Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

“What happened there?” Roy said.

“Just a scrape,” Rhett said. “Opening up my locker.”

Roy started the car, drove off.

“Do we have to listen to that?” Rhett said.

Roy switched off “Milky White Way.”

“Vroom vroom,” said Sonny Junior, raising a Bud in welcome. He sat on the back of a flatbed truck with Ducktown Salvage on the door, the demolition derby car already down on the dirt track, an abandoned course near the South Carolina line. “Any trouble finding the place?”

“Some,” said Roy.

“Did I say south on four forty-one?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Meant north. South coming from Tennessee.”

Roy’s watch felt heavy, ticking away the time.

Sonny Junior flipped the empty bottle over his shoulder, slipped down off the truck. “How’s it goin’, killer?” he said. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and his arms and shoulders were reddening in the sun.

“Pretty good,” said Rhett.

“What happened to your hair?”

“Got cut.”

“Lookin’ good,” said Sonny Junior.

“My mom made me. I’m moving to New York.”

“That’s what I hear,” said Sonny Junior. “Ready for a spin?”

They got in the demolition derby car, yellow with red flames except for the deep dents where bare metal gleamed, Sonny Junior behind the wheel, Rhett beside him. Roy watched the car circle the track. On the first go-around, Sonny Junior talked and made gestures and Rhett nodded. On the second, Rhett was on Sonny Junior’s lap, hands on the wheel, and they were both laughing. On the third, Sonny Junior was on the passenger side, his arm hanging out the window, and Rhett was driving. The car veered over to the side of the track, a little abruptly, and stopped near Roy. Sonny Junior hopped out. The car started rolling.

“Hey,” Roy said, stepping forward.

Sonny Junior put a hand on Roy’s arm. “Can’t hurt himself, cousin. He knows not to go over twenty and I got him all strapped in-it’s like a cage in there.”

Roy watched Rhett drive off, just tall enough to see over the wheel. For a moment, he strained a bit against Sonny’s hand, and Sonny strained back. Then Rhett came to the first turn, appeared to have no trouble with it, continued slowly around the oval, dead center in the track. Roy relaxed a little. Was he going to ruin this treat, act like an old woman on Rhett’s last day, leave Rhett with that memory to fly off with?

Sonny Junior went over to the truck, opened another beer. “Cold one?” he said.

Roy shook his head, watched Rhett driving sedately up the backstretch.

“New York,” Sonny Junior said.

“Correct.”

“A lip doctor, what’s that?”

“Some kind of plastic surgeon.”

“You couldn’t do anything about it?”

“Like what?”

Sonny Junior came over, put a beer in his hand. “I get you, Roy. If you could of done the kind of something that would of worked, it wouldn’t of happened in the first place.”

Roy turned to him. “Meaning?”

Sonny Junior raised his hands in surprise, reacting to some expression that must have been on Roy’s face. “No offense, cuz. I’m just talking about a quick one upside the head-another one of those no-nos in this society we got goin’.”

“That sort of happened,” Roy said.

“You hit her?” said Sonny Junior. “Wouldn’t have thought it of you, what with how smooth you are, Roy, in control.”

Is that the way he appeared to Sonny Junior? “Not her,” Roy said. “Him.”

“The lip doctor? You popped him?”

Rhett came out of the number four turn, drove up the track their way at about ten miles an hour. He didn’t look at them, just went by, both hands on the wheel, face glowing. He must have spotted some weeds growing up through the track, weeds with flowers on the end, because he swerved to run them over, crunch, under his left front wheel. Roy didn’t answer.

“Popped him a good one, I hope,” said Sonny Junior.

“What difference does it make?”

“Makes me feel better, anyway.”

“You?”

“For what they done,” said Sonny Junior. “Just when I’m gettin’ to know him, takin’ him away like this. What I’d fuckin’ do to-” He went silent, tilted the bottle to his mouth. They watched Rhett rounding the number two turn; was that his arm hanging out the window? A skinny arm, but in its nonchalant pose an exact duplicate of Sonny Junior’s. Sonny Junior patted Roy on the back. “So I know what you must be going through.”

“What I’m going through?” said Roy.

“Yeah. Like the separation thing.”

All at once, Roy found his eyes tearing up again, a crazy thing to happen in front of Sonny Junior. For cover, more than anything else, he took a drink from the bottle, unexpectedly found himself wanting more, drank more, chugging down the whole bottle in the end. His vision cleared.

“Wee-ooo,” said Sonny Junior, his eyebrows-so fair they were almost invisible-rising in surprise. He chugged his beer too. “That’s more like it, Roy. What’s family all about anyways?” He hurled the empty bottle all the way across the track, smashing against the rusted stands on the other side. “This fuckin’ society,” he said.

Rhett was on the backstretch again, maybe going a little faster now. A strange question popped into Roy’s mind and he said it aloud; this was his cousin, after all. “Was that the rebel yell, Sonny?”

“Huh?”

“That yell you just did.”

“Wee-ooo. Like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell if I know. Why, Roy? What’s up?”

Roy looked at the sky, a deep blue sky that got deeper and deeper the longer he looked, like he could fall up into it and fall and fall forever. He tried that rebel yell.

Not too good. His air supply failed and the volume got nowhere near Sonny Junior’s, besides which his voice cracked in the middle, the rest of it quavering off to nothing. That fucking night- don’t say fucking — in the Hotel de whatever it was in the French Quarter where Rhett was conceived, and where afterward in the dim bathroom Roy had pissed in the bidet thing, not knowing any better: suddenly Roy’s lungs folded up and he was out of air, but completely. He dug in his pockets; no inhaler. He glanced around, maybe a little wildly, drowning for air in all that blue sky.

“ ’Nother frostie?” said Sonny Junior.

Everything started to fade, and in that fading, Roy heard a roar and saw the demolition derby car, yellow with red flames, zooming down the backstretch, barreling into the number three turn, fishtailing, fishtailing, wider and wider, then starting to spin, spinning in clouds of dust, Rhett’s face thumb-sized with a black O in the middle, and of course it rolled, the yellow red-flaming thing rolled and kept rolling, rolling across the infield right at Sonny Junior and him, flipping, flipping again, and once more before landing upright, and stopping just like that, quivering ten yards away.

Roy wasn’t aware of his lungs reopening, of running across the infield, of ripping open the door, grappling with the harness, of nothing until he had Rhett out of the car and in his arms.

“Put me down,” said Rhett, struggling free, dropping to the ground.

Roy just stood there, breathing. Sonny Junior came running up. “He okay?”

“I’m fine,” said Rhett. He looked it, eyes wide, mouth open, not a mark on him. “That’s the most fun I ever had in my whole life.”

Sonny Junior took off his belt. “Want this, Roy?”

“For what?”

“The whippin’ you’re gonna give him-I told him no more than twenty miles an hour. Must have hit eighty.”

“There’s going to be no whipping. Let an eleven-year-old kid drive a car, whatever happens is on you.”