, stay here,” he ordered.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“No,” Kipp protested.

“Yes,” Tony told him, reaching for the door.

Outside was a full-fledged dust storm. His eyes stung and he quickly had a dirty taste
in his mouth. The flashlight flickered as he hurriedly retraced the deep grooves the
tires had eaten into the dirt. A branch flung out of the shadows and slapped him in
the face and he jumped twenty feet inside and the soles of his shoes didn’t leave
the ground. He was in a state a hairline beyond scared, where shock and dread stood
as equals. A part of his mind he did not want to listen to was trying to tell him
exactly what he would find.

Two hundred yards behind the car, he came to the man.

He lay on his back in a relatively casual position, no limbs bent at radical angles,
his tan sports coat flung apart, untorn but filthy with dust. He was not old, thirty
perhaps, nor was he tall, having Neil’s slight build. The eyes were wide open, drawn
up, focused on the mythical third eye, the gaze unnerving in the trembling light and
the haunting wind. It was the mouth, however, that dropped Tony to his knees. A ragged
trail of blood spilt out the corner of the slightly parted lips, and still, the guy
looked like he was grinning.