Read Online Downers Grove by Michael Hornburg - Free Book Online

parts. I felt myself twisting into a chain-link mesh.
    The music blended with the wind and the roar of the Charger. The interior was colored by the oncoming blur of passing cars bending through the wide curves of the two-lane road. We drove past the UNOCAL petroleum refineries. Tiny white bulbs traced its skeleton of black and silver pipes. Three musty pill-shaped train cars were parked behind the chain-link fence. Power lines looped over the tree line, disappearing into the Black Partridge Woods.
    A thick toxic scent filled the car. My breath was shortened and my face started burning. I tried to rationalize the concept that we had just driven through an industrial accident, that I might be the victim of toxic agencies already chewing through the fibers of my internal organs, that this was probably the beginning of the end. I rolled up the window, checked my reflection in the glass and the huge black plume of smoke pushing farther into the heavens.
    â€œThis must be the biggest thing to happen around here since the night they fried John Wayne Gacy,” I said, shifting on thebucket seat and trying to imagine myself in the electric chair: the first surge of electricity; my hair frying; my fingernails turning black and peeling back; my eyeballs popping out of my head.
    â€œDid you go to that too?”
    â€œNo. That was a long time ago. Where are we going?” I asked him.
    â€œMy garage.” He coasted through a yellow light. “I gotta check in with some friends before we go anywhere else.” He looked over at me. “It’ll only take a minute.”
    â€œWhere’s your garage?”
    â€œA few more lights,” he said, pointing ahead.
    We sped through Lockport. Old brick bungalows and tar papered shacks lined Archer Avenue. The waterfront became a faint glow and then a shadow behind us. I saw a cigar tree, remembered smoking the long finger-shaped seeds when I was in grade school and getting sick as a dog.
    Bobby accelerated through another yellow and I felt myself getting too comfortable in the seat, worried this date was going nowhere. We turned off Archer Avenue and wound through a thicket of trees and empty lots across the river from Stateville Penitentiary. In a hollow of trees stood a two-story wood building with the garage door open. A couple of guys were inside working on a dented-up race car. The car had big wide tires and was painted black and orange with a large white number 89 on the door. Behind the garage was a junkyard full of mashed cars. Two large German shepherds paced behind a fence, barking madly, their white teeth snapping, their paws pushing against the wilting chain-link.
    â€œWhat’s that?” I pointed into the garage.

    â€œMy ticket out of here,” he said.
    â€œYou a race car driver?” I asked.
    â€œSometimes.” He shut off the engine. The car sputtered to a choking death.
    â€œWhere do you race?”
    â€œWherever they’ll let me.” He punched open his door. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
    He got out and pointed at the dogs. “Jonesie, Maxie, down.” He snapped his fingers and the dogs dropped to all fours, then trailed him along the fence line, their tails wagging softly behind them. Bobby said something as he approached his two friends and they all started laughing. One of them looked back at me in the car, then they all disappeared into a doorway. I leaned against the window and stared at the prison across the water. At night, the complex looked like the dark side of Disneyland. All I could think about was all the creepy-crawlies locked inside.
    When David and I were kids Mom took us to a prisoner art show. It turned out one of the painters was one of Mom’s classmates from high school. I had never seen a murderer before and remember being very excited. He was wearing leg chains and what looked like blue pajamas. He reminded me of those handsome Nazis in old war movies, so that even his good