The Night We Buried Road Dog

III.

What with him burying cars and raising hell, Jesse never wrote to me in summer. He was surely faithful in winter, though. He wrote long letters printed in a clumsy hand. He tried to cheer me up, and so did Matt Simons.

The Navy sent me to boot camp and diesel school, then to a motor pool in San Diego. I worked there three and a half years, sometimes even working on ships if the ships weren’t going anywhere. A sunny land and smiling ladies lay all about, but the ladies mostly fell in love by ten at night and got over it by dawn. Women in the bars were younger and prettier than back home. There was enough clap to go around.

“The business is growing like jimsonweed,” Jesse wrote toward Christmas of ’62. “I buried fourteen cars this summer, and one of them was a Kraut.” He wrote a whole page about his morals. It didn’t seem right to stick a crap crate in the ground beside real cars. At the same time, it was bad business not to. He opened a special corner of the cemetery, and pretended it was exclusive for foreign iron.

“And Mike Tarbush got to drinking,” he wrote. “I’m sad to say we planted Judith.”

Mike never had a minute’s trouble with that Merc. Judith behaved like a perfect lady until Mike turned upside down. He backed across a parking lot at night, rather hasty, and drove backward up the guy wire of a power pole. It was the only rollover wreck in history that happened at twenty miles an hour.

“Mike can’t stop discussing it,” Jesse wrote. “He’s never caught The Dog, neither, but he ain’t stopped trying. He wheeled in here in a beefed-up ’57 Olds called Sally. It goes like stink and looks like a Hereford.”

Home seemed far away, though it couldn’t have been more than thirty-six hours by road for a man willing to hang over the wheel. I wanted to take a leave and drive home, but knew it better not happen. Once I got there, I’d likely stay.

“George Pierson at the feed store says he’s going to file a paternity suit against Potato,” Jesse wrote. “The pups are cute, and there’s a family resemblance.”

It came to me then why I was homesick. I surely missed the land, but even more I missed the people. Back home, folks were important enough that you knew their names. When somebody got messed up or killed, you felt sorry. In California, nobody knew nobody. They just swept up broken glass and moved right along. I should have meshed right in. I had made my rating and was pushing a rich man’s car, a ’57 hemi Chrysler, but never felt it fit.

“Don’t pay it any mind,” Jesse wrote when I told about meeting Road Dog. “I’ve heard about a guy who looks the same as me. Sometimes stuff like that happens.”

And that was all he ever did say.

Nineteen sixty-three ended happy and hopeful. Matt Simons wrote a letter. Sam Winder bought a big Christmas card, and everybody signed it with little messages. Even my old boss at the filling station signed, “Merry Xmas, Jed—Keep It Between The Fence Posts.” My boss didn’t hold it against me that I left. In Montana a guy is supposed to be free to find out what he’s all about.

Christmas of ’63 saw Jesse pleased as a bee in clover. A lady named Sarah moved in with him. She waitressed at the café, and Jesse’s letter ran pretty short. He’d put twenty-three cars under that year, and bought more acreage. He ordered a genuine marble gravestone for Miss Molly. “Sue Ellen is a real darling,” Jesse wrote about the Linc. “That marker like to weighed a ton. We just about bent a back axle bringing it from the railroad.”

From Christmas of ’63 to January of ’64 was just a few days, but they marked an awful downturn for Jesse. His letter was more real to me than all the diesels in San Diego.

He drew black borders all around the pages. The letter started out okay, but went downhill. “Sarah moved out and into a rented room,” he wrote. “I reckon I was just too much to handle.” He didn’t explain, but I did my own reckoning. I could imagine that it was Jesse, plus two cats and two dogs, trying to get into a ten-wide-fifty trailer, that got to Sarah. “I think she misses me,” he wrote, “but I expect she’ll have to bear it.”

Then the letter got just awful.

“A pack of wolves came through from Canada,” Jesse wrote. “They picked off old Potato like a berry from a bush. Me and Mike found tracks, and a little blood in the snow.”

I sat in the summery dayroom surrounded by sailors shooting pool and playing Ping-Pong. I imagined the snow and ice of home. I imagined old Potato nosing around in his dumb and happy way, looking for rabbits or lifting his leg. Maybe he even wagged his tail when that first wolf came into view. I sat blinking tears, ready to bawl over a dog, and then I did, and to hell with it.

The world was changing, and it wouldn’t change back. I put in for sea duty one more time, and the chief warrant who ramrodded that motor pool turned it down again. He claimed we kept the world safe by wrenching engines.

“The ’62 Dodge is emerging as the car of choice for people in a hurry.” Matt Simons wrote that in February ’64, knowing I’d understand that nobody could tell which cars would be treasured until they had a year or two on them. “It’s an extreme winter,” he wrote, “and it’s taking its toll on many of us. Mike has now learned not to punch a policeman. He’s doing ten days. Sam Winder managed to roll a Jeep, and neither he nor I can figure out how a man can roll a Jeep. Sam has a broken arm, and lost two toes to frost. He was trapped under the wreck. It took a while to pull him out. Brother Jesse is in the darkest sort of mood. He comes and goes in an irregular manner, but the Linc sits outside the pool hall on most days.

“And for myself,” Matt wrote, “I think, come summer, I’ll drop some revs. My flaming youth seems to be giving way to other interests. A young woman named Nancy started teaching at the school. Until now, I thought I was a confirmed bachelor.”

A postcard came the end of February. The postmark said “Cheyenne, Wyoming,” way down in the southeast corner of the state. It was written fancy. Nobody could mistake that fine, spidery hand. It read:

The picture on the card had been taken from an airplane. It showed an oval racetrack where cars chased each other round and round. I couldn’t figure why Jesse sent it, but it had to be Jesse. Then it came to me that Jesse was The Road Dog. Then it came to me that he wasn’t. The Road Dog was too slick. He wrote real delicate, and Jesse only printed real clumsy. On the other hand, The Road Dog didn’t know me from Adam’s off ox. Somehow it had to be Jesse.

“We got snow nut deep to a tall palm tree,” Jesse wrote at about the same time, “and Chip is failing. He’s off his feed. He don’t even tease the kitties. Chip just can’t seem to stop mourning.”

I had bad premonitions. Chip was sensitive. I feared he wouldn’t be around by the time I got back home, and my fear proved right. Chip held off until the first warm sun of spring, and then he died while napping in the shade of the bulldozer. When Jesse sent a quick note telling me, I felt pretty bad, but had been expecting it. Chip had a good heart. I figured now he was with Potato, romping in the hills somewhere. I knew that was a bunch of crap, but that’s just the way I chose to figure it.

They say a man can get used to anything, but maybe some can’t. Day after day, and week after week, California weather nagged. Sometimes a puny little dab of weather dribbled in from the Pacific, and people hollered it was storming. Sometimes temperatures dropped toward the fifties, and people trotted around in thick sweaters and coats. It was almost a relief when that happened, because everybody put on their shirts. In three years, I’d seen more woman skin than a normal man sees in a lifetime, and more tattoos on men. The chief warrant at the motor pool had the only tattoo in the world called “worm’s-eye view of a pig’s butt in the moonlight.”

In autumn ’64, with one more year to pull, I took a two-week leave and headed north just chasing weather. It showed up first in Oregon with rain, and more in Washington. I got hassled on the Canadian border by a distressful little guy who thought, what with the war, that I wanted political asylum.

I chased on up to Calgary, where matters got chill and wholesome. Wind worked through the mountains like it wanted to drive me south toward home. Elk and moose and porcupines went about their business. Red-tailed hawks circled. I slid on over to Edmonton, chased on east to Saskatoon, then dropped south through the Dakotas. In Williston, I had a terrible want to cut and run for home, but didn’t dare.

The Road Dog showed up all over the place, but the messages were getting strange. At a bar in Amidon:

At a hamburger joint in Belle Fourche:

At a restaurant in Redbird:

In a poolroom in Fort Collins:

Road Dog, or Jesse, was too far south. The Dog had never showed up in Colorado before. At least, nobody ever heard of such.

My leave was running out. There was nothing to do except sit over the wheel. I dropped on south to Albuquerque, hung a right, and headed back to the big city. All along the road, I chewed a dreadful fear for Jesse. Something bad was happening, and that didn’t seem fair, because something good went on between me and the Chrysler. We reached an understanding. The Chrysler came alive and began to hum. All that poor car had ever needed was to look at road. It had been raised among traffic and poodles, but needed long sight distances and bears.

When I got back, there seemed no way out of writing a letter to Matt Simons, even if it was borrowing trouble. It took evening after evening of gnawing the end of a pencil, I hated to tell about Miss Molly, and about the dancing ghost, and about my fears for Jesse. A man is supposed to keep his problems to himself.

At the same time, Matt was educated. Maybe he could give Jesse a hand if he knew all of it. The letter came out pretty thick. I mailed it thinking Matt wasn’t likely to answer real soon. Autumn deepened to winter back home, and everybody would be busy.

So I worked and waited. There was an old White Mustang with a fifth wheel left over from the last war. It was a lean and hungry-looking animal, and slightly marvelous. I overhauled the engine, then dropped the tranny and adapted a ten-speed Roadranger. When I got that truck running smooth as a Baptist’s mouth, the Navy surveyed it and sold it for scrap.

“Ghost cars are a tradition,” Matt wrote toward the back of October, “and I’d be hard-pressed to say they are not real. I recall being passed by an Auburn boat tail about 3:00 a.m. on a summer day. That happened ten years ago. I was about your age, which means there was not an Auburn boat tail in all of Montana. That car died in the early thirties.

“And we all hear stories of huge old headlights overtaking in the mist, stories of Mercers and Duesenbergs and Bugattis. I try to believe the stories are true, because, in a way, it would be a shame if they were not.

“The same for road ghosts. I’ve never seen a ghost who looked like Jesse. The ghosts I’ve seen might not have been ghosts. To paraphrase an expert, they may have been a trapped beer belch, an undigested hamburger, or blowing mist. On the other hand, maybe not. They certainly seemed real at the time.

“As for Jesse—we have a problem here. In a way, we’ve had it for a long while, but only since last winter have matters become solemn. Then your letter arrives, and matters become mysterious. Jesse has—or had—a twin brother. One night when we were carousing, he told me that, but he also said his brother was dead. Then he swore me to a silence I must now break.”

Matt went on to say that I must never, never say anything. He figured something was going on between brothers. He figured it must run deep.

“There is something uncanny about twins,” Matt wrote. “What great matters are joined in the womb? When twins enter the world, they learn and grow the way all of us do; but some communication (or communion) surely happens before birth. A clash between brothers is a terrible thing. A clash between twins may spell tragedy.”

Matt went on to tell how Jesse was going over the edge with road games, only the games stayed close to home. All during the summer, Jesse would head out, roll fifty or a hundred miles, and come home scorching like drawn by a string. Matt guessed the postcard I’d gotten from Jesse in February was part of the game, and it was the last time Jesse had been very far from home. Matt figured Jesse used tracing paper to imitate The Road Dog’s writing. He also figured Road Dog had to be Jesse’s brother.

“It’s obvious,” Matt wrote, “that Jesse’s brother is still alive, and is only metaphorically dead to Jesse. There are look-alikes in this world, but you have reported identical twins.”

Matt told how Jesse drove so crazy, even Mike would not run with him. That was bad enough, but it seemed the graveyard had sort of moved in on Jesse’s mind. That graveyard was no longer just something to do. Jesse swapped around until he came up with a tractor and mower. Three times that summer, he trimmed the graveyard and straightened the markers. He dusted and polished Miss Molly’s headstone.

“It’s past being a joke,” Matt wrote, “or a sentimental indulgence. Jesse no longer drinks, and no longer hells around in a general way. He either runs or tends the cemetery. I’ve seen other men search for a ditch, but never in such bizarre fashion.”

Jesse had been seen on his knees, praying before Miss Molly’s grave.

“Or perhaps he was praying for himself, or for Chip,” Matt wrote.

“Chip is buried beside Miss Molly. The graveyard has to be seen to be believed. Who would ever think so many machines would be so dear to so many men?”

Then Matt went on to say he was going to “inquire in various places” that winter. “There are ways to trace Jesse’s brother,” Matt wrote, “and I am very good at that sort of research.” He said it was about the only thing be could still do for Jesse.

“Because,” Matt wrote, “I seem to have fallen in love with a romantic. Nancy wants a June wedding. I look forward to another winter alone, but it will be an easy wait. Nancy is rather old-fashioned, and I find that I’m old-fashioned as well. I will never regret my years spent helling around, but am glad they are now in the past.”

Back home, winter deepened. At Christmas a long letter came from Jesse, and some of it made sense. “I put eighteen cars under this summer. Business fell off because I lost my hustle. You got to scooch around a good bit, or you don’t make contacts. I may start advertising.

“And the tabbies took off. I forgot to slop them regular, so now they’re mousing in a barn on Jimmy Come Lately Road. Mike says I ought to get another dog, but my heart isn’t in it.”

Then the letter went into plans for the cemetery. Jesse talked some grand ideas. He thought a nice wrought-iron gate might be showy, and bring in business. He thought of finding a truck that would haul “deceased” cars.

“On the other hand,” he wrote, “if a guy don’t care enough to find a tow, maybe I don’t want to plant his iron.” He went on for a good while about morals, but a lawyer couldn’t understand it. He seemed to be saying something about respect for Miss Molly, and Betty Lou, and Judith. “Sue Ellen is a real hummer,” he wrote about the Linc. “She’s got two hundred thousand I know about, plus whatever went on before.”

Which meant Jesse was piling up about seventy thousand miles a year, and that didn’t seem too bad. Truck drivers put up a hundred thousand. Of course, they make a living at it.

Then the letter got so crazy it was hard to credit.

“I got The Road Dog figured out. There’s two little kids. Their mama reads to them, and they play tag. The one that don’t get caught gets to be the Gingerbread Man. This all come together because I ran across a bunch of kids down on the Colorado line. I was down that way to call on a lady I once knew, but she moved, and I said what the hell, and hung around a few days, and that’s what clued me to The Dog. The kids were at a Sunday-school picnic, and I was napping across the car seat. Then a preacher’s wife came over and saw I wasn’t drunk, but the preacher was there, too, and they invited me. I eased over to the picnic, and everybody made me welcome. Anyway, those kids were playing, and I heard the gingerbread business, and I figured The Dog is from Colorado.”

The last page of the letter was just as scary. Jesse took kids’ crayons and drew the front ends of the Linc and Miss Molly. There was a tail that was probably Potato’s sticking out from behind the picture of Miss Molly, and everything was centered around the picture of a marker that said “R.I.P. Road Dog.”

But—there weren’t any little kids. Jesse had not been to Colorado. Jesse had been tending that graveyard, and staying close to home. Jesse played make-believe, or else Matt Simons lied; and there was no reason for Matt to lie. Something bad, bad wrong was going on with Jesse.

There was no help for it. I did my time and wrote a letter every month or six weeks pretending everything was normal. I wrote about what we’d do when I got home, and about the Chrysler. Maybe that didn’t make much sense, but Jesse was important to me. He was a big part of what I remembered about home.

At the end of April, a postcard came, this time from Havre. “The Dog is after me. I feel it.” It was just a plain old postcard. No picture.

Matt wrote in May, mostly his own plans. He busied himself building a couple of rooms onto his place. “Nancy and I do not want a family right away,” he wrote, “but someday we will.” He wrote a bubbly letter with a feel of springtime to it.

“I almost forgot my main reason for writing,” the letter said. “Jesse comes from around Boulder, Colorado. His parents are long dead, ironically in a car wreck. His mother was a schoolteacher, his father a librarian. Those people, who lived such quiet lives, somehow produced a hellion like Jesse, and Jesse’s brother. That’s the factual side of the matter.

“The human side is so complex it will not commit to paper. In fact, I do not trust what I know. When you get home next fall, we’ll discuss it.”

The letter made me sad and mad. Sad because I wasn’t getting married, and mad because Matt didn’t think I’d keep my mouth shut. Then I thought better of it. Matt didn’t trust himself. I did what any gentleman would do, and sent him and Nancy a nice gravy boat for the wedding.

In late July, Jesse sent another postcard. “He’s after me; I’m after him. If I ain’t around when you get back, don’t fret. Stuff happens. It’s just a matter of chasing road.”

Summer rolled on. The Navy released “nonessential personnel” in spite of the war. I put four years in the outfit and got called nonessential. Days choked past like a rig with fouled injectors. One good thing happened. My old boss moved his station to the outskirts of town and started an IH dealership. He straight out wrote how he needed a diesel mechanic. I felt hopeful thoughts, and dark ones.

In September, I became a veteran who qualified for an overseas ribbon, because of work on ships that later on went somewhere. Now I could join the Legion post back home, which was maybe the payoff. They had the best pool table in the county.

“Gents,” I said to the boys at the motor pool, “it’s been a distinct by-God pleasure enjoying your company, and don’t never come to Montana, ‘cause she’s a heartbreaker.” The Chrysler and me lit out like a kyoodle of pups.

It would have been easier to run to Salt Lake, then climb the map to Havre, but notions pushed. I slid east to Las Cruces, then popped north to Boulder with the idea of tracing Jesse. The Chrysler hummed and chewed up road. When I got to Boulder, the notion turned hopeless. There were too many people. I didn’t even know where to start asking.

It’s no big job to fool yourself. Above Boulder, it came to me how I’d been pointing for Sheridan all along, and not even Sheridan. I pointed toward a girl who smiled at me four years ago.

I found her working at a hardware, and she wasn’t wearing any rings. I blushed around a little bit, then got out of there to catch my breath. I thought of how Jesse took whatever time was needed when he bought the Linc. It looked like this would take a while.

My pockets were crowded with mustering-out pay and money for unused leave. I camped in a ten-dollar motel. It took three days to get acquainted, then we went to a show and supper afterward. Her name was Linda. Her father was a Mormon. That meant a year of courting, but it’s not all that far from north Montana to Sheridan.

I had to get home and get employed, which would make the Mormon happy. On Saturday afternoon Linda and I went back to the same old movie, but this time we held hands. Before going home, she kissed me once, real gentle. That made up for those hard times in San Diego. It let me know I was back with my own people.

I drove downtown all fired up with visions. It was way too early for bed, and I cared nothing for a beer. A run-down café sat on the outskirts. I figured pie and coffee.

The Dog had signed in. His writing showed faint, like the wall had been scrubbed. Newer stuff scrabbled over it.

The café sort of slumbered. Several old men lined the counter. Four young gearheads sat at a table and talked fuel injection. The old men yawned and put up with it. Faded pictures of old racing cars hung along the walls. The young guys sat beneath a picture of the Bluebird. That car held the land speed record of 301.29 m.p.h. This was a racer’s café, and had been for a long, long time.

The waitress was graying and motherly. She tsked and tished over the old men as much as she did the young ones. Her eyes held that long-distance prairie look, a look knowing wind and fire and hard times, stuff that either breaks people or leaves them wise. Matt Simons might get that look in another twenty years. I tried to imagine Linda when she became the waitress’s age, and it wasn’t bad imagining.

Pictures of quarter-mile cars hung back of the counter, and pictures of street machines hung on each side of the door. Fifties hot rods scorched beside worked-up stockers. Some mighty rowdy iron crowded that wall. One picture showed a Golden Hawk. I walked over, and in one corner was the name “Still”—written in The Road Dog’s hand. It shouldn’t have been scary.

I went back to the counter shaking. A nice-looking old gent nursed coffee. His hands wore knuckles busted by a thousand slipped wrenches. Grease was worked in deep around his eyes, the way it gets after years and years when no soap made will touch it. You could tell he’d been a steady man. His eyes were clear as a kid.

“Mister,” I said, “and beg pardon for bothering you. Do you know anything about that Studebaker?” I pointed to the wall.

“You ain’t bothering me,” he said, “but I’ll tell you when you do.” He tapped the side of his head like trying to ease a gear in place, then he started talking engine specs on the Stude.

“I mean the man who owns it.”

The old man probably liked my haircut, which was short. He liked it that I was raised right. Young guys don’t always pay old men much mind.

“You still ain’t bothering me.” He turned to the waitress. “Sue,” he said, “has Johnny Still been in?”

She turned from cleaning the pie case, and she looked toward the young guys like she feared for them. You could tell she was no big fan of engines. “It’s been the better part of a year, maybe more.” She looked down the line of old men. “I was fretting about him just the other day….” She let it hang. Nobody said anything. “He comes and goes so quiet, you might miss him.”

“I don’t miss him a hell of a lot,” one of the young guys said. The guy looked like a duck, and had a voice like a sparrow. His fingernails were too clean. That proved something.

“Because Johnny blew you out,” another young guy said. “Johnny always blew you out.”

“Because he’s crazy,” the first guy said. “There’s noisy crazy and quiet crazy. The guy is a spook.”

“He’s going through something,” the waitress said, and said it kind.

“Johnny’s taken a lot of loss. He’s the type who grieves.” She looked at me like she expected an explanation.

“I’m friends with his brother,” I told her. “Maybe Johnny and his brother don’t get along.”

The old man looked at me rather strange. “You go back quite a ways,”

he told me. “Jesse’s been dead a good long time.”

I thought I’d pass out. My hands started shaking, and my legs felt too weak to stand. Beyond the window of the café, red light came from a neon sign, and inside the café everybody sat quiet, waiting to see if I was crazy, too. I sort of picked at my pie. One of the young guys moved real uneasy. He loafed toward the door, maybe figuring he’d need a shotgun. The other three young ones looked confused.

“No offense,” I said to the old man, “but Jesse Still is alive. Up on the high line. We run together.”

“Jesse Still drove a damn old Hudson Terraplane into the South Platte River in spring of ’52, maybe ’53.” The old man said it real quiet. “He popped a tire when not real sober.”

“Which is why Johnny doesn’t drink,” the waitress said. “At least, I expect that’s the reason.”

“And now you are bothering me.” The old man looked to the waitress, and she was as full of questions as he was.

Nobody ever felt more hopeless or scared. These folks had no reason to tell this kind of yarn. “Jesse is sort of roughhouse.” My voice was only whispering. It wouldn’t make enough sound. “Jesse made his reputation helling around.”

“You’ve got that part right,” the old man told me, “and, youngster, I don’t give a tinker’s damn if you believe me or not, but Jesse Still is dead.”

I saw what it had to be, but seeing isn’t always believing. “Thank you, mister,” I whispered to the old man, “and thank you, ma’am,” to the waitress. Then I hauled out of there leaving them with something to discuss.

A terrible fear rolled with me, because of Jesse’s last postcard. He said he might not be home, and now that could mean more than it said. The Chrysler bettered its reputation, and we just flew. From the Montana line to Shelby is eight hours on a clear day. You can wail it in seven, or maybe six and a half if a deer doesn’t tangle with your front end. I was afraid, and confused, and getting mad. Me and Linda were just to the point of hoping for an understanding, and now I was going to get killed running over a porcupine or into a heifer. The Chrysler blazed like a hound on a hot scent. At eighty the pedal kept wanting to dig deep and really howl.

The nighttime road yells danger. Shadows crawl over everything. What jumps into your headlights may be real, and may be not. Metal crosses hold little clusters of dark flowers on their arms, and the land rolls out beneath the moon. Buttes stand like great ships anchored in the plains, and riverbeds run like dry ink. Come spring, they’ll flow; but in September, all flow is in the road.

The dancing ghost picked me up on Highway 3 outside Comanche, but this time he wasn’t dancing. He stood on the berm, and no mist tied him in place. He gave the old road sign for “roll ’em.” Beyond Columbia, he showed up again. His mouth moved like he was yelling me along, and his face twisted with as much fear as my own.

That gave me reason to hope. I’d never known Jesse to be afraid like that, so maybe there was a mistake. Maybe the dancing ghost wasn’t the ghost of Jesse. I hung over the wheel and forced myself to think of Linda. When I thought of her, I couldn’t bring myself to get crazy. Highway 3 is not much of a road, but that’s no bother. I can drive anything with wheels over any road ever made. The dancing ghost kept showing up and beckoning, telling me to scorch. I told myself the damn ghost had no judgment, or he wouldn’t be a ghost in the first place.

That didn’t keep me from pushing faster, but it wasn’t fast enough to satisfy the roadside. They came out of the mist, or out of the ditches; crowds and clusters of ghosts standing pale beneath a weak moon. Some of them gossiped with each other. Some stood yelling me along. Maybe there was sense to it, but I had my hands full. If they were trying to help, they sure weren’t doing it. They just made me get my back up, and think of dropping revs.

Maybe the ghosts held a meeting and studied out the problem. They could see a clear road, but I couldn’t. The dancing ghost showed up on Highway 12 and gave me “thumbs up” for a clear road. I didn’t believe a word of it, and then I really didn’t believe what showed in my mirrors. Headlights closed like I was standing. My feelings said that all of this had happened before; except, last time, there was only one set of headlights.

It was Miss Molly and Betty Lou that brought me home. Miss Molly overtook, sweeping past with a lane change smooth and sober as an Adventist. The high, slaunch-forward form of Miss Molly thrummed with business. She wasn’t blowing sparks or showing off. She wasn’t playing Gingerbread Man or tag.

Betty Lou came alongside so I could see who she was, then Betty Lou laid back a half mile. If we ran into a claim-jumping deputy, he’d have to chase her first; and more luck to him. Her headlights hovered back there like angels.

Miss Molly settled down a mile ahead of the Chrysler and stayed at that distance, no matter how hard I pressed. Twice before Great Falls, she spotted trouble, and her squinchy little brake lights hauled me down. Once it was an animal, and once it was busted road surface. Miss Molly and Betty Lou dropped me off before Great Falls, and picked me back up the minute I cleared town.

We ran the night like rockets. The roadside lay deserted. The dancing ghost stayed out of it, and so did the others. That let me concentrate, which proved a blessing. At those speeds, a man don’t have time to do deep thinking. The road rolls past, the hours roll, but you’ve got a racer’s mind. No matter how tired you should be, you don’t get tired until it’s over.

I chased a ghost car northward while a fingernail moon moved across the sky. In deepest night the land turned silver. At speed, you don’t think, but you do have time to feel. The farther north we pushed, the more my feelings went to despair. Maybe Miss Molly thought the same, but everybody did all they could.

The Chrysler was a howler, and Lord knows where the top end lay. I buried the needle. Even accounting for speedometer error, we burned along in the low half of the second century. We made Highway 2 and Shelby around three in the morning, then hung a left. In just about no time, I rolled home. Betty Lou dropped back and faded. Miss Molly blew sparks and purely flew out of sight. The sparks meant something. Maybe Miss Molly was still hopeful. Or maybe she knew we were too late.

Beneath that thin moon, mounded graves looked like dark surf across the acreage. No lights burned in the trailer, and the Linc showed nowhere. Even under the scant light, you could see snowy tops of mountains, and the perfectly straight markers standing at the head of each grave. A tent, big enough to hold a small revival, stood not far from the trailer. In my headlights a sign on the tent read “Chapel.” I fetched a flashlight from the glove box.

A dozen folding chairs stood in the chapel, and a podium served as an altar. Jesse had rigged up two sets of candles, so I lit some. Matt Simons had written that the graveyard had to be seen to be believed. Hanging on one side of the tent was a sign reading “Shrine,” and all along that side hung road maps, and pictures of cars, and pictures of men standing beside their cars. There was a special display of odometers, with little cards beneath them: “330,938 miles”; “407,000 miles”; “half a million miles, more or less.” These were the championship cars, the all-time best at piling up road, and those odometers would make even a married man feel lonesome. You couldn’t look at them without thinking of empty roads and empty nights.

Even with darkness spreading across the cemetery, nothing felt worse than the inside of the tent. I could believe that Jesse took it serious, and had tried to make it nice, but couldn’t believe anyone else would buy it.

The night was not too late for owls, and nearly silent wings swept past as I left the tent. I walked to Miss Molly’s grave, half-expecting ghostly headlights. Two small markers stood beside a real fine marble headstone.

From a distance, I could see piled dirt where the dozer had dug new graves. I stepped cautious toward the dozer, not knowing why, but knowing it had to happen.

Two graves stood open like little garages, and the front ends of the Linc and the Hawk poked out. The Linc’s front bumper shone spotless, but the rest of the Linc looked tough and experienced. Dents and dings crowded the sides, and cracked glass starred the windows.

The Hawk stood sparkly, ready to come roaring from the grave. Its glass shone washed and clean before my flashlight. I thought of what I heard in Sheridan, and thought of the first time I’d seen the Hawk. It hadn’t changed. The Hawk looked like it had just been driven off a showroom floor.

Nobody in his right mind would want to look in those two cars, but it wasn’t a matter of “want.” Jesse, or Johnny—if that’s who it was—had to be here someplace. It was certain sure he needed help. When I looked, the Hawk sat empty. My flashlight poked against the glass of the Linc. Jesse lay there, taking his last nap across a car seat. His long black hair had turned gray. He had always been thin, but now he was skin and bones. Too many miles, and no time to eat. Creases around his eyes came from looking at road, but now the creases were deep like an old man’s. His eyes showed that he was dead. They were open only a little bit, but open enough.

I couldn’t stand to be alone with such a sight. In less than fifteen minutes, I stood banging on Matt Simons’s door. Matt finally answered, and Nancy showed up behind him. She was in her robe. She stood taller than Matt, and sleepier. She looked blond and Swedish. Matt didn’t know whether to be mad or glad. Then I got my story pieced together, and he really woke up.

“Dr. Jekyll has finally dealt with Mr. Hyde,” he said in a low voice to Nancy. “Or maybe the other way around.” To me, he said, “That may be a bad joke, but it’s not ill meant.” He went to get dressed. “Call Mike,” he said to me. “Drunk or sober, I want him there.”

Nancy showed me the phone. Then she went to the bedroom to talk with Matt. I could hear him soothing her fears. When Mike answered, he was sleepy and sober, but he woke up stampeding.

Deep night and a thin moon is a perfect time for ghosts, but none showed up as Matt rode with me back to the graveyard. The Chrysler loafed. There was no need for hurry.

I told Matt what I’d learned in Sheridan.

“That matches what I heard,” he said, “and we have two mysteries. The first mystery is interesting, but it’s no longer important. Was John Still pretending to be Jesse Still, or was Jesse pretending to be John?”

“If Jesse drove into a river in ’53, then it has to be John.” I didn’t like what I said, because Jesse was real. The best actor in the world couldn’t pretend that well. My sorrow choked me, but I wasn’t ashamed.

Matt seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “We don’t know how long the game went on,” he said real quiet. “We never will know. John could have been playing at being Jesse way back in ’53.”

That got things tangled, and I felt resentful. Things were complicated enough. Me and Matt had just lost a friend, and now Matt was talking like that was the least interesting part.

“Makes no difference whether he was John or Jesse,” I told Matt. “He was Jesse when he died. He’s laying across the seat in Jesse’s car. Figure it any way you want, but we’re talking about Jesse.”

“You’re right,” Matt said. “Also, you’re wrong. We’re talking about someone who was both.” Matt sat quiet for a minute, figuring things out. I told myself it was just as well that he’d married a schoolteacher. “Assume, for the sake of argument,” he said, “that John was playing Jesse in ’53. John drove into the river, and people believed they were burying Jesse.

“Or, for the sake of argument, assume that it was Jesse in ’53. In that case the game started with John’s grief. Either way the game ran for many years.” Matt was getting at something, but he always has to go roundabout.

“After years, John, or Jesse, disappeared. There was only a man who was both John and Jesse. That’s the reason it makes no difference who died in ’53.”

Matt looked through the car window into the darkness like he expected to discover something important. “This is a long and lonesome country,” he said. “The biggest mystery is: why? The answer may lie in the mystery of twins, or it may be as simple as a man reaching into the past for happy memories. At any rate, one brother dies, and the survivor keeps his brother alive by living his brother’s life, as well as his own. Think of the planning, the elaborate schemes, the near self-deception. Think of how often the roles shifted. A time must have arrived when that lonely man could not even remember who he was.”

The answer was easy, and I saw it. Jesse, or John, chased the road to find something they’d lost on the road. They lost their parents and each other. I didn’t say a damn word. Matt was making me mad, but I worked at forgiving him. He was handling his own grief, and maybe he didn’t have a better way.

“And so he invented The Road Dog,” Matt said. “That kept the personalities separate. The Road Dog was a metaphor to make him proud. Perhaps it might confuse some of the ladies, but there isn’t a man ever born who wouldn’t understand it.”

I remembered long nights and long roads. I couldn’t fault his reasoning.

“At the same time,” Matt said, “the metaphor served the twins. They could play road games with the innocence of children, maybe even replay memories of a time when their parents were alive and the world seemed warm. John played The Road Dog, and Jesse chased; and, by God, so did the rest of us. It was a magnificent metaphor.”

“If it was that blamed snappy,” I said, “how come it fell to pieces? For the past year, it seems like Jesse’s been running away from The Dog.”

“The metaphor began to take over. The twins began to defend against each other,” Matt said. “I’ve been watching it all along, but couldn’t understand what was happening. John Still was trying to take over Jesse, and Jesse was trying to take over John.”

“It worked for a long time,” I said, “and then it didn’t work. What’s the kicker?”

“Our own belief,” Matt said. “We all believed in The Road Dog. When all of us believed, John was forced to become stronger.”

“And Jesse fought him off?”

“Successfully,” Matt said. “All this year, when Jesse came firing out of town, rolling fifty miles, and firing back, I thought it was Jesse’s problem. Now I see that John was trying to get free, get back on the road, and Jesse was dragging him back. This was a struggle between real men, maybe titans in the oldest sense, but certainly not imitations.”

“It was a guy handling his problems.”

“That’s an easy answer. We can’t know what went on with John,” Matt said, “but we know some of what went on with Jesse. He tried to love a woman, Sarah, and failed. He lost his dogs—which doesn’t sound like much, unless your dogs are all you have. Jesse fought defeat by building his other metaphor, which was that damned cemetery.” Matt’s voice got husky. He’d been holding in his sorrow, but his sorrow started coming through. It made me feel better about him.

“I think the cemetery was Jesse’s way of answering John, or denying that he was vulnerable. He needed a symbol. He tried to protect his loves and couldn’t. He couldn’t even protect his love for his brother. That cemetery is the last bastion of Jesse’s love.” Matt looked like he was going to cry, and I felt the same.

“Cars can’t hurt you,” Matt said. “Only bad driving hurts you. The cemetery is a symbol for protecting one of the few loves you can protect. That’s not saying anything bad about Jesse. That’s saying something with sadness for all of us.”

I slowed to pull onto Jesse’s place. Mike’s Olds sat by the trailer. Lights were on in the trailer, but no other lights showed anywhere.

“Men build all kinds of worlds in order to defeat fear and loneliness,”

Matt said. “We give and take as we build those worlds. One must wonder how much Jesse, and John, gave in order to take the little that they got.”

We climbed from the Chrysler as autumn wind moved across the graveyard and felt its way toward my bones. The moon lighted faces of grave markers, but not enough that you could read them. Mike had the bulldozer warming up. It stood and puttered, and darkness felt best, and Mike knew it. The headlights were off. Far away on Highway 2, an engine wound tight and squalling, and it seemed like echoes of engines whispered among the graves. Mike stood huge as a grizzly.

“I’ve shot horses that looked healthier than you two guys,” he said, but said it sort of husky.

Matt motioned toward the bulldozer. “This is illegal.”

“Nobody ever claimed it wasn’t.” Mike was ready to fight if a fight was needed. “Anybody who don’t like it can turn around and walk.”

“I like it,” Matt said. “It’s fitting and proper. But if we’re caught, there’s hell to pay.”

“I like most everything and everybody,” Mike said, “except the government. They paw a man to death while he’s alive, then keep pawing his corpse. I’m saving Jesse a little trouble.”

“They like to know that he’s dead and what killed him.”

“Sorrow killed him,” Mike said. “Let it go at that.”

Jesse killed himself, timing his tiredness and starvation just right, but I was willing to let it go, and Matt was, too.

“We’ll go along with you,” Matt said. “But they’ll sell this place for taxes. Somebody will start digging sometime.”

“Not for years and years. It’s deeded to me, Jesse fixed up papers. They’re on the kitchen table.” Mike turned toward the trailer. “We’re going to do this right, and there’s not much time.”

We found a blanket and a quilt in the trailer. Mike opened a kitchen drawer and pulled out snapshots. Some looked pretty new, and some were faded: a man and woman in old-fashioned clothes, a picture of two young boys in Sunday suits, pictures of cars and road signs, and pictures of two women who were maybe Sue Ellen and Sarah. Mike piled them like a deck of cards, snapped a rubber band around them, and checked the trailer. He picked up a pair of pale yellow sunglasses that some racers use for night driving. “You guys see anything else?”

“His dogs,” Matt said. “He had pictures of his dogs.”

We found them, under a pillow, and it didn’t pay to think why they were there. Then we went to the Linc and wrapped Jesse real careful in the blanket. We spread the quilt over him, and laid his stuff on the floor beside the accelerator. Then Mike remembered something. He half unwrapped Jesse, went through his pockets, then wrapped him back up. He took Jesse’s keys and left them hanging in the ignition.

The three of us stood beside the Linc, and Matt cleared his throat.

“It’s my place to say it,” Mike told him. “This was my best friend.” Mike took off his cap. Moonlight lay thin on his bald head.

“A lot of preachers will be glad this man is gone, and that’s one good thing you can say for him. He drove nice people crazy. This man was a hellion, pure and simple; but what folks don’t understand is, hellions have their place. They put everything on the line over nothing very much. Most guys worry so much about dying, they never do any living. Jesse was so alive with living, he never gave dying any thought. This man would roll ninety just to get to a bar before it closed.” Mike kind of choked up and stopped to listen. From the graveyard came the echoes, of engines, and from Highway 2 rose the thrum of a straight-eight crankshaft whipping in its bed. Dim light covered the graveyard, like a hundred sets of parking lights and not the moon.

“This man kept adventure alive, when, everyplace else, it’s dying. There was nothing ever smug or safe about this man. If he had fears, he laughed. This man never hit a woman or crossed a friend. He did tie the can on Betty Lou one night, but can’t be blamed. It was really The Dog who did that one. Jesse never had a problem until he climbed into that Studebaker.”

So Mike had known all along. At least Mike knew something.

“I could always run even with Jesse,” Mike said, “but I never could beat The Dog. The Dog could clear any track. And in a damn Studebaker.”

“But a very swift Studebaker,” Matt muttered, like a Holy Roller answering the preacher.

“Bored and stroked and rowdy,” Mike said, “and you can say the same for Jesse. Let that be the final word. Amen.”