100 Malicious Little Mysteries

The Chicken Player by Joe L. Hensley

Jamie pulled the dusty, black T-bird onto the shoulder of the road he’d been cruising and sat there waiting. The radio was off because on a still day he could hear a car from further away than he could see it.

In that hour of cruising he’d checked the road carefully. It wasn’t in top condition, but it was all right, better than many he’d played the game on, and it had the advantage of sparse traffic, perhaps too sparse. The only other car he’d seen during that hour of driving was an old Chevy, worn out, down at the springs, driven by a man with white hair. Not very good prey, but a possible. The old man had driven by without a glance, moving very slowly. Jamie was still debating with himself whether to follow when he’d seen a child’s curious face appear in the rear window of the old car.

That had ruined it. He was superstitious about kids and there’d been enough bad luck recently. Thursday, he’d almost been arrested by a State Trooper, but had managed to outrun him. Friday, the transmission had gone out of the T-bird and he’d been dismounted the whole weekend. Now, deep inside, he felt he’d about worn out this part of the country and it was time to move on. People were starting to look familiar to him, remind him of people he’d known before in other places and at other times. It was kooky how so many faces reminded him of Mr. Kelly. Mr. Kelly was thousands of miles away, back in New York State. Mr. Kelly was five years before in time.

Jamie remembered with narcissistic nostalgia that he’d been an amateur then, just learning the game. Then it had been a game of half-grown kids, played on deserted roads, with sentries out to warn if police came near. The Chicken Game. God, it had grabbed him even then.

The run at Mr. Kelly’s car had been a lark, an impulse, a broadening of the game to include the world around Jamie. He’d have gotten away if he hadn’t blown a tire at the critical moment. That had thrown him into the Kelly car when he thought himself safely past and it had jumbled his hopped up Ford into a junk pile, but he’d scrambled out unhurt.

He would not have thought that a kid could scream as much or as long as the Kelly boy had. Mr. Kelly had been thrown clear and he was unconscious, so only Jamie had to listen to the screams from the burning Kelly car. He had listened and felt strange inside and when the screams stopped he’d giggled a little.

After awhile there’d been lots of police and questions.

“I lost control,” he told them. “The tire blew and I lost control.” He repeated it and repeated it, and stubbornness and the good lawyer his Aunt hired made the difference. The jury turned him loose.

Only Mr. Kelly knew. Jamie remembered the eyes that had burned right through him during the trial.

When it was done and Jamie was free, he moved on. It was an act of protection, not fear. By that time he’d played again and again and without the game there was nothing. No angry, vengeful man was going to take the game away.

So now he was twenty-three years old and he’d been playing the game for a long time. It was now a professional thing, done carefully, accomplished at rare, safe intervals when the desire became overpowering. The game was more than anything else, more than the sum total of all the rest. It was more than love, greater than sex, better than drugs, and stronger than the fear of death.

Sometimes when Jamie was around other people who were his age, he could have screamed. The talk was mundane, the pleasures crude, and there was an eternal sameness to each scene. Sometimes he was sure that the only time he was really alive was when he was behind the wheel of the T-bird, alone, hunting. The rest of it was just the scene, all papery and fragile.

The game was simple, but there were rules. The other car was the mark. You passed it and accelerated away, making sure the highway was clear. A mile or so ahead you turned and came back at the mark, twisting right lane to left lane until the mark saw you. Then you took his lane, going straight for him, foot deep in the accelerator, forcing the mark to turn away, to chicken.

The rest of the game was of his own variation. When the mark turned away, Jamie followed, while the brutal, delicious fear rose within him.

Sometimes other drivers froze and stopped dead in the road, and that filled Jamie with contempt. More often they came on erratically until he forced them from the road. Two months back, he’d run a lone, male driver down a steep hill and seen him roll, metal shrieking, against rocks and trees until all sound stopped. That had been a very good one.

The game took nerve and a sure knowledge of the condition of the highway and an instinctive feel for what a car would do, but the shuddery exultation was worth all of it.

He’d not played the game for two weeks now and the last time had been a washout. He leaned back in the T-bird’s bucket seat and thought and let the heat of anticipation wash over him. Vaguely he remembered his mother and father. They’d died when he was ten years old. It had been an accident on the Turnpike. A truck had smashed their car to nothingness. In a way he was a child of speed. The insurance had made him nearly rich and he lived frugally now, except for cars. An indulgent, adoring Aunt had raised him, given him his first car, protected him first from angry neighbors and, later, the police.

A sound brought him back to awareness. He heard a faraway motor, and then he saw the tiny, fast-moving car in his rear-view mirror. He started the T-bird and listened to the sweet motor, the best that money could buy. He fastened his seat belt. Once he would have snarled at the idea of wearing a seat belt, but now the game was so precious that he took no chances and the belt held him firmly as he twisted back and forth.

He waited the other car out and it came past, moving fast, on the borderline of speeding. He caught a furtive glimpse of a lone, male driver who sat stiffly upright, appearing to be almost drawn back against the seat.

He gunned the T-bird out behind and passed the other car and was elated when it speeded up as he went around it. He could almost envision the other driver cursing him as he cut in sharply and pressed the accelerator down. There was no riding passenger in the other car. There was only the driver.

A perfect mark. Oh, Heat that lives within me: Make this one of the good ones.

Jamie made his turn when the distance was right. There was no car behind the mark and nothing in his own rear-view mirror. The heat began to build.

He let the engine wind up until the speedometer read ninety, and he eased, right lane, then left lane.

He saw dust puff from the rear tires of the other car and something inside him screamed: No! Don’t quit on me! The other car came on and Jamie smiled.

At three hundred feet away he slid the T-bird into the left lane, dead at the other car, anticipating what would happen. The other driver would panic now, move out of the path of Jamie’s hurtling car. Then the variation. Jamie would follow, forcing the other driver away from the traveled road, onto the tricky shoulder.

At this moment Jamie liked to see the oncoming driver’s face. He lifted his eyes, and the face he saw seemed vaguely familiar and smiling, but that was impossible. Savagely, with hate, Jamie floorboarded the T-bird.

At fifty feet the other car cut sharply left and Jamie corrected happily, for this was as anticipated, but then the other car cut right again and there was no time to recover. The T-bird was caught slightly broadside. Jamie heard the thunder of the crash and fought the wheel and got the T-bird straightened as his wheels bounced on the shoulder, but one of the wheels hit a rut and he felt the T-bird going. He bent desperately into the seat, felt the top hit on the parched ground, heard the renewed tearing of metal and then it was a roll that seemed endless. The door came away beside him, but the belt held him firmly until all of the crazy, loud motion stopped and there was silence. Jamie reached then very quickly for the ignition, smelling the gasoline smell, breathing as hard as if he’d run a mile.

He could see the other car out of his starred windshield. Its right front end was smashed. The driver had the door open and he was unhooking a complicated safety harness that ran from a roll bar in the car over his shoulders and waist. It was the harness that had given him the stiff look, Jamie calculated.

Jamie unhooked his own seat belt, but the steering wheel was still in the way and his left leg was caught somewhere. He felt the beginning of pain, and the warmth of blood running down his injured leg brought a leaping panic.

“Help,” he called.

The other man came slowly up to the jumbled T-bird.

“Hello, Jamie.”

“I remember you,” Jamie said incredulously. “You’re Mr. Kelly.”

“Can you make it out?” Mr. Kelly asked.

Jamie shook his head. “It’s my leg.”

Mr. Kelly’s eyes sparkled.

Jamie looked at the other man, unable to read him, fighting away fear. “You like the game?”

Mr. Kelly smiled. “Enough to learn to play it. I trained in sports cars and drove dirt track for awhile after my boy died and before I came after you.”

“Maybe...”

Mr. Kelly held up his hand. “If they put you away you’d be back.” He nodded. “There isn’t any way to break you, Jamie.”

“We could play again,” Jamie said. “I’ve never had anyone before who could really play.” He searched within. “It was better than it’s ever been.” And it had been.

“Not ever again, Jamie,” Mr. Kelly said gently.

The fear came up in waves. “If you do anything they’ll find out somehow. You prosecuted me once. They’ll catch you.”

“Not about us,” Mr. Kelly said. “You’ve changed your name too many times.”

Jamie laughed and the fear went away and he was exultant with triumph. “My fingerprints haven’t changed. They took them then. They’ll take them again. They’ll use them and find out.”

Mr. Kelly smiled a curious smile and sniffed at the gasoline fumes.

“I thought about that, too.”

He lit a match.

When the screaming was all over, Mr. Kelly giggled.