Drive Like Hell: A Novel

by Dallas Hudgens

  25

  I headed over to Lance Hillin’s log mansion to get an update on the Peugeot. I’d been putting it off for a couple of days, wondering if Hillin would even remember me. Considering just how piss-drunk he’d been on the night he wrecked us, I worried he might even accuse me of stealing the hearse.

  But that wasn’t the case at all. He waved me out onto his boat dock, just like Bob Barker on The Price Is Right.

  “Lucas J. Filmore!” he shouted. “Come on down!”

  It was one thing to butcher a person’s name, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how he’d managed to grant me a heretofore nonexistent middle initial. Not that I was complaining. At least he wasn’t threatening to call the cops.

  I tramped down the fescue-blanketed hill behind the house and walked right out onto the dock. It was the size of a ballroom dance floor, plywood floating atop aluminum pontoons. Hillin stood at the door to the boathouse, fiddling with a ring of keys.

  “You wanna take a boat ride?”

  He was wearing baggy shorts, flip-flops, and a pink golf shirt, and he didn’t even bother turning around to greet me. In the daylight, I could see that his body was a mess. His fingers and toes were gnarled and doglegged, and both knees bore the jagged marks of surgical knives. One kneecap was set off to the side and the other might have been missing altogether.

  He kept on plugging keys into and out of the big padlock that swung from the metal door, growing more agitated each time a key wouldn’t fit. “Goddamn these sons of bitches,” he growled.

  I stood behind him with my hands stuffed into my jeans pockets, taking in the desolate spread of water. It wasn’t exactly a stellar day for boating, the afternoon thunderclouds gathering above our heads, ready to raise some hell. The lake reflected the sky’s gray pall, its surface dull like a tarnished coat of primer.

  “Actually, I just wanted to check in with you about the car situation. Have you heard anything on the Peugeot?”

  The padlock clicked. Hillin turned and smiled like he’d just cracked a safe. He peeled off the bifocals perched at the edge of his nose and looked me up and down as though I had overdressed for the occasion.

  “Well, we can talk about that shit in the boat, can’t we?”

  The clouds spit a few raindrops on us, but Hillin didn’t even seem to notice. He slapped me on the shoulder and marched right into the boathouse without waiting for an answer. There wasn’t much left for me to do but follow him.

  I untied his twin-outboard nineteen-foot Kona so we could back out of the boathouse. I hadn’t even taken a seat when he slapped the throttle with the heel of his hand and sent us charging out into open water. The bow shot up into the air and pitched me backward. I made a grab for the back of Hillin’s captain’s chair but missed and thumped the floor of the boat with the back of my head. The pain felt like an explosion. That was two good head shots I’d now taken courtesy of Hillin.

  “You better grab a fucking seat,” Hillin yelled, as though I’d brought the tumble upon myself.

  I waited until the boat had leveled off and then climbed into the passenger seat, directly across from Hillin. We skimmed across the flooded valley, heading straight out to the dam. A jag of lightning stabbed at the north end of the lake while the ashen clouds peppered our faces and arms with raindrops.

  “So how’s that knot on your head?” Hillin shouted so I could hear him above the screaming Evinrudes.

  “It’s not too bad. Looks a lot worse than it feels.” I lifted my cap to give him a better view. Hillin puckered his lips and shook his head like I’d given him a case of the willies.

  “I had one like that a long time ago, back when I played for the Packers.”

  I expected a football story.

  “I ran into a goddamn telephone pole,” he said. “We’d just lost to the Lions, and I was piss-drunk, driving this brand-new Cadillac DeVille. I hadn’t played worth a shit, and my hip and my knee were bothering me. Plus, me and my second wife were having some problems back then. Anyway, I hit some water. Hydroplaned, you know.”

  I was beginning to wonder how many cars he’d wrecked in his day, how many phantom oil slicks and ice patches he’d actually come across. I couldn’t help worrying that he might have had a few boating mishaps under his belt as well. One thing was certain: he believed in making eye contact with his passenger while he drove.

  “I talked to my mechanic,” Hillin said. “Besides all the body damage, your girl’s car has got a busted radiator. He said it’s hard getting parts for that thing. Could take a month. So you can just go ahead and keep the hearse until it’s ready.”

  The big dam loomed off to the right. It hulked over the water like a broad set of granite shoulders, Hillin’s maybe, or those of a pro wrestler. The shoreline was bordered by tall stands of pine trees. The only evidence of the houses tucked back into woods were the boat docks scattered along the water’s edge.

  “Just as long as it’s ready by October first,” I said.

  “What’s so special about October one?” he asked.

  I’d forgotten he was a curious sort. I told him that Rachel and I were planning on moving that day. He smiled like he was pleased, his flattop fanning back and forth in the wind like rows of wheat stalks.

  “Where you moving to?”

  “Champaign, Illinois.”

  “Champaign,” he repeated in a singsong way. “Sounds like a shot-and-a-beer kind of town.”

  He pulled back on the throttle, slowing the boat with a jerk. The wake disappeared, and we sat there bobbing like a cork in the middle of the lake. I thought he was going to turn around and head back to the dock. It felt like the sensible thing to do. Thunder rumbled all around us, and the rain was pelting the lake like buckshot.

  But Hillin had no intentions of turning back. It was like the man had no sense of weather. He reached up under his seat and pulled out a pint of Maker’s Mark.

  “So, what are you gonna do in Champaign? Build birdhouses?”

  “No, I’m probably gonna work at a restaurant, at least until I can find me a job working for a bail bondsman.”

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  “I wanna go to school and get my license eventually—open up a bonding and bounty-hunting outfit.”

  Hillin pulled the bottle away from his mouth. “No shit?”

  I assured him it wasn’t. I even told him about Speedy and the car chase. Hillin was rapt, sitting there with that big jaw of his dropped open like a cash register drawer.

  “I tell you something,” he said. “If I was fifteen years younger and had any knees left, I’d go in on it with you. To hell with the restaurant business. I’d just pack up and do something crazy.”

  He sat there staring at me, smiling like I was someone to be admired, like I was the one with the big ideas. It made no sense whatsoever. For all I knew, I might be incarcerated by nightfall.

  “I don’t think you’d be making the same kind of scratch,” I said.

  Hillin snorted. “Let me tell you a little secret.” He leaned forward as though he was about to share something in confidence. “The thing is, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing when I started off in the restaurant business. In fact, I was trying to go broke.”

  “Why the hell would you want to do that?”

  Hillin threw his hands in the air. “Hell, I don’t know. My first wife used to say that I was self-destructive, but I never cared much for her from the start. Anyway, I got into the restaurant business because somebody told me it was the best way to lose your ass. I opened me a steak house with a big ol’ bar where I could drink every day. Put everything I liked on the menu. All you could fucking eat. I thought, Shit, I’ll just go there every day and enjoy it until I’m broke. And you know what happened?”

  “Forty locations,” I said. “Six states.” I remembered the info from the back of the menu.

  Hillin sat there shaking his head, wearing this bewildered look, as if he couldn’t understand how his life had go
ne so right. “I’ve always been lucky. Got the big bones for football, you know. Had a heart murmur that kept me out of World War Two. My big brother, Buck, now he was something. He had talent and brains. Smart, good-looking, and a hell of an athlete. Hit .560 his senior year in high school, had Yankee scouts coming to the house. Hell, he could have played center field for those fuckers. They’d of moved that gimpy-assed DiMaggio to right field.”

  He was on a roll now, and I didn’t know how to shut him up. The rain was slanted, the boat swaying. I couldn’t even see the shore. It was getting close to five o’clock, punch-in time at the Holiday Inn. The last thing I needed in my current predicament was to lose that job. Rachel and I had planned to squirrel away as much money as possible before our October getaway.

  Hillin went on about Buck for a long time, about big hits he’d gotten and pretty girls he’d dated. The stories eventually turned as dark as the sky. Hillin’s old man used to beat on the King, and Buck would often intervene. Apparently, the father respected Buck more than he respected himself. And then Buck was sent to Fort Benning to become a paratrooper, to train to be dropped over the fields of Normandy. But “some stupid bastard” crashed the plane he was in before he ever got a chance to go overseas and become a war hero.

  “So don’t tell me I ain’t lucky,” Hillin said.

  He let out a chuff of air, like he’d just finished running a sprint. I took the opportunity to steer our conversation toward land.

  “I need to get back, if you don’t mind. I have to be at work by five.”

  Hillin didn’t say anything for a moment. He just sat there, staring at the floor of the boat. Finally, he looked up at me.

  “Champaign, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “Champaign fucking Illinois.”

  I shrugged, not exactly certain where he was going with the conversation.

  “I don’t suppose you could stand to earn a little extra money before you go.”

  Even in the downpour, those words got my attention. “What have you got in mind?”

  Hillin smiled, then gazed skyward as if he’d just taken notice of the weather. “Let’s talk about it back at the dock,” he said. “Looks like it’s fixing to get ugly out here.”

  26

  The first sign of trouble was the patrol car that followed me and Rachel home from the Holiday Inn one night. Rachel was driving the hearse, and I was riding shotgun and keeping an eye on the action in the rearview mirror. I caught a glimpse of the cop’s head while we were sitting at a traffic light near the bank. It was someone I didn’t recognize, probably sent out at Muskgrave’s behest. He followed us all the way to the entrance of the apartment complex, where he pulled off to the side of the road and sat as if he was going to stay for a while.

  Rachel parked the car, slid the keys out of the ignition, and grabbed my arm. “What the fuck was that all about?”

  “I don’t know, but he sure as hell didn’t mind us knowing he was there.”

  “No shit. It’s like having the KGB follow you around.”

  I told her not to worry about it. “Muskgrave’s probably just trying to scare me. He hasn’t got jack shit to haul me in on. If he did, I’d be sitting in a cell right now. You can be sure of that.”

  “You mean you’re not worried?”

  “Hell yeah, I’m worried. I’m not stupid. I just need to play it safe for now. No slipups. Don’t give Muskgrave a reason to grab me.”

  She sat there staring out the windshield at the sad brick face of the apartment building.

  “I don’t think you should drive anymore. At least not until you get your license back.”

  “I agree. But I can’t quit running errands for Hillin. We need the money.”

  Hillin’s offer to earn a little cash had quickly turned into a minor windfall. What he’d needed was a “Sonny, or Red,” as he put it, referring to Elvis’s famed gophers. He even gave me a pager, which had seemed a little formal at the time, although in the two weeks since we’d set up the arrangement, he’d called me at least once a day to go to the liquor store, grocery store, and/or pharmacy to pick up his pain medication, whiskey, and favorite dessert, which was Breyer’s mint-chip ice cream. It was shit work, but Hillin paid for everything with hundred-dollar bills. And he always told me to keep the change. Thus far, I’d managed to net just over two hundred dollars in gratuities. Fay would have shot someone and dumped his body in a ditch for those kinds of tips.

  “I’ll just have to be really careful,” I told Rachel.

  “That’s not exactly reassuring,” she said. “Your definition of the word careful is not in any way similar to what’s in Webster’s dictionary.”

  What I wanted to explain to her was how I felt safer behind the wheel of a car than anywhere else. It didn’t matter if I was driving on a suspended license, or if someone was looking to put me under the jailhouse. A car was just about the only place where you could take absolute control of your circumstances. Of course, I realized this was no time for such an explanation. All I needed to do was ease her mind a little.

  “I’ll take it easy,” I told her. “Seriously, I will.”

  We finally got out of the hearse and made our way up the steps to her mother’s apartment. I was already starting to feel comfortable there, if not quite rooted. The sofa wasn’t as long, or as comfortable, as Nick’s, but it smelled a lot better and offered a clear view of the illegal cable hookup that I’d acquired courtesy of Speedy.

  Rachel and I spent a lot of time on that sofa, Brute curled up at our feet. We’d stay up late after we got home from work, watching movies on HBO. Jeremiah Johnson and Midnight Express were in heavy rotation that month. We must have watched them both a half a dozen times.

  Sometimes, Rachel would fall asleep as we lay there together. I wouldn’t move, even if I was uncomfortable, because I didn’t want to wake her and have her go and get in her own bed. I’d reach for the pale blue afghan and pull it around her shoulders. And then I’d lie there and watch her instead of the TV. I liked the way she slept with her lips parted, as though she were about to tell me something.

  We made the most out of Fridays. I’d ignore the fire marshal’s edict and crank up the hibachi out on the apartment balcony, grilling us a couple of strip steaks that I’d slipped out of Yuri’s freezer. Rachel would take care of the Ore-Ida fries, and we’d chow down in front of the TV, using a couple of unopened moving boxes as trays. We’d watch the Rockford and Dallas reruns (I’d missed a lot of those when our TV was stolen), stepping onto the balcony during the commercial breaks to get stoned. If I was really lit, I might even do my J.R. impression for Rachel, seeing how she liked it so much.

  “ ‘Sue Ellen, you are a drunk and an unfit mother.’”

  “Now do the other one,” she’d say. She was an easy audience when she got high.

  “ ‘Cliff Barnes, you and that drunk daddy of yours better not mess with ol’ J.R. You’re outta your league, boy.’”

  We’d stand there smoking and laughing and fine-tuning our moving plans while the moths gathered around the floodlights. It just felt like the place to be.

  I’d always grab a steak for Rachel’s mother, too. She didn’t come home until eleven, after she’d finished teaching her summer-school class and going to her AA meeting. I’d soak the strip in some Worcestershire and soy sauce, à la Yuri, and throw it on the grill for her after she came in.

  As far as I could tell, Mrs. Coyle didn’t have a problem with me, or Brute, staying in the apartment. I suppose it helped that I tried to pull my weight, that I tended to Brute’s needs, and went to the grocery store and brought home those steaks. On the other hand, she might have been frightened of what Rachel would do if she tossed my ass onto the street.

  Rachel could be a real shit to her mother. In fact, I’d come to learn that she was the main instigator of tension between herself and Mrs. Coyle. But it wasn’t like she fought the woman every second of the day. She’d let her guard down at times, and I’d see a side of
her that I didn’t even know existed. It might sound strange, but the more Rachel confused me, the more I liked her.

  It was still difficult, at times, to imagine any of our plans coming to light: like living in Champaign, or visiting Nick after he was settled in Shreveport. And not all of my doubts were seeded by the shadows of patrol cars. Once, in the late afternoon, I came in from working in Cash’s garage to find Rachel and her mother together on the sofa. A record played on the stereo, Chet Baker blowing softly, and darkly, into his trumpet. Rachel lay with her head in her mother’s lap, while Mrs. Coyle stared sadly at the blank walls, absentmindedly stroking her daughter’s hair. The record sleeve was on the floor beside an opened moving box. It was one of the boxes that had been sitting, still taped together, in the living room for months.

  They hadn’t noticed me when I walked in, the music concealing the sound of my borrowed key in the door. I stood in the tiny foyer, behind the sofa, watching, not understanding. Mrs. Coyle had dark hair, like Rachel, but sad, murky green eyes. Her hands shook a little as she worked on Rachel’s hair. Rachel lay still, running her own fingers along the hem of her mother’s skirt. The sight caused my heart to sway a little. And then our secret plans began to ache inside me. For the first time, I didn’t feel as if I belonged there. I finally backed out the door and left them alone. I went for a drive along the lake in Lance Hillin’s hearse, and I didn’t feel that I was in control of a single thing.

  27

  The local prosecutor placed a gag order on everyone involved in the Chuck Sosebee case, including Muskgrave, making it difficult to gather much of anything from the daily articles in the Gazette. Some days I’d try to forget the whole mess, at least for a little while. My success was limited. I’d pick up the Atlanta paper, where Green Lake was largely ignored, but the news there was even worse. A fourteen-year-old boy had been missing for a week, his bike found on a deserted road. The last anybody had seen of him, he was heading out to run an errand for his mother.