pirate queen, came up whitely from across the field.
“God,” she said. “Are we all right? What was that that happened?”
“We lived,” Billy said, and he felt the thrill rising in his voice. “We all lived.”
“We wrecked Bix's father's car,” Dina said.
“It isn't wrecked,” Bix said. “I bet we can push it out of that ditch.”
“Wait a second,” Larry said. He ran back to the car.
“Don't,” Billy called. “It's going to blow.”
Bix started to laugh. Then Billy started, then Dina did. Larry went into the car and came out again with the vodka bottle. “There's still some in here,” he called.
“It's a miracle.” Billy laughed.
“Look.” Dina pointed. Her rings put out a dull flash. Fifty yards away the cow stood placidly, staring at them. Billy yelped with laughter. Bix pounded his back. Billy fell in the grass and Bix tumbled onto him. Billy smelled the blood and the crisp personal essence of Bix. Billy was laughing so hard he could barely breathe. He had a hard-on. Larry took a sip of the vodka, passed the bottle around. When it was empty Bix stood up and threw it at the cow. The bottle fell thirty yards short, and broke against a stone. The cow didn't move.
“Argh,” Bix hollered. He smeared both his hands with blood from his forehead and went running at the cow, screaming and waving his hands. As he watched Bix run toward the cow Billy was overcome with a feeling of recognition. There was the car at its crazy angle, still playing music, its headlights illuminating the ground. There was the spotted cow and there was Bix, running bloody and ecstatic in his army jacket. It was not dèjà vu. Billy didn't feel as if he'd seen all this before. He felt instead that it had been waiting for him, this strange perfection, and now that he was seeing it he was becoming someone new, someone particular, after the long confusion of his childhood. A surge rose in him and, with a whoop, he jumped up and ran after Bix. The earth was soft and uneven under his boots and he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting. He caught up with Bix just as the cow turned, with a disgruntled moan, and trotted away. He and Bix chased it until it broke into an ungainly swaying lope that had no true element of haste. The cow was just placid appetite moving, temporarily, at a faster rate. Billy and Bix kept chasing it, screaming, until at the same instant, with a singular accord, they stopped and stood screaming at one another. Bix's face was wild and shining, streaked with blood. They screamed, and something invisible happened. An enormous love arced and crackled between them. Billy stopped screaming. He stood, mute and suddenly frightened. Bix looked at him with no expression, with a face gone blank and stupid as a statue's. Then he turned and ran back to the car. Billy stood alone in the grass, with passion and fear turning hugely inside him. Bix took the moment away and Billy ran after him, greedy for more of whatever could happen. When he and Bix reached the others they all fell briefly into a spasmodic, gleeful dance. The radio played “Light My Fire.” The moment filled everything. It seemed, somehow, that they'd won some kind of victory.
When the song ended they all sat down in the grass. Crickets buzzed, and the DJ played “Incense and Peppermints.” Billy touched the place on his forehead where Bix's blood had dried.
“We got to push the car out,” Bix said.
“Think we can?” Billy asked.
“Yeah.”
No one spoke for a while. Dina sat close to Billy, pulling up handfuls of grass, and he watched Bix. Bix was silent and fierce. He had a soldierly self-containment. Billy's heart swelled. He'd do anything, suffer any loss.
“We flew,” he said. His voice sounded smaller than he'd expected it to. He was aware of the sky—pale stars and the flashing red lights of a plane. The now started to shrink. A whistling, windy nowhere wanted to return.
“We fucking flew,” he said.
Bix stood up. He had square shoulders and a graceful, weighted way of standing. He stood as if his pockets were full of stones.
“Come on,” he said. “We got to get that goddamn car out.”
By pushing on the front fenders, they were able to inch the car out of the ditch, as Bix had predicted. He slid into the driver's seat and, after