His mouth dropped open in a gesture of mild shock. “Does Claudia know you talk like that?”
“She doesn’t care. As long as it’s not at school.” Of course, that was a lie. But I figured if he was going to ask me to steal things, I might as well get something in return.
He nodded like the deal made sense. “All right. I was just checking. But don’t go overboard. If you cuss all the time, people won’t take you serious.” He went back to reading the package.
“I counted in my head,” I told him. “There’s no way I was in there two minutes.”
He didn’t say anything, so I craned my neck and tried to look him straight in the eye. “You didn’t really time me, did you?”
He sighed and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder in the direction of the empty road. “Well, I had to keep a look out.” He walked over to the car and tossed the stuff into the open window. He turned my way again and waved his hand through the air. “Come on out of there.”
I tried to slide the rest of the way through the door, but my ass was stuck again. This time I couldn’t work it free.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I mean I’m stuck.”
Lyndell grabbed my arms and started pulling. He pulled, and I wiggled. I tried holding my breath, blowing it all out, sucking in my stomach, tightening my butt, the whole nine yards.
“I can’t move either way, now. I think my legs are falling asleep.”
Lyndell stepped back and observed the situation. “Well, what the hell did you do, eat a T-bone steak while you were in there?”
He stood above me for a moment, thinking. He took a look at me and then the Chevelle. His eyes lingered on the car.
“If you leave me, I’ll tell on you.”
He pulled his Kools out of his jacket pocket and smiled. “You wouldn’t rat out your old man, would you?”
“Does a hobby horse have a hickory dick?”
Lyndell laughed. “Hey, where’d you hear that one?”
“From Nick.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “I bet you didn’t know he heard it from me. Ain’t that a kick in the ass?”
“It’d be a bigger kick if I wasn’t stuck in this door.”
“All right, then. Just hold your damn horses.”
He went to the car and grabbed his tire iron from the trunk, then he walked back over and sized up the problem. The tire iron dangled at his side.
“I guess this guy, Wilson, hates to see you with one of those.”
Lyndell gazed down and chuckled, then he squatted and went to work. By the time he’d finished hacking up the door, a good-size hunting dog could have scampered through the hole. I crawled right out, stood up, and brushed off my jeans.
Lyndell held the tire iron up in the air and grinned. “Now that’s what you call an all-purpose tool.”
We ended up on Green Lake Road that night. It was a crooked two-lane running along the banks of the lake. There were no other cars out, so Lyndell took it upon himself to double the speed limit. We were doing 90, the pine trees streaming past us like fence posts. Every now and then there’d be a break in the trees, and I’d catch a glimpse of the lake.
Lyndell plucked the cigarette lighter out of the ashtray and held the orange tip to a fresh stick. He glanced my way, smoke filling the air.
“You like cars?” he asked.
“They’re all right.”
“Well, you don’t sound too committed.”
“It’s not like I can drive.”
“Says who?”
“You ever heard of the police?”
Lyndell waved his hand through the air. “You don’t need a damn license to be able to drive. I know plenty of drivers who don’t have a license. Most of them can drive better than the people who do have one. Even when they’re drunk.”
He flung us around the curve, pressing me up against the door. He caught a little bit of the shoulder coming out. The tires thumped like we’d run over a squirrel. Lyndell dropped the Muncie into fourth and jumped on the gas again.
“Well, what else?” he asked. “What do you like to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you gotta like something.”
“I don’t like school, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“sh*t, no,” he said, “that’s not what I’m getting at. I just mean for fun. If you’ve got a day to kill, what would you do with it?”
Only one thing came to mind. “I’d probably watch TV.”
Lyndell smiled, nodded. “You get that from Claudia. I remember when we bought our first Emerson. Hell, I couldn’t get her out from in front of it. She’d sit there all day with Nick in her arms, watching those soaps.”
“She’s still like that,” I said.
“General Hospital?” he asked.
“Every day at three, watching those Quartermaines.”
He laughed. “I never cared much for the soaps. I do like that Love, American Style show. That’s a good one. That, and Flip Wilson.”
He asked what shows I liked best. I took him down the list, starting with the eight o’clock programs. Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Mod Squad, Emergency! I also made sure I mentioned Georgia Championship Wrestling, which conflicted with one of Claudia’s favorites, Hee Haw. Sometimes, she’d blackmail me and force me to sing that “Gloom, Despair and Agony” song from Hee Haw just for the privilege of watching wrestling. For some reason, she got a kick out of hearing me sing it. I thought the whole thing bordered on psychological abuse.
“Who’s your favorite wrestler?” Lyndell asked.
“I like Buddy Colt. Him and Mr. Wrestling Number Two.”
“What about the Funk Brothers?”
“They’re all right. They can do some damage.”
Lyndell nodded. “That stuff’s fake, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. Claudia met one of those guys at the fish camp.”
“Who? A wrestler?”
“Yeah. His name’s Rowland, but he wrestles as Big Boy Brown. He’s not on TV, though, so you wouldn’t know him.”
Lyndell frowned. He didn’t speak for a moment, but he kept glancing over at me like he was hoping I’d say something.
“So is that her boyfriend?”
“Who, Rowland?”
“Rowland. Big Boy. Whatever the hell he goes by.”
“Nah, Claudia only went out with him twice. She said he’d landed on his head one too many times.”
Lyndell nodded. He was staring out over the hood again. “So I guess she meets a lot of men at the fish camp.”
My heart gave my rib cage a little tap-tap-tap, just to let me know this might be a good time to play dumb.
“Not many,” I lied.
He cast a suspicious glance in my direction. “Claudia’s an awfully pretty woman,” he said. “You might not have noticed that, seeing how she’s your mother. But other men notice.”
“Lee Gordon said she reminded him of a young Angie Dickinson.”
“Who’s that?”
“She was in that John Wayne picture, Rio Bravo, and the one with Burt Reynolds, Sam Whiskey.”
Lyndell shook his head. “Hell, I know who Angie Dickinson is. I mean, who the hell is Lee Gordon?”
“Oh, he’s the manager at the Big Star. He plays that stand-up bass in the Green Lake Gang.”
Lyndell was getting all puffed up, like he wanted to fight somebody. He was squeezing the steering wheel extra tight.
“I don’t know him, but he’s a damn idiot. She don’t look a thing like Angie Dickinson, I can tell you that. She’s got prettier hair than Angie Dickinson.”
“You jealous or something?”
He snorted, but without a whole lot of conviction. “Hell, no, I’m not jealous. Me and Claudia have an understanding about these things. I just wanna make sure she doesn’t get mixed up with the wrong guy.”
“She said there’s a lot of men who are lucky she’s not a big singing star.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she could sing some real mean songs about them.”
Lyndell got quiet for a moment. He switched off the radio in an agitated way. Roger Miller, one of his all-time favorites, had been singing. Even Claudia liked Roger Miller. Hell, even I liked Roger Miller.
“Well, I sure hope she wasn’t including me on that list,” Lyndell said. “I might not be perfect, but I’ve always had her best interests at heart.”
We never got around to swimming in the Holiday Inn’s pool. Lyndell and Claudia were hardly ever together. Lyndell eventually found work at a garage. He had a habit of going in late and coming home even later. I don’t believe Claudia ever saw much money from him, but she was always friendly enough toward him. They played gin sometimes in the evenings, Claudia whipping Lyndell’s ass time and again while the radio played.
“Goddammit, this game ain’t nothing but luck.” Lyndell fired his hand down on the table after another futile effort. He turned in his chair, crossed his legs, and lit a cigarette.
Claudia smiled and winked at me. I’d been sitting there pretending to read one of my schoolbooks.
“Poor Lyndell,” she said, “he’s lost his touch.”
Lyndell had his arms crossed. He was sulking and drawing the life out of his Kool.
“The thing is,” she said to me, “he’s the one who taught me to play this game. Taught me years ago, and now that I’m better than him, he doesn’t like it much.”
Claudia never stopped seeing other men while Lyndell was staying with us. Sometimes, on fish camp nights, she wouldn’t come home until five in the morning. Lyndell would have stumbled in long before her, a quart of Schlitz in his hand, his face and clothes caked in the red powder from the dirt track. We’d fall asleep together on the sofa, watching the TV in the dark, James Brown’s Future Shock and then the monster movies on channel 17. Lyndell was a big James Brown fan.
One Sunday, I woke up to Lyndell and Claudia arguing. It was the only time I ever heard them raise their voices at each other. Lyndell was back in Claudia’s bedroom.
“You’re just doing this to get back at me,” he said. “It’s nothing but spite.”
I tiptoed down the hall and gazed through the crack in the doorway. Claudia was standing there wrapped in a towel, still wet from the shower. Lyndell stood in front of her, dressed in his racing clothes from the night before. Claudia flicked the towel with her thumb and let it fall to her feet. She stood there in front of him naked. I turned away as fast as I could.
“It’s not spite,” she said, her voice cool and measured. “It’s called blowing your chance. And you blew it twice. So, take a look, Lyndell. Get your eyes full. Because all you’re gonna have is a memory.”
Lyndell didn’t have anything else to say.
We kept up the late-night car rides. Lyndell would come in and wake me a couple times a week. At school, I would daydream about the Chevelle, the smell and the feel of the engine when it threw my head back against the seat. I drew pictures of it in my notebook. I pictured myself on the dirt track, behind the wheel, banging fenders on the last lap. Lyndell had taken me to the Green Lake Speedway to watch him race a couple of times. He’d set me up in the stands with a funnel cake and a co*ke. He hadn’t made the feature race on either occasion, but he hadn’t wrecked, either. It was about the most fun I’d ever had. I realized that the only thing better than one loud, fast car was a whole bunch of them driving in circles together.
One of the best things about our car rides was hearing Lyndell tell stories about his own father, C.W. It was C.W. who had taught Lyndell to drive in his ‘39 Ford Coupe, the same car that C.W. used to run liquor down from north Georgia to Atlanta. Lyndell was barely twelve when he started driving that car.
“It’s best to learn young,” he said.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
He thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. It just is.”
Lyndell had all sorts of C.W. stories. C.W. winning illegal stock car races in cow pastures, outrunning the law, sharking people at pool and then fighting his way out of the bar with a cue stick. My favorite tale involved the time he was hauling ass through Buford after dropping off a load of whiskey. The deputy pulled him over and walked up to the window, whereupon C.W. presented him with a twenty-dollar bill. The deputy gave C.W. a puzzled look and said, “Goddamn, C.W. After all the times we’ve done this, you should know a speeding ticket only costs ten dollars.” C.W. just nodded his head, one foot still riding the clutch and the other revving the motor. “I am fully aware,” he said. “But seeing how I plan to be in a big hurry when I come back through here tonight, I’d like to go ahead and pay the other fine up front.”
Lyndell had promised to let me drive the Chevelle before he moved out. When that time came, he drove us out to Green Lake Road this particular night, pulled onto the shoulder, and slid the stick into neutral. The moon was high and full and white as a marble. George Jones was singing “The Race Is On.”
“I’m probably rushing things here a little,” Lyndell said, “but it’s now or f*cking never.”
I knew what he was getting at. “I’m ready.”
He considered my face and my hands. “Are you scared?”
For some reason, I decided to be truthful. “A little bit.”
He smiled and nodded. “That’s good. A little fear is a good thing. It’ll keep you alert. I guarantee you Richard Petty gets a little nervous before races.”
He pressed in the cigarette lighter and waited for it to catch fire. He already had the Kool dangling from his lips.
“Are you planning to leave or something?” I asked.
He turned down the radio a little and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth. “It’s kind of looking that way,” he said. “Nick’ll be out in a few months, and the racing season’s almost over. Plus, I got an offer to work at this race shop up in Bristol.”
“Does Claudia know?”
“Yeah, she knows. I think she’ll be glad to have me gone.”
He got a concerned look on his face. “Are you okay with it?”
I thought about my room, empty and dark, and how I didn’t want to be there, how I could have spent every night like this. We sat there a moment longer. I kept waiting for him to open the door so we could switch sides, but he never made a move in that direction. He still had his hand draped over the wheel, staring out the windshield like he was trying to spot something up ahead of the high beams.
I asked him what he saw. He grunted and shook his head like he was trying to clear some things out of his mind. He pulled the Lem Motlow out from under the seat, unscrewed the cap, and took a pop.
“I was just thinking,” he said. “You know, Claudia thought that maybe having me around would be good for you. She thought that maybe the reason Nick got into trouble was because I hadn’t been around when he was growing up.”
The lighter finally clicked, and he whipped it out and sparked his Kool with it.
“I don’t think that’s why Nick got into trouble,” I said. “He told me it was because some guy turned state’s evidence on him.”
Lyndell smiled. “Yeah, I know all about that. I’m just talking about something different. What Claudia was hoping is that maybe I could teach you some things, maybe give you an idea of how a man should act, so you wouldn’t get into any trouble yourself. She thought it might be a way for me to sort of make amends.”
He studied my face. Something about it seemed to frighten him. He pulled back a little. “I didn’t teach you a damn thing, did I?”
I dug really deep, hoping I could bail him out. I could tell it was important to him.
“A tire iron comes in pretty handy,” I said. “That’s one thing.”
He laughed, but soon he was frowning. I started to worry he might change his mind about letting me drive.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not gonna get thrown in jail when I grow up. I only had detention seven times last year. This kid, Marty
Atkins, got it twenty-three times. I heard Mr. Rogers, the principal, say that Marty was gonna make a good convict one day.”
Lyndell sat there a while longer, squeezing the steering wheel. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he said.
“What’s that?”
He had a real serious look on his face, like he was about to pass along some grave news. I couldn’t imagine what it might be.
“It’s about C.W.,” he said. “It’s about those stories I told you.”
“What about them?”
“Well, they’re all a bunch of sh*t, basically. I stole them from other people.” He turned and blew his smoke out the side window. “Truth is, C.W. wasn’t no character. He was just a drunk, an outlaw, a womanizer. Pretty much a sonuvabitch, really.”
He looked at me and draped his arm across the back of the seat. His eyes were wide and remorseful.
“You know, he sent me out one time to set fire to a man’s sugar sacks. It was another moonshiner, a mean-ass sonuvabitch who’d have just as soon gutted you as look at you. He’d short-changed C.W. on a run, and C.W. wanted to get back at him. I wasn’t much older than you at the time, but I knew that sugar was something a moonshiner would kill over, especially this sonuvabitch. We were parked out in the middle of the woods, and it was late at night. I told C.W. I was scared. I told him I didn’t want to do it. But he just looked at his car. He said, ‘It’s a long walk home, boy. A long walk.’”
I felt bad for Lyndell. At least he hadn’t left me behind at the auto supply store.
He took another drink out of the bottle. He was getting near the bottom. “You know, I used to take Nick out like this. That was back before you were born.” He squinted his eyes, thinking hard, trying to keep the history straight. “Actually, I guess we were in the process of making you. That’s when me and Claudia had our second go-round. That’s before she’d had enough of me.”
“Did you ever let Nick drive?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure, I did. I had me a Plymouth back then. Nick must have been about your age.” Lyndell whistled and shook his head. “Good Lord, he scared the sh*t out of me. Took this turn too fast and spun us around. We ended up in the front yard of this old shack with some sonuvabitch’s mailbox lying on the hood of the car. The lights come on in the house, and then this man and woman step out onto the porch. I look over at Nick, and I’m expecting him to be scared to death. But that little rascal was already trying to get the car started. He fired up that sonuvabitch and lit off down the road with the mailbox still on the hood. He finally looked over at me, and he said, ‘Lyndell, the mail service sure ain’t what it used to be.’”
