The Suicide Motor Club

by Christopher Buehlman

  The hostility Woods had felt a moment before dampened considerably now that the boy felt himself acknowledged and respected. Calcutta sensed the tension ease as well and gave in to the hunger that propelled her toward the Ferris wheel and the exsanguinating young woman in the crown and swimsuit.

  “You’re not talking about photographs at all, are you? You’re talking about things you’ve seen.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not.”

  “Tell me.”

  Clayton allowed a gleam to visit his eye as he said, “There was a minor chief named Smiles at Horses who wore a bonnet that stood straight up, all in a circle around his head. Not so many feathers as other chiefs had. It was said he kept the others under a bear skin in his teepee, that he would not wear them all, for he wanted men to judge him by what he did now, not what he had done before.”

  “Did you see the buffalo?”

  “Which buffalo?”

  “The great herds.”

  “I saw a buffalo.”

  “You didn’t see the herds?”

  “Alas, no. I also once saw Buffalo, in New York. Does that impress you?”

  Woods smiled a crooked smile. Clayton clapped his arm in fraternity, then wandered off. He would find some house and charm the occupants therein, take his necessary tribute and leave unremembered, sheltering with this pack through one more day, two at most. Why did these insist on killing? He had been tempted to scale the carnival ride and take his share, perhaps more tempted than any of them—older stomachs rumbled louder, and he did not gorge himself lionlike as these did, which might see him through two or three nights of fast—but he felt no kinship with them and would not break bread with them unless expediency demanded it.

  “Hey,” Luther said from his perch as Clayton wandered off down Route 66. “Where the hell’re you goin?”

  “Nowhere I shall not soon return from, sir.”

  “Just see that you come back alone.”

  “I shall deserve your every confidence.”

  “What?”

  “I will come back alone.”

  “Yeah. Or not at all would suit me, too.”

  Cole said, more quietly, “Shut up, asshole, I kinda like him.”

  Clayton heard them tussle now, but good-naturedly, and not so hard that either would be pitched from the squeaking car lest Cole should tear his shirt.

  There’s something more to these two than friendship, Clayton thought.

  Or there was.

  —

  TWO HOURS LATER.

  Luther and Clayton sat on the floor of the mold-furred room Luther claimed as his own. He had brought Luther half an RC Cola bottle full of blood as a peace offering.

  “Who’d you take this off of?”

  “The daughter of a squash farmer two miles off.”

  “It’s good. She’s as pure as North Carolina rain.”

  “Her father was no less tainted than she. Baptists of the rare variety, and by that I mean observant.”

  “You’re a funny bird, you know that?”

  “How so?”

  “Way you talk.”

  “I can’t seem to help it. In my household we were punished for lazy speech and rewarded for sounding like gentlemen. They were trying to make senators and rail barons of us, and our sisters the wives of such.”

  “What happened?”

  “Smallpox. Scandal. Vampirism. We were already undone before I was whisked off into the night. My last remaining brother succumbed to fever at Andersonville while enjoying southern hospitality.”

  “I ain’t from Georgia, Cole is. Anyway, that’s before my time.”

  “And after mine.”

  Luther raised his RC bottle in salute, swirled it to discourage coagulation, then throated it back. He picked up a bottle of Old Crow bourbon and rinsed it around in his mouth, seemed to think about it, then swallowed. Clayton looked at him with some surprise.

  “I love the shit outta whiskey. I still swallow it sometimes. Mostly spit it out but sometimes it’s worth a headache and pissin’ fire.”

  “There we disagree.”

  “Not just about that, I reckon.”

  Luther swigged bourbon again, but this time spat it out on the floor.

  “I reckon the same.”

  An awkward moment passed between them. Luther broke it.

  “Had a little fun while you was gone.”

  “Did you?”

  “Sheriff rolled up askin’ about fireworks and was we squattin’. Course I charmed him into getting on the radio sayin’ he’d checked the place and there weren’t nothing to see. Then just for fun I said, ‘But how’s that little itchy spot doin’ on your face?’ and he said, ‘What spot?’ with spit runnin’ down his chin, and I said, ‘That’un there,’ and touched his cheek. ‘Got a tick in it or something, but the tricky kind you can’t hardly see. I’ll bet it itches a little now, but by morning you’ll be ready to scratch your face plum off from it.’”

  Clayton considered Luther, wondered how much of his sadism came from his condition and how much had been natural to him. It had been Clayton’s observation that vampirism amplified certain traits, chief among these narcissism and psychopathy. This specimen seemed to be wealthy in both.

  “Tell me something, Mr. Nixon.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How did this come upon you? The curse, I mean.”

  “You really want to hear all that?”

  “I do.”

  Luther spoke.

  Luther liked to speak.

  18

  YOU BEIN’ A YANKEE AND ALL, YOU PROLLY DON’T KNOW NOTHING ABOUT DIRT track racin’, old NASCAR shit. Lot of us moonshiners fell in love with Mr. Henry Ford and his big, growly V-8s before the war and, well, after we came back we needed someplace else to drive fast for money. I got knocked around a bit in Italy, okay, more than a bit. Pile a’ busted-up bricks called Cisterna di Latina. That was in ’44. That day in Cisterna, me and three guys on patrol went into this busted-up church, you know, daylight coming through the roof and pigeon shit everywhere. There was an angel holding a pretty wood cross that looked loose in its hand. Had gold on it. I wondered why had nobody taken it, so I jiggled it, but the sergeant called me a Philistine, how’d’ya like that word? An’ he said don’t go givin’ us bad luck. But we had just been through hell tradin’ that town back an’ forth, and we was pissed off generally because of all them rangers gettin’ kilt, and I guess I felt like I had something good comin’ to me. I wanted that thing, figured I could sell it, send it to my momma, give it to a whore, somethin’, so I gave it a good tug. Now the major had already told us how Fritz had rigged up every little thing in Naples with explosives and not to touch nothin’, but that was different. That had been the year before, and way down south. They had lots a’ time there, they knew we was comin’. Here, the fightin’ had been real fresh and they only just turned tail, and us all over ’em. So I wasn’t thinkin’ that way. Guess I wasn’t thinkin’ at all. “Private Nixon, I gave you a order,” he said. It hadn’t sounded like no order, it sounded like advice, but I guessed now it was a order, so I left that cross be. But whenever I settled it back in the hand, that’s when the fuse finally caught. Boom. And not no little boom, neither. I got knocked back in the pews, both my legs broke, blinded too. But that didn’t last. Anyway, I shoulda been dead. The other guys were. All of ’em. Sarge, Jumper, the new kid that smoked a pipe like a old man, I forget his name. So back home I went on a hospital ship. Hadn’t even been in Italy but a month. Never shot nobody, well, mighta coulda ’cause I shot at ’em, but I didn’t never see it. I think that was the biggest thing seemed wasted to me. All that trainin’ and yes sir no sir and I end up getting sent home lookin’ like roast beef off a booby trap and never once got to plug me a kraut. I guess you can see why I was okay with kickin’ a little ass on the stock car circuit.
Guess you could say I maybe had a little chip on my shoulder. That was in ’44. By the time I could get around okay again, it was ’46 and I was thirty years old and meaner’n a badger with a bad haircut. I got picked to drive a car in Daytona, they had a course there on the beach wasn’t just an oval, right turns too is what I’m sayin’, an’ I had just won a race up in Georgia on a track like that. So I was thinkin’ I had a chance even though Roy Hall was in the game, and that was a crazy, rare fucker. I loved that ole boy, handsome like Clark Gable and he’d whoop you at racin’ or shining or shoot ya if you made him. But this city fella comes up to me the night before and says, “I got some people bettin’ on somebody,” and I says, “If these is smart people, I hope you mean me,” and he says, “Nossir, but this bag a’ dollars says you’ll help the one they’s bettin’ on,” and it was a pretty bag a’ dollars. I was hurtin’ for a new place to live, on account of a lady friend kicked me to the curb. Besides which, I had a little morphine monkey on my back, too, and I know you know what I mean, you look like you mighta had a suck on a opium pipe once or twice. Anyway I took that man’s money and found myself not racin’ to win but playin’ wingman to a gimp flyboy named Red, gimped up even worse than me, had to nail his fucked-up leg to the clutch, but the boy could definitely drive. Just not as good as Roy Hall. An’ as much esteem as I had for Roy, it was him I had to do wrong to. After he sprayed some wet sand back at Red—and I mean this track was right on the water—I came up on his left and nudged him off’n the other side of the track so his wheel sheared off and he almost went plowin’ into bystanders—they didn’t have no raised bleachers—but instead he took a jump and tumble into a bunch a’ scrub palms. Me, I kept my wheels on the track, but I fell good’n behind. Red Byron won the purse that day, but I made more money’n him, and it makes me wonder just how much the fellows that paid me bet on the thing if they was cutting me that much. I’m pretty sure I’d’a ended up in the Atlantic if I’d fucked up. Roy swore he’d kill me but he never did. Fellow killed me did it in Atlanta. Turns out I had a talent for wreckin’ other people. Truth was I liked it. The papers started callin’ me “Blitz,” like “Blitz Nixon sent Barney Childress into a spin on the second-to-last lap.” Oh, I won a few smaller purses down the way, I had a talent for third place, but I made my big takes when some fella’d come outta the shadows with a paper sack. I killed a fellow once, I ain’t proud of it, and a spectator or two, but I never got disbarred because by then I was good at makin’ it look like a accident. Or enough like one. And I think them fellows with the paper sacks had a talk with some of them NASCAR and AAA boys. But there it was 1955 and all these rules comin’ in and I was pushin’ forty, never goin’ to be nothing but a dirt track racer. I was lookin’ for one more big score. Well, I was runnin’ this race in Pennsylvania, got told to take out a fellow named Penry Carlisle, ain’t that a hell of a name? Ole Penry had a future. Prettier’n Roy Hall had been, Roy was in the pokey now, though Penry was not near as hard as Roy. Penry wouldn’t a’ hurt a fly. But Lordy could he thread the needle in a stock car. He was getting ready to make the switch and try to qualify for Indy, and here he was out on a clay track in Amish country, the stands all full a’ pretty girls. He was like Elvis, makin’ ’em scream when he waved at ’em, and that didn’t make me love him no more. Old dogs don’t like young pups takin’ all the soup bones. So I did it. Near on the thirtieth lap I hooked his bumper and flipped him pretty, spun him into another car and caused a big ol’ pileup. Fellow was supposed to won won, so I guess the paper-sack boys was happy. But I messed up that Carlisle kid. Burnt him. He didn’t die, but the only woman was gonna wave back at him now was his momma. NASCAR banned me. I got a death threat or two—ever notice that most death threateners ain’t good spellers?—and I decided maybe I should make myself scarce, like Mexico scarce, but didn’t do it quick enough. One night I was drinkin’ at the Black Mill, that was the bar down from Little Five Points where I was livin’ in Atlanta, and the bartender gives me this extra shot of Jack Daniel’s. I said, “What’s that for?” He said, “Fella bought it for you.” “What fella?” I said. “Penry Carlisle,” he said, but with no sass on it, like he was just deliverin’ a message. I looked around and didn’t see no burnt-up pile a’ goo, so I said, “Well, where’d he go?” and he wiped his chin and said “Who?” so I said, “Penry Carlisle, man, who do you think?” and he said, “Mister, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” So I knew somebody was messin’ with me. I asked him for a cherry in my glass and he gave me one, and I lifted up that shot of Jack Daniel’s to the crowd, lookin’ right at everyone who looked at me, and I drank it down, and I ate that cherry, too, with big chews. I put the stem in the glass like putting a bow on a package and I walked out with my chin up and a smile on like Fuck you, coward, if you can’t call me out to my face. I walked home watchin’ over my shoulder a little but I never saw nothing. Not that I was likely to, knowin’ what I know now. When I got home, where I was livin’ by myself because ol’ Dolores give me the boot, I turned on the radio and started listenin’ to a ball game and lit myself a cigarette. I about shit myself when I saw him. He’d been there all along, just watchin’ me, kind of a older man in a hat and coat, standin’ in the corner. I said, “How’d you get here,” and he said, “I spoke to your landlord,” and I ain’t entirely slow, so I said, “Thanks for the drink,” and I’m thinkin’ how can I get to the .38 I got in a shoebox under my bed but now he comes walkin’ over and I stand up thinkin’ he’s going to shoot me but I can see both of his hands. So I rush at him and then he’s just not there and I bang my head into m’own closet door. Where the fuck did he go, right? So I go divin’ in my room under the bed to grab the shoebox but he was already under the bed waitin’ for me. I yelled and I could smell his breath like onions and ants, you know how ants get that formaldehyde smell? That was what it smelled like. And he grabs my face with a hand like a wooden Indian’s hand and it’s dark and I can’t hardly see but his eyes are bright and he says, “Penry Carlisle was important to me,” and I says, “Was? Ain’t he alive?” and he said, “I fed him a pillow last night. Some kinds of living aren’t living. You’ll learn all about that,” and that’s when he did it. You know what he did. There under the bed, he did it. And took me away and left me alone under a bridge to figure out what I was now. Course, once I did, first one I went back for was that paper-cut lesbian bitch Dolores. Anyway, “Blitz” Nixon disappeared. You mighta seen it in the papers if you follow racin’. But I don’t guess you do.

  19

  “NO,” CLAYTON SAID. HE THOUGHT FOR A MOMENT BEFORE HE SPOKE AGAIN.

  “It seems to me that you might have had a promising career had you not preyed on other sportsmen. And now you jeopardize your peace by killing those you might simply steal from. Why?”

  Luther tilted up the bottle and tongued out the very last drop before he spoke.

  “I’d rather show you than tell you.”

  Clayton knew what Luther would do at the very instant Luther did. Luther whipped the bottle at him. Clayton ducked, but the bottle broke against the wall, a piece of it nicking his cheek. Now Luther was on top of him, licking blood from his face, laughing. Clayton threw him off with great force, smashing a discolored chair neither of them had thought fit to sit on. Luther laughed even harder, then spat blood and a front tooth. He sprang again, but this time Clayton rolled away and took up a leg of the chair, rising to his knees. Luther, up already, kicked him in the head, driving Clayton’s face against the wall and breaking his nose. He pushed away from the wall and turned, whipping the chair leg down so it broke the arm Luther blocked it with, then ducked and whipped it even harder, splintering it against Luther’s leg, which broke as well with a sick, wet crack, tumbling Luther to the ground. Clayton grabbed the Old Crow bottle and nearly brought it down on Luther’s head but then, as an olive branch, set it carefully down on the floor. Now Cole came in with a camper’s hand ax and Neck Brace loomed outside the window like he was about to j
ump through it. Luther stopped them both by raising his good hand. He looked at Clayton, his hurt arm thrice-jointed, his mouth smeared, smiling as though he’d been caught stealing cherry pie.

  The arm made a gristly noise as it reset itself. He slithered forward and took the bourbon bottle, swigged from it and made himself swallow. Sat up again. Winked at Clayton.

  “There, now. Wasn’t that more fun than just sittin’ talkin’?”

  —

  CLAYTON WAS HAVING HIS FIRST GOOD DREAM IN MONTHS, MAYBE YEARS. HE LAY in the lap of a beautiful woman who was sitting in a cool, clear stream, such that only his face remained above water. This was important because in this dream, he was alive and breathing. He knew the woman was beautiful even though he could not see her face because of a bright light behind it. The sun. She bent over him, backlit by bright sun, and he did not burn. He saw his own white limbs in the running water, little fish or maybe tadpoles moving in the current, and he lay still. He had no thought of leaving this place, which might have been Eden, and no care to ask the woman’s name or intentions toward him. He breathed in and out without thinking about it. He blinked automatically, not by act of will to mimic the living. He smelled plants and sap and heard the muffled sound of the water. Nothing had ever been so sweet as this, just breathing in, breathing out. Just feeling cool water on his limbs and sun on his nose and cheeks.

  He wanted a good look at her face; perhaps it was his mother as a young woman, perhaps it was Anna, his wife. He knew the woman was nude, but hers was the nakedness of the meadow, not the boudoir. The fringe of bright sun about her lit her hair so it might have been brown, black, or blond, he could not tell. It did not matter. He breathed in, breathed out, and it seemed from the rise and fall of her belly that her breathing matched his. She opened her mouth and he thought she was going to ask him a question, or say his name—he had no doubt that she knew it—but she did not speak. Instead, a curious noise came out of her mouth, a noise like a dry croaking or ticking, an electric noise. He understood then that the waking world was intruding on his dream, and he fought against it. Since the real world had found him here, he thought he might flee with her to some other place.