“Slow down!” both Luckman and Barris said together.
By now the car had reached almost one hundred; ahead, a VW van loomed. His gas pedal was dead: it did not return and it did nothing. Both Luckman, who sat next to him, and Barris, beyond him, threw up their arms instinctively. Arctor twisted the wheel and shot by the VW van, to its left, where a limited space remained before a fast-moving ‘Vet filled it up. The Corvette honked, and they heard its brakes screech. Now Luckman and Barris were yelling; Luckman suddenly reached and shut off the ignition; meanwhile, Arctor shifted out of gear into neutral. The car slowed, and he braked it down, moved into the right-hand lane and then, with the engine finally dead and the transmission out of gear, rolled off onto the emergency strip and came by degrees to a stop.
The Corvette, long gone down the freeway, still honked its indignation. And now the giant Safeway truck rolled by them and for a deafening moment sounded its own warning air horn.
“What the hell happened?” Barris said.
Arctor, his hands and voice and the rest of him shaking, said, “The return spring on the throttle cable–the gas. Must have caught or broken.” He pointed down. They all peered at the pedal, which lay still flat against the floor. The engine had revved up to its entire maximum rpm, which for his car was considerable. He had not clocked their final highest road speed, probably well over one hundred. And, he realized, though he had been reflexively pushing down on the power brakes, the car had only slowed.
Silently the three of them got onto the emergency pavement and raised the hood. White smoke drifted up from the oil caps and from underneath as well. And near-boiling water fizzled from the overflow spout of the radiator.
Luckman reached over the hot engine and pointed. “Not the spring,” he said. “It’s the linkage from the pedal to the carb. See? It fell apart.” The long rod lay aimlessly against the block, hanging impotently and uselessly down with its locking ring still in place. “So the gas pedal didn’t push back up when you took your foot off. But–” He inspected the carb for a time, his face wrinkled.
“There’s a safety override on the canb,” Barris said, grinfling and showing his syntheticlike teeth. “This system when the linkage parts–”
“Why’d it pant?” Arctor broke in. “Shouldn’t this locking ring hold the nut in place?” He stroked along the rod. “How could it just fall off like that?”
As if not hearing him, Barris continued, “If for any reason the linkage gives, then the engine should drop down to idle. As a safety factor. But it revved up all the way instead.” He bent his body around to get a better look at the carb. “This screw has been turned all the way out,” he said. “The idle screw. So that when the linkage parted the override went the other way, up instead of down.”
“How could that happen?” Luckman said loudly. “Could it screw itself all the way out like that accidentally?”
Without answering, Barris got out his pocketknife, opened the small blade, and began slowly screwing the idle-adjustment screw back in. He counted aloud. Twenty turns of the screw to get it in. “To loosen the lock ring and nut assembly that holds the accelerator-linkage rods together,” he said, “a special tool would be needed. A couple, in fact. I’d estimate it’ll take about half an hour to get this back together. I have the tools, though, in my toolbox.”
“Your toolbox is back at the house,” Luckman said.
“Yes.” Barris nodded. “Then we’ll have to get to a gas station and either borrow theirs or get their tow truck out here. I suggest we get them out here to look it over before we drive it again.”
“Hey, man,” Luckman said loudly, “did this happen by accident or was this done deliberately? Like the cephscope?”
Barris pondered, still smiling his wily, rueful smile. “I couldn’t say for sure about this. Normally, sabotage on a car, malicious damage to cause an accident . . .” He glanced at Arctor, his eyes invisible behind his green shades. “We almost piled up. If that ‘Vet had been coming any faster . . . There was almost no ditch to head for. You should have cut the ignition as soon as you realized what happened.”
“I got it out of gear,” Arctor said. “When I realized. For a second I couldn’t figure it out.” He thought, If it had been the brakes, if the brake pedal had gone to the floor, I’d have flashed on it sooner, known better what to do. This was so– weird.
“Someone deliberately did it,” Luckman said loudly. He spun around in a circle of fury, lashing out with both fists. “MOTHERFUCKER! We almost bought it! They fucking almost got us!”
Barris, standing visible by the side of the freeway with all its heavy traffic whizzing by, got out a little horn snuffbox of death tabs and took several. He passed the snuffbox to Luckman, who took a few, then passed it to Arctor.
“Maybe that’s what’s fucking us up,” Arctor said, declining irritably. “Messing up our brains.”
“Dope can’t screw up an accelerator linkage and carb-idle adjustment,” Barris said, still holding the snuffbox out to Arctor. “You’d better drop at least three of these–they’re Primo, but mild. Cut with a little meth.”
“Put the damn snuffbox away,” Arctor said. He felt, in his head, loud voices singing: terrible music, as if the reality around him had gone sour. Everything now–the fast-moving cars, the two men, his own car with its hood up, the smell of smog, the bright, hot light of midday–it all had a rancid quality, as if, throughout, his world had putrefied, rather than anything else. Not so much become all at once, because of this, dangerous, not frightening, but more as if rotting away, stinking in sight and sound and odor. It made him sick, and he shut his eyes and shuddered.
“What do you smell?” Luckman asked. “A clue, man? Some engine smell that–”
“Dog shit,” Arctor said. He could smell it, from within the engine area. Bending, he sniffed, smelled it distinctly and more strongly. Weird, he thought. Freaky and fucking weird. “Do you smell dog shit?” he asked Barris and Luckman.
“No,” Luckman said, eyeing him. To Barris he said, “Were there any psychedelics in that dope?”
Barris, smiling, shook his head.
As he bent over the hot engine, smelling dog shit, Arctor knew to himself that it was an illusion; there was no dogshit smell. But still he smelled it. And now he saw, smeared across the motorblock, especially down low by the plugs, dark-brown stains, an ugly substance. Oil, he thought. Spilled oil, thrown oil: I may have a leaky head gasket. But he needed to reach down and touch to be sure, to fortify his rational conviction. His fingers met the sticky brown smears, and his fingers leaped back. He had run his fingers into dog shit. There was a coating of dog shit all over the block, on the wires. Then he realized it was on the fire wall as well. Looking up, he saw it on the soundproofing underneath the hood. The stink overpowered him, and he shut his eyes, shuddering.
“Hey, man,” Luckman said acutely, taking hold of Arctor by the shoulder. “You’re getting a flashback, aren’t you?”
“Free theater tickets,” Barris agreed, and chuckled.
“You better sit down,” Luckman said; he guided Arctor back to the driver’s seat and got him seated there. “Man, you’re really freaked. Just sit there. Take it easy. Nobody got killed, and now we’re warned.” He shut the car door beside Arctor. “We’re okay now, dig?”
Barris appeared at the window and said, “Want a lump of dog shit, Bob? To chew on?”
Opening his eyes, chilled, Arctor stared at him. Barris’s green-glass eyes gave nothing back, no clue. Did he really say that? Arctor wondered. Or did my head make that up? “What, Jim?” he said.
Barris began to laugh. And laugh and laugh.
“Leave him alone, man,” Luckman said, punching Barris on the back. “Fuck off, Barris!”
Arctor said to Luckman, “What did he say just now? What the hell exactly did he say to me?”
“I don’t know,” Luckman said. “I can’t figure out half the things Barris lays on people.”
Barris still smiled, but had become silent.
“You goddamn Barris,” Arctor said to him. “I know you did it, screwed over the cephscope and now the car. You fucking did it, you kinky freak mother bastard.” His voice was hardly audible to him, but as he yelled that out at smiling Barris, the dreadful stench of dog shit grew. He gave up trying to speak and sat there at the useless wheel of his car trying not to throw up. Thank God Luckman came along, he thought. Or it’d be all over for me this day. It’d all fucking be over, at the hands of this burned-out fucking creep, this mother living right in the same house with me.