Unpossible (36 page)

Two weeks later Zeke caught me as I was walking home from the schoolhouse. The palms of his hands were wrapped in rags. "Joey, boy. Tonight we should take a little trip."

"What did you do to your hands?"

"Nothing. Hurt ’em working on the car. Will you be there?"

"I can’t sneak out again without getting caught. Why can’t we wait til Saturday?"

My sisters raced past us. "We’re gonna tell Firstmother you’re talking to Zeke!"

"Oh Lord Jesus," I said. I would catch heck later.

"Don’t worry about it. Tonight, all right? And bring paint."

"Paint? Where am I going to get paint?"

"Check your barn, stupid."

Zeke was right, as usual. There was paint in the barn, some old cans of red that Grampa had mixed years ago. But I couldn’t take off with it until nightfall.

The fire is always the center of the home. Father had built the chimney first, stone by stone, and the kitchen around it. As the children were born he had added small rooms that sprang off from the kitchen at odd angles, and after I’d gotten big enough to help him we built the porch around the front door.

Firstmother started her prayer that evening with the usual, "Thank you Jesus for the Summer Sun," while Sara, my pop’s new young wife (barely older than me), passed potatoes and a little mashed corn around the table. Pop took a potato and bit into it. Firstmother went through the entire list of crops we were hoping for, plus all of the sins me, my sisters, Pop, and most of all Sara had committed that week. She kept going until she saw that Sara was almost finished setting the table, and then Firstmother finished off the whole thing by saying, "and especially watch over our young Joseph, and protect him from the temptations that so beset a young man." My sisters giggled; then we all said "Amen." Sara sat down gratefully.

Firstmother eyed the table. "I don’t see no salt here."

Sara jumped up and vanished into the kitchen, and Firstmother said, "I been hearing that you were running around with Zeke again after Schoolhouse." My sisters giggled again.

"No ma’am, I wasn’t ‘running around,’ I just ... "

"Don’t talk back to me, boy." Sara came back into the room carrying the salt bowl. My father was chewing intently, silently, as always. And Sara was worse than no help, a liability.

It was time. I either had to stand up for Zeke or listen forever to everything Firstmother said. I looked her in the eye. "What’s the matter with Zeke, anyways?"

She stared back. "You know what’s the matter with Zeke. His father’s a drunk, a black magician, a road racer, a no-good consorter with demons—"

"Enough, Rachel."

Firstmother stopped in mid sentence. Sara and us kids dropped our eyes instantly to our plates. Pop never spoke at the dinner table.

"What did you say, Samuel?" Firstmother said icily.

Pop looked up. He kept chewing as he talked, red potatoes mashing between his teeth. His voice was quiet, like when he was explaining why he was going to hit you for not feeding the horses on time. "I said, Rachel, that enough was enough. Frank Landers has had his troubles. I don’t want any wife of mine continuing to add to them."

Firstmother was almost sputtering. "I will not have my son hanging around with the son of a demoner!" She picked up her plate and stalked to the kitchen.

Pop picked up another potato. My sisters stared moodily at their food. And even with her head bowed and her hair falling across her eyes, I could see the barest beginnings of a smile on Sara’s face.

Just after ten that night I was banging around in the dark with two cans of red paint. I’d stuffed my blankets with pillows and climbed out the window, hoping that Firstmother wouldn’t think to check on me—she did that sometimes.

I was circling Zeke’s house to knock on his bedroom window when I saw lamplight seeping through the cracks of the old shed set away from the house. The door, usually chained shut, was busted open. Zeke was there, his back to me as he rummaged through some cabinets at the back of the shed. And there was something else.

It was a Pontiac—one of the big cars they race down in Mexicana. It was painted almost all black, but in the flicker I could make out a spiderweb of silver lines. The tires were low, and there was some rust along the bottom of the driver’s side door, but overall it looked real good.

"You’re late," Zeke said when he turned around. "Here. Grab these." He was holding up three dusty books, two cans of paint and a bucket of brushes in his bandaged hands.

"Lord Jesus, Zeke! Where did this thing come from?"

"Nowhere." He dropped the paint at my feet and circled the room, blowing out lanterns.

"C’mon, whose car is this? Is this your dad’s?" There’d been rumors about Zeke’s dad, Frank, ever since I was a kid. Everybody knew he was a drunk now, but every once in a while you’d hear an adult say something about the magic, or a pro driver.

Zeke pushed me and the buckets outside. He wound the chain up around the door handle and said, "Forget it. That car ain’t there, you understand?" He turned to me, and in the moonlight I could barely make out a smile. The smile was always the end of the argument with Zeke. "Ready for a little hike?"

We took the short-cuts and made it into the city in under two hours. For the entire trip, Zeke wouldn’t talk about the Pontiac, but the subject was still cars.

"Joey," he said, "I’m gonna race on the white highways. I’m gonna win. Then I’m going to Mexicana and I’m gonna race the Brujo."

"The Brujo? Phil Mendez? You’re crazy, Zeke."

"You know I’m crazy. That’s why I’m gonna win."

"That’s why you’re going to die. Messing with the demons and magic is serious stuff. I don’t even know why I’m helping you."

He nudged me. "You haven’t figured that out, Joey? Because you love this shit. You love being bad, breaking the rules, messing with magic. And if anything goes wrong, you can blame it on mean old Zeke."

"You’re full of it," I said. But I knew he was right.

The Chevy was sitting in an alley that had been cleared of rubble.

"Christ in the tomb," I whispered.

Zeke started lighting lamps that had been placed in a circle around the car. I was conscious of Dead City surrounding us on all sides. I set my buckets on the ground and walked forward.

"Christ in the tomb," I said again, louder. "How did you get it up here?"

"An angel pushed the boulders out of the way. What do you think?" Zeke opened one of the books and began flipping through its pages.

"Zeke! You already did it? What happened?"

"Nothing happened." He studied a diagram on one page of the book. "Now get those cans of red over here. I want to prime it in red."

"Jesus Lord, I should have known it when I saw your hands." I followed him around the circle. "What was it like? Did it have wings? Did it look like the Devil?"

"How the hell would I know what the Devil looks like?" Zeke snapped the book shut and handed me a big brush. "Smooth, slow strokes, all over the hood. Don’t mess it up." He set the books off to the side carefully.

"Zeke, why do we have to work on it out here, in the City?"

"Can’t you feel it?" His voice sounded like he was speaking from under the ground. "There’s a lot of death here. A lot of power." Death. Power. I was out of my depth.

I didn’t ask any more questions. We worked silently for almost three hours. Two hours before dawn we put the cans and brushes beneath the car, doused the lamps, and walked home. Zeke whistled the whole way.

One or two days a week for almost two months I made the trek out to the city with or for Zeke. He had stopped going to schoolhouse. He would stay awake for days, working on the car, talking about how he was going to take it on the circuit and blow everybody else away. I’d bring him some food from home and he’d barely look at it.

Looking back, I know I could have done something to stop him. I could have hid the tools, or sabotaged the paint, or told my folks what we were doing. But Zeke was Zeke. And I couldn’t imagine any situation that Zeke couldn’t handle.

Me, I was a different story. I was petrified Firstmother or Father would find out what I was up to. I would tell Zeke that I was absolutely never coming back out to the City. But Zeke would tell me he needed me to bring something out; and, sure enough, that night I would climb out my window and head toward Dead City. Considering my nervousness and lack of confidence, I had amazing luck. Of all the times I sneaked out of the house to go help him, I was only caught once.

It was mid-June and I was late coming back from the City. The sun was just starting to come up behind me. I was about to boost myself over the window ledge and start pretending to be asleep when Sara walked around the corner. What was she doing up this early? She stared at me and I slowly dropped back to the ground. If she told Firstmother (which she wouldn’t) or Father (which she probably would) I was in big trouble.

"Sara, listen ... " I began. She shushed me with a finger to her lips. She grinned like a little kid.

"I’m pregnant," she said. "I’m Secondmother now."

"That’s great," I said. We stood there in silence for a while, me nervously watching the sun get bigger and brighter every minute. Finally she reached up and touched the top of my head.

"You’d better get inside now, Joseph." She turned her back to me and walked around the corner again. I scrambled up the wall and dove into bed. A few minutes later Father came in to wake me up for the morning chores.