Drive Like Hell: A Novel Page 6

  Naturally, everyone wanted to hear about my encounter with Judge Knox. I laid it on the table, and they all shook their heads and commiserated with me. Nick blew out a cloud of smoke and studied it as though it were the scales of justice.

  “Six months is rough,” he said. “They only took away Dewey’s license for three months, and he had eight DUIs and a hit-and-run.”

  “Next time around,” Claudia said, “she told him he was going to the youth detention facility.”

  Nick shook his head in a wistful sort of way. “They’ve got some real hard asses riding the benches around here.”

  Mercifully, there was no need to spend all our time dwelling on my legal troubles. Claudia asked Nick how things were going with his parole officer.

  “Not bad. He keeps bugging me about getting into Lakeside Community College.”

  Claudia’s expression turned hopeful. “For what?”

  “Ah, I don’t know. We’ve talked about some different stuff.”

  Bev was sipping her Coke through a straw, eyeing Nick in an unhappy way. “You’re already twenty-six,” she said. “Don’t you think that’s a little old for college?”

  Nick glared at her but then chose not to say anything back. It was probably for the best. From what I’d witnessed, their arguments had a tinderbox quality about them. Bev had been known to throw pieces of furniture around the house. She’d even given Nick a couple of stitches over his eye once, courtesy of an ashtray.

  “What about the landscaping job?” Claudia asked. “Is that still working out?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” Nick smiled. “Keeping it green.”

  The job in question consisted of supplying high-grade pot to the owner of Turfari Landscaping. The owner, in turn, vouched for Nick as a reliable employee and kept him on the payroll. I knew about the setup but Claudia was still in the dark.

  I started to scan the menu, even though I knew it by heart. The T-Bone King chain was started by Lance Hillin, a former All-American defensive tackle at the University of Georgia who went on to play for the Packers, Lions, and Rams. Hence, the restaurant’s walls were covered with photos from Hillin’s playing days. Even the menu bore a gridiron theme. The smallest T-bone (a twelve-ouncer) was called “the scatback,” while the middle cut (eighteen ounces) was known as “the quarterback.” The large steak (twenty-four ounces) drew “the linebacker” label. And the biggest of all, a gargantuan, thirty-eight-

  ounce slab of flesh, was, of course, known as “the lineman,” in honor of Lance Hillin. Most people chose to share that one. The menu advised: “Double-team this bad boy, just as opposing offenses double-teamed the great Lance Hillin.”

  My appetite had been on vacation the last few days, but it was starting to return with a vengeance. Charlie must have heard my stomach growling, seeing how he reached across the table and patted my arm.

  “Get whatever you want,” he said. “It’s on me.”

  I took down a linebacker, medium rare, and a stuffed potato. Charlie couldn’t finish his quarterback, so he shoved his plate my way. “Go on and sack his ass,” he said. And I did just that.

  Nick and Claudia spent a lot of time catching up. They hadn’t spoken all that often in the year and a half since Nick’s last prison stay. I could tell that she resented Nick for what he’d put her through. There was no other way to explain why she hardly ever returned his calls anymore, or never asked him over to the house, even at Christmas. She’d replaced a few of the records she’d sold and bought a fairly nice guitar. But it didn’t have “that same, lonesome sound,” she told me.

  Nick never flat-out admitted it, but the cold shoulder bothered him. Whenever I’d ride my bike over to hang out at his place, he’d always ask if she’d said anything about him, or if she was mad at him. When I told him his name hadn’t come up, I think it hurt worse than if she’d been putting the poor mouth on him.

  So, I think Nick was happy to be at the T-Bone King with all of us. He was smiling and telling Claudia and Charlie about his cover band. He played guitar, of course, and Bev sang. Dewey banged the skins and this new guy, Carlton, attempted to play bass.

  “We played at Smokey the Bar and Whatchamacallit’s last month,” Nick said. “Then we did a couple of fraternity parties up in Athens.”

  “We’ve got a gig over in Augusta tonight,” Bev said. “We’re playing a wedding party for a guy Nick met in the can.”

  “Well, what’s the name of your band?” Charlie asked.

  Nick and Bev considered each other and smiled. Nick had a Winston dangling from his mouth.

  “We used to be called Whiskey Dick,” Bev said. “But we just changed our name to Puss ‘n Booze. I thought it sounded classier for a wedding.”

  Charlie appeared confused. “Did this fellow Dick quit the band?”

  Nick and Bev burst out laughing. I laughed, too, though I felt kind of sorry for Charlie. Claudia was sitting there looking embarrassed to even know him.

  After we’d had our way with the sundae bar, everyone sat around the table looking drowsy. Nick and Claudia fired up a couple of sticks, exchanged glances, and nodded in a conspiratorial manner.

  Nick leaned my way and draped his arm around my shoulder. “You think you might want to come to Augusta with us? Maybe be our roadie?”

  The invite caught me by surprise.

  “Me and Nick had a little talk last night,” Claudia said. She looked down and tamped some ashes from her Virginia Slim into the already full ashtray and waited for Nick to finish her thought.

  “How’d you like to come live with me for a while?” he asked. “Maybe move into the hacienda for an extended stay. You’ve seen the layout. Twelve acres. Swimming pool. Jacuzzi. Petting zoo.”

  Bev snorted. “You mean that filthy rat who sneaks in and eats your damn food?”

  Nick turned and wagged a finger in Bev’s face. “Don’t you be talking about my goddamn rat, woman. His name’s Roberto. And that’s Mr. Roberto to you.”

  While he and Bev were laughing, I gazed in Claudia’s direction and asked if this was for real. She shrugged as though she hadn’t completely sold herself on the idea.

  “Charlie’s getting ready to open a couple of liquor stores down in Jacksonville,” she said. “He just bought a condo on the beach in Ponte Vedra, and he asked me to come down and spend the summer with him. I told him no at first. But then, after all of this stuff with Mrs. Dees, I started thinking that maybe a change of scenery might do us all some good right now. It just feels like the two of us are smothering in that little house.”

  I had to agree with her on that. Besides, I liked the plan. As I said before, Nick’s house felt like destiny. There was always something happening, people coming and going, playing music and telling jokes and having contests to see who could roll the fastest joint. I rode my bicycle over there every chance I got.

  “We’re gonna shake things up a little,” Nick said. “Besides, we’re brothers. We need to spend more time together.”

  “Of course, there’s going to be rules,” Claudia said. “And discipline, just like Judge Knox talked about.”

  I knew there had to be a catch somewhere. “Here we go,” I groaned.

  Nick slapped me on the back of the head, but he was grinning.

  “Charlie knows the beverage manager at the Holiday Inn,” Claudia said, “and he got you a busboy job working in the restaurant. You’ll be doing it in the evenings. That’s how you’re gonna pay back Mrs. Dees for the car.”

  “Which nights?” I was already thinking about my TV schedule.

  “Sunday through Thursday,” Charlie said. “You can pretend Saturday’s the Sabbath.”

  I loosened my necktie again. Friday and Saturday would leave me with Rockford and Dallas. Slim pickings, but quality pickings. Plus, I could always watch the Braves replays at one in the morning. This setup would certainly inflict some pain, but I figured I could live with it.

  “Don’t worry,” Nick said, “it ain’t gonna be Stalag 17. But I a
m gonna whip your sorry ass into shape. We’ll go into training together. Get up early. Lift weights. Drink beer and eat barbecue potato chips for breakfast.”

  Claudia frowned. “Nick, that’s not what—”

  Nick waved his hand through the air. “I’m just kidding about the beer.”

  He made a point then of turning in his chair and looking me squarely in the eyes. He even set his hand on the back of my chair. I could sense that a challenge was about to be issued. I felt like one of those Scared Straight kids, only Nick wasn’t scary at all.

  “Seriously, bro, you need a little discipline. Hell, everybody does. Now I know I’m not the best example, but I’ve learned a lot from my many, and ongoing, stumbles. And I bet I know what that judge made you feel like in there today: like a rotten, dirty, low-down piece of shit. Am I right?”

  He was on the money, and I nodded accordingly.

  “I bet she even made you feel like you didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as other people. She made you feel like you’d never amount to nothing, like you were just taking up space. Am I right?”

  Now my throat was starting to swell. I hadn’t expected anybody to know how I felt, not even Nick. Hell, even I wasn’t sure how I’d felt.

  “She’s gonna find a way to lock me up,” I croaked.

  Nick lit another Winston, waved out the spark on his matchstick, and shook his head.

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” he said. “The thing is, this ain’t about being locked up. It’s about you getting some damn respect—earning it, really. You see, all they wanna do in that courthouse is beat your ass down. They don’t wanna help you succeed. Hell, it’s easier for them to just lock you up and forget about you. But I got a plan for you, something that’s gonna make you feel like a good citizen of the world.”

  I liked the sound of that a whole lot better than “contributing member of society.” Hell, that one had always sounded about as important as “utility infielder.”

  I stared intently at Nick, like a killer seeking God on execution day.

  “First off,” he said, “any money you make goes to fixing that old lady’s car. That’s your debt for fucking up and you can’t walk away from it. But…”

  Here, he paused to dot the air with the tip of his cigarette. It looked like something a millionaire might do.

  “…I’ll match half of everything you make on your paycheck, just so you have some walking-around money. And the other half of your stub, I’ll hold that for you until you get your license back. Then you can use it to help buy yourself a car.”

  Charlie was smiling now, too. “Hell, I’ll pay the rest.” He gazed across the table at Nick and nodded in an approving way. “I like your brand of justice. Firm, but fair.”

  Nick leaned back in his chair and took a satisfied toke off his Winston. “They don’t call me the Velvet Hammer for nothing.”

  I suppose Nick’s greatest talent in all of this was how well he managed to wear his own transgressions. For someone who’d served more than seven hundred combined days in prison by the age of twenty-six, he sure did a helluva job selling me on the rewards of hard work and discipline. After he’d finished talking to me, I felt like I could have taken on the young Lance Hillin, whose agile, flattopped, All-American self was crouched low in a photo on the wall in front of me.

  Nick and Bev tore out of the T-Bone King parking lot on Nick’s motorcycle, a loud silver 400CC Triumph. Charlie was still inside paying at the register, while Claudia and I waited outside by the newspaper boxes.

  The front of the Atlanta Constitution featured a picture of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor. I’d watched a report about the reactor’s meltdown on the Today show that morning. Tom Brokaw had said the radiation was the kind of trouble you couldn’t see, smell, or hear, at least not until it was too late.

  “Well,” Claudia said, “I sure hope I’m doing the right thing leaving you with Nick.”

  I gazed up from the smoking reactor. “It’ll be okay. What could go wrong?”

  Claudia smiled. “You got a legal pad and a sharp pencil?”

  We laughed, and then she told me it would be all right if I said no. She was having second thoughts. “I don’t mind staying here with you,” she said. “But you’re still taking that job and cutting down on the TV.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  Claudia had been lucky to meet Charlie, someone who had the means to support her in a venture like this. They’d hooked up at the fish camp a couple of days after she’d gotten the news about Lyndell’s marriage and sobriety. Charlie was still grieving over a daughter who’d died a year earlier in an auto accident, thrown from her drunk boyfriend’s pickup truck during a rollover. He went over and talked to Claudia after she’d sung a Kitty Wells song. He told her she made the hair stand up on his neck.

  Charlie walked out of the restaurant, toothpick in his mouth and credit card receipt in hand. He buttoned his sport coat over his gut and smiled at Claudia. “You look young enough to be your own son’s girlfriend,” he said.

  Claudia made a face and shook her head. “That’s disgusting, Charlie. You should think before you say stuff like that.”

  “Well, I meant it as a compliment.”

  He slid the toothpick out of his mouth and puckered up to kiss her, so she gave him a quick peck, then reached out and straightened the lapels on his sport coat.

  “I haven’t seen this one before,” she said. “That is one sharp jacket.”

  She gazed over Charlie’s shoulder and winked at me as we started toward the car. Charlie looked as proud as could be. “Pierre Cardin,” he said. “Forty-eight long.”

  4

  Dewey was the first to greet me at Nick’s house, stepping off the porch and squeezing my shoulder. He shook his head in a mournful way.

  “I heard about the license,” he said. “Damn, that’s some cold-ass shit.”

  Dewey and I now possessed a close bond, seeing how we were members of the suspended-license brigade.

  “How long have you got left?” I asked.

  Dewey didn’t bat an eye. “Fifty-three days.”

  He gazed off into the woods behind the house, full of a longing that I immediately recognized.

  “Well, I’m looking at the big one-eight-three. Plus twelve months in Alto if I don’t shake twice every time I piss.”

  Dewey clucked his tongue and shook his head, standing there in his usual outfit of faded jeans and Atlanta Flames hockey jersey. He was built like a pulling guard, at least six-four and about two and a half bills on the scales, with a short, brambly beard and long black hair.

  I could hear Nick and Bev arguing inside. It sounded like a stage-one confrontation, meaning all screaming and no projectiles. Dewey steered me away from the dustup.

  “She’s having one of her spells,” he said. “She gets a little temperamental before a show.”

  He grabbed a can of PBR off the porch steps and led me out to a van that was parked in the dirt driveway beside Nick’s old Plymouth Fury. The side of the van read AAA-Action TV Repair. Carlton, the new bass player, was standing by the back door loading Dewey’s drum kit.

  “Careful, now,” Dewey said. “Don’t bruise my skins.”

  I had yet to meet Carlton. He was crouched over Dewey’s bass drum, looking irritated and sweating. He was wearing a fire-enginered silk shirt unbuttoned to his navel. The sleeves were rolled up to reveal a pair of red-white-and-blue wristbands.

  Carlton shot Dewey a nasty look. “You think it might kill you to give me a little help?”

  Dewey flexed his hand, wincing as though the slightest movement caused a measure of pain. “I got a little tendinitis in the wrist. I’m thinking I better save myself for the show.”

  “That’s what you get for beating off all the time,” Carlton said.

  “Hey, hey,” Dewey said. “That’s no way for a bassman to talk to his drummer. I’m like your left nut, junior.”

  Carlton went back to loading equipment. Dewey nudged my
shoulder and pointed at Carlton’s head. I had a feeling he was going to say something about Carlton’s hair. It was a sight to behold, blond and curled into a clownish explosion of follicles. I could smell the scorched perm solution five feet downwind.

  “So what do you think about Bev’s handiwork?” Dewey asked.

  I wasn’t all that eager to jump into their pissing contest, so I deferred with a mere shrug.

  Carlton tugged at the ends of his corkscrews. “She said it’d loosen up in a week or so. I hope she’s right.”

  Dewey chuckled. “Yeah, I guess she learned that when she was studying at MIT.”

  He winked at me. “That’s Middle Indiana Tonsorial, in case you were wondering.”

  Carlton seemed like an okay guy, if only a little too eager to mention his part-time DJ job at WPND. The first question he asked was where I went to school. When I told him Green Lake High, he brushed his hands together and squinted in a gesture of deep thought.

  “I think we’re doing one of our Friday school-spirit remotes from there in a couple of weeks.”

  Dewey rolled his eyes. “Oh, Lord. Here we go.”

  Naturally, I had to ask what Carlton was talking about, and that’s when he told me about his once-a-week gig at the station. “I’m on from two to five, on Sundays.”

  I was somewhat impressed. “I bet you have a lot of listeners that time of the afternoon. People out on their boats and stuff.”

  He looked away from me like a bashful, bushy-haired toddler. He picked up Nick’s amp and set it in the back of the van.

  “Actually, I’m on from two to five in the mornings. But you’d be surprised who listens.”

  “Yeah, he’s got a varied fan base,” Dewey said. “Four crank addicts and a guy who works at the morgue.”