Craig Davidson - Cataract City

“I found her on the side of the road,” I said. “You have to take her.”

“Oh Gaad ,” she said with a strong upstate accent. “What happened?”

“I don’t know … someone might’ve hit her with their car.”

“ Savages . Why wouldn’t they have stopped?”

“Jesus, listen — I don’t know .” I held Folchik out to her. “She’s real bad off. Do you have a vet on staff?”

She nodded. “Always one on call. I’ll have to—”

“Call whoever it is. Hurry up, you have to—”

The woman stepped aside, waving me in. Beyond the door lay a small, clean, white-tiled room dominated by a steel examining table.

“Lay the dog down,” she said. “I’ll call the police, too. We have to file a report. You’ll have to talk to them.”

A quick scan of the room told me there was no phone. I said, “Go make the calls.”

“Okay, yes. Oh Gaad ,” she said, hurrying out.

Blood had soaked through my shirt. Folchik had been breathing shallowly, but her inhales seemed steadier now.

I left before the woman returned. I drove to an all-night carwash on Pine Street and cleaned my truck out, scrubbing the upholstery until my hands turned a chapped red. I changed into my overalls and drove to the Tops Market, where I bought bandages and peroxide in the pharmacy and grabbed a case of Hamm’s from the cooler. In the parking lot, by the glow of the truck’s domelight, I debrided and bandaged my arm where Seeker had bit me. The punctures were ragged, throbbing with a dull, bone-deep heat. I hoped they wouldn’t get infected.

I’d driven back to the border, where I declared and paid full duty on the beer. Then I wound through the quiet streets of my city, drank four beers real quick at the end of my block and finally rolled up the driveway with the headlights off.

“You been drinking?” Edwina said.

I stared at the beer at the end of my arm. “Bovine bought a couple cases over the river. I bought one off him.”

I was shocked at how easily the lie came to me. Dolly padded over and nosed around my legs, snaffling the exposed skin at my ankles. Her tail stiffened.

“Have you been seeing other dogs?” Ed asked.

“A stray wandering around the shipworks.” Another effortless lie.

“Hmm. Dolly’s jealous. Come here,” Edwina said.

We lay in the moonlight. The breeze played on the wind chimes hanging in the window: it was hammered bronze and shaped like tumbling water. A friend of Ed’s had bought it for us at a tourist trap on Clifton Hill. Might as well buy wooden shoes for a Dutchman.

“There’s something on your neck,” Ed said. “Is that blood?”

“Oil, probably. From the docks.”

She rubbed my thigh … then rubbed higher. I liked her this way, all coy and mothering. I needed her to carry me away from the sight of Folchik broken open on a warehouse floor. Maybe she needed it too, really needed it, like me, instead of just wanting it to satisfy the urge.

Lately when we made love, I’d been seeing Ed as someone else. She’d angle her head as she lay on the pillow and the outline of her bone structure would seem more purely arousing to me. But then I’d realize it was still Edwina — just a younger version. Her hair not yet leeched by the bleached flour that constantly hung in the air at the Bisk. Her forearms not yet twisted with thick blue veins. And I’d look at my own hands and they were no longer ruined things, either. It was as if our young selves reappeared … the strangest thing.

But those younger, other selves are never really gone, are they? All their possibilities. Why would they be? They’re only waiting for you to chase them down and reclaim them, right?

Who’d have figured wrecking a hearse could be so much fun?

Owe, Bovine and I drove it to Westlane High School, where, as promised, the auto shop teacher let us use the tool bay. We jacked the meat-wagon on a pneumatic hoist and tore it apart.

It was just the three of us drinking Lakers and busting the hell out of the hearse. We took a sledgehammer to it. We stomped the windshield until the Saf-T-Glas webbed, caved and folded into the front seat. We loosed war whoops while crowbarring out the side windows, which broke with such a sweet tinkling. I crawled into the back and ripped down the velvet curtains— pik-pik-pik! — off the brass hooks.

Bovine popped the hood. We stood around it.

“Well,” Owen said. “I’m pretty sure that’s an engine.”

At least Bovine had half a clue what to do. He purged the gas tank and rerouted the flow to a hose fed through the glovebox and then into a jerry can duct-taped to the back seat.

“Can’t be any gas in the tank during a demo derby,” he said. “Unless you want a field of flaming fireballs.”

One night I cracked the door leading into the hallway and when the alarm didn’t blare we walked into the darkened school. Our boots squeaked on the tiles, that haunting sound echoing down the hallways.

“Darla Dinkins,” Bovine said, tapping his beer bottle on a locker. “Ol’ Double D. I asked her out dancing at the Blue Lagoon — I had fake ID. Ah, god, did she shoot me doooown .”

“She works at the Shoppers Drug Mart on Portage,” I said. “Married to Doug Kirkwood, who sells Chevys at Mullane Motors. Two kids … one’s named Ekko, I think.”

We passed the trophy case, our bodies reflected amidst the golden armatures. The three of us looked younger in the half-light, relieved of the years sunken into our flesh — the effect was so compelling I found myself reaching out to touch our faces where they lay trapped in the glass.

Back in the tool bay we spray-painted THE DEVIL’S DUE down each side of the hearse. Bovine hacked down the muffler with an acetylene torch — miraculously without melting his fingers off. The big hulk howled like the hounds of hell.

On the night of the derby we flicked on the hearse’s hazard lights and crept down the back roads to the Merrittville Speedway.

Bovine had spent the afternoon stuck down a bottle, so I drove. Bovine hummed softly in the back seat as wind rushed through the empty windows to carve the hair back from his widow’s peak. The narrow road shone like a runway in the moonlight. Stars salted the sky above the escarpment. I fiddled with the radio and pulled in “Take Me Home Tonight” by Eddie Money.

“Beee mah little bay-bee,” Bovine crooned in a drunken falsetto.

The Speedway shone under a ring of spotlights. I pulled into the grassy staging area teeming with chopped-down derby rides. The inspector did a circuit around the hearse, casually snapped the antenna off and said, “Got a helmet?”

“No,” Owe said.

“You can rent one over there. Ten bucks.”

“That’s highway robbery!” Bovine cackled from the back seat.

“That guy better not be driving,” the inspector said.

Owe begged off, seeing as his knee was held together with Silly Putty and carpenter’s glue. Bovine slapped me on both cheeks and gave me a woozy hug. “Steady on, Highlander!”

While Bovine and Owe made their way to the bleachers, I scoped the competition: a rusty delivery van with a giant plastic chicken on its roof; a slab of Detroit rolling iron, cotton-candy pink, with THE SHOCKER on the hood; a purple Buick with an armless, legless mannequin lashed to the grille. Two guys sat on the Buick’s hood passing a flask; their laughter floated up towards the stars.

Drivers hopped into our cars. The air was soon hammering with pistons, thick with exhaust fumes. The inspector waved a red flag. I pulled out behind a Nissan Micra that must’ve been some masochist’s idea of a swell ride. We drove a lap past the stands. The lights shone down with the intensity of tiny suns. Owe and Bovine stood, beers in hand, cheering their guts out. I blew them kisses.