sometimes use dental records, don’t they?” JannaRose said. “I saw it on television.”
That was when Nina decided that for sure it wasn’t a scouting expedition. They were going to go ahead and do it. They might never get another chance.
“But,” JannaRose said, “if you haven’t been to the dentist in — I don’t know. I went once when I was little. One came to the school and looked at our teeth. She was a lady dentist. But,” she said, “what good will that do? I bet she didn’t even keep records.”
Nina decided something else, too. If they were going to do it, they better do it quick. JannaRose was getting freaky. Any minute she was going to start babbling about never seeing her kids again. About how she hadn’t kissed them goodbye.
“When was the last time you did?” JannaRose said.
“What?”
“Went to a dentist.”
“I don’t know, goddamn it!”
But she didn’t say it. Not like that. JannaRose would have blown to pieces right on the spot.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. She had to. It was the only way she could keep her voice under control.
For awhile they sat in silence. JannaRose thought they were both thinking about teeth, so it shocked her when Nina hammered her fist on the steering wheel and put the shift in drive.
“Now what’re you doing?”
Getting into that parking lot. She almost felt as if she had nothing to do with whatever was going to happen from here on. There wasn’t any actual plan. No Step One leading to Step Two leading to … Kaboom! Once again, some power way down inside her, so deep she’d only just discovered it, was in control. A force more potent than anything she’d ever known. She was perfectly capable of making herself stop breathing, except as soon as she stopped thinking about not breathing, she started breathing again. But she was doing this without thinking even slightly. Like she was just part of what was happening. If she didn’t do it, it would be as if she held her breath for so long that she died. And that was impossible.
“Why are you crashing into the gate?”
She wasn’t crashing into it. She was pushing it open.
The gate was built to swing open like a door, but the padlock refused to give. “Holy shit!” JannaRose watched the nose of the car press against the chain link. She watched the chain link stretch the way a balloon does when you press your finger into it. The frame of the gate started bending. “Holy shit!”
JannaRose’s voice sounded like it was a long way away. Nina dropped the shift into low and stomped on the gas.
The chain link just kept on bulging. Then the balloon burst. “Holy shit!” The car jumped forward. Metal fenceposts ripped out of the ground. The gate slumped flat under the Pontiac. Long sections of fence came down on either side, and the car screeched. Bucked. Jerked to a stop. Nina floored it. It wouldn’t back up, either. She tried rocking it, forward, back. The engine roared, metal squealed, otherwise nothing. It wasn’t going to move.
“Aw, for fuck’s sakes,” she said.
“Holy shit!” JannaRose kept saying it, over and over.
Nina opened the door and leaned way out, trying to see underneath. It was hard to do. Broken strands of chain link fencing grabbed at her hair, scratched her face. It was this wire, combined with jackknifed pieces of the fence’s frame, that had grabbed the bottom of the car. Other strands wrapped around the wheels, the axles, the muffler, all the mysterious stuff down there. Every possible thing the wire could get tangled around was held solid, every which way. She couldn’t see any of this, though. The only light in the parking lot was on the wall of the ice cream factory, making it extra dark and shadowy under the car. But if she hadn’t struggled to climb out the door and to stand up — because of the tangle of twisty metal that made it impossible to find steady footing, a lot of struggling was necessary — if she had just kept hanging out the door there for another second or so, she would have had a much better idea about the situation they were in. Because in just a few more seconds, a light did appear down there. A little light. A little light from a little blue flame even smaller than the flame on a birthday candle. It flickered to life and illuminated, faintly, the impossible jumble the car was trapped in. The little blue light fluttered and danced on the hot exhaust pipe, fed by gasoline that was dripping from the hole the fence wire had poked in the fuel tank. But she wouldn’t have seen this light for more than an instant, because she would have been blinded by the flash. There was a deafening explosion, too, but the only sound she remembered was the sickening crack her head made hitting the asphalt when the blast knocked her down.
Vaguely … when she floated up into consciousness, she could vaguely make out a voice going “Yiiiiii-i-i-i!” Oh Jesus, JannaRose was hurt! Wait. It wasn’t JannaRose’s voice. It was hers. She stopped shrieking. It wasn’t easy, but she forced herself. Only she could still hear it! “Yiiiiii-i-i-i!” Now that was JannaRose. And now she could see her. She didn’t look hurt, though. She looked hysterical. She was pressed up against one of the ice cream trucks, screaming at the flames like a crazy person.
The flames!
The whole world was in flames!
No. That was wrong. The whole world wasn’t. It just looked like that at first. The only thing in flames was Ed Oataway’s stupid, stolen old brown Pontiac.
It was a long walk, but Ed Oataway didn’t care that it was almost two in the morning when they got back. He came out and stood in the middle of the street yelling how come his car had exploded, and what were they doing with it way over there anyway.
“Can I help it if he’s missing the point?” Nina said to D.S. That wasn’t what worried her, though. What worried her was that he might smack JannaRose around. But all he did was yell at Nina about how if she had any guts she’d step out there and he’d pound her head in. That was why she told D.S. not to bother going out and making him shut up, since what Ed was doing didn’t matter even slightly. D.S. explained that he had no intention of making Ed Oataway shut up, because there were times when a man had to blow off whatever was putting too much pressure on his mind. What he wanted to do was advise him as a friend that he better not tempt Nina to step out there, because if she did she would break him in two. D.S. said that was why Ed wasn’t about to smack JannaRose around and why he never had: she outweighed him about three to one and was half again as tall, and if he tried anything she would break him in two even quicker than Nina could.
Nina rocked her head back and forth like something had come loose inside and told D.S. that he was missing the point, too. But D.S. didn’t listen, and Ed whanged him in the face so hard with one of the hubcaps that was always lying beside the curb that it knocked his wig flying. When the welfare inspector hammered on her door, Ed had gone back to yelling about what he’d do if she would only step out there, and D.S. was lying on the road moaning.
“Hey, lady,” the welfare inspector hollered when nobody answered the door, “there’s something about that dyke you’re having an affair with that you might not know.” With him and Ed both shouting, he failed to hear D.S. come up the steps behind him. Getting whanged in the face with the hubcap had started D.S.’s nose bleeding, and blood was dripping down his nightie from between his fingers. His unexpected arrival startled the welfare inspector so much he nearly jumped off the porch, but once he calmed down he spoke accusingly. “I’m making note of this incident,”
