Boys Life

and forth across the windshield. “We’ll get somebody to weld it together or somethin’. That’ll be cheaper than a new bike, for sure.”
    “Okay,” I answered, but I knew the bike was dead. No amount of welding was going to revive it. “The front wheel was messed up, too,” I added, but Dad was concentrating on his driving.
    We reached the place where I’d pulled the carcass up under the oak tree. “Where it is?” Dad asked. “Was this the place?”
    It was, though the carcass was gone. Dad stopped the truck, got out, and knocked on the front door of the house we sat before. I saw the door open, and a white-haired woman peered out. She and Dad talked for a minute or so, and I saw the woman point toward the street. Then my dad came back, his cap dripping water and his shoulders hunched in his wet milkman’s jacket. He slid behind the wheel, closed the door, and said, “Well, she walked out to get her mail, she saw the bike lyin’ there under her tree, and she called Mr. Sculley to come pick it up.” Mr. Emmett Sculley was Zephyr’s junkman, and he drove around in a bright green truck with SCULLEY’S ANTIQUES and a telephone number painted on the sides in red. My dad started the engine and looked at me. I knew that look; it was hard and angry, and I could read a grim future in it. “Why didn’t you go to that woman’s door and tell her you were gonna come back for your bike? Didn’t you think of that?”
    “No, sir,” I had to admit. “I didn’t.”
    Well, my dad pulled the truck away from the curb and we started off again. Not toward home, but heading west. I knew where we were going. Mr. Sculley’s junk shop lay to the west, past the wooded edge of town. On the way, I had to endure my father’s tale, the one that began like this: “When I was your age, I had to walk if I wanted to get somewhere. I wish I’d had a bike back then, even a used one. Heck, if my buddies and me had to walk two or three miles, we didn’t think a thing about it. And we were healthier for it, too. Sun, wind, or rain, it didn’t matter. We got where we were going on our own two le-” And so on, you know the kind of speech I mean, the generational paean of childhood.
    We left the town limits behind us, and the glistening road wound through the wet green forest. The rain was still coming down, pieces of fog snagged on the treetops and drifting across the road. Dad had to drive slowly because the road around here was dangerous even when the pavement was dry. My dad was still going on about the dubious joys of not having a bike, which I was beginning to realize was his way of telling me I’d better get used to walking if my old ride was unfixable. Thunder boomed off beyond the hazy hills, the road deserted before us as it curved beneath the tires like a wild horse fights a saddle. I don’t know why I chose that moment to turn my head and look back, but I did.
    And I saw the car that was coming up fast behind us.
    The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and the skin beneath it tingled like the scurrying of ants. The car was a black, low-slung, mean-looking panther with gleaming chrome teeth, and it rocketed around the long curve my father had just negotiated with an uneasy alliance of brake and accelerator. The pickup truck’s engine was sputtery, but I could hear no sound from the black car that closed on us. I could see a shape and a pale face behind the wheel. I could see red and orange flames painted on the slope of the ebony hood, and then the car was on our tail and showed no sign of slowing or swerving and I looked at my father and shouted, “Dad!”
    He jumped in his seat and jerked the wheel. The truck’s tires slewed to the left, over the faded centerline, and my father fought to keep us from going into the woods. Then the tires got a grip again, the truck straightened out, and Dad had fire in his eyes when he swung his face in my direction. “Are you crazy?” he snapped. “You want to get us killed?”
    I looked back.
    The black car was gone.
    It hadn’t passed us. It hadn’t turned off anywhere. It was just gone.
    “I saw… I saw…”
    “Saw what? Where?” he demanded.
    “I… thought I saw… a car,” I told him. “It was… about to hit us, I thought.”
    He peered into the rearview mirror. Of course he saw only the same rain and empty road I was seeing. He reached out, put his hand against my forehead, and said, “You feelin’ all right?”
    “Yes sir.” I didn’t have a