Speak Ill of the Living

by Mark Arsenault

  For once, let it start the first try.

  The Mighty Chevette coughed to life. The van came at him again, slowly this time. Eddie flicked on his lights, saw an arm sticking out of the van’s window, a gun in the hand.

  He popped the clutch and the Mighty Chevette jerked forward.

  The gun flashed and banged.

  The Chevette’s windshield crackled in a spiderweb pattern, just below the rear view mirror.

  “Jesus!”

  Eddie drove straight at the van’s headlights, then veered hard left at the last second and passed the van on its passenger side. He slammed the gearshift into third and floored the accelerator, aiming across the parking lot, for the street.

  With no driver’s side door, the pavement raced by close enough to touch. In one quick motion, Eddie reached his right hand over, dragged the seat belt across his body and clicked it into place.

  Headlights filled his mirrors. The van was giving chase.

  The Mighty Chevette zoomed onto the street, its engine high and whiny. Who was doing this to him? How did they find him? They must have followed him from Pawtucketville, and waited all afternoon in that parking lot for Eddie to get back from the Empire.

  The wind whipped inside the Chevette. The speedometer reached fifty. Eddie watched the van in the mirror. One silhouette behind the wheel. The van was gaining. The arm snaked outside the window again.

  Bang.

  The back windshield cracked around a tiny hole. The bullet thumped behind the passenger’s seat.

  Get small.

  Eddie hunched low against the wheel, close enough to bite it.

  The road merged ahead with a busy urban thoroughfare. The Chevette weaved into traffic. Horns blared. A sedan with four people swerved out of his way into the breakdown lane.

  Traffic was slowing for a yellow light. Eddie twisted the wheel left. The Chevette’s tires squealed over the median line, through the intersection toward oncoming traffic. Those drivers slammed their brakes and darted left and right, looking for a safe spot out of the way of the madman in the little yellow Chevette. Eddie threaded through the jumble at forty miles per hour, then yanked the wheel hard again and got back in the right lane.

  In his rear view mirror, the van was trying a copycat move, but it was bigger, couldn’t go as fast through the maze of cars, and Eddie pulled ahead. He glimpsed his own face in the mirror—jaw clenched, eyes bugging out, hair matted with sweat.

  Typical rush hour commuter.

  The steering wheel felt slick. He gripped it with all his strength; veins on the back of his hands bubbled against the skin.

  To the left was a public park, dark at this hour. Beyond it, twinkling between the trees, were the lights of a shopping district. A blue flash caught his eye—a police car, across the park, probably responding to the chase through downtown Lowell.

  The van was growing in the rear view mirror.

  The shortest distance between two points…

  Eddie wrenched the wheel left, thumped up the curb. The car answered with a pathetic rattle. Two hubcaps shot off like UFOs. Eddie raced the Chevette over the grass into the darkened park. The ground was soft, the wheel unsteady in his hands.

  Please, don’t get stuck out here in the mud.

  The headlights in the rear mirror bounced up and down, as the van pounded over the curb. Eddie watched it. Still gaining. But the far edge of the park was coming up. He turned toward the store lights, racing up a little knoll.

  Suddenly, ahead of him appeared two teenagers holding hands.

  Oh fuck!

  Shocked by the car, the teens stood paralyzed in Eddie’s path, horror on their faces.

  Eddie pulled hard right. The Mighty Chevette plowed into a giant puddle. Muddy water splashed over the windshield. The car slowed to nearly a stop. Water poured in the open door. Eddie slammed into first gear and gunned the engine. The car wailed in pain, tires spinning. For a moment, Eddie considered abandoning the machine and running for his life, but the Chevette seemed to sense the urgency and it struggled to dry land. A sickening sweet friction smell filled the car.

  The van was nearly on him.

  Bang.

  The slug clanged near a rear wheel.

  Eddie had no choice—there wasn’t time to turn around—he sped away from the van, away from the storefront lights and the police, toward an industrial area of windowless warehouses. The Chevette rocked over the curb, back onto the street, and Eddie pounded the pedal to the floor.

  The van barreled from the park a moment later and roared after him.

  Will this guy ever give up?

  The streets of the industrial park were wide to accommodate the tractor-trailers that serviced the warehouses there. Eddie aimed the Chevette down the center of the road. White aluminum buildings flew by on both sides. The street was lit in eerie yellow from curbside utility poles.

  Eddie had the pedal buried, but with a newer, bigger engine, the van overmatched the Chevette and grew huge in Eddie’s mirror.

  Eddie had driven through this warehouse district a few times on assignment for The Daily Empire. He tried to picture it like a map. Where were the turn-offs? Which exit roads led back downtown?

  The gun barked.

  A tire exploded.

  The Chevette bucked as if possessed by a demon. Eddie fought the wheel—no use, the car skidded toward a light pole. Two wheels bumped over the curb. Eddie heard a thunderous wham as the car ricocheted off the pole. The world outside the windshield flipped violently on its side. Over the scrape of hot metal, Eddie heard his own scream. The car slid across the tar. With no driver’s-side door, Eddie’s face was inches from bare pavement and a blast of white-hot sparks. He closed his eyes and wrenched against the seat belt.

  Then, in an instant, the car stopped and everything was quiet, except the feeble squeak of a single spinning wheel.

  Dazed, bruised by the seat belt across his chest, but not seriously hurt, Eddie tried to reconnect with reality.

  The car had rolled onto its left side, in the middle of the street.

  Eddie was still buckled in. The Chevette’s engine had died. The van had swerved around him. Eddie saw its brake lights, some sixty yards down the street.

  He’s coming back to finish me.

  Eddie slammed his fist on the seat belt release. It let go and he dropped to the pavement. It was hard and cold. The passenger’s door was facing straight up. He struggled to his feet, put his shoulder into the door, pulled the handle and shoved, trying to open it like the hatch of a submarine. The door wouldn’t budge. He tried to roll down the window; the handle snapped off in his hand.

  Eddie smelled gasoline.

  There was a twelve-inch dandelion puller at his feet, a tool he had left in the car months before. Eddie snatched it up and smacked it backhand against the windshield. In the tiny confines of the Chevette, he couldn’t get leverage and the weapon glanced meekly off the safety glass.

  I’m trapped in here.

  The van’s headlights swung back toward the Chevette.

  A rivulet of gasoline flowed down the street, away from the Mighty Chevette. Eddie’s car was hemorrhaging fuel.

  The van pulled up in front of the Chevette and stopped.

  Eddie felt as if he could choke on the ball of nerves in his throat.

  The driver of the van wore a black ski mask. He got up from his seat and disappeared into the back of the van. A moment later he reappeared with what looked like a stick of dynamite—a road flare. He unscrewed one end of it, held both halves out the window and struck the two parts together, like lighting a giant match. It erupted into blinding red light.

  This is the end.

  Eddie waited for the man in the mask to meet eyes with him at least once before he dropped the flare, but he didn’t. The son-of-a-bitch just dropped the fire into the river of gas, and then peeled away in the van without a glance.

  Flames rose from the street. They spr
ead in seconds around the little Chevette. Eddie had the point-of-view of the woodpile at the start of a bonfire. Smoke drifted into the car. Eddie felt the heat and the hopelessness.

  He wasn’t scared in a traditional way. He was furious with terror. Of all the thousands of miles he had safely driven in his Mighty Chevette, the little yellow car he had bought used for eight hundred bucks was about to become his coffin. He was supremely frustrated that a man who wears a ski mask in August was cheating Eddie Bourque out of his life, and of all that he would have become. Eddie didn’t even know why the man had murdered him.

  He slammed the lawn tool on the pavement in frustration.

  It clanked, metal on metal.

  Eddie sunk to his knees, coughing in the smoke, and studied the ground. Sweat dripped from his nose and his chin like raindrops. The Chevette had skidded to rest above a manhole. The steel cover was about thirty inches wide and marked:

  City of Lowell—ELECTRIC.

  The electric service on this street was underground.

  Hopelessness fled instantly. He dug the dandelion tool in a notch between the cover and the rim of the manhole, and pried. The cover lifted an inch. Eddie grunted and growled and wormed the tool in deeper. Musty air poured out.

  At least it’s not a sewer hole.

  The fire filled the field of view outside the windshield.

  Eddie gagged, choking on smoke. His eyes stung and filled with tears. Working furiously, muttering curses, he wormed his fingers under the steel cover and lifted. It must have weighed more than a hundred pounds, but Eddie’s muscles were supercharged by adrenaline, and the hole yawned open. He could see the first step of a ladder on the side of the hole.

  Eddie wasted no time backing down the passage. Standing on the fourth rung, he tried to lower the cover slowly, but unbearable heat stung his face. He yelped and ducked deeper into the hole.

  The cover slammed above him and everything was dark and cool.

  He heard a whoosh as the car flashed over in flame.

  Chapter 8

  Eddie sat on the bumper of a red fire-pumper truck and sipped bottled water. The scene smelled of diesel exhaust from the six idling emergency trucks, and charred vinyl and seat foam, scorched paint and wiring, and burnt rubber from the Chevette, no longer Mighty.

  Detective Orr was red-faced, as hot as the car.

  “Tell me again, Eddie,” she demanded, “why you drove through a public park, nearly running over two Lowell High kids on their first date?”

  “I missed them by ten feet.”

  “That was an hour ago. What have you been doing all this time?”

  Eddie went through the story again, slowly this time, with all the details. “And then when I got down into the manhole, I tried to call the police station, but my cell phone couldn’t get a signal underground.”

  She looked skeptical.

  “It was the first chance I had to call,” Eddie insisted. “It’s hard to dial and drive for your life at the same time.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So then I had to feel my way through a conduit pipe on hands and knees for, oh, maybe two hundred feet, until I found another manhole and was able to climb up. It’s slow down there, believe me—if you’re not bumping your head into junction boxes, you’re worried about getting electrocuted any second.”

  She looked to her notebook. “This van—did you get the license number?”

  “No Lucy—I mean, detective, uh…” Eddie thought back and pictured the van. “The front plate had no light, now that I think about it, and I never saw the back of the van clearly. But I’m pretty sure it was cream colored, maybe a Ford. Hmm, I guess I’m not sure of that.” Eddie was embarrassed; as a journalist he was supposed to be a professional observer.

  The fire department had arrived by the time Eddie had gotten out of the manhole. They had quickly doused the visible fire in the car. Several firefighters had torn out what was left of the seats, to drown the tricky fire that could smolder in the flammable foam cushioning. Police investigators were taking photographs and measurements. Two officers bagged the spent road flare.

  Eddie sighed. The Mighty Chevette was his only transportation. It had been an old junker, but Eddie had respected how the car carried on long past retirement age. He felt as if an old friend had died. He tried not to think about his own close call, but the smoldering car and the smoke stench in his clothing kept reminding him. Eddie’s legs went rubbery every time he thought about his escape, and he felt a tingle of nervous electricity in his gut.

  A young firefighter, barely eighteen, brought Eddie the Chevette’s steering wheel. “We saved this,” he said. “Thought you might like to have it.”

  The firefighter had a tiny hint of smile on his face, and Eddie wasn’t sure if he was being ironic. No matter—Eddie wanted the memento. “Thanks. I’ll take it.”

  Detective Orr had a few more questions, about the route Eddie had driven, the speeds the chase had reached. Eddie answered honestly and as fully as he could.

  When Orr was finished, she snapped her little cop notebook shut and wrinkled her brow at Eddie. She scolded, “Where did you get this knack for nearly getting killed?” It was a question from a friend, not an investigating officer.

  Eddie held up the steering wheel and shrugged. There was no answer.

  “I need ten more minutes here,” she said, “and then I’ll drop you off at your house.”

  Detective Orr walked away. Eddie sipped more water. He had been calm the entire time he had been crawling through the electrical tunnel, and when he was being interviewed by police. But now, as he looked at his charred car and smelled the poison smoke, his hands were trembling.

  His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. With great difficulty, he retrieved it and checked the caller ID number. Local, but not a number he recognized.

  “Hello?”

  “Professor Bourque?” The idling fire trucks were noisy and Eddie wasn’t sure he had heard what he thought he heard. He looked around, to see if anyone was playing a joke on him. “This is Eddie Bourque.”

  “Ay, Professor! It’s Ryan, from Intro to Journalism, man! I have a question about the mid-term assignments.”

  Eddie rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell, Ryan. Can this wait? You caught me at a bad time.”

  “I can see that, that’s why I’m calling. What did you have? Some kind of accident? The TV news says you drove through the park. That sounds fucked up to me, man, because you don’t sound drunk.”

  Eddie stood. “I am not drunk.” He looked around. “Where are you?”

  “At home. You’re on TV. I’m looking right at you.”

  That’s when Eddie saw the news van parked down the street.

  When did Channel Eight get here?

  Closer to the action, in the shadows near the sidewalk, he saw that a camera crew had set up a tripod. The camera was pointed straight at Eddie. His stomach tightened. He pictured the driver from the van at home, relaxing after a good night of killing, maybe eating crackers and wombat pâté, or sipping blood from a skull—whatever—and watching Eddie Bourque on the eleven o’clock news.

  Now he knows he failed. He knows I escaped.

  He had no idea what the driver looked like. In Eddie’s imagination, the man went to bed in a ski mask. Eddie stared into the camera; he couldn’t look away. He felt a paralyzing anxiety, as if his insides had suddenly liquefied and gushed out his feet, leaving a hollow tin replica of himself.

  “Oh, dude! You’re looking right at me,” Ryan said. He laughed. “That’s creepy. Whoops! Now you’re gone. They’re onto the sports. Awwww! The Red Sox got bombed tonight.”

  “So why are you calling, Ryan?”

  “Well, dude—professor!—I was thinking that you might have undergone some sort of trauma in this car accident, and if that was the case—I mean, like, we hope it’s not, but if—would the mid-term papers still be due next week?”

  Eddie watched the TV news crew br
eak down their equipment. “They’re due,” he said.

  “Aw man, it’s just that I’m having a hard time finding a public meeting to go to, and, um…”

  “Just find a city board dealing with a topic that interests you and you’ll be fine.”

  “That’s the problem, professor!” Ryan said. “The only thing that interests me is music.”

  “Try the liquor licensing board,” Eddie suggested. “Nightclubs go before those commissions to get permits for live music. Happens all the time.”

  “You mean government controls our nightclubs?”

  “Find the conflict,” Eddie told him, thinking about the conflict he had just escaped. “And tell both sides.”

  ***

  The next morning, General VonKatz planted his hind legs on Eddie’s forehead, boosting himself to get a better look at whatever he was meowing at out the bedroom window.

  Eddie had a feeling he would be sore from the car crash, and that it would hurt to move. He stayed still in his bed and moved only his eyelids. The room was dim; it was too early to get up. A gray tail swished above his face.

  “General,” he mumbled, “the human head is not a stepladder.”

  Eddie heard a rustling from the front yard.

  “Stupid raccoons.”

  The General soon lost interest in whatever was outside, and jumped down.

  “Thank you.”

  Eddie woke sore a few hours later, like a runningback the day after a punishing game. His chest hurt from where he had slammed against the seatbelt. He swallowed five ibuprofen, set the coffee maker to brew his darkest Italian roast, and went out in a t-shirt and boxers for his Washington Post.

  The air was cool and a steady breeze bent the top branches of his neighbor’s sugar maples. Again, the paper was a mess, and Eddie wondered if raccoons could be destroying his morning read. He picked up what he could find of his Post and brought it inside.

  At least I’m still around to read it.

  He discovered a can of mixed grill in gravy in the cupboard, emptied it on a paper plate and set it on the kitchen table for General VonKatz. Usually, the cat ate on the floor, but what did it matter today? During the minutes Eddie had been trapped in the burning Chevette, he had thought he’d never see the General again.