James Sallis: Driven

“When it does, you have yourself a good ride, every minute of it.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Best times of your life, just you and the road, leaving all the rest of this shit behind.”

“I hear you.”

The man nodded a half inch or so and walked away.

Were they the best times? In many ways, absolutely. Out there loose and free and moving fast, away from everything that works so hard to hold you in place. Once you had that feeling, once it soaked into your bones, you never got over it, and nothing else ever came close.

But sooner or later, as Manny always reminded him, you had to pull over and get out of the car.

He’d barely got back under when a second set of shoes, pink hightops well-smeared with grease this time, hove into view and didn’t go away. He rolled out. She worked at the far end, by the vertical door that stayed propped open on fifty-gallon drums. Everyone called her Billie or just B. Strictly business, from what he’d seen. Hispanic, but second, third generation.

“Yes ma’am?”

First she looked startled. Then she laughed.

“Sweet ride, but how’ll it fit in, there in Scottsdale?”

“Any luck at all, she’ll never have to find out.”

“ She, huh?”

He waited what actors would call two beats and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

She laughed again and waved toward the hood. When he told her to be his guest, she popped it. Came up for air shaking her head.

“That’s some serious head room.”

“Never know what you might need.”

“Right, and when you think you do, it usually turns out to be the wrong thing.” Her fingers had left a smudge on the hood. Noticing, she bent to wipe it with her shirt tail. A man’s denim shirt, well faded, sleeves rolled to her biceps. Loose khaki-colored cargo pants. “I wouldn’t mind taking that for a ride.”

His turn to laugh.

“Guess you heard that one before,” she said.

“Once or twice. Not in this context.”

She looked around. “Some context we got here. This the part where the music comes up, you know, strings and shit?”

“Probably not.”

“Yeah, probably not.”

In addition to oleanders, crickets and cracks, the new place had a TV, and as he sat there that night finishing up his carry-out Bento Box from Tokyo Express with hot air blowing from window to window and the swamp cooler heaving, local news gave way to a movie and suddenly he was looking into Shannon’s face.

Part of his face, actually-seen in a rearview mirror. But it was him. Shannon was the best stunt driver who ever lived, a legend really, and the one who’d given Driver a leg up, got him into the business. Bought him meals, even let him sleep on his couch. Ten months after Driver’s first solid job, on a routine stunt like hundreds he’d done before, Shannon’s car went off a cliff, somersaulted twice, and sat rocking on its back like a beetle, cameras rolling the whole time.

This movie was titled Stranger, about the self-appointed guardian of a small community. You never saw him, just his car, a Mercury, pulling up at an overlook or turning in behind a suspicious vehicle, and once in a while his arm in the window, a shadowy profile or a slice of face in the mirror, or his back and neck as he sat watching. You never found out what the man’s motivations were. The movie had been made on the cheap, so instead of an actor they’d just used Shannon for those bits. There was kick ass driving all through. Not much of a script, when you got right down to it. But the movie had that sheen that cheap films often have when the makers are shooting something they believe in, working with next to no money, time, or resources, reaching hard for effect.

Had to be an old movie, since Shannon, the parts of Shannon he could see anyway, looked young. Probably made by youngsters with little more than a gleam in their eyes and a credit card. They’d be huge now or selling real estate somewhere.

That night, as a predicted rain eased down outside, memories mixed with twisted versions of scenes from the movie in his dreams. The next day he caught the Crown Vic in the rear view and realized what it meant, he almost laughed.

No doubt about its following him. Late model, nondescript gray, two men. He’d turned off Indian School, swung up to Osborn, then onto Sixteenth and they were still there. He took a residential street, one that looked wide and inviting but that, at the end of a long, curving block, ran headlong into a maze of apartment complexes and curlicue feeders. He’d come across it months ago and from sheer force of habit filed the location away. The area was riddled with stubs of pavement abutting the street, where private driveways had been before the complexes took over. Accelerating and taking a turn or two, just enough to get out ahead, he backed into one of those stubs and shut off the engine. Cars were parked along the streets on both sides-another plus. Across from him two young men unloaded furniture looking to be mostly veneer from a van that dipped alarmingly each time one of them climbed aboard.

DOS AMIGOS MOVERS

WE GET THE JOB DONE

Driver got out and walked over.

“Give you a hand there?”

They looked at him, then at one another, and rightfully so, with suspicion. One was crowding six foot, light complected with startlingly black hair that swept to either side like a crow’s wings. The other was short and deeply brown, hair sparse but long, upper arms like bags filled with rocks.

“I live just up the block.” Driver hooked his head. “Back there. Work at home, fourteen-fifteen hours a day I’m nose to nose with a computer screen. Then I got to get out, move around some. You know?”

“We can’t pay you, friend.” This from the shorter one, who seemed more or less to be in charge and more or less to be doing the lion’s share of the heavy lifting.

“Don’t expect it.”

Moments later, as Driver came down the ramp with an end table in one hand, lamp in the other, he saw the Crown Vic cruise past at a slow trot. It pulled up by the Fairlane, the passenger got out and checked, looked around, got back in. Never did more than glance across at three poor slobs unloading furniture. The Crown Vic came back by twice as they emptied the van, four minutes or so between laps, so they were sweeping the complexes, looking hard for whatever signs they thought they might see. Last lap, the guy on the passenger side was talking on a phone. The Crown Vic picked up speed and was gone.

“Better get back to it, I guess,” Driver said.

“Back in the saddle, right. Hey, man-much thanks for the help. Cold beer in the cooler up front if you want one.”

“Next time.”

“ Any time.”

Two days later he’s sitting at the mall swallowing bitter coffee when the guy at the next table says “You’ve made Carl unhappy.”

Driver looked over. Thirtyish, dress shirt and slacks, could be a sales rep on break or the manager of Dillard’s across the way.

“Carl is good at one thing and one thing only. That is pretty much his life. But you lost him.”

“I take it Carl drives a grey Crown Vic.”

“And when Carl’s unhappy, it’s like…well, it’s as though small black clouds spring up everywhere.” He held up his cup. “Grabbing a refill, get you anything?”

“I’m good.”

While the man was gone, a couple of teenagers took the table. He came back and stood there silently until they got up and moved away. He sat down. Some kind of slush drink, so that he kept tilting his head back, letting the soft ice slide down his throat.

“You and Carl of the Black Cloud, I assume you’d both have the same business address.”

“More or less.”

Pretty much, more or less: evidently his visitor came from a world of approximations, one where perception, judgment, even facts, were in suspension, and could shift at a moment’s notice.