The Driver's Guide to Hitting Pedestrians (2 page)

He’s trying to talk to me. Saying pitiful things like he’s in a lot of pain and I busted him up real good. As we get closer to the hospital he becomes more abusive, telling me he hopes it’s worth it, that he really hopes I win since he’ll never be the same again.

There are a lot of things I want to say to him but I don’t. I just say, “Don’t die,” and turn the music up louder to blot his pathetic voice.

12.

I pull up to the hospital entrance. Because I’ve already logged it into my phone, there are two nurses waiting with a wheelchair. They can’t get the ped out of the van fast enough. I’m opening the back doors and I think I’m yelling at them but I can’t even hear myself over the music pouring out of Sunset so the whole thing is just a furious blur. I hop back into the driver’s seat and quickly turn around.

Unicorn passes the intersecting street right in front of me. He must notice me too. He stops and backs up, right in front of me. Goading me.

And I notice his van has two additions and something inside me breaks.

I turn the music down and then off.

I sit in the cab of Sunset and even the sounds of the city around me fade away.

It’s just me, the gentle idling of Sunset, and my anger.

13.

I wasn’t always a serious driver. I used to be a sometime pedestrian and sometime driver just like almost everyone else. I was married and had a wife and a house and all that. My wife’s name was Peggy. She died. Hit by another driver while she was in her car. An honest accident. Something that almost never happens now.

Her face was now painted on the airbrushed unicorn’s ass.

That was the first addition I noticed.

14.

The second addition was Hidalgo. He was on top of Unicorn’s van. He looked at me and made a jerking off motion before slapping himself back down onto the roof, probably securing himself with spikes driven into the steel.

It was, in a way, the safest place for him to be. Since he was untouchable in his place as the pedestrian leader, he didn’t necessarily need to spend the day out walking. He could play. He could goad and chide just like Unicorn was doing. Unicorn couldn’t hit him if he was on top of his van. And for me to hit him would mean hitting Unicorn as well.

Unicorn peels out and I follow him.

15.

My blood is up. This is the end game. Something has to happen and I’m trying to work something out in my head. I grab a handful of coffee beans and pop them into my mouth, crunching and swallowing them. I wash it all down with some moonshine I keep in the glove compartment. I strip off my shirt. I want to wear the blood of Hidalgo. And, perhaps, once the game is over, I’ll want to wear the blood of Unicorn as well. There is absolutely no game law stating that I can’t beat him to a bloody pulp in a bar fight.

Unicorn speeds onto Route 4 heading west and out of Dayton.

I feel drunk and boastful.

I don’t have any friends but I have a few living family members scattered throughout the globe. I systematically punch their speed dial coordinates into my phone—it doesn’t even matter which one I’m talking to—and shout ridiculous things at them. I ask them if they’re watching this shit then say of course they are, everyone is. I tell them I drive to win and I’m going to win everything. I’m going to win the moon and space and existence. I feel blood coursing through my body and pounding in my head. It feels like all of my hair is standing on end. I tell them I am an electric man here to drive lightning bolts into the faces of my enemies.

I slam my phone onto the center console so hard it almost breaks.

Back on with the music. Up loud.

Down with the accelerator, keeping a safe distance from Unicorn so he doesn’t slam on his brakes and force me to hit him. To come all this way and be disqualified would be like suicide. Losing to Unicorn would be like snorting a pile of my broken teeth.

16.

We’re barreling down the state route and it’s gray and humid and threatening rain and I think this might be a good thing. It might loosen Hidalgo’s grip. The rain will sting his face and his eyes. If he comes off that van, I’m nailing him. Hopefully not hard enough to kill him.

Unicorn comes to a screeching halt and I almost plow into the back of him. He’s disabled his brake lights. Hidalgo slides forward, in front of Unicorn’s window now, but he maintains a grip on the spikes. Unicorn backs up and slams on the brakes. Speeds forward and slams on the brakes. This continues several more times. I’m not sure what I have to do other than stay out of the way. I check my phone. Coffee still hasn’t hit anyone. Then again, the more Unicorn and I dick around, the greater her chances of winning.

The more Unicorn goes back and forth, the less likely it looks that he’s going to loose Hidalgo from his handholds. I need to think of something else to do. Maybe drive back to Dayton and see if I can find one of those packs. Maybe take out five or six peds at a time.

But being this close to Hidalgo is maddening.

Unicorn being this close to Hidalgo is maddening.

Peggy’s face on that unicorn’s ass is maddening.

17.

I pull alongside Unicorn. He goes backward. I creep forward and stop. He speeds forward, probably not even thinking and slams into the back of Sunset. And like that, he’s disqualified. I’m in second now. Hidalgo goes sliding over the top of my van and onto the road in front of me. I punch the accelerator but it takes Sunset a second to leap forward and Hidalgo is already out of the road.

He has to be hurt. I don’t see any sign of him.

Until I look in my rearview mirror.

He’s leaping into the passenger side of Unicorn’s van and Unicorn is then driving around me, steam billowing up from his hood.

I’m not really sure what just happened.

I check my phone and find out that Unicorn is indeed disqualified.

Coffee still hasn’t hit a ped.

The smartest thing to do would be to drive back to Dayton and hit as many pedestrians as I can.

But Hidalgo is right there in front of me.

I just need for him to get out of Unicorn’s van. I’m not sure this will happen. Most of our vans are well equipped and capable of keeping the driver comfortable for at least a week. Why the camaraderie between Hidalgo and Unicorn? Doesn’t Unicorn harbor some kind of resentment toward Hidalgo? If it hadn’t been for him clinging to the roof of his van, he might have stood a good chance of winning.

Unless he knows something I don’t.

18.

Unicorn continues to drive along Route 4, down past Germantown. The steam continues to billow. He’s losing speed. He pulls into a gravel pit. His truck idles in front of the unnaturally blue quarry lake, the airbrushed unicorn with Peggy’s face on the ass trembling with the dying rhythm.

I again turn my radio off.

Unicorn and Hidalgo are just sitting in the cab of the van, staring at me. Maybe daring me. But to do what I don’t know. We are now in a fairly rural area. For some reason, there is no one working at the quarry and everything is silent except for the occasional car up on the state route.

I check my phone.

Coffee still hasn’t hit anyone else.

I’m so close to Hidalgo.

All he has to do is step out of the van.

I’m prepared to wait until midnight.

19.

The moonshine has made me kind of tired so I keep chomping coffee beans. I want to get out of the van so I can brew some fresh coffee over the heat of the engine but I know Hidalgo will take that chance to run. If he even plans on it. Occasionally, I open my door and feign stepping out, hoping this will coax Hidalgo out. At one point I unleash a vicious rant in their direction. They do not pay it any mind.

Around sunset, Unicorn steps out of his van and says to me, “This is your time to shine, isn’t it, Sunset?”

I would drive into him but then I would have to waste time taking him to the hospital, going in the opposite direction of Hidalgo.

Unicorn has a can of spraypaint in his hand and he crosses to the side of my van. He begins spraypainting something on the side of it. I try to see what it is from the side mirror but I can only make out the first letter. It’s an “L”.

While the mystery of what he’s spraypainting and the desire to beat him to a pulp are overwhelming, I remind myself that I need to keep my eye on the prize.

Hidalgo.

A life of fortune.

A lonely life of fortune.

But with money, people would gravitate toward me. I could keep them entertained while entertaining myself. I could buy a huge house and have parties every night and ...

I realize I don’t like any of that stuff.

I don’t like parties.

I don’t like people.

I don’t like party people.

I liked being a mechanic. I liked coming home to Peggy and reading about races in other countries. I liked to dream of going there. I liked the dream. I didn’t know if I would like going there or not. Definitely not alone.

Coffee still hasn’t hit a single pedestrian all day.

There hasn’t been a single update since Unicorn’s disqualification.

I think about bribing Hidalgo to come out and let me hit him. Just a tap. But that’s against the rules and with Unicorn right there, I’d never get away with it.

It gets dark. The summer night air is alive with the smell of honeysuckle and the burning rubber and exhaust from the state route. In the distance, in the dark and silent woods, someone has started a fire. Insects hum and rattle their drawn out rhythm.

This is how they’re going to beat me.

If Hidalgo survives, he gets a fairly large sum of money too. It’s possible he’s worked out something with Unicorn. It’s possible that’s what they’ve been talking about in the cab all this time. In low tones so I can’t hear. It’s possible even that they’ve both worked out something with Coffee. Two winners split three ways is still a pretty good bank.

And like that, all hope leaves me. This van was customized on hope and now it’s empty.

I’ve been empty for a long time. Maybe I just confused hope with self-delusion.

I look into Unicorn’s van and see his and Hidalgo’s faces lit by the orange light of the dash.

I turn the radio up, the sound roaring out into the night.

I reverse until I’m a fairly good distance away. Then I slam the van into drive and shoot forward.

There isn’t an explosion or anything. Just the satisfying impact and crumple of metal on metal. The concussive shattering of glass. The cold slurp of the water in the gravel pit.

And we’re all wrapped in metal and broken glass and water.

And we’re all going down into the cold depth of the gravel pit.

All going down.

All together.

The Laughing Crusade

After finishing my treatise on the New Anarchist Revolution I decide to head out to the back porch for a beer and a cigarette. The television lies on the floor in a broken, smoldering heap. I pull a beer out of the refrigerator, cross the kitchen and go outside. It’s hot and humid. Quiet, but the neighborhood kind of quiet, which isn’t really quiet at all. Wind in the trees. The humming of a neighbor’s air conditioner. Buzzing streetlamps. Televisions murmuring through open windows. A telephone ringing. Distant traffic. Distant trains. Distant sirens. All the real noise is distant.

I light a cigarette and take the first deep drag and all the quiet unquiet is shattered. Someone laughs. It’s loud and continuous, emitted from somewhere high up in the nasal passages. Female. It’s like she has some sort of loudspeaker between her eyes. I don’t hear anyone else. Just this one woman, laughing and laughing. I sit down in a chair, rest my beer bottle on the small patio table, and try to block out that heinous laughter and focus on my next treatise. I can’t. Jesus. She sounds like a braying donkey. I finish the rest of my beer in a single gulp, take the last drag from my cigarette and toss both of them out into the yard.

Inside, I can still hear the laughter. I picture her standing there on her porch, leaning out over the steps, laughing and laughing and laughing.

I urinate on the busted television and head upstairs. I lie down next to the woman who has been lying comatose in this bed since I moved in nearly two years ago. She breathes slowly and steadily. Normally, her breathing is soporific but tonight it is drowned out by the braying donkey. She must live in the house across the street and just to the north.

Hours later, pillows piled around my head, I finally fall asleep.

And wake up to laughter. Loud. Raucous. Bursting forth in unrelenting waves.

What can possibly be so funny? This woman has laughed more in one night than I have my entire life. In fact, I have only laughed three times I can remember. Each time, something dreadful happened in the following days and I don’t know if I remember the laughter because of the funny things that happened or because of the subsequent tragedies.