The Driver's Guide to Hitting Pedestrians (9 page)

“
What are we gonna do with him?”

“
So you’ll help me?”

“
Yeah. Do I really have a choice?”

“
We might have to bury him.”

“
Jesus.”

“
We need to hustle up. Before anyone sees him.”

Together, we go downstairs. “You go on over there,” Dad says. “I’ll go out back and get the wheelbarrow.”

Reluctantly, I cross the street. Closing in on Benny Robinson I wonder if he’s dead or not. He
looks
dead. But that doesn’t always mean anything. Standing next to the probable corpse, I hear a door open and see Benny’s mother stick her head out. She screams in horror, passes out, and lands half in and half out of the door. Sirens scream in the distance. Looking over my shoulder, I do not see my father. I debate running and then think maybe it would be better if I just stand there. I think of the reward for taking the rap for Dad.

There’s no sign of him, even as the police fold me into their car and take me away.

Lost

Lon spends three weeks growing a thick, dark mustache.

One day he invites his girlfriend, Tina, over.

It isn’t long before he is performing cunnilingus on her. She laughs and tells him she likes the way the mustache feels. Within a few minutes, she reaches a shivering climax. Afterwards, Tina giggles and leaves. It isn’t until the next morning, when Lon goes into the bathroom to shave, he notices his mustache missing.

“
That bitch,” he says between clenched teeth.

He tries to grow another mustache but it isn’t the same; the symmetry is all wrong, the thickness subpar. It has an odor.

Lon tries to call Tina but she won’t pick up the phone. He can’t leave a message. What would he say?

Many months later, Lon rents a porno, it being a long time since his last sexual encounter. Midway through the porno, after Lon has masturbated three times, he notices Tina. She is calling herself Glenda Bummings now. He doesn’t want to watch, he’s so angry with her, but her image sparks memories of being with her and Lon is, once again, aroused.

Soon, the male actor in the porno enters Tina. Lon remembers the days when that was him. The man slides his penis out and Lon is flabbergasted. He scrambles to kneel in front of the TV. Attached to the man’s penis is Lon’s mustache.

“
That bitch,” Lon thinks.

Captivated, he watches as his mustache rumples up against her vagina and then disappears inside once more. There are times when Lon thinks he can see it peeking out, nearly taunting him, whispering softly, “Remember when I used to be on your lip?”

Dog in Orbit

A woman comes home and discovers her dog is missing. It is an ugly mutt with a face like a leathered wino but, nevertheless, she misses it. She goes back outside. A thin old man is collapsed face down on the sidewalk in a puddle of drool. She nudges his skeletal shoulder with her foot.

“
Whu...?” He squints up into the sunlight.

“
Have you seen my dog?”

“
Can you help me up?”

The woman bends down and grabs the man beneath the arms. It’s a struggle but he makes it to his feet. He sits down on a retaining wall and pulls a cigarette from his shirt pocket. The woman sits down on his left and he puts a hand to the side of his face, pretending she can’t see him. She stands up and walks in front of him. “Have you seen my dog?”

The man silently points to a house across the street. He throws his cigarette out into the road and slides back down onto the sidewalk. The woman crosses the street to the house the old man pointed to. It’s pretty dilapidated. She didn’t even know anyone lived there. Once she’s in front of the house, the old man shouts from the sidewalk: “Hey, lady! Think you can help me up?”

She doesn’t want to help him up. She ignores him. She walks up onto the porch of the dilapidated house and knocks on the door. The door opens quickly, as though someone stood just on the other side, waiting. Her dog jumps up on her, his front paws on her thighs. She reaches down to pet him. A rugged looking man stands behind the dog, a leash in his hand. “Whoa, boy,” he says. He pulls the dog back into the house.

“
I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman says. “But I think there’s been a mistake.”

“
I like dogs,” the man says. “Make no mistake about that. I love ’em.”

“
I’m sure you do. But this is my dog.”

“
No. You’re confused. It’s my dog.”

“
No. This is most certainly my dog.”

“
I like dogs. It’s my dog now.”

“
No. It’s still my dog.”

“
Hardly.” The man chuckles. “Look, maybe it could be
our
dog.”

“
I don’t understand.”

“
Yeah. You move in and stuff. It’ll be our dog.”

“
Please just give me my dog back.”

“
He likes me better.”

The dog laps at the woman’s face as she continues to pet him. It farts on the man.

“
I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the man says. “Or stay. The choice is yours. But you can’t take the dog with you.”

The woman decides to move in. The man isn’t too atrociously ugly and she doesn’t have a boyfriend anyway. The man never leaves the house so she never has the chance to take the dog back. The man never even lets go of the leash. The sex is subpar and awkward.

One day, the dog chews up one of the man’s shirts. “We have to get rid of it,” the man says.

“
I’ll just take him and go home.”

“
Nope. Gotta make sure he’s far away. I need my shirts. And you need to learn about loss.”

The man drags the dog into the kitchen. He rummages through drawers and opens cabinets. In the refrigerator he finds a pair of large wings. “These oughtta do it,” he says.

He holds the wings against the dog’s fur, as though they’ll just magically adhere themselves. They don’t. “Whatta you think’s the most humane way to go about this?” he asks. “I got staples, nails ...”

“
I don’t know what you’re planning to do but you’re scaring me. And you’re scaring the dog.” She points to the dog, its tail between its legs and whimpering.

“
Maybe glue. Yeah, I got some good glue.”

“
I can’t let you do this.”

“
You can and you will. This here’s my dog. You ain’t got no say in it.”

The woman is now crying. “It is
not
your dog.”

The man slathers glue on the base of the right wing and sticks it to the dog, under its right shoulder. “We done been over this. This here’s
my
dog and I get to choose what happens to it. When you went and moved in you unconditionally accepted the fact that this here was my dog. If you was so upset about it, thinkin’ it was your dog and everything, you woulda called the cops or somethin’.”

The woman takes a deep breath. “There haven’t been any cops for years.”

“
I suppose that’s my fault too, huh?”

“
I can’t stand here and watch this anymore.”

The woman wants to attack the man but she’s afraid he will hurt her and the dog and then it will have all been pointless. She leaves the room and sits on the rancid couch in the living room, turning on the TV and watching static patterns snow across the fractured glass. In a few minutes the man walks through the living room, carrying the dog. Both wings have now been affixed to the dog’s back.

The man chuckles. “If you love somethin’ you got to set it free.”

The woman buries her face in her hands and cries, her shoulders heaving.

She doesn’t want to follow the man and the dog outside but curiosity gets the best of her. She thinks maybe the dog will run off and she can run after it, knowing the man will be too lazy to follow. The man delicately descends the porch steps and stands in the wasted front yard. A boy rides his bike down the street, dragging an old pushmower behind him. The mower is running, loud, almost drowning out the boy’s shouted obscenities.

“
Here goes,” the man says. He tosses the dog up into the air and the wings begin flapping. The dog rises into the sky, higher and higher, until it flies so high that it goes into orbit. By this time, it’s well out of sight.

The man and woman go back inside. The man keeps the empty leash strapped to his wrist. In the following days he becomes despondent and mentally abusive. He brings home hideous women covered in various lumps and odors. The lumpy women make fun of the other woman and, eventually, she leaves. She goes back to her house but someone has planted a garden in it. She lies down between two rows of lettuce and stares up through the glass ceiling and waits for her dog to stop orbiting the earth.

Two Children Who Want to Drive Off a Cliff

An eight feet tall man runs upon a narrow dirt path through a dense jungle. The jungle is very dark and smells like death. It’s filled with the squealing sounds of imagibeasts. Soon the man emerges from the jungle into the bright daylight. He continues running. The path ascends the side of a mountain. Halfway up the mountain a car is pulled to the shoulder of the path. The man, being so tall, reaches the car in no time. Two children lean against the driver’s side door of the black muscle car. A girl and a boy. They look about seven. The man, sweaty and mildly exerted, approaches the two children. The boy wears a stained white t-shirt and oversized jeans. He is smoking an unfiltered cigarette and smells like cheap whiskey. The girl is dressed so scantily it makes the tall man nervous to look at her.

“
Need some help?” The man mops sweat from his brow with a giant hand.

“
Fuck yeah.” The boy pulls a flask from his hip pocket and takes a slug.

“
What’s the problem?”

“
Fuckin’ broke down, old man.”

The man does not like this boy at all. He wants to smack him around but he’s just a kid. The girl is now giving herself a tattoo with a pocketknife. It’s a big, crooked bloody heart around her bellybutton.

“
Where you kids going?”

“
Top of the hill.” The boy points to the top of the hill.

“
That’s a drop off up there. You’ll go right into the ocean.”

“
Yeah. We know that. Think you can help us?”

Of course the man can help. Being eight feet tall, he can do just about anything.

“
Open her up,” he tells the boy.

The boy tosses his cigarette onto the dirt road, opens the door, and pops the hood.

The tall man grabs some grass and dirt and shoves it randomly throughout the engine. “Oughtta do it,” he says.

“
Get in the car bitch,” the boy barks at the girl. She obediently runs around to the passenger side and gets in.

“
I really wouldn’t advise driving off that cliff,” the man warns them.

“
We’re fuckin’ goin’ off that cliff. We’re in love.”

The boy fires up the engine and shoots up the side of the mountain. The man doesn’t know why the path goes all the way to the cliff. He wonders why there isn’t some kind of warning sign at the end of the road. Maybe it is made for this purpose. He runs after the car. The car flies off the cliff and the man brings himself to a stop before going over himself. The car tumbles end over end until it crashes into the water. The man takes a deep breath and runs back down the path and into the dark jungle.

Rivalry

I rented a truck to drive over my neighbor. All of this because he’d taken a backhoe to my once beautiful lawn. I got the last truck the rental place had. It was a great lumbering beast. On the way home I stopped at a bar specializing in darts and arm wrestling and got blind drunk. Navigating the truck was difficult but I felt invincible.

I slammed into the curb in front of my house. My neighbor, Baxter, was watering his flowerbeds—the haughty prick.

Now was the time to do it. I gunned the accelerator and raced toward him. He dropped the hose and ran into his house. It took a few minutes to get the truck all turned around. They probably shouldn’t rent these things to everyday, non-truck driving people. I think I hit the house behind me but I was too drunk to tell. My body had gone numb. I was covered in an acrid sweat. I gunned the engine again and slammed into my neighbor’s house.

He looked out from the second floor window. He had a shotgun. I guess Baxter had everything. A fantastic lawn. Gorgeous flowerbeds. Hi-tech weaponry.

I backed up and ran into the house again. I wanted to shake its foundations. He fired a shot and the windshield shattered. My heart skipped a beat. A lump formed in my throat. I couldn’t quit. I couldn’t let this hobo win. I honked the horn. Laid on it. Loud and blaring.

He had probably called the cops but they wouldn’t respond to anything short of murder, kidnapping, or hostage situations. I backed up and rammed the house again. He fired another shot. Some of the buckshot peppered my right arm. Baxter—the violent fuck.

I pulled the keys out of the ignition and pocketed them. I opened the back of the truck, went into my house and, grabbing some essential items (knives, the television, a blowtorch, beer, and pornography), moved into the back of the truck.