Ashes

TIMING CHAINS OF THE HEART

Leather on leather, glove on shift ball, the faint smell of oil in the air. Wide-tread rubber clinging desperately to asphalt, a ton-and-a-half of steel-and-chrome stud machine that could grab and growl in five gears, not counting reverse. It was great to be alive.

J.D. Jolley peered at the strip of black ribbon that rolled out in front of his headlights. The ribbon disappeared into the larger strip of night. Night hid the rest of the world, and that was fine with J.D. The world was nothing but litter along the highway, as far as he was concerned.

He pumped the accelerator once, then again, steadily, listening to the thrush of exhaust. A lot of muscle drivers stomped, but J.D. never stomped. You had to treat a '69 Camaro like a lady. With tenderness, compassion, lots of foreplay if you wanted a smooth ride.

"You're purring like a kitten in a kettle tonight, Cammie," J.D. said, patting the dashboard. "Warm as a manifold cover and wet as a water pump. What say we get it on?"

The moon was out, weakly grinning down on his left shoulder through the clouds. No matter how far he drove, the moon never seemed to move. It was one of those things about the world that J.D. accepted without a second thought. Hell, that was up there in the sky, and the moon didn't have a damned inch of asphalt. Maybe if those pencil-necked engineers ever came up with solo rockets, he'd take another study of the heavens. But until then, the sky was nothing but wind resistance.

He hung his arm out the window. A good little back-breeze played against his elbow. Ought to add a couple of miles per hour. He was shooting for one-forty tonight.

This was his favorite stretch of road, a nice straight three miles of open country. The local cops never patrolled out here for the simple reason that the only traffic was farm tractors and cattle trucks and the occasional riding lawn mower. The few farmhouses in the area were back from the highway, buffered by wide green and brown fields lined with barbed wire. Nobody to bother but the big-eyed cows, and they were practically kneeling in awe.

J.D. pressed the clutch and slid the Camaro into first gear. He clenched his left hand on the steering wheel. A lot of muscle guys had those faggy vinyl wraps on their steering wheels, but J.D. liked the natural factory feel. Same way with his women.

The back seat practically needed reconditioning, he'd worked the shock absorbers so much. A '69 Camaro drew the babes. They couldn't resist the sleek curves and classic lines, not to mention the throbbing under the hood. True, it was a lower class of women, but hell, one was pretty much the same as another when their legs were splayed out the back window.

So women were allowed in his meat wagon. But not on his midnight runs. Those were reserved strictly for him and his Cammie, a bond that was far more sacred than any relationship of mere flesh. This love was truer than motherly and was right up there with religious love. This was a man and his car racing against themselves.

For that same reason, he never dragged in the Saturday night specials with the hot rodders. There was a brisk betting business going on in this two-factory Iowa town because there wasn't much else to get excited about if you didn't invest in hog futures. The local cops were under orders to steer clear of the four-lane east of town when the muscleheads fired up their engines. But solo riders like J.D. were cracked faster than a powder-dry engine block.

If they did blue-light him out here, he could easily outrun them. They had those little pussyfoot cruisers that whined if they even got within sniffing distance of triple digits. They were driving damned imports, made in Korea even if the label said American. Ought to be a law against that.

J.D. closed his eyes and gave the gas pedal a little boot leather. His bucket seat shivered and he shivered with it, even though it was April. He was joining with the car. The spoiler was his open and gasping mouth, the carburetor throat was sucking oxygen, his crankcase belly was growling, hungry for petroleum, and the tires itched like his moist toes. The muffler was backfiring brimstone.

He popped the clutch at the same moment he popped open his eyelids. The asphalt squealed in agony as he left a fifty-foot scar up its spine. He straddled the dotted white line as he power-shifted into second, leaving another mist of scalded rubber hanging in the air behind him. J.D. glanced at the tachometer, saw that he was at 7,000 RPM, and he booted into third. Cammie was already at sixty and they'd not yet begun to party.

This was better than sex. This was red-eyed adrenaline, a spark in the old plug, a rush that made the small hairs on the back of J.D.'s neck stand up and dance. Fence posts blurred past both quarter panels as the Camaro's grill chewed up moths and the slipstream set the sawgrass swaying along the ditches. The G-force pressed J.D. against the seat. An excited sweat gathered under his eyes and his tongue felt like a gasket between the valve covers of his teeth.

He squinted at the small fuzzy dot ahead where the headlights petered out, at the murky oblivion that was always his destination. He was getting there, he felt it in his bones, he glanced down and saw the needle tacking toward one-ten and his bowels had gone zero-gravity. He was reaching down to glide into fourth when he saw the pale shape, a small figure that grew large too soon, from nothing to five-feet-six in only three seconds, and J.D. barely had time to see the face in the sweep of headlights.

Later he would tell himself that there was no way he could have observed all that detail in a fraction of a second. It was his imagination that must have painted the portrait. Eyes like a spotlighted deer's, wide and brown, impossibly deep. Eyebrows frantically climbing the white slope of forehead. Mouth open, choking on a scream that could fill the Holland Tunnel.

It was a glancing blow. J.D. didn't remember doing it, but he must have nudged the wheel slightly and his virgin-tight rack-and-pinion responded instantly. Otherwise the Camaro would have bucked and rolled, tumbling through the shin-high corn and strewing vital organs and steaming spare parts across the stubbled fields. At over a hundred, mistakes got amplified. But in that overdriven moment, J.D. was more car than man, high octane in his blood as he manipulated the automobile back onto course.

His foot had instantly left the accelerator but he had resisted the impulse to lock down on the brakes. The braking instinct was natural, but the resulting fishtail would have had J.D. ending up with a drive shaft necktie. The muffler growled as he downshifted and when he reached sixty he began working the brake pedal. He pulled to the side of the road and felt his heart beating in time to the idling pistons.

"Damn, Cammie," he said, when at last he was able to take a breath. "That was a close one."

He left the engine running while he opened the door and stood up, disoriented from the abrupt change in motion. He walked to the front of the car and knelt at the right fender. There was a crumple in the panel and the headlight chrome was dented and hanging loose. He took off his glove and ran a gentle hand along the fender and a few chips of candy-apple red paint flaked onto the shoulder of the road. He saw a smudge on the bumper and wiped at it.

Blood.

He looked back up the highway, but under the veiled moon, he couldn't see anything on the pavement. J.D. got behind the wheel and shifted into reverse.

"I'm so sorry, Cammie," he whimpered. The closest thing he’d ever had to tears tried to collect in his eyes. "It was just an accident."

He held the horses in check as he backed up, keeping the revolutions steady. The crankshaft turned quietly in its pit of golden thirty-weight. He'd damaged her flesh, but he could take care with her heart. J.D. pushed the gas pedal gently as he cut a U-turn and drove up the road.

He killed the engine when he reached the body, but left his headlights on. The first exhalation of night fog swirled in the low beams as he loomed over the figure.

She was wearing a dress. The cotton was tattered, but it was a pretty dress, butterfly yellow, the kind that should have been easy to see at night. Her slim legs were sticking out below the hem at an obtuse angle, a scuffed sandal dangling from one big toe. The other foot was completely bare, a red sock of blood where the skin had peeled away.

Her arms were accordioned under her chest and she was face down. Her hair was brown, and the big curls fluttered in the breeze. A pool of crimson was spreading out from under her belly. She was leaking like a busted oil pan.

He touched her skin where the dress had slid down one creamy shoulder. This was a dairy girl, J.D. was positive. Must have crept out her window and met some little boy blue behind a haystack. Come blow your horn. She had no business being out on the road at that time of night.

He turned her over and wished he hadn't. That split-second portrait before the accident had been of a pleasant face, one with round cheekbones and plump ruby lips and strong nostrils. But this, this was like a bag of beef soup that had been dropped on the highway from a helicopter. This was roadkill.

"You shouldn'ta been out so late," J.D. whispered. "Now look what you gone and done to yourself."

He glanced at one white exposed breast that had managed to avoid visible harm. Then he let her roll forward again. Her bones rattled like lug nuts in a hubcap.

"Now what am I going to do with you?" he said, licking his lips. He looked both ways but there were no headlights in sight.

"Can't leave you out here, that's for sure. Might get yourself run over, and then where would you be?"

That, plus J.D. didn't want his ass behind bars for second degree murder. A few speeding tickets were one thing, but this deal meant some hard time. At state prison, a pretty boy like him would be up on the blocks in no time, and the grease monkeys wouldn't wait for every twenty thousand miles to give him a lube job, either.

He stood up and looked around. He could slide her into the ditch, but that would be leaving things up to luck. She might be found before morning if some gap-toothed farmer came out early to get a fresh squeeze of swollen udder. And who knew what the forensics boys would come up with? He thought of the paint flakes up the road. They could look into those little microscopes and say whatever they wanted to, and the cops had been after him for years.

"Nope. Can't leave you here."

He walked behind the Camaro and unlocked the trunk. He unrolled a tarp that was stowed in one corner. He didn't want to mess up his trunk carpet. He took off his leather jacket and tossed it on the passenger seat, but he kept his gloves on.

The night smelled of cow manure and car exhaust and sweet, coppery body fluids. Cammie's engine ticked as it cooled. He patted her on the hood as he went past. Then he stooped and lifted the broken body.

It hung like a rag doll, with too many universal joints in the arms and legs. It was light, too, as if all its gears and cogs had slipped out. He put her in the trunk, hearing the largest chunk of her skull ding off the wheel well. He walked up the road until he found the other sandal, then he tossed it in and closed the trunk.

He drove back to town without breaking fifty-five. It was raining by the time he hit the outskirts.

Mama must not have heard him come in. She was already gone when he woke up, down checking side stitches on boxer shorts for five-and-a-quarter plus production. He was glad he'd slept through her coffee and butter toast. That made another half-dozen hundred questions she'd never get around to bugging him with.

He winced when he saw Cammie in daylight. There was a dimple on top of the fender and the chrome striping was peeling away from the side panel, damage he hadn't noticed the night before. He drove down to the shop and pulled into the middle bay.

Floyd was smoking a cigarette and wiping his hands on a greasy orange rag. Floyd owned the shop, and liked to let everyone know it. He glowered at J.D. with oil-drop eyes.

"Yo, Jayce," he said. "What you doing here so early?"

"Got a ding on the shoulder. Need you to hammer it out."

"Had you a little bender, did you? Demolition derby with a mailbox?"

Floyd snickered and then started coughing. He pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and spat a wad of phlegm onto the greasy concrete floor.

"Just get me a rubber mallet, wouldja?"

"Sure, I'll help. Thanks for asking," Floyd said.

"You don't have to be a smart-ass."

"And you don't have to work here if you don't want to."

Floyd could be a real pain in the plug hole. But he was a body-work pro. He'd worked the pits for Bobby Allison about twenty years back. When he got down to business, he was an artist, and steel and fiberglass and primer were his media.

And J.D. could tell Floyd loved Cammie almost as much as he did. They pounded out the dents and replaced the headlight frame and put on the primer coat before they started taking care of the customers’ cars. Then at lunch, Floyd feathered out a coat of red so that it blended with the color of the rest of the car's body.

J.D. was up to his elbows in an automatic transmission when he saw Floyd put down his airbrush and step back to admire his work.

"That's gooder than snuff," he proclaimed. J.D. nodded in appreciation. The quarter panel didn't have so much as a shadow in it.

"Preesh, Floyd. Nobody can fix them like you do," J.D. said.

"Nope. Throw me your keys, Jayce. I need to change my plugs, and I left my good ratchet in your trunk yesterday."

"Hey, buddy. After all you've done for me? You got to be kidding. Let me do it."

Floyd frowned around the black fingerprints on his cigarette butt. Floyd didn't like other people tinkering under the hood of his '57 Chevy. But J.D. moved quickly, before Floyd could say no.

J.D. popped the trunk and there she was, Miss American Pie. Mincemeat pie. The blood had clotted and dried and she was starting to smell a little. Her left arm was draped over the toolbox. As he moved it away, he noticed that it had stiffened a little from rigor mortis.

He clattered around in the toolbox and found the ratchet. He was about to slam the lid when he saw that her eyes were open. Damned things weren't open last night, he was positive. Her eyes didn't sparkle at all. They were staring at him.

"What's the matter, J.D.?"

J.D. gulped and slammed the trunk. "Nothing," he said, holding up the ratchet. "Found it."

"Make sure you gap the damned things right. Don't want you screwing up my gas mileage."

"You got it, Floyd."

J.D. drove out to the trailer park after work to pick up Melanie, his Thursday girl. He thought he heard a noise in the rear end as he pulled into the gravel driveway. Transfer case was groaning a little. He'd have to check it out later. He honked his horn and the trailer door opened.

Melanie slid in the passenger side and J.D. watched her rear settle into the bucket seat. She smiled at him. She was a big-boned redhead with lots of freckles, but her aqua eye shadow was so thick it quivered when she blinked.

"What you want to do, J.D.?"

He looked out the window. In the next yard, two brats were playing with a broken Easy-Bake oven. "Ride around, I reckon."

"Ride around? That's all you ever want to do."

"What else is there to do? Would you rather sit around the trailer park with your thumb up your ass?"

Melanie pouted. She was a first-class pouter. J.D. had told her that her lip drooped so low you could drive up on it and swap out your oil filter.

"Okay," she said after a moment. "Let's go circle the burger joint."

That wasn't a bad idea. Everybody hung out at the burger joint, the muscleheads and the dope peddlers and the zombie teens. And that meant everybody would see that the Camaro was unscratched. J.D. didn't have a damn thing to hide.

Later, after they'd split two burgers and a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, J.D. had driven out to their favorite dirt back road. The sun was just going down by the time he'd sweet-talked Melanie into the back seat. He was wrestling with her double-hook D-cup when she suddenly tensed underneath him.

"Joo hear that?" she whispered. J.D. heard only crickets and the slight squeaking of leaf springs.

"Hear what?"

"A scratching, like. On metal."

J.D. looked up. He always parked away from the trees out on these country roads. Damned branches would claw the hell out of a custom paint job. He saw nothing but the gangly shadows of the far underbrush.

"I don't hear nothing, babe. Now, where were we?"

"There it went again. Sounds like it's coming from the trunk."

"Bullshit."

"Sounds like a squirrel running around in there."

J.D. strained his ears. He heard the faint rattle of tools. Then, fingernails on metal.

He sat up suddenly.

"What the hell, J.D.?"

"Nothing. Better get you back to town, is all."

Melanie whimpered. She was as good at whimpering as she was at pouting.

"But J.D., I thought-"

"Not tonight, I got… work to do."

She whined all the way back into town, but J.D. didn't hear her. All he could hear were the low moans coming from the trunk and the sound of fists banging like rubber mallets off the trunk lid.

After J.D. dropped off Melanie, he pulled out behind Floyd's garage and looked around the auto graveyard. Here was where Detroit's mistakes came to die. Pontiacs draped over Plymouths while Chryslers sagged on cinder blocks. A school bus slept in its bed of briars. A couple of Studebakers decayed beside the high wooden fence, and a dozen junk jeeps were lined in rows like dead soldiers awaiting body bags. The few unbroken headlights were like watching eyes, but they would be the only witnesses.

Back here, Miss American Mincemeat Pie could rust in peace.

He stepped out among the bones of cars, gang-raped engines, and jagged chassis. The moon was glaring down, all of last night's clouds now long-hauled to the east. J.D. gripped the trunk key between his sweaty fingers.

"Open it, J.D.," said the voice. It was a young, hollow voice, with the kind of drawn-out accent a country girl might have. The long syllables reverberated inside the tin can of the trunk space.

J.D. looked around the junkyard.

"Stick it in, muscleboy," the voice taunted. "You know you want to."

He unlatched the trunk and it opened with a rush of foul air.

She sat up and arched her back.

"Cramped in here," she said. The moon shone fully on her, like a spotlight. The raw flesh of her face was tinged green, and her eyes were ringed with black. She reached up to smooth her hair and her arm hung like a broken clutch-spring.

"You… y-you're dead." But that was dumb. He knew machines didn't die, they only got rebuilt.

"Now, do I look dead?"

J.D. didn't know what to say. It wasn't the kind of thing he could look up in the troubleshooting section of his owner's manual.

"Still got a few miles left on me," she said, tugging at the strap of her dress that had slipped too low over her mottled chest. Her eyes were wide but as dull as Volkswagen hubcaps. "Besides, all I need is a little body work and I'll be good as new."

"What's the big idea, screwing up my date like that?" J.D. angled his head so he could look at her out of the corners of his eyes.

"Your cheating days are over, rough rider. You've only got room in your heart for one girl now."

"Whatchoo talking about? And why did you dump over my toolbox?" J.D. couldn’t be sure, but it looked like radiator fluid was leaking from her eyes.

"A lady's always in search of that one good tool. What say we get it on?"

"No. I'm going to stuff you behind the seat of that Suburban over there, and you're going to stay until you're both a collector's item."

"J.D., is that any way to treat a lady?"

"Well, you ought to be glad I think enough of you to leave you in a Chevy. There's plenty of Datsuns out here."

She shook her head, and tattered meat swung below her face. "I don't think so, muscleboy."

Her finger flexed like a carb linkage as she beckoned him closer.

J.D. couldn't help himself. He was as captivated as he'd been by his first Hot Rod magazine. She smelled of gasoline and grave dirt, hot grease and raw sex. She'd oozed out all over the spare tire. He'd never get his trunk clean.

"I think we're ready for a midnight run." She slid her mangled tongue over her teeth.

He leaned over the back bumper. He felt a cold limp hand slide behind his Mark Martin belt buckle. She put the mashed blackberries of her lips to his ear.

"And from now on, I ride up front," she whispered, and her words came out with no breath.

Three months, and J.D. was dragging.

The summer heat was wearing on him, and he'd lost twenty of his hundred-and-forty pounds. But it was even worse for her. She had gone from pink to green to gray and still the meat clung stubbornly to her bones.

He hid her during the day, in a self-storage garage he rented. Floyd had given him hell at first, asking him why he walked all the time these days, was he afraid of putting another dent in Cammie or what. But lately Floyd had quit the ribbing. This morning Floyd said J.D. looked like he'd been run all night by the hounds of hell.

"Something like that," J.D. wanted to say, but he'd promised to keep the affair a secret.

And that evening, as he'd done every night since he'd picked up his new passenger, he carried a five-gallon can of gas to the garage and filled up the Camaro.

And when the sun slid behind the flat Midwestern horizon and midnight raised its oil-soaked rags, he backed the car out and pointed it toward the street.

"Where to tonight, Cammie?" he asked, as if he had to ask.

She grinned at him. She was always grinning, now that her face was mostly skull. "The usual, muscleboy."

He drove out to that three-mile stretch of open black road and idled. Oblivion beckoned beyond the yellow cones of the headlights.

"One-sixty-five tonight," she said.

He gulped and nodded. One-sixty-five. He could do it. Probably.

Not that he had any choice. He could damage her flesh, but couldn't break the timing chains of love.

"Okay, Cammie," he said to her.

As J.D. stomped the accelerator and jerked his foot off the clutch, he wondered if this would be the night of consummation. Would she let him release the steering wheel as he wound into fifth gear, making them truly one, all blood and twisted metal and spare parts?

He glanced at her. There was no sign of requited love in the dim holes of her skull. She was as cold as a machine, unforgiving, more metal than bone, more petroleum than blood.

She was going to ride shotgun forever, as the odometer racked up miles and miles of endless highway.

If only he could please her. But he was afraid that he was nothing to her, just a vapor in the combustion chambers of her heart.

He shifted into fourth.