He took a deep breath and sucked in pure fire. The flesh of his lungs seared and crackled and burst with thin hisses of steam. The last sound he heard was the screendoor opening on its keeperspring and then everything fell from him in a rush, Beth and the thousanddollar story and the midnight runs to Clifton and every detail of his life that had made him Buddy Wildman and no other. Years reeled backward in a dizzying rush and abruptly he was on the floor, a naked child crawling about the bubbling linoleum, hair ablaze and swaddled in fire, feeling about for his playthings amongst the painted flames.
WHERE WILL YOU GO WHEN YOUR SKIN CANNOT CONTAIN YOU?
THE JEEPSTER COULDN’T KEEP STILL. For forty-eight hours he’s been steady on the move and no place worked for long. He’d think of somewhere to be and go there and almost immediately suck the life from it, he could feel it charring around him. He felt he was on fire and running with upraised arms into a stiff cold wind but instead of cooling him the wind just fanned the flames. His last so-called friend had faded on him and demanded to be left by the roadside with his thumb in the air.
The Jeepster drove westward into a sun that had gone down the sky so fast it left a fiery wake like a comet. Light pooled above the horizon like blood and red light hammered off the hood of the SUV he was driving. He put on his sunglasses. In the failing day the light was falling almost horizontally and the highway glittered like some virtual highway in a fairy tale or nightmare.
His so-called friend had faded because The Jeepster was armed and dangerous. He was armed and dangerous and running on adrenaline and fury and grief and honed to such a fine edge that alcohol and drugs no longer affected him. Nothing worked on him. He had a pocket full of money and nine-millimeter automatic shoved into the waistband of his jeans and his T-shirt pulled down over it. He had his ticket punched for the graveyard or the penitentiary and one foot on the platform and the other foot on the train. He had everything he needed to get himself killed, to push the borders back and alter the very geography of reality itself.
On the outskirts of Ackerman’s Field the neon of a Texaco station bled into the dusk like a virulent stain. Night was falling like some disease he was in the act of catching. At the pumps he filled the SUV up and watched the traffic accomplish itself in a kind of wonder. Everyone should have been frozen in whatever attitude they’d held when the hammer fell on Aimee and they should hold that attitude forever. He felt like a plague set upon the world to cauterize and cleanse it.
He went through the pneumatic door. He had his Ray-Bans shoved on the top of his shaven head and he was grinning his gap-toothed grin. Such patrons as were about regarded him warily. He looked like bad news. He looked like the letter edged in black, the telegram shoved under your door at three o’clock in the morning.
You seen that Coors man? The Jeepster asked the man at the register.
Seen what? The man asked. Somewhere behind them a cue stick tipped a ball and it went down the felt in a near-silent hush and a ball rattled into a pocket and spiraled down and then there was just silence.
The Jeepster laid money on the counter. I know all about that Coors man, he said. I know Escue was broke and he borrowed ten bucks off the Coors man for the gas to get to where Aimee was working. Where’s he at?
The counterman made careful change. He don’t run today, he said. Wednesday was the last day he’s been here. And what if he did run, what if he was here? How could he know? He was just a guy doing Escue a favor. He didn’t know.
He didn’t know, he didn’t know. The Jeepster said. You reckon that’ll keep the dirt out of his face? I don’t.
They regarded each other in silence. The Jeepster picked up his change and slid it into his pocket. He leaned toward the counterman until their faces were very close together. Could be you chipped in a few bucks yourself, he finally said.
Just so you know, the counterman said, I’ve got me a sawed-off here under the counter. And I got my hand right on the stock. You don’t look just right to me. You look crazy. You look like you escaped from prison or the crazy house.
I didn’t escape, The Jeepster said. They let me out and was glad to see me go. They said I was too far gone, they couldn’t do anything for me. They said I was a bad influence.
The Jeepster in Emile’s living room. Emile was thinking thus must be the end-time, the end of days. The rapture with graves bursting open and fold sailing skyward like superheroes. There was no precedent for this. The Jeepster was crying. His shaven head was bowed. His fingers were knotted at the base of his skull. A letter on each finger, LOVE and HATE inscribed there by some drunk or stoned tattooist in blurred jailhouse blue. The fingers were interlocked illegibly and so spelled nothing. The Jeepster’s shoulders jerked with his sobbing, there was more news to read on his left arm: HEAVEN WON’T HAVE ME AND HELL’S AFRAID I’M TAKING OVER.
Emile himself had fallen on hard times. Once the scion of a prosperous farm family, now he could only look back on long-lost days that were bathed in an amber haze of nostalgia. He’d inherited all this and for a while there were wonders. Enormous John Deere cultivators and hay balers and tractors more dear than Rolls-Royces. For a while there was coke and crank and wild parties. Friends unnumbered and naked women rampant in their willingness to be sent so high you couldn’t have tracked them on radar, sports cars that did not hold up so well against trees and bridge abutments.
Little by little Emile had sold things off for pennies on the dollar and day by day the money rolled through his veins and into his lungs and the greasy coins trickled down his throat. The cattle were sold away or wandered off. Hogs starved and the strong ate the weak. It amazed him how easily a small fortune could be pissed away. Money don’t go nowhere these days, Emile said when he was down to selling off stepladders and drop cords.
Finally he was down to rolling his own, becoming an entrepreneur, slaving over his meth lab like some crazed alchemist at his test tubes and brazier on the brink of some breakthrough that would cleanse the world of sanity forever.
The appalled ghost of Emile’s mother haunted these rooms, hovered fretfully in the darker corners. Wringing her spectral hands over doilies beset with beer cans and spilled ashtrays. Rats tunneling in secret trespass through the upholstery. There were man-shaped indentations in the sheetrocked walls, palimpsest cavities with outflung arms where miscreants had gone in drunken rage. JESUS IS THE UNSEEN LISTENER TO EVERY CONVERSATION, an embroidered sampler warned from the wall. There were those of Emile’s customers who wanted it taken down or turned to the wall. Emile left it as it was. He needs an education, Emile would say. He needs to know what it’s like out here in the world. There’s no secrets here.
The Jeepster looked up. He took off his Ray-Bans and shook his head as if to clear it of whatever visions beset it. Reorder everything as you might shake a kaleidoscope into a different pattern.
You got to have something, he said.
I ain’t got jack shit.
Pills or something. Dilaudid.
I ain’t got jack shit. I’m out on bond, and I done told you they’re watchin this place. A sheriff’s car parks right up there in them trees. Takin pictures. I seen some son of a bitch with a video camera. It’s like being a fuckin movie star. Man can’t step outside to take a leak without windin up on videotape or asked for a autograph.
What happened?