I closed the door behind me. It clicked into place with the finality of a coffin lid being lowered.
* * *
That was nearly four months ago. Since then, I have set up over a dozen track configurations and orchestrated three times as many accidents, all according to the system, which I am still learning.
On the first day of each week I receive a list of numbers, which I then enter into the system so that the mapping and track configurations will be precise. I then construct the tracks accordingly, and wait for the delivery of the HO vehicles.
I keep exact records. So far I have choreographed the deaths of nearly one hundred people. It took me a while to figure out the star system, but I did it: silver stars are used to mark those who were injured in a wreck; blue stars are to mark those whose injuries will eventually result in their deaths, be it weeks, months, or years from the initial accident; and the gold stars—you guessed it—are for those fatalities that occur at the scene.
I have begun going to hobby stores in my spare time—what little there is of it—and buying decorations for the tracks; houses, stores, trees, human figures, dogs, cats, rabbits, whatever strikes my fancy. I understand now why Miss Driscoll went to such lengths to make her tracks more attractive, more life-like: you don’t get to see the actual outside world very often, so you do your best to recreate it. It helps. Not much. But some.
* * *
I read an on-line article a few days ago that said by the end of this decade, something like two-thirds of the cars manufactured in the United States will come equipped with some form of GPS technology, and by 2021 every car in the country will have it. So the Road will always be able to find you when your number comes up.
The more I come to understand how precise this system is, the more I find myself admiring it. And hating myself for it.
* * *
Dianne never called me. I’m guessing she erased the message when she heard my voice. I can’t blame her. I still miss her. I always will.
* * *
I quite working for Brennert. He was pissed but, being the type of guy he is, he didn’t let it show. He told me he understood if I was feeling burned out, and if I ever changed my mind and wanted to come back to the job, it’d be there waiting for me. Before I hung up, I finally asked him: “Do you ever think about the Leonard house?” “Every day,” he said. “I was always sorry about the way Mark and I treated you that night.” “I know.” “Doesn’t help much, does it?” “Not a goddamned bit.”
Click.
* * *
I did some digging on-line one night—a free night for me, which doesn’t happen very often—and found something interesting.
I’d been thinking about what Ciera had said about Daddy Bliss and Road Mama, how they were the only two who remembered their real names, and I began wondering if maybe there was something out there in the ether of cyberspace that might tell me something.
It turned out to be a lot easier than I’d thought. I just entered the words Driscoll and Cars, then Bliss and Cars. I figured that might be a good way to begin.
Both searches pretty much started and ended right there.
On August 17, 1896, in London, Bridget Driscoll, age 44, became the world's first person to be killed in an automobile accident.
As she and her teenage daughter crossed the grounds of the Crystal Palace, an automobile belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Car Company and being used to give demonstration rides struck her at “tremendous speed”, according to witnesses—some 4 MPH (6.4 km/h). The driver had apparently modified the engine to allow the car to go faster.
The jury returned a verdict of “accidental death” after an inquest lasting some six hours. The coroner said: “This must never happen again.” No prosecution was made.
While Bridget Driscoll was the first person killed by an automobile in the world, Henry Bliss (1831 to September 13, 1899) was the first person killed by an automobile in the United States. He was disembarking from a streetcar at West 74th Street and Central Park West in New York City, when an electric-powered taxicab (Automobile No. 43) struck him and crushed his head and chest. He died from these injuries the next morning.
The driver of the taxicab was arrested and charged with manslaughter but was acquitted on the grounds that it was unintentional.
So now I know. The Road acquired its taste for blood early. And Daddy Bliss and Road Mama have been parents to their family for a very long time.
* * *
My first really big assignment is coming up in a few days—the weekend of the OSU-Michigan football game. I’ve set up three different tracks for this. Thirty-eight fatalities and twenty injuries—not all in the same place, of course; the Road can’t be too obvious about its methods.
I figured out a way to run several tracks simultaneously without blowing any fuses. I rig them to run off of car batteries. Seems to me there ought to be something ironic in there, but I’m too tired to figure it out.
I’ve been practicing with the controls. I’ve gotten really good. My hand/eye coordination has never been so sharp.
* * *
Ciera called me. Daddy Bliss is going to let her come visit me the weekend of the OSU-Michigan game. I’m really looking forward to seeing her. I remember the way she kissed me and hope she’ll want to do it again. And maybe other stuff, too.
It’s been a while.
* * *
And that’s it. I don’t know why I decided to write all of this down. Maybe to have some record, for my own sanity. Maybe I did it in case I decide to do a Miss Driscoll with some pudding and pills. But that would mean no Ciera weekend, so I doubt that’s the reason. Hell, I don’t know.
I tried to think of some clever way to end this, some witty remark that would leave you with a grin or something, and I’d almost decided on “Drive safely” but the truth is, even if you do—drive safely, that is—it won’t make a damned bit of difference.
It never did. And never will.
Keep on truckin’….
Kiss of the Mudman
“Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.” —Igor Stravinsky “Without music, life would be a mistake.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
1
Of all the things I have lost in this life, it is music that I miss the most.
I read once that humankind was never supposed to have had music, that it was stolen by the Fallen Angels from something called The Book of Forbidden Knowledge and given to us before God could do anything about it. This article (I think it was in an old issue of Fate I found lying around the Open Shelter) said this book contained all information about Science, Writing, Music, Poetry and Storytelling, Art, everything like that, and that humanity wasn’t supposed to possess this knowledge because we wouldn’t know what to do with it, that we’d take these things that were supposed to be holy and ruin them.
I remember thinking, How could God believe we’d ruin music? I mean, c’mon: say you’re having a rotten day, right? It seems like everything in your life is coming apart at the seams and you feel as if you’re going under for the third time...then you hear a favorite song coming from the radio of a passing car, and maybe it’s been twenty years since you even thought about this song, but hearing just those few seconds of it brings the whole thing back, verse, chorus, instrumental passages...and for a frozen instant you’re Back There when you heard it for the first time, and Back There you’re thinking: I am going to remember this song and this moment for the rest of my life because the day will come that I’m going to need this memory, and so you-Back There taps you-Right Here on the shoulder and says, “I can name that tune in four notes, how about you?”