Drive

Chapter Twenty

Doc threw sponges, swabs, syringes and gloves into a plastic bucket produced to fit against floorboards and serve as a wastebasket for cars. Hey, he lived in a garage, right? Lived on an island, he’d use coconut shells. No problem.

“That’s it,” he said. “Stitches are out, the wound looks good.”

Bad news was that his patient wasn’t going to have a whole lot of feeling in that arm from now on.

Good news was, he had full mobility.

Driver handed over a wad of bills secured with a rubber band.

“Here’s what I figure I owe you. That’s not enough-”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Not the first time you stapled my ass back together, after all.”

“1950 Ford, wasn’t it?”

“Like the one Mitchum drove in Thunder Road, yeah.”

That was really a ’51-you could tell by the V-8 emblems, Ford Custom on front fenders, dashboard and steering wheel-but chrome windsplits had been removed and a ’50 grille added. Close enough.

“You crashed into the supports of the freeway approach that had just gone up.”

“Forgot it was there. It hadn’t been, the last few times I made that run.”

“Perfectly understandable.”

“Something wonky about the car, too.”

“Might cause a man to take caution who he steals a car from.”

“Borrows a car from. I was going to take it back… Seriously, Doc: You had my back then and you have it now. Appreciate the heads-up on Guzman. I saw the news. All three of them went down at the scene.”

“Figures. He was basically your purest brand of trouble.”

“Not many that’d crew up with a one-armed driver. I was desperate, I’d have taken on just about anything at that point. You knew that.”

But Doc had drifted off into his own world, as he did sometimes, and made no response.

Miss Dickinson rushed up, front legs stiff and hitting ground together, then the back, like a rocking horse, as Driver was leaving. Doc had told him about her. He let her in and closed the door. Last he saw, she was sitting quietly at Doc’s feet, waiting.

Doc was thinking about a story he’d read by Theodore Sturgeon. This guy, not playing with a full deck, lives in a garage apartment like his. He’s brutish, elemental; much of life escapes him. But he can fix anything. One day he finds a woman in the street. She’s been beaten, all but killed. He takes her back to the apartment and-Sturgeon goes into great detail about provisions for blood drainage, makeshift surgical instruments, the moment-to-moment practicalities-repairs her.

What was it called?

“Bright Segment”-that’s it.

If in our lives we have one or two of those, one or two bright segments, Doc thought, we’re fortunate. Most don’t.

And the rest wasn’t silence, like that opera, I Pagliacci, said.

The rest was just noise.