| Writing Samples - Novels "Temptation Key" Chapter Nine - The Prez |
9. The Prez Buddy parked next to Robbie's father's tow-truck and tapped the horn lightly. He and Brian could hear Robbie's parents arguing in the kitchen, as usual. In a few seconds, Robbie sauntered out the front door. Even in the dim light, he could see Buddy behind the wheel of the Prez, alone. He picked up his pace for the driver's window, asking Buddy what the hell he was doing! Brian would— At that moment, Brian popped up from the back seat, laughing uproariously, and calling Robbie a "dumbfuck sucker." Robbie nodded and smiled then Brian ordered Buddy to the passenger side: "Slide over, squirt. Lesson's over. It's time to fly." Normally, Brian stayed off the Highway, preferring to dig out in the gravel at the end of the driveway, squealing his tires a few feet onto the Old Road. This night, he let them burn down US-1 until they would burn no more, leaving black marks for almost two hundred feet. The Prez had guts. In seconds they were going 75, headed south, for Marathon. Brian let out a rebel yell that would have made Andrew Jackson proud, and reached into the back seat. Fortunately, the Prez was heavy on the road and forgave some doodling around behind the wheel, barely wiggling at all in its lane. Finding the six-pack in the back, Brian pulled one free and handed it to Robbie, next to him, in the middle, then got one for himself. "You don't get one, squirt," he said. Neither he nor Robbie ever gave alcohol to Buddy; he'd get enough of it on his own, sooner or later. Buddy was happy with the arrangement. He dreaded the day someone gave him one and expected him to drink it. Robbie dug in the glove compartment, found Brian's church key, popped both caps and let them fall on the floor as the speedometer needle surged smoothly along with the increasing rush of speed which was making the telephone poles fly by like a tall, dark picket fence. Wind poured through the windows, buffeting their ears and faces, throwing their hair around like grass in a gale. It was glorious. And scary. Buddy had never been so fast. He kept his arm up in the open window behind the vent window, to at least give the allusion of calm, as his eyes got wider and his grip got tighter on the edge of the seat between Robbie and him where it couldn't be seen. "How... fast are we goin', Bri'?" he asked as nonchalantly as he could manage, without moving his neck. Amazingly, his voice didn't crack. Brian checked the speedo and came back with "a hundred and ten." Buddy mouthed the words to himself, barely moving his lips and never taking his eyes off the road which sped up and under them faster than they could identify anything on it. The point of this exercise was to exceed the ability of the speedometer to tell you how fast you were going; that point when the needle passed the highest number and sat there quivering as the cable spun against it, trying to make it go further than was possible by design. The speedo on the Prez topped out at 120. Anything beyond was undefined territory. Brian took a long draw on his beer, checked the gauges and shouted over the whipping wind and roar of horsepower and exhaust being shoved out the glasspacks (ordered from the J.C. Whitney catalogue along with the large-faced tach mounted on the side of the steering column) as fast as the churning mill could push it. "We'll bury it in another mile!" He loved this game. Buddy's knuckles were turning white. Robbie wasn't overly troubled. He'd been this fast before on his own as well as with Brian. And worse, with Dan. He glanced over and saw that Buddy looked like limestone statuary. "You okay, Bud'?" he asked, then swigged his beer to give an illusion of casual comfort. After all, going 120 down US-1 was a rite of passage. Buddy had to do it sooner or later; and no one they knew had ever crashed just from speed. It took lots of alcohol, a blow out (or blow job), or some other unforeseen tragedy to actually cause a crash. Speed alone never caused it. Buddy wasn't thinking about the exceptions. In fact, he wasn't thinking about anything but how unsteady he felt going this fast; how completely unsafe and vulnerable. How mortal. He stammered a little on his "Okay," to Robbie, but got it out. His right forearm felt glued to the window sill under the vent window which had now worried itself loose from all the high-speed vibration and was rattling; though no one could hear it over the thunder of the iron and the rumble of the wind. Robbie smiled and gave Buddy a comforting pat, then, to further reassure him, asked Brian if the old Studebaker was up to a "suicide run," knowing the answer would be yes. Brian yelled back over the still-increasing roar and rumble that, other than still having a tendency to backfire when he let off the gas, the Prez was solid as a rock and could handle anything he could throw at her. Buddy only heard the word "suicide." With one eye on the speedo and one on the road, Brian pushed his car as hard as he ever had, encouraging the Prez along as they sped into the night. "Come on, baby.... come on, baby... come on... A HUNDRED AND TWENTY!" He then let go the loudest howl yet, polished off his beer and tossed it high out the window. They were a hundred yards gone before it tinkled into a thousand pieces on the opposite shoulder. Up ahead, across the water, Brian could see the lights of a vehicle twinkling onto the south end of the two-and-a- half-mile-long curved bridge between Upper and Lower Matacumbe Keys. It was too far away to tell who or what it was, but his gut told him it wasn't a cop, so he didn't slow down; and he reached back for a new beer. However, with all the speed and motion, the six-pack of Pabst longnecks had slid just out of reach. He reached further. Noting the dent in Brian's driving concentration—at 122 mph—Robbie half-stood and turned, hanging over the seatback to reach for the recalcitrant sixer before Brian killed them all on the broad, blunt, unyielding end of the cement bridge rail. "I got it," Robbie said, and felt for cold, sweaty glass. What happened next was an unfortunate coincidence which had a fortuitous result: In anticipation of the small bump at the beginning of the bridge, Brian let up on the gas... Backpressure built quickly in the mufflers... Brian turned back to get his beer from Robbie... The Prez hit the bridge bump... The loosened vent glass fell out onto Buddy's arm just as... The Prez backfired. BOOOOOM! Buddy screamed. Startled by Buddy's scream, Robbie and Brian spun forward, fresh beers in hand, just as the barely visible 6-volt pink taillights of Zebulon Seavers' rusty old International Harvester flatbed full of rotted lobster traps came into full view, directly in front of them, in their lane, going about 30. Or less. Brian dropped his bottle and yelled, "Goddammit!!!!" Robbie concurred with Brian's quick assessment of their predicament by muttering a clenched, "Shit," and similarly let go of his brew which clinked against Brian's on the floorboard. Buddy kept screaming. With the Prez's gurgling backfires and general roar rattling off the hard cement surfaces all around them, Brian swerved to the left as hard as he dared, considering their high rate of speed on a two-lane bridge thirty feet above the pitch black night ocean which beckoned them down and under. No one had fed any teenagers to the beast in over a year. He knew it was hungry. The Prez cleared the lobster truck with several feet to spare but caught the opposite railing at a shallow angle, causing a horrible grating metallic shriek as it ground along at fifty feet a second. This brought aging Zebulon Seavers directly out of his haze. And his seat. He watched slack-jawed and horrified as the dark apparition slipped past him at four times his speed, throwing sparks like Independence Day in Key West. Then he glanced ahead at their next hurdle. The oncoming semi was flashing its lights, blowing its air-horn with ferocious and well-warranted concern, bearing down fast. The boys didn't hear it. They were now all screaming so loudly they couldn't have heard an atomic bomb go off in the backseat. The heck with an onrushing Mack. With incredible stability of mind and instinctual skills for getting out of physically demanding and dangerous situations, Brian... Floored it. Intuitively, unconsciously, he knew it was the only way he could regain control. And it worked. The Prez pulled away from the wall as he again twitched the wheel as hard as he dared, this time to the right. They were now close enough to see, clearly, the yellow semi-trailer lights above the glare of the four bright headlamps. Very clearly. And they finally heard the airhorn. It caterwauled past, close enough to feel the sound waves in the car. As they would later say, if there had been another coat of primer on the Prez, it would have been left on the semi's front bumper. They weren't far from correct. Less than two inches separated them from becoming the latest names painted on their twisted wreckage and parked in front of Ciavelli's Serve'n'Go Standard station under the year's current tally of Overseas Highway fatalities and a sign that read: Slow Down! The boys didn't stop yelling until they were a hundred yards past the danger when Brian finally let off the gas and the car started backfiring its way to a saner speed of just under a hundred, after reaching a peak of almost 130. He had set a new record for the Prez and didn't even know it. After easing down to 75, which now seemed a snail's pace, they continued on to the little picnic area just before the next bridge and pulled off, spilling out onto the short, hard grass, laughing like they had never laughed before. Sweet release. Robbie howled at how Buddy had screamed and caused them both to drop their beers, how Robbie thought he was going to die but didn't know from what until he turned around and saw the old rust-bucket piled high with rotten traps and thought that was it until they hit the guardrail, and then only for the next moment until he saw the oncoming tractor-trailer. In their teenage adrenaline high, bringing with it a tactile sense of immortality, they didn't consider that they almost had died. Brian and Robbie howled in hysterics over Buddy being so afraid at seeing the taillights of the lobster truck that he froze and screamed bloody murder. Through laugh-choked convulsions, Buddy managed to sputter the word "window" in an effort to correct them, not really understanding how they didn't know about the vent event. They didn't understand his sputter either so he forced himself to say: "No! It was the window! Not the taillights! It fell on my arm! The vent window!” They heard him clearly that time, but it only made them laugh harder and louder which made Buddy slowly stop laughing altogether, his honest-to-a-fault side rearing its head, again. He got up onto his knees, then stood, saying clearly, "Guys, no really. The window came out. Look. C'mere." As Buddy walked over to the Prez to point at the vent, Brian, in mid-laugh, leaned over to Robbie and, out of the blue, said in a low tone, "I never really went out to Temptation Key, ya know. I just say that 'cause it's what people wanna hear." Then he burst into uncontrolled laughter again. This pure-Brian non-sequitur moment had the strange effect on Robbie of making him not want to laugh anymore but try and figure out what the hell Brian was saying and why the hell he chose this moment to say it; but for some reason, all Robbie could do was laugh more, which only made Brian laugh more. The beer helped. Through teary eyes, they watched Buddy point at the missing vent window and say, with no uncertain indignation, "Look! See?!" Brian stopped laughing. He had heard, he had looked, and he had seen. He was now marching for the Prez. And Buddy. Knowing a danger sign when he saw it, Robbie stopped laughing immediately, leapt up and followed, unsure of what might happen or what he could do if something were required, or even what it might be. Brian exploded in ugly, frightening rage. "What the fuck did you do to my car, ya fuckin' little shithead?!" He grabbed Buddy with thoroughly unanticipated ferocity and force. Buddy was horrified; first, that Brian would treat him this way, and second, that without the Good Brian to save him from the Bad Brian, Buddy might end up hamburger. Robbie surely couldn't stop Brian from doing anything he was serious about. Hurt and afraid, Buddy blurted, "I didn't do anything! It fell out on my arm!" "Bullshit! Windows just don't fall out, Buddy! What the fuck did you do, goddammit?! Tell me!!" He was seething. To impugn the structural integrity his car was apparently crossing the line. "Nothing!!" Buddy screamed back. "It just fell out! And the Prez backfired! And that's what made me scream! It scared me!" After all this scaring in one day, Buddy was running out of fear to feed into the confrontation. He was yelling at Brian the same way he'd yell at Mike or Ricky. Julio! Perhaps it was this relative lack of apparent fear, or his record for honesty, or simply the earnestness of his plea, but Brian shook Buddy only once more, snarled "You're gonna pay for a new one," and shoved him away. Robbie was about to intervene, but he didn't have to; Buddy had been pushed too far: "You ripped off the whole other side on the bridge and almost killed us all goin' that fast and some guy you don't even know in a semi, and if I hadn't screamed, you wouldn't'a seen the lobster truck and woulda run us right into it we'd all be dead along with that guy, too!!!" Brian ignored it all, grabbed Buddy's arm again and threatened with a unclouded absence of goodwill, "You're gonna pay or I'm gonna tell Dan you're ballin' Susie behind his back!" Buddy was unequivocally horrified! "Brian... Godddddddd!" He actually snatched himself clear of Brian, turning in little circles of consummate frustration, then suddenly ran off down the seawall to sulk and cuss under his breath. For one thing, he wasn't balling Susie, and for another, what the hell was Brian doing?! He even managed to yell back over his shoulder: “Fuck you! Liar!” Brian’s eyes flared. He took a step after Buddy, but felt something unexpected on his arm: Robbie’s hand. Brian snapped a hateful look at Robbie, expecting Robbie to abandon this insane exercise immediately, but it wasn’t to be. Robbie said, "He didn't do anything and you know it." When Brian didn't reply, Robbie went on with, "Buddy loves you, man. And you know he'd never do anything to hurt the Prez. He'd be too afraid you'd kill him, and besides, he loves it almost as much as you do. Maybe more since you started letting him drive it." Brian acted like he wasn't listening, but he glanced over to where Buddy was throwing rocks four at a time into the dark water which lapped at the wall in a hypnotic night pattern. Robbie wasn't done. "And I don't know what all this sex shit is that's goin' on between you and the brats, but you better cut it out. It's gonna come to no good." There were several moments of silence, then Brian said, softly, "I'm not doing anything to them." "Well, you better not be. Anybody hears about that shit and you'll be lucky to live long enough to get to prison. People around here don't take kindly to their kids... doin' whatever the hell they're doin' with you." "I'm not doin' anything to them!!" Brian yelled. Buddy heard but didn't look over; he threw in six rocks at once but still didn't feel released from his hurt and rage. Robbie didn't back down. He just got quieter. "You can fuck up your life if you want, Brian, but leave theirs alone. I mean it." Only Robbie could get away with talking to Brian like this. Anyone else would have been swallowing teeth at this point. After a moment, Robbie turned towards Buddy who was now throwing ten rocks at a time. It was a pitiful sight. "And especially Buddy," Robbie said. "I thought you liked him better than that." Brian was silent. Suddenly, Robbie said, "Man, I can't be around this shit," and marched off toward Buddy. The sermon was over -- and maybe the friendship. Brian watched him go, looked at Buddy, looked at the missing vent, then walked around to the other side of the Prez and looked at the driver's side. It was scraped down to metal, headlight to taillight. The mirror was gone, but the door handle remained and, miraculously, still worked. The door opened with a popping creak. Brian kicked the sheet metal in with his heel, tried it again, looked it over... And smiled. It had been a hell of a ride. Brian then glanced over as Robbie joined Buddy, tried to put his arm around him and Buddy shoved him away. Brian chuckled, then walked over to the seawall, unzipped and peed in the ocean. He felt much better. Great, even. Life was good; the venom, washed away. A few minutes later, Robbie coaxed Buddy back to the car where Brian grabbed his shoulder. Buddy yanked it away, pouting, but Brian persisted with a sincere, "I'm sorry, squirt. It's just, you know, the Prez." Buddy was quiet now, but still highly offended. "I wouldn't hurt it." Brian said, softly, like the old Brian, the Good Brian, "I know, Buddy. I'm sorry. Okay?" "And I don't like being called Squirt and Pipsqueak, anymore." "Sure. Whatever you say. You're gettin' bigger, now." Buddy took a moment to nod and indicate that he accepted the apology. Then, he pointed down below his waist. "I peed my pants." Brian wondered, "On my seat?" Buddy nodded, embarrassed. "You can kill me for that if you want, but I didn't do anything to that vent window. It just fell out, that's all." Brian laughed a bit. "Hell, I've had worse things on those seats. You should see Jeannie Pepperton come. It's like breakin' open a gallon jug that floated up full on the rocks. You know, those big brown ones with that white shit in 'em?" Robbie couldn't stop himself. "Brian, Jesus! Enough! The kid's fourteen, he pissed his pants, he feels like shit, just take him home!" Brian let the sound of the wind in the palms be all there was for a moment. It caressed their senses, soothed their souls. Dry air couldn't do that. You needed humidity. Brian finally said, "Okay, Buddy. Is that what you want?" Buddy nodded, still looking at the ground. "Okay then, let's go. You wanna drive?" It was a combination bribe and olive branch. Without raising up, Buddy shook his head no. He felt that bad. He just wasn't up to handling the Highway. Brian nodded, accepting the full depth of Buddy's despondency, patted him on the back and they left, Robbie sitting on a tattered towel in front, Buddy on a dirty burlap in back. Not a word was said all the way home. At Buddy's house, they all got out, then Brian accidentally bumped the horn while Buddy skulked around back. Buddy's mom came out the front door to see who was there, thereby allowing Buddy a chance to slip in the back before she knew he was home. Brian poured on all his charm. "Hi, Mrs. Boyle, sorry about hitting the horn, I was just turning the wheel, ya know." "Oh, hi guys. That's all right. Is Buddy with you?" She was about the nicest mom in the entire Keys, a real life June Cleaver. Robbie said he thought Buddy went around back. "He said he had to check on something." Verna Boyle smiled. "Probably his bike. He likes to make sure that he locked it." Brian chimed right in that, yeah, he thought that was it. Buddy's mom then asked if they'd had fun tonight and Robbie said "pretty much," which was pretty much the truth. There was just that one near-death experience and the fight, after. By that point, Buddy had slipped in the back door, stripped off his peed-on pants and tight whites, thrown them under his bed to dry, grabbed his towel and jumped in the shower. Verna turned to go inside. The boys were home free. They shared a quick look of relief and started to back out so that Buddy’s mom couldn’t see the damage to the driver’s side panels. But something caught Verna Boyle's eye and she turned back to look closer. For, even though they had parked the Prez with the torn-up driver's side away from the house, she seemed to notice some irregularity and asked with genuine concern, "My goodness. What happened to your car, Brian?" Robbie felt his stomach cinch up as Brian tried desperately to figure out how Buddy's mom could possibly have seen the damage on the opposite side. He started moving that way, improvising, "Oh, um.... someone sideswiped me in... the parking lot at the store. No note or anything." "Well, my word," she said with certain disdain. "The Market?" Unheard of! "Yes, ma'am," he said, his voice thick with sadness at the state of things, all the while sharing furtive looks with Robbie as Verna came down to the edge of the tiled porch and peered into the night. "Imagine breaking out someone's window like that and not having the courtesy to leave a note. What's this world coming to?" The window? The vent window! Brian and Robbie let go a combined sigh of relief and both proffered strong agreement with her as to the sorry state of the world. Then, she wished them goodnight and went inside to Ward, gently closing and latching the screen door behind her. Robbie and Brian could see them hug in the living room as if they hadn't seen each other in a week rather than four minutes. It was not a sight either of the boys was accustomed to seeing at their houses. Or anywhere else. But they saw it here all the time. It created an indefinable ache which neither ever discussed. They could also see Buddy in the bathroom window as he stepped into the shower, hollered "Dang!" and jumped back out of the scalding water, adjusting the temperature before re-entering. He looked beaten down and worn out. Robbie smiled. "Poor kid. It has been a rough day for him." Brian said, "He'll grow up." Robbie nodded. Then Brian finished his previous thought: "Then every day will suck." |
