“Hey, youall long tall an og ly,” the driver drawled, and Trash shifted his attention from the painted flames to the driver of this rolling bomb.

He stood about five feet three inches. His hair was piled and swirled and pomaded and brilliantined. The hair alone gave him another three inches of height. The swirls all met above his collar in what was not just a duck’s ass but the avatar of all the duck’s-ass hairdos ever affected by the punks and hoods of the world. He was wearing black boots with pointed toes. The sides were elasticized. The heels, which gave The Kid another three inches, bringing him up to a respectable five-nine total, were stacked Cubans. His pegged and faded jeans were tight enough to read the dates of the coins in his pockets. They limned each nifty little buttock into a kind of blue sculpture and made his crotch look like he’d maybe stuffed a chamois bag full of Spalding golfballs in there. He wore a Western-style silk shirt of an off-burgundy color. It was decorated with yellow trim and imitation sapphire buttons. The cufflinks looked like polished bone, and Trash later found out that was just what they were. The Kid had two sets, one made from a pair of human molars, the other from the incisors of a Doberman pinscher. Over this wonder of a shirt, in spite of the heat of the day, he wore a black leather motorcycle jacket with an eagle on the back. It was crisscrossed with zippers, the teeth glimmering like diamonds. From the shoulder-flaps and waistbelt three rabbits’ feet dangled. One was white, one brown, one bright St. Paddy’s Day green. This jacket, even more wonderful than the shirt, creaked smugly with rich oil. Above the eagle, this time written in white silk thread, were the words THE KID. The face now looking up at the Trashcan Man from between the high pile of gleaming hair and the upturned collar of the gleaming motorcycle jacket was tiny and pallid, a doll’s face, with heavy but flawlessly sculpted pouting lips, dead gray eyes, a wide forehead without a mark or a seam, and strange full cheeks. He looked like Baby Elvis.

Two gunbelts were crisscrossed on his flat belly, and a giant .45 leaned out of each of the sagging holsters on his hips.

“Hey, boy, whatchall say?” The Kid drawled.

And the only thing Trashcan could think of to say was, “I like your car.”

It was the right thing. Maybe the only thing. Five minutes later Trash was in the passenger seat and the deuce coupe was accelerating up to The Kid’s cruising speed, which was about ninety-five. The bike Trash had ridden all the way from eastern Illinois was fading to a speck on the horizon.

Timidly, Trashcan Man suggested that at such a speed The Kid would not be able to see a wreck or a stall in the road if they came to one (they had already come to several, as a matter of fact; The Kid simply slalomed around them, the Wide Ovals shrieking unheeded protest).

“Hey, boy,” The Kid said. “I got the reflexes. I got the timin. I got three-fiffs of a second. You believe that?”

“Yes, sir,” Trash said faintly. He felt like a man who has just used a stick to stir up a nest of snakes.

“I like you, boy,” The Kid said in his odd, droning voice. His doll’s eyes stared out over the fluorescent orange steering wheel at the shimmering road. Large Styrofoam dice with death’s heads for pips dangled and bounced from the rearview mirror. “Getchall a beer out’n the back seat.”

They were Coors and they were warm and Trashcan Man hated beer and he drank one fast and said how good it was.

“Hey, boy,” The Kid said. “Coors beer’s the only beer. I’d piss Coors if I could. You believe that happy crappy?”

Trashcan said he did indeed believe that happy crappy.

“They call me The Kid. Outta Shreveport, Looseyanna. You know that? This here beast won every major carshow award in the South. You believe that happy crappy?”

Trashcan Man said he did and got another warm beer. It seemed like the best move under the circumstances.

“What they call you, boy?”

“The Trashcan Man.”

“The whut?” For one horrible moment the dead doll’s eyes rested on Trashcan’s face. “You jokin me, boy? Ain’t nobody jokes The Kid. An you better believe that happy crappy.”

“I do believe it,” Trashcan said earnestly, “but that’s what they call me. Because I used to light fires in people’s trashcans and mailboxes and stuff. I set old lady Semple’s pension check on fire. I got sent to the reformatory for it. I also burned down the Methodist Church in Powtanville, Indiana.”

“Didja? ” The Kid asked, delighted. “Boy, you sound as crazy as a rat in a shithouse. That’s okay. I like crazy people. I’m crazy myself. Tripped right outta my fuckin gourd. Trashcan Man, huh? I like that. We make a pair. The fucking Kid and the fucking Trashcan Man. Shake, Trash.”

The Kid offered his hand and Trash shook it as quick as he could so that The Kid could put both hands back on the wheel. They whizzed around a bend and there was a Bekins semi nearly blocking the whole highway and Trashcan put his hands over his face, prepared to make an immediate transition to the astral plane. The Kid never turned a hair. The deuce coupe skittered along the left side of the highway like a waterbug and they skinned by the cab of the truck with a coat of paint to spare.

“Close,” Trashcan said when he felt he could speak without a quaver in his voice.

“Hey, boy,” The Kid said flatly. Then one of his doll’s eyes closed in a solemn wink. “Don’t tell me—I’ll tell you. How’s that beer? Pretty fuckin gnarly, ain’t it? Hits the spot after ridin that kiddy-bike, don’t it?”

“It sure does,” Trashcan Man said, and took another big swallow of warm Coors. He was insane, but not yet insane enough to disagree with The Kid while he was driving. Nowhere near.

“Well, no sense beatin around the motherfuckin bush,” The Kid said, reaching back over the seat to get his own can of suds. “I guess we’re goin to the same place.”

“I guess so,” Trash said cautiously.

“Gonna jine up,” The Kid said. “Goin west. Gonna get in on the motherfuckin ground floor. You believe that happy crappy?”

“I guess so.”

“You been gettin dreams about that boogeyman in the black flight-suit, ain’tcha?”

“You mean the priest.”

“I always mean what I say an say what I mean,” The Kid said flatly. “Don’t tell me, ya fuckin bug, I’ll tell you. It’s a black flight-suit, and the guy’s got goggles. Like in a John Wayne movie about Big Two. Goggles so big you can’t see his motherfuckin face. Spooky old cock-knocker, ain’t he?”

“Yeah,” Trashcan said, and sipped his warm beer. His head was beginning to buzz.

The Kid hunched over the orange steering wheel and began to imitate a fighter pilot—one who had done his stuff in Big Two, presumably—in a dogfight. The deuce coupe rollercoastered alarmingly from one side of the road to the other as he imitated loops and dives and barrel rolls.

“Neeeeyaaaahhhh… eheheheheheh… budda-budda-budda… take that, ya fuckin kraut… Cap’n! Bandits at twelve o’clock!… Turn the air-cooled cannon on em, ya fuckin dipstick… takka… takka… takka-takka-takka! We got em, sir! All clear… HowOOOGAH! Stand down, fellers! HowOOOOOOOGAH! ”

His face gained no expression as he went through this fantasy; not a single well-oiled hair fell from grace as he jerked the car back into its lane and pounded on up the road. Trashcan Man’s heart thudded heavily in his chest. A light sheen of sweat had oiled his body. He drank his beer. He had to make wee-wee.

“But he don’t scare me,” The Kid said, as if the former topic of conversation had never lapsed. “Fuck no. He’s a hard baby, but The Kid has handled hard babies before. I shut em up and then I shut em down, just like The Boss says. You believe that happy crappy?”

“Sure,” Trash said.