“Just get the hell out of here, McCain, and leave me alone. And take the princess with you.”
“God, David, please listen to him-”
Molly said, stepping toward him.
Rita came up in front of Molly.
“Tell McCain here that in five seconds I’m telling Kevin to start breaking him in two.
And I’m serious.”
“But this is ridiculous,” Molly said. “People don’t do-”
But people do do. And people do do it all the time. They use clubs, fists, knives, guns, whatever it takes. Not in Molly’s world but in the world at large-they do do it all the time.
We were in a movie and the inevitable scene of violence was upon us. I was getting my one and only close-up right now. I looked scared shitless was what I looked like. I didn’t like to think of what Kevin Brainard could do to me.
Molly tried to walk around Rita but Rita wouldn’t let her. She shoved Molly. “You take him, Kevin. I’ll take her.”
And then it started, that inevitable scene of violence I talked about.
Rock-and-roll radios blasting. Kids forming a circle around us. Rita twisting Molly around and getting her in a hammerlock. And Brainard hunching low and coming at me.
Fight scene-take one-the assistant director shouts.
And the camera starts rolling.
My dad taught me one thing about fighting when you’re our diminutive size. Fight dirty.
Only chance you have. Leave the heroics to John Wayne and the movie stars.
So when Brainard came hulking toward me, his hands coming up and automatically forming clamps that would fit nicely around my throat, I steadied myself and hoped that my aim was as true as it usually was. He had to be in the right position and I had to be damned quick or the moment would be lost.
He came closer and closer.
Everybody was cheering him on. Some of the drive-in movie things they said were so stupid, I almost broke out laughing. Which I would’ve done if Brainard hadn’t just spat in my face. He apparently believed in demolishing you only after he’d humiliated you. Still and all, even with spittle dripping down my forehead, “Kill him, daddy-o!” distracted the hell out of me.
“Daddy-o” was a word that was popular from approximately 1954 to 1958 or thereabouts.
Slang expires just like bread and milk do at the supermarket.
But this was the wrong time to worry about the social faux pas of using dated slang. Because this huge, angry guy showing off for the crowd was about to seize my throat.
I fired my one and only weapon, which is the toe of my 8-D penny loafer. You can’t tell right away if it worked. That’s the only thing about getting somebody in the balls. It always takes a couple of seconds to register in the other guy’s brain, as if his sac has to send his mind a telegram.
He kept coming, leaving me with the impression that my aim had been off. His clamplike hands groped for me-and then his face changed. It was as if he’d slipped on a new mask. If he’d been wearing rage, he was now wearing pain.
Pain and misery and an anger he could only put into a few spluttering curse words.
He dropped to his knees, holding his crotch. He was momentarily immobilized.
I heard Molly scream. Rita still had Molly in a hammerlock, bending her over a car hood.
I started toward them but Egan reached them before I did. He put a quick hand on Rita’s shoulder and said, “Let her go.”
“She shouldn’t be here.”
“Let her go, Rita. Now.”
Rita relented reluctantly. You could see that the pain didn’t subside any for Molly.
As she slumped against the car hood, I took her shoulder and gently tried to help her up. I knew better than to touch the arm Rita had been so expertly working on. Molly’s eyes gleamed with tears as she began the millimeter-by-millimeter process of trying to straighten her arm out.
“You two get out of here,” Egan said to my back. “A lot of these people here don’t seem to like you. Anyway, I got a race.”
His words were still slurred; he squinted to find focus.
Molly started to say something. I took her good arm and tugged her away from the car.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Then we were back to living our life inside that drive-in movie poster. There was a lot of posing and pouting, girls as well as boys, as I led Molly up the hill toward my car. Several of the hot-rodders revved their engines and their radios. It was a rock-and-roll moment, daddy-o.
“You really kicked Brainard hard,” Molly said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad.”
“How’s the arm?”
“I wish I would’ve been able to kick her.
She’s really mean.” Her arm was at her side.
She rubbed it with her good hand.
By the time we reached the top of the hill and the ragtop, the shouts below turned away from us and to the race.
We turned and watched. Rita positioned herself in the middle of the strip, arms raised above her head. She’d drop her arms and the cars would come screaming off the line.
“He’s really going to do it, isn’t he?”
“I’m afraid so, Molly.”
“He could get killed.”
“He’s old enough to know what he’s doing.”
“I shouldn’t have said what I said about him feeling so sorry for himself. I love him. I really do.”
And then they were off.
We had a good place to watch. From here, the two dragsters were the size of huge toys.
They both fishtailed off the line, scarring the road with black tread, rubber crying like lost children.
Molly’s fingers dug into my wrist as we stood there in the nose-numbing wind, looking down into the darkness where headlights carved out an area that looked not unlike a cave. It was all primitive and it was all dangerous and it was all juvenile but I couldn’t deny the excitement.
I’d been in a lot of drag races myself.
What’s the point of having a hot car if you can’t prove it’s hot? But I’d never gone into a race drunk.
The black car and the red car stayed pretty close right up until the end and then the black car lurched ahead.
I realized what was going to happen before Molly did. From up here it was pretty easy to spot.
The ones on the ground wouldn’t realize it until it was over and too late.
The red car fought and fishtailed to a stop a few yards before the road ended, where the trestle bridge had once been.
Molly screamed, her nails ripping into my wrist.
What he did, David Egan, was overshoot the end of the road and hurtle into the air, smashing into the hard clay wall on the other side of the narrow river where the bridge had once been.
The explosion happened first. I’d seen Egan at the gas station not long ago. He probably had a full tank.
The explosion came in three quick segments, like bursts of railroad dynamite taking out a side of hill. A furious flare glared yellow-red-green-blue against the starry night sky, the spectacle of it hushing everybody for a terrible breath-held moment, the passenger’s door ripping off and flying into the brightest depths of the explosion, glass and one of the taillights blowing up and out into the darkness.
And then the screams started from below. And people started running down the road toward the red car, whose driver was now outside his car and shouting something.
He started running around in animal-crazy little circles.
Then the car disappeared into the river. Just vanished into the fast, moon-traced water.
And Molly was screaming and sobbing and shouting.
And all I could do was hold her and let her pound her little fists into me. I had no idea what to say to her. Or to myself.
Part II
Twelve
In every small town there are one or two women who shame everybody else with their virtue. It is not forced virtue or contrived virtue and it does not necessarily have anything to do with denominational religion, though it is the essence of Christ’s words before churches began twisting it to their own ends.