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
“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.
The night we were to call the Engine, I walked into the City early, just before dusk. I wanted to look at the car alone, in daylight.
I took almost as much pride in it as Zeke did.
At that time I’d only seen one race on the white highways, between two cars on the pro circuit from Nevada. I’d thought the cars were the most beautiful, terrible things in the world. But Zeke’s car, our car, surpassed them.
Not in beauty. Even by lamplight, the lines on the Chevy did not look delicate; the interior did not look padded and luxurious; the wheels were not trimmed in gold like the circuit cars were. But for sheer terribleness, you couldn’t match Zeke’s Chevy.
It was red, but a red shot through with yellow and white lines that, by lamplight, flickered and burned. I’d asked Zeke how he did it. How did he know what design was needed, what pattern of lines and circles and rectangles was called for. Zeke said that every pattern on every car was exactly the same, but I said that was horse-hockey—I’d seen the pro cars, and each design was as different from the other as strangers.
As I entered the alley I could see that the Chevy was no less terrible by daylight. I could make out each line and shape, and as I looked I began to grasp the logic of their relationships. Each line bound one shape to another; each shape froze the line in its path. There was no way to look past that design to the base red, and there was no path from the red out.
The pattern was bars to a cage, and the cage was the car.
Suddenly I realized that there was someone in the car behind the wheel; nearly as quick I knew it was Frank. The door opened and he heaved himself out. He stumbled forward, then leaned against the hood. As I walked toward him he drew a flask and swallowed hard.
“Who are you?”
“Joseph Peterson,” I said. I was ready to break and run if he got crazy. I’d seen Frank drunk, but I’d always stayed out of his way. So did Zeke.
His eyes narrowed. “Sam’s boy?”
“That’s right.” He shook his head as if to clear it. He looked at the car beneath his hand.
“What the hell are you boys trying to do out here?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Nothing? C’mere, boy. Look at this.” Cautiously I walked over. He traced one of the lines with his finger. The finger, and now I noticed the entire hand as well, was covered with pink scars. I looked at where he pointed. There was a small break in the paint. “That’s sloppy, boy, sloppy that could get you killed. That line’s useless, and if your Engine finds that break it’s gonna try to pop right out of there.” He pulled me around to the open driver’s door. “Look at that steerin’ wheel.”
