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.
But I knew. And Donny knew, too. Little Stevie Cauley was coming to save
his girlfriend.
“If he wants to fuckin’ play, I’ll play with him!” Donny yelled, and his
foot sank to the floor. The Chevy’s engine screamed, the whole car starting to
vibrate, everything that wasn’t bolted down rattling and groaning. “He never
could beat me! Never could!”
“Slow down!” Lainie begged, her eyes filling up with fear. “You’ll kill
us!”
But Midnight Mona was right on our tail now, hanging there like a black
jet plane, matching speed for speed. The driver was a dark shape behind the
wheel. The Chevy’s tires flayed rubber as Donny gritted his teeth, sweat on
his face, and followed the dangerous road. Over the engine and the wind and
Lainie’s voice crying for Donny to slow down, I couldn’t hear a sound from
Midnight Mona.
“Come on, you sumbitch!” Donny snarled. “I killed you once! I can kill
you again, too!”
“You’re crazy!” Lainie was clinging to her seat like a cat. “I don’t
wanna die!”
I was thrown from one side of the car to the other as the Chevy took the
curves at breakneck speed, Donny fighting the wheel with every ounce of mean
strength in his body. My mind was jangled, but not disconnected; I realized,
as I was flung around like yesterday’s laundry, that Donny Blaylock had killed
Little Stevie Cauley. How it had happened I could see in my imagination: two
cars—one blue, one black—racing hell-for-sparkplugs on this very road, flames
shooting from their tail pipes under last year’s October moon. Maybe they were
neck and neck, like the chariots in Ben-Hur, and then Donny had whipped Big
Dick to one side and the right rear panel had slammed into Midnight Mona.
Maybe Little Stevie had lost control of the wheel, or maybe a tire had blown.
But Midnight Mona had taken flight, as graceful as a black butterfly through
the silvery dark, and exploded into fire when she came down. I could hear
Donny’s fiendish laugh as he’d raced away from the burning ruin of glass and
metal.
As a matter of fact, I could hear his fiendish laugh right this minute.
“I’ll kill you again! I’ll kill you again!” he hollered, his eyes crazed
and his brilliantined hair swept back and twisting like Medusa’s snakes. It
was obvious he was riding on his rims.
He slammed on the brake. Lainie screamed. I screamed. Big Dick screamed,
too.
Midnight Mona, which was five feet behind the Chevy’s rear fender, hit
us.
I saw, as my eyes almost blasted out of my head, the black car’s
flame-painted snout shove through the back seat. Then, like blurred
freeze-frame pictures, Midnight Mona began to fill up the inside of Big Dick.
I smelled burning oil and scorched metal, cigarette smoke and English Leather
cologne. For the briefest of instants a black-haired young man with eyes as
blue as swimming-pool water sat beside me, his hands gripping a steering
wheel, his teeth clenching a Chesterfield’s stub. The sharp chin of his
