Drive Like Hell: A Novel

by Dallas Hudgens

  “I was thinking about telling you,” she said.

  “Telling me what?”

  “What you just asked,” she said.

  “You mean my question made sense?”

  “Yeah, it made perfect sense.”

  “So, tell me,” I said.

  It took her a moment. I could sense that she was fumbling through her brain for the right words.

  “So,” she said, “what do you think happens when two fucked-up people have a kid?”

  “Are you talking about us?”

  She shook her head. “The thing is, my parents were college professors. They wouldn’t have gotten together otherwise.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, my mother used to say that the thing that attracted her to my father was his intelligence. Isn’t that fucking ridiculous?”

  “Well, you’re smart, too,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Yeah, but come on. There’s gotta be limits. I mean, that’s always been the most important thing to her. It’s so cold, you know. Like when I wanted a dog, my mother had to do all this homework first and find out which was the smartest breed. She didn’t want a stupid dog. So we drove out to this breeder and bought a sheltie. Well, you know what? The dog was fucking retarded.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously. He used to bark all night, couldn’t be house-trained, used to run into the sliding glass doors whenever he saw a squirrel outside. So she gave him away.”

  “Now I know why you like strays.”

  “Bingo,” she said. “And it was the same thing with my father. She used to say that she loved his brilliance and his intensity. It never occurred to her that he was crazy as a fucking bedbug.”

  “What do you mean, ‘crazy’?”

  “How about two suicide attempts in the same week? Does that sound crazy to you?”

  “Fuck. I guess that qualifies.”

  She opened the glove box again and took one last look through it, then slammed it shut.

  “So, did he jump off a bridge or something?”

  Rachel laughed. “No, he wasn’t that dramatic about it. Bottle of aspirin the first time, sleeping pills the next. He went to a hospital for a while after all of that.”

  “Well, what was he like? Was he mean?”

  “Oh, fuck no,” she said. “He’d have these great flashes, you know, like when we used to hunt the frogs. He could act all goofy and make me laugh. It was like when you’re driving along and you pick up a song you really like on the radio, but the station keeps going in and out. That was him. It gets to your favorite part, and then buzzzzzz.” She swiped her hand through the air. “Nothing but static.”

  She reached out and touched her thumb to the fogged-up windshield. It seemed to amuse her, how the print of it slowly vanished.

  “My mother was such a fuck, though. She never tried to help him, not after she realized he was defective. It was just me and him at the end. She’d taken a semester’s leave in Oregon. She was fucking some anthropology professor out there. So Dad and I stayed behind in Champaign.”

  I still hadn’t met Rachel’s mother, but the picture that she painted of the woman grew less flattering all the time. She was always saying that her mother needed to boost the dosage on her mood stabilizers.

  “So your mother was screwing around while he had leukemia?”

  Rachel looked at me with those dark pools of hers. “He didn’t have leukemia,” she said. “I lied about that. I don’t know why, so don’t bother asking.”

  “Then what happened to him?”

  “Well, he was doing okay while my mother was gone. I mean, all things considered, he was doing okay. But like I said, you never knew when he was going to come and go. So there was this one night around Christmas when he decides we needed to go driving around looking at the Christmas lights. He liked doing that kind of stuff. You know, traditional stuff, kind of like your brother. Problem was, he’d been mixing Borden’s egg nog with Captain Morgan’s. Plus he and my mother had gotten into this fight on the phone. Of course, I was proud of him about that part. He’d really stood up to her that night. He said, ‘Goddammit, Maggie, I’m tired of your fucking shit.’”

  She smiled proudly, as though she were telling me about some important science prize her father had won.

  “Anyway, we’re driving around these neighborhoods looking at the lights, when this dog runs out in front of the car. This little beagle. So my father, he’s looking off at some plastic Santa on a rooftop or something, and doesn’t even see the dog. And splat.”

  She slapped her hands together.

  “Jesus,” I said, “do you have any happy dog stories?”

  She laughed. “Brute’s still alive. That’s a happy one.”

  “So what about the beagle?” I asked. “Did it kill him?”

  “It was a she,” Rachel said. “And we killed her good. Jesus, that was the last thing my father needed. He could take something like that and really run with it, you know. He was cussing and kicking dents in the side of the car. And then he started crying. Kneeling in the middle of the street, crying.”

  “Over the dog?”

  “Absolutely. He kept thinking we could save it. He thought it belonged to some little girl, that it was like a Christmas present or something, and he’d ruined this little girl’s Christmas. He wanted to take the beagle to a real hospital to see like a fucking internist or something. But I knew that dog had pranced across her last green lawn. I mean, she was on the express elevator to doggie heaven.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I had to get him in the car and drive him home,” she said.

  “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “You mean you were driving at thirteen, and you gave me shit about driving when I was ten?”

  She smiled. “Ha. Turns out you were right. It really is important to learn young.”

  “So, did your father get over the dog thing?”

  She was holding the sunglasses, tilting them in different directions, studying the reflections from the hotel’s floodlights.

  “He was better, you know. For about a few months, I guess. He took his medication and stayed busy doing stuff. That was always a good sign, though a lot of times it meant that he’d charge up the credit cards really high. But he seemed more balanced this time. He bought new tires and brake pads for the car, got a new toaster for the kitchen. Then he went out and bought us all of this ski stuff. I’d been asking him to take me snow skiing, so he got me the bibs and the jacket and gloves. He said we were driving up to Michigan for the weekend. I was so fucking happy, I didn’t even care that the ski suit he’d bought me was this awful green color. Plus I was fat back then, so I looked like this big fucking avocado.”

  “Come on,” I said. “You weren’t fat.”

  “You wanna bet?” She stuck out her hand. “I was like a butter butt. Oh, and I had braces, too. I was ugly.”

  “So this was before the Juicy Fruit diet?”

  “Bingo,” she said. “Juicy Fruit and Dexatrim. They changed my fucking life.”

  “All right, so get back to your father. What happened?”

  “Well, he was seeing somebody, too. I forgot to mention that. But at least he wasn’t an asshole about it, not like my mother. He didn’t moon around the house and act like he hated everybody. She was this woman off campus, a waitress from a bar that he went to. So he told me he was going to her house for a while. Remember, now, this is the same day he bought all of the ski stuff, the brake pads and everything. And what he did is he went over there and they polished off some coke that they’d bought together, and then they fucked, I guess. And after that, he went to the drawer in her kitchen where she kept her cocaine and this forty-four pistol. And he took the pistol and left without telling her good-bye. And then he got in the car with those new tires and brake pads, and he drove way outside of town, and he parked the car there and walked out into the woods and stuck
the forty-four in his mouth and killed himself.”

  After she’d finished the story, she pulled a stick of Juicy Fruit from her pocket and slid it into her mouth. Nice and calm, like the story had been mostly about her father buying the new brake pads. She turned to me and held out the pack of gum. She pushed her hair off her face and gave me a smile.

  For a time, I couldn’t even speak. It felt like someone had kicked me in the chest.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all of this before?”

  She pocketed the gum and threw her wrapper onto Newman’s floorboard. “I don’t guess I had a reason to tell you before now.”

  “So what’s your reason?”

  She slipped her hands into her jacket pockets. “Maybe it’s because I had this idea. I was thinking, you know, that if your brother moves to Shreveport, you could come live with us. I just thought that maybe I should tell you all of this first.”

  She was being careful not to look at me. It made me wonder if she was worried I might say no.

  “But what about that stuff you said? You know, about things going bad when you get people under the same roof?”

  She locked her eyes onto mine again. She flattened the gum against the inside of her front teeth and popped it.

  “Maybe it’s not always like that,” she said. “I could be full of shit, you know.”

  I ran my finger along the steering wheel. All of the car’s gauges were resting on zero, but we might as well have been moving. After what Rachel had just said, it felt like we were headed somewhere. I couldn’t help but punch the accelerator just a little.

  “You know, Nick believes in this evolution kind of thing,” I told her, “like that his kids will have all of the stuff that he’s missing. He thinks that if he marries the right woman, they’ll be like doctors and pro golfers and shit.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I buy into any of that. But I was thinking, you know, that me and you could have some pretty smart little convicts.”

  Rachel didn’t say anything. A breeze drifted in through the side window, warm and reassuring. It made what we were doing seem of less consequence, at least for a moment.

  Finally, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder. “Come on,” I said. “We better get back inside.”

  Just as I reached for the door handle, Rachel laid her hand on my arm. “Here,” she said, “you forgot something.”

  She was smiling, holding Paul Newman’s sunglasses. I slipped them over my eyes and flashed her the Fulmer grin.

  “You’re probably right,” she said. “Our kids would be running the prison library.”

  19

  I could feel the stretch run approaching. It was mid-August, six weeks and counting until my return engagement with Dot Knox. Rachel drove me home from work one night in her Peugeot. The air was warm and heavy, like a hand pushing against my chest. We were parked in Nick’s driveway, talking some more about how I was going to move in with her and her mother. I was ready to make the jump. It felt like the right thing to do, never mind that Nick was planning to leave town and Claudia appeared to be entrenched with Charlie and his Hamilton Beach blender.

  Heat lightning flickered in the distance. The occasional raindrop plinked against the windshield. Rachel had the windows cracked and a Damned cassette playing in the dash. She was talking over the music, telling me she had an even better idea, something to top the simple notion of our living with her mother. She was just about to reveal the details, when Bev started up with her screaming from inside the house. She was in full throat, and not even the mighty drumming of Rat Scabies could drown out her wrath.

  “I wanna know who you’re fucking, goddammit!”

  There was a noise like breaking glass, and then the front door flew open and Bev ran down the steps. Rachel forgot all about her bright idea. She turned off the radio and pointed, her mouth open in total surprise.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  “Oh, that’s just Nick’s girlfriend.”

  “Is she the one he’s going to break up with?”

  “Actually, he did break up with her. About ten days ago. She just hasn’t taken it very well.”

  “No shit.”

  Bev was running around holding Nick’s car keys over her head. Nick walked out the door barefoot in his jeans and T-shirt. He had his palms pressed together, pleading with Bev.

  “Come on, Bev. Get hold of yourself and quit acting crazy. You’re not a teenager anymore.”

  Bev stood on the opposite side of her Matador, taunting Nick by jiggling the keys over the roof of the car.

  “Let’s see what you do without these,” she said. “Let’s see you make your little cocaine run with your rich friend, Chuckie.”

  She started waving her arms like a cheerleader. “Chuck—Chuck—bo buck—banana fanna—fo fuck. Chuck, Chuck is a fuck, a big fat, rich, ugly, airplane-flying fuck.”

  Nick rubbed his temples and let out a sigh. “Look, Bev. I don’t know what else you want me to do. I’ve been honest with you. I told you how I feel.”

  “Did you think it was gonna be that easy?” she screamed. “After ten fucking years?”

  Nick shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, yeah. Maybe.”

  “Then you must be fucking high,” she said, “if you think you’re gonna throw me away like some piece of dog shit on the bottom of your shoe.”

  Nick appeared completely exasperated. “I’m not throwing you away. I’m just saying it’s time we looked at some alternatives.”

  “I wanna know who you’re fucking!” she screamed. She started pounding the top of the car with her fists. “You owe me that much, you motherfucker!”

  Rachel watched the episode with a fair amount of disbelief. “Jesus,” she said, “this is brutal.”

  “High school sweethearts,” I declared. “This could be us in a few years.”

  Rachel shook her head at the sorry sight in front of us. “No way. We’ve gotta fucking call it quits before it ever gets that ugly.”

  “Of course, we might be different,” I said.

  “Trust me,” she said, “everybody thinks they’re different.”

  “You’ve got a point there.”

  Bev’s tantrum soon turned to flat-out grief. She was bawling and screaming but still pounding the roof of the car. Nick stood on the other side, trying to reason with her. I don’t think he wanted to get too close.

  “I’m not fucking anybody,” he pleaded. “I wouldn’t do that to you. It’s just not working anymore. We don’t want the same things.”

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, hell, probably since we first met. You just wouldn’t ever listen to me.”

  “Okay, goddammit. Quit blaming me for everything. You make it sound like I’m some kind of selfish bitch.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Well, you didn’t have to.”

  She looked like she might try to get hold of herself. She stopped her blubbering and drew up the muscles in her face until she appeared halfway composed.

  “So when are you leaving for Shreveport?”

  “Probably after Labor Day,” Nick said. “I still have a couple more jobs to do with Chuck.”

  Bev snuffled and wiped at her nose. “Well, can I come?” she asked.

  Nick looked away from her. His gaze landed on Rachel’s car. He squinted to see who was inside. Our eyes met, and he shook his head in a hopeless way. He turned back to face his troubles. “No, Bev. You can’t come.”

  She stood there, staring at him in disbelief. Her lower lip started to quiver, and then she began to whimper.

  “My God,” she said, “you really aren’t fucking anybody else, are you?”

  Nick stared at the ground.

  “That’s even worse,” she said. “That means you don’t love me at all. You’d rather be alone.”

  Nick started to walk toward her. “Bev, you know I love you.”


  “Stop it!” she screamed. “I’ve heard enough out of you!”

  She tightened her face up even more, until it was full of spite, just like when she sang “Hair of the Dog.”

  “I hate you!” she hollered. “I wish you were dead right now, and I mean that. I mean it more than anything I’ve ever meant in my life. If you were to die right now, I’d laugh at your fucking funeral. Hell, I’d get drunk and throw a goddamn party. Then, I’d fuck every man in the house. Twice!”

  Bev climbed inside the Matador.

  “You’ve still got my damn keys,” Nick yelled.

  But she didn’t pay him any attention. She fired up the motor and backed up to turn around. Nick moved to the front of the car. He stood there while she slid the shifter into drive. He planted his hands on the hood like he was going to hold her back.

  Rachel grabbed my arm. “She wouldn’t run him over, would she?”

  “Oh, yeah. I think she would. She asked me to run over a couple of guys in Augusta, once.”

  They stared each other down, Nick lit up by the high beams and Bev clinching the wheel, gazing out at him with an incendiary mix of love and hate. Hate eventually got the upper hand. She stomped the gas, and the Matador kicked up a shower of gravel and lurched forward. Nick jumped and landed facedown on the hood. His and Bev’s eyes couldn’t have been more than a foot apart, separated only by the thick pane of glass, before he rolled over and fell onto the ground.

  “Bev, honey. Wait a minute. Don’t do this. I need my fucking keys.”

  Bev barely missed Rachel’s car as she headed out to the street. Nick sprinted back to the porch and hopped on his Triumph. He kick-started the engine and took off after her in the moonless night: no shoes, no helmet, and not a whole lot of sense behind his actions. Of course, he smiled and waved at me and Rachel as he passed the car, acting as though this sort of thing was not out of the ordinary.

  Dewey stood waiting for us on the porch, a can of PBR in his hand. He wore the expression of a doctor who had just emerged from an operating room with tragic news.