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Bachman
1
Chapter 1
George was somewhere in the dark. Blaze couldn’t see him, but the
voice came in loud and clear, rough and a little hoarse. George always
sounded as if he had a cold. He’d had an accident when he was a kid. He
never said what, but there was a dilly of a scar on his adam’s apple.
“Not that one, you dummy, it’s got bumper stickers all over it. Get a
Chevy or a Ford. Dark blue or green. Two years old. No more, no less.
Nobody remembers them. And no stickers.”
Blaze passed the little car with the bumper stickers and kept
walking. The faint thump of the bass reached him even here, at the far end
of the beer joint’s parking lot. It was Saturday night and the place was
crowded. The air was bitterly cold. He had hitched him a ride into town, but
now he had been in the open air for forty minutes and his ears were numb.
He had forgotten his hat. He always forgot something. He had started to
take his hands out of his jacket pockets and put them over his ears, but
George put the kibosh on that. George said his ears could freeze but not his
hands. You didn’t need your ears to hotwire a car. It was three above zero.
“There,” George said. “On your right.”
Blaze looked and saw a Saab. With a sticker. It didn’t look like the
right kind of car at all.
“That’s your left,” George said. “Your right, dummy. The hand you
pick your nose with.”
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“I’m sorry, George.”
Yes, he was being a dummy again. He could pick his nose with either
hand, but he knew his right, the hand you write with. He thought of that
hand and looked to that side. There was a dark green Ford there.
Blaze walked over to the Ford, elaborately casual. He looked over his
shoulder. The beer joint was a college bar called The Bag. That was a stupid
name, a bag was what you called your balls. It was a walk-down. There was
a band on Friday and Saturday nights. It would be crowded and warm
inside, lots of little girls in short skirts dancing up a storm. It would be nice
to go inside, just look around—
“What are you supposed to be doing?” George asked. “Walking on
Commonwealth Ave? You couldn’t fool my old blind granny. Just do it,
huh?”
“Okay, I was just—”
“Yeah, I know what you was just. Keep your mind on your business.”
“Okay.”
“What are you, Blaze?”
He hung his head, snorkled back snot. “I’m a dummy.”
George always said there was no shame in this, but it was a fact and
you had to recognize it. You couldn’t fool anybody into thinking you were
smart. They looked at you and saw the truth: the lights were on but nobody
was home. If you were a dummy, you had to just do your business and get
out. And if you were caught, you owned up to everything except the guys
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who were with you, because they’d get everything else out of you in the
end, anyway. George said dummies couldn’t lie worth shit.
Blaze took his hands out of his pockets and flexed them twice. The
knuckles popped in the cold still air.
“You ready, big man?” George asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to get a beer. Take care of it.”
Blaze felt panic start. It came up his throat. “Hey, no, I ain’t never
done this before. I just watched you.”
“Well this time you’re going to do more than watch.”
“But—”
He stopped. There was no sense going on, unless he wanted to shout.
He could hear the hard crunch of packed snow as George headed toward
the beer joint. Soon his footsteps were lost in the heartbeat of the bass.
“Jesus,” Blaze said. “Oh Jesus Christ.”
And his fingers were getting cold. At this temperature they’d only be
good for five minutes. Maybe less. He went around to the driver’s side door,
thinking the door would be locked. If the door was locked, this car was no
good because he didn’t have the Slim Jim, George had the Slim Jim. Only
the door was unlocked. He opened the door, reached in, found the hood
release, and pulled it. Then he went around front, fiddled around for the
second catch, found that one, and lifted the hood.
There was a small Penlite in his pocket. He took it out. He turned it
Bachman
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on and trained the beam on the engine.
Find the ignition wire.
But there was so much spaghetti. Battery cables, hoses, spark-plug
wires, the gas-line—
He stood there with sweat running down the sides of his face and
freezing on his cheeks. This was no good. This wouldn’t never be no good.
And all at once he had an idea. It wasn’t a very good idea, but he didn’t
have many and when he had one he had to chase it. He went back to the
driver’s side and opened the door again. The light came on, but he couldn’t
help that. If someone saw him fiddling around, they would just think he
was having trouble getting started. Sure, cold night like this, that made
sense, didn’t it? Even George couldn’t give him grief on that one. Not much,
anyway.
He flipped down the visor over the steering wheel, hoping against
hope that a spare key might flop down, sometimes folks kept one up there,
but there was nothing there but an old ice scraper.
That
flopped down. He
tried the glove compartment next. It was full of papers. He raked them out
onto the floor, kneeling on the seat to do it, his breath puffing. There were
papers, and a box of Junior Mints, but no keys.
There, you goddam dummy,
he heard George saying,
are you
satisfied now? Ready to at least try hot-wiring it now?
He supposed he was. He supposed he could at least tear some of the
wires loose and touch them together like George did and see what
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happened. He closed the door and started toward the front of the Ford
again with his head down. Then he stopped. A new idea had struck him. He
went back, opened the door, bent down, flipped up the floormat, and there
it was. They key didn’t say FORD on it, it didn’t say anything on it because
it was a dupe, but it had the right square head and everything.
Blaze picked it up and kissed the cold metal.
Unlocked car
, he thought. Then he thought:
Unlocked car and key
under the floormat.
Then he thought:
I ain’t the dumbest guy out tonight
after all, George.
He got in behind the wheel, slammed the door, slid the key in the
ignition slot—it went in nice—then realized he couldn’t see the parking lot
because the hood was still up. He looked around quick, first one way and
then the other, making sure that George hadn’t decided to come back and
help him out. George would never let him hear the end of it if he saw the
hood still up like that. But George wasn’t there. No one was there. The
parking lot was tundra with cars.
Blaze got out and slammed the hood. Then he got back in and paused
in the act of reaching for the door handle. What about George? Should he
go in yonder beer-farm and get him? Blaze sat frowning, head down. The
dome light cast yellow light on his big hands.
Guess what?
he thought, raising his head again at last.
Screw him.
“Screw you, George,” he said. George had left him to hitchhike in,
just meeting him here, then left him again. Left him to do the dirtywork,
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