Drive Like Hell: A Novel

by Dallas Hudgens

  “Slow down, I’m gonna fall.”

  Rachel’s voice had an edge of panic and irritation to it. She was having some trouble, stumbling backward every few steps. It didn’t help that she was wearing those clunky black shoes of hers, or that I was gaining a fair amount of pleasure watching her troubles. I’d never seen her so vulnerable. She kept gazing over her shoulder at all the other couples around us, most of whom were gray-haired and decked out in Western wear.

  “Slow down,” she said again. “We’re gonna bump into one of these geezers and break their hip.”

  “No, we’re not. Besides, we gotta keep up with the beat.”

  “Well, why can’t I go forward for a while?”

  “Because it’s not allowed,” I lied. “They’d ask us to leave. Besides, you wouldn’t know what to do.”

  She gave me a dirty look. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

  “Nothing’s the matter,” I told her. “I’m happy as hell. I’m getting on the good foot.”

  I still hadn’t said anything to Rachel about all the stuff I’d learned that morning. I’d run through my mind the different ways that I might approach her, but nothing seemed appropriate. Mostly, I couldn’t decide if I was mad, or sad, or if any of it even mattered at all.

  I swerved around the octogenarian gent who’d plucked Claudia off her chair. The guy was sporting a denim suit with pearl snaps. Claudia glided along the sawdust floor with the old-timer, smiling her new, drunken smile and making eye contact with Wade as he stood beneath his gray hat, strumming his Gibson.

  Dewey had tagged along, just to get out of the house for a while. Even though he’d reclaimed his driver’s license, he seemed to be falling evermore into a funk without Nick or the band around. Dewey had lured Wade Briggs’s wife, Cassie, onto the floor. Cassie was a public defender who’d handled a number of Dewey’s drunk driving cases. He swore that she owned the best legal mind in Green Lake.

  I didn’t know if Cassie was aware of her husband’s friendship with Claudia, if she knew about the phone calls or Claudia’s particular affection for the singing deputy. She was an attractive woman, blue-eyed and tall, with a good figure for her blue business suit. She could have been in that perfume commercial where the woman sang about bringing home the bacon, frying it up in a pan, and never, never letting you forget you’re a man. Maybe she’d even married beneath herself.

  Claudia patted Methuselah’s shoulder midsong and excused herself. She fetched her purse from the table and headed for the bathroom, weaving just a little, no doubt longing to take a pull from whatever bottle she had tucked inside her bag. Wade eyed her sadly as she disappeared, still singing about how he’d had no hugging, or kissing, or squeezing in a long, long while.

  Rachel and I stepped outside to get some air. The breeze felt good after floating among the stew of warm bodies on the dance floor. We tramped across the gravel parking lot and settled in at a picnic table beside the runoff pond. This was what passed for the fish camp’s lake. The real lake was two miles away.

  Rachel took a seat beside me. Pretty soon, she was talking plans again.

  “I called a friend of mine in Champaign, and she was telling me a room in her group house is opening up in two weeks. That’s perfect timing for us.”

  I just stared at her. I didn’t have the heart to say anything, or to even play along anymore.

  Rachel had a puzzled look on her face. “So, what do you think?”

  I shrugged and looked away, staring off at the fish camp. It was little more than a long shed, really, with cinder-block walls and a tin roof. The building practically hummed a 2/4 beat, the twang of the steel guitar slipping through the windows.

  “You’ve been like this all fucking day,” Rachel said. “Did you get your period or something?”

  I ignored the remark. “What is it with you and Champaign, anyway?” I asked. “What’s so fucking special about that place?”

  She eyed me with a fair amount of suspicion. “I thought we already talked about this. There’s nothing special about it. I just have contacts there. I can find us a place to live, jobs, shit like that.”

  “Well, how do you know it hasn’t changed? I mean, when was the last time you were even there?”

  She just sat there staring at me, batting her eyes nervously.

  “What is your fucking problem?” she asked. “You have got the shittiest attitude right now.”

  “I don’t have a fucking problem. In fact, I was just thinking how I’d heard this band the other day that I thought you might like.”

  “Who?”

  I fixed her with a hard stare. “I think they call themselves Ass Disaster.”

  She was dead still for a moment, stunned. Finally, she clenched her jaw and nodded as if she was starting to figure some things out.

  “That fucking bitch,” she said. “What did she tell you?”

  “The whole thing,” I said. “She told me the whole thing. The pregnancy, the abortion, everything.”

  “I’ll fucking kill her.” Rachel clenched her fists. “I swear to God, I’ll fucking stick a knife in her heart. Goddamn her.” She pounded her fists on the table.

  “You can’t kill her,” I said. “They’ll send you to the juvenile prison up in Alto. And, believe me, that’d make Champaign look like Paris fuckin’ France. Besides which, there’s nothing wrong with your mother. You make her out to be some kind of monster or something. And it’s not true. She’s no more fucked up than anybody else.”

  “How the hell do you know?”

  “Because I’ve talked to her.”

  Rachel snorted. “You can’t believe anything she says.”

  “Look who’s talking. You’ve got more secrets than a twelve-dollar motel room.”

  “So, name some.”

  “How about all your shoplifting arrests? Turns out you’re not the master thief you made yourself out to be.”

  “Motherfucker! Did she tell you about that, too?”

  “Believe it or not, I got that information elsewhere.”

  I turned my back to her and straddled the picnic table’s bench, gazing out at the cluttered parking lot. The rows of headlights stared back at me like sad pairs of eyes.

  “It’s not gonna be the same if you go back to Champaign,” I said. “It’s only gonna feel worse.”

  I waited for the smart-ass remark, but it never came. For some reason, she was willing to listen to what I had to say.

  “I’ve seen it enough, the way it happens when people have to go from a place. Like when Lyndell left our house. It never was the same. Nick’s house, too. I don’t even like going there since he left, and poor Dewey, he’s miserable. It’ll be the same one day with that apartment you and your mother live in. I’ll probably go out of my way to avoid driving by there.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “What I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter if all you have are good memories of a place, or a person. Once it’s over, it’s over. And that’s the worst memory of all, the day something ends. And believe me, that’s the one that’s gonna slap you into next week when you get back to Champaign.”

  We sat there without saying anything for a while. The ash-colored moonlight spilled mournfully across the tin roof of the building. When I finally turned back around, I could see that she’d been crying. She’d wiped the tears on the sleeves of her leather jacket.

  She studied my face, her cheeks flushed and her eyes still watery. “They say your last thought before you die affects what happens to you in your next life.”

  “What’s that got to do with Champaign?”

  “The thing is,” she said, “I’ve tried to imagine what my father must have been thinking when he died. And I just can’t, you know. I mean, he was so unhappy that whatever it was, whatever he was thinking, it couldn’t have led to anything good. And now he’s got this new life somewhere, and it’s bad, too. And he’s in the same pain, and he’ll end up like that again and again, with no
way to stop it.”

  I had no business answering that question. Hell, I didn’t know what Pete Coyle had been thinking. I didn’t even know how Pete Coyle had died. I didn’t know which of Rachel’s stories was true, if any of them.

  She had this desperate look on her face, like she was staring across the table at a doctor, hoping for a good prognosis, maybe a fifty-fifty shot. I wanted to deliver. I wanted to say the right thing.

  “Maybe he’s just dead,” I told her. “Maybe that’s all there is to it. And now he’s not suffering anymore.”

  I felt like banging my head on the table. After the words had left my mouth, I realized they hadn’t sounded hopeful at all.

  But Rachel thought differently. “It would probably be better like that,” she said. “For him, at least. Not for everybody, but maybe for him.”

  The breeze picked up and beat back her curtain of hair. It thrilled me to see her face. It was like a veil being lifted from a beautiful painting. And I knew that I would have done anything to keep her from seeing any more trouble or pain.

  She ducked her head and wiped her arm across her eyes.

  “I know that you don’t hate your mother,” I said. “I saw you one day with her, on the sofa. You were lying across her lap.”

  She stared off at the ground, embarrassed.

  “I used to worry that something would happen to her,” she said. “Back when she was drinking and staying in bed all the time. I worried that I’d come home from school and find her dead.”

  “She needs you,” I said. “She’s trying to change.”

  Rachel shook her head as though she couldn’t begin to figure me out.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why do you care so much about my mother and I getting along?”

  “I just don’t want you to end up like Claudia. I think she may have run off with Lyndell just to spite her mother’s cousin. Now, look at her. She’s a mess. I mean, this is the shit you get yourself into with these kinds of decisions. You end up twenty years down the road, asking, ‘What the hell have I done?’ You end up miserable and sad, and then you have to hurt a lot of people to make it any better.”

  She narrowed her eyes, confused. “What does that have to do with us?”

  I leaned forward and laid my hands on top of hers. “The thing is, I don’t want to be the man who fucks up your life. I don’t want to ever see you with a bottle of vodka in your purse, or your hands shaking.”

  She sat there with the moon’s net draped over her, waiting for me to say more.

  31

  The next couple of days proved as awkward as our turn on the dance floor. It became apparent to the both of us that we’d lost our rhythm—in conversation, at work, in bed. Even the silence was grating. It was all pauses and squeaks, like fingers sliding up and down guitar strings but never stopping to play any music.

  I still had a little time left before Muskgrave came calling again for his favor, a few more sleepless nights, lying there while the TV flickered, wondering what the hell I should do. I wasn’t convinced that Muskgrave could pin anything on Rachel with those photos. Then again, I could never be certain. And if it came down to making a choice, I knew that I would spare her at Nick’s expense. It was awful to consider. I kept hoping things wouldn’t go that far, but I couldn’t see any way out.

  Regardless, it seemed to me that packing up and moving out was probably the best thing that I could do for Rachel and her mother. At least it would give them a chance to make things right between themselves. With me out of the picture, Rachel didn’t have anyone except her mother. And so I slipped my stuff out of their apartment in the middle of the night, while Rachel and Mrs. Coyle were still asleep and while the parking lot was free of police vehicles. I told Brute good-bye, and then I tossed my bag into the back of the hearse and drove over to the Cove Road Marina. I spent the rest of the night aboard the Cash Register, rumpled and damp and longing for the smell of Juicy Fruit.

  I can’t say that I ever had this concrete idea about calling Lyndell. But somewhere in the night, while the lake ticked against the side of the boat—over and over again with those same lake noises—I began to ponder his dusty image: the sideburns and the crooked smile, a steering wheel in his hands and cigarette smoke streaming from his lips. It was the day that he’d planned to leave for Bristol, and he’d come by the school and checked me out early to say good-bye. We cruised over to the Krystal, took the drive-through and sat in the car, working on a sackful of cheeseburgers while a Charlie Rich tune trickled out of the dashboard.

  “Well, there he is.” Lyndell pointed at the radio dial. “Claudia’s favorite.”

  He grinned and took a drink from his Miller High Life. The can was wrapped in a brown paper bag.

  “So, anything good happen at school?”

  I swallowed the burger that I’d stuffed into my mouth. “Marty Atkins had a bottle of MD 20/20 in his locker. He said he stole it from his old man.”

  Lyndell was about to take another sip of beer. He reconsidered, lowering the can to his lap as if I might not notice. “That’s what winos drink.”

  “Marty says his old man calls it Mad Dog. He told me his mother poured out a bottle one time, and his father got so mad he threw all her clothes out in the yard and ran over them with his lawn mower.”

  I could tell that Lyndell was none too impressed by Marty’s father. Nevertheless, he smiled as if the lawn mower stunt had been a clever one.

  “Listen,” he said, “I want to tell you something.”

  He reached over and switched off the radio. I’d only seen him do that once before.

  “Is this about C.W.?”

  Lyndell shook his head. “No, I already told you all there is to know about that sonuvabitch. This is more important.”

  “Is it about Claudia?”

  He scratched at his head. “Yeah, it’s about her. But it’s also about Nick. I just want you to know that if either of them ever gets into any sort of mess, I want you to call me. Okay?”

  “Well, where would I call you?”

  He made a face like he hadn’t considered that part of the instructions. “Well, I suppose you could ask somebody from the track. I’ll probably be keeping in touch with that gang. One of those fellows will know how to get me.”

  I told him I’d call, but I didn’t really think much of his offer at the time. All I knew was that I’d miss riding in that Chevelle.

  “Of course, I don’t expect any problems from you,” he said. “Just as long as you don’t start drinking that Mad Dog.”

  He smiled and switched on the radio, jumping in with Charlie Rich, singing about the most beautiful girl in the world, asking someone to relay a message, to “tell her I love her.”

  And then he seemed to remember something important. He turned down the radio again.

  “Drinking MD 20/20,” he said, “is one step removed from drinking Aqua Velva. You remember that, okay?”

  I drove to the Amoco the following morning to speak with Carl Bettis. I expected he would know the name of the racing team that Lyndell worked for and how I might get in touch with him.

  “Well, look here,” Carl said. “Where you been hiding, boy?”

  I shrugged. “Oh, here and there.”

  He was sitting by the front door of the service station, atop a cannibalized backseat, working on a ham biscuit and a Miller High Life. As always, he was wearing his Mountain Dew baseball cap, just like Darrell Waltrip.

  “I haven’t seen you around the track since that night you and Cash took off after Speedy.”

  “Well, Speedy did some damage to Cash’s car, if you’ll recall. He’s been out of commission for a while.”

  Carl shook his head at the craziness of it all. “I’m glad they locked that little peckerhead up. He put me on the sidelines for a month. Hell, I was seeing double after he ran me into that wall.”

  It was a warm morning, the sun low, a gash of jaundiced light cutting through the skinny pines. Most times, I would
have welcomed the track talk. But not right now. Muskgrave’s clock was ticking.

  “I was wondering if you could help me out, Carl.”

  He wadded the empty biscuit wrapper and gazed up at me, his face knotted and flushed with an alcoholic burn.

  “Well, sure. But I hope it’s not for that thing.” He pointed at the hearse and smiled. “I don’t work on those. I figure I’ll be riding in one soon enough.”

  “No, that’s not it. What I was hoping is that you could maybe help me get in touch with Lyndell. Claudia had told me that you two talked every now and then. She said you knew who he worked for up in Bristol.”

  Carl appeared startled by the question, his eyes suddenly clear and sober. He tilted his head to get a better look at me but didn’t say anything. And then he removed his cap and scratched at his head in a dodgy sort of way—a classic Lyndell gesture.

  “Goddamn,” he murmured. “Well, shit.”

  He was looking past me, out toward the road. It was like he’d suddenly remembered a head-on collision that had taken place out there.

  My heart jumped out of its hole and gave my rib cage a nudge. “What’s the matter, Carl?”

  He pushed himself off his perch and started shaking his head. “This ain’t none of my business,” he said. “I think you better talk to Claudia.”

  I grabbed him by the shoulder before he could walk away from me. “About what? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I can’t believe she didn’t say anything about it.”

  “About what?”

  He tried to steel himself, fighting his natural tendency to shake. He swallowed hard. “Lyndell’s dead, Luke. He died last winter.”

  He closed his eyes, flinching as though I might hit him. Of course, I never would have done such a thing. I actually let go of his shirt and straightened the wrinkles. Only after I’d taken care of that piece of business did I realize my own hands had begun to shake. It might have been from lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of options. All I know is that the air felt as heavy as it had all summer, a front of gray clouds already moving toward the lake. They were always there, just like the water lapping at the shore, always the same thing and for no good reason.