"No ma’am, I wasn’t ‘running around,’ I just ... "
"Don’t talk back to me, boy." Sara came back into the room carrying the salt bowl. My father was chewing intently, silently, as always. And Sara was worse than no help, a liability.
It was time. I either had to stand up for Zeke or listen forever to everything Firstmother said. I looked her in the eye. "What’s the matter with Zeke, anyways?"
She stared back. "You know what’s the matter with Zeke. His father’s a drunk, a black magician, a road racer, a no-good consorter with demons—"
"Enough, Rachel."
Firstmother stopped in mid sentence. Sara and us kids dropped our eyes instantly to our plates. Pop never spoke at the dinner table.
"What did you say, Samuel?" Firstmother said icily.
Pop looked up. He kept chewing as he talked, red potatoes mashing between his teeth. His voice was quiet, like when he was explaining why he was going to hit you for not feeding the horses on time. "I said, Rachel, that enough was enough. Frank Landers has had his troubles. I don’t want any wife of mine continuing to add to them."
Firstmother was almost sputtering. "I will not have my son hanging around with the son of a demoner!" She picked up her plate and stalked to the kitchen.
Pop picked up another potato. My sisters stared moodily at their food. And even with her head bowed and her hair falling across her eyes, I could see the barest beginnings of a smile on Sara’s face.
Just after ten that night I was banging around in the dark with two cans of red paint. I’d stuffed my blankets with pillows and climbed out the window, hoping that Firstmother wouldn’t think to check on me—she did that sometimes.
I was circling Zeke’s house to knock on his bedroom window when I saw lamplight seeping through the cracks of the old shed set away from the house. The door, usually chained shut, was busted open. Zeke was there, his back to me as he rummaged through some cabinets at the back of the shed. And there was something else.
It was a Pontiac—one of the big cars they race down in Mexicana. It was painted almost all black, but in the flicker I could make out a spiderweb of silver lines. The tires were low, and there was some rust along the bottom of the driver’s side door, but overall it looked real good.
"You’re late," Zeke said when he turned around. "Here. Grab these." He was holding up three dusty books, two cans of paint and a bucket of brushes in his bandaged hands.
"Lord Jesus, Zeke! Where did this thing come from?"
"Nowhere." He dropped the paint at my feet and circled the room, blowing out lanterns.
"C’mon, whose car is this? Is this your dad’s?" There’d been rumors about Zeke’s dad, Frank, ever since I was a kid. Everybody knew he was a drunk now, but every once in a while you’d hear an adult say something about the magic, or a pro driver.
Zeke pushed me and the buckets outside. He wound the chain up around the door handle and said, "Forget it. That car ain’t there, you understand?" He turned to me, and in the moonlight I could barely make out a smile. The smile was always the end of the argument with Zeke. "Ready for a little hike?"
We took the short-cuts and made it into the city in under two hours. For the entire trip, Zeke wouldn’t talk about the Pontiac, but the subject was still cars.
"Joey," he said, "I’m gonna race on the white highways. I’m gonna win. Then I’m going to Mexicana and I’m gonna race the Brujo."
"The Brujo? Phil Mendez? You’re crazy, Zeke."
"You know I’m crazy. That’s why I’m gonna win."
"That’s why you’re going to die. Messing with the demons and magic is serious stuff. I don’t even know why I’m helping you."
He nudged me. "You haven’t figured that out, Joey? Because you love this shit. You love being bad, breaking the rules, messing with magic. And if anything goes wrong, you can blame it on mean old Zeke."
"You’re full of it," I said. But I knew he was right.
The Chevy was sitting in an alley that had been cleared of rubble.
"Christ in the tomb," I whispered.
Zeke started lighting lamps that had been placed in a circle around the car. I was conscious of Dead City surrounding us on all sides. I set my buckets on the ground and walked forward.
"Christ in the tomb," I said again, louder. "How did you get it up here?"
"An angel pushed the boulders out of the way. What do you think?" Zeke opened one of the books and began flipping through its pages.
"Zeke! You already did it? What happened?"
"Nothing happened." He studied a diagram on one page of the book. "Now get those cans of red over here. I want to prime it in red."
"Jesus Lord, I should have known it when I saw your hands." I followed him around the circle. "What was it like? Did it have wings? Did it look like the Devil?"
"How the hell would I know what the Devil looks like?" Zeke snapped the book shut and handed me a big brush. "Smooth, slow strokes, all over the hood. Don’t mess it up." He set the books off to the side carefully.
"Zeke, why do we have to work on it out here, in the City?"
"Can’t you feel it?" His voice sounded like he was speaking from under the ground. "There’s a lot of death here. A lot of power." Death. Power. I was out of my depth.
I didn’t ask any more questions. We worked silently for almost three hours. Two hours before dawn we put the cans and brushes beneath the car, doused the lamps, and walked home. Zeke whistled the whole way.
One or two days a week for almost two months I made the trek out to the city with or for Zeke. He had stopped going to schoolhouse. He would stay awake for days, working on the car, talking about how he was going to take it on the circuit and blow everybody else away. I’d bring him some food from home and he’d barely look at it.
Looking back, I know I could have done something to stop him. I could have hid the tools, or sabotaged the paint, or told my folks what we were doing. But Zeke was Zeke. And I couldn’t imagine any situation that Zeke couldn’t handle.
Me, I was a different story. I was petrified Firstmother or Father would find out what I was up to. I would tell Zeke that I was absolutely never coming back out to the City. But Zeke would tell me he needed me to bring something out; and, sure enough, that night I would climb out my window and head toward Dead City. Considering my nervousness and lack of confidence, I had amazing luck. Of all the times I sneaked out of the house to go help him, I was only caught once.
It was mid-June and I was late coming back from the City. The sun was just starting to come up behind me. I was about to boost myself over the window ledge and start pretending to be asleep when Sara walked around the corner. What was she doing up this early? She stared at me and I slowly dropped back to the ground. If she told Firstmother (which she wouldn’t) or Father (which she probably would) I was in big trouble.
"Sara, listen ... " I began. She shushed me with a finger to her lips. She grinned like a little kid.
"I’m pregnant," she said. "I’m Secondmother now."
"That’s great," I said. We stood there in silence for a while, me nervously watching the sun get bigger and brighter every minute. Finally she reached up and touched the top of my head.
"You’d better get inside now, Joseph." She turned her back to me and walked around the corner again. I scrambled up the wall and dove into bed. A few minutes later Father came in to wake me up for the morning chores.
The night we were to call the Engine, I walked into the City early, just before dusk. I wanted to look at the car alone, in daylight.
I took almost as much pride in it as Zeke did.
At that time I’d only seen one race on the white highways, between two cars on the pro circuit from Nevada. I’d thought the cars were the most beautiful, terrible things in the world. But Zeke’s car, our car, surpassed them.
Not in beauty. Even by lamplight, the lines on the Chevy did not look delicate; the interior did not look padded and luxurious; the wheels were not trimmed in gold like the ci
rcuit cars were. But for sheer terribleness, you couldn’t match Zeke’s Chevy.
It was red, but a red shot through with yellow and white lines that, by lamplight, flickered and burned. I’d asked Zeke how he did it. How did he know what design was needed, what pattern of lines and circles and rectangles was called for. Zeke said that every pattern on every car was exactly the same, but I said that was horse-hockey—I’d seen the pro cars, and each design was as different from the other as strangers.
As I entered the alley I could see that the Chevy was no less terrible by daylight. I could make out each line and shape, and as I looked I began to grasp the logic of their relationships. Each line bound one shape to another; each shape froze the line in its path. There was no way to look past that design to the base red, and there was no path from the red out.
The pattern was bars to a cage, and the cage was the car.
Suddenly I realized that there was someone in the car behind the wheel; nearly as quick I knew it was Frank. The door opened and he heaved himself out. He stumbled forward, then leaned against the hood. As I walked toward him he drew a flask and swallowed hard.
"Who are you?"
"Joseph Peterson," I said. I was ready to break and run if he got crazy. I’d seen Frank drunk, but I’d always stayed out of his way. So did Zeke.
His eyes narrowed. "Sam’s boy?"
"That’s right." He shook his head as if to clear it. He looked at the car beneath his hand.
"What the hell are you boys trying to do out here?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Nothing? C’mere, boy. Look at this." Cautiously I walked over. He traced one of the lines with his finger. The finger, and now I noticed the entire hand as well, was covered with pink scars. I looked at where he pointed. There was a small break in the paint. "That’s sloppy, boy, sloppy that could get you killed. That line’s useless, and if your Engine finds that break it’s gonna try to pop right out of there." He pulled me around to the open driver’s door. "Look at that steerin’ wheel."
I looked. "I don’t see anything wrong."
Frank made a sound like a man trying to push a mule uphill, and he shoved me into the seat. "Put your hands on the wheel."
I did as I was told, but I was also trying to see if I could scoot over to the other door and get out before he could grab me again. "No no no. Look where your hands are. Put ’em at two o’clock and ten. Now, see where the pattern stops to either sides of your hands? Those are your channels, and if your hand’s not completely covering those blank spots when the blood’s flowing, the Engine’s gonna climb up into your lap and bite your head off. Then you go zombi."
"Zeke’s hands are bigger," I said defensively.
"Nobody races with channels that big. Don’t you understand, boy? It’s a two way street. You reach in, and it reaches you."
"But Zeke says with bigger channels you get more speed, more fuel out of the Engine ... "
"Boy, speed’s not everything."
Suddenly a big bandaged hand reached in and hauled Frank out of the door. Zeke held him by the shirt collar and shouted at him. "What are doing here, old man? What are you doing here!" Zeke pushed Frank away from him. Frank stumbled backwards and fell to the ground.
Zeke stalked off to the other side of the car. I was left looking at Frank. He wasn’t getting up. After half a minute I got out of the car and went to see if he was all right.
His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing me. It was like he was caught up in a memory, or a dream that he couldn’t shake.
"Can I give you a hand?" I asked. His eyes focused on me. He shook his head and slowly levered himself up into a sitting position. After a while he eased himself up and walked stiff-leggedly out of the alley.
"That was kind of rough, don’t you think?" I told Zeke.
He didn’t answer, or even look at me. He was flipping through one of his books again. And if I hadn’t known Zeke as well as I did, I would have sworn he looked like a boy about to cry. He slammed the book shut, picked up a brush, and began filling in the breaks in the lines of the pattern with quick, angry strokes. He left the channels on the steering wheel untouched.
An hour or so later Zeke began to talk again as he worked, but it was only about the Circuit, and how fast this car was going to be, and taking on Brujo Mendez in Mexicana.
"What’s the big deal with Mendez?" I asked.
"He’s the best," Zeke said. "No one’s ever beaten him."
By eleven, Zeke was almost finished.
If the car was a cage, the Gateway pattern was the carrot to lure the Engine in. Zeke had drawn three blue circles on the ground, lined up in a row, each circle edge touching the edge of another circle. The biggest circle was around the car. The middle circle was smaller and laced with intersecting diagonal lines. The last circle was the smallest. Zeke was sitting in the center of that circle and painting in a complex double row of shapes and lines around the inside of the border.
"I don’t get it," I said.
Zeke smiled. "I sit here," he said, "and the demon pops up there." The middle circle. "Then it becomes a test. Can I push it into the car or not."
"What if you can’t?"
"Then either of two things is going to happen. It’s going to force its way into my circle, or it’s going to go back where it came from."
"And if it gets in?"
"Then you’d better run like hell, Joey. I’ll already be gone."
"Shit."
Zeke laughed. "I never heard you swear before! You’re hanging out with the wrong guy, Joseph."
"I know it. When do you start?"
"Midnight."
We waited out the hour (Zeke inside his circle, me outside the whole pattern) listening to the silence of Dead City. I still feared the City, but it was a familiar fear.
I tried to imagine thousands of people living in these buildings, but I couldn’t do it. Where would all the food come from? What did they do for a living, besides drive cars?
Zeke said, "All right. It’s time." Zeke told me to douse the lanterns around the alley. Before the last of the lights went out, though, I saw Zeke take off his bandages. The scabs on his palms that looked like black holes in his skin. I turned away and doused the last lamp.
Moonlight glinted off something metallic in Zeke’s hands. I heard him gasp, and then I saw blotches of phosphorescent blood appear in the middle circle. Then the entire pattern flared into blue fire.
After a minute the fire subsided to a glow that lit up the alley. Zeke sat in the center of his circle, hugging his knees, staring at the middle circle. The blotches were burning brighter now. I gazed from Zeke to the middle circle to the car. For the longest time nothing happened at all.
I can’t tell you how the thing appeared, because I was looking at Zeke’s face when I heard it. It sounded like a huge downpour, or the center of a waterfall. Zeke gritted his teeth and grunted like he’d been stabbed in the gut, and I flicked my eyes to the middle circle again. It was already there ...
... the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It swirled like a dust-devil, but a dust-devil made of light. It was not green, or red, or any other color, really. It simply was. I know that’s crazy.
It spun toward Zeke, moaning like a tornado, and as it moved I saw the bright blotches rise up and become part of the whirlwind. It battered at Zeke’s circle, sparks flying as flakes of paint chipped off the ground and joined the spinning air. Zeke clenched his fist. Blood poured down his arms. The thing spun backwards; then Zeke was on his feet, shouting at the top of his lungs. I couldn’t make out the words over the roar.
After that it was over almost instantly. The whirlwind broke through the circle surrounding the car, then vanished. The circles and rectangles on the Chevy flared a moment and went dark. The blue circles on the ground faded.
We were in darkness.
That’s when I realized Zeke was calling for help. I ran to him, picked the bandages off the ground, and began to wrap up his hands. There was so much blo
od I couldn’t tell where the wound was: but I cinched both bandages tight. Zeke’s hair was matted to his head with sweat. A smile was playing around his face. He stood up, holding me. Then he looked at the car and whooped for joy.
When Zeke got in and started her up, I whooped too.
August was race season. Any kid who could escape his family snuck off at night to the white highways.
The highways have always been here. They are cracked, and full of holes, and some whole sections of bridges have collapsed, You can still ride the white highways from one ocean to another, from Canuck to Mexicana. And if you’re a driver, you can race on them.
The pro driver that first Saturday in August was a blond-haired guy from Appalachia who called himself the Bobcat and drove a blue and gold Ford. The local girls who’d ditched their folks were pooling in the glow of his headlights like moths, jockeying to get closer to him. The boys were standing around in tight bunches outside the light, looking at the car. Everyone was very careful not to lean on the Bobcat’s car.
We watched him from a ridge above the highways. Zeke had said he wanted to size up the competition. He snorted. "I’m gonna bury this guy."
I wasn’t so sure. The Bobcat wasn’t famous on the circuit, but he was still a pro driver, and Zeke had never raced before. But Zeke was Zeke. And he was confident as hell. "Let’s go," he said. I climbed in from the passenger side and Zeke slid in the other door. He planted his big hands on the steering wheel—completely covering the channels, I saw—and his face contorted into an angry sneer like he was wrestling the Engine for control. Finally he smiled.
We shot down the ridge, the Engine growling like a caged bear, and popped through a hole in the railing. Zeke slid to a stop just behind Bobcat, his lights focusing on the blue Ford. The blond-haired driver looked at us for a moment. I thought I saw a little doubt in his face, but then he shrugged and turned back to the girls.
Zeke eased the Chevy up to the line. "Hey, piss-head," Zeke said. The Bobcat ignored us.
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