Reave waited until the tide of poetry had stopped.
‘What’s a wheelfreak?’
Jetstream Willie looked shocked.
‘You asking what a wheelfreak is? You don’t know nothing. You’re looking at one. Us wheelfreaks are the lords of creation. We’re the boys who ride these rigs, we’re the only ones who got the balls. We haul them from Graveyard clear down to no man’s land.’
‘What do you carry in these trucks?’
‘Carry? We don’t carry nothing. Ain’t nothing in the back of here ‘cept one ol’ big generator. How else do you think we keep this road together, wouldn’t stop turning into nothing for an hour if we weren’t gunning these ol’ boys up and down.’
He fumbled in the pocket of his leather jacket and produced a green plastic box, and popped a little white pill into his mouth.
‘Yes sir, there wouldn’t be no road or nothing if it wasn’t for us, I can tell you.’
He offered the box to Reave and Billy.
‘Have a benny.’
Each of them dutifully took a pill and settled back in his seat. They didn’t want to ask any more fool questions, and risk upsetting a lord of creation.
Another truck flashed past in the opposite lane, going in the other direction. Briefly, as it passed, all its lights came on, and it shone like a Christmas tree. Jetstream Willie hit buttons on the dash, and his own lights came on in reply.
‘That’s Long Sam. He’s a good ol’ boy.’
Jetstream Willie cut the lights, and pointed to a set of sockets on the dash panel.
‘If you want to recharge them portables of yours, you could try plugging them in there, takes power from the engine.’
Reave and Billy unclipped the pacs from their belts and did as he indicated. Willie seemed to have lost interest in them because he now stared straight in front of him, and sang along with the music. It consisted of the same song, over and over again.
After an hour of this, by the dash panel clock, he swung the truck on to a slip road. Without apparently slackening speed, he jockeyed the truck up a steep ramp and out on to a huge expanse of flat, smooth, concrete. He cut the engine and let it roll to a stop at the end of a line of about a dozen other huge baroque vehicles. They were of the same general shape and massive size, but each was unique in its elaborate design and paintwork.
Jetstream Willie caught them staring at a vast gold monster with black trim and enormous balloon tyres.
‘That’s Dirty Marv’s, sure is a fine-looking machine, but it’s all show and no go. I can shut him down with a ten minute head start before he’s even hit the quarter line.’
They unplugged the porta-pacs, gathered up their bags and swung down from the cab. The truck still seemed to hum slightly, and Reave looked at it curiously. Jetstream Willie provided the answer.
‘Always leave the generator on, all helps to keep things straight.’
At first sight Graveyard looked like one huge parking lot surrounded by buildings, and that, in fact, was what it was. Far over on one side was a row of trailers, with smoke curling up from chimneys and lines of washing hanging out to dry. They were dwarfed by the odd truck that was parked among them. On the other side of the lot, right by where Jetstream Willie had parked, was an immensely long single-storey building made of glass and chrome that stretched for a whole side of the roughly square lot. On its flat roof was mounted a huge replica of an ice-cream soda, which rose into the air for sixty or seventy feet. The cherry on the top was illuminated from inside, and it flashed on and off like a beacon. Flashing in time with the cherry was a red and yellow neon sign that occupied most of the rest of the roof, and spelled out the words Vito’s Cozy Drop-In in twelve-foot letters. It was towards this structure that Jetstream Willie led. As they pushed through the revolving glass door, Willie looked at them warmly.
‘You better keep yourselves to yourselves in here, some of the boys might not take too kindly to the way you look.’
The Cozy Drop-In was decorated in black and orange plastic. There were lines and lines of tables and seats. A bunch of men, all with similar suits and cropped haircuts to Willie’s, queued at a long counter waiting to be served by a team of blonde girls with jutting breasts and short yellow tunics. Willie pointed at a table away over in the corner.
‘You best go and sit yourselves down there, and I’ll bring you something over.’
Reave and Billy did as they were told, while Jetstream Willie joined the other men in a flurry of back slapping and hee-haw laughter. Like their trucks, the wheelfreaks’ suits were all basically similar, but each one had its own colour and design.
While they waited for Willie to come back, Billy and Reave looked cautiously round the room. One end of it was dominated by a vast juke box, as tall as a man and maybe eight feet across. Coloured lights kept changing the patterns of reflections on its elaborate chrome face and it seemed to be playing the same ‘Ring of Fire’ record that Willie had had in the truck. Another wall was filled by a row of pinball machines, but again they were much larger than anything that Billy and Reave had ever seen. Instead of standing in front of it, the player sat in a kind of pilot’s chair that had complex flipper controls set in the arms.
Jetstream Willie came back with a tray of coffee and donuts. He banged them down on the orange plastic top of the table.
‘Here you go, get some of that down you.’
He jerked his thumb towards the waitress who had served him.
‘There’s a hot little number. Sure like to crawl into her jeans.’
He winked and pushed a hand into the leg pocket of his suit.
‘Might as well put a kick into this here coffee.’
He produced a bottle wrapped in brown paper. Reave looked at it curiously.
‘What’s that?’
Willie grinned and touched the side of his nose with his index finger.
‘Good ol’ crank-case gin. Put hairs on your chest.’
He topped up each coffee cup, and Reave and Billy both took a tentative sip. They coughed as the raw spirit hit their throats.
‘Strong stuff that.’
Jetstream Willie winked.
‘Sure is.’
He gulped down his coffee in one, took a bite at a donut, and then a hit from the bottle.
‘Listen, boys, can’t hang round here all day. Got my little woman waiting there at home.’
He stood up.
‘See you both later.’
‘Yeah, thanks for the lift.’
‘That’s okay, see you all.’
They watched him walk away. It was strangely sad, somewhere beneath the wheelfreaks’ frenetic confidence there seemed to be something doomed. Billy and Reave looked at each other, and there was a long silence. Then Reave let out his breath.
‘So what do we do now?’
Billy shrugged.
‘Hang round Graveyard and see what turns up. I don’t have any ideas.’
As it happened, something turned up before they’d even finished their coffee.
A huge fat man in a scarlet leather suit with blue and white stars and the words Charlie Mountain in white across the back, sauntered over and placed a heavy boot on the seat beside Reave.
‘You the boys that came in with Jetstream Willie?’
They both nodded.
‘Yeah, what of it?’
Charlie Mountain put two huge hands on the table and leaned forward threateningly.
‘It’s lucky that you came in with Willie, else we’d be doing something about you right now. As it is, I wouldn’t stay too long if I was you. You don’t fit in around here, we don’t need your kind in Graveyard. You know what I mean?’
Billy and Reave said nothing, and Charlie Mountain straightened up and strolled away. They looked round and saw that every eye in the place was on them. Reave leaned close to Billy.