NOS4A2(101)

In all this time, Manx did not touch the steering wheel or the stick but remained clutching his ear and turned in his seat to look at the Gasmask Man.

The gingerbread smoke, Wayne thought with a kind of dull-edged wonder. It was making him see things. Cars didn’t drive themselves. Backseats didn’t go on forever.

The Gasmask Man rocked back and forth, making piteous noises and shaking his head.

“Stupid,” the Gasmask Man whispered. “I am so stupid.” He banged his head on the dash, forcefully. Twice.

“You will quit right this instant or I am leaving you by the side of the road. There is no reason for you to take out your failures on the handsome interior of my car,” Manx said.

The car jolted forward and began to rush away from the cottage. Manx’s hands never left his face. The steering wheel moved minutely from side to side, guiding the Rolls along the road. Wayne narrowed his eyes, fixed his stare upon it. He pinched his cheek, very hard, twisting the flesh, but the pain did nothing to clear his vision. The car went on driving itself, so either the gingerbread smoke was causing him to hallucinate or—But there wasn’t an “or” in this line of reasoning. He didn’t want to start thinking “or.”

He turned his head and looked out the rear window. He had a last glimpse of the lake, under its low blanket of fog. The water was as smooth as a plate of new-minted steel, as smooth as the blade of a knife. If his mother was there, he saw no sign of her.

“Bing. Have a look in the glove compartment and I believe you will find a pair of scissors and some tape.”

“Do you want me to cut out my own tongue?” the Gasmask Man asked hopefully.

“No. I want you to bandage my head. Unless you would rather sit there and watch me bleed to death. I suppose that would be an entertaining spectacle.”

“No!” the Gasmask Man screamed.

“Well then. You will have to do what you can for my ear and my head. And take off that mask. It is impossible to talk to you while you have that thing on.”

The Gasmask Man’s head made a popping sound as it came out of the mask, much like a cork popping from a bottle of wine. The face beneath was flushed and reddened, and there were tears streaked all down his flabby, quivering cheeks. He rummaged through the glove compartment and came up with a roll of surgical tape and a pair of little silver scissors. He unzipped his tracksuit to reveal a stained white muscle shirt and shoulders so furry they brought to mind silverback gorillas. He stripped off the undershirt and zipped the jacket up.

The blinker clicked on. The car slowed for a stop sign, then turned onto the highway.

Bing scissored several long strips of undershirt. He folded one neatly and put it against Manx’s ear.

“Hold that there,” Bing said, and hiccupped in a miserable sort of way.

“I would like to know what she cut me with,” Manx said. He glanced into the backseat again, met Wayne’s gaze. “I have had a history of poor dealings with your mother, you know. It is like fighting with a bag of cats.”

Bing said, “I wish maggots were eating her. I wish maggots were eating her eyes.”

“That is a vile image.”

Bing looped another long strip of undershirt around Manx’s head, binding the pad to his ear and covering the slash across his forehead. He began to fix the undershirt in place with crosswise strips of surgical tape.

Manx was still looking at Wayne. “You are a quiet one. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Let me go,” Wayne said.

“I will,” Manx said.

They blew past the Greenbough Diner, where Wayne and his mother had eaten breakfast sandwiches that morning. Thinking back on the morning was like thinking back on a half-remembered dream. Had he seen Charlie Manx’s shadow when he first woke up? It seemed he had.

“I knew you were coming,” Wayne said. He was surprised to hear himself saying such a thing. “I knew all day.”

“It is hard to keep a child from thinking about presents on the night before Christmas,” Manx said. He winced as Bing pressed another strip of tape in place.

The steering wheel rocked gently from side to side, and the car hugged the curves.

“Is this car driving itself?” Wayne asked. “Or am I just seeing that because he sprayed stuff in my face?”

“You don’t need to talk!” the Gasmask Man screamed at him. “Quaker Meeting has begun! No more laughing, no more fun, or we cut out your stupid tongue!”

“Will you stop talking about cutting out tongues?” Manx said. “I am beginning to think you have a fixation. I am speaking to the boy. I do not need you to referee.”

Abashed, the Gasmask Man returned to snipping strips of tape.

“You are not seeing things, and it is not driving itself,” Manx said. “I am driving it. I am the car, and the car is me. It is an authentic Rolls-Royce Wraith, assembled in Bristol in 1937, shipped to America in 1938, one of fewer than five hundred on these shores. But it is also an extension of my thoughts and can take me to roads that can exist only in the imagination.”

“There,” Bing said. “All fixed.”

Manx laughed. “For me to be all fixed, we would have to go back and search that woman’s lawn for the rest of my ear.”

Bing’s face shriveled; his eyes narrowed to squints; his shoulders hitched and jerked with silent sobs.