Posted by AlOmega on February 09, 2001 at 17:53:06:
So ya thinks ya knows ya're cars? You aint heard nuthin yet.
Cars today, they’re nothing, kid; crappy little Detroit shittboxes stamped outa sheet metal. A waste of your
fuckin’ money and so fulla electronic crap that you can’t even tune ‘em up without a fuckin’ computer.
You like that one? Pretty, you say? Let me tell you, you couldn’t afford it, not that one. Not for sale
anyway.
Let me tell you about cars, kid, about real cars. I was a kid too, once. Yeah, that was quite a while back,
more miles than I cares to remember. Useta tag along behind the greasers. A grease-monkey wannabe, me,
hair all slicked back with Beryl Creem and snot drippin’ outa my nose and thought I knew something about
cars. Nah, I didn’t know nothin’ back then. But Den Tolbert, he tolerated me trailin’ around behind him.
Sometime he’d even let me hold a wrench for him while he worked on his streetrod, let me feel like I was a
part of it - ya know, something special.
Never heard of him? Kid, I aint surprised. But believe you me, he was the best there was - maybe the best
there ever was. He was a T-shirt grease-punk back when the word “punk” meant somethin’. Not like those
fags today who think they’re somethin’ because they gots a staple through their face Not that anybody -
anybody - woulda called him a punk to his face, no sir.
Den had a ‘57 Chevy, just like that one. The finest car ever made, in my opinion. He’d crammed a Cadillac
flathead V-8 in it, the one that back then, they made special only for ambulances. He took it apart and
rebuilt it - the engine bored and stroked and milled and ported and polished, every cam sanded and shined
and rubbed and put back together the way he wanted it. He had damn near five hundred ragin’ broncos
chained under the hood, with fat racin’ slicks of Pirelli rubber two feet wide in back, and custom hand-tooled
air shocks he took offa Italian racer that crashed and burned off Topanga Canyon one misty morning. Got
‘em cause some asshole who thought he could afford a pretty car, he knew how to drive it.
Den’s rod had chrome so bright your eyes hurt to look at it; rubber so hot it left sooty flames on the asphalt
five hundred feet behind where he’d been, twin quad-barrel carbs and a tuned exhaust that let him do zero to
one-eighty in nothing flat. He spent weeks fine-tuning just the aero, lookin’ for that perfect edge that would
keep the rear end from floatin’ right off the street at top speed. Other street-punks had their cars all dolled
up, with cherry-slick enamel and white-wall tires and fancy hi-fi radios. Except for the chrome, Den’s rod
was slick glossy black with only a white skull on the hood and the words Hot Death on Wheels. He didn’t
have nothin’ inside, not even a tach, ‘cause he knew every quaver of his engine and could always tell just
exactly what he was doin’ by the second. He left behind everything on the road. He don’t even have a
rearview mirror because nobody ever came up behind him. No baby, not even once.
One Halloween night the hot wind was a blowin’ out of the mountains, and he’d beat everythin’ on the road,
no contest. We’d gone to the drive-in where all the street-punks would hang out in the back row, smokin’
Luckys, makin’ a great show of ignorin’ the girls and arrangin’ races. But nobody would race with Den
‘cause they’d all been beaten so bad that they wouldn’t even look him in the eye. They just stood there
pretending they couldn’t see him.
That night was hot for October sorta like the wind blowin’ down from the desert was from Hell’s own door.
Den stared down the other drivers contemptuously, not sayin’ a word. Then he threw down his cigarette
and just got in his car and gunned it. Rev up a car like his and you can feel it as much as you hear it -
thunder-like, ya know. He took off, out into the mountains, screechin’ wheels like a coyote gone mad and
leavin’ us all behind in a cloud of burnt rubber and gas fumes.
I heard the story later, in bits and pieces. I believed it then, and all these years and too many miles later, I
goddamn still believe every word of it now.
He went through the mountains at about a hundred miles an hour, he told me, twisting and turning like a
mountain goat. but he’d built that car to hold onto the road no matter what, and by God it did. And he
headed straight out through the desert, cactus, and sagebrush and then a thousand miles of nothin’ but
darkness and stars - nothin’ else, not even cows, not even cactus.
He’d left California so far behind in the night, with the hot wind razor-whippin’ past him, that he coulda
been in Arizona, or even Kansas, but the roads were wide and straight and empty and just made for street
racin’.
And the - this is the part you aren’t gonna believe, kid, but I swear I heard it straight, and he wasn’t smilin’
when he said it; so laugh and I’ll goddamn knock your teeth in, I’m tellin’ you.
He left everything behind and there, in the last hour before dawn, he came on Death, waiting for him in the
road. Death in a midnight black coupe, painted so flat black you had to look hard to see it was even there at
all. Death had the face of a skull; grinning, of course, but there ‘tweren’t no humor in that grin, none, an
wearing a dirty T-shirt with a pack of Camels rolled up in a sleeve that just hung there, flappin’ limp on the
bones. Ded recognized that gleamin’ skull instantly, he’d seen it a thousand times, seen it even in his dreams;
it was painted on the hood of his rod. The car, though, the midnight coupe, was a make that he couldn’t
quite recognize, and that right there was more than a little odd, ‘cause Den knew the lines of every car ever
built.
And when he saw Death waitin’ for him, just grinnin’ and smokin’ and waitin’ by his car, he knew he’d
ridden so fast he’d left behind Nevada, and Wyoming, and even goddamn Iowa, and had left the roads of
the living so far behind that the only way he would ever get back was to run this race, this last race, and by
God win it.
But he’s been lookin’ for a race, spoilin’ for one, and if it was Death, and win, too. He wasn’t about to lose
to anybody , not Death, not anybody.
And Death only grinned and beckoned with one finger.
He probably should have stopped and checked his car, let his oil cool a little, taken a look at the wedges he
had on his springs, scooped things out. But that’s somethin’ you just don’t do, kid. You never shut the
motor when the adrenaline is pumpin’. And we’d had that car apart just last week tweakin’ it up - him doin’
the tweakin’’, me handin’ him wrenches - and it was arunnin’ as sweet as we’d ever got it, smoother than
twenty-dollar whisky and rattlesnake- fast. And ‘sides, he was a spoilin’ for a race.
So he waved Death on ahead of him, and old skull-face pulled up and waited at a stoplight - a stoplight right
out in the middle of nowhere, not even at a crossroads. Just a light. Nothn’ there but road and starlight and
maybe way in the distance two tall buttes, with the road disappearin’ between them. So Den pulled up
beside him, both of them racin’ their engines, both of them smilin’ like raid coons, and then the light turned
green, and he popped the clutch and they were gone.
And Death’s car was fast, scary fast, faster than any car Den had ever seen, and in that first instant he knew
that every other race he’d ever run was just chickenshitt, but this was the real thing. They’d hit a hundred
before you could spit, and Death was even with him, maybe a little ahead and then they both shifted into
fourth, and Den put his foot down and hammered it with everything he had.
He was neck and neck with Death, but his engine was arunnin’ way hot’ it had been a hot night to start with
and he’d picked up a lot of dirt from going to damn fast on some rotten unpaved desert road and the dirt
was stoppin’ up his radiator. And now his engine was overheatin’ bad, flames lickin’ out the side of the
hood, and the road got narrower and went on a curve between the two loomin’ buttes. He took the inside
of the curve and right then he blew a sparkplug - BLAM! - like a rifle-shot, right through the side of the
hood and he knew he wasn’t goin’ to make it. Death started to draw ahead, he could see the grinnin’ skull
in the window inches away, and as the midnight coupe pulled ahead, he saw something he should’ve noticed
right off. He realized that Death’s car had no aero. It was all muscle with no finesse and most particularly
with no down-force to hold the rear end to the road. It was built for the straightaway. So Den, he just
tapped the wheel, just a little bit, and holding his car into the curve with all the force he could muster he
nudged Death’s rear end, and Death’s midnight-black coupe broke free of the road and spun out. And
behind him - he took a quick look as he passed - behind him he saw a huge cloud of dust and two wheels off
that midnight coupe came flyin’ through the air, bouncin’ and spinnin’, and one of them came right over his
car, a few inches over his head, and spanged down in the road ahead of him, and he didn’t stop, didn’t
even slow down, just dodged onto the dirt and held the car steady and ran. One thing he wasn’t ever gonna
do was to stop - not then, not until he was a thousand miles away. He knew, he just knew, that old
skull-face wasn’t gonna be too pleased about this race.
So he limped home, firin’ on seven cylinders. But he coddled it and nursed it and coasted when he could -
the engine going pock! pock! pock! with the air suckin’ into the cylinder where the spark-plug had blown,
but he made it back.
After that, the fire went outa him. He settled down, got married, sold the car, and got a full-time job. Last I
heard, he’s sellin’ insurance and doin’ pretty well for himself at it, too. Says he don’t regret gettin’ out.
You can cheat Death once, he told me, and once is enough.
Me? Yeah, you’re right. It was me who bought the car offa him. I had to scrap the engine - put in a
Pontiac engine I got off a wreak and rebuilt damn near from scratch. But I could never make it run the way
he did (though I won my share of street races and then some).
I’m on the NASCAR circuit now, doin’ engines mostly, sometimes suspensions, but the heart has gone outa
it. ‘Tis all show-biz now, commercials for soft drinks and Virginia Slims and last I heard even a goddamn
cosmetics company. I think maybe it’s time for me to settle down, too.
Yeah, kid, that there’s the car. Pretty, you say. I detailed it myself, wouldn’t let anybody else touch this
one. But no, I aint about to sell. You couldn’t afford it, kid. And I aint talkin’ about the money either.
No, I don’t race myself. I never take that car out any more, except maybe once a year on November first
and then only at midday. I run it up and down the street once or twice to remember the old times - to
remember what a real car feels like. Because I know that Death is still out there, still cruisin’ somewhere in
a midnight coupe so black that you have to look hard to see it’s even there at all, cruisin’ and lookin’ and
lookin’ and cruisin’, just lookin’ to find that one care, the one that, long ago, had the hood that says Hot
Death On Wheels.
And its always Halloween when he’s lookin’. Always. And if he finds it, he’ll wanna race.
And this time, I don’t reckon he’s fixin’ to lose.