Riding The Bullet

His hand stole out, the skin yellow in the light of the Mustang's dashboard lights, the nails filthy, and gripped my locked hands. The strength went out of them when he did and they fell apart like a knot that magically unties itself at the touch of the magician's wand. His skin was cold and somehow snaky.

"Didn't you?"

"Yes," I said. I couldn't get my voice much above a whisper. "When we got close and I saw how high it was . . . how it turned over at the top and how they screamed inside when it did . . . I chickened out. She swatted me, and she wouldn't talk to me all the way home. I never rode the Bullet." Until now, at least. "You should have, man. That's the best one. That's the one to ride. Nothin else is as good, at least not there. I stopped on the way home and got some beers at that store by the state line. I was gonna stop over my girlfriend's house, give her the button as a joke." He tapped the button on his chest, then unrolled his window and flicked his cigarette out into the windy night. "Only you probably know what happened."

Of course I knew. It was every ghost story you'd

ever heard, wasn't it? He crashed his Mustang and

when the cops got there he'd been sitting dead in the

crumpled remains with his body behind the wheel

and his head in the backseat, his cap turned around

backwards and his dead eyes staring up at the roof,

and ever since you see him on Ridge Road when the

moon is full and the wind is high, wheee-oooo, we will return after this brief word from our sponsor. I know something now that I didn't before-the worst stories are the ones you've heard your whole life. Those are the real nightmares.

"Nothing like a funeral," he said, and laughed. "Isn't that what you said? You slipped there, Al. No doubt about it. Slipped, tripped, and fell." "Let me out," I whispered. "Please."

"Well," he said, turning toward me, "we have to talk about that, don't we? Do you know who I am, Alan?"

"You're a ghost," I said.

He gave an impatient little snort, and in the glow of the speedometer the corners of his mouth turned down. "Come on, man, you can do better than that. Fuckin Casper's a ghost. Do I float in the air? Can you see through me?" He held up one of his hands, opened and closed it in front of me. I could hear the dry, unlu-bricated sound of his tendons creaking.

I tried to say something. I don't know what, and it doesn't really matter, because nothing came out.

"I'm a kind of messenger," Staub said. "Fuckin

FedEx from beyond the grave, you like that? Guys like

me actually come out pretty often whenever the cir-cumstances

are just right. You know what I think? I

think that whoever runs things-God or whatever-

must like to be entertained. He always wants to see if

you'll keep what you already got or if he can talk you into goin for what's behind the curtain. Things have to be just right, though. Tonight they were. You out all by yourself . . . mother sick . . . needin a ride . . ." "If I'd stayed with the old man, none of this would have happened," I said. "Would it?" I could smell Staub clearly now, the needle-sharp smell of the chemicals and the duller, blunter stink of decaying meat, and wondered how I ever could have missed it, or mistaken it for something else.

"Hard to say," Staub replied. "Maybe this old man you're talking about was dead, too."

I thought of old man's shrill handful-of-glass voice, the snap of his truss. No, he hadn't been dead, and I had traded the smell of piss in his old Dodge for some-thing a lot worse.

"Anyway, man, we don't have time to talk about all that. Five more miles and we'll start seeing houses again. Seven more and we're at the Lewiston city line. Which means you have to decide now."

"Decide what?" Only I thought I knew.

"Who rides the Bullet and who stays on the ground. You or your mother." He turned and looked at me with his drowning moonlight eyes. He smiled more fully and I saw most of his teeth were gone, knocked out in the crash. He patted the steering wheel. "I'm taking one of you with m

e, man. And since you're here, you get to choose. What do you say?"

You can't be serious rose to my lips, but what would be the point of saying that, or anything like it? Of course he was serious. Dead serious.