James Sallis: Driven

That wasn’t how it happened, soft, slow. In life it happened fast. In an instant. But in the dream it got stretched, extended, elongated, it just went on and on…like his life here.

Dream. Memory. Who the fuck cared.

Once it was over, his partner was bleeding out and the kid lay dead by the wall.

Back when Driver was first discovering his gift, first realizing that cars and his life were inextricably intertwined, whenever things went wrong, with the family, one of the kids, or within the community, Jorge’s abuela would say, “You’ve seen the tip of the wolf’s ear.” Over the years he’d seen his share of ear tips, and of wolves.

He was at Boyd’s, fine-tuning the Ford following the Tucson jaunt. Outside, day gave way to night by a kind of gentlemen’s agreement, neither losing face: light still strong as shadows moved in from nearby hills and taller buildings. Pushing out from under the car he saw that, while the radio blared and lights blazed and tools lay where they had been in use, on floors and benches and hoods, he was alone. The other mechanics and workers and hangers-on were gone.

Instinctively he got to his feet, taking a long socket wrench with him.

What was it about these guys going around in pairs?

One stayed by the door as the other stepped toward him. Rail-thin, musculature standing out on his arms like add-ons. Never glanced at the wrench, but halfway across he held up his hands palm out.

Driver moved out from the car. Don’t want your back to the wall.

“A word, young man, nothing more. We’re not a threat.” Keeping the one hand in place, palm out, he stepped sideways to lower the radio’s volume. Accordion, fiddle, and guitarron fell away from the ear, became almost internal, part of the heartbeat.

“You had a pleasant trip earlier today?”

Driver nodded. Getting weirder all the time.

“While you were gone, you had callers. Left to their own wiles, and for no good reason-nothing to look for, nothing to find-they made a mess of your most recent home. A mistake those two will not be making again.”

His eyes went momentarily around the garage, taking it all in, then to the Fairlane.

“The car does not look like much.”

“That’s not what she’s about.”

The man dipped his head in affirmation. The skin on his forehead was deeply pleated, ridges that ran from his eyes right up to his hairline. You could plant crops in there.

“These men, the ones who came into your home, were expendable. Coins to be tossed. The ones who sent them, those with substance, are displeased with you.”

“I suspect they’re displeased with a lot of things.”

“There is that. But, first the man at the mall. Now these two.”

“With which I had nothing to do.”

“Those who sent them will assume otherwise.”

Driver was shifting around, watching both men closely, their reactions, body language, eyes. “What am I to these people?”

“A danger, imagined or otherwise? An irritant? An imperfection? Something to be removed. But-” His eyes followed Driver’s to the one posted at the door-“I don’t speak for them.”

Looking back, he moved slowly toward the Fairlane as Driver circled away, and rested a hand momentarily on the car’s hood.

“They have a smell to them, don’t they,” he said, “the good ones.”

Carefully he lifted the windshield wiper, tucked a card beneath, and eased it down.

“Mr. Beil asks that you have dinner with him. The time and address are on the card. He asks that I tell you it will be the best meal of your life.”

“I don’t-”

“Be hungry, Mr. West.”

Driver watched them leave, heard the car spit and catch and pull away. Momentarily the others began drifting in by various passways, all eyes going first to Driver. Soon the music was back up, the clangs and revs and burr of power tools back in place.

The card was thick stock, light blue with embossed silver letters, just the name, James Beil. Inscribed on the back in handwriting every bit as precise as the printing:

Fifth Corner, off 16th Ave, 9 p.m. A little over two hours away.

“Everything good?” It was the guy with the clown-puke BKs.

“ Esta bien. ”

“We were not far. We were watching, all of us.”

Like most statements, Driver thought, you could read it more than one way. But he nodded and said that was good to hear.

The man started off but, before Driver could put down the wrench, turned. “We had your back, is what I mean to say.”

Beil lifted his cup. Steam passed like a sweep of rain across his glasses. He blinked. “Do you know who I am?”

“Not the sous chef, I take it.”

“Hardly.”

“No clue, then.”

“Good. As it should be.” He downed a slug of the coffee. “Something we appear to have in common.” He drank again and set the cup down empty. “Among other things, I own this restaurant. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for you, thought we might have a drink first. Your preference is single malt, I believe.” A waiter stepped up carrying a crystal tumbler. “From Orkney. This Scotch has spent an appreciable time in its cask. Waiting, as it were?”

Driver lifted the glass in thanks and sipped, held it in his mouth.

“Age twelve, you watched your mother kill your father. You then lived for four years with a couple named Smith in Tucson-they are still in the house, by the way. Leaving with no good-byes, you became a stunt driver in L.A., one of the best, they say. I have seen your work, and would agree. It was the other career that didn’t go so well.

“You fall away from sight at that point, leaving bodies behind this time instead of a home. You surface a bit later, a new day, a new city, as Paul West. Years pass and again you vanish, only to pop up-or to stay low, it might better be said-here.

“Ah…and here it is.”

Driver thinking back to what Felix said, they know more about me than anyone should, as waiters lowered plates and platters onto the table. A pasta dish with clams, veal in a wine sauce studded with bright red peppers and capers, a cutting board of prosciutto and cheeses, a bowl of salad. Glasses set out for white and red wines. Sparkling water.

“Eat. Please.”

Driver tried to remember the last time he had done so. He’d had a breakfast burrito, what, yesterday, eleven or so in the morning? Once he’d served himself, the waiters conveyed the platters down the table to Beil, who spooned out small portions from each. They ate without speaking. Sounds gradually subsided past the doors to this private dining room.

“The restaurant is closing early tonight,” Beil said.

Looking around, Driver realized that the waiters had withdrawn. They were alone.

Beil finished with a final bite of salad, placed the fork on his plate diagonally, and crossed it with his knife. He poured himself fresh tea from a tulip-shaped pitcher. Sweet tea in the Southern fashion, Driver had discovered. He’d put the glass down and not touched it since.

“I grew up in Texas,” Beil said. “Not in the piney woods and not in any town, but in the wild, unclaimed stretches-unclaimable, really. Bare land every way you looked, and the horizon so far off it may as well have been The Great Hereafter. My mother and father were there but forever busy, he as foreman for one of the huge ranches, she as librarian for the county library in the nearest town. I had my room at the rear of the house, all but a separate domicile, and there I went about feeling my way along the years, putting together a life from pieces of things, shiny things, discarded things, useless things, that I found around me, much as a bird builds its nest.

“In many ways it was like living in another country, another world. Even the air was different. The wind would shift, and you’d smell cattle, their rankness, their manure, coming from the ranch where my father worked, miles and miles away. Smells of earth, mold, stale water, and rot as well. And dust. Always the smell of dust. I’d lie in bed at night in absolute darkness thinking this might be a little what it was like being buried. I knew I had to get out of there.”