sister-in-law killed herself in had been pressed down into a cube of meaningless metal. Perhaps all I feel is a sense of outraged propriety.'
'Mr LeBay, you said you'd hired someone to take care of your brother's house until it was sold. Was that true?'
He shifted a little in his chair. 'No, it wasn't. I lied on impulse. I didn't like the thought of that car back in that garage . . . as if it had found its way home. If there are emotions and feelings that still live on, they would be there, as well as in the car herself.' And very quickly he corrected himself: 'Itself.'
Not long after, I said my goodbyes and followed my headlights home through the dark, thinking over everything LeBay had told me. I wondered if it would make any difference to Arnie if I told him one person had had a mortal accident in his car and another had actually died in it. I pretty well knew that it wouldn't; in his own way, Arnie could be every bit as stubborn as Roland LeBay himself. The lovely little scene over the car with his parents had shown that quite conclusively. The fact that he went on taking auto-shop courses down there in the Libertyville High version of the DMZ showed the same thing.
I thought of LeBay saying, I didn't like the thought of that car back in that garage . . . as if it had found its way home.
He had also said that his brother took the car someplace to work on it. And the only do-it-yourself garage in Libertyville now was Will Darnell's. Of course, there might have been another back in the '50s, but I didn't believe it. In my heart what I believed was that Arnie had been working on Christine in a place where she had been worked on before.
Had been. That was the operant phrase . Because of the fight with Buddy Repperton, Arnie was afraid to leave it there any longer, So maybe that avenue to Christine's past was blocked off as well.
And, of course, there were no curses. Even LeBay's idea about lingering emotions was pretty farfetched. I doubted if he really believed it himself. He had shown me an old scar, and he had used the word vengeance. And that was probably a lot closer to the truth than any phony supernatural bullshit. Of course.
No; I was seventeen years old, bound for college in another year, and I didn't believe in such things as curses and emotions that linger and grow rancid, the spilled milk of dreams. I would not have granted you the power of the past to reach out horrid dead hands toward the living.
But I'm a little older now.
PART I: DENNIS - TEENAGE CAR-SONG Chapter 13 LATER THAT EVENING
As I was motorvating over the hill
I saw Maybelline in a Coupe de Ville.
Cadillac rollin down the open road
But nothin outrun my VS Ford . . .
- Chuck Berry
My mother and Elaine had gone to bid, but my dad was up, watching the eleven o'clock news on TV. 'Where you been, Dennis?' he asked.
'Bowling,' I said, the lie coming naturally and instinctively to my lips. I didn't want my father to know any of this. Peculiar as it was, it really wasn't peculiar enough to be more than moderately interesting. Or so I rationalized.
'Arnie called,' he said. 'Asked me to have you call back if you got in before eleven-thirty or so.'
I glanced at my watch. It was only eleven-twenty. But hadn't I had enough of Arnie and Arnie's problems for one day?
'Well?'
'Well what?'
'Are you going to call him?'
I sighed. 'Yeah, I guess I will.'
I went into the kitchen, slapped together a cold chicken sandwich, poured myself a glass of Hawaiian punch - gross stuff, but I love it - and dialled Arnie's house. He picked up the phone himself on the second ring. He sounded happy and excited.
'Dennis! Where you been?'
'Bowling,' I said.
'Listen, I went down to Darnell's tonight, you know? And - this is great, Dennis - he gave Repperton the boot! Repperton's gone and I can stay!'
That sensation of unformed dread in my belly again. I put my sandwich down. Suddenly I didn't want it anymore.
'Arnie, do you think taking it back there is really such a good idea?'
What do you mean? Repperton's gone. That doesn't sound like a good idea to you?'
I thought about Darnell ordering Arnie to turn off his car before it polluted his cruddy garage, Darnell