The Year's Best SF 11 # 1993

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  In autumn ’64, with one more year to pull, I took a two-week leave and headed north just chasing weather. It showed up first in Oregon with rain, and more in Washington. I got hassled on the Canadian border by a distressful little guy who thought, what with the war, that I wanted political asylum.

  I chased on up to Calgary, where matters got chill and wholesome. Wind worked through the mountains like it wanted to drive me south toward home. Elk and moose and porcupines went about their business. Red-tailed hawks circled. I slid on over to Edmonton, chased on east to Saskatoon, then dropped south through the Dakotas. In Williston, I had a terrible want to cut and run for home, but didn’t dare.

  The Road Dog showed up all over the place, but the messages were getting strange. At a bar in Amidon:

  Road Dog

  Taking Kentucky Windage

  At a hamburger joint in Belle Fourche:

  Road Dog

  Chasing his tail

  At a restaurant in Redbird:

  Road Dog

  Flea and flee as much as we can

  We’ll soon find who is the Gingerbread Man

  In a poolroom in Fort Collins:

  Road Dog

  Home home on derange

  Road Dog, or Jesse, was too far south. The Dog had never showed up in Colorado before. At least, nobody ever heard of such.

  My leave was running out. There was nothing to do except sit over the wheel. I dropped on south to Albuquerque, hung a right, and headed back to the big city. All along the road, I chewed a dreadful fear for Jesse. Something bad was happening, and that didn’t seem fair, because something good went on between me and the Chrysler. We reached an understanding. The Chrysler came alive and began to hum. All that poor car had ever needed was to look at road. It had been raised among traffic and poodles, but needed long sight-distances and bears.

  * * *

  When I got back, there seemed no way out of writing a letter to Matt Simons, even if it was borrowing trouble. It took evening after evening of gnawing the end of a pencil. I hated to tell about Miss Molly, and about the dancing ghost, and about my fears for Jesse. A man is supposed to keep his problems to himself.

  At the same time, Matt was educated. Maybe he could give Jesse a hand if he knew all of it. The letter came out pretty thick. I mailed it thinking Matt wasn’t likely to answer real soon. Autumn deepened to winter back home, and everybody would be busy.

  So I worked and waited. There was an old White Mustang with a fifth wheel left over from the last war. It was a lean and hungry-looking animal, and slightly marvelous. I overhauled the engine, then dropped the tranny and adapted a ten-speed Roadranger. When I got that truck running smooth as a Baptist’s mouth, the Navy surveyed it and sold it for scrap.

  “Ghost cars are a tradition,” Matt wrote toward the back of October, “and I’d be hard pressed to say they are not real. I recall being passed by an Auburn boat-tail about 3:00 A.M. on a summer day. That happened ten years ago. I was about your age, which means there was not an Auburn boat-tail in all of Montana. That car died in the early thirties.

  “And we all hear stories of huge old headlights overtaking in the mist, stories of Mercers and Deusenbergs and Bugattis. I try to believe the stories are true, because, in a way, it would be a shame if they were not.

  “The same for road ghosts. I’ve never seen a ghost who looked like Jesse. The ghosts I’ve seen might not have been ghosts. To paraphrase an expert, they may have been a trapped beer belch, an undigested hamburger, or blowing mist. On the other hand, maybe not. They certainly seemed real at the time.

  “As for Jesse—we have a problem here. In a way, we’ve had it for a long while, but only since last winter have matters become solemn. Then your letter arrives, and matters become mysterious. Jesse has—or had—a twin brother. One night when we were carousing, he told me that, but he also said his brother was dead. Then he swore me to a silence I must now break.”

  Matt went on to say that I must never, never say anything. He figured something was going on between brothers. He figured it must run deep.

  “There is something uncanny about twins,” Matt wrote. “What great matters are joined in the womb? When twins enter the world, they learn and grow the way all of us do; but some communication (or communion) surely happens before birth. A clash between brothers is a terrible thing. A clash between twins may spell tragedy.”

  Matt went on to tell how Jesse was going over the edge with road games, only, the games stayed close to home. All during the summer, Jesse would head out, roll fifty or a hundred miles, and come home scorching like drawn by a string. Matt guessed the postcard I’d gotten from Jesse in February was part of the game, and it was the last time Jesse had been very far from home. Matt figured Jesse used tracing paper to imitate the Road Dog’s writing. He also figured Road Dog had to be Jesse’s brother.

  “It’s obvious,” Matt wrote, “that Jesse’s brother is still alive, and is only metaphorically dead to Jesse. There are look-alikes in this world, but you have reported identical twins.”

  Matt told how Jesse drove so crazy, even Mike would not run with him. That was bad enough, but it seemed the graveyard had sort of moved in on Jesse’s mind. That graveyard was no longer just something to do. Jesse swapped around until he came up with a tractor and mower. Three times that summer, he trimmed the graveyard and straightened the markers. He dusted and polished Miss Molly’s headstone.

  “It’s past being a joke,” Matt wrote, “or a sentimental indulgence. Jesse no longer drinks, and no longer hells around in a general way. He either runs or tends the cemetery. I’ve seen other men search for a ditch, but never in such bizarre fashion.”

  Jesse had been seen on his knees, praying before Miss Molly’s grave.

  “Or perhaps he was praying for himself, or for Chip.” Matt wrote. “Chip is buried beside Miss Molly. The graveyard has to be seen to be believed. Who would ever think so many machines would be so dear to so many men?”

  Then Matt went on to say he was going to “inquire in various places” that winter. “There are ways to trace Jesse’s brother,” Matt wrote, “and I am very good at that sort of research.” He said it was about the only thing he could still do for Jesse.

  “Because,” Matt wrote, “I seem to have fallen in love with a romantic. Nancy wants a June wedding. I look forward to another winter alone, but it will be an easy wait. Nancy is rather old-fashioned, and I find that I’m old-fashioned as well. I will never regret my years spent helling around, but am glad they are now in the past.”

  Back home, winter deepened. At Christmas a long letter came from Jesse, and some of it made sense. “I put eighteen cars under this summer. Business fell off because I lost my hustle. You got to scooch around a good bit, or you don’t make contacts. I may start advertising.

  “And the tabbies took off. I forgot to slop them regular, so now they’re mousing in a barn on Jimmy Come Lately Road. Mike says I ought to get another dog, but my heart isn’t in it.”

  Then the letter went into plans for the cemetery. Jesse talked some grand ideas. He thought a nice wrought-iron gate might be showy, and bring in business. He thought of finding a truck that would haul “deceased” cars. “On the other hand,” he wrote, “if a guy don’t care enough to find a tow, maybe I don’t want to plant his iron.” He went on for a good while about morals, but a lawyer couldn’t understand it. He seemed to be saying something about respect for Miss Molly, and Betty Lou, and Judith. “Sue Ellen is a real hummer,” he wrote about the Linc. “She’s got two hundred thousand I know about, plus whatever went on before.”

  Which meant Jesse was piling up about seventy thousand miles a year, and that didn’t seem too bad. Truck drivers put up a hundred thousand. Of course, they make a living at it.

  Then the letter got so crazy it was hard to credit.

  “I got The Road Dog figured out. There’s two little kids. Their mama reads to them, and they play tag. The one that don’t get caught gets to be the Gingerbread Ma
n. This all come together because I ran across a bunch of kids down on the Colorado line. I was down that way to call on a lady I once knew, but she moved, and I said what the hell, and hung around a few days, and that’s what clued me to The Dog. The kids were at a Sunday-school picnic, and I was napping across the car seat. Then a preacher’s wife came over and saw I wasn’t drunk, but the preacher was there, too, and they invited me. I eased over to the picnic, and everybody made me welcome. Anyway, those kids were playing, and I heard the gingerbread business, and I figured The Dog is from Colorado.”

  The last page of the letter was just as scary. Jesse took kids’ crayons and drew the front ends of the Linc and Miss Molly. There was a tail that was probably Potato’s, sticking out from behind the picture of Miss Molly, and everything was centered around the picture of a marker that said “R.I.P. Road Dog.”

  But—there weren’t any little kids. Jesse had not been to Colorado. Jesse had been tending that graveyard, and staying close to home. Jesse played make-believe, or else Matt Simons lied; and there was no reason for Matt to lie. Something bad, bad wrong was going on with Jesse.

  There was no help for it. I did my time and wrote a letter every month or six weeks pretending everything was normal. I wrote about what we’d do when I got home, and about the Chrysler. Maybe that didn’t make much sense, but Jesse was important to me. He was a big part of what I remembered about home.

  At the end of April, a postcard came, this time from Havre. “The Dog is after me. I feel it.” It was just a plain old postcard. No picture.

  Matt wrote in May, mostly his own plans. He busied himself building a couple of rooms onto his place. “Nancy and I do not want a family right away,” he wrote, “but someday we will.” He wrote a bubbly letter with a feel of springtime to it.

  “I almost forgot my main reason for writing,” the letter said. “Jesse comes from around Boulder, Colorado. His parents are long dead, ironically in a car wreck. His mother was a schoolteacher, his father a librarian. Those people, who lived such quiet lives, somehow produced a hellion like Jesse, and Jesse’s brother. That’s the factual side of the matter.

  “The human side is so complex it will not commit to paper. In fact, I do not trust what I know. When you get home next fall, we’ll discuss it.”

  The letter made me sad and mad. Sad because I wasn’t getting married, and mad because Matt didn’t think I’d keep my mouth shut. Then I thought better of it. Matt didn’t trust himself. I did what any gentleman would do, and sent him and Nancy a nice gravy boat for the wedding.

  In late July, Jesse sent another postcard. “He’s after me; I’m after him. If I ain’t around when you get back, don’t fret. Stuff happens. It’s just a matter of chasing road.”

  Summer rolled on. The Navy released “nonessential personnel” in spite of the war. I put four years in the outfit and got called nonessential. Days choked past like a rig with fouled injectors. One good thing happened. My old boss moved his station to the outskirts of town and started an IH dealership. He straight-out wrote how he needed a diesel mechanic. I felt hopeful thoughts, and dark ones.

  In September, I became a veteran who qualified for an overseas ribbon, because of work on ships that later on went somewhere. Now I could join the Legion post back home, which was maybe the payoff. They had the best pool table in the county.

  “Gents,” I said to the boys at the motor pool, “it’s been a distinct by-God pleasure enjoying your company, and don’t never come to Montana, ’cause she’s a heartbreaker.” The Chrysler and me lit out like a kyoodle of pups.

  It would have been easier to run to Salt Lake, then climb the map to Havre, but notions pushed. I slid east to Las Cruces, then popped north to Boulder with the idea of tracing Jesse. The Chrysler hummed and chewed up road. When I got to Boulder, the notion turned hopeless. There were too many people. I didn’t even know where to start asking.

  It’s no big job to fool yourself. Above Boulder, it came to me how I’d been pointing for Sheridan all along, and not even Sheridan. I pointed toward a girl who smiled at me four years ago.

  I found her working at a hardware, and she wasn’t wearing any rings. I blushed around a little bit, then got out of there to catch my breath. I thought of how Jesse took whatever time was needed when he bought the Linc. It looked like this would take awhile.

  My pockets were crowded with mustering-out pay and money for unused leave. I camped in a ten-dollar motel. It took three days to get acquainted, then we went to a show and supper afterward. Her name was Linda. Her father was a Mormon. That meant a year of courting, but it’s not all that far from north Montana to Sheridan.

  I had to get home and get employed, which would make the Mormon happy. On Saturday afternoon, Linda and I went back to the same old movie, but this time we held hands. Before going home, she kissed me once, real gentle. That made up for those hard times in San Diego. It let me know I was back with my own people.

  I drove downtown all fired-up with visions. It was way too early for bed, and I cared nothing for a beer. A run-down café sat on the outskirts. I figured pie and coffee.

  The Dog had signed in. His writing showed faint, like the wall had been scrubbed. Newer stuff scrabbled over it.

  Road Dog

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee

  Lonely pups as pups can be

  For each other had to wait

  Down beside the churchyard gate.

  The café sort of slumbered. Several old men lined the counter. Four young gearheads sat at a table and talked fuel injection. The old men yawned and put up with it. Faded pictures of old racing cars hung along the walls. The young guys sat beneath a picture of the Bluebird. That car held the land speed record of 301.29 m.p.h. This was a racer’s café, and had been for a long, long time.

  The waitress was graying and motherly. She tsked and tished over the old men as much as she did the young ones. Her eyes held that long-distance prairie look, a look knowing wind and fire and hard times, stuff that either breaks people or leaves them wise. Matt Simons might get that look in another twenty years. I tried to imagine Linda when she became the waitress’s age, and it wasn’t bad imagining.

  Pictures of quarter-mile cars hung back of the counter, and pictures of street machines hung on each side of the door. Fifties hot rods scorched beside worked-up stockers. Some mighty rowdy iron crowded that wall. One picture showed a Golden Hawk. I walked over, and in one corner was the name “Still”—written in The Road Dog’s hand. It shouldn’t have been scary.

  I went back to the counter shaking. A nice-looking old gent nursed coffee. His hands wore knuckles busted by a thousand slipped wrenches. Grease was worked in deep around his eyes, the way it gets after years and years when no soap made will touch it. You could tell he’d been a steady man. His eyes were clear as a kid.

  “Mister,” I said, “and beg pardon for bothering you. Do you know anything about that Studebaker?” I pointed to the wall.

  “You ain’t bothering me,” he said, “but I’ll tell you when you do.” He tapped the side of his head like trying to ease a gear in place, then he started talking engine specs on the Stude.

  “I mean the man who owns it.”

  The old man probably liked my haircut, which was short. He liked it that I was raised right. Young guys don’t always pay old men much mind.

  “You still ain’t bothering me.” He turned to the waitress. “Sue,” he said, “has Johnny Still been in?”

  She turned from cleaning the pie case, and she looked toward the young guys like she feared for them. You could tell she was no big fan of engines. “It’s been the better part of a year, maybe more.” She looked down the line of old men. “I was fretting about him just the other day.…” She let it hang. Nobody said anything. “He comes and goes so quiet, you might miss him.”

  “I don’t miss him a hell of a lot,” one of the young guys said. The guy looked like a duck, and had a voice like a sparrow. His fingernails were too clean. That proved something.
<
br />   “Because Johnny blew you out,” another young guy said. “Johnny always blew you out.”

  “Because he’s crazy,” the first guy said. “There’s noisy-crazy and quiet-crazy. The guy is a spook.”

  “He’s going through something,” the waitress said, and said it kind. “Johnny’s taken a lot of loss. He’s the type who grieves.” She looked at me like she expected an explanation.

  “I’m friends with his brother,” I told her. “Maybe Johnny and his brother don’t get along.”

  The old man looked at me rather strange. “You go back quite a ways,” he told me. “Jesse’s been dead a good long time.”

  I thought I’d pass out. My hands started shaking, and my legs felt too weak to stand. Beyond the window of the café, red light came from a neon sign, and inside the café, everybody sat quiet, waiting to see if I was crazy, too. I sort of picked at my pie. One of the young guys moved real uneasy. He loafed toward the door, maybe figuring he’d need a shotgun. The other three young ones looked confused.

  “No offense,” I said to the old man, “but Jesse Still is alive. Up on the highline. We run together.”

  “Jesse Still drove a damn old Hudson Terraplane into the South Platte River in spring of ’52, maybe ’53.” The old man said it real quiet. “He popped a tire when not real sober.”

  “Which is why Johnny doesn’t drink,” the waitress said. “At least, I expect that’s the reason.”

  “And now you are bothering me.” The old man looked to the waitress, and she was as full of questions as he was.

  Nobody ever felt more hopeless or scared. These folks had no reason to tell this kind of yarn. “Jesse is sort of roughhouse.” My voice was only whispering. It wouldn’t make enough sound. “Jesse made his reputation helling around.”

  “You’ve got that part right,” the old man told me, “and youngster, I don’t give a tinker’s damn if you believe me or not, but Jesse Still is dead.”