Bent Highway
Chapter Seventeen: 8-Track
The inside of the Charger vibrated with the bass beat of a honky-tonk old-timey western band blaring over the 8-Track, jammed with two match covers to help with the warbly sound. But in this case, it made the ancient bleached tape warble even more. The boys in the back nodded in time, the ends of their cigarettes dangles in perfect beat, somehow the ashes didn’t drop. That took some fucking skill. I started to say something to Mr. Nascar, who was holding it at a steady 83 mph, but was silenced by him reaching over to turn up the volume.
He nodded at me and said, “Blaupunkt.”
“Fuckin’ A,” said the trucker twins in the back. I swore they said it in harmony, the guy with the handlebar mustache taking the third note up.
I settled back into the sheepskin seat covers and tried to figure it out. All of it.
Okay. The boys in the Charger had first tried to put Walt out of commission, and then good ole Uncle Lester and his shitkickers. Now, somehow, anyhow, they were helping Walt out. I knew we were headed to find Harold. How did I know that? It didn’t matter. I didn’t really understand where Harold was—or more importantly, who he was. Was he some kind of super-boogie man with chaos and destruction on his mind? An evil force? A bad-ass Lex Luthor with an out of control ‘fro? But then I had to remember that’s how he looked to me growing up together.
I pushed that out of my head, as I knew we hadn’t really grown up together. That was a part stitched into my brain like a keep-on-trucking patch on ripped blue jeans. And to Chalk Girl, Harold was some sort of ex-lover, or ex-husband, or ex-offico. Thinking about Harold’s identity hurt my head worse than the whiny vocals sitting on top of the razor-sharp fiddle sounds ripping through the car. It was like being in a sawmill without ear protection. Fucking dire music is what it was. No wonder those cowboys sang songs about killing themselves.
Chalk Girl. Damn. I couldn’t ever complete the task she kept bringing me back to. There was no way I could stop the flames from coming. Now I knew Harold was behind that, too. So when did I meet her? A long line of events lined up in my brain, a stack of calendars on top of back issues of Time, Look and Life. I flipped through them all like a sped-up newsreel, complete with a the sing-song news of tomorrow voiceover.
How long had I been on the highway. When I looked into Walt’s face, I knew it had been a helluva long time—before asphalt maybe.
Outside a fat moon climbed over a copse of black fir trees. How long had we been driving? How long had we been doing anything? Will this song ever end? Someone put their guns in the ground before a knife blade of a fiddle solo cut the air in two thick pieces.
The hell with time. I focused on the now. It didn’t matter what came before, or how much of “before” there was. Seemed to be that’s something the Buddha would teach if I knew one single real thing about him. Damned if I didn’t catch myself nodding to the music as another number, so much like the others it was hard to say it was new, came on. The tune drifted back to the rhythm section behind me, who were either snapping along or one of them had a trick knee.
Mr. Nascar reached over and hit the eject button, shooting the tapes and matchbooks onto the floor.
“Got company.”
In the rearview mirror a green sedan grew in size.
“Looks like them Duke boys got themselves in a heap of trouble,” said the mustached one.
The other one whooped and hollered. I heard guns being pulled out and racked.
“Shit.”
I cranked my head around and saw the sedan coming hell-bent for leather with a silhouetted fuzzy head behind the wheel. The headlights glowed a deep red, probably lousy for sight lines, but damn chilling.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Only one thing to do,” Nascar said and held his hand up. “Elvis.”
An 8-Track was slammed into the hand. One of the boys in the back had pulled it out of who knows where.
“Little less conversation, little more action.” Nascar jammed the tape in and the speakers found a new level—let’s call it jet engine decibels.
The bass exploded and the drums slammed into my chest like a scatter bomb. Nascar gunned it and buried the speedometer.
“Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Three-part harmony, I swear. Nascar was a fine tenor.
A pair of red headlights shrunk in the rearview.
“Piece-o-shit Ford!”
“Call us when you get a real car!”
More hoots and back slaps. The seats, the dashboard and the ashstray pulsed as the Pelvis’s dulcet tones swept through the car. I admit, I hooted. Just a bit.
Then, like the eyes of a python opening, a pair of red circles grew in the mirror. In a few seconds the rearview was nothing but red. The boys in the back leaned out and started firing. One of the red eyes went out. Nascar speedshifted into some unknown gear. Just as fast he slammed on the brakes. A long screech that wasn’t from a guitar split the air. The back end of the Charger spun and at least two of the tires lifted. I kinda hoped that Nascar had installed a roll bar along with the supercharge.
I waited.
For the flip.
The cyclops sedan was framed perfectly by the back window.
The boys kept firing.
I waited.
Time slowed and stopped. Everything was so still, that if not for the g-forces of the spin, I could have reached down on the handle, got out of the car and went over to kick Harold in the nuts.
That did not happen.
The track skipped—a fast skiffle beat, coming in hard on the chorus.
Yer the devil in disguise.
We came back into the skid hard, the Charger was enveloped in smoke from the outside and the coffin nails dangling from the boy’s lips. A long snip of time was taken out, and we were frozen stiff stretched across the highway. Harold’s one bloody eye stared at us. The tape ended. The Charger sputtered to a stop. The sedan nosed up.
“Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em boys.”
Three butts hit the floor of the charger and three Zippos flared in unison.
“Any chance you have a plan?” I asked.
“The best I had was Elvis.”
“Right.”
Harold got out of the car carrying a long mother of a sword.
Harold with a samurai blade didn’t surprise me as much as who got out of the passenger side.
Wow, so M has been on the road since Edmund J. DeSmedt first laid asphalt in Newark, N. J. Lol