Chapter 12

“Drive?”

“Yes.”

“A stick?”

“Four speed and reverse.”

“With a clutch?”

“Yes.”

“Both feet?”

The look he gave her was worried.

“I don’t know how!”

“What?”

“I never learned ... the school only had automatics.” She was whining now. Every comment before this last was louder, more shrill than the one before. She was working herself to a tizzy.

In case you have never seen a tizzy ... she was on the edge of panic. Drive a STICK? Drive a loaded down four wheel drive VAN? With all those long poles sticking out the front? ‘I’ll spear somebody.’

She started crying and not breathing... ‘I’m going to be sick!’ She could see impaled spasming bodies shuddering out their last moments. Blood and entrails smeared across the windshield as they kicked and screamed ... and then she noticed something she hadn’t noticed.

“That hole in the windshield?”

“What about it?” He said.

“That’s my line.”

“12 gauge shotgun slug.”

The vision of blood and guts dripping from speared victims and smearing the windshield became one of said blood and guts on the windshield being one of the gory gook vacuum drawn through that hole and ... spraying...

ERP

“I dod id up by node”... ‘Oh ... I hate it when that happens.’

EEERRRPPP

“Maybe I better drive.”

“NO!”

“What?”

“This is all your fault...” except what she said sorta sounded like that ... but it was too involved with dry heaves, spitting and naaasty belches to make any sense... “You are going to teach me to drive thi ... this ... this ... monstrosity and that’s FINAL!”

“Yes, ma’am. At your command, ma’am.”

“Now kiss me.”

He almost did ... but she belched.

Wasn’t a ladylike belch ... nope ... it was a full throated wide open mouthed, see the leftovers with cling-on pieces of bile green partly digested last nights dinner still in her teeth belch ... the odor would drive a norway rat off a garbage scow kind of belch.

“No!” He shied away.

“No?”

“Brush your teeth, gargle listerine for a full minute and I will,” he said, “but not until!”

Beck took Marion in the house and more or less hosed her down in the mud-room. She offered her one of Bill’s giant t shirts ... that being larger than the largest of Beck’s miniature clothes.

Beck is little. So little that she had to lie on her drivers license application.

“I’m 5’3” ... five foot three being the shortest driver without using hand controls that her state would allow on the highways.

Beck said, “While you’re learning I’ll just run your clothes through the wash and dry.” In a confidential aside, Beck said, “I learned to drive a stick on that beast ... it’s tricky.” And clapped a hand over her mouth.

Marion was fetching in the Tee ... it was long but worn threadbare in the best of places.

He ogled her form approvingly.

“Beck is washing my clothes,” she told him.

“Good ... we’ll need the time.”