The Complete Drive-In

4

When I turned, I saw that at Mable’s scream Sam had made it over the fence and sprinted over to her. Bob was ahead of him, tearing off the smoldering blanket. Sam and Bob got arms around her and lifted her up and Sam said, “Oh, honey bugs, I thought you were croaked. Done gone to be with Jesus.”

Mable was clutching one of the recipe cards in her good hand. She looked at it there in the light of the burning concession and the lightning overhead. “Polk salad,” she said. “Now that’s a good one, if you get it when the shoots are young. Don’t, you might as well cook you up a mess of Johnson grass.”

I started over to join them, stopped. The patrons of both lots were coming out of the shadows, into the light of the great fire, coming toward us. A more unpleasant crowd I’d never seen. The patrons from Lot A no longer had their movies, and neither lot had their King and their popcorn.

Sam and Bob saw me looking, and they swiveled Mable around so that they were all facing the crowd. I pulled the pistol from my belt and held it against my leg and walked over there.

Bob and Sam gently lowered Mable to the ground. She sat there reading the pork salad recipe, nodding over it.

“It ain’t over,” Sam said. “It ain’t never over.”

“The King,” went the cry from the crowd. “The King.”

Then they swarmed us. I heard Bob’s shotgun roar and I got off one shot-and missed. In a crowd, no less. Jack the deadly gunman. Sweaty, hot bodies piled on me and I struck the ground hard and someone said an obscenity in my face and some other smart aleck twisted the gun out of my hand and hit me with it, which is kind of humiliating, getting clubbed with your own gun, I mean. Next the crowd started dribbling me around the lot with fists and feet and I got beyond pain and entered into nice, dark, cozy unconsciousness.

But that didn’t last long.

Lot A built a bigger and better fire out of the smoldering lumber of the concession stand so they would have plenty of light to work by, but they managed to save enough of the lumber for cooking and building.

What they built was crosses.

They got some nails out of the wreckage and someone had a hammer, and they stripped us naked and held us down and crucified us. That hurt bad enough, but when they dropped our crosses into the holes the concession pilings had been in, that was real pain. It shook my entire body until I felt as if the tips of my teeth would bulb up and squirt blood.

They packed the holes tight with junk from the concession, then piled lumber around the bottoms of the crosses and looked up at us like chefs contemplating the larder.

The nails hurt something awful, but worse was the racking pain throughout the body and the pressure it put on the lungs. Now and then I had to make my legs work so I could force myself up on the nail through my feet and get some good breaths. I’d stay that way long as I could until the muscles in my feet cramped and I had to let go. Then I’d have trouble breathing again, and I’d get my strength back just enough before my lungs collapsed, and I’d push up once more. I had just thought Coach Murphy’s calisthenics in PE were tough.

They got the Popcorn King’s body, put it on a pole and stuck it upright in that part of the wreckage that wasn’t on fire. The King had gone seriously ugly. The tattoos had fallen off him and lay like ink pools on the ground where he had lain. That part of the body that had been Willard was pink again; he had even lost the tattoos he had come to the drive-in with.

Members of the crowd took a blanket and put it over the King’s head so his face would show, and they took a nail and nailed through it into the top of his hat so it wouldn’t fall off. Then they stretched the blanket behind him so that he looked like he was standing there wearing a hooded robe. One young woman with spiky hair claimed she had been possessed by the King’s spirit, or some such thing (I wasn’t in the mood to take it all in, actually), and she wandered around and did a kind of Jezebel dance by the body, and after a while she let her voice go deep, though it cracked some, and she gave the impression the King was talking through her. The crowd liked that, and she got behind the body, under the stretched-out blanket, and patrons would come by and ask the King questions and she’d answer for him and everyone was pleased with this oracle. They did this until it got boring and they turned back to us and started piling more lumber. One of the pilers was especially annoying. He kept singing “Mama’s Little Baby Loves Short’nin’ Bread,” and he couldn’t carry a tune in a safety-deposit box. It just wasn’t the way for a man to die. On a cross, about to be cooked, with some idiot singing “Short’nin’ Bread.”

I could turn my head and see the others to my left. Sam, Bob and Mable. Mable, who had lost her plumbing-pipe hand, had gotten nailed through the wrist a couple of times and I think she was bleeding worse than the rest of us. She cashed in early, her last words being something about how to wrap tamale meat in corn shucks. I kept expecting her to come alive again and start on some other recipe, but this time she was dead for real. Her shapeless white body hung out from the cross like a swollen grub.

When Sam knew she was gone he went to preaching. Said something about Jesus and the thieves on either side of him.

“Ain’t stole nothing in my life,” Bob said. “Cept maybe your bus and sardines, and I don’t think that counts.”

Sam went on with his story, said those suckers on either side of Jesus had repented and Jesus had saved their lives and they went on to Paradise. Being as I was in the thieves’ position, I could sympathize with their line of thinking, but just having had a rather uninspiring religious experience, I declined to join Sam in Paradise.

But Sam kept at it. I couldn’t figure where he was getting the wind. I could hardly breathe at all. I reckon he felt like a big wheel because he was in the middle. He preached for quite some time before his mouth went dry and he couldn’t say anything else, which I was grateful for.

I blacked out off and on, and once I had what might have been a dream. In the dream the lightning overhead ceased and out of the blackness came a face, an indescribable face, but a face that had the look of someone, or something, with a mission. He opened his toothy mouth and roared, “Over budget, you fools. Over budget. Cut. Wrap.” Then the face withdrew into the black and there was light. The dream ended.

I opened my eyes and saw below that the patrons were piling more wood around me, and that one of them had a piece of board wrapped in a shirt and it was on fire. He was about to put it to my pile of lumber. I hoped fire was quick. I had read somewhere that it was a tough way to go, and that smoke inhalation killed you first. I decided I would breathe a lot of smoke quickly, get it over with.

And then there was a change. I looked up. The lightning was still there and so was the blackness, but there was something bright moving behind it, a red glow that was expanding.

I looked down at my captors, at the faces of those close to the fire and at the shadowy shapes of those beyond; the more clearly outlined, if distant, shapes over in Lot B, where the movies still rolled. They all seemed to be looking up.

I lifted my head again. It wasn’t just delirium. It was lighter up there and growing lighter still. Then it looked as if a great apple broke through the chocolate pudding, but it was the comet tearing through the poison sky. Down it came, dragging daylight behind it, white clouds, the sun.

The drive-in went red and the comet smiled.

Up it whipped again, this time pulling the blackness with it. Up, up, up and away, until it was not even a speck against the bright blue sky, and there was nothing left but a fine warm day with the smell of trees in the air and the touch of hot sun on our faces.

It was nice, but I didn’t feel like a picnic or nothing.

The patrons just sort of stood there for a while, marveling at the world beyond the tin fence. There were lots of trees visible. Big trees. The guy with the burning board dropped it-not on the wood pile, fortunately. People began wandering off, some began to run. Cars were cranked. Engines seemed to be working fine. Like a line of insects the cars and trucks rolled out of the drive-in. Some people whose cars had been totaled walked. Some hot-wired and took other cars. Everyone was in a hurry to get out of there. They didn’t mention getting us down. No one waved or shot us the finger as they went by.

A tall, skinny man with long hair and a hoe handle for a cane came up. He looked up at Bob. “How’s it going?”

“Hanging around,” Bob said, not missing a beat.

“Maybe you’d like down?” Crier said.

“That would be right nice,” Bob said.

Crier got down on his hands and knees and started pulling the junk out of the piling holes and pretty soon the crosses were wobbling and then Crier pushed us down. When I hit the ground I thought my arms and legs would come off.

Crier went away for a while and when he came back he had a hammer. He used the claw end to free us. It hurt like hell. He got Mable free last, since she wasn’t in any hurry.

“I broke into your camper to get this hammer,” Crier said to Bob, “I figured you’d have one. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Nah,” Bob said, “it’s insured.”

My hands and feet hurt so bad I couldn’t move them and I couldn’t walk, least not without help. My legs seemed to have died. Sam looked walleyed and had gone to singing “The Old Rugged Cross” in a whispery kind of voice, and that wasn’t helping my nerves.

“What you driving?” Bob said.

“Well,” Crier said, “this is kind of odd, but I can’t remember what car I came in. Can’t remember who I came with.”

“Don’t matter,” Bob said. “We’ll take the camper. You can drive, can’t you?”

“Is it an automatic?”

“I thought you said you were a truck driver,” Bob said. “I figured you could drive anything.”

“Well, I may have exaggerated. A whole lot. I drove an ice cream truck, actually.”

“An ice cream truck!” Bob said.

“Yeah. But sometimes I drove it real fast. And it was an automatic. Which brings me back to the question. Is your truck an automatic?”

“Yep.” Bob said.

“Then I can drive the hell out of that. It’s been awhile, but I reckon I remember that much. But you don’t look like you got a key on you.”

“There’s one underneath the dash in a magnetic box. Doors aren’t locked.”

“Okay,” Crier said. “I’ll drive it over here and pick you up.”

“You wouldn’t just drive off and leave us, would you?” Bob said.

“Gone this far for you, might as well go the whole hog.”

When Crier came back with the truck, Bob said, “There’s some blankets in the back. There’s a knife back there too. We can cut a hole in the blankets and slip them over our heads.”

“Why the trouble?” Crier asked. “You boys got dates?”

“Just a thing I prefer, if you’ll do it,” Bob said.

Crier found the blankets and the sardines and the knife. He brought the sardines out and we ate all we could stand, Crier feeding them to us, as our hands didn’t work so good.

He cut the blankets and pulled them over our heads. Sam didn’t even notice. He was trying to sing “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder.”

“What about her?” I asked, nodding at Mable.

“Dead, ain’t she?” Crier said.

“Maybe you could pile some boards on her or something, set her on fire if you had a mind to. She ought to have some kind of burial.”

“Ain’t you something,” Crier said.

“And the Popcorn King,” I said. “He ought not just be left.”

“You’re kind of tight with everybody, ain’t you?” Crier said,

“Before he was that, he was two friends of ours,” Bob said. “I know it’s a bother, but could you?”

“Hell,” Crier said. “Good thing you boys are paying by the hour.” He piled some boards on Mable and set fire to her and she caught poorly at first, but after a time was blazing away. It didn’t take so much to get the Popcorn King burning. He caught quick and flared like a torch, the blanket whipping to flame immediately. Black smoke churned up from the corpses and floated up into the clear sky and faded.

“Now,” Crier said. “Any little ole chores you boys want performed? Just anything would be all right. Maybe you’d like to see if I can make a few laps around the lots.”

“Would you?” Bob said.

“You know what you can do,” Crier said.

Crier helped Bob and Sam into the back of the truck and led me around to the cab. It seemed to take forever and my feet felt like raw stumps. I had Crier on one side holding me up, and the truck on the other. I touched the truck with my elbow because my hand wouldn’t take it. I still couldn’t open or close either one of them. They looked like talons.

Inside the cab, Crier started the truck again, leaned on the wheel and looked around. “Strange, I feel funny leaving.”

“Maybe you can get over it,” I said.

“Maybe.”

“One thing, Crier,” I said. “You saw what that crowd was about to do to us. I know you couldn’t have stopped them, but would you have helped eat us? Could you have done that?”

“Been the first in line if I could have. No sense missing a free meal, even if it is made up of a couple of guys I kind of like.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s one way of looking at things.”