Drive Like Hell: A Novel Read online

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  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Dallas Hudgens

  All rights reserved, including the right of

  reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of

  Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

  Designed by Kyoko Watanabe

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2004056576

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6547-5

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-6547-7

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  To Deborah

  Acknowledgments

  With thanks to Joe Regal for his insight and unwavering belief, and to Brant Rumble for supporting this book and providing his editorial skill. I’m especially grateful for my friends Wendi Kaufman, Robyn Kirby Wright, Scott W. Berg, and Corrine Gormont, who provided help and encouragement from start to finish. Special thanks to Casey McKinney, Tom Jenks, and the Museum of Television and Radio’s Jane Klain. I also want to acknowledge Paul Hemphill’s Wheels as a resource on the history of stock car racing.

  Prologue

  I may not have spent much time with Lyndell Fulmer, or have known him the way that some people think a son ought to know a father, but I understood him.

  “If you remember anything,” he said, “let it be this. A real man eats pussy and drives a stick shift.”

  He told me this when I was ten years old. He was drinking Lem Motlow as we skimmed along a blacktop outside of town in his ‘66 Chevelle Super Sport. Three in the morning.

  I was the one behind the wheel, perched up at the edge of the seat so I could reach the gas and the clutch, edging up to 50 in a 45. Lyndell was riding shotgun and doing his talking, most of it about driving, like how to downshift and work your heel and toe on the brakes and the accelerator at the same time.

  He was lean and dark, with kick-ass sideburns and a junior Porter Wagoner pompadour. A Kool snagged in his teeth and the pint of Motlow between his legs, he fiddled with the radio dial, trying to find something worth listening to, all the while letting me drive as if I were Cale Yarborough.

  He pointed to an oak tree up ahead of us, sitting off a bend in the road. “That’s your entry point, right there,” he said. “When you get to that tree, squeeze the brakes and cut the wheel. Don’t jump on the gas again until you start to unwind.”

  “Unwind what?”

  “The steering wheel,” he said. “What else?”

  “Well, what if I start spinning?”

  “You ain’t gonna spin. Jesus Christ, don’t be so goddamn negative.”

  He leaned back and mulled over the situation. “Of course, if you do spin, remember to turn into it, not against it.”

  “Got it.”

  “All right. Good.”

  He dialed in a Charlie Rich song on the radio and turned it up nice and loud, so he could hear it over the screaming engine. The Silver Fox was singing about what goes on behind closed doors. Lyndell closed his eyes and started playing the dashboard like it was a baby grand. He didn’t appear concerned in the least that I might wreck his car. I pointed the high beams right at the oak tree and prepared myself to brake and downshift.

  My baby makes me proud, Lord don’t she make me proud.

  She never makes a scene by hanging all over me in a crowd.

  Claudia, my mother, was disappointed in Charlie Rich. She thought he’d sold out and forsaken the hard-core, gut-bucket country shit that she really loved. Claudia stood firmly in the corner of folks like Hank and Lefty and Lester Flatt, Faron Young, Webb Pierce, and Hank Thompson. She liked the twang and the heartbreak and people talking about killing their lovers. Sounding too smooth never sat well with her. She never had much good to say about “Gentleman” Jim Reeves or Eddie Arnold. “There’s no place more boring than the middle of the road,” she’d say.

  She and Lyndell had the radio playing in the kitchen one night. They were smoking and fretting over my older brother, Nick, who was in the midst of a twelve-month prison term on account of marijuana trafficking. They’d been to see him that afternoon, and they were talking about his lawyer and his upcoming parole hearing. That’s when Charlie Rich came on the radio. He was singing about the most beautiful girl in the world, prompting Claudia to forget all about Nick.

  “He used to be good,” she said, “back when he sang real country music.”

  I was eating a bowl of Pet vanilla ice cream, and Lyndell was tapping out the beat to the music with his Zippo. He shrugged and frowned. “It’s only a song, Claudia. Why can’t you just relax and enjoy it?”

  “Because,” she said, “the more you listen to that stuff, the more of it they’re gonna make.”

  She looked down at me. “Do you like this song?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t like any of that country stuff. They all sound like a bunch of hicks.”

  Claudia could always get sidetracked by music. It might have even meant more to her than cars meant to Lyndell. They each had their Saturday-night destinations. Lyndell’s was the dirt track, where he’d change the tires on the Chevelle, slap a pair of magnetized number 7’s to the doors, and race in the hobby stock class. Meanwhile, Claudia would be working over at the fish camp, dishing out hush puppies and slaw in the serving line until the house band called her onstage to sing her two songs: “I Can’t Help It If I’m Still in Love With You” and “Just Someone I Used to Know.”

  She’d be wearing her Wranglers and straw cowboy hat, her thin, blonde hair pouring out the sides of it. She always waited for some fellow from the dance floor to give her a boost onto the stage, and then she’d drop her apron and take her spot behind the mike, calling out “one, two, three” in an unsure voice, like she wasn’t going to pull it off. Then the Green Lake Gang would start up with their playing, and her voice would suddenly grow strong and run like cool water atop all of their twanging and banging. The men standing down front would stare up at her until their partners grabbed their shoulders and turned them back around to dance.

  Claudia and Lyndell could have been one of those couples in a country duet, maybe something by Dolly and Porter, or Conway and Loretta. Verse one would have covered the early years, Claudia sixteen and living with a second cousin, just a quiet girl who’d been abandoned by her mother. Then Lyndell comes along, a good bit older, already been through one marriage and a stint in Korea, nursing a constant hangover while he fixes transmissions at a garage. He’s got a glow that’s not all whiskey, and Claudia falls for him. She turns up pregnant, they get married, and Nick is born. Life’s sunnier than July.

  Verse two would have to introduce the heartbreak; Lyndell drifting and drinking and fighting his demons, finally leaving and getting married to another woman. Claudia’s all alone again, except for the kid. It ain’t July anymore.

  Verse three would provide the reconciliation, with Dolly doing the singing:

  And then, eight years later, he called me out of the blue.

  He said, “Honey, I’m with this other woman, but I’ve been thinking of you.”

  He said, “I’m the water and you’re the moon, and if I can’t see you soon,

  then I do believe my heart will turn to dust.”

  That would have been a good ending right there, Dolly taking him back and then fading things out with a nice refrain about lovers under the moon. But Lyndell an
d Claudia’s story still had a few more verses to go, and they really weren’t all that song-worthy. Of course, I still had to be born. And then Lyndell would run back to his wife, who’d eventually find out about the fling that produced me. She’d shit a brick, divorce Lyndell, settle up for possession of his GTO, and then burn it right in front of his eyes for spite. Lyndell would drift for several years, until he heard about Nick being locked up. And that would bring him back again. He was no longer the dashingly drunk paramour. He was just a man who needed a place to stay. And so Claudia offered him the sofa.

  I met Lyndell at two o’clock in the morning, when he slipped into my bedroom smelling of sweet liquor and cigarette smoke. I didn’t know who he was. I only heard the floorboards creaking in the darkness, so I reached under the bed for my Rico Carty baseball bat. As soon as the tall, dark figure stepped into the strike zone, I took his ass to right field.

  All the air rushed out of his body. He groaned, dropped to his knees, and fell onto his side. He looked like a wrestler who’d just been thrown from the ring. “My kidney,” he whimpered. “Oh, God. I think my kidney’s ruptured.”

  The hallway light came on and Claudia swept into the room, still tying her blue bathrobe. I was standing on the bed with the bat cocked behind my ear, and Lyndell was lying on his back with his hands covering the top of his head.

  Claudia rushed over and grabbed the barrel of the bat. “Holy shit, Luke. Don’t kill him. That’s Lyndell. That’s your father.”

  My heart slowed to a trot. I pulled the bat off my shoulder and tilted my head to get a better look. My body felt warm and tight all of the sudden, like someone had rolled me up inside a big, heavy rug.

  Ever so slowly, Lyndell’s hands parted. When he realized I had no intention of smacking him again, he swiped his hand across his chest. “That’s the take sign,” he said.

  I dropped the bat on the bed. “You oughta try knocking. I thought somebody was breaking in.”

  Claudia helped him sit up. He groaned and touched his fingers to his side.

  “Jesus, boy. You swing like Willie McCovey.”

  I hopped off the bed, dressed in my skivvies and socks. That’s what Nick slept in, at least before he went to prison. He’d told me the socks were more important than pants—they took longer to put on in case you had to make a fast getaway.

  “You’re lucky I was choking up,” I said.

  Lyndell pushed himself to his feet. He was wearing his Wranglers, a blue T-shirt, and a gray Amoco jacket with his name stitched over the heart.

  Claudia couldn’t help but smile a little as Lyndell leaned against the wall, still hurting and doubled over from the blow. “So what’s the word?” she asked. “Are you gonna live?”

  “I think so.” He laid his hand on his side again. “I might be pissing blood for a few days, but otherwise…”

  “Well, what were you thinking, sneaking in here like that?” she asked.

  He pointed my way. “I was gonna see if he wanted to take a ride.”

  “At this time of night?”

  “Well, yeah. It’s the best time. No cops. No traffic.”

  “Oh, Lord.” She was smiling, though, and Lyndell was looking over her shoulder. He was smiling, too. He even gave me a wink.

  The next night, I was ready to make a fast getaway, wearing my Keds and my Toughskins under the covers. Lyndell was careful to knock. He stuck his head in the door and waved his hand for me to follow him.

  We padded out of the house and climbed into the white Chevelle. It was long and low-slung, with a twin-bulge hood, a Muncie four-speed, and mag wheels. The front fenders were embossed with crossed flags and the words “Turbo Jet.” I’d never been impressed much with cars before then, but this one got my attention. It was the smell as much as anything else, the cigarette smoke and the leather and the gasoline. It smelled like the place to be at two o’clock in the morning.

  Lyndell coasted down the driveway so the engine wouldn’t wake Claudia. He rolled halfway down the street and fired up the motor on the fly. BA-WOOM, WOOM, WOOM, WOOM. The big V-8 scared me. It felt like that engine was over us, under us, in front and behind us. I grabbed hold of the dashboard with both hands. Lyndell glanced over and smiled. I let go and tried to sit back like I wasn’t all that impressed.

  We didn’t talk much at first. Lyndell drove toward town, playing with the radio as he steered us along the crooked roads, braking and downshifting and romping on the gas when it was needed. He drove faster than anybody I’d ever seen, and it took a while for me to relax and start to feel like the engine wasn’t so much surrounding me as a part of me. It made me feel fast, strong, loud, and hard to break.

  We lived forty miles north of Atlanta in a town called Green Lake. It hadn’t even been a town before World War II, just an empty river valley. The Army Engineers drove in after the war and decided the valley would be the perfect spot for a huge dam to help water and electrify all the people in Atlanta. The result was Green Lake, a forty-thousand-acre pond, which had become, as I’d learned in social studies class, a “valuable water, power, and recreation resource.” Or as Claudia used to say, “Take away the lake, and there goes the Dairy Queen and the Holiday Inn.”

  Lyndell wheeled the Chevelle past the Holiday Inn. It was a fairly impressive structure for Green Lake in 1973—a two-story job, all lit up, the parking lot filled with automobiles. Tom T. Hall was on the car radio, singing about heaven and how the water there tasted an awful lot like beer.

  “Hmm.” Lyndell slowed the car and eyed the hotel’s lighted swimming pool. It shone like a bright, blue gem out in the middle of the parking lot. “I think me, you, and Claudia might need to come over here one night and take a dip in that thing.”

  We passed the Krystal, the Big Star, and the Dairy Queen. The buildings glowed under the spring moon, their neon signs still flickering long after closing. The bank’s time-and-temp sign said it was 2:46 A.M. and 65 degrees.

  Lyndell drove down to the end of the commercial strip and pulled into Wilson’s Auto Supply, an old cinder-block eyesore. He pulled around back, cut the lights, and stepped out onto the gravel. He motioned for me to follow him.

  “You ever seen one of these?”

  We were standing in the shadows at the back door of Wilson’s. Lyndell was holding up a greasy piece of metal.

  I shook my head. “Uh-uh.”

  “It’s a distributor cap,” he said. “I need a new one for the car. You think you could get in under that door and get me one?” He pointed to the dog door that was cut into the bottom of the door frame. It was small, barely the size of a dachshund. I knew it would be a tight fit.

  “I thought you worked at a garage. Can’t you get one of those for free?”

  “Well, I don’t exactly have a job yet. I mean, hell, I just moved in with y’all yesterday.” He crossed his arms and scratched at his chin. “I’ve got a line of credit here. Me and the owner go way back. We used to race together and everything, so he doesn’t really mind me coming in and taking what I need.”

  “Wouldn’t he give you some keys if he didn’t mind you coming in?”

  Lyndell scratched at his head and looked back over his shoulder. My questions were making him awfully itchy, but I kept asking them.

  “You really raced together?”

  Lyndell shrugged in a dodgy sort of way. “More like against each other. We don’t get along too well.”

  “How come? Did you beat him?” I imagined Lyndell standing in the winner’s circle with a big trophy.

  “Sort of,” Lyndell said. “He ran me into the wall one night when I was leading. Two laps to go in the feature race. Came up underneath me and hit my rear axle.”

  “And you still beat him?”

  “Well, no. Not in the race, anyway. Hell, I couldn’t even finish because my car was so busted up. But after it was over, I wrapped a tire iron in newspaper and went after him down in the pits. I got in a good head shot before they pulled me off him. Split his scalp wide open.”r />
  “That’d be a better story if you’d come back and won the race.”

  “Yeah, I know. Funny thing is, I met his wife a couple years later in this bar.” He smiled and wolf whistled, remembering the occasion. “I got him back real good then.”

  We stood there staring at each other. “You mean you hit his wife in the head with a tire iron, too?”

  He shook his head and scratched his shoulder. He wasn’t used to telling his stories to kids.

  He pointed to the dog door again. “So what do you think? Will you do it?”

  I’d stolen some stuff before: candy bars and cinnamon toothpicks from Elmore’s Five and Dime, and a Hot Wheels car from a kid’s desk at school. I’d actually felt bad when the kid started crying about his toy car. Nevertheless, I wanted to impress Lyndell.

  “You need anything else while I’m in there?”

  Lyndell smiled. “Now that you mention it, I could use a new oil filter. But that’s all. There’s no need to get greedy.”

  I had to wiggle my ass a little to get my hips through the dog door. Lyndell helped me along with a shove. “In you go,” he said.

  The stockroom was windowless and pitch black. It smelled like mildew and grape soda. I switched on the flashlight Lyndell had given me and made my way up front. The caps and the filters were exactly where he’d said they would be. I pocketed the goods and scrambled back to the dog door. I felt like Colonel Hogan on one of his nighttime scouting missions outside the stalag.

  Lyndell had said he would time me on his watch to see how fast I could get in and out. I slid the distributor cap, oil filter, and flashlight through the door and wormed my head and shoulders out into the cool night air. I looked up from the ground, still half in and half out of the store. “How long?” I asked.

  Lyndell had already retrieved the goods. He was reading something off the back of the oil filter box. He glanced at his watch and shrugged. “About two minutes, eighteen.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said.