What You Have Left (10 page)

Scanning the parking lot, I expect to see Wylie's Firebird, expect to see Wylie himself, but the only other person around is a teenager gassing up his VW. It's all I can do to keep calm. I don't even want to consider the possibility that Wylie's gone, because if Holly really knows I lied, it'll be my fault he got away. I cut through the garage, casting a quick
glance around. Before now, it hasn't occurred to me that Wylie might have skipped town, but suddenly it makes perfect sense. Of course he figured I'd tell Holly I found him. Of course he didn't think I'd lie to the woman I love.

Now Holly regards me with mock surprise. “How about that?” she says. “Another liar.” Gene looks like he's swallowed a mouthful of Beech-Nut. He turns to me for help, as though Holly is mine to control, but she's already stepping through the doorway behind the register. I can hear other doors opening as she searches the office, the bathroom, the break room. I catch up with her as she pushes through the back door out into the dusty lot behind the garage.

“Will you please stop following me?” she says. We're standing between the two race cars Wylie's been working on. I tell Holly that if she'll calm down for five seconds, I'll explain. She surprises me by crossing her arms and waiting. “One one thousand,” she says, eyes boring into me. “Two one thousand.” I'm still trying to decide where to start when I hear tires screeching. I crack the door. Two state patrol cars have converged on the garage, blocking the Plymouth. When the troopers get out, they have their revolvers drawn, and they don't look happy: somebody has embarrassed them, and somebody's going to pay.

One glance over my shoulder and Holly's ready to run, but I've got her by the arm and I'm not letting go. I press my car keys into her hand. “Give me yours,” I say. She starts to argue, but I tell her to hurry, it'll be worse for her. She's shaking so hard she can barely get the keys out of her pocket. The last thing I do before I walk through that door is close her fingers around the diamond ring.

The troopers are barricaded behind their cars, calling for the driver of the Plymouth to come out of the building
with his hands up, so that's what I do. Gene's still at the register, and I'm afraid he'll blow Holly's cover, but he gives me a glance as I pass, sums up the situation with a raised eyebrow, and spits into a Coke bottle. For all the headache Holly's caused him, he is not a man without pity—at least when it comes to his buddy's daughter.

As soon as I'm out front, the troopers start yelling at me to get down. I drop to my knees, then lie facedown on the asphalt beside the gas pumps. They're on me in a flash, pinning me and cuffing my hands behind my back. All the while they're calling me cowboy, telling me what a fuckup I am, how badly I fucked up, how fucked I am. I keep my mouth shut and stare straight ahead, hoping for a glimpse of Holly at the back door, but what catches my eye instead, underneath a van in the service bay, is a dark figure—the figure, perhaps, of a mechanic lying on a creeper. Then again, maybe it's just a shadow. I blink twice, squinting through the shimmers of heat rising from the blacktop, but before I know for sure what I'm looking at, the trooper takes his boot off my back and they're hauling me up, guiding me toward the cruiser. I want to call out to Holly, tell her to look under the van, but I don't want the police to see her. It's hard to swallow the fact that I'll never know if that's Wylie under there. I'd like to think it is. I'd like to think he and Holly are taking a good long look as the troopers bend me into the back of the car, and what they're seeing, both of them, is a guy who's not afraid to put in his time.

 

Wylie knew Maddy didn't intend to spend the rest of her life banging fenders with a bunch of dirt dobbers and shade-tree mechanics in some little bullring. “You and me,” she told him, “we got a plan.” Really, it was more pipe dream than plan, but Wylie didn't care, so long as he was in it. Basically it involved the two of them leaving Columbia and running off to North Carolina. That's where they'd build their first real car, a late-model sportsman. No more hobby division. Wylie would be the mechanic, crew chief, whatever: he'd take care of the car. Maddy would do what she did best, which was drive. Her goal was to make the Grand National circuit, become the first lady driver at Darlington. Together, they'd be NASCAR's only husband and wife team.

“If we've got a plan,” Wylie said, “what are we waiting for?”

It was Thursday afternoon, Maddy's day off, and they were in the four-poster bed paid for by her fiancé, Dale—a big bed for the big house Dale planned to buy once they were married. Maddy still hadn't told Dale they were through, and Wylie was starting to think she never would. He nudged her hip with his.

“Well?”

“You tell me,” Maddy said.

This was what came after the sex, the two of them saying the same things they'd been saying to each other for months. It was a conversation that went around and around, like a slow, frustrating race, only there was no finish line in sight. He wanted her to leave Dale, she wanted him to leave Sheila, but no matter how many threats or pleas or ultimatums were spoken, neither had the nerve to make the first move.

Now they had an hour before they had to be at the track, back in the real world, and they might have wasted the rest of the afternoon arguing if someone hadn't rung the doorbell. For a second Maddy stared at Wylie as if she didn't quite believe what she'd heard, then she flew out of bed and started throwing on her clothes. Wylie's first impulse was to hide in the closet, which he wasn't too proud to do, but he was too proud to get caught there, so he concentrated on not losing his cool. It made his heart pound to think about the world of shit he was in for if Sheila found out how he spent his Thursday afternoons. There would be tears and shouting, maybe flying bottles. She'd want to know who else knew, why he hadn't told her the truth, when he'd quit loving her, what she'd done to make him hate her enough to make such a fool of her. She'd want to know about the sex, too— how many times they'd done it, what was so great about it, so great about Maddy. Then
she'd
probably want to do it, which he'd probably feel obliged to do, and the whole time she'd be crying and asking him why, and he wouldn't have a single thing to say for himself.

“Sheila's at work,” he said, pulling on his jeans. “Dale's at work. It's probably somebody selling something.”

Maddy was feeling under the bed for her bra. “Of
course
it's not Dale. Dale has a key.”

Wylie didn't let himself think too hard about the fact that
he
didn't have a key. He peered between the curtains and found himself staring down at the orange crew cut of Bobby Taggert, one of the other mechanics from the Ford dealership they all worked at. That morning, after replacing the transmission in a Galaxie, Wylie'd told Tag he was off to deliver a fuel pump to a speed shop out in Lexington. Over in parts, Maddy had had the pump waiting. Now it was on the seat of Wylie's truck just around the corner, still in its box, and for all Wylie knew, Tag had seen it and figured out the score.

Tag rang the doorbell again. His race car, a dented 1959 Fairlane, was hitched to the back of his Jeep at the curb. It was the same model as Maddy's, only three years older and worse for wear. “Maddy? Wylie? Anybody home?”

Maddy covered her mouth when she recognized the voice. “Oh my God,” she said. “Why's he calling you?”

All Wylie could do was shrug. Between work and the track, Tag saw them together more than anybody else. The three of them used to spend weekends in Maddy's driveway, tinkering with the Fairlanes while Sheila and Dale drank beer and tossed horseshoes in the yard. But Maddy hadn't been on speaking terms with Tag since he knocked her out of last week's race. She didn't believe for a second it had been an accident. “Those boys put him up to it,” she'd told Wylie as her car was towed off the track. “I guarantee you, they took up a collection, drew straws or something to see who'd be the lucky guy.”

Wylie'd thought she was wrong about Tag—all week the poor guy had been apologizing for the wreck—but now,
gazing down at Tag's sunburned forehead, he wasn't so sure. It was no secret the other drivers wanted Maddy gone, and with the cold shoulder she'd been giving Tag, it was only a matter of time before he started feeling the same. So maybe he was here to yank their chain a little; maybe he was even thinking there was some money to be made. Or maybe it was nothing like that at all. Maybe he just figured Maddy would be out for revenge—a pretty safe bet—and he was here to patch things up.

“You should go see what he wants,” Wylie said.

Maddy looked like he'd asked her to jump out the window. “
I'm
not going down there.”

“Never mind,” Wylie said. “He's leaving.”

But he wasn't. He was heading around back, where Maddy's Fairlane was parked in front of the garage. She and Wylie tiptoed across the hall and watched from the bathroom as Tag climbed into her car, gripped the wheel, and spat tobacco juice into the gravel.
Get your freckly ass out of my car,
Wylie thought. True, Dale was the Fairlane's actual owner, but Wylie was the one who kept it running. Wylie was the one who'd used up a week's vacation turning it into a race car, five days he was supposed to spend at Garden City with Sheila, five days he was still catching hell for.

“That son of a bitch,” Maddy said, squinting between the blinds.

“He's not doing anything. He's just sitting there.”

“What if he starts poking around under the hood?” She was worried about the roller-tappet cam, the milled cylinder heads, all of the stuff she hadn't wanted done to the car but that Wylie had insisted on doing, telling her they had to bend a rule here and there because all the other drivers did, too.

“He won't find anything,” Wylie said. “He'd have to take the whole engine apart.”

Maddy was threatening to call the police by the time Tag finally hoisted himself from the car. For a moment he stared at the house, as if waiting for Maddy to show herself, then he shrugged, walked into the garage, and came out carrying Wylie's socket kit. Wylie put his arm around Maddy. “See? He's just borrowing tools.”

“You mean stealing.” Maddy ducked away and headed back to the bedroom. From behind the curtain, they watched Tag stash the socket kit in the Jeep and pull away. Before he made the turn onto Rosewood, he stuck his arm out the window. A turn signal? A wave? A taunt? Maddy sat on the bed with her hands between her knees. It was ninety degrees out, but she was shivering. “I can't believe this,” she said. “I can't believe you're so calm. He's
spying
on us.”

“Who's calm?” Wylie said, but she was right—he felt almost peaceful. Watching Tag drive off, he'd begun to think maybe this wasn't such a bad turn of events. If Tag did know about them, and if that led to Dale finding out, then Maddy would have to make a decision. Really, it would be for her own good. She wasn't meant to be with Dale, but she couldn't bring herself to leave him. “How can I do that to him?” she'd say. “We're supposed to get married and have kids and spend summers at Hilton Head.” Dale owned Holman's, the downtown men's shop he'd taken over from his father. He was a nice guy who could provide a nice life for Maddy. But it seemed that what Wylie and Maddy had was true love, and it seemed, too, a lot of the time, that Maddy wouldn't be able to live without it. Still, there were other times when it seemed like Maddy had her eyes on the prize, the fat life with Dale, and Wylie was just a way to pass the time.

“Maybe this is a sign,” he said. “Maybe we should tell Sheila and Dale before Tag does.”

Maddy glared at him. “A sign?” she said. “There aren't any
signs,
Wylie.” She picked up his shirt and shoes and shoved them against his stomach.

“But won't it be worse if they hear it from someone else?”

“Out,” she said, steering him into the hall and closing the door. Wylie stood in the hallway with his forehead against the door, listening to Maddy bang drawers shut. In trying to force her hand, he had crossed a line. Normally, that was Dale's department—Dale who was so sure he knew what was best for Maddy, that she should quit racing, leave parts, take some classes, or come work at Holman's. When it was quiet again, Wylie went in. She was lying on her side, facing the wall. Her uniform—gray coveralls with red stripes stitched down the sides—was draped over the footboard. Wylie sat next to her and gathered up the damp hair at the back of her neck, blowing a little breeze there.

“My life is one big mistake,” she said.

“No, it's not,” he said. “It's a series of small mistakes.”

She smiled a little, and he apologized and said of course they shouldn't tell Dale and Sheila, not unless it was what they both wanted, and before long he had her across the hall and in the shower. “What for?” she said. “I'm just going to get filthy at the track,” but she let him soap up her back and shampoo her hair. He told her to relax, focus on the race. When he'd finished rinsing her off, he patted her down with a towel. They were back at the window looking out at the Fairlane. Wylie couldn't afford an Ethan Allen bed, so this had been his birthday present to her—a gleaming silver paint job worthy of a Grand National car, her number eleven
in black on each door, and, along the fenders, trails of flame the color of her hair. The first time she saw it, she looked like she wanted to cry. “It's so pretty,” she'd said. “And it'll just get banged to shit.”

The track was in West Columbia, out past Piggie Park Bar-BQ on 321 South. As they approached the gate, Wylie told Maddy he wanted to touch up the Ford on Saturday. That, and he'd like a key to her apartment. She leaned over, kissed him, and slipped him a key. “Keep it somewhere safe,” she said, as if she'd been planning to give him one all along. At the gate, she flashed her NASCAR license, and the sleepy attendant waved them across the track and into the infield. The grandstand was already starting to fill up. This was 1970, before they paved the track and people stopped coming. Wylie drove past the shiny late-models on pit row and headed for the cusp of infield grass that served as a makeshift pit area for the hobby cars. Guys in T-shirts and grease-smeared jeans were tuning battered Fords and Chevys. All of the cars were old, and all of them were American; those were the rules in the hobby division. A couple of guys nodded hello to Wylie, but nobody came over, which was how it had been ever since he hooked up with Maddy. Columbia Speedway was one of the few tracks around that allowed women on pit row, but there were no women owners, no women mechanics, and certainly no other women drivers, not unless you counted powder-puff derbies, and Maddy didn't.