These guys had wasted his day, and now Earl was trying to draw things out even longer. Blackburn kicked free, knocked Earl's head against the floor, and resumed dragging him.
Blackburn propped Earl in a sitting position against the back wall, then pulled the valve from the end of the air-compressor hose. The hose hissed, and the compressor kicked on. Blackburn put the hose into Earl's mouth and shoved it down as far as it would go. Then he sealed Earl's mouth and nose with electrical tape, wrapping the tape around and around Earl's head.
When he ran out of tape, Blackburn went to the front of the garage, opened the left bay door, and got into the Fury. The key was in the ignition, and the car started on the first try. He backed it out, then turned it off and came back inside to close the bay door. He took a ring of keys from Ed's pocket, went into the waiting room, and unlocked the cash drawer. In addition to Blackburn's three hundred, the drawer contained two hundred and forty-two dollars in cash and over fifteen hundred in checks. Blackburn took the cash. Then he pocketed the yellow forms for the Fury and for Mrs. Stopes's Chevy.
Something out in the garage went
He drove Mrs. Stopes's Chevy to the small house at the address on her yellow form. He parked it in the driveway and left the two hundred and forty-two dollars in an envelope on the dash. He enclosed a note that read, 'You are our thousandth customer. Here is your prize. Your car is fixed. You do not need to come back. Best, E. amp; E.'
Then Blackburn walked back to Ed amp; Earl's Auto Service. It was dark now, and a cold mist was falling. He pursed his lips to suck in the moisture. It had been a beautiful day. He wished that he hadn't had to spend most of it cooped up in Ed and Earl's waiting room.
When he reached the garage, he could hear the air compressor running inside. But he had turned off the lights before leaving, so the place looked empty. The windows in the bay doors showed him his own face under a streetlight halo. He got into the Fury and drove to his apartment.
Dog was waiting for him, dancing in a black-and-white whirl. She had peed on the carpet again. This time Blackburn didn't mind.
'We're going for a ride,' he told her, and packed his duffel bag. There wasn't much to pack. His dirty laundry was in the Fury's trunk.
The Fury overheated on the way to Minneapolis, and Blackburn discovered that Earl had failed to refill the radiator. Blackburn did so and drove on.
The next day the car blew steam from its tailpipe and died on Marshall Avenue in St. Paul. Blackburn had it towed to a discount store with an auto service center, where he was told that the engine block had cracked because of the overheating incident. The Fury was a total loss.
Blackburn had to spend all of his money on a 1974 AMC Hornet. For the first time, he wished it were possible to kill someone twice.
SEVEN
The water tower lay in pieces. Blackburn pulled the Hornet onto the far shoulder of the Potwin road and stared at the wreckage.
He had passed the new one out on K-132. It was a mushroom-shaped thing with letters that spelled TUTTLE CO. RURAL WATER DISTRICT #8 instead of WANTODA It had neither a catwalk nor graffiti. It was ugly.
He let Dog out of the car to take a piss, and she jumped into the ditch and rolled in the burrs. Blackburn got out and yelled at her. She ignored him.
Blackburn crossed the ditch and climbed into the field, shading his eyes. The tower looked like a dead robot. As he approached, he saw that its legs were only partially dismembered. If he had come two days sooner, he might have seen it still standing. Two days later, and he might not have seen it at all. But today was Sunday, and the carrion eaters were at rest.
He stopped beside the rust-smeared silver tank. Here were the letters wan, peeled and almost gone. And here were graffiti, although he remembered none of the phrases. ZZ TOP, they said. AC/DC. '84 RULES. PINK FLOYD THE WALL. KATHY BITES. JESUS IS LOVE. LOVE THIS. Beside this last was an arrow pointing to a red spray-paint drawing of a giant cock and balls. Blackburn pressed his lips and tongue to the tank's skin. The taste of paint and metal, at least, hadn't changed.
A truck rumbled past on the road, and Dog charged after it. Blackburn ran back to the Hornet, shouting. Damn stupid Dog had no sense. She would get herself killed. He blamed her first master. A mistreated pup never recovered.
After a while she came to him, looking happy. He shoved her into the car and then sat and talked to her. She put her head in his lap and slobbered on his jeans. He pointed at the crumpled tower.
'I used to climb that,' he said. 'I was king of the world.'
He wished that the tower would reassemble and leap up, like a film run backward. He wished that the mushroom out on 132 would shrivel into the dirt. He wished that the town of Wantoda were as it had been when he had left it. He had wanted to think of this trip as a visit to the past, as a time-travel story about a man confronting his idiot ancestors. He had wanted May '84 to be a rerun of May '75.
But then tomorrow would be his seventeenth birthday instead of his twenty-sixth. It was better to be older. It was better not to be afraid.
Blackburn looked away from the remains of the water tower and started the Hornet. He steered back onto the pavement and drove down the Potwin road to kill his father.
Even for rural Tuttle County, the house was cruddy. The siding was blotched with orange, and the wooden shingles looked like scabs. The porch sagged. Dad had let the place go to hell.
A blue Celica sat in the dirt driveway behind a battered white GMC pickup. Dad had a visitor. That was too bad. Blackburn parked the Hornet against the Celica's rear bumper, then reached under the seat for his Colt Python. It had slid back, and he had to bend low and stretch before his fingers closed on the grip.
Dog barked in his ear, making him bang his head on the steering wheel. He yelled, and Dog barked again. Blackburn slapped at her with his free hand. Then he sat up, holding the pistol, and saw his mother on the porch. She was wearing a cream-colored summer dress like the ones she had always looked at in the Penney's catalog. Her hair touched her shoulders. Blackburn was amazed. He had thought she was in Oregon, or possibly dead. He ducked to hide the gun under the seat again.
When he rose, she was walking across the yard toward him. The south wind pressed the dress against her legs, and her hair blew back from her face. Her face was smooth.
Then she was at his window, and in her scowl he saw that she was not his mother after all. She was his sister. Dog barked at her.
Blackburn rolled down the window. 'Jasmine,' he said.
'Jimmy.' She stepped back. She looked surprised.
Blackburn opened his door and got out. Dog cowered against the passenger door.
Jasmine was several inches shorter than her brother. He looked down at her. 'You have breasts,' he said.
Her eyes narrowed. 'You don't.'
Blackburn realized that he had said a stupid thing. But he had left when she was twelve, and now the twelve-year-old's eyes and mouth were pasted on a different body. Maybe he should have
