Whiteout Conditions
Page 4
“The guy fixed the engine light, he—”
“Then why is it on?”
“Because he said it might come back on sometimes but to not worry about it because it’s just the dang electronics in cars these days and that it doesn’t matter the fucking engine’s fine!”
Vince accelerates, takes the off-ramp at a borderline lethal velocity. I have to grip the handle not to knock heads with him. He just barely misses clipping a Lexus parked in the gas station lot we pull into.
“Know what? I don’t deserve this kind of grief, man. You act like I’m this kind of drooling window licker. But guess what? I’m actually pretty smart. I know what I’m doing.”
“All right, Christ…”
“You know, the other day I’m driving home from work and I have to run a few errands. Catherine needs some saline solution or some shit, and Caroline wants to do Mongolian barbecue for dinner because we got a new Mongolian barbecue place—what’s wrong with regular barbecue? I don’t know, but what else is there to do, so I went and had to go pick that up because she’d called in the order early so as to time it all perfect and keep it all hot by the time it gets home, so I go into the drug store and I buy the stupid contact solution—the buy one get one pack—and I book over to 75th Street to go get the food order for Caroline, and I’m driving home, I’m turning onto our street and there’s Ray and Bullets.”
“Let’s talk and drive. Let’s go, Vince, c’mon—”
“No, you listen—I see Ray, and I see Bullets. Ray’s on the ground, no jacket, no shirt, no nothin’. It’s winter. The snow around them’s—sort of pink. I’m out of the car and going over, and the minute I lock eyes on Bullets he gets all low over Ray, and starts growling these don’t-fuck-with-me growls. Ray’s not moving. He is out, like he just got clocked by I don’t know. And Bullets—someone’d painted clown makeup or something on his face, all over his muzzle. A clown dog. Or like he’d maybe gone and snatched one of Mom’s cobblers and eaten it all up. Then it hits me what’s happening.”
“Let’s go, man. You don’t—”
“I stop walking. I do that, and Bullets quits growling at me. He starts panting, smiling.”
“Vin, you were in shock. You maybe still are. Just calm down…”
“The frontal, temporal, and occipital scalp had multiple, predominately superficial, incised wounds, puncture wounds, and abrasions. The largest incised wound penetrated approximately 1.8 centimeters into the soft tissues and muscles of the right side of the neck.”
“I get it…”
“What else. Oh, the soft tissues and muscles of the right side of the neck were hemorrhagic. Multiple axillary vessels were severed in the left forearm. Patches of neck and chest soft tissue exhibited muscle hemorrhage, multiple rib fractures, left hemothorax—whatever that is—”
“Stop.”
“—Contusions of the left lung, contusions of the heart. Is what the autopsy said. I read it enough I got parts memorized. But I couldn’t tell any of that at the time though. I couldn’t tell anything, except he looked really bad. The dog opened him up. Happy now?”
Vince cuts the engine and gets out.
“You calm down.”
He slams the door and storms off, leaving me in the car, where I can feel the semis barrel past.
I’m filling the tank and to pass the time, I also fill the backseat windows with pentagrams and wobbly smiley faces finger-scraped into the salty frost-grime encrusting the glass, as I wait for Vince to pay for gas inside.
When he waltzes back to the car, I give him a nod but he disregards it. So, as he’s passing by the front of the car I spritz him with a little gasoline. Just a little bit, barely any—a couple flecks—get on his jeans.
“Don’t you start that shit,” he says, striding toward me. He can tell I’m playing, but still, he stops, then swipes a rainbow with his thumb across the windshield’s schmutz. With that, he then smears an inverted cross along his brow. He gets right up in my face and does the same to mine.
“C’mon. Let’s party,” he says, wild-eyed, full of wry, old venom, and even though he’s back, I can’t tell if he’s joking.
*
The engine dies about twenty miles later. We just paid a toll and we’re on the pike, getting back on 94 when the lights go out, and suddenly it feels like we’re sailing between the tall walls of an Arctic gully, the snow gray as old crazy glue.
What makes it bad is that that particular turnpike is one of those that has a stoplight, to help mitigate traffic snarls, that lets cars on little by little, like micro doses of antidote, time-released into the main artery.
We need to get out and push and there’s a line about ten cars deep behind us, each about ten seconds from losing it.
The blast of air shuts down my lungs the instant I open the door.
“Hit the hazards, Vince.”
“What hazards?”
“You know what I just thought of? Someone’s got to steer.”
We are veering, foot by foot, toward that filthy, salty snow bank cresting along the shoulder. The front headlight makes contact just as Vince slides behind the wheel, too late to not get halted dead in our tracks. I yell for him to cut it left, hard, and when that does nothing, to get out and be useful for once.
“I gotta steer, I thought!” he yells back.
“Do both. We’re running—aground.”
The cars in back of us barely pause. We soon clear the snow bank, but it’s almost a quarter mile to the next exit. It’d take all night for a tow truck to get here, were there a phone nearby to even call one.
The effort feels like one of those running-in-slow-motion dreams. I locate a cauldron of anger inside me, I kick it over and push that heap on and on and on. The frigid metal numbs the heels of my palms. Whenever the highway traffic quiets or the wind lets up, it sounds like we’re lethargically steamrolling over a blanket of bugs.
With my eyes to the asphalt, I grind it out. I had told myself on the plane, this funeral, this service—it had better be worth it. I’d wanted the full payload dropped on my head, to emerge core-shook and sparkling, death-ecstatic, fully diamond-hearted. But this feels all wrong, beyond my sphere of control. Everything’s upside down; there are cruel stars of road salt underfoot. I ought to be gung ho, chomping at the bit. Instead, I’m shoving a dead sedan along a shoulder, crossing lines I should not be, wondering: what’s waiting at the end of this road, is it too late to turn back, who’s the real dimwit here?
When I pop my head up again, Vince is back in the car, waving to the passersby in his dusty admiral coat like some kind of weird pageant winner.
He checks the rearview mirror and when he catches me doing my best to telepathically burst him into flames he ducks low in his seat. “Vince I can still see you, fucking muppet…”
As the car slows and lists, I sneak to the door. “How about it’s time we switch.”
“I only got one hand, hot shot.”
“Use your elbow or something.” I start yanking him by the collar and he relents. The cold is so cold it’s like an awl in your ear. As a shield the car door is a joke against the bitter wind-scream. With everything I’ve got, I plant one foot, then the next, and push to make it end.
“Wel—come home!” Vince cries.
*
Batteries don’t die on running engines but here we are.
“Battery.” That is all we get from the mechanic as he lets down the hood with a clap. Vince and I shiver against the garage wall, burning our tongues on bland cocoa from the vending machine, puddles forming at our feet as we defrost.
“How much is a replacement?” Vince says.
The guy gets stern as a doctor, scribbling notes on a thick metal clipboard. “Duralasts run about one-fifty,” he says. “Valucraft’s less. Around one-twenty-five, one-thirty.”
Vince gives me a look.
“With labor,” the guy goes on, “that’s maybe another hundred. Might not have any Valucraft left. Have to see in back.”
“Should have ’em…” The guy says, and walks off.
Vince leans back and sighs. “Battery.”
“Just get the damn Durlalast and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“I should call Caroline.”
“She’s just going to say what I just said.”
“How do you know?”
“You know how I know? I know because the both of us hate mechanics, garages, cars, and most of all, how much it sucks waiting around for them to get fixed.”
He sees the wisdom of this, if him shutting up is any indication. But when the guy comes back and tells us it’s our lucky day, Vince looks around, says, “You guys don’t have a phone I could use to make a quick call, do you?”
“I’ll cover the spread,” I tell him.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“Seems it is my lucky day after all,” he says, beaming at the guy.
“Fine by me. Go grab a seat in the lounge over there, if you two want to wait.”
“How long’ll it be?” I ask.
“Not long.”
“Oh,” I say, “that’s not bad…”
“I love lounges,” Vince says. “Look, this one even has a Playboy calendar. Classic.”
“Nothing happens in them. Not even sleep,” I say. Downing the dregs of my insipid cocoa, I settle into my chair and listen to an air wrench zing the lugs off a Toyota’s tire someone felt the need to slash.
*
About ten minutes stewing in the lounge, with Vince humming along to Empire carpet TV commercials, I’m pretty ready to swallow my tongue. I head outside, kick an ice chunk around the parking lot until it’s a hockey puck, then nothing more than a poker chip.
He looked just like he did outside the principal’s office. I wonder if the little portable TV the secretary had propped on the file cabinet by her desk was the secret reason he got in trouble so often. It wasn’t so rare to catch sight of him there, taking in a little Price is Right, as I headed to the bathroom, or between class.
“What they get you for?” I’d ask.
“Pfft. Petty theft.”
Once we’re good to go, the guy yells us over, I write out a check, and they bring the car around.
“Mind if I drive?” I ask. Vince gets all still.
“I don’t know,” he says. “This is a 1987 Cutlass Supreme. Not for amateurs.”
“Who knows that better than me? C’mon. Just to get food.”
“You even know how to drive still?”
I start the engine and Vin buckles up, digs a joint out of his shirt pocket. Clenching it between his teeth, he pats himself down for a light. He’s got the business end twisted like a Tootsie Roll, and when Vince sparks it, the flame stays there, the joint a little birthday candle until he blows it out and takes a giant toke.
“Are we hot-boxing this thing?” I say, putting us in reverse, then letting in some fresh air. “Gonna drive us right smack into the first fucking wall I see. Cannot wait.”
“Hold on a sec,” Vince says. “Don’t go yet.” He grows silent, cocks an ear. “Just listen to that baby purr…”
“Let me know when you’re ready…”
Vin puts his seat back a few notches until he’s just a pair of dark pink eyes peeking out. He hits the defroster, breathes out another cloud.
“Okay,” he says. “Ready.”
The oasis off the main exit is cut into four quadrants by the north-south Tri-State and some junction running perpendicular to it, which branches off into other routes and avenues that trickle into the little suburbs and hamlets carved from shallow pockets of farmland and forest.
At the turn out, waiting on traffic, Vince points off at a pair of gas stations and burger chains on the other side of the exit. “I’d recognize that big red cowboy hat a dozen miles away,” he says.
“I can smell the curly fries.”
Vince hands me the joint. “You need to hit this.”
“Maybe later on.”
“You sure? It’s dipped in a little of this embalming fluid stuff a buddy scored. Sounds harsh, but it’s…” He just grins, searching for the word. “…a love boat. Says it all.”
“Tempting, but I think I’ll maybe pass…”
Each quadrant is no more than a few hundred yards long, and even less than that lies between them. Nevertheless, we’ve been in the Cutlass for more than fifteen minutes, I’ve driven maybe fifty feet. The cross-traffic may as well be an Amtrak train.
Vince gnaws at a hangnail, spits it like a sunflower shell.
“You got something on your mind,” I say.
“Swear I just saw a bird.”
I peer into the dark. “You have some keen vision…”
“Thought it was one I’d seen before. When your grandpa was in the hospital. It’d been raining non-stop all night. So it was a pretty morning—breezy, kind of loose, with big, almost-blue clouds moving fast. Just as I look out the window, a great big white seagull flies by. And I thought, man…”
I can feel the earnest look he casts at me, but I keep my eyes on the left turn signals blinking across the road.
“Your grandpa’s last words,” he says. “Know what they are?”
I don’t want to know, but I look at him anyway. He is staring into the lights now, knuckling out a little beat on the window.
“Said: Play the trumpets, and cheer us up.”
“Doesn’t sound like him.”
“I think he thought I was you.”
I almost miss my chance to go when it’s our turn. The bald wheels spin, burning rubber. We begin fishtailing into that no man’s land in the middle of the intersection.
I have to lay off the pedal completely, then press again, with the weight of a few feathers, until the tires stick. I hold out my hand to Vince. The joint’s just a roach by this point. But it hits like a champ. And I’m hearing trumpets now. I’m seeing birds everywhere.
*
Vince follows me into the restaurant, where everything is humming, backlit, lacquered yellow and brown molded plastic, and screwed to the floor.
I’m feeling pretty cosmic until making eye contact with the girl behind the counter, whose look is a katana that vivisects us as we’re blundering in like a couple flushed crackheads thinking they own the place. Her stare is cool and withering. I feel caught naked.
“Welcome to Arby’s,” she says to me.
“Huh? I mean—thank you. It’s good to be here…”
“Qasra—what kind of name’s that?” Vince says.
“Kashmiri. It means—do you want to order something to eat or not.”
“Lemme get a number five,” I say.
“What size would you like.”
“Oh, man. Um, let’s go with medium. Vince, know what you want?”
“I can’t decide between all this shit…”
“When you know what you want, just let me know,” she says.
“Two 38s,” I tell her.
“Hold it!”
Qasra smacks her gum. Vince, wincing at the menu like a paranoid dyslexic. In the corner, someone is shrouded in a sleeping bag, bare feet propped up near the napkins and condiments. Beyond him and us, the place is empty.
“Not usually this indecisive. Must be the herb,” Vince says, but suddenly, Qasra’s all ears.
“Trade you food for some,” she says. Yet even now, her detached expression doesn’t change.
Vince nudges me, leans in close. “This a sting operation, what you think? Be surprised how often that goes down…”
I nudge him back, away from me.
“Hurry up,” she says. “Are we cool?”
“Well, what’s a joint good for?”
“One room-temperature roast beef, plus a large fries.”
“…Curly or regular.”
“I can do curly.”
“Frie
s fresh?”
“Fresh for this place. What about your smoke.”
I say, “You sure this is the time and place for this?”
“Who asked you, ugly?”
Vince laughs. “Will you marry me? I mean, I’m already married, but at least come with us up to Big Bend? I could use you in the car, help keep the peace.”
Qasra considers this. “That sounds like the start of an awful slasher flick.”
Before returning to the menu, he mumbles, “Awfullest slasher flicks were always the best.”
Boredom sets her eyes wandering. She’s about four feet tall. I think she’d yawn if a sabretooth rolled in on a skateboard. Vin finds his eighth, taps the rolled Ziploc on the counter.
“I’ll roll you three for two burgs, two curlies, and two large Dr. Peppers.”
Qasra punches in our order. “Coming right up,” she says. “Dad! I’m going for my break now…” From behind the fryer, an older man looks out to the front, but there’s only Qasra’s apron there.
We head back out to the car. I get in shotgun. He and Qasra slide in back. She keeps her door open.
“How’s work?” I ask.
“Incredibly amazing in every way.”
“Cool…”
“I don’t have all night.”
“Let’s go, Vince.”
“Are you guys poor or something?”
Neither of us respond. In the rearview, I watch Vince break up lime green nuggets on an upturned Frisbee with the focus of a bench jeweler.
“You guys on the run? Someone after you? The law? The mob?”
“Be quiet,” Vin says, concentrating on his craft. Qasra gears up to unload on him, but holds off.
“There a motel or anything nearby?” I ask.
“Um,” she says, “if you can read, just check out the signs off the highway. They say what’s around.”
“I know how to read, I just—Vince? Any day now. I’ve got to take a leak.”
“The restroom is out of service. A customer went nuts in there earlier.”
“One down, two to go. Voila,” He says, placing the joint in her palm. She barely glances at it before getting it good and roasting.
“There’s a port-a-potty over there,” she says, and points to a pair of them teeming with icicles long as tusks beside the dumpster in the parking lot next door. “It is—functional. You got like a—emergency?”