even though I hold her tight part 3

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

… even though I hold her tight.

Part 3

By R. Peterson

            The gas fumes explosion blew both fenders plus the front bumper and grill assembly off the Del Ray and sent the hood spinning upward like a Cape Canaveral satellite launch gone terribly wrong. The car became a flying machine as it rounded the large curve at the William Douglas Egg Farm doing more than one hundred forty miles per hour and rolled numerous times in the air. As the world spun, I glimpsed Janna, hanging from the window like a marionette with broken strings. There was one last vicious spin and she plunged earthwards. Her guardian angel must have been close by … perhaps one of the dark silhouettes riding in the 1949 Buick Roadmaster we were racing next to. Janna landed dead center in a freshly piled mountain of un-baled straw. I found out later, she crawled out of the straw with just a bump on her lovely head and a few scratches. I wasn’t so lucky.

            The recently-restored 1958 Chevy bounced twice on its roof, spun sideways through a barbed-wire fence, plowed more than thirty yards down a halfway-filled irrigation canal and crashed through the wooden wall of an industrial-sized chicken coop.

I have a vague recollection of being stared at by sober men in white. My left arm was broken and my right shoulder dislocated. At first I thought I was blind in one eye. One of my broken and missing teeth was embedded in the dashboard. My head was gonging like a cracked-bell.  As they pulled me out of the wreckage, the flashing ambulance lights turned the Del Ray’s shattered windscreen into some sort of neon mirror and I saw a reflection. It looked like my face had been bandaged with splinters, blood and feathers. The radio in the Del Ray was still blasting out the hits. The dangerously-happy McGuire Sisters were singing Sugartime.

           

-------2-------

They let me out of the hospital after three days mainly because my stepfather was refusing to pay the medical bills. It took almost two weeks before I could walk without crutches and then I went to visit Janna. Her father met me at the door and told me in no uncertain terms that his daughter wanted nothing more to do with me and never would. I was walking back to my bicycle parked on the sidewalk when Janna called to me from over the back yard fence. “Are you okay?” she asked. Both of my eyes had turned black and more than one nurse at the hospital told me I looked like a raccoon. “Fine,” I told her. “Never better!”

            “How about your car … can it be repaired?”

I hadn’t really thought about the Del Ray; it was as if that part of my life was over. “If I had about two grand, I could probably get it back on the road,” I told her. “But why bother? Your father tells me I’m no longer a part of your life.”

            “I’ll decide who’s a part of my life and who isn’t!” Janna cast an angry glance toward her house.

            “You would still go out with me?”

            “I’ll do better than that,” Janna pulled me close to the fence. “You catch that ghost car and get it to stop … and I’ll marry you!”

I left her house in a daze. The kiss she gave me still burning my lips in a good way. I knew I’d get the Del Ray on the road again somehow. What I was worried about was fixing the gas-throttle linkage on the dual carbs. There was no way either of us was going to live through another explosion.

-------3-------

            I wasn’t wrong about the car costing two thousand dollars to repair. I paid a twenty dollar impound fee and had the wreckage towed to behind the Conoco station. The frame was bent on one side and both head-gaskets were leaking. All the rubber including hoses and belts under the pretzel-twisted hood had been melted. Everything I’d replaced before would have to be replaced again. It would take a bank full of money to get the car back on the road. What I needed was a gun.

---*---

I didn’t have a bank account, but that didn’t stop me from walking into the 1st. National Bank in Butte and demanding a withdrawal the day after the cast came off my arm. The terrified teller later told the FBI that the eyes peering at her from behind a black scarf and low pulled-down black hat looked like a demon’s. I was more scared than she was. While she was filling a bag with money I waved my gun in the air and told everyone in the bank to hug the floor or I was going to start blasting. Just as she handed me the money my finger slipped on the trigger and a stream of water hit her right between the eyes. She fainted and bounced hard when she hit the floor. With all the screams and general panic everyone thought I’d killed her. I ran out the door and to Meryl Hick’s truck that I’d left parked in an alley just around the corner. I stuffed the now empty money bag along with my coat, my scarf, the hat and the black-painted squirt-gun into a trash can and lifted my bicycle from the bed of the truck. I peddled back to where a crowd was forming just before the cops arrived. I agreed with the middle aged man standing next to me. I’ve never seen so many police.

-------4-------

I paid cash for everything, including the welder who heated and straightened the bent frame. A month later I had the car on the road but it was uglier than ever. The entire front of the car was a half a dozen different colors … including rust.

The excess fuel situation was still knocking me around. The problem was getting enough air for the combustion mixture at high speeds while the throttle was pumping enormous amounts of gasoline. I was hanging out in the drug store one afternoon putting my greasy fingerprints on a bunch of Hot Rod magazines and even hotter Playboy foldouts when the solution splashed me in the face like a bucket of cold water. What I needed was an air-scoop attacked to the hood, preferably something powered that would suck air from outside and inject it into the dual carburetors.

Two days later, when Ernie LaBelle opened the front door to the Dill Pickle Inn he found broken front door glass and the powered fan and hood assembly above his hamburger grill missing.

A week later I had the excess fuel problem solved and Janna surprised me by helping to paint my car. She even brought her own broom.

-------5-------

            It was easier the second time. I started off cruising Canyon Road in a counter clockwise direction and I’d had weeks to make my plans. I spotted the tail lights on the fourth round and I made sure I caught the classic Buick and passed it just before the stretch of road that runs past Magician’s Canyon. The road along the canyon winds like a snake and is barely one lane for almost two miles. I stomped both boots on the brake and there was nothing the ghost car could do but hug my back bumper. When we came to a stop, Janna was out of the car and talking to whoever was riding in the passenger side of the Buick. Even idling, the ghostly car had an ethereal quality like a match flickering under a summer breeze. After what seemed like ages Janna returned to the Del Ray and as God is my witness … the Buick vanished.  She just sat there staring into the dark. “Did you get what you were looking for?” I was afraid of her answer.

            “Yes,’ she said.

            “What about our deal … are we still going out?” To tell the truth I thought everything related to us was over.

            “Yes, I’ll marry you,” she said.

            “When?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

            “The sooner the better,” she told me.

In the far off distance I head a train whistle sound. It was the sound of my teenage soul rejoicing.

-------6-------

In the two weeks after we announced our wedding plans, I became somewhat of a celebrity. Girls who had never given me a second glance were now wondering what Cloverdale’s most popular girl saw in me. Regina Bates chased after me relentlessly.  She pulled me into a coat room at the reception after a church wedding while Janna was visiting with some uncles.

            I never meant to cheat on Janna. She caught me and Regina kissing and rolling around on the floor on a pile of coats and was understandably furious. I dragged her into Dr. Descombey’s 1955 Mercury Montclair which I’d borrowed for the evening. He’d left the car at the Conoco for service while he was out of town and I could always roll-back the miles.

            It was Janna’s idea to park on the railroad trestle. “We might as well get this over with,” she sighed. I thought she was talking about consummating our marriage. I was drunk. We were fighting when the train came. I found the ring that she tossed out the window. She wasn’t even trying to escape. I tried to pull her out of the car … but the doors were locked … from the inside. The last time I saw her alive … she almost seemed to smile.

-------7-------

I was never the same after that night. I couldn’t go to her funeral because of the car theft charges. After I did my time, including a three week stay at State Hospital North for a mental evaluation, I stopped working at the Conoco and spent every hour I wasn’t drunk at the city library. Cloverdale has one of the largest collections of books on the occult in the world and for good reason. The entire town is like a bus stop on the low-road to hell.

My life was over, and because it was I no longer feared death. I entered the witch Melania Descombey’s house one night while she was sleeping. I hadn’t eaten for two weeks and I seemed to float about the darkened rooms. I’ve never seen so many paintings of cats. Just before dawn, I found the carved box with the ancient Tarot cards in a cabinet in the kitchen. I was careful to take only the one card that I needed from the yellowed deck … and replaced all the others.

Janna’s grave wasn’t that hard to dig up. There was a big yellow full moon at the end of August. The Del Ray was doused with gasoline and burning near the entrance. I’m sure several passing cars spotted it. She’d only been in the ground for two months. I didn’t know they sealed coffins. I broke the handle on the shovel prying the carved lid open. An owl hooted and I almost ran. I’m glad I didn’t. She was still take-your-breath-away beautiful.

I felt something the instant I placed the Hanged Man on the bosom of her white laced wedding dress. It was warm like a match. I’d already memorized the Latin words hand-printed on the back of the card.

Her spirit came alive with my last words and passed through me. It was only for a glorious instant but I knew I’d set her free.

I hope she finds him … her ghost rider.

It was all worth it, every single moment. Her soul will now always be in my world … in one form or another. I saw the flashing lights a mile off … but I still don’t care. The police have just now turned into Black Rose Cemetery. I’m sure they know about the bank and probably a lot of other things. These are state cops and I’m sure they’ll shoot me down when I charge them with the shovel. I’m counting on it.

They’ve found the burnt-to-a-cinder Del Ray parked near the entrance and they’ll soon find me. There is a whole spirit world that lives in the shadows of this one. That is where my heart tells me I must go. I can see everything in the moonlight. Wow! What an ugly car!

I’m all alone now, so very alone … even though I hold her tight.

THE END ???