Up in Smoke (10 page)

Tony planted a foot on the sidewalk, gave a hefty push and rode the narrow scooter until it started to slow, then gave another push. At the intersection, he bounced off the curb and zipped into the street.

Brakes squealed. “Hey, kid, you wanna' live to grow up!”

Max had them going straight through downtown, store windows all full of Halloween stuff. Once they got past all the stores and stuff, there was hardly any traffic. Max spun tight turns, deliberately slid on wet leaves in the gutters, and zigged and zagged back and forth across the street. Tony just kept slogging, wondering if it was worth it. They kept going, they crossed the bridge and kept going, hung a left on Garden Street and kept going, all the way out to the county road. What a mushbrain Max was. The road was pocked with potholes and every one filled with rain water.

Noggin's Hill was halfway to nowhere. Nobody ever said why it was called Noggin's Hill. Tony thought he ought to ask his uncle Osey. Osey knew lots of weird things like that.

“See?” Max said. “Isn't this great?”

“Yeah. Great.” Tony rode up beside Max and looked down. He never realized how really high Noggin's Hill was.

Max farted around trying to find the exact middle of the road, eyeing the downhill slope and scooting his Razor an inch this way, an inch that way.

“You gonna ride or spend the rest of your life measurin'?”

Max took off, yelling, “Geronimo!” The Razor flew, straight as an arrow downhill, through the hollow at the bottom and started up the other side.

Max pulled his scooter off the road and shot his fist in the air. “Yeah! The Champ and Best There Is!” Shielding his eyes with one hand, he looked up at Tony. “Beat that!”

Tony wheeled his Razor to the middle of the road and looked down the hill. Uh-huh. He realized what Max had been doing before. Stalling. Tony followed his example, moved a little to the right, a little to the left.

“Come on!” Max yelled. “We don't have all day.”

Tony shoved off, put both feet on the four-inch wide scooter deck and sailed down the road. Yes! He'd get higher up the other side. Doing great! Oh no! Rock! He tried to swerve. The scooter took a right turn leap off the road, juddered over mud, rocks, and rotten green stuff. Momentum shot him over a rise and sent him crashing down the other side. He smashed into a blue Mustang, fell off and the Razor kept right on going and then toppled over in dead leaves.

“Tony!”

Max came skidding down the slope sideways on wet leaves and muddy gunk. “Wow, man! You all right?”

Tony retrieved his scooter and examined it for damage.

“Trying to kill yourself?” Max stepped back and looked at the car. He walked his Razor around it. “Hey, how come this car's sitting here like this?”

Tony swiped a sleeve across his nose and rubbed his elbow. “I think I broke my arm.”

“Can you bend it?”

Tony tried. “Yeah, but it hurts.”

“If you can bend it, it's fine. Don't be such a baby. Boy, look what you did to this car.” Max rubbed a scratch on the shiny blue paint.

“You retard. That was already there.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe you better get out of here before the owner comes back and wrings your neck.” Max looked around. “Where is the owner anyway?”

Good question. There weren't any houses around the guy could be at. Nothing here but weeds and a few trees. “Probably taking a leak.”

Cupping his hands around his eyes, Max peered in the driver's side window. “Tony? The keys are in it.” He tried the handle and the door opened.

“You think somebody dumped it?”

“No.”

“Why not? It's old.”

“Not that old and look at it. It's not banged up and the paint's shiny.”

“So where's the owner?

“How should I know? Around here somewhere.”

“Hey!” Max yelled. “Somebody's stealin' your car!”

A flock of little bitty birds flew away from the trees in a cloud of flutter.

“If anybody was here, he'd come a runnin'.” Max folded his scooter, tossed it in the back of the car and hopped into the driver's seat.

“Max! What're you doin'?”

The motor started with a roar.

“Max—”

“Get in! Hurry up!”

“You crazy?”

“Get in! Get in!”

Quickly, Tony popped his Razor in the back with Max's and climbed in the passenger seat. “It's stealing. You don't even know how to drive.”

“I've been doing it for years.” Max tromped the accelerator. The motor screamed.

“If you know so much, how come you didn't put the gear in drive?” Tony reached between the seats and took care of it.

The car shot backward. Max managed to hit the brakes before the car whipped across the road and down the ditch on the other side.

“Slower, stupid!”

Max crimped the wheel, put his foot on the accelerator and the car leaped ahead. Tony yelled. Max hit the brake. After a few more leaps and stops, Max got better. They drove farther down the county road, past corn stocks and pastureland with cattle grazing.

“Where you goin'?” Tony braced both hands on the dash to keep from being thrown through the windshield. He shouldn't have gotten in the damn car. He should have just let Max go off by himself. But you never knew what the peckerwood might do. Tony needed to make sure Max didn't kill himself.

“You crazy?” Tony repeated.

“It was dumped,” Max said. “That means whoever left it doesn't want it, that means no reason we shouldn't go for a ride.”

“That means stealing, dumb nuts.”

“Goody boy!”

“Don't you think it's kind of a nice car to just be dumped?”

“Then what was it doing there?”

“How should I know? It was just parked that's all. The owner's probably calling the cops right now.”

At the next crossroad, Max got the car turned around and headed toward town. Drifting back and forth across the road like he did, he was gonna get them smoked for sure.

“We can outrun the cops,” Max said. “This is great!”

“It's dangerous. You don't know the first thing about driving.” Tony opened the glove box and pulled out a bunch of papers. He flipped through them, insurance card, clippings about a fire where a bunch of people died, and finally the car registration.

“Think you could do better?”

“Anybody could do better, you dickhead. This car belongs to Vincent Egelhoff.”

Max looked at him. “So? You know him?”

“Look out! You're gonna hit that tree.” Tony grabbed the wheel and they swerved back onto the road. “That's it. Stop the car. I'm getting out.”

“Wimp. Wuss. You're nothin' but a baby. Baby Tony. Baby Tony.”

“We stole some guy's car. He's stranded out there somewhere. Turn around and go back.”

Like the doofus he was, Max drove right on into town where everybody could see him. Just like it wasn't going to occur to them that Max was twelve and didn't have a license.

He pulled a left on Lyons Street and squealed into Elkhorn Park. Too fast for Tony to sort it out, they spun a half-circle, slid, bounced off the boulder and plowed nose first into the raised concrete base of Horace Greeley. The Mustang's hood rippled like an accordion. The trunk lid popped up. The passenger door flew open. Tony tumbled out, landed on his shoulder, banged his head. He couldn't breathe.

The motor died. Antifreeze started dripping.

Max came running. “You all right?” He knelt and helped Tony sit up. “Say something! You dead or what!”

“What'd you go and do that for?”

“Gimme that stuff.” Max grabbed the papers Tony still clutched in his hand and stuffed them back in the glove box.

Tony stood up and rolled his shoulder. It hurt. He felt kinda funny. Dizzy and sorta sick. His head hurt.

“Wow.” Max stood peering into the trunk. “Oh man.”

“Now what are you doing?”

“There's blood all over. Doesn't smell too good either.”

Tony went to check what stupid stunt Max was pulling now.

A woman lay in the trunk. All curved and bent and kinda' crumpled-looking. Bloody hair fanned out over most of her face. The skin was an icky gray color and the back of her head looked kinda squished.

“Hey!” Max shouted.

Tony jumped a mile, then turned and punched Max's shoulder. “What're you doing?”

“Tryin' to wake her up.” Max's voice dropped to a whisper. “You think she's dead?”

“No.”

“Oh yeah? If you're so sure, whyn't you touch her? Go ahead. I dare you.”

Making sure his hand was steady so Max wouldn't know how weirded out he was, Tony reached in and touched her shoulder. Hard, not like a person at all, more like cold inflexible rubber.

Max backed away.

“Where you going?”

“Anywhere, man.”

“We have to tell the cops,” Tony said.

“You do it. I'm gone.”

“Max!” Tony ran after him and grabbed his arm. “We have to get help.”

After that it started to get kinda confusing. There was a lot of commotion with people running over to see what happened and pretty soon the cops were there. And not too long after that they were at the cop house and Uncle Osey had his butt on the front edge of his desk and he wasn't looking too friendly.

“Give it to me,” Osey said in a cop voice.

“Promise you won't get mad.”

“Tony—”

Osey had all the patience in the world, but Tony could see even he was getting a little tight. Tony told it all, except the part where he tried to stop Max taking the car. That made him sound like making up excuses.

Osey looked madlike at him the whole time and that made Tony nervous and he kept forgetting stuff and having to go back and put it in and Max kept interrupting to add his two cents and the whole thing just sounded really snarky and by then even Max knew they were in a whole lot of trouble and kept saying actually it was a good thing they'd done it 'cause what would've happened if they hadn't, she might have been totally rotted out before anybody knew and by the time Tony was finally finished with everything a whole lot of time had gone by and he wondered how an ordinary Sunday could turn into such a mess.

15

The discreet tap on the door was a member of the Sunflower Hotel staff returning Sean's clean laundry, neatly plastic-wrapped.
In at 10
P.M.
, out at 10
A.M.
,
and bless all hotels who provided such a needed service. Some places he'd stayed didn't offer much more than beds and those had dirty sheets. He dumped the package on a chair, found the remote and zapped on the television. As he transferred socks and underwear to a drawer and hung up shirts, he watched a reporter stick a microphone in the face of Congresswoman Stendor as she came from one of the House office buildings.

“Tell us what you think of the growing number of presidential candidates?”

“It reaffirms my faith in the American people. That in these most difficult times, there are so many willing to put themselves in the fray and serve.”

“Anyone who stands out as a sure winner?”

“Everyone who runs for president has the soul of a winner.” She walked swiftly to the car and slid in.

“What about Governor Garrett?” the reporter asked before she could close the door. “You were classmates at Harvard. Does that mean his soul is more likely to win than the others?”

“It means friends don't have to be in the same political party.” She closed the car door with a firm slam and her driver put his foot on the accelerator.

Sean folded the plastic his laundry had come in, dropped it in the wastebasket and carried the pile of Sunday newspapers to the easy chair by the window.
Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, L.A. Times,
and the
Hampstead Herald.
Outside, the sun shone on the soaked and bedraggled hotel grounds. To keep on top of what was happening in the world, he perused the national news—mostly the same in each one—then went to the political news. All the possibles maneuvering for presidential nomination managed to get their names mentioned somehow.

Most didn't have a whisper of a chance. Some were a joke, some weren't seriously running, just wanted to get their names out there in the country's consciousness for future use—always another election coming up—some wanted to keep their names uppermost in the minds of their constituents, and some were nobodies with a single issue that most of the country had little interest in.

The smart money was going with the incumbent for the Republicans, historically always a good bet. All they had to do was keep patting him on the back and stating he was for God and country. With the Democrats it was all up in the air. Senator Roswell from Missouri, Senator Halderbreck from Massachusetts, Representative Barnes from Rhode Island, and Governor Garrett from Kansas, all with pluses and minuses on their records. Originally Halderbreck looked strong, but then Garrett started turning up in the polls.

The
Hampstead Herald
was thick with articles on Garrett, many with pictures, one twenty years old of Garrett all suited up and parachuting in to fight a raging forest fire. Should be good for a vote or two. Sean was a little surprised to see the photo and wondered where it came from. Garrett shied away from using his smoke jumping days in his campaign. Why? Something strange here. He was considered a hero for what happened in the disastrous forest fire that killed—what was it, five, six people?

Sean folded the paper, dropped it on the end of the bed and grabbed his jacket. One thing about small towns, you could walk just about anywhere. He shrugged on the jacket and set off for the
Hampstead Herald.
Even though the sun was still shining, the end of daylight saving time in the wee hours of the morning had shadows waiting in the wings and the wind was fierce. He turned up the collar of his jacket and upped his pace.