“No no no no,” I say. Doesn’t the woman know you want to keep your wheels straight?
She jams it into reverse, guns it again, and the back tires just spin deeper.
“Cut your wheels!” I cry, meaning Don’t. So of course she does, except she can’t because we’re in so deep. “Rock have to rock.” Damn it, she has to rock the damn car, if it’ll even rock.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” she says.
“You car rocking!” I holler. She slams it back into drive, the wheels spin and she glares over at me.
I say, “Damn fuck.”
“Well, why don’t you try it then,” she says. Then she says, “I’m sorry, Lew, I didn’t mean that.” But the harm is done: I’m bawling like a big angry baby.
“Lew,” she says, “I’m so sorry. It’s truly my fault.” I entertain the thought that I’m weeping to punish her. Which may be so, but I can’t stop it now.
“Lew,” she says. “Now, listen to me a minute. Try and listen. Will you be all right to sit here while I go back up to the house?”
“Do what?” I say.
“I can’t understand you, dear.”
I try harder. “You what to you do?”
“I guess I’m going to try to raise somebody on the phone,” she says. “Maybe one of the boys from the Shell station would come up.”
I’ve got the blubbering stopped now. “Plane make the plane,” I say, meaning We’ll never.
“Well, Lew, I don’t know what else to do,” she says. “I’ll leave the motor running so you can have the heater.”
I don’t turn to watch her walking up the driveway for fear it’ll set me off again. I put the radio on, just in time to catch the end of some bouncy tune from way, way back. Can it have been “The Dipsy Doodle”? But then the announcer comes on to say the time is 10:08, and I turn it off. The last thing I need is to be hearing the time every two minutes. The dashboard clock says 10:07. I take a glove out of my pocket and drape it over the dashboard so that it blocks my view of the clock. I stare out the windshield at the road we should be on and listen to the motor humming away. We’ve been very satisfied with the Lumina.
An idling engine consumes a gallon of gasoline an hour. Or used to years ago. (It said so in the owner’s manual of some car we had, and it always stuck in my mind for some reason.) An hour. It would be a good hour before anybody got here, if they ran true to form. Oh, brother. Well, there’s not a thing you can do about it. I go back to the hum of the motor.
But wait now. Sunk in mud, motor running: couldn’t this clog the tailpipe, making carbon monoxide seep inside? Isn’t this what they do, trapped and Godless men going out to the garage with the hose from the vacuum? In fact, it’s beginning to seem to me that I’m starting to feel sleepy, that something’s woozy with my thoughts. You better reach over, turn the ignition key.
I let it run.
Before shutting my eyes I decide I’ll take a last look around at things. And when I turn my head I see somebody pulling up in front of the Paquettes’. I see them sit there a second, then pull out again, coming right at me. If it’s a car full of roughnecks I’m helpless out here. I spot Alice, but she’s far away, she’s on the doorstep, opening the door. They’re still coming. I stretch over with my good hand and blow the horn. But she’s already in the house. They’re halfway here, coming fast now. And now I see it’s something too high up off the ground to be a car. Oh, I’d rather the roughnecks than what’s going to happen now. It’s the mail lady in her moon vehicle. And we are saved.