Craig Davidson - Cataract City

The cars idled on the sloped oval, grilles aimed into the centre. When the air horn blatted , I threw the tranny into reverse and tromped the accelerator; the tires stuttered, spitting loose stones against the undercarriage until finally they bit, rocketing the hearse up the slope and away from the fray.

The delivery van collided with a Dodge Aspen; the plastic chicken sailed off the roof to explode like a snow globe on the Dodge’s hood. Wrenching the wheel, I swung the hearse into a sloppy arc as the little Micra caromed off my bumper and pinballed like a BB.

I threw my arm over the passenger seat and cranked my neck over my shoulder. The purple Buick fell directly in my crosshairs: it sat in the centre of the bowl, fishtailing on two flats. I punched the gas and shot downhill — the pink behemoth charged past my front bumper in pursuit of a lime-green Gremlin — lining up the hearse’s trunk with the Buick’s mannequin hood ornament, which swelled in the rear window until— CRANCH!

The impact threw me forward. My face bounced off the wheel; flaming spiders scuttled before my eyes. The mannequin’s head bounded off the hood and burst under the passing tires of the delivery van. I jerked the transmission into D and goosed the gas; my bumper was snarled with the Buick’s fender and the unlocking of all that twisted metal was accompanied by a metallic shriek that set my teeth on edge. The air above the oval was blue with exhaust; my head swam with the fumes but my adrenaline was redlined. Absolute clarity settled over me, a sensation I’d felt only once or twice in my life.

The hearse accelerated up the oval; I spun the wheel casually, using just two fingers, blood on the back of my hand in perfect red droplets. I must have bloodied my nose when it hit the wheel but never mind, this was a hell of a time. The big car swung around at the top of the oval as if on autopilot, back wheels flirting with the fence; the thunder of the hearse’s muffler trip-hammered against my eardrums while I paused at the height of the incline to survey the madness below. I selected the delivery van that was meshed with the Aspen; their back tires smoked as they tried to separate. My foot mashed the gas and the view expanded, blown up big as all outdoors, before shrinking to a pinprick as I shot the gap and SHRRAASH! barrelled into the van, hitting it broadside and rocking it up on its side.

For an instant I thought I’d tipped the van over but soon gravity took hold and it smashed back down, axles snapping, hood jackrabbiting up and a torn fan belt hurtling skyward like a bird. I took in the green piss of antifreeze and the stink of cooked wiring and screamed in triumph, tasting blood between my teeth.

That was when the hearse rattled and died. I gripped the wheel, white-knuckled, laughing as I twisted the key. Nothing. Laughing harder now, these hysterical giggles, I jammed the transmission collar into P and reefed the key. The hearse coughed to life and I let loose a war whoop as the Micra blazed down the decline and ran straight into me.

The collision jolted me — each knob of my spine was robed in cold flames — as a glowing-hot lugnut pinged off the roof and hit the passenger seat, melting through the upholstery and sending up tiny curls of smoke. I peered groggily over the hearse’s hood at the Micra, which was folded up like an accordion, the driver laughing like a hyena with the flesh split above his brow. I was laughing, too—“You’re a wildman!” I shouted, and he must’ve heard because he grinned as if to say, Buddy, you don’t even wanna know! He threw the Micra into reverse, backed clear and went after the pink behemoth.

When I dropped the tranny into D, the hearse whined like a sick animal. The stink of broiled creosote seeped through the vents. I navigated a wasteland of shorn metal and cracked engine blocks hissing steam to the low side of the oval. A busted car horn emitted an endless high-pitched honk — the whooonk of a terrified goose. I gunned the hearse up the track incline, gears grinding, unsteady on tires shredding from their rims, then swung around and scanned the field. The Micra was rammed into the ass-end of the Aspen. The pink thing’s trunk was torn off and there was a huge dent in its left side, but it still moved. It angled round until we faced each other, three hundred yards apart. My heart swelled up to fill my chest.

I stood on the gas pedal. The big block V8 shrieked as the hearse leapt like a scalded cat. The pink car was boogying, too: vaporous streamers of smoke peeled back from its crunched hood. The spotlights shone off the still-bright chrome of the dash, which glowed with its strange circular geometries, and I inhaled the mustard leatherette of the seat and thought about the bodies that had occupied the berth behind me, laid out in coffins with their formaldehyde-stiff skin white as candle wax, wounds sewn tight with black thread, and then I braced my hands on the wheel as the pink car blasted into me.

A crash of earthbound thunder. Our hoods were welded with the weirdest metallic symmetry. Steel buckled, the alloy became liquid: it tumbled off the front of the hood in silver waves like steel-tinted winter water over the Falls, throwing me against the wheel so hard that I’d wake the next morning with the bright welt of its shape on my chest.

The impact shocked the air from my lungs. My next inhale was tortured, the sound you make after being under water so long it has almost killed you. I sucked in the steam roiling off the hearse’s engine block — the taste of a blowtorch’s blue flame. As the motor rattled down I smelled gas — on me? — and watched as small flames licked from under the pink car’s hood.

“Hey! You okay, buddy?”

The derby inspector hung his big fat melon through the window. I blinked my eyes and tried to focus.

“Derby’s over, man. You got yourself a bloody nose.”

“I’ll be okay. Say, did I win?”

The inspector shook his head. “The Micra took it.”

When I burst out laughing, the inspector insisted I check in with the on-site medic: unprovoked laughter was a symptom of a concussion.

After the race we took a cab to the Blue Lagoon. A pair of gay divorcees danced together on the postage stamp of a dance floor. Their pancake makeup shone under the black lights, making them look like lost mimes.

I drank a pint of Laker and soon the plugs of Kleenex stuffed up my nostrils were wet with beer foam. Bovine had kept himself well lubed on two-dollar drafts at the derby and showed no signs of flagging. Pinpricks of sweat glittered in the hollows of his eyes, and his hair looked like a half-deflated soufflé.

“Take it easy,” I told him. “You don’t have to drink your body weight.”

Bovine said, “Who are you — my mother?”

He staggered onto the dance floor, grinding up on the divorcees. Arms above his head, a highball glass in one hand and a pint in the other. When the women abandoned the floor, Bovine danced by himself in the strobes, thrusting his crotch.

Owe winced, fished in his back pocket and tossed a deck of cigarettes on the table.

“You smoke?”

Owe shook his head. “Sitting on them funny, is all. Screwing with my spine. They’re evidence, actually.” He exhaled casually. “Know much about cigarette smuggling?”

“Nothing. Why, should I?”

Owe tore the cellophane off the package, tapped one out. “These’re counterfeits, but they look and taste almost like the real deal.” He rotated the cigarette with his fingertips. “The band’s a little different — the only way to tell. Dull yellow instead of glossy gold. It’s big money.”

“That so?”

“Half a billion a year — can you believe that? Mainly on the reserves down in Cornwall. The Akwesasne Mohawks in the U.S., the Kahnawake tribe on our side. When the Saint Lawrence freezes they hoof ’em over the ice. In the summer it’s speedboats.”