James looked me up once, some years later, came to see me, but I had stepped out. He left a note, slipped it between the glass and the screen of the metal door where I lived. Didn’t say much, and he didn’t leave a number. I had a feeling he felt he had tried, and that was enough, and he was done.
Frankly, I don’t lose much sleep about the way it all went down, but I think of Belinda and feel a hole in my heart; I miss her. I felt guilty for leaving her there. Even though I knew she’d have never come with me, and had I stuck, there was no way I would have survived.
Here’s a curiosity: They never found her body, so I clung to the hope she made it out somehow and would find me. Though if she did make it, she made sure I was none the wiser.
There was an impersonator I’d gone to see once, heard she was the real deal, and if I closed one eye and cocked my head to the side, wished real hard and clicked my heels, it could have been her. She looked like an older version of Belinda, had her moves, had a long, raised scar that ran from her temple to jaw line, and though the voice was reminiscent, it wasn’t the same. She was like Belinda with the juice drained out. I never heard anyone hit those notes before or since.
So here I am. Alone in this soundproofed room, which is kind of silly, since I’m still spinning that “Tremble” .45 on an old record player. It took a long time before I could bring myself to listen to it again, but it’s all I have left of her, so now and again, no more than three times a day, and sometimes five on Sunday, I play it, and the trick in reverse is that there’s no interruption from outside. It’s me and the music, me and Belinda, living hot in the tune.
There ain’t no place for you to hide
Tremble, to the moon.
Hear the Siren song, take you along
Don’t fight it baby, you know where you belong.
Tremble, to the moon.
* * *
KASEY LANSDALE, first published at the tender age of eight by Random House, is the author of several short stories and novellas from Harper Collins, Titan Books, and others. She is the editor of assorted anthology collections and in her latest publication, Terror is Our Business, Publishers Weekly noted, “Lansdale’s storytelling delightfully takes on a lighter and sharper edge.” She is best known as a country singer/songwriter whose music has been placed on various television and film networks.
JOE R. LANSDALE is the author of forty-five novels and four hundred shorter works, including stories, essays, reviews, introductions, and magazine articles. His work has been made into films, Bubba Ho-Tep, Cold in July, as well as the acclaimed TV show, Hap and Leonard. He has also had works adapted to Masters of Horror on Showtime, and wrote scripts for Batman: The Animated Series, and Superman: The Animated Series. He scripted a special Jonah Hex animated short, as well as the animated Batman film, Son of Batman.
He has received numerous recognitions for his work. Among them The Edgar, for his crime novel The Bottoms, The Spur, for his historical western Paradise Sky, as well as ten Bram Stoker Awards for his horror work, and has also received the Grandmaster Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. He has been recognized for his contributions to comics and is a member of the Texas Institute of Literature, the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and is Writer in Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University.
He is in the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame, as well as the U.S. Martial Arts Hall of Fame, and is the founder of the Shen Chuan martial arts system.
His books and stories appear in twenty-five languages.
* * *
THE DEMON OF THE TRACK
by Gary Phillips
“You are a skilled man,” she said. Her accent was heavy but her words were clear . . .
* * *
ADAM “DEACON” COLES TAPPED THE BRAKES and swung his ’41 Willys coupe to the right, his high-beams illuminating the edge and the drop off. The green Mercury with a supercharger scoop sticking out of the hood brushed against the left side of his car. He didn’t care about the body; it was full of dents, and the fenders and passenger door were mismatched colors obtained from the salvage yard. But he didn’t want the Merc knocking him over the rise as they took the turn. The Mercury was on the inside of the curve, plumes of dirt and loose rocks clouding behind both cars as they sped, their rear ends bumping once, twice together, then apart again. Each car had big bore engines in them that were not stock; their mechanic-drivers had cut and welded and pounded to fit them into their respective vehicles. The roar of those engines filled the cabs of each car as their owners sought dominance.
The crowd hooped and hollered and made other joyous noises down where the race started and would end. Behind the gathered rose a wide ramp of the Santa Monica Freeway under construction, a mass of concrete and rebar sticking out of the end as if the ramp had been sawed off by a storm giant, for this was as far as the work had taken the builders. The goal was to build a byway connecting downtown to the coast. In the process, the homes of working class black folk, in what was called the Pico District—people who’d come west in the ’30s and ’40s to work the then-boom of oil fields and later aircraft—had been snatched up by eminent domain. Those same homes were rented back to them before they were kicked out and the houses torn down to make way for rivers of freeway cement.
The race took place primarily on a snake of land that had been bulldozed to gradually rise nearly a quarter mile up, then took a whip turn around to descend into a flattened, cleared area that once housed a park and an apartment complex. Now there were stands of unfinished pylons and piles of concrete and wood and glass debris from demolished houses to maneuver around, then another turn through a partially fenced-in area where several heavy duty trucks and tractors—and the crowd—were gathered, back to the rise of land again. To add to the difficulty, it was now dusk and the natural light fading, so a driver’s vision and reflexes had to be sharp. The improvised race track was a rough oval the racers had to drive around ten times. This was the eighth lap.
They came out of the turn, the Merc taking the lead. Downhill the cars plowed, the Willys running over a chunk of concrete, which Coles prayed didn’t blow out his tire. Reaching the flattened area, he swerved around a pylon, the Merc now on his right flank. The other car zigged and zagged between two interspaced pylons and veered back toward Coles’ car. Traveling at more than ninety miles an hour, both were homing in on another pylon dead center, piled concrete on either side of the two vehicles. Coles went left and the other car gobbled distance opposite. But the Willys hit a sizable rut in the earth that would have snapped the front axle in half given the speed they were traveling.
Coles smiled ruefully. Fortunately he’d installed hydraulics taken from a junked WWII airplane wing in the front leaf springs connected to the straight axle. These helped absorb the impact. Good thing he’d run into a man he knew, Ron Aguirre at a car show about a year ago, and Aguirre had shown him the hydraulics he’d installed on a custom car he called a lowrider. At the flick of a toggle switch, he could lift and lower the car’s shell. Now as they reached the other turn, Coles pressed down again on the accelerator, then pulled the handbrake out in a maneuver he’d been practicing. He fishtailed through the turn, forcing the Merc to swing wider to avoid his car. In this way he gained the lead as he straightened out.
They zoomed past the onlookers.
Coles kept in front but the Mercury was tight on his tail. As they again got near the top of the dirt rise, the Merc attempted to gain an advantage by powering through the turn. But the driver miscalculated when to apply the gas and just as he was about to complete the turn, momentum caused the rear end to lose purchase, and the car skidded over the side of the dirt ramp. It rolled twice and landed upright down below. Coles completed the race, then ran from his car once he’d shut it off, to see about his opponent. Someone had already gotten the other driver free from his wrecked vehicle; fortunately both cars had roll bars installed on the interior.
“You okay, Sak?” Coles asked William S
akamoto. The other driver’s face was cut and bruised.
“Looks like I’ll live, Deac.” He took a step but his knee buckled. Coles put a hand under his arm.
“Okay, maybe I’ll sit down a minute,” he grinned.
Bystanders laughed and clapped the two on their backs. Somebody had a folding beach chair and set it up for Sakamoto to sit. A few kerosene camping lanterns had been brought and these were lit against the oncoming night. Some of the people left and others milled around, talking about the race, or examining the Mercury while drinking beers. The smell of marijuana drifted about, and one beatnick sat on the crinkled fender of the Mercury, wailing on his bongos.
“Good race, Deac,” said a blonde in stripped pants and a sweater top. She handed him a can of Hamm’s.
“You’re the coolest, Dorrie.”
“Ain’t I?” she said, wandering away.
A tall man in a snap-brim hat and Hawaiian shirt stepped over to Coles. The night was warm.
“Mind if I have a word with you, Mr. Coles?”
They were near the Willys, and Coles leaned against the driver’s door. “What can I do for you?” Coles was in rolled-up sleeves, tan chinos, and worn heavy work boots. His hair was close-cropped and a scar ran part of the length of his jaw line.
“My name’s Fred Warrens.” He was in his late forties, brown hair long at the nape of his neck, and with hazel eyes. He had a trim moustache and knobby knuckles.
Coles showed interest. “You manage the Centinela Speedway, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Warrens?”
“I want you to race at our track.”
Coles chuckled harshly. “What, you going to have ‘Bring a Negro to the Races’ night?” He chuckled some more.
Uncomfortable, Warrens frowned. “That’s a crude way of putting it, Mr. Coles, but we would like to offer you a featured spot. I know something of your record. Fighter pilot in Korea, flying Mustangs then the F-80 jets. Over seventy-five missions and ten confirmed kills in air combat. The Deacon of the Air they called you.”
“Yeah, well,” he said dismissively. “You read that old article on me in Ebony so I guess that makes you an all-right sort of guy, huh?”
“What wasn’t in that article is since the war you’ve been building and racing hot rods in pick-up contests all over town. A lot of people, black and white, talk you up.”
“Yeah, well, it still means me and mine is unwelcome at you all’s precious race tracks . . . all over town.”
Warrens looked off at a few people dancing and snapping their fingers as the bongo man beat out a frenzied rhythm. He looked back at Coles. “Let me put my cards on the table, okay?”
“Please do.”
“It’s no secret that Inglewood is changing and, well, we think we need to change with the times too.” Centinela Speedway was on a hill overlooking Centinela Avenue in Inglewood.
“Uh-huh.” Coles folded his arms. “You mean them colored folk who’ve been buying homes near the plant since after the Big One has also meant they go to the races and have noticed the lack of shade down on the track.”
Looking past Warrens’ shoulder, Coles couldn’t help but notice a Mexican-American woman he hadn’t seen around before. She was dark-haired and copper-hued, wearing black jeans and a black top, lantern light glinting off gold hoop earrings. She was something. She glanced his way then smiled as a man in a T-shirt offered her a toke on the tea, the marijuana. The woman declined.
“The Inglewood chapter of the NAACP has threatened a boycott campaign,” Warrens said. “They’ve been very active when it comes to jobs and promotions at North American Aviation.”
Coles smiled bemusedly. “Didn’t you tell ’em you had a couple of black fellas working at your track already, Mr. Warrens? Both of them janitors I believe, now ain’t that so?”
Warrens spread his hands. “As I said, we want to do things differently.”
“Then bring some coloreds onto the pit crews,” Coles countered.
“We can’t demand that of a racer and his sponsors. That’s their decision to make.”
“But you want me to shuck and jive at some kind of hopped-up show, that it? Make sure the cameras are there on me after the race and I got this big shit-eatin’ grin on my mug thanking you and de Lawd for this special, special day. Maybe take a knee and break into Mammy while I’m at it?”
“You’re looking at this all wrong, Mr. Coles.”
“Sorry you wasted your time, Mr. Warrens.” He took a pull of his beer.
Warrens lingered, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slow. He adjusted his hat and left.
Coles shook his head and finished his beer. Nearby was a mound of junk and, walking toward it, he tossed his can onto the pile. Turning, he encountered the woman in black.
“You are a skilled man,” she said. Her accent was heavy but her words were clear. Like they were being tattooed on his spine.
“Maybe it’s equal parts stupid sometimes,” he countered, careful not to get lost in those depthless eyes of hers. “But winning is good for business.”
“How so?”
“I build custom engines and cars so word gets around when you come in first.”
“And coming in first matters to you?”
“Better than getting kicked in the teeth.”
“Yes, I suppose that is so.”
He made a sound. “I wasn’t being that serious.”
“I see.”
“You’re new around these parts.”
“I’m Ymar, Ymar Montez.” She put out her hand. There was a large jade-and-stone ring on her finger.
They shook hands. “Good to meet you.”
“The pleasure’s all mine, Deacon Coles.”
Those eyes.
“Deac,” a voice called out.
He turned to see an inebriated Sakamoto holding out a beer to him. “Here you go, daddy-o.”
“Yeah, cool, Sak, but I was just talking to Ymar here,” hoping he’d get the hint and blow.
“Who?”
She’d slipped away and Coles couldn’t spot her beyond the small circles of light the lanterns allowed.
“Never mind,” he sighed, taking the beer.
His friend grinned, bobbing his head to the bongo beat.
Two afternoons later Coles was sitting in the Gas House, a coffee, poetry, and jazz joint on Ocean Front Walk in Venice. The inhabitants of the beach community affectionately called the area the “Slum by the Sea” and was recently immortalized in Lawrence Lipton’s book, The Holy Barbarians.
“Here you go, Deac,” Dorrie Muldare said as she placed his burger and fries on the table. She waitressed at the coffee house part-time while attending UCLA.
“Thanks,” he said absently as he sketched and made notations on a pad of lined paper. Three other sheets of paper had been torn away and were on the table too, his cup of coffee having formed a brown stained ring on one of them.
She turned her head to check out his work. “That for a new car you’re putting together?”
He looked up at her. “Yeah. It’s gonna be a killer.” He tapped the eraser end of his pencil on the pad. “Well, of course I gotta get a backer first, but more races, more notches to my rep.”
“Right. You know, maybe my dad could help.”
“No offense, Dorrie, but those egghead buddies of his don’t go in for no racing.”
“But they’re, you know, with it.”
“Hip, you mean.”
She smiled. “He just got back from another expedition, excited like a kid in a candy store. He’s in a good mood, dig?”
“Where’d he go this time?”
“Some jungle deep in the Mexican interior. He found some Aztec artifacts he and his crew are still sorting through. But my point was, his friends at the university are all about equal rights, right? Some of them gave money to that bus boycott they had down south a couple of years ago. He just signed a petition recently about busting
up the restrictive housing covenants here in L.A.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “I’ll mention it to him. Who knows, maybe they’d sponsor you.”
Maybe if Warrens had approached him several years ago, he might have gone along with the idea of a “Negro Night” at the race track, Coles reflected. Get some publicity for himself and do something for good intentions. But when he’d come back from Korea, no airplane manufacturer would hire him to pilot their prototype, or airline hire him to be in the cockpit. A couple had offered him a mechanic’s spot. But he was vocal in telling them that if a white man showed up with his kind of record, they’d be bending over backward to give him a job flying. And while car craft was all about skill and knowledge, color was still an intractable bar at raceways where you could put your talents on bigger display than at a street race.
He smiled, spreading his hands wide. “I can see it now, ‘The professors of archaeology present . . . the Black Speedster.’ And the crowd goes wild.” He let his voice echo off.
“Smart ass.” They both laughed as she walked away, passing a bulletin board where numerous handbills were tacked up. These included announcements about upcoming events such as Lord Buckley, His Royal Hipness, reciting his ribald recitations with Art Pepper on sax, and one about details for the Miss Beatnik 1959 contest.
When Coles left the coffee house it was getting on in the afternoon. He walked back to his residence on Brooks Avenue, an apartment he rented in a fourplex in Ghost Town, the Oakwood section. There was a four-car garage on the side of the property that let out onto an alleyway. He took the stairs and let himself into his pad. Coles made a sandwich and, taking that and a bottle of beer back downstairs, put on his worn coveralls and got to work tuning up the Willys in his stall in the garage.
The day fell away to night and Coles was about done. He was on a creeper under the car, bolting the starter back in place. He heard her approach, then saw her feet. She wore leather sandals that laced up to her ankles, and around one of those ankles was a thick stone-and-jade bracelet. She spoke his name and gave him a thrill.
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