Boy's Life (56 page)

     “Oh no,” I whispered. “Oh no, it can’t be Dr. Le—”

     A car pulled up beside me, so close it almost skinned my leg, and then it swerved to block my way. It was a dark blue, low-slung Chevy, its right rear side smashed in and rust splotched across it like dead poison ivy leaves. A white rabbit’s head on a black square hung from the rearview mirror. The Chevy’s engine boomed and popped under the hood, and the whole car trembled with pent-up power. “Hey, boy!” the man behind the wheel said through the rolled-down window. The wheel was covered with blue fur. “You’re that little Mackenson shit!”

     His voice was slurred, the lids of his red eyes at half mast. Donny Blaylock was three sheets to an ill wind. His face was as craggy as rough-cut rock, a greasy comma hanging down from his dark, slick brilliantined hair. “I ’member you,” he said. “Sim’s house. Little fucker.”

     I felt Rocket shiver. The bike suddenly darted forward and banged into the Chevy, like a terrier attacking a Doberman.

     “Been seein’ things you shouldn’t oughta see,” Donny went on. “Been causin’ us some trouble, ain’t you?”

     “No sir,” I said. Rocket backed up and banged into the Chevy again.

     “Oh, yes you have. Biggun’s gonna be glad to see you, boy. Gonna have a talk with you ’bout them big eyes and that big ol’ mouth of yours. Get in.”

     If my heart had been pounding any harder, it would’ve pulled up its root and burst right out of my chest.

     “I said, get in.
Now
.” He raised his right hand.

     It gripped a pistol, and the pistol was aimed at me.

     Once again Rocket attacked the car. Rocket had saved me from Gordo Branlin, but against this dirty rat and his gun, Rocket was powerless.

     “Shoot your fuckin’ head off in two seconds,” Donny vowed.

     I was scared half to death, and the other half was terrified. That gun’s barrel looked as big as a cannon. It made a convincing argument. In my mind I could hear Mom screaming as I left Rocket and got into the car, but what choice did I have? “Goin’ for a ride,” Donny said, and he leaned across me—all but suffocating me with the foul odors of stale sweat and moonshine whiskey—and slammed the door shut. He put his foot down on the gas pedal and the Chevy growled and crawled up on the curb before he could get it straightened out again. I looked back at Rocket, which was rapidly shrinking. A little plastic Hawaiian girl did a wobbly hula in the Chevy’s rear windshield. “Sit still!” Donny snapped, and I obeyed him because the pistol was right there to jab the obedience into me. Donny’s foot pressed harder on the gas. The Chevy’s engine was wailing as we tore along Merchants Street and turned toward the gargoyle bridge.

     “Where’re we goin’?” I dared ask.

     “You just wait ’n see.”

     The speedometer’s needle climbed to sixty. We left the gargoyles gasping for breath. The Chevy’s engine was making thunder, and we were going seventy miles an hour on the curving road that led past Saxon’s Lake. When I gripped the armrest, Donny laughed. On the floorboard an empty bottle rolled back and forth under my feet and the smell of raw rotgut moonshine was harsh enough to make my eyes water.

     The woods on either side of the road passed in a yellow blur, the Chevy’s rear tires shrieking on the snake-twist road. “I’m fuckin’
alive!
” Donny howled. Maybe so, but he looked near dead. His eyes were sunken, his jaw stubbled with a scraggly beard, his clothes as wrinkled and dirty as if he’d slept for three days in a pigpen. Or maybe just laid in there and drank for three days. “I saw you!” he shouted to me over the wind’s blast. “Followed you! Yessir, ol’ Donny crept up behind you and bagged him a bird, didn’t he?” He threw his shoulders into a curve that made my eyes pop. “That fat sumbitch says I’m stupid! Show his fat ass who the smart Blaylock is!”

     If a gun, a fast car, and being drunker than a Shriner made a man smart, then Donny was Copernicus, Da Vinci, and Einstein rolled up into one mass of doughy genius.

     We whipped past Saxon’s Lake and the red rock cliff. “Whoa! Whoa, Big Dick!” Donny hollered at the car as he stepped on the brake. We slowed down enough for Donny to turn the Chevy to the right and onto a dirt road without flying us into the trees. Then he put on the gas again, and we zoomed the fifty yards between Route Ten and the small white house with a screened-in front porch that stood at the end of that road. I knew the house. The red Mustang was still parked under the green plastic awning, but the old rust-gnawed Cadillac was gone. The rose garden was still there, all thorns and no flowers.

     “
Whoa!
” Donny shouted, and his Big Dick came to a throbbing halt at the door of Miss Grace’s house of bad girls.

     Lord help me! I thought. What was this all about?

     He got out of the car, gun in hand. He showed me its ugly snout. “You better be here when I come back! Better be here, or I’ll hunt you down and kill you! Understand?”

     I nodded. Donny Blaylock had already killed one man. Mr. Dollar had said so. I had no doubt he would do it again, so my butt stayed glued to the seat. Donny staggered to the door and started beating on it. Somebody hollered from inside. Donny kicked the door open and charged in, shouting, “Where is she? Where’s my fuckin’ woman?”

     I was in deep dookey, that was for sure. Somehow in my fear-seized brain I thought that Dr. Lezander couldn’t be the one who’d killed that man at Saxon’s Lake; it had to be Donny Blaylock. Mr. Dollar had heard about it from Sim Sears. Donny Blaylock was the killer, not Dr. Lezander!

     Donny emerged from the house less than thirty seconds after he’d crashed in. He had hold of a girl by her blond hair, and he was dragging her as she fought and cursed.

     That girl was Lainie, who’d furled her tongue at me that very first day.

     “Get in that car!” Donny yelled as he dragged her over the ground. She was wearing a pink halter top and purple hot pants, and one of her silver shoes had come off. “Get in there, and do it quick!”

     “Lemme go! Lemme go, you sumbitch!”

      Out from the doorway shot redhaired, stocky Miss Grace, who wore a white sweater and blue jeans big enough to house a barn dance. She had the look of hellfire on her face and a frying pan in her right hand, and she lifted it to strike Donny over the head.

     He shot her.
Bam!
Just that fast.

     Miss Grace screamed and grabbed her shoulder as the crimson blossomed against the white like the opening of a rose. She fell to her knees, crying, “You shot me, you asshole! You dumb bastard, you!” Two more girls, both brunette and one as plump as the other was skinny, rushed out to kneel beside Miss Grace, while another blond girl stood in the doorway shouting, “We’re callin’ the sheriff! Right this minute, we’re callin’ him!”

     “You stupid shit!” Donny yelled as he reached the car. “We
own
the sheriff!” He yanked the door open and threw Lainie in on me, and I scrambled over into the backseat as she clawed and kicked to get out. Donny said, “Stop it!” and he hit her across the face with his free hand so hard, one second I was looking at the back of her head and the next at her face, the tough but pretty features pinched with pain. Blood began crawling from the corner of her mouth. “You want some more, you just keep it up!” Donny warned her, and then he went around and slid under the wheel. The Chevy’s engine fired. I started to jump out, but Donny caught my motion in the rearview mirror and the pistol’s barrel swatted at my head. If I hadn’t ducked in time, I might’ve earned my wings for real. “Just sit there! The both of you!” Donny shouted, and he whipped the car around in a neck-wrenching circle and headed for Route Ten again.

     “You’re crazy!” Lainie seethed, one hand pressed to her mouth. “I told you to leave me alone!”

     “Do tell!”

     “I swear I won’t stand for this! Miss Grace’ll—”

     “
What’ll
she do? I shoulda shot her brains out!”

     Lainie made a move for the door handle. But just then we reached Route Ten and Donny laid on the gas. The Chevy’s tires screeched as we sped toward Zephyr once more. Lainie’s fingers were gripping the handle, but we were already going fifty miles an hour.

     “Jump,” Donny said, and he grinned. “Go on, I dare ya!”

     Her fingers loosened. They let go.

     “I’ll get the law on you! I swear it!”

     “Sure you will.” His grin widened. “The law don’t have time for trash like you.”

     “You’re drunk and out of your mind!” She glanced back at me. “What’re you doin’ draggin’ a kid around with you for?”

     “Family business. You just shut up and look pretty.”

      “Damn you to hell,” she spat at him, but he just laughed.

     The Chevy crossed the gargoyle bridge again. We passed Rocket. A crow was perched on the handlebars, trying to pry the pie box open. The indignity of it! Donny tore through Zephyr at sixty miles an hour, blowing dead leaves in our wake. He burst out on the other side and hit Route Sixteen, and we raced across the hills toward Union Town.

     “Kidnappin’!” Lainie was still raging. “That’s what it is! They can kill you for that!”

     “I don’t give a shit. I got you. That’s what I want.”

     “I don’t want
you!
”

     His hand grabbed her chin and squeezed. The Chevy swerved across the road, and I gasped as I saw the woods reaching for us. Then Donny veered us back onto pavement again with a jerk of his arm. We were straddling the centerline. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you ever say that, or you’ll be real sorry.”

     “I’m just shakin’!” She tried to pull loose, but his wiry fingers tightened.

     “I don’t wanna hurt you, baby. God knows I don’t.” His fingers released her, but their marks stayed on her skin.

     “I ain’t your baby! I told you a long time ago, I don’t want nothin’ to do with you or them damn brothers of yours!”

     “You take our money, don’t you? High and mighty for a damned punchboard, ain’t you?”

     “I’m a
professional
,” she said with a measure of pride. “I don’t love you, don’t you get it? I don’t even
like
you! Only one man I ever loved, and he’s with Jesus.”

     “
Jesus
.” He mocked her voice. “That bastard’s rottin’ in hell.” His eyes flickered to the rearview mirror. I saw them narrow. “What the
fuck?
” he whispered.

     I looked back. A car was behind us, gaining rapidly.

     It was a black car. Black as a panther.

     “No.” Donny shook his head. “Oh, no. I cain’t be
that
wasted!”

     Lainie looked back, too, her lower lip swollen. “What is it?”

     “That car. See it?”

     “What car?”

     Her deep brown eyes registered nothing. I saw it, though. Clear as light. And Donny did, too. I could tell by the way he was letting the Chevy drift all over the road. The black car was speeding after us. In another moment I could make out the flames painted on the hood. I could see the faint shape of the driver through the slanted windshield. He seemed to be crouched forward, eager to catch us.

     “Hell’s bells!” Donny’s knuckles whitened around the furry wheel. “I’m goin’ off my rocker!”

     “You just now figurin’ that one out? Kidnappin’ me is bad enough, but your ass is gonna be in a crack for shootin’ Miss Grace! What if you’d killed her?”

     “Shut up.” Little beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead. His eyes kept ticking back and forth from the rearview mirror to the winding road ahead. The black car was lost for a few seconds behind a curve, and then I saw Midnight Mona slide around it and come out of a shadow, barreling after us. The sun was dull on the black paint and the tinted windshield. The Chevy was on the high side of seventy; Midnight Mona had to be doing near ninety.

     “There’s where it happened!” Lainie pointed at a place off the roadside, the wind whipping the hair around her strained and lonely face. “That’s where my baby got killed!”

     She was pointing at a place that might’ve just looked like weeds and thick underbrush, except two dead and blackened trees stood side by side, their trunks cut by deep and ugly gashes. The limbs of the trees were interlocked, as if embracing each other even in death.

     I looked at her blond hair, and I remembered it.

     Hers was the head I had seen resting on the shoulder of Little Stevie Cauley, a long time ago in the Spinnin’ Wheel’s parking lot.

     “
Look out!
” Lainie suddenly screamed, and she grabbed for the wheel as a tractor-trailer truck roared over a hill in front of us, its grille filling Big Dick’s windshield like a mouthful of silver teeth. Donny had been watching Midnight Mona grow in the rearview mirror, and he shouted with terror and twisted the wheel. The truck’s massive tires zoomed past, a deep bass horn bellowing with indignation. I turned around in time to see the truck and Midnight Mona merge together, and then Midnight Mona burst through the truck’s rear wheels and kept on coming and the truck went on its way as dumb as Paul Bunyan’s ox. Donny hadn’t seen this feat of magic; he’d been too busy trying to keep us from crashing. “That was damn close!” Lainie said, and when she looked back I could tell she still saw nothing of the black car.