NOS4A2(57)

The car swam through the grass, a black shark slicing through a rippling ocean of yellows and greens. Birds scattered before it, darting into a lemon sky. The wheels banged and thudded in unseen ruts.

Her father, crocked and getting crockeder, sat in the passenger seat fiddling with the tuner, a warm Coors between his legs. Only the tuner didn’t do anything. The radio jumped from band to band, but everything was white noise. The only station that came in at all was distant, crackling, and awash with background hiss and playing that goddamn holiday music.

“Who is playing this shit in the middle of May?” he asked, and burped, enormously and grotesquely.

Michelle giggled in appreciation.

There was no way to turn the radio off or even down. The volume dial spun uselessly, adjusting nothing.

“This car is like your old man,” Nathan said, pulling another Coors out of the six-pack at his feet, popping another top. “A wreck of its former self.”

That was just more of his silly talk. Her father wasn’t doing so bad. He had invented some kind of valve for Boeing, and it had paid for three hundred acres above the Ohio River. They were driving around it now.

The car, on the other hand, really had left its best days behind it. The carpet was gone, and where it belonged was bare, humming metal. There were holes under the pedals, and through them Michelle could see grass whipping by below. The leather on the dash was peeling. One of the back doors didn’t match the others, was unpainted and caked with rust. There was no rear window at all, just a round open hole. No backseat either, and a char mark in the rear compartment, where it looked as if someone had tried to light a campfire once.

The girl worked the clutch and the gas and the brake expertly with her right foot, just as her father had taught her. The front seat was cranked all the way forward, and still she had to sit on a pillow so she could see over the high dash and out the window.

“One of these days I’m going to get around to working on this beast. Roll my sleeves up and bring the old lady all the way back to life. Be a hell of a thing to have it completely restored so you could take it to the prom,” her father said. “When you’re old enough for proms.”

“Yah. Good call. Plenty of room in the backseat to make out,” she said, twisting her neck to look over her shoulder into the rear.

“It’d also be a nice ride to take you to the nunnery in. You keep your eyes on the road, why don’tcha?” Gesturing with his beer can at the rise and fall of the land and the tangles of grass and brush and goldenrod, no road in sight in any direction, the only sign of human existence the distant barn in the rearview mirror and the jet contrails overhead.

She pumped the pedals. They wheezed and gasped.

The only thing Michelle didn’t like about the car was the hood ornament, a creepy silver lady with blind eyes and a flowing gown. She leaned out into the lashing weeds and grinned manically as she was flagellated. That silver lady should’ve been magical and pretty, but the smile on her face ruined it. She had the demented grin of a madwoman who has just pushed a loved one off a ledge and is about to follow him into eternity.

“She’s awful,” Michelle said, lifting her chin in the direction of the hood. “Like a vampire lady.”

“The bloofer lady,” her father said, remembering something he had read once.

“The who? She is not called the bloofer lady.”

“No,” Nathan said. “She’s called the Spirit of Ecstasy. She’s classic. She’s a classic part of a classic car.”

“Ecstasy? Like the drug?” Michelle asked. “Wow. Trippy. They were into that back then?”

“No. Not like the drug. Like fun. She’s a symbol of never-ending fun. I think she’s pretty,” he said, although in fact he thought she looked like one of the Joker’s victims, a rich lady who had died laughing.

“I been driving out to Christmasland, all the livelong day,” Michelle sang softly. For the moment the radio was just a roar of static and whine, and she could sing without competition. “I been driving out to Christmasland, just to ride in Santa’s sleigh!”

“What’s that one? I don’t know it,” her dad said.

“That’s where we’re going,” she said. “To Christmasland. I just decided.”

The sky was trying on a variety of citrus hues. Michelle felt perfectly at peace. She felt she could drive forever.

Her tone was soft with excitement and delight, and when her father glanced at her, there was a dew of sweat on her forehead and her eyes had a faraway look.

“It’s out there, Daddy,” she said. “It’s out there in the mountains. If we kept going, we could be in Christmasland by tonight.”

Nathan Demeter narrowed his eyes and peered out through the dusty window. A vast, pale mountain range towered in the west, with snow-touched peaks higher than the Rockies, a mountain range that had not been there this morning, or even when they set out on this drive, twenty minutes ago.

He looked quickly away, blinking to clear his vision, then looked back—and the mountain range resolved into a looming mass of thunderheads, crowding the western horizon. His heart continued to run a three-legged race in his chest for a few moments longer.

“Too bad you have homework. No Christmasland for you,” he said. Even though it was Saturday and no dad anywhere made his twelve-year-old do algebra on a Saturday. “Time to turn us around, sweetheart. Daddy has things to do.”