Boys Life

with terror and twisted the wheel. The truck’s massive tires zoomed past, a deep bass horn bellowing with indignation. I turned around in time to see the truck and Midnight Mona merge together, and then Midnight Mona burst through the truck’s rear wheels and kept on coming and the truck went on its way as dumb as Paul Bunyan’s ox. Donny hadn’t seen this feat of magic; he’d been too busy trying to keep us from crashing. “That was damn close!” Lainie said, and when she looked back I could tell she still saw nothing of the black car.
    But I knew. And Donny knew, too. Little Stevie Cauley was coming to save his girlfriend.
    “If he wants to fuckin’ play, I’ll play with him!” Donny yelled, and his foot sank to the floor. The Chevy’s engine screamed, the whole car starting to vibrate, everything that wasn’t bolted down rattling and groaning. “He never could beat me! Never could!”
    “Slow down!” Lainie begged, her eyes filling up with fear. “You’ll kill us!”
    But Midnight Mona was right on our tail now, hanging there like a black jet plane, matching speed for speed. The driver was a dark shape behind the wheel. The Chevy’s tires flayed rubber as Donny gritted his teeth, sweat on his face, and followed the dangerous road. Over the engine and the wind and Lainie’s voice crying for Donny to slow down, I couldn’t hear a sound from Midnight Mona.
    “Come on, you sumbitch!” Donny snarled. “I killed you once! I can kill you again, too!”
    “You’re crazy!” Lainie was clinging to her seat like a cat. “I don’t wanna die!”
    I was thrown from one side of the car to the other as the Chevy took the curves at breakneck speed, Donny fighting the wheel with every ounce of mean strength in his body. My mind was jangled, but not disconnected; I realized, as I was flung around like yesterday’s laundry, that Donny Blaylock had killed Little Stevie Cauley. How it had happened I could see in my imagination: two cars-one blue, one black-racing hell-for-sparkplugs on this very road, flames shooting from their tail pipes under last year’s October moon. Maybe they were neck and neck, like the chariots in Ben-Hur, and then Donny had whipped Big Dick to one side and the right rear panel had slammed into Midnight Mona. Maybe Little Stevie had lost control of the wheel, or maybe a tire had blown. But Midnight Mona had taken flight, as graceful as a black butterfly through the silvery dark, and exploded into fire when she came down. I could hear Donny’s fiendish laugh as he’d raced away from the burning ruin of glass and metal.
    As a matter of fact, I could hear his fiendish laugh right this minute.
    “I’ll kill you again! I’ll kill you again!” he hollered, his eyes crazed and his brilliantined hair swept back and twisting like Medusa’s snakes. It was obvious he was riding on his rims.
    He slammed on the brake. Lainie screamed. I screamed. Big Dick screamed, too.
    Midnight Mona, which was five feet behind the Chevy’s rear fender, hit us.
    I saw, as my eyes almost blasted out of my head, the black car’s flame-painted snout shove through the back seat. Then, like blurred freeze-frame pictures, Midnight Mona began to fill up the inside of Big Dick. I smelled burning oil and scorched metal, cigarette smoke and English Leather cologne. For the briefest of instants a black-haired young man with eyes as blue as swimming-pool water sat beside me, his hands gripping a steering wheel, his teeth clenching a Chesterfield’s stub. The sharp chin of his ruggedly handsome face was set like the prow of the Flying Dutchman. I believe my hair stood on end.
    Midnight Mona cleaved through Big Dick. Went right through the front seats, and on its way into the engine block its driver reached out a hand and seemed to touch Lainie’s cheek. I saw her blink and jump, her face going as pale as white silk. Donny cringed, yelling in stark-naked fear. He twisted the wheel back and forth because he could see the passing apparition even if Lainie was blind to it. Then Midnight Mona had gone through the front fender, its taillights the shape of red diamonds and its exhaust pipes spouting in Donny’s face, and the Chevy started spinning around and around like a Tiltawhirl, the brakes and tires shrieking like drunken banshees at an all-night haunt.
    I felt a crunch and heard a thud and I flew into the back of Lainie’s seat as if pressed there by an invisible waffle iron. “Jesus!” I heard Donny shout;