NOS4A2 A Novel

Highway 322


THIS IS THE NICEST CAR I HAVE EVER BEEN IN,” BING PARTRIDGE SAID when they were gliding along Highway 322, the Rolls riding the curves like a stainless-steel ball bearing in a groove.

“It is a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, one of just four hundred made in Bristol, England. A rare find—just like you, Bing Partridge!”

Bing moved his hand across the pebbled leather. The polished cherry dash and the gearshift glowed.

“Does your license plate mean something?” Bing asked. “En-o-ess-four-a-two?”

“Nosferatu,” the man Charlie Manx said.

“Nosfer-what-who?”

Manx said, “It is one of my little jokes. My first wife once accused me of being a Nosferatu. She did not use that exact word, but close enough. Have you ever had poison ivy, Bing?”

“Not in a long time. When I was little, before my father died, he took me camping and I—”

“If he took you camping after he died, my boy, then you would have a story to tell! Here is my point: My first wife was like the rash you get from poison ivy. I couldn’t stand her, but I couldn’t keep my hands off her. She was an itch I scratched until I bled—and then I scratched it some more! Your work sounds dangerous, Mr. Partridge!”

The transition was so abrupt that Bing wasn’t ready for it, needed a moment to register that it was his turn to talk.

“It does?”

“You mentioned in your letter your work with compressed gases,” Manx said. “Aren’t tanks of helium and oxygen highly explosive?”

“Oh, sure. A guy in the loading bay snuck a smoke a few years ago, next to a tank of nitrogen with an open valve. It made a big shriek and went off like a rocket. It hit the fire door hard enough to smash it off its hinges, and the fire door is made of iron. No one died that time, though. And my crew has been accident-free for as long as I’ve been head man. Well—almost accident-free anyway. Denis Loory huffed some gingerbread smoke once, but that doesn’t really count. He didn’t even get sick.”

“Gingerbread smoke?”

“That’s a flavored mix of sevoflurane that we send to dentists’ offices. You can also get it unscented, but the little guys like the old gingerbread smoke.”

“Oh? It’s a narcotic?”

“It makes it so you don’t know what’s happening to you, yeah. But it doesn’t put you to sleep. It’s more like you only know what you’re told. And you lose all your intuitions.” Bing laughed a little, couldn’t help himself, then said, almost apologetically, “We told Denis it was disco time, and he started humping the air like John Ravolta in that movie. We just about died.”

Mr. Manx’s mouth opened to show his little brown teeth in a homely and irresistible grin. “I like a man with a sense of humor, Mr. Partridge.”

“You can call me Bing, Mr. Manx.”

He waited for Mr. Manx to say it was all right to call him Charlie, but Mr. Manx didn’t. Instead he said, “I imagine most of the people who danced to disco music were under the influence of some kind of drugs. It is the only explanation for it. Not that I would call such silly wiggling a form of dance. More like rank foolishness!”

The Wraith rolled into the dirt lot of the Franklin Dairy Queen. On blacktop the Wraith seemed to glide like a sailboat with the wind behind it. There was a sense of effortless, silent motion. On dirt Bing had a different impression, a feeling of mass and momentum and weight: a Panzer grinding the clay under its treads.

“How about I buy us Coke-Colas and we will get down to brass tacks?” Charlie Manx said. He turned sideways, one gangly arm hung over the wheel.

Bing opened his mouth to answer, only to find himself struggling against a yawn. The long, peaceful, rocking ride in the late-day sun had made him drowsy. He had not slept well in a month and had been up since 4:00 A.M., and if Charlie Manx had not turned up parked across from his house, he would’ve made himself a TV dinner and gone to bed early. Which reminded him.

“I dreamed about it,” Bing said simply. “I dream about Christmasland all the time.” He laughed, embarrassed. Charlie Manx would think him quite the fool.

Only Charlie Manx didn’t. His smile widened. “Did you dream about the moon? Did the moon speak to you?”

Bing’s breath was pushed out of him all at once. He stared at Manx in wonder and, possibly, just a little alarm.

“You dreamt about it because you belong there, Bing,” Manx said. “But if you want to go, you’ll have to earn it. And I can tell you how.”


MR. MANX WAS BACK FROM THE TAKE-OUT WINDOW A COUPLE OF minutes later. He eased his lanky frame in behind the wheel and passed Bing a chill, sweating bottle of Coca-Cola, audibly fizzing. Bing thought he had never seen a bottle of anything look so good.

He tipped back his head and poured the Coca-Cola down, swallowing rapidly, one gulp, two, three. When he lowered the bottle, it was half gone. He inhaled deeply—and then burped, a sharp, raggedy sound, loud as someone tearing a bedsheet.

Bing’s face burned—but Charlie Manx only laughed gaily and said, “Better in than out, that’s what I always tell my children!”

Bing relaxed and smiled shamefacedly. His burp had tasted bad, like Coca-Cola but also weirdly of aspirin.

Manx spun the wheel and carried them out onto the road.

“You’ve been watching me,” Bing said.

“Yes, I have,” Charlie said. “Almost ever since I opened your letter. I was quite surprised to receive it, I admit. I have not had any responses to my old magazine ads in many a season. Still, I had a hunch, as soon as I read your letter, that you were one of my people. Someone who would understand from the get-go the important work I’m doing. Still, a hunch is good, but knowing is better. Christmasland is a special place, and many people would have reservations about the work I do for it. I am very selective about who I employ. As it happens, I am looking for a man who can act as my new head of security. I need a hum hum hum hum to hum hum hum.”

It took Bing a long minute to realize he hadn’t heard the last part of what Charlie Manx was saying. The sound of his words had gotten lost in the drone of the tires on the blacktop. They were off the highway now, slipping along under the firs, through cool, piney shade. When Bing caught a glimpse of the rosy sky—the sun had slipped down when he wasn’t paying attention, and sunset had come—he saw the moon, as white as a lemon ice, drifting in the clear empty.

“What did you say?” Bing asked, forcing himself to sit up a little straighter and rapidly blinking his eyes. He was dully aware that he was in danger of nodding off. His Coke, with its caffeine and sugar and refreshing fizz, should’ve woken him up but seemed to have had the opposite effect. He took a last swallow, but the residue at the bottom of the bottle was bitter, and he made a face.

“The world is full of brutal, stupid people, Bing,” Charlie said. “And do you know the worst of it? Some of them have children. Some of them get drunk and hit their little ones. Hit them and call them names. Such folk are unfit for children—that’s how I see it! You could line them up and put a bullet in all of them—that would suit me fine. A bullet in the brain for each of them . . . or a nail.”

Bing felt his insides turn upside down. He felt unsteady, so unsteady he had to put a hand on the dash to keep from tipping over.

“I don’t remember doing it,” Bing lied, his voice hushed and trembling just slightly. “It was a long time ago.” Then he said, “I’d give anything to take it back.”

“Why? So your father could’ve had a chance to kill you instead? The papers said before you shot him, he hit you so hard you suffered a cranial fracture. The papers said you were covered in bruises, some of them days old! I hope I do not have to explain to you the difference between homicide and fighting for your life!”

“I hurt my mom, too,” Bing whispered. “In the kitchen. She didn’t do anything to me.”

Mr. Manx didn’t seem impressed by this point. “Where was she when your father was giving you the old one-two? I take it she did not heroically attempt to shield you with her body! How come she never called the police? Couldn’t find the number in the phone book?” Manx exhaled a weary sigh. “I wish someone had been there for you, Bing. The fires of hell are not hot enough for a man—or woman!—who would hurt his children. But, really, I am less concerned with punishment than prevention! It would’ve been best if it simply had never happened to you at all! If your home had been a safe one. If every day had been Christmas for you, Bing, instead of every day being misery and woe. I think we can both agree on that!”

Bing stared at him with woolly eyes. He felt as if he had not slept in days, and it was a minute-by-minute struggle to keep from sinking back into his leather seat and slipping away into unconsciousness.

“I think I’m going to fall asleep,” Bing said.

“That’s all right, Bing,” Charlie said. “The road to Christmasland is paved in dreams!”

White blossoms drifted down from somewhere, flicked across the windshield. Bing stared at them with dim pleasure. He felt warm and good and peaceful, and he liked Charlie Manx. The fires of hell are not hot enough for a man—or woman!—who would hurt his children. It was a fine thing to say: It rang with moral certainty. Charlie Manx was a man who knew what was what.

“Humma hum hum hum,” Charlie Manx said.

Bing nodded—this statement also rang with moral certainty and wisdom—and then he pointed at the blossoms raining down onto the windscreen. “It’s snowing!”

“Ha!” Charlie Manx said. “That is not snow. Rest your eyes, Bing Partridge. Rest your eyes and you will see something.”

Bing Partridge did as he was told.

His eyes were not closed long—only a single moment. But it was a moment that seemed to go on and on, to stretch out into a peaceful eternity, a restful sleeping darkness in which the only sound was the thrum of the tires on the road. Bing exhaled. Bing inhaled. Bing opened his eyes and then jolted upright, staring out through the windshield at