I opened my eyes. My air bag, and the one that had exploded out of the steering wheel, had already deflated. I started twisting around the belt, my heart pounding, but fingers fumbling for the buckle.

But the sense of urgency seemed to have passed.

Merker was not moving.

His head was tilted forward, and there was blood dripping from his face onto his shirt and pants.

His eyes were still open, but they seemed lifeless.

Then I noticed something silver and pink and rubbery under his nose.

It was the yellow wooden pencil. The force of the airbag had driven it clear up Gary Merker’s right nostril.

The only thing left sticking out was the eraser. He had six inches of pencil in his brain.

CHAPTER 42

42

“GARY?” SAID LEO, who’d been tossed to the floor of the back seat and was getting himself reoriented.

I had my hands on the buckle, was pulling the belt through it. Once I had enough slack, I pulled it over my head.

“Gary, you okay?” Leo leaned forward between the seats and tapped Merker on the shoulder. Leo saw the blood, then saw the end of the pencil sticking out of his nose.

“Gary!” he shouted. He burst into tears. “Gary?”

I opened the door and stumbled out of the car. I could hear sirens coming from different directions. The elderly woman in the Honda had gotten out too, and was standing next to her car, shouting back at us, “Where’d you get your license, asshole?”

I took three steps over to the curb, crossed the sidewalk, and collapsed onto the perfectly cut yard of a two-story brick house.

Leo, gun in hand, got out of the back seat and opened the front driver’s door. His beltless pants were slipping down and he tugged them up with his free hand. “Come on, Gary! Wake up! Come on! Wake up.”

Gary Merker was not waking up. Not with a lead pencil through his head.

A police car barreled up the street from the direction we’d come, and a second one was screeching to a halt in front of the Civic. A cop jumped out of each, weapon drawn.

There were tears running down Leo’s cheeks. “Come on, Gary, jeez, come on.” He saw the cop approaching from the rear vehicle, and waved the gun at him, not intending to use it menacingly, I thought, but gesturing the cop to come up, to give them some help. “He’s hurt!” But the cop wasn’t reading it that way.

He screamed, “Put the gun down!”

But Leo was too busy crying and yelling to get the message. “He’s hurt, man, you gotta help him.”

“They ran into my car!” the old lady shouted, pointing, seemingly oblivious to the guns that were being waved about.

“Ma’am, get down!” the officer from the second car shouted.

“On purpose!” she said. “They ran right into me!”

“Ma’am, get down!”