July 1981
Wavy walked around the garage bay, looking at herself in the finish on the Barracuda. I picked the thing up cheap at an insurance auction and bought a new back end from a salvage yard down by Tulsa. For a good six months, Wavy had been watching me put it together in the evenings. I was all the time teasing her about how I was gonna paint it Moulin Rouge.
“That’s a factory color,” I’d say. Just to get her to roll her eyes, thinking about me driving a pink car. I ended up painting it black with metallic gray striping.
I’d planned to sell the car, but the way she looked at it once it was painted and ready to go, I wasn’t sure. She looked impressed.
“Wanna take it out?” I said.
She nodded and gave me that squinty look of hers that meant, “Let’s go fast.” She was like me that way, kind of a speed fiend, and the Cuda was built for it. We took it easy out around the lake, taking in the view, but the damn thing was champing at the bit. So I took it out to Highway 9 and opened it up a little.
Wavy leaned back in the seat, smiling, the wind blowing her hair around. I put my foot in the gas, kicked it up to about eighty. Then we came over a hill, damn near on top of a cop sitting on the shoulder. I braked hard, got it down to somewhere around sixty, and coasted past the cop.
I held my breath, but a mile on, the cop hadn’t come after us. I looked over at Wavy, who’d sat up to see why we slowed down.
“You tired?” I said.
She shook her head. She was a night owl.
“Feel like doing some drag racing?”
Hell yeah, she did. We ran the Cuda into Garringer and down to the flatlands where they drag on the weekends. It’s not legal, but the cops mostly look the other way, because it keeps the draggers off the main roads. And if you’re looking to sell a car like the Cuda, that’s where you find buyers.
The place was nothing but hard-packed dunes and old gravel pits. Not a tree to cut the wind and just ugly. When we pulled in, there were probably thirty cars, guys talking trash and checking out the competition. I parked and got out, went around to put up the hood. Let people know I was thinking about selling. Behind me, I heard some guy say to his buddies, “Look, it’s that big goddamn Indian.”
That was Billy, still wearing a letter jacket for football, when he’d been outta high school longer than I had.
“What’re you driving tonight?” he said.
“You’re looking at it.”
I didn’t know him from anywhere else, but I’d seen him out there plenty of times when I had my ’64 Polara. Summer before I met Wavy, I was out there nearly every weekend, dragging that old Dodge.
While Billy and his buddies checked out the Cuda, Wavy came up and slipped her hand into mine. Right away, Billy got his eye on her.
“Say, what’s this little girl’s mommy gonna do if you lose her in a race?”
“I ain’t losing nothing tonight,” I said.
“She’s a little young for my taste,” his buddy said, “but she’ll be worth racing for in a couple years. I do like blondes.”
Wavy glared at them, even though it was just a joke. Nobody ever won somebody else’s girl. The drags were strictly about the money and the winning, showing your car was faster. I mean, I’d won plenty of races, and only ever took home two girls. One was done with me as soon as she sobered up. The other one went home with a different guy every week.
Billy wanted to put fifty bucks on our race, so while me and him queued up for the track, Wavy headed off to where all the spectators were.
The track was shaped like a D. A loop around the big gravel pit, then a quarter-mile straightaway. It was a good track, except for this tight spot early on. About a hundred yards from the start, the track cut into the side of a dune. It meant you had to ride close to the other car until you passed it.
As I pulled up in the line, I glanced out of the corner of my eye and caught Wavy staring up at the stars. She was the prettiest girl there easy, with her hair blowing back like a flag. Amazed me how fast she was growing up. She’d be twelve in a couple weeks and she was gonna be long-legged like Val. Every time I looked at her, the gap between the bottom of her skirt and the tops of her boots was bigger. As soon as I thought it, I got to worrying about all the other guys there looking at her and thinking the same thing. We had a minute before the flagger sent me and Billy around the loop to the straightaway, so I called her over.
“Come gimme a kiss for good luck,” I said.
She walked over and rested her arm on the door panel. Leaning in through the window, she pressed her lips to the corner of my mouth, real soft. The wind whipped her hair up, and blew it all around, brushing against my face and my neck. As she straightened up, she tucked it back behind her ears.
“Thanks, sweetheart.”
Then it was time for me to roll around to the start line. I watched in my side view mirror as she walked back to the spectators. She was still smiling when the flagger gave me the nod.
The trick with drags like that is not to win by too much. You wanna feel out the other guy and win by just enough. You go smoking the first couple of guys you race and pretty soon nobody wants to race you, and they sure don’t wanna put any money on it.
Billy had a Trans Am, ’73 I think, and for an automatic, it had some oomph, but when we came outta the squeeze between those dunes, I stepped into the Cuda and kept a car length ahead of him all the way to the finish line. He was a loudmouth, but he was a good loser. Paid up and said, “Not too shabby considering how much weight she’s hauling.”
“Maybe next time,” I said. To remind him he pretty much always lost to me.
I raced four more guys after that. Beat a Camaro, and a Charger same year as mine, and then got my ass handed to me by this scrawny Mexican kid in a Corvette with a 427 under the hood. I knew I wasn’t gonna beat him, which was why I only put twenty bucks on it, but I wasn’t planning on getting smoked that bad.
I only raced him so that when I was paying him, I could give him the number for the shop.
“You bring it around, I’ll give you a good deal. Make it look as nice as it rides,” I said.
“It still beat you, man.” He gave me this chin-up look, like we were gonna get into it.
“Yeah, well, you’d look better beating me with a new paint job.”
After that race, Wavy and me took a break for a while. I sat up on the hood, watching the other races, and she sat down on the bumper while I braided her hair. She never kept braids in it, but my sister taught me how to do it a couple different ways. Just something to do with my hands.
“What is this, a hair salon?” this guy walking by said.
I shrugged him off, but a couple minutes later, he was back.
“You racing tonight?” he said.
“Yeah, I took her ’round a couple times. You wanna go?”
He didn’t say nothing, but he walked around the Cuda, looking it over. When he came back around to the hood, he was grinning.
“Looks like that saying is wrong. I guess you can polish a turd.”
“The question is whether you can beat it,” I said.
“Hundred bucks.”
Now I didn’t have a clue what he was driving, but I didn’t care. Anybody wanna walk up to me and talk that kinda shit, I’ll give it a go.
I nudged Wavy and she hopped off the bumper, so I could get up.
“Hundred bucks.” I stuck out my hand and we shook.
“See you up at the starting line, Chief.”
“Asshole,” Wavy said, not really under her breath.
“Somebody oughta wash your mouth out, little girl,” he said.
“You wanna ride with me while I go beat this guy?” I said.
Wavy nodded. We were gonna show that jackass a thing or two.
We pulled up alongside him and I didn’t know what to think. I leaned out my window and hollered, “What the hell is that?”
“Mazda RX-7!” the guy yelled back. Might as wella said, “Martian Armpit Smeller.” Some kinda ricer car.
It looked brand new, but newness don’t count for a thing. My old Polara was proof of that.
Either way, I figured if his car had any go, it’d be at the start, and I was right.
When we came off the line, he was in the lead. I did like always, hung back a little to see what he had. In the squeeze, I was half a car length back from him, but I pushed on through, and coming out the other side to the open flats, I put my foot to the floor. That Barracuda damn near redlined on rpms, the speedometer needle squeezing up past 105. Wavy was laughing out loud, when we reached the finish. Guy in his rice burner ate our dust.
We coasted down to the turn around and circled back to get our winnings.
I pulled up at the end of the row of cars and shut the engine off. Before we got back on the road, I wanted to make sure I hadn’t rattled nothing loose. As soon as I popped the hood, a couple guys come over to look. They couldn’t quite believe I’d hit 105 in the quarter mile.
The guy in his Mazda came barreling in while we were standing there. He threw it into park and jumped outta the car. Didn’t even bother to shut the door.
“You fucking bumped me, asshole!” He grabbed my arm to turn me around, so I put my hand on his chest to make him step back.
“I didn’t bump you,” I said.
“You fucking bumped me in the tight spot!”
“Show me. You show me where I bumped you, because I wanna see it.”
The guy stepped around me and started looking down the side of the Cuda.
Now I shoulda been trying to throttle him back, but I went and popped off with, “New car. Maybe you don’t got the hang of it yet.”
“You fucking bumped me, dickface!”
By then we had an audience. Some of them started looking over the cars, too, but there wasn’t a mark on the Cuda. Because I hadn’t bumped him. He prolly clipped that dune.
“I don’t see anything,” Billy said.
“Motherfucker!” The guy kicked the front quarter panel on the Cuda. He wasn’t wearing boots, just sneakers, so I figured worst he’d done was give me a scuff, but that was bullshit. I went to grab him, but he backed up, right into Wavy. She shoved him back, and he smacked her.
I grabbed the front of his jacket and slammed him into the side of the Cuda. If somebody was gonna put a dent in it, it’d be me. I punched him in the face until I was the only thing holding him up. Then I dropped him on the ground and kicked him a couple times for good measure. Next thing I knew, I had Billy on one arm and Wavy on the other, pulling me back.
“You better stay down, man,” Billy called to the Mazda guy. “He’s liable to stomp a mudhole in you. I seen him do it.”
Before I could, a couple of guys who knew the Mazda asshole came and got him by the arms. They walked him over and sat him on the bumper of somebody’s Charger. I turned around and got my head cleared enough to see Wavy standing there with a big red mark on her cheek.
Nobody stopped me when I walked across to that asshole’s crap car and planted my boot in the door. I kicked it half a dozen times, stove that fucker in. If he could still drive himself home, he was gonna have to get in from the passenger side.
WAVY
I’ve been hit harder. The guy didn’t even knock me down, but Kellen went crazy. After he kicked in the car door, he came back to me with a black cloud look on his face. He leaned down to look at my cheek, close enough I could see tiny freckles of blood on his face. Not his blood.
“Goddamnit,” he said. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”
He tilted my head up and brushed his thumb over my cheek.
“We need to get some ice on that before your eye swells up.”
People whispered as he opened the car door for me to get in. The guy in the Mazda was sitting on the bumper of another car. His face and his blue satin jacket were covered in blood.
“You still owe me a hundred bucks,” Kellen said to him. Then he slid into the front seat next to me and started the car.
I sat in the middle and Kellen kept his arm around me while he drove. He breathed out hot and angry on top of my head.
“I’m sorry, Wavy.” He apologized until I had to say something.
“Not your fault.”
He kissed the top of my head five, ten, fifteen times.
At the gas station, while Kellen pumped gas, I folded my arms on the window ledge and watched him. He was calmer, but he was still under his black cloud.
He leaned down to kiss me again, and I wanted to go on being kissed, but instead he went in to pay for the gas and get some ice for me.
While he was inside, two police cars pulled into the gas station. One sheriff’s deputy, one highway patrolman. The cops got out and walked over to the car, looked at the tags.
I knew what could happen when a dark cloud and the police came together, so I opened the door and got out of the car. That way, when Kellen came out of the gas station and saw the cops, I was there to take hold of his hand, where his knuckles were bloody. Even though I knew it would hurt him, I squeezed his hand hard, to hold him.
“Evening, officers.” Kellen squeezed my hand back, so I knew he understood me.
“This your car, sir?”
“Yes, it is.”
“We had a report you were causing trouble down at the barrens south of Garringer. Is that true?”
“No, I wouldn’t say I was causing trouble.”
“We had a report you assaulted somebody and vandalized his vehicle.”
“I was provoked,” Kellen said.
“Provoked how?”
“That son of a bitch in the Mazda hit … her.” The hesitation was because he didn’t know what to call me. A lie? Daughter, sister, niece? Or the truth?
“Is that true, young lady?”
I stepped away from Kellen, closer to the cops and their flashlights. I pushed my hair back to show them my face. I hoped it looked as bad as it felt. From the way the cops frowned, it must have.
“What was I supposed to do?” Kellen said. “Am I supposed to put up with some asshole punching her?”
“And who exactly is she? She looks a little young to be out this late,” said the deputy.
“I’m taking her home now.”
The patrolman almost laughed, but the deputy frowned.
“Let’s see some ID,” he said.
Kellen got out his, but I didn’t have any.
“And who’s the girl?”
“Wavy Quinn.” I liked my name in Kellen’s mouth.
“Does your mama know you’re out with this guy?” the deputy said.
“Yeah, her folks know she’s out with me.”
The two cops stepped back and whispered to each other for a few minutes.
Then there was so much arguing it hurt my head. The deputy said I couldn’t leave with Kellen. He said, “We need to speak to her mother,” and “We’re going to have to book you anyway, so why don’t we just go down to the station?”
“You’re seriously gonna arrest me for whooping that asshole? Because look at her, you can see he hit her. I got witnesses. So why are you riding my ass? Why aren’t you out arresting him?”
“Don’t you worry, sir, we’re taking care of him,” the patrolman said.
“How’s that? I don’t see you taking care of him. I see you hassling me over bullshit.”
“We just want to talk to her parents, okay?”
“Okay, fine. They’re gonna tell you what I’m telling you.”
At the police station, when the deputy called the farmhouse, nobody answered. Mama had probably turned off the ringer. Then he called Sandy’s trailer and nobody answered there either. I sat in a chair in the sheriff’s empty office while the deputy took Kellen to charge him for assaulting the guy in the Mazda. It was only a misdemeanor, so Kellen got to post bail right there, but he still had to have his picture and his fingerprints taken.
He came back, wiping ink off his hands and arguing with the deputy. His name tag said Vogel.
“I’m gonna have to call Children’s Protective Services,” Deputy Vogel said.
“What the hell for?” Kellen’s black cloud was back. Bigger.
“Because we got a minor here and not knowing who she is, I can’t let her go with you.”
“How about this? Why don’t I go get her mama? Take me an hour to get there and an hour to get back. Think you can wait to call somebody ’til then?”
“I couldn’t get CPS out here before then anyway. I just don’t want to release her to somebody who doesn’t have any business taking her.”
Kellen’s mouth got hard, but he didn’t say anything to that. He ran his hand over my hair and said, “I’ll be back, Wavy.” He glared at the deputy. “And can you get some ice for her eye?”
After Kellen left, Deputy Vogel brought me a bottle of pop and an ice pack, but I didn’t touch them.
Being in the sheriff’s office was a lot like when Mama got arrested, but at least I was dressed with my boots on. When they arrested Mama, I had to sit in the police station for hours, just in my nightshirt, while strangers walked in and out and talked to me. And tried to touch me.
The deputy didn’t try to touch me, but he sat at the sheriff’s desk, asking me questions.
“So how do you know Mr. Kellen? Or Mr. Barfoot? That’s his legal name.”
I stared through him.
“Where did you two meet?”
I crossed my arms over my chest to let Deputy Vogel know he was wasting his time.
“Not at school, I’m guessing.”
Ha ha ha.
“You know this isn’t his first assault charge?” he said.
I knew. Kellen didn’t get those scars on his knuckles from playing poker or fixing motorcycles. He got them from pulping guys in the face.
“He’s got himself quite a rap sheet. Doesn’t hardly seem like the kind of guy a sweet girl like you should be hanging around.”
I was so sweet. Like a lemon drop.
I stared through the deputy until he had to get up and walk around the station to get away from me.
It was almost five o’clock in the morning when Kellen came back. I recognized the sound of his boots on the tiles outside the sheriff’s office, but it wasn’t Mama with him. Clicky heels, but too slow. I turned and looked out the window blinds. Sandy.
She looked tired but beautiful. A different kind of beautiful than Mama, who was dark. The sun was always shining on Sandy. Her hair was as blond as mine, but big and hair sprayed. She wore lots of makeup, and tight jeans and a tight T-shirt with no bra.
“Hello there, ma’am,” the deputy said. He sounded surprised, and I could tell he thought Sandy was sexy. He kept looking and looking at her. It made me wish I looked older. If I looked more like Sandy, the cops wouldn’t think I was too young to be out with Kellen.
“Hi, sweetie,” Sandy said to me. “You ready to go home?”
I nodded.
“Wow, that guy really did a number on you.”
“Are you her mother?” the deputy said.
“Yes, I am. I’m Valerie Quinn. I’m not sure why I had to get out of bed at o’dark-thirty to come tell you that, but here I am.” Sandy wasn’t like me. She always sounded sweet, even when she was mad.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Quinn, but you can see why we were concerned about her being out so late with him.”
“No, I guess I don’t see.”
“I wasn’t sure her parents knew where she was.”
“Well, of course, I knew she was with him. Don’t you think I’d be out looking for her if I didn’t know where she was?”
“I just wanted to be sure,” the deputy said.
“Is that all? Are we free to go?”
“Yes, ma’am, but can I just say? You ought to keep an eye on your girl. You shouldn’t ought to let her out with a man like—”
“Thank you so very much for the advice. We’re gonna go now, if that’s okay?”
I got up when Sandy did, but before we could walk out, the deputy reached across the desk and handed me a piece of paper.
“If you ever need anything, Wavy Quinn, you call me,” he said. That’s what was written on the paper, his name—Deputy Leon Vogel—and his phone number. I stuck it in my pocket and followed Kellen outside to the car.
Sandy stretched out in the backseat and slept all the way to the ranch, snoring a little. I curled up beside Kellen and rested my head on his leg. Even though we didn’t talk, I stayed awake to keep him company.
When we pulled into the yard in front of Sandy’s trailer, Liam was standing on the porch, drinking a beer. Kellen got out of the car and folded the seat up so Sandy could get out of the back. Liam came down the stairs, his eyes red. If you could see into him, see what he was, his eyes would always be red. The sun was coming up when he walked across the driveway and grabbed Sandy by the arm.
“What the fuck is going on? Where you been?”
“I got into this whole dust up down by Garringer. Me and Wavy went out to the drags, I got in a fight, and a Belton County deputy gave me a rash of shit about Wavy being out so late. He wanted her folks to come get her.” Kellen was talking fast, so I knew he was nervous. I scooted across the seat and swung my legs out of the car. So he wouldn’t be alone.
“And what the fuck was Sandy doing out at the drags?”
“I didn’t go, Liam. I went to get Wavy,” she said in a soft, don’t-hurt-me voice.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, Val couldn’t go. You know, she couldn’t go. So I went, to get Wavy. I just told them I was Val and—”
“Oh, I see,” Liam said. “You went and pretended to be her mama?”
“Yeah, I—”
“You went and pretended to be Val? My wife?”
Sandy was wringing her hands, not like Mama, who always stood up tall when Liam was getting ready to hit her.
“It was just to get Wavy. Not for—”
Pow! Liam smacked her right in the mouth. Kellen could be fast when he wanted. He yanked Liam back from Sandy so hard the beer bottle flew out of Liam’s hand and landed in the gravel.
“You wanna hit somebody, you hit me. It’s my fault. Sandy didn’t do nothing wrong,” Kellen said.
Liam’s fist crunched into Kellen’s jaw, hard enough to make his head snap back.
“I don’t like people sneaking around behind my back,” Liam said. “You know that, Sandy.”
“We weren’t sneaking,” she whispered.
“It wasn’t sneaking.” Kellen had his mouth clenched up like his jaw hurt. “I didn’t see no reason to wake you up. Sandy was up anyway, so—”
“And what were you doing up?” That was all Liam cared about, where Sandy was.
“I can’t sleep when you’re not here,” she said.
“I was just next door. You know that.”
“Well, we didn’t wanna wake you,” Kellen said. “Sandy said she’d go. And the cops were fine. They didn’t hassle her. Anyway, I’m sorry. The cops were just—”
“Fucking pigs. What business is it of theirs? Like they got any business telling me what to do.”
“I know.” Kellen finally put his hand up to his jaw.
“You took this out to the drags? I didn’t know you had it finished yet,” Liam said. He leaned down to look at the polish on the Barracuda’s hood.
“I finished it yesterday. That’s why we took it out.”
“How’d it do?”
“It’s goddamn fast,” Kellen said. He knew how to make Liam look the other direction. “I think it’ll beat just about everything out there. Well, not one of them big-block Corvettes, but damn near anything else. We smoked a ricer, which is how I got in a fight.”
Liam laughed and looked down at his empty hand. He reached over and slapped Sandy on the leg. “Go on in the house, baby, and get me and Kellen a beer.”
“Okay.” She hurried up the steps and slipped inside.
“How fast?” Liam said.
“I hit one-oh-five in the quarter-mile. Think she’d do one-forty out on the flats.”
Sandy came back with the beers, already open. Kellen took his and drank.
“We should take it out,” Liam said.
“Yeah, there’s some money to be made. Plenty of guys with newer cars think they can take an old beast like this.”
I touched Kellen’s leg and he shifted the beer to his other hand. When he lowered his hand to his side, I slipped mine into it.
“You gotta stay outta trouble, Kellen. I got work for you to do. Can’t be having the pigs hassling you on bullshit charges,” Liam said.
“No, you’re right.”
For a few minutes, they were quiet, drinking their beers.
“Well,” Kellen said. “It’s late. I guess I better take Wavy on up to bed.”
“Stay outta trouble.”
“I will.”
I scooted back in the car and Kellen got behind the wheel, with the beer bottle between his legs. At the farmhouse, he didn’t turn the engine off, and he was quiet, worrying. I turned around in the seat, put my arm around his neck and laid my head on his shoulder. He sighed.
After a few minutes, he put his arm around me and kissed my hair again.
“I had fun,” I said.
He laughed.
“You got punched and arrested, and you had fun?”
I nodded, careful not to bump my head against his jaw. He squeezed me tight, almost as tight as I needed. Tight enough to let me know he wasn’t too afraid of Liam. Tight enough to tell me I was important to him. A little tighter and I would know I was more important than anything else. That was what I wanted.