From a Buick 8(101)

'Four-!'

'That's right. It flew a little bit, hit one of the walls, and dropped dead. In the fall of 1993, the trunk popped open after one of those lightquakes and it was half-filled with dirt. Curt wanted to leave it there and see what would happen and Tony agreed at first, but then it began to stink. I didn't know dirt could decompose, but I guess it can if it's dirt from the right place. And so . . . this is crazy, but we buried the dirt. Can you believe it?'

He nodded. 'And did my dad keep an eye on the place where it was buried? Sure he did. Just to see what would grow.'

'I think he was hoping for a few of those weird lilies.'

'Any luck?'

'I guess that depends on what you think of as luck. Nothing sprouted, I'll tell you that much. The dirt from the trunk went into the ground not far from where we buried Mister D and the tools. As for the monster, what didn't turn to goo we burned in the incinerator. The ground where the dirt went is still bare. A few things try to straggle up every spring, but so far they always die. Eventually, I suppose that'll change.'

I put the last cigarette in my mouth and lit it.

'A year and a half or so after the dirt-delivery, we got another red-stick lizard. Dead. That's been the last. It's still earthquake country in there, but the earth never shakes as hard these days. It wouldn't do to be careless around the Buick any more than it would to be careless around an old rifle just because it's rusty and the barrel's plugged with dirt, but with reasonable precautions it's probably safe enough. And someday ? your dad believed it, Tony believed it, and I do too ? that old car really will fall apart. All at once, just like the wonderful one-hoss shay in the poem.'

He looked at me vaguely, and I realized he had no idea what poem I was talking about. We live in degenerate times. Then he said, 'I can feel it.'

Something in his tone startled me badly, and I gave him a hard stare. He still looked younger than his eighteen years, I thought. Just a boy, no more than that, sitting with his sneakered feet crossed and his face painted with starlight. 'Can you?' I asked.

'Yes. Can't you?'

All the Troopers who'd passed through D over the years had felt the pull of it, I guessed. Felt it the way people who live on the coast come to feel the motions of the sea, the tides a clock their hearts beat to. On most days and nights we noticed it no more than you consciously notice your nose, a shape sitting at the bottom of all you see. Sometimes, though, the pull was stronger, and then it made you ache, somehow.

'All right,' I said, 'let's say I do. Huddie sure did ? what do you think would have happened to him that day if Shirley hadn't screamed when she did? What do you think would have happened to him if he'd crawled into the trunk like he said he had a mind to do?'

'You really never heard that story before tonight, Sandy?'

I shook my head.

'You didn't look all that surprised, even so.'

'Nothing about that Buick surprises me anymore.'

'Do you think he really meant to do it? To crawl in and shut the lid behind him?'

'Yes. Only I don't think he had anything to do with it. It's that pull ? that attraction it has. It was stronger then, but it's still there.'

He made no reply to that. Just sat looking across at Shed B.

'You didn't answer my question, Ned. What do you think would have happened to him if he'd crawled in there?'

'I don't know.'

A reasonable enough answer, I suppose ? a kid's answer, certainly, they say it a dozen times a day ? but I hated it just the same. He'd quit off the football team, but it seemed he hadn't forgotten all he'd learned there about bobbing and weaving. I drew in smoke that tasted like hot hay, then blew it back out. 'You don't.'

'No.'

'After Ennis and Jimmy and ? probably ? Brian Lippy, you don't.'

'Not everything goes on to somewhere else, Sandy. Take the other gerbil, for instance. Rosalie or Roslyn or whatever her name was.'

I sighed. 'Have it your way. I'm going down to The Country Way to bite a cheeseburger. You're welcome to join me, but only if we can let this go and talk about something else.'

He thought it over, then shook his head. 'Think I'll head home. Do some thinking.'

'Okay, but don't be sharing any of your thinking with your mother.'

He looked almost comically shocked. 'God, no!'

I laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. The shadows had gone out of his face and suddenly it was possible to like him again. As for his questions and his childish insistence that the story must have an ending and the ending must hold some kind of answer, time might take care of it. Maybe I'd been expecting too many of my own answers. The imitation lives we see on TV and in the movies whisper the idea that human existence consists of revelations and abrupt changes of heart; by the time we've reached full adulthood, I think this is an idea we have on some level come to accept. Such things may happen from time to time, but I think that for the most part it's a lie. Life's changes come slowly. They come the way my youngest nephew breathes in his deepest sleep; sometimes I feel the urge to put a hand on his chest just to assure myself he's still alive. Seen in that light, the whole idea of curious cats attaining satisfaction seemed slightly absurd. The world rarely finishes its conversations. If twenty-three years of living with the Buick 8 had taught me nothing else, it should have taught me that. At this moment Curt's boy looked as if he might have taken a step toward getting better. Maybe even two. And if I couldn't let that be enough for one night, I had my own problems.