Riding The Bullet

"Yeah? That right?" He turned to look at me, wide-set eyes and handsome face, full lips smiling slightly, the eyes unbelieving.

"Yeah," I said.

I was afraid. Just like that I was afraid again. Some-thing was wrong, had maybe started being wrong when the old geezer in the Dodge had invited me to wish on the infected moon instead of on a star. Or maybe from the moment I'd picked up the telephone and lis-tened to Mrs. McCurdy saying she had some bad news for me, but 'twasn't s'bad as it could've been. "Well that's good," said the young man in the turned-around cap. "A brother getting married, man, that's good. What's your name?"

I wasn't just afraid, I was terrified. Everything was wrong, everything, and I didn't know why or how it could possibly have happened so fast. I did know one thing, however: I wanted the driver of the Mustang to know my name no more than I wanted him to know my business in Lewiston. Not that I'd be getting to Lewiston. I was suddenly sure that I would never see Lewiston again. It was like knowing the car was going to stop. And there was the smell, I knew something about that, as well. It wasn't the air freshener; it was something beneath the air freshener.

"Hector," I said, giving him my roommate's name. "Hector Passmore, that's me." It came out of my dry mouth smooth and calm, and that was good. Some-thing inside me insisted that I must not let the driver of the Mustang know that I sensed something wrong. It was my only chance.

He turned toward me a little, and I could read his button: i rode the bullet at thrill village, laco-nia. I knew the place; had been there, although not for a long time.

I could also see a heavy black line which circled his throat just as the barbwire tattoo circled his upper arm, only the line around the driver's throat wasn't a tattoo. Dozens of black marks crossed it vertically. They were the stitches put in by whoever had put his head back on his body.

"Nice to meet you, Hector," he said. "I'm George Staub."

My hand seemed to float out like a hand in a dream. I wish that it had been a dream, but it wasn't; it had all the sharp edges of reality. The smell on top was pine. The smell underneath was some chemical, prob-ably formaldehyde. I was riding with a dead man.

The Mustang rushed along Ridge Road at sixty miles an hour, chasing its high beams under the light of a polished button moon. To either side, the trees crowd-ing the road danced and writhed in the wind. George Staub smiled at me with his empty eyes, then let go of my hand and returned his attention to the road. In high school I'd read Dracula, and now a line from it recurred, clanging in my head like a cracked bell: The dead drive fast.

Can't let him know I know. This also clanged in my

head. It wasn't much, but it was all I had. Can't let him know, can't let him, can't. I wondered where the old man was now. Safe at his brother's? Or had the old man been in on it all along? Was he maybe right behind us, driving along in his old Dodge, hunched over the wheel and snapping at his truss? Was he dead, too? Probably not. The dead drive fast, accord-ing to Bram Stoker, but the old man had never gone a tick over forty-five. I felt demented laughter bubbling in the back of my throat and held it down. If I laughed he'd know. And he mustn't know, because that was my only hope.

"There's nothing like a wedding," he said.

"Yeah," I said, "everyone should do it at least twice."

My hands had settled on each other and were squeezing. I could feel the nails digging the backs of them just above the knuckles, but the sensation was distant, news from another country. I couldn't let him know, that was the thing. The woods were all around us, the only light was the heartless bone-glow of the moon, and I couldn't let him know that I knew he was dead. Because he wasn't a ghost, nothing so harmless. You might see a ghost, but what sort of thing stopped to give you a ride? What kind of creature was that? Zombie? Ghoul? Vampire? None of the above?

George Staub laughed. "Do it twice! Yeah, man, that's my whole family!"

"Mine, too," I said. My voice sounded calm, just the voice of a hitchhiker passing the time of day-night, in this case-making agreeable conversation as some small payment for his ride. "There's really nothing like a funeral."

"Wedding," he said mildly. In the light from the dashboard, his face was waxy, the face of a corpse before the makeup went on. That turned-around cap was particularly horrible. It made you wonder how much was left beneath it. I had read somewhere that morticians sawed off the top of the skull and took out the brains and put in some sort of chemically treated cotton. To keep the face from falling in, maybe. "Wedding," I said through numb lips, and even laughed a little-a light little chuckle. "Wedding's what I meant to say."

"We always say what we mean to say, that's what I think," the driver said. He was still smiling. Yes, Freud had believed that, too. I'd read it in Psych 101. I doubted if this fellow knew much about Freud, I didn't think many Freudian scholars wore sleeveless tee shirts and baseball caps turned around backwards, but he knew enough. Funeral, I'd said. Dear Christ, I'd said funeral. It came to me then that he was playing me. I didn't want to let him know I knew he was dead. He didn't want to let me know that he knew I knew he was dead. And so I couldn't let him know that I knew that he knew that . . .

The world began to swing in front of me. In a moment it would begin to spin, then to whirl, and I'd lose it. I closed my eyes for a moment. In the dark-ness, the afterimage of the moon hung, turning green. "You feeling all right, man?" he asked. The concern in his voice was gruesome.

"Yes," I said, opening my eyes. Things had steadied again. The pain in the backs of my hands where my nails were digging into the skin was strong and real. And the smell. Not just pine air freshener, not just chemicals. There was a smell of earth, as well. "You sure?" he asked.

"Just a little tired. Been hitchhiking a long time. And sometimes I get a little carsick." Inspiration sud-denly struck. "You know what, I think you better let me out. If I get a little fresh air, my stomach will set-tle.

Someone else will come along and-"

"I couldn't do that," he said. "Leave you out here? No way. It could be an hour before someone came along, and they might not pick you up when they did. I got to take care of you. What's that song? Get me to the church on time, right? No way I'm letting you out. Crack your window a little, that'll help. I know it doesn't smell exactly great in here. I hung up that air freshener, but those things don't work worth a shit. Of course, some smells are harder to get rid of than others."

I wanted to reach out for the window crank and

turn it, let in the fresh air, but the muscles in my arm wouldn't seem to tighten. All I could do was sit there with my hands locked together, nails biting into the backs of them. One set of muscles wouldn't work; another wouldn't stop working. What a joke. "It's like that story," he said. "The one about the kid who buys the almost new Cadillac for seven hun-dred and fifty dollars. You know that story, don't you?"

"Yeah," I said through my numb lips. I d

idn't know the story, but I knew perfectly well that I didn't want to hear it, didn't want to hear any story this man might have to tell. "That one's famous." Ahead of us the road leaped forward like a road in an old black-and-white movie.

"Yeah it is, fucking famous. So the kid's looking for a car and he sees an almost brand-new Cadillac on this guy's lawn."

"I said I-"