Jules was not in charge either. That much was clear. Things were not going according to plan.
He needed three things to get this stunt done: a car, a ramp, himself. None was in good shape. All through the month of June, it had rained. It rained so much that a sort of lake had formed in the low-lying field alongside the ramp. By the end of the month, the mud was so deep that trucks had to be brought in to pull the tractors out, then bigger tractors had to be brought in to pull the trucks out. Construction came to a halt. Costs were out of control. Investors were pulling out. The TV people were getting nervous.
On Dominion Day, about a thousand pounds of packed earth slid off the side of the ramp, revealing unmoored steel girders. The asphalt on top tore in two. The engineer was fired. The construction company declined to extend its contract. The jump was postponed. July 15th became August 19th.
It was all slipping away from him now. Jules knew it. Before the TV deal, before the promoter got involved, Jules had been in charge. There hadn’t been much to be in charge of — a few small investors, a fake car, his own carnival sideshow patter — but the project had been his. Now arrangements were made by someone else. Decisions were taken without him. The promoter recruited investors, hired contractors, worked with the network to schedule interviews and appearances, set the date for the jump. And then cancelled it. And then set a new one.
The only person Jules knew how to contact was Sammy Harrison, and he could never get a straight answer about Sammy. Did he work for the network? The promoter? Who was paying him? He had just started popping up one day, all feathered hair and smiles and tight T-shirts. He was everywhere. At the jump site, at press events. And now he was calling from Chicago, where the rocket car was being built. He had been talking to the head mechanic and test driver. Twice they had tested the car. Twice the gas tank had exploded. But they had it all figured out now. No need to worry. Sammy had everything under control. Next week, he said, Jules should be able to test drive it himself. Jules had never driven a rocket car before. Apparently, this one could go 270 miles an hour.
The ramp was being rebuilt using as much of the existing materials as possible. There was a new engineer, a new construction company. A few days of sunshine, and the site was starting to dry up a little. He allowed himself to feel hope.
Then one night, just a week before the new date, Jules went to the site and drove his car halfway up the ramp. The pavement was covered in cracks and patches. It was a mess. The ride was so bumpy it rattled his teeth. He put the car in park and sat there, leaning back into his seat, staring at the moon hanging in the sky like a yellow light bulb. A dark shadowy ring of black clouds surrounded it. Slowly shuttered around it, blotting out the light.
He wasn’t surprised when Sammy called to deliver the news. The jump would have to be delayed again. Maybe to the end of September.
Trudy was happy each time the jump was delayed — which was flattering — but she was in the minority in Preston Mills. Jules saw the way people looked at him. Like him, he supposed, they were starting to think the jump might never happen. That the whole thing was a hoax.
When his cast came off, his ankle looked shrunken. The skin was shrivelled and white, and he seemed to have grown an extra layer of dark hair where the cast had been. It was disgusting.
Limping through the grocery store one day, a boy called out to him. He was maybe twelve years old.
“Hey! Jules Tremblay!”
“Yeah?”
“You’re a fuckin’ chicken!” The kid ran off to join his friends on the sidewalk outside of the store, flapping his arms like wings. Laughing his head off.
And Jules limped along behind his shopping cart like a sad old woman.
(And he felt like he had had this dream before. This dream of being broken, deflated, unmanned in a grocery store. In a town full of strangers. This dream and the one about the crumpling of the hood and the crushing of bones, the smack of his helmet against the wheel and then the smell of gas. The rasp and click of the lighter. This and all the other bad endings or bad beginnings: the ramp sinking into the mud, leaning to the left, the rocket car exploding on a track in Chicago in a fluttering cloud of dollar bills.
When he was a kid, he had dreams about his mother leaving him alone with his brothers. And his brothers leaving him alone in the street. Disappearing down alleyways like ghosts.
Now, he dreamed of the water. He had dreams about the cold water of the St. Lawrence River bubbling green outside the windows of the car as it sank down, down, down. And the tentacles of a monster sliding black against the windshield, shutting out the light.
And Jules thought, most of these things have already happened.
One by one they have marched out of the dream world and into the daylight.)