Читать книгу All the Beautiful Sinners - Stephen Graham Jones - Страница 11

He was throwing up in the ditch now. Amos. The half-digested pills rolling in the dust like punctured ticks, spilling his blood. He was screaming too, a thin line of snot connecting him to the ground, trying to pull him in, under. He raised his head, held his hands over his eyes, but the yellow jacket was there, burned into the backside of his lids. The man in it was holding a long metal pole.

He set a fire in the ditch with the lighter from his dashboard, and he drove. Maybe the fire would slow the fireman down. Maybe all of Kansas would burn. He poured his Nyquil out the vent window and it clung to the side glass for as long as it could, beading thick against the felt weather-stripping and finally clumping over, into the void behind him. Texas. Oklahoma. Kansas.

What was the metal pole for? He’d never had a metal pole before.

He had to find a drugstore. This far gone, even straight morphine would do. He would shoot it into his tearduct if he had to, then let the numbness spread out from there. It would be the opposite of crying.

He drove, and drove, and then on one of the turns on 156 the front passenger side tire went for the second time in two states and that was almost it, he was almost over, but then the road on the passenger side of the car banked up for him suddenly, so the car could lean against it instead of shooting off into the ditch, the telephone poles, the fences. Something always saved him.

But the spare. He couldn’t get it—the children were lying on it. It would interrupt them to open the trunk. To see him frantic like this. It would scare them.

So he drove on the rim again, one side of the car hooked over onto the grass shoulder, where it was softer. Where the rim would last, maybe. He had to hang onto the left side of the steering wheel with both hands, to keep the car straight. It was foolish. He started laughing and turned the stereo up, the mechanized hum of another world.

A mile marker folded under the car, scraped the oil pan, tore out the belly of the muffler.

It didn’t matter.

The handcuffs. He had to get the handcuffs off first. He could do it with a paper clip, he knew, but to get it into the lock he’d have to hold it in his teeth, and the sound of metal on enamel, it would bleed out his ear, and the blood would collect in the dead space over his collarbone and congeal there, and then everyone would know who he was, what he’d done.

The dry heads of the grass were silk rubbing against the rough Chevrolet frame.

He thought about leaving the car in low then running ahead, holding the chain of the handcuffs in the path of the rim he was pushing. The rim’s edge was sharp and raw and hot by now. He’d have to tie the steering wheel over with a rag. And set the accelerator somehow. And then pull his arm out before the rim rolled to his shoulder. And then catch the car.

He drove.

Fifteen miles per hour, bits of hot rubber slinging themselves up onto the hood in defeat, or surrender. Once a big truck honked at him the whole time it was passing. He stared after it, trying to memorize the mural that had been on the side. For future reference. For standing next to that particular driver at a long row of urinals, the wall before them not yet splattered with blood and grey matter, the more particular shades of regret.

The next town was two miles away. Kalvesta. It was on the way to Lydia. Lydia was where he was going. He’d forgotten for a while—driving north and east, fast, away from Texas, any way—but now he remembered again: Lydia.

Then, like the tire wasn’t bad enough, pushing it through the tall grass and soft earth spun the water pump out, the bearing in there reeling silver angel hair out against the race.

He could hear it, feel all the heat building up in the engine.

Two miles.

The Impala limped into town on three tires, favoring the tender steel rim. He nosed it into a service station, pulled the hood open from under the dash. Steam billowed up into the sky. He still had the handcuffs on.

Before anything else—the station attendant approaching, shielding himself from the steam with a small, red rag—he had to protect the children. He did. He turned into a white person so as not to attract attention—White—all his hair telescoping into his scalp, pressing on his brain so that he had to set his teeth against it, hard, then broke the round key off in the trunk lock, using both hands because of the six-inch chain between his wrists. He had his shirt hanging from the chain, wrapped in his hands. Like he’d used it to twist the radiator cap off a few minutes ago.

He followed the side of the car around to the open hood. The station attendant was trying to see through the steam. He looked up, the brim of his dingy brown hat framing his eyes. They were blue. The stitching on his shirt read TAYLOR.

“I’d say she’s one hot bitch, yep,” Taylor said, pushing his hat back on his head to see under the hood better.

“You don’t know me,” Amos croaked, shaking his head no, please. “I’m White.”

And now Taylor was studying him, it felt like.

There was only one thing to do.

Amos reached under the hood and placed his bare palm against the radiator cap. The skin sizzled, curling back from the heat, and he fell to his knees, mouth open in a scream, just no sound.

“Holy—” Taylor said, didn’t get to finish because the water was pressuring out from under the cap. It was like a sprinkler head now. In hell.

Amos backed off, holding his hand—his hands, chained together—close to his stomach, staring his eyes wide.

Taylor dove for the water hose, pointing Amos inside, to the garage. Something about a first-aid kit on the wall.

Amos turned, stumbled into the cool, dank air of the garage, and stood among the tools. His hand didn’t hurt anymore, never had. Not really, not him. He became Indian again and slowly removed the Def Leppard shirt from the chain of the handcuffs and straightened it on the hood of a Cutlass. It was his favorite shirt, the one concert he’d ever been to.

The chain he set on a vise. The vise was welded to a three-inch pipe, the pipe set in concrete poured into an old seventeen-inch Ford wheel. There were probably bolt cutters here somewhere, a torch even, but the vise would work. He took a slag hammer by the very end of the handle, to make the most of the six inches of motion he had, then fixed the chain in the vise and tried to hit it with the hammer, missed, came down on the table instead, throwing sparks.

Right next to the vise was a bench grinder, with a foot pedal. Amos smiled. He wasn’t White. He held the leading edge of the slag hammer under the grinder until it was shiny sharp, a flat point, then worked it between one of the links of the chain, started twisting, passing the handle of the hammer from one hand to the other. After three revolutions, the chain snapped; his hands fell free. And then he looked at the hammer, past it to Taylor, the Impala.

Kalvesta. This was Kalvesta.

Maybe they wouldn’t mind if he stayed here an hour or two.