He starts the car. Revs the engine up, so that its torque rocks the car on its performance suspension. This excites the woman in the passenger seat.
He drops the clutch and spins donuts in the lot, spraying gravel and dust. The woman squeals like a teenager. She screams like a woman when the Bible slides off the dash and bounces off her door, almost hitting her legs on its way to the floor.
He guns the engine out of the last donut, spinning the wheel fast under his palm to drift out onto the pitted asphalt of the road. The tires scream and smoke, almost drowning out the woman. He takes the car across the river, getting to reckless speed by the end of the bridge. Then he puts it in neutral to let it coast back down to sanity.
The woman has drawn her feet up into the bucket seat with her. Her mouth and eyes wide, she is panting in excitement. He looks over at her, and down. With her knees drawn right up, in her short skirt, she has given him a nice view. Dirty feet in bright, new purple and white flip-flops. On her feet and ankles, rivulets of cleaner skin left behind from an earlier wettening. Whatever fluid that might have been.
Black, cotton, utility panties. High-cut briefs. Because, of course they are.
They drive on for a while. The car eats up the road.
In control of himself again, he points down at the floor in front of her seat. At the Bible.
“Pick that up, would you? It shouldn’t be on the ground.”
She gives him a sideways look.
“What? You’re right back at it with that? You don’t know when to stay down, do you? I told you. I don’t do heavy lifting.”
“Why don’t you just pick it up? You going to burst into flames if you touch it?”
“No. But it might,” she says, with more intention to some far away space.
This gives him pause. After that, he says:
“You the devil?”
“No. I’m just a li’l devil. The Devil lives over in the city there. Looks like an old man, sitting in a rocking chair on his cottage porch. Yard’s a fuckin mess. He doesn’t look like shit. But he’s The Devil. Got the Center of All Evil down in his basement: a concrete room with a drain in the floor.”
A concrete room with a drain in the floor. The center of all evil, indeed. He’s been in a place or two like that. He tries to play it cool, though.
“No shit. You been there?”
She makes some kind of noise of avoidance. Turns away from him and stares out her window, knees still drawn up into her seat in front of her.
He checks that the road ahead is clear before reaching down to get the Bible off the floor. Gets another good look at her panties as he does. Her pussy looks great inside of them. A little pouch of delight. He gently tosses the Bible into the back seat.
He drives on.
“What’s your name?” he eventually asks her.
She sighs and looks around the car for inspiration. Looks into the back seat at the Bible.
“Jezebel.”
“Bit on the nose, isn’t it?”
“Well, that’s the best place for it, isn’t it?” she answers.
He grunts. Drives on for a while.
“So what is your name?” he eventually asks again.
She shifts her weight and swings her knees over to point at him. Slides her hand up the back of his arm and across his shoulder to his neck. Strokes his neck and runs her fingernails through his hair.
“Whatever you want, baby,” she breathes.
“Okay, then. Jezebel works.”
“Yes, she sure does,” she says, once again to that far off space.
After a while, she lets her arm drop and pushes on:
“So, if I’m Jezebel, I guess that makes you Ahab. At least for the duration of this ride.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
“Really? After all that fuss about the Bible, you’re just going to roll over on that? You’ve never actually read the thing, huh?” she jerks her thumb back towards the Bible.
“What? Call me whatever you want. It doesn’t matter,” he says, scowling hard at the road ahead.
“Alright then, Ahab.”
They drive on in silence for a while. She looks around the car’s interior. Fiddles with the buckle of the seatbelt she is not in. Runs her fingers across the dash in front of her.
Then she notices it.
Bullet hole in the dash. Right there in front of her. Black socket punched through the hard plastic, with two cracks radiating out from it.
She reaches out and sticks her finger in the hole. Pulls a little on the wedge between the cracks. It makes little clicks as she wiggles it. Finally, she leaves the hole be and looks over at him.
“Must be a story there,” she says.
“I’m over it.”
“Are you?”
Ahab drives on for a while. She leaves him to it, staring at his profile; at the muscles working his clenched jaw.
“Some people shouldn’t play with guns,” he says.
“No, they shouldn’t. Did they learn their lesson?”
“Yeah. I suppose he did.”
They drive on. Drive right past the gas station. It is actually still in business. Gas and Grocery, the big enameled steel sign over the door says, chipped and weeping tears of rust. COLD BEER says a neon sign in the window. FIREWORKS, says a sheet of spraypainted plywood. AMMO, says a piece of cardboard in the window, written in magic marker.
“That was the gas station,” she says.
“Yeah. I know. We’ll come back.”
They cross another bridge. She turns on the radio. Works the dial, giving him a sideways look as she does. Another gambit. Like putting a palm print on the hood, or clicking her ring on the paint of the roof. She knows that a man with such an automobile is particular about the etiquette. Look, but don’t touch. And a man’s radio is his own.
He lets it pass, as he did her previous transgressions. She finds a station and turns it up.
What the hell did she find? Some deep woods hillbilly shit, this. No vocals. Just a groove that seems like it is never going to end.
Eventually, she speaks up about it:
“My grandpa always said that the banjo was the devil’s instrument.”
“Everyone’s a critic.”
“Well, he’d know. He was a devil himself,” she says soft.
That banjo. He’s playing it slow. Plucking the notes like every one of them cost him a penny.
“What the hell kinda song is this?” he asks. “Why’s he playing it slow like that? On the radio, they always play that banjo fast. Playing it slow like that, it’s… got something more to it. Like… spurs in my side, that sound.”
She gives this a think. She likes it.
“Spurs, huh? That’s an image. Never played with those,” she says.
She waits.
“What’re they driving you towards? Them spurs?” she asks, real quiet.
“Evil. Home. Been away too long, now,” he says.
“Yeah, I know how that goes.”
They are quiet together for a while. Listening.
“Fingers do that, you know?” she says.
“Fingers do what?”
“Do the picking. On that banjo. They do lots of other stuff, too. That’s our whole deal, right? Fingers. Without them, we’d be nothing.” She holds her right hand out in front of her, fingers splayed out. Gives them a wiggle. “The smarter we get, the more dangerous we become.”
Quiet again. The song won’t end. Just keeps going on and on in its quiet groove.
“Do you know why it is that fewer notes is more evil?” she asks.
“Huh?”
“You said this slow picking is driving you. Driving you to Evil. Do you know why that is?”
“No,” he says.
“Because when a guy that can play a whole bunch of notes, when he chooses to only play a few, he knows just where to pluck them. And he’s doing that because he really wants you to feel them. That means he’s focused on you. It aint just a performance. It’s a relationship. That gets evil.”
He gives this a long think.
“Relationships get evil, do they?” he says.
“Have you ever known one that didn’t?”
Good point.
They drive on. Every minute they do is another minute they are going to have to drive back. Back to the gas station, gasoline running down.
But he knows he is not going to turn the car around while that song is still playing. There is no way he can. There is no other choice.
So they drive on.
Muse Vassal 