“I figger,” Brother Jesse whispered, “that we should keep shut about last night. Word would just get around that we were alkies.” He pulled himself together, arranged his face like a horse trying to grin, and walked toward the Roadmaster.
Mike Tarbush was a man in mourning. He sat on the fat trunk of that Buick and gazed off toward the mountains. Mike wore extra large of everything, and still looked stout. He sported a thick red mustache to make up for his bald bead. From time to time he bragged about his criminal record, which amounted to three days in jail for assaulting a pool table. He threw it through a bar window.
Now his mustache drooped, and Mike seemed small inside his clothes. The hood of the Roadmaster gaped open. Under that hood things couldn’t be worse. The poor thing had thrown a rod into the next county.
Jesse looked under the hood and tsked. “I know what you’re going through,” he said to Mike. He kind of petted the Roadmaster. “I always figured Betty Lou would last a century. What happened?”
There’s no call to tell about a grown man blubbering, and especially not one who can heave pool tables. Mike finally got straight enough to tell the story.
“We was chasing The Dog,” he said. “At least I think so. Three nights ago over to Kalispell. This Golden Hawk blew past me sittin’.” Mike watched the distant mountains like he’d seen a miracle, or else like he was expecting one to happen. “That sonovabitch shore can drive,” he whispered in disbelief. “Blown out by a damn Studebaker.”
“But a very swift Studebaker,” Matt Simons said. Matt is as small as Mike is large, and Matt is educated. Even so, he’s set his share of fence posts. He looks like an algebra teacher, but not as delicate.
“Betty Lou went on up past her flat spot,” Mike whispered. “She was tryin’. We had ninety on the clock, and The Dog left us sitting.” He patted the Roadmaster. “I reckon she died of a broken heart.”
“We got three kinds of funerals,” Jesse said, and he was sympathetic. “We got the no-frills type, the regular type, and the extra special. The extra special comes with flowers.” He said it with a straight face, and Mike took it that way. He bought the extra special, and that was sixty-five dollars.
Mike put up a nice marker:
Brother Jesse worked on the Lincoln until the front end tracked rock solid. He named it Sue Ellen, but not Miss Sue Ellen, there being no way to know if Miss Molly was jealous. When we examined Miss Molly’s grave, the soil seemed rumpled. Wildflowers, which Jesse sowed on the grave, bloomed in midsummer. I couldn’t get it out of my head that Miss Molly was still alive, and maybe Jesse couldn’t either.
Jesse explained about the Lincoln’s name. “Sue Ellen is a lady I knew in Pocatello. I expect she misses me.” He said it hopeful, like he didn’t really believe it.
It looked to me like Jesse was brooding. Night usually found him in town, but sometimes he disappeared. When he was around, he drove real calm and always got home before midnight. The wildness hadn’t come out of Jesse, but he had it on a tight rein. He claimed he dreamed of Miss Molly. Jesse was working something out.
And so was I, awake or dreaming. Thoughts of The Road Dog filled my nights, and so did thoughts of the dancing ghost. As summer deepened, restlessness took me wailing under moonlight. The road unreeled before my headlights like a magic line that pointed to places under a warm sun where ladies laughed and fell in love. Something went wrong, though. During that summer the ladies stopped being dreams and became only imagination. When I told Jesse, he claimed I was just growing up. I wished for once Jesse was wrong. I wished for a lot of things, and one of the wishes came true. It was Mike Tarbush, not me, who got in the next tangle with Miss Molly.
Mike rode in from Billings, where he’d been car shopping. He showed up at Jesse’s place on Sunday afternoon. Montana lay restful. Birds hunkered on wires, or called from high grass. Highway 2 ran watery with sunlight, deserted as a road ever could be. When Mike rolled a ’56 Merc up beside the Linc, it looked like Old Home Week at a Ford dealership.
“I got to look at something,” Mike said when be climbed from the Mercury. He sort of plodded over to Miss Molly’s grave and hovered. Light breezes blew the wildflowers sideways. Mike looked like a bear trying to shake confusion from its head. He walked to the Roadmaster’s grave. New grass sprouted reddish green. “I was sober,” Mike said. “Most Saturday nights, maybe I ain’t, but I was sober as a deputy.”
For a while nobody said anything. Potato sat glowing and white and thoughtful. Chip slept in the sun beside one of the tabbies. Then Chip woke up. He turned around three times and dashed to hide under the bulldozer.
“Now, tell me I ain’t crazy,” Mike said. He perched on the front fender of the Merc, which was blue and white and adventuresome. “Name of Judith,” he said about the Merc. “A real lady.” He swabbed sweat from his bald head. “I got blown out by Betty Lou and Miss Molly. That sound reasonable?” He swabbed some more sweat and looked at the graves, which looked like little speed bumps on the prairie. “Nope,” be answered himself, “that don’t sound reasonable a-tall.”
“Something’s wrong with your Mercury,” Jesse said, real quiet. “You got a bad tire, or a hydraulic line about to blow, or something screwy in the steering.”
He made Mike swear not to breathe a word. Then he told about Miss Molly and about the front end of the Lincoln. When the story got over, Mike looked like a halfback hit by a twelve-man line.
“Don’t drive another inch,” Jesse said. “Not until we find what’s wrong.”
“That car already cracked a hundred,” Mike whispered. “I bought it special to chase one sumbitch in a Studebaker.” He looked toward Betty Lou’s grave. “The Dog did that.”
The three of us went through that Merc like men panning gold. The trouble was so obvious we missed it for two hours while the engine cooled. Then Jesse caught it. The fuel filter rubbed its underside against the valve cover. When Jesse touched it, the filter collapsed. Gasoline spilled on the engine and the spark plugs. That Merc was getting set to catch on fire.
“I got to wonder if The Dog did it,” Jesse said about Betty Lou after Mike drove away. “I wonder if The Road Dog is the Studebaker type.”
Nights started to get serious, but any lonesomeness on that road was only in a man’s head. As summer stretched past its longest days, and sunsets started earlier, ghosts rose beside crosses before daylight hardly left the land. We drove to work and back, drove to town and back. My job was steady at a filling station, but it asked day after day of the same old thing. We never did any serious wrenching; no engine rebuilds or transmissions, just tune-ups and flat tires. I dearly wanted to meet a nice lady, but no woman in her right mind would mess with a pump jockey.
Nights were different, though. I figured I was going crazy, and Jesse and Mike were worse. Jesse finally got his situation worked out. He claimed Miss Molly was protecting him. Jesse and Mike took the Linc and the Merc on long runs, just wringing the howl out of those cars. Some nights, they’d flash past me at speed no sane man would try in darkness. Jesse was never a real big drinker, and Mike stopped altogether. They were too busy playing road games. It got so the state cop never tried to chase them. He just dropped past Jesse’s place next day and passed out tickets.
The dancing ghost danced in my dreams, both asleep and driving. When daylight left the land, I passed metal crosses and remembered some of the wrecks.