The Suicide Motor Club (23 page)

CLAYTON FOUND THEM A RELATIVELY FLAT, DESERTED STRETCH OF FARM ROAD IN
Arkansas and switched seats with Judith. She sat behind the wheel of the wicked black Camaro. A slouching scarecrow with a woman's hat faced a bean field to her right like a drunken conductor. Corn waved to her left. Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth as she remembered her mother once told her seemed to help for a minute, but the panic crept up in her anyway.

She got out of the car and stood bent over with her sweaty palms on her thighs. She tried to focus her mind on other things. She looked at the toes of her one-size-too-big combat boots, noticed how badly her jeans needed washing. She spat dry spit and got control of her breathing.

“We should just drive the van,” Clayton said.

“We don't have the van yet. And we need to go fast. We need to drive day and night without stopping.”

“Maybe it's time for me to give you your present.”

“What present?”

“You don't think I just sat in the car like a good boy while you bought ammunition for your sidearm, do you?”

She smiled despite herself.

“Put your hand out.”

She did as he instructed.

He dropped a medallion into her palm.

“St. Christopher?” she said.

“He helps travelers, I hear.”

“Put it on me, please.”

He stepped behind her and put it on. She reached back to hold her hair out of the way for him, but this was just a reflex; the abbey had cut her hair just above the neck. She remembered now the dark snowfall of her tresses, then remembered even further back to the last time a man had put a necklace on her. Rob, her husband. A diamond their last Christmas together. He was a flawed, weak man, but he had loved her in his way.

“Where did you get this?” she said, turning to face the vampire, but stepping back so as not to stand too close. An owl hooted in the darkness.

“Don't worry about that.”

“Religious stores aren't open at night. And you wouldn't have bought it for yourself.”

“Correct on both counts.”

“So did you steal it out of some nice old woman's car while I was shopping?”

“I love the way you make buying large-caliber bullets sound like a stroll through Macy's.”

“You've dodged the question. I can't wear a stolen St. Christopher medal.”

“You didn't steal it.”

“Stolen nonetheless.”

“I didn't admit that.”

She made a sound like a small growl.

“And why doesn't it harm you? Or disturb you?” she said. “I thought holy objects were off-limits to . . . your kind.”

“My parents failed to indoctrinate me to the mysteries of faith. Crosses have never bothered me. Even if they did, I don't know if this would have any effect since Christopher's not actually a saint anymore.”

“Oh, he's a saint all right.”

“Not as of February. According to what I read.”

“You read hastily, Mr. Birch; the Holy Father simply removed his feast day.”

“How rude.”

“They had to. The calendar was getting crowded. Anyway, if you're so skeptical, why did you bring him to me?”

“It's not my faith that's at issue here.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You're the one who needs to believe in this, so go ahead and believe in it.”

She stared into his handsome greenish eyes, not sure if he was pulling her leg.

He looked more intensely.

“You're going to drive this car without fear. You're going to drive it skillfully and you're going to come back safe in it.”

“That doesn't work on me. Or, at least, it didn't.”

“What changed?”

You no longer look like a pork chop,
she thought, and bit her lip not to laugh.

“I don't know, Mr. Birch. But I can't waste any more time.”

—

JUDITH HAD LEARNED TO DRIVE IN HER FATHER'S 1959 CHEVY APACHE TRUCK, A
three-speed floor shifter, so the Camaro's five-speed transmission
was not an impossible leap for her. The power in the thing, however, was a different matter. She drove the farm roads of Missouri with increasing confidence, the Camaro's headlights sweeping barns and silos and the rusted hulks of prewar tractors, fireflies on either side of them glinting sweetly over low crops and in the elbow bends of hedges. Twice she almost put them in a ditch; once, her use of a hard-packed dirt driveway to turn around had summoned forth an older man who, silhouetting himself in the lit rectangle of a door and shaking what looked like a rolled-up magazine at them (had he been killing a fly? Beating a house dog?), yelled “Goddamn bums! Goddamn draft dodgers! Go to town and do your drag racing, we're Christian folks here.”

Speeding away from him, Judith enjoyed her first real, deep laugh in a very long time.

—

AN HOUR LATER CLAYTON ROSE IN THE NEAR DARKNESS OF THE PASSENGER SEAT,
consulting the careworn, rained-on fold-out map he kept in his coat. “I suppose I should invest in a new one,” he said, charmingly embarrassed.

“Are we close to Joplin?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” she said. “It's on Independence Road. Howell's Body Shop and Wrecking Service.”

“You need gas.”

“So I do,” she said, putting her blinker on and veering toward a big orange Gulf sign.

They parked by the pumps and, as she watched him fold away his map, she said, “I wonder how they navigate? Do they have those bothersome, hard-to-fold maps? Or do they just know where they're going?”

“No,” he said. Then he sat up straight as he seemed to remember something painfully obvious. “They used an atlas.”

They looked at one another.

“Check under the seat!” she said, even as he bent forward to do exactly that.

“THERE SHE IS. THAT'S HER,” COLE SAID. “THAT
IS
ONE.”

Cole held forth a copy of
Motor Trend
magazine opened to a dog-eared page that bore the legend
Mustang Mach 1
in lime-green letters.

“Listen,” Cole said, and read aloud,
“You do not merely sit in the Mach One, you close the door and seal yourself away in a tiny capsule. Your eye falls on the dash and your hand reaches out instinctively to see if the teakwood grain panels are real . . .”

“Ain't an automatic, is it?”

“I dearly doubt it.”

Cole scanned the magazine, turned the page. “One in the picture here's a stick.”

“Better not be an automatic.”

“It's a four-speed, asshole, I'd bet on it. Look at it. Royal maroon.”

“Yeah, I can see what color it is.”

“Kinda makes you hungry, don't it? That blood color.”

“Stop tryin' to sell me.”

“You always were a Ford man.”

“Mostly.”

“Then you met that pretty red goat.”

“Yeppers.”

“Mustang's on top now.”

“Some people think so. I'm used to thinking of 'em as small blocks. Little ponies.”

“They were, maybe.”

“'Member that greeny-blue one in New York?”

“Teal.”

“Teal ain't no color for a man's car.”

“Musta had it painted special.”

“I guess.”

“Small block.”

“Well, Mach One ain't no small block. Look at it.”

“I just wish they hadn't fucked up the GTO after '67.”

“But they did.”

“Made a goddamn hobgoblin out of it.”

“Nah, they ain't pretty no more. But this one is. Even says
Cobra Jet
on the scoop. Four twenty-eight. Rob'll go nuts.”

“I see it. You just want this one back.”

“Bet it'll beat this one.”

“You're just sayin' that. Earlier you said nothing could beat a 427 Camaro, not even a Vette.”

“Bet it could, though.”

“Maybe if an asshole were drivin' this one.”

“One is.”

“Fuck you, Cole.”

“Right back atcha. You took my car. Well?”

“Sure is pretty.”

“Somebody's comin' up.”

“I see.”

“Keys in his hand.”

“I see 'em, shut up.”

“Them girls with him, the one can't be seventeen.”

“Good for him. Now shut up.”

“Flip the lights on.”

—

CHARLES MURPHY NETTLES WAS ENJOYING THE HELL OUT OF HIS SUMMER HOME
from school. Classes at UT Austin were tough, but he paid top dollar for test answers and had just coasted through his sophomore year with a B average and minimal inconvenience to his robust social life. His roommate at the Phi Gam house had heard so much unzipping of jeans and boots coming from his bed that the other Fiji brothers had dubbed Nettles “Lord of the Flies.” One of the secrets of his success, aside from the fact that he looked like a skinny, young version of Superman, was that he knew what people wanted to hear and how to say those things without getting himself on the hook. His dad, for example, had wanted to hear that he would have his brand-new Mustang home by midnight without a scratch on it, and that was what he told him. If he managed to get these two free-love chicks (one a high school senior, one a college freshman) out to the cornfield behind the Jack in the Box or the abandoned warehouse by the railroad tracks, he sure wasn't going to be watching his watch. And things were going okay. For all their talk about new America and tuning in and dropping out, they were awfully impressed with the woodgrain dash and bucket seats in the 'Stang. They had asked him to take them to a place not too far from his own home, the Catacombs in Rice Village.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't Charlie's scene. For one thing, you had to be a member of “the club” to get a drink and the cutoff age was twenty-one. Like, you had to be
younger
than that to be a member. Charlie had just turned twenty-one at the end of June, and the bartender nearly denied him. So Charlie stood by the bar nursing his drink, listening to some band with a drummer who looked like Prince Valiant with a mustache. He wasn't worried about seeming hip. He
had found that the best way to stoke a girl's furnace was just not to care. So he listened to the formless electronic music and watched the projected-light show (which looked like a brightly colored science project) and let his face read exactly what he was feeling.
This is fine and all, but we've got better places to be.

He had watched the older of the two girls, he was pretty sure her name was Ronda, start to get drawn in by some vocal, skinny mixed-race guy who wore the ashes of his draft card in a little plastic pouch around his neck and used the word
paradigm
a lot, so he ambled over—Charlie had a flawless amble—and said, “Train's leavin' in five, ladies.”

“Oh, really?” the maybe-Ronda said. “I'm kinda having a good time here.”

“Yeah, man,” Paradigm said, “why not be cool and hang out awhile?” Charlie knew the guy had already made him out as a poser but also knew the cruel math of car keys. Possibly-Ronda smiled at Charlie. The younger girl just held her purse and waited to see which way the wind would blow.

“My friend, I will be cool anywhere I go, and right now I'm fixin' to go to Rooster Eddie's. You been there?”

“Naw, man, I don't know that place.”

“Maybe you should get to know it. They've got a band, too. And Shiner. Anyway, we're about to split. Meet us there if you want.”

“Naw, I heard about that place. They're all hawked out in there.”

“What?”

“Jocks and GI Joes, man.”

“Ah, right. Well, I'll check it out and get back to you. Ladies? Ready to hat up?”

“Wait. Ronda.”

Charlie silently thanked the hippie kid for confirming his soon-to-be conquest's name.

“Can I get your number?”

The balls on him! Charlie's respect for Paradigm went up considerably. Of course, he would still have to shut the kid out tonight—business was business.

Ronda darted her eyes at Charlie and back at Paradigm—she clearly thought about it but dreaded the awkwardness of fishing for pen and paper under her sort-of date's gaze, or maybe she imagined her conservative daddy answering the phone and chatting this kid up, but either way, she said, “I think we're going just now. But why don't you come meet us?”

Because he doesn't want to get his scrawny, draft-dodging, nonwhite ass kicked in Rooster Eddie's parking lot, that's why.

“Yeah, come meet us,” Charlie said, smiling a shit-eating grin.

“I'll pass,” Paradigm said.

“Suit yourself.”

Charlie turned and headed for the door. The girls followed in his wake.

—

HE WALKED THROUGH THE KNOT OF POT-SMELLING KIDS CROWDING AROUND THE
front door and crossed University Street diagonally to where his dad's Mustang was parked. As he opened the door and pushed the seat forward so the younger girl could get in, he heard the rumble of a muscle car cruising at an idling trot and saw a new Camaro with its headlights off turn the corner off Kirby (why did he have the impression it had been circling?), flip the lights on, and sidle up next to them. The driver, a bald man, leaned over his boyish passenger to address Charlie.

“That's a helluva nice car.”

“Thanks.”

“That all yours?”

“You bet,” he said.

“Lucky kid.”

“Don't I know it,” he said, now letting Ronda into the passenger seat of the Mach 1.

“Automatic?”

“No, sir, standard.”

“Good boy. Say,” the bald man said. “You wouldn't want to, you know, do that thing people do with fast cars to see which of them cars is faster, would you? 'Cause I got fifty bucks says this Camaro's gonna get at least a car length on that 'Stang on a quarter-mile drag. What you think?”

“I don't know, man, I've got places to be,” he said, giving a nod to his passengers and smiling a “you know what's up” smile at the older man in the Camaro.

“Aww, c'mon, kid. How often you think I see a car I think's even
maybe
worthy of running up against this here mill?”

“I don't want to race,” the younger girl in the back said.

“Yeah, me neither. Let's go to this Rooster place you were talking about,” Ronda said.

“What have you got under there, anyway?” Charlie said. “A 351?”

“Maybe, maybe not. That's for you to find out. Ask me where I want to do it.”

Charlie said, “Where you want to do it?”

“Now you're talking!” the bald man in the Camaro said.

The smaller blond man in the passenger seat said, “Show me the money, boy.”

“This is dumb, Charlie,” Ronda said.

Ronda was starting to sound like a pain in the ass.

Charlie flashed some bills.

“So where?” he said.

“I don't know, kid, I'm a Carolina man. Where do the boys with the big britches go to lay a patch in Houston-town?”

“Rankin Road, mostly. On the weekends.”

“Ain't gonna be here on the weekend. How about right now?”

“Okay.”

“Let us out,” Ronda said.

“No, honey, you're gonna stay in the car,” the one with the dirty-blond James Dean hair said, and suddenly Ronda wanted very much to stay in the car.

“That's right,” the bald one said. “What's a race without race fans? Come on, now, lead the way!”

The Mustang pulled away now, closely shadowed by the Camaro, both cars rumbling their way through the streets of Rice Village, on north toward the brand-new airport.

The younger girl, Becky Ann Davis of Tomball, said, “Where are we going? Are we really going to race? I'd rather not, please,” but nobody listened. Not her gently drooling friend in the front seat. Not the wild-eyed boy at the wheel of the Mustang. Not even the large man with the neck brace who, when the cars pulled even, leaned forward from his backseat post in the Camaro and seemed, for just a moment, to be trying to read her lips.