..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Sunday, May 11, 2003

"I don't lose my composure in a high speed chase."
-Tom Waits


"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are."
-Repo Man


FICTION:



Driving



He saw everything at a red light.

Everything he needed to know he could see from behind the wheel of his car. He didn't have to tilt his head, lean forward, or even squint his eyes. The girl? She didn't need to be in a car next to his for him to see everything. Actually, next to him would be harder, since he'd have to cock his head to look over and the mirrors would be all wrong. And he wouldn't be able to use his hands the way he needed to. It was best if the girl was in a car in front or behind. He could use his mirrors or hers. Not more than three feet from his bumper was the perfect distance. In the summer, the sun at seven o’clock was the perfect time. And the long red light.

All Steven needed was her eyes. Looking at his eyes. That was enough. Driving was almost enough, and a girl’s eyes made driving almost perfect. He was so relaxed nested in his car that before he even turned the key, his shoes were off. His feet worked the controls like a chimp. The pedals could have been a third their size down there, with extra buttons and switches and knobs, and his toes could have orchestrated it all like a mad scientist. Hell, he could have played a guitar under there. Speeding up or stopping fast was like squeezing warm sand with those toes
and he treated the controls with love. He never stomped on the gas or the clutch or the brake.

However, there really wasn't enough for his feet to do. Sometimes one of his feet would need to be on a pedal and instead it would get distracted and start trying to turn over a penny. This caused some trouble, especially during start-and-stop traffic jams and construction sites. Still, besides his toes getting bored, everything was perfect when he was in the car.

Well, maybe there were some other things that bothered him. He didn't like the way his hand covered up his view of the gauges when he had his knuckles across the top of the wheel. He wanted his hand there, needed his hand there, arm straight, elbow locked, only now he noticed that he couldn't see the RPMs in that position. He wanted to watch those numbers. They changed faster than the speedometer. And they were bigger. He could go up thousands, then down hundreds, then back up another thousand and still he was just squeezing his toes and cruising. Or seeing how far he could go in a straight line without turning the wheel. Or just jerking through a stop sign. Sometimes he wondered, if he could comfortably move his hand over and stop hiding those numbers, driving could be perfect.

Except for the trucks. That was another thing. When he was driving next to a silver tanker, watching the lines of the road scrolling along its hide, something strange happened. He would see the reflection of his car on the truck pinched and distorted into a hazy deformed streak. He would slide around behind the truck and look up to the back of the tank where the long silver tube came to a point and the distortions were the worst. He would follow the truck for miles, looking for his car at that angle, to see if he was as deformed as the road. He thought if he got close enough to that funhouse mirror, he would see extra fingers across his steering wheel. Or someone standing on his hood. Or an animal hanging off his grill. He’d stare for hours at the vanishing points on the ass-ends of those silver monsters and that’s when it would happen. It would take him a couple seconds to realize it. The car wasn't there. He wasn’t there. Every time it was a surprise, like he was a vampire who forgot until he looked up at the mirror while brushing his teeth. He’d pull back, curl his toes on the gas and run his car right up on its mud-flaps and still he was invisible. The road was still there in the truck’s reflection, spitting out a Morse code message of yellow dots and white dashes. He still wasn't there. He knew it had something to do with the curve of those metal tanks. He knew he was still there, squeezing the wheel until it creaked, driving behind those trucks forever, no matter what the road mirrors told
him. Still, it made him angry. Sometimes he flipped some vents and stabbed some buttons pretending they were missiles.

And he wondered if it would take a collision for him to prove he was there.

Besides those trucks? And his hand crawling up too high on the steering wheel? And his toes trying to flip coins? Driving was perfect. Of course, Steven couldn’t drive forever. Driving would be perfect if his body didn’t always betray him. After crunching all the ice away that he kept in a baseball cap between his legs every summer, he’d have to stop to piss. And stopping was the worst thing he could do. Getting out of the car. Now that was a betrayal. It was an insult to the road. He'd thought about pissing in the car several times and never could force himself to do it. Today was no exception. He crunched the last ice cube into warm water and swallowed. Then he wringed the water out of his baseball cap, screwed it tight onto his head, and stopped his car at the next gas station.

It turned out that the man he held the door for asked the clerk for the toilet key first. The man wore a yellow shirt that used to be white and even angrier than Steven. He stood there at the counter shaking his head, bringing a fist down hard enough to make the free pennies in the matchbox jump. The yellow man couldn't believe that this toilet key had to remain attached to an empty gallon milk jug.

"Just open the goddamn door," the yellow man snarled.

"You got the key," the clerk shrugged.

The man stormed off with the jug, banging the huge toilet anchor off the door in disgust.

Steven wiped his hands nervously on his gray shirt that used to be black and was just getting ready to ask if there was a girl's key, maybe with just a half-gallon or a pop can attached to it, when the man was suddenly back, slamming the gallon back onto the counter. The jug belched a spray of foul liquid out of the top when it hit and, even though Steven was more than five feet away, he could have swore he felt the heat coming off it. It was filled to the brim with piss. This yellow man was small, and still it seemed that he'd somehow delivered almost a full gallon of
urine in about thirty seconds. Then the small yellow man was out the door with a smile before the clerk could react, allowing his steaming jug of waste water to get the last word instead. Steven and the clerk just stared at it. After a few seconds, they finally looked up at each other.

“I need the key to the toilet too, dude," Steven said slowly.

"You got the key,” the clerk shrugged.

"Not a chance,” Steven said. “Cut that key loose, give me another one or something.”

"Can't do that."

"You're nuts. You want me to haul around a gallon of fucking piss?"

"No, you're nuts,” the clerk laughed. “If you think that he filled that whole gallon jug. No way. Sure he pissed some, to give it the color. No way a whole gallon though. He just pissed what he had in the tank, then filled the rest with water and shook it up real good to make the foam on top."

“You’re missing the fucking point, I don’t care if it’s three percent urine, nine percent saliva, six percent snot and eighty percent natural spring water, I don’t want to-”

“That’s only adds up to ninety-eight percent-”

Steven grabbed the key and stomped off. He couldn’t argue the math. As Steven walked around the building, emptying the jug into the gravel as he went, he heard the clerk still muttering inside.

“There’s just no way. No man could have done that much that fast. . .”

That was at sundown, his piss-stop recharged his batteries enough to risk a little more driving. And just when he thought there were enough distractions that day to screw his perfect drive beyond repair, he took a wrong turn and found himself on a one-lane road. He hated those, they were too small to maneuver with another car coming at him. Tagging roadkill with one wheel was impossible. And, of course, cars kept rolling into sight on the horizon like the teeth on a music box wheel fprever repeating the same song. The cars squeezed by him, fighting for room, tire-treads slipping off the tar and into the dirt, kicking up rooster-tails of dust and stones. He thought that maybe these other cars were trying to hit things too. Maybe they had that urge to feel that thump in their feet, to know what it felt like to run over an animal without the guilt of really killing one. His toes scissored angrily over the controls. It wasn’t fair that other cars were pushing him off the road. This was his home. He knew that any thump they would feel would
only be through shoes and not the skin of a bare foot.

Steven was forced to the side three times before he found two-lanes again. He couldn’t swerve for roadkill and had to let several dark-red somethings in the middle of that road slip silently between his wheels to keep his car out of the ditch. Lately it had been making him nervous when something disappeared under his car and between his wheels untouched. His mind wandered when there wasn’t any turns and he started to wonder if evolution might have given the roads an animal that had learned to curl up dead-center in the lane. Something that looked dead when it wasn’t moving. Something that looked like it had already been hit. Something with fur that looked like blood and legs that looked like guts and a tail that looked like a rope of intestine. Maybe even eyes on its back. Something with the speed to hook a claw on a muffler when a car passed over it. Something with the strength to climb down the exhaust pipes, creep up into the motor, and live in there forever. Every noise, shake or rumble he could feel in his toes, was an animal that had been playing possum, or been hiding under a possum, waiting on that spot in the road that his wheels always missed. If the engine coughed he would think of something scurrying under his feet, blowing the exhaust out of its nostrils and curling a long red tail around itself to get comfortable down there in the shadow of his body. He knew the idea was crazy and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He even knew exactly where, when and why that seed got planted in his brain. Three things. It was always three things.

First, there were these two little boys who crank-called him some mornings and one time they whispered in his ear, "don’t fuck her when she’s red. . .’cause she ain't dead!" Twenty-four hours and he would have flushed that rhyme from his head completely.

Then the second thing happened that day, not that he was counting. Steven was on the road and the car vibrating under his hands, ass and feet just didn't feel right. Something was strangling his engine. He broke up a the long straight line he’d been working on and quickly took a detour and soon he was standing outside leaning on his raised hood with his uncle. They were looking to pull a branch out of the fan, or fix something that had snapped, or pour some fluid into a hole. However, when they did pop the hood, Steven got confused looking at the wires and works and his mind and eyes started to wander again. That's when he saw the explosion of scratches on the inside of the hood above their heads. Steven asked his uncle, "If the problem is over there, and the noise was coming from over there, then what the hell made all these marks up here?" His uncle looked up and stared for a while, then finally unwrapped a broken belt from the engine, also hooking a handful of rotten leaves to throw over his shoulder and into Steven’s face. They both bumped their heads on the hood standing back up.

"I don't know, some animal, I guess."

“What!?!”

Steven spit out a black stem and stared at him in shock. His uncle frowned, then shook his head and went back to work. His uncle never looked back up at those scratches. And Steven couldn’t take his eyes off them. He couldn’t understand why his uncle wasn’t as horrified with that idea as he was. He imagined an animal that could crawl around in there and navigate through all the spots where the oil wouldn’t burn it. Shredding insulation and rubber wire for its nest, training the hairless grub-pink babies that hung from its stomach to avoid anything that was hot or
spinning. . .

His uncle slammed the hood shut and those thoughts were locked in tight ever since. Still, he figured there was no danger as long as nothing slipped between his tires untouched. As long as he avoided any more one-lane roads today, his drive should be perfect.

Third came the bus, nine miles later. Even though it was bright green instead of yellow and there wasn’t a name of a school on the side, he saw the children wiggling around inside and didn't think anything strange could be going on. He slipped in behind the bus hoping there would be some antics or arguing in the back seats he could watch. He liked to do that sometimes, at least until they noticed him.

He was lucky, there were three of them sitting back there.

Two boys and one girl, he thought. The perfect number and never a good combination. Could be worse though. Three boys. That would be the worst.

The two boys were waving furiously, showing off, making faces, mouths moving around silent insults as they challenged Steven to wave back. He didn't. He’d been a boy once, he knew a middle finger was the guarenteed response with the safety between vehicle. Steven concentrated on the girl instead. She waited until the boys’ faces got sore and gave up their taunts to offer Steven a smile and a small sincere wave with her tiny hand. When she did that, Steven had no choice. His reaction was instant and automatic.

The boys could have had equal power over my hands if they’d thrown me a football.

He found himself loosening his knuckles from their death-grip on the steering wheel. A quick glance under that hand told him that they were all going 6900 RMPs. He frowned. Something was wrong after all.

That’s too fast for a school bus. Green or yellow.

Then he was waving to the girl. Instantly her look changed and she quickly separated the two boys from whatever arm, leg or thumb wrestling match to twist them towards the glass and look. She was laughing and holding up some fingers in front of their faces and wiggling them victoriously. Steven suddenly understood that she’d won their game. They had been counting waves from strangers out the window to kill time. As if they’d run out of dead bugs on the glass to count and looked to the road as an afterthought. Neither wave, hers or Steven’s, meant anything at all. It was as if it had never happened. Steven’s hand went back to the wheel and squeezed until his knuckles were white again.

Did I say there were only three things that fucked up this drive? Steven thought. No, there was at least one more...

There was the boy on the overpass three turns after that. Steven only saw him for a second, just a blur of head and hands and feet outlined in the hole he was making in the fence. Steven blinked in shock, thinking for a split second that the boy was tearing through that fence to jump down onto his car. Then he was under the bridge and the boy was gone. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with his forearm. He closed his eyes as long as he dared to bring the image back. His foot came up off the controls and the car slowed to a crawl. He saw it again behind his eyelids. A boy furiously bending and twisting and kicking that metal fence to get through it. Arms and legs moving quick as hell. The boy seemed so fast and desperate that Steven had been sure he’d was squeezing through that hole just for him. He couldn’t believe a boy would want to jump onto a car.

Then the rock rebounded off his trunk and he sighed in relief. Just a boy throwing rocks.

Now he was at another red light and it was too hot to concentrate.

Too hot, he thought. Even for summer.

The last ice cube in his baseball cap had sank away into nothing and sweat was making his nose itch. There was a girl in front of him, actually she was in the car in front of him, he had to keep reminding himself of the difference, and he thought catching her eyes might be enough to salvage the drive.

He found the mirrors on her vehicle. . .

The ears. . .always locate the ears of the car first. . .then look through them.

. . .and Steven started to go down his checklist:

There was still enough light to see the outlines of her ears in the shadows. She turned her head to look down the cross-road and he saw a whiplash of a black pony-tail hanging out of a ballcap. He saw her small mouth and a flash of teeth in the driver's side mirror. Steven knew a trick. He turned his key to make his car bark in protest and she jerked her head the other way so he could see the straight line of her nose. Now the drive was perfect. She was perfect. Finally he looked deep inside her car to find her eyes in her rearview mirror. There was a problem.

She wasn’t there.

Steven forced himself to think rationally. He decided that her car must have been stopped at a strange angle to him and her mirror didn't seem to reflect anywhere near her head. Or maybe she bumped it swatting a fly or the windshield. He thought of the impossible silver trucks that refused to acknowledge him or his car on the road and he started to get angry.

He inched forward, one toe easing off the clutch, another toe rubbing the gas. Nothing, he still couldn’t see her eyes. He stabbed at the brake, clutch and gas like organ pedals, trying to rock the car hard enough for her to notice. Nothing. He tapped the horn with his elbow as if it was an accidental yawn-turned-grope at the movie theater. Still nothing. His car lurched again in frustration and he saw a flash of eyes. However these eyes were dead, refecting nothing and they wouldn’t connect with his own. He got angrier and wondered if her rearview mirror just had eyes
drawn onto it, to give drivers the same fake stare you’d find on the backs of caterpillars to confuse predators.

His naked toes fanned out over the pedals, one stopping to tickle the gas. Hesitating. Steven felt the toe swell as if it was holding it’s breath. Then he grunted and decided he’d waited long enough to see her. The car lunged and kissed her back bumper. The kiss wasn’t that hard. Only about ninety-nine RPMs.

After she tore off, Steven drove towards home leaning forward off his sticky driver’s seat, sweat running races down his back. He was out of ice and his damp baseball cap was now screwed tight onto his head. He was going straight home to watch a movie that he'd been saving for a day just like this. More sweat gathered between his shoulder blades, forming a stream and picking up speed down the crack of his ass. He thought back to when he was a little boy, when he was forced to sit in the backseat of his parents’ car, and he used to imagine he was swinging a
sword across the road, cutting destruction through the oncoming traffic.

He felt the numbers under his hand climbed as the car gathered speed. His left foot, the one that normally hovered over the brake and clutch, curled up and crawled under his seat to hide. He didn’t worry about animals under there anymore that day. His foot was as far away from the brake and clutch as it could be. It was if there was heat coming off two of the pedals and he wanted no part of them. Only the gas was safe. It seemed that the only problems that he encountered on the road were when he slowed down to look at something. The mirrors on the trucks, roadkill and oncomming traffic on a one-lane road, the boy crawling through the fence to throw a rock, that green school bus. Maybe he wouldn’t use those pedals anymore. Ever. His left foot felt comfortable curled up under him. It was as if he was home in front of the TV and not controlling two tons of metal. Maybe he’d just estimate exactly how much gas he’d need to coast to a stop instead. It had to be the brake. That’s where all his troubles began and ended. The urge to connect his problems on the road to some kind of catalyst was overwhelming.

Slowing down. That had to be it.

The only thing worse than slowing down would be stopping, he thought.

What happened when he stopped? He’s standing there with a jug of urine in his hand. Or he’s finding animals living under the hood of his car. Or he’s wasting time staring at a girl who wasn’t even there. Driving was the car. Nothing on the road should be involved. Even rolling the windows down could corrupt a drive. A bug flies in and everything is changed.

I read somewhere that 75% of all unexplained fatal car crashes are thought to be caused by stinging insects, or worse, some girl bumps her rearview mirror trying to swat a fly. . .

His tongue caught some salt dripping off his nose and his rolled his shoulderblades to try to scratch without taking his hands off the wheel.

Suddenly he knew that it wasn’t sweat on his back. It was bugs. Bugs that had evolved to live in a car forever and learned to roll straight down your shirt so that you'd think it was only perspiration and frustration while you drove in heavy traffic. Sweatbugs. Insects that would stay hidden on the tips of your tiny neck hairs when they rose up, then drop their eggs when your muscles relaxed and those hairs came down. They could live on your back, running and rolling around on your skin, surfing your sweat all the way down. Drinking your salt water when they needed to. Steven knew these strange new bugs would only live in cars.

Or is it 99% of all unexplained car crashes?

You can’t scratch your back behind the wheel so they could breed like mad on a driver. A driver could never kill one.

A driver’s hands and feet were always driving.



-© 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 2:12 AM [+] :::
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