16. Dragon
Chapter Sixteen
DRAGON
Istopped driving in New Jersey, industrial country, where my uncle Patty kept his garage and track. I stared at the place, the grime, the grit, and the desolation. It didn’t look like anyone lived there, much less ran a business. Which made it absolutely perfect.
I drove around the back, parked and went to break into the kitchen. The door was open, and the place looked like a horror movie waiting to happen.
I stood there, staring at the curling yellow linoleum with the whining fluorescent above, then felt the bite of metal against my throat.
“There’s nothing here to steal,” my uncle whispered, letting out a vile breath. He’d been drinking then. For more than a few days.
I pushed the tip of the blade away from my throat and turned to look at him.
He was hunched over, too thin, unbathed, with haunted green eyes.
“I’m here to steal your house. I need a place to crash while I figure out some things.
I hope you don’t mind, Uncle Patty. I could really disappear right now. ”
He blinked at me and slowly lowered the knife and straightened up. “Fera? Why did you come back from the grave? Doesn’t my soul twist enough for you?”
I blinked at him. “Not Fera. Trixie. Your niece.”
He stared at me for a long time, confusion growing in his clouded green eyes. “Trixie? You don’t look like Trixie.”
I patted his shoulder. It wasn’t as disgusting as the rest of him.
“People grow up. More or less. Also, I’m pregnant.
And I have a stolen car in the back. Any way you could get rid of it for me?
I’d usually dump it and take another one, harder to trace that way, but I’m tired.
And it’s a really nice car. There’s nothing like a classic caddy. ”
He blinked at me for a few seconds before nodding. “You’re Trixie. You look like my sister, Fera. I’ll take care of the car. I have some canned stuff if you’re hungry.”
I’d only heard my dad’s sister mentioned in passing. “I had Marco’s steak. I’ll be fine until morning. I just want to sleep. You still have that extra room?”
He nodded again, and I walked past him towards the stairs, heading up.
“I don’t want no trouble,” he called after me.
I raised a hand. “Same.”
The room was dusty, but not disgusting. I crashed on the bed and curled up in a ball. I needed to take off my boots, but who could do something so impossibly hard?
Horse was Nathaniel David VanBuren. One of those psycho shadow players I wanted nothing to do with. I closed my eyes and forced all thoughts out of my head, replacing them with the sound of tires on asphalt, engine whirring, steering wheel vibrating. I’d think later.
I found that thinking was remarkably easy to avoid when there was so much to do.
Cleaning, sure, but also in the garage were half a dozen partially built classic cars.
That’s how Patty was earning his bread these days.
The bread he drank. I couldn’t drink pregnant, so I poured all the alcohol I could find down the sink while he was passed out under a car.
He’d thank me later. Like he’d thank me for cleaning his kitchen, top to bottom.
And organizing his garage. Cleaning that, too.
Those windows were the filthiest things; it was satisfying to elbow grease it all clean.
After a week of cleaning, I started working on the broken-down rigs in the back lot under a ripped-up tarp. None of them ran, but they were all similar to the twisted metal in Horse’s bedroom.
A wave of aching rushed through me. I missed him so much. The pain of his lie wasn’t as big as the devouring ache of missing him.
I blinked as I gripped the tarp and ripped it off in fluttering streams. I was wearing one of Patty’s coveralls. I’d washed all of those too, all except the one he was wearing.
I worked through the day and into the night, but the lamps weren’t good enough and the cords didn’t stretch far enough to the overgrown back lot. I had to give up if I didn’t want to drop stuff into the tall grass. I’d never find it again.
I wiped my hands on a rag and headed towards the house, almost running into Patty where he stood in the shadows.
“Oh! I didn’t see you there.”
He frowned at me. “What are you doing?”
I shrugged and walked around him towards the house. “Spaghettios?”
“I got some groceries. I’ll make you something. Pregnant women shouldn’t live on canned goods. They also shouldn’t be living in my house.”
I glanced at him. “You don’t want me here?” My heart sank. “I guess I could steal another car and keep driving. I didn’t mean to come here, it’s just where the road led. I can go if…”
He held up a hand. “Don’t be ridiculous.
I’m not kicking you out. I’m just saying that it seems like someone should have come after you by now.
Like the father of your wee babe. Shouldn’t he be here with your suitcase, begging you to come back?
It’s been a week. And now you’ve started on the go-carts.
The next thing I know, you’ll be clearing the tracks, and then the kids will come around.
They still come around asking if the track’s open, and it’s been twenty years. ”
I walked into the kitchen and poked around the bags of groceries on the counter. There was everything I’d need to make a good spaghetti. My hands started moving before I gave them permission, chopping onions and combining herbs and spices into the hamburger mixture.
“Like I said,” he said, standing behind me. “I’ve had two people stop by thinking the garage was open for regular repairs this week. Neither looked like they could pay, but there they are, old clunkers that should be junked, but I’m agreeing to find the parts at Ralph’s tomorrow.”
“How is Ralph?”
“His son owns it now. His dad retired, like I’ve done, but now…” He glowered in a way that I remembered when he was being gruff about caring too much.
I leaned my head against his shoulder and deeply inhaled the scent of grease and tomatoes. He smelled much better after only a week. Maybe we could help each other deal with whatever. “I’ll go with you. Maybe Ralph’s looking for a wife.”
He snorted, but squeezed my shoulders. “It’ll all work out, Trixie O’Hara. It’ll all come right.”
I nodded and then went back to making the best spaghetti he’d ever have.
Ralph was already married, but he was interested in whether the garage was really back open, because he had a whole list of people who couldn’t afford all the new prices, and used car prices going up with inflation.
And if Patty had help, he could use the business.
And he could give Ralph’s people a discount.
I ripped out parts and found a pretty Oldsmobile that would need to be completely gutted. I could work on that along with Patty, using profits from the garage work to invest in parts.
Patty gave me a look, but nodded and added it to the list of purchases.
Ralph agreed to bring everything over that afternoon, and with that, we’d had a productive morning.
Back at the house, I went back out to the carts and started working on the saddest one, stripping and replacing all the delicate parts that went first: gaskets and seals, rusted tanks and bent wheel frames.
“We could haul it into the garage,” Patty said, hands on his hips as he studied me.
I frowned at the thing I was working on. “I’m not supposed to push things or lift them up if they’re heavier than me.”
He rolled his eyes and put it in neutral. “Steer little lamb. I’ll push the bucket of bolts in.”
I climbed in and it was like being two again, him pushing me and me steering. I almost smiled as we came through the doors and into the well-lit garage.
“I think you weigh less than you used to,” he said, wiping his brow.
“I lost a lot of weight,” I said as I pulled myself out of the frame.
I froze as the twisted metal in Horse’s room filled my head.
I’d pulled him out of the passenger’s side, not that the carts had passengers.
And it had exploded in the back, sending it flipping.
I’d seen it from my rearview mirror. There was something weird about that explosion.
“Trix?” Patty asked, and I realized I was standing there, frozen.
I looked at him. “You closed up right after the last time I was there, after the explosion.”
His eyes darkened. “Guess if I can’t protect the kids on my track, I have no business running one.”
“There was something weird about it. Do you have any video?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I’ve got some old black and white tapes, but they might be damaged after all this time.”
“But it might not.”
He sighed heavily. “Chasing ghosts never helped anyone, darlin’.”
“Neither did drinking, but when did that ever stop us?”
His brows furrowed. “I may have been drinking too much.”
“I’m talking about me. That’s what got me pregnant: drinking. Running away probably doesn’t help either.” I scowled because I didn’t want to think about my mistakes when I was still feeling so betrayed by absolutely everyone I’d ever trusted.
He squeezed my shoulder. “All right. Let’s chase some ghosts.”
Watching the old feed of me racing on the track filled me with all kinds of nostalgia.
The first time I saw young Nathaniel David VanBuren, I had to stop the video on Uncle Patty’s little old small TV with an attached VHS player and just stare at that scowling kid.
He was smaller than the others, but he was filled with this rage, clearly visible even through the screen.
His small body was so filled with fury. He was going to burn down the world.
His mother must have died before this. Also, he was so pretty.
I’d forgotten the first time I saw him standing away from the group, scowling, but he was still the prettiest boy I’d ever seen. Much prettier than me.
When he caught me staring, he sneered. He probably didn’t even realize that I was a girl.
Most people didn’t until they heard my name.
I scowled back at him, and he flinched. That made me happy.
The pretty boy should be afraid of me. He wasn’t, though.
He wasn’t ever afraid of anything. He was too angry to be afraid.
Or maybe he was afraid of everything and covered it up with anger.
Too bad I couldn’t ask him which one it was.
I shook my head and fast-forwarded. I didn’t need to fixate on my husband.
I dreamed about him last night. He’d held me so tenderly, called me pretty and made me feel so loved.
And then I’d woken up alone in Patty’s extra bedroom and felt like crying.
So I did. Because it’s my party. I’ll cry if I want to.
Anyway, when I got to the explosion after fast-forwarding through three tapes, I watched it over and over again. Small burst, large burst, medium burst. And they were offset. One-and-two-and, like the large and medium were almost one but not quite. If I had sound, that would help.
What did I know about explosives? Not as much as my other brother, Travis, who kept quiet and had always fiddled with things that made an impression.
But I remember my mother lecturing him at breakfast one morning about car bombs.
How you needed to make sure your explosives were timed and set in such a way that they weren’t identifiable afterwards.
My dad said, “Not at the breakfast table.”
She looked at him, then at me, and said, “Eat your sausage.”
I’d put that in the box labelled, ‘things about my family I don’t want to get involved in,’ but it was still there, like the worn books in the living room, ‘A Hand-book of Modern Explosives,’ ‘The Science of Explosives,’ and ‘Physics of an Explosion.’
I could call my mom and ask her about it, but she never gave me any useful answers.
Then again, there was always the internet.
Patty’s computer was so old, but it wasn’t impossible to use.
It didn’t take me long to find a board about explosions.
I uploaded the video using the computer’s own ancient camera, so the video wasn’t the best quality, and it was old and grainy anyway, but maybe someone would know something.
After I posted about that, I went back to work on the go-kart.
Patty went out, and when he came back, he had more groceries, also a big bottle of prenatal vitamins.
He handed them to me without saying anything, but it made my heart constrict.
I should have thought about the health of my baby.
Instead, I’d been trying not to think. I took two pills and then rested on the couch because I was tired.
Uncle Patty turned on some music, and we spent the evening reading.
He had some old Louis L’Amour books that I’d read when I was younger.
They were still fun, but the men reminded me of Horse.
Strong, capable, devoted—not that he was actually those things, but he put on a good show.
Except that he had that twisted wreck and the blanket in his room.
That said obsessed. And wasn’t obsession love-tangent?
What did I know about it? Other than the fact that I couldn’t go two minutes without thinking about him, and I’d driven here, where we’d met, when I could have gone anywhere in the world.
The feelings swamped me, pulling me into the dark depths of despair, but there was no alcohol in the house, and I wasn’t drinking no matter what I did, because I was a mama bird who needed to protect her young.
I put a hand to my hair. Maybe I should do something about that nest. Or maybe I should just lie on the couch and feel the feelings.
I cried, but quietly, and it didn’t seem like Patty noticed.
If he did, he didn’t say anything. My uncle was quality, no doubt about that.
Time passed. I got that first go-cart up and running while the garage started getting busier as news spread that Patty was open. I still felt the feelings, but I got used to feeling them instead of drowning or running from them. And I took my prenatals.