swirled in the low beams as he loomed over the figure.
She was wearing a dress. The cotton was tattered, but it was a pretty dress, butterfly yellow, the kind that should have been easy to see at night. Her slim legs were sticking out below the hem at an obtuse angle, a scuffed sandal dangling from one big toe. The other foot was completely bare, a red sock of blood where the skin had peeled away.
Her arms were accordioned under her chest and she was face down. Her hair was brown, and the big curls fluttered in the breeze. A pool of crimson was spreading out from under her belly. She was leaking like a busted oil pan.
He touched her skin where the dress had slid down one creamy shoulder. This was a dairy girl, J.D. was positive. Must have crept out her window and met some little boy blue behind a haystack. Come blow your horn. She had no business being out on the road at that time of night.
He turned her over and wished he hadn't. That split-second portrait before the accident had been of a pleasant face, one with round cheekbones and plump ruby lips and strong nostrils. But this, this was like a bag of beef soup that had been dropped on the highway from a helicopter. This was roadkill.
'You shouldn'ta been out so late,' J.D. whispered. 'Now look what you gone and done to yourself.'
He glanced at one white exposed breast that had managed to avoid visible harm. Then he let her roll forward again. Her bones rattled like lug nuts in a hubcap.
'Now what am I going to do with you?' he said, licking his lips. He looked both ways but there were no headlights in sight.
'Can't leave you out here, that's for sure. Might get yourself run over, and then where would you be?'
That, plus J.D. didn't want his ass behind bars for second degree murder. A few speeding tickets were one thing, but this deal meant some hard time. At state prison, a pretty boy like him would be up on the blocks in no time, and the grease monkeys wouldn't wait for every twenty thousand miles to give him a lube job, either.
He stood up and looked around. He could slide her into the ditch, but that would be leaving things up to luck. She might be found before morning if some gap-toothed farmer came out early to get a fresh squeeze of swollen udder. And who knew what the forensics boys would come up with? He thought of the paint flakes up the road. They could look into those little microscopes and say whatever they wanted to, and the cops had been after him for years.
'Nope. Can't leave you here.'
He walked behind the Camaro and unlocked the trunk. He unrolled a tarp that was stowed in one corner. He didn't want to mess up his trunk carpet. He took off his leather jacket and tossed it on the passenger seat, but he kept his gloves on.
The night smelled of cow manure and car exhaust and sweet, coppery body fluids. Cammie's engine ticked as it cooled. He patted her on the hood as he went past. Then he stooped and lifted the broken body.
It hung like a rag doll, with too many universal joints in the arms and legs. It was light, too, as if all its gears and cogs had slipped out. He put her in the trunk, hearing the largest chunk of her skull ding off the wheel well. He walked up the road until he found the other sandal, then he tossed it in and closed the trunk.
He drove back to town without breaking fifty-five. It was raining by the time he hit the outskirts.
Mama must not have heard him come in. She was already gone when he woke up, down checking side stitches on boxer shorts for five-and-a-quarter plus production. He was glad he'd slept through her coffee and butter toast. That made another half-dozen hundred questions she'd never get around to bugging him with.
He winced when he saw Cammie in daylight. There was a dimple on top of the fender and the chrome striping was peeling away from the side panel, damage he hadn't noticed the night before. He drove down to the shop and pulled into the middle bay.
Floyd was smoking a cigarette and wiping his hands on a greasy orange rag. Floyd owned the shop, and liked to let everyone know it. He glowered at J.D. with oil-drop eyes.
'Yo, Jayce,' he said. 'What you doing here so early?'
'Got a ding on the shoulder. Need you to hammer it out.'
'Had you a little bender, did you? Demolition derby with a mailbox?'
Floyd snickered and then started coughing. He pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and spat a wad of phlegm onto the greasy concrete floor.
'Just get me a rubber mallet, wouldja?'
'Sure, I'll help. Thanks for asking,' Floyd said.
'You don't have to be a smart-ass.'
'And you don't have to work here if you don't want to.'
Floyd could be a real pain in the plug hole. But he was a body-work pro. He'd worked the pits for Bobby Allison about twenty years back. When he got down to business, he was an artist, and steel and fiberglass and primer were his media.
And J.D. could tell Floyd loved Cammie almost as much as he did. They pounded out the dents and replaced the headlight frame and put on the primer coat before they started taking care of the customers’ cars. Then at lunch, Floyd feathered out a coat of red so that it blended with the color of the rest of the car's body.
J.D. was up to his elbows in an automatic transmission when he saw Floyd put down his airbrush and step back to admire his work.
'That's gooder than snuff,' he proclaimed. J.D. nodded in appreciation. The quarter panel didn't have so much as a shadow in it.
'Preesh, Floyd. Nobody can fix them like you do,' J.D. said.
'Nope. Throw me your keys, Jayce. I need to change my plugs, and I left my good ratchet in your trunk yesterday.'
'Hey, buddy. After all you've done for me? You got to be kidding. Let me do it.'
Floyd frowned around the black fingerprints on his cigarette butt. Floyd didn't like other people tinkering under the hood of his '57 Chevy. But J.D. moved quickly, before Floyd could say no.
J.D. popped the trunk and there she was, Miss American Pie. Mincemeat pie. The blood had clotted and dried and she was starting to smell a little. Her left arm was draped over the toolbox. As he moved it away, he noticed that it had stiffened a little from rigor mortis.
He clattered around in the toolbox and found the ratchet. He was about to slam the lid when he saw that her eyes were open. Damned things weren't open last night, he was positive. Her eyes didn't sparkle at all. They were staring at him.
'What's the matter, J.D.?'
J.D. gulped and slammed the trunk. 'Nothing,' he said, holding up the ratchet. 'Found it.'
'Make sure you gap the damned things right. Don't want you screwing up my gas mileage.'
'You got it, Floyd.'
J.D. drove out to the trailer park after work to pick up Melanie, his Thursday girl. He thought he heard a noise in the rear end as he pulled into the gravel driveway. Transfer case was groaning a little. He'd have to check it out later. He honked his horn and the trailer door opened.
Melanie slid in the passenger side and J.D. watched her rear settle into the bucket seat. She smiled at him. She was a big-boned redhead with lots of freckles, but her aqua eye shadow was so thick it quivered when she blinked.
'What you want to do, J.D.?'
He looked out the window. In the next yard, two brats were playing with a broken Easy-Bake oven. 'Ride around, I reckon.'
'Ride around? That's all you ever want to do.'
'What else is there to do? Would you rather sit around the trailer park with your thumb up your ass?'
Melanie pouted. She was a first-class pouter. J.D. had told her that her lip drooped so low you could drive up on it and swap out your oil filter.
'Okay,' she said after a moment. 'Let's go circle the burger joint.'
That wasn't a bad idea. Everybody hung out at the burger joint, the muscleheads and the dope peddlers and the zombie teens. And that meant everybody would see that the Camaro was unscratched. J.D. didn't have a damn thing to hide.
Later, after they'd split two burgers and a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, J.D. had driven out to their favorite
