The Arm and Flanagan Page 8

When he reached the outskirts of town, Jimmy pulled into a gas station to fill up. He hadn’t thought about it consciously, but when he stopped beside the pump, he noticed that the needle on the fuel gauge was just slightly above Empty.

  I don’t even know what I’m doing any more, he thought. “You’re driving me crazy,” he said to the arm. “Let go of my steering wheel.”

  He turned off the engine and got out. He took off the gas cap with his right hand and punched the buttons on the pump with the left. He set the pump going and cleaned the windshield and rear window, using both hands.

  The arm was doing more than its part.

  “Sucking up, you bastard?” he said to it. “Won’t work.”

  The pump ticked away in the background. It made a chunk sound when the tank was full and the pumping stopped.

  Jimmy went inside to pay. The arm pulled his wallet out of his left hip pocket and handed it to his right hand.

  He didn’t remember putting his wallet there. That was where he had always kept it in the old days, before he’d lost his real left arm. I’m going out of my mind, he thought.

  He paid and let the arm put the wallet back in his left hip pocket. It was easier that way. “Once I have you taken off me again,” he told the arm, “I’ll go back to keeping my wallet in my right hip pocket. You’ll see. I don’t need you.”

  Back at his car, he looked up at the sky. It was late afternoon, he guessed, but still light. He wondered what time it was. He held up the arm, pulled the cuff back with his right hand, and checked the time.

  Six o’clock. I made good time coming back from Morrisburg, he thought.

  Only then did he realize that the new watch his parents had bought him was on the arm’s wrist, not in the drawer in his room, where he knew he had put it.

  “God damn you,” he said to the arm. “You did that when I wasn’t watching. You’re fucking with my mind, you bastard.”

  But that wasn’t possible, he realized. How could the arm have put the watch on by itself? That could only have been done by his right hand, his real hand. Was that damned machine taking control of his right hand?

  That’s got to be the explanation, Jimmy thought. I know I didn’t do it. It’s taking over.

  His knees felt weak. His heart was hammering. He was sucking in rapid breaths but couldn’t get enough air.

  He leaned against the car and put his right hand on the roof to hold on. After a while, his heartbeat slowed and his legs felt stronger.

  I’m in control, he thought. He repeated it aloud, so that the arm would hear it. “I’m in control. Not you. Me, not you.”

  He looked up suddenly. A man at an adjacent pump was staring at him.

  Jimmy got inside his car, started the engine, and drove out of the gas station and onto the street.

  Guy must have thought I was crazy, he thought. I could have told him I wasn’t talking to myself. I was talking to my arm. He laughed. Yeah, that would have helped.

  “I’m in control of my life,” he said, continuing the one–sided conversation. “I’m in control of everything. I’ll show you how much I’m in control . I’m going to see Terrie now. She wants to break up with me? I’ll beat her to it. I’ll break up with her. What do you think of that? Huh?”

  There was no answer, of course. It was better that way. Jimmy knew it would drive him completely crazy if the arm ever replied.

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