With
the last of his blood-donor money Mac makes some of the old rounds,
and it feels strange, as if he had been somewhere else a long time
and come back.
Down
Burg Jones there is much walking between the bar and the Stop-N-Go
and the laundromat, bicycles weaving interbout, some visibly
resentful of the white face. Some just stare, heads turning with the
slow-rolling Fury.
Here
are no sidewalks, just crumbly footpaths through soft earth on both
sides of the tar-surface street. Frame churches and frame houses
hardly distinguishable among stunted yards and undernourished
vegetation. Hidden eyes deepset in trees off the ragged streets
follow Mac's progress.
In
the Stop-N-Go he buys his Icee from a white girl much amused at the
attention from a group of sub-teen black boys: "C'mon, got
horses in my pocket, I swear. None of 'em used."
Mac
stands around, glancing at the stacks of unbought newspapers. Video
basketball plays noisily nearby. A tap on the shoulder indicates a
sign above the door: No Consumption On Premises. The man is seriously
big, seriously black.
Mac
sucks the straw, grins as if a joke. It isn't beer or anything. He
finds his shoulder pushed, his Icee disturbed, and himself getting in
the Fury, not entirely under his own locomotion.
There,
in the parking lot, bicycles surround him, hands slapping the trunk,
doors, hood. It gets a little scary, so many, jeering. This was a
first timer, never happened to him before. He's able to drive away,
but the bicycles follow him.
He
speeds up, cutting down Standifer near the deep foliage around the
sewerage plant. Past the water chemical station, the Lone Star
Baptist Church, and Ray's Bottle Tree. It seems that he's lost them.
No street lights down here.
His belly feels jittery.
Across
the tracks at South Jackson, cruising near the reformatory and
charity hospital. There, suddenly, bikes. Different ones? His
leg jerks crazily, startled. He makes the first sharp right, looking
for a street sign, but none appears. There stands the pole, green
plates gone.
A
strict shortness comes up his throat. Mac does not recognize the
street at all. When he was at the warehouse and on terms with Cooper,
a bunch of them would get around Mac in a circle and hand out a map
and take bets, Cooper daring any to pick an obscure name off the
index and see if Mac couldn't name the region and progress and order
of each intersection. But this street Mac does not know.
A
Dead End sign announces itself, one corner somehow ripped away, the
paint faded. Barbed-wire fence and rural field and black woods
beyond. It is as if finding himself transported to another place in
the world entirely, beyond his realm, grossly unfair. He is trying to
reverse when he sees the bicycles, coming. They are around him,
slapping, kicking fenders with bare feet. Circling, yelling, calling
him out. Voices chant, ancient deep leering sounds that strike at his
heart. He can't drive past, the interlopers are so thick.
One
appears to be a kind of leader. Mac rolls the window down and makes
an attempt to chat, but gets no coherent reply. He steps outside. A
nearby porch light comes on. He is sucking the Icee when they
dismount and close in as the bikes fall over heedlessly. His last
recognizable utterance is Ret's name shouted, and then a multitude of
rough grasps seize him. He feels himself airborne, literally flying
back inside the car. The door gets kicked shut. The porch light goes
out.
Inside
the sound is like the worst imaginable hailstorm. Huge, sharp cracks,
dull thunks, chassis-groans. A shower of glass fills the back. The
Fury rocks, a ship in some relentless tempest.
Mac fires up, throws it in
reverse, and backs deliberately with eyes closed. More blows track
alongside, loud, forceful. When he reaches the highway a horn blares
and the tractor-trailer swerves. He jams it into drive and melts
tread toward town.
Parking at the Mill Street grocery, he takes the keys and walks
off toward the leafy back alleys of the dark west city. He can't
even look at the Fury right now.
