Hot Death on Wheels

     

     

     Cars today, they're nothing, kid; crappy little Detroit shitboxes stamped 
out of sheet-metal.  A waste of your fuckin' money and so full of 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 a while back, more miles than I care to remember.  
Used to tag along behind the greasers.  A grease-monkey wannabe, me, hair 
slicked back with Bryl Creem and snot dripping out my nose and thought I 
knew something about cars.  Nah, I didn't know nothing back then, but Den 
Tolbert, he tolerated me trailing around behind him, sometimes even let 
me hold a wrench for him while he worked on his street-rod, let me feel 
like I was part of it, something special.

     Never heard of him?  Kid, I'm not surprised, you wouldn't.  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 something, not like 
those fags today who think they're something because they got a staple 
though their face.  Not that anybody--anybody--would have 
called him a punk to his face, no sir.

     Den had a '57 Chevy, just like that one.  The finest car ever made, 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 raging broncos chained under 
the hood, with fat racing slicks of Pirelli rubber two feet wide in back, and 
custom hand-tooled air shocks he took off an Italian racer that crashed and 
burned off Topanga Canyon one misty morning; some asshole who had the 
bright idea that 'cause 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, looking for 
that perfect edge that would keep the rear-end from floating right off the 
street at top speed.  Other streetpunks 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 nothing inside, not even a tach, because he knew every quaver of his 
engine and could always tell just exactly what he was doing by the sound.

     He left behind everything on the road.  He didn't even have a 
rearview mirror because nobody ever came up behind him, no baby, not 
even once. 

     One summer night the hot wind was blowing out of the mountains, and 
he'd beat everything on the road, no contest.  We'd gone to the drive-in, 
where all the streetpunks would hang out in the back row, smoking Luckies, 
making a great show of ignoring the girls, and arranging races.  But nobody 
would race with Den; they'd all been beaten so bad that they wouldn't even 
look him in the eye, just stood there pretending they couldn't see him.

     That night was hot, the wind blowing down from the desert like the 
devil had forgotten to close the gates of Hell.  Den stared down the other 
drivers contemptuously, not saying 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 to shake you to pieces.  He 
took off, out into the mountains, screeching wheels like a coyote gone mad 
and leaving 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 nothing but darkness and stars, nothing else, not even cows, not 
even cactus.

     He'd left California so far behind in the night, with the hot wind razor-
whipping past him, that he could be in Arizona, or even Kansas, but the 
roads were wide and straight and empty and just made for street racing.

     And then-- this is the part you might not believe, kid, but I swear I heard 
it straight, and he wasn't smiling when he said it; so laugh and I'll goddamn 
knock your teeth in, I'm telling you.

     He'd 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, paint 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 wasn't any 
humor in that grin, none, and wearing a dirty t-shirt with a pack of Camels 
rolled up in a sleeve that just hung there, flapping limp on the bones.  Den 
recognized that gleaming 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 waiting for him, just grinning and smoking and 
waiting by his car, he knew that 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'd been looking for a race, spoiling for one, and if it was Death, 
why then, he'd goddamn race 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, scoped things out.  
But that's something that you just don't do, kid, you never shut the motor 
when the adrenaline is pumping.  And we'd had that car apart just last week 
tweaking it up--him tweaking it up, that is, me handing him wrenches--and 
it was running as sweet as we'd ever gotten it, smoother than twenty-dollar 
whisky and rattlesnake fast.  And, besides, he was spoiling 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 cross-roads, just a light.  Nothing there but road and starlight, and 
maybe in the way distance two tall buttes, with the road disappearing 
between them.  So Den pulled up beside him, both of them racing their 
engines, both of them smiling like rabid '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 chickenshit, but this was the real thing.  They'd hit a hundred 
before you could spit, and Death was even with him, maybe even 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 running way hot; it 
had been a hot night to start with and he'd picked up a lot of dirt from 
going too damn fast on some rotten unpaved desert road and the dirt was 
stopping up his radiator.  And now his engine was overheating bad, flames 
licking out the side of the hood, and the road got narrow and went on a 
curve between the two looming buttes.  He took the inside of the curve and 
right then he blew a sparkplug bam! like a rifle-shot, right 
through the side of the hood and he knew he wasn't going to make it.  Death 
started to draw ahead, he could see the grinning skull in the window inches 
away, and as the midnight coupe pulled ahead he saw something he should 
have 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 in to 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 around as he passed-- behind him he saw a huge 
cloud of dust, and two wheels off that midnight coupe came flying through 
the air, bouncing and spinning, 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 going to do was stop, not 
then, not until he was a thousand miles away.  He knew, he just knew, that 
old Skull-face wasn't going to be too pleased about the race.

     So he limped home, firing on seven cylinders, but he coddled it and 
nursed it and coasted when he could, the engine going pock! pock! pock! 
with the air sucking into the cylinder where the spark-plug had blown, but 
he made it back.

     After that the fire went out of him; he settled down, got married, sold 
the car and got a full-time job.  Last I heard, he's selling insurance, and 
doing pretty well for himself at it, too.  Says he doesn't regret getting out.  
You can cheat Death once, he told me, and once is enough.

     Me?  Yeah, you're right, it was me bought the car off him.  I had to scrap 
the engine; put in a Pontiac engine I got off a wreck 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, doing engines mostly, sometimes 
suspensions, but the heart has gone out of it.  It's 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'm not about to sell.  You 
couldn't afford it, kid, and I'm not talking about money, neither.

     No, I don't race, myself.  I never take that car out any more, except 
maybe once a year or so, and then only in mid-day; run it up and down the 
street once or twice to remember old times, to remember what a real car 
feels like.  Because I know that Death is still out there, still cruising 
somewhere in a midnight coupe so black that you have to look hard to see 
it's even there at all, cruising and looking and looking and cruising, just 
looking to find that one car, the one that, long ago, had the hood that says 
Hot Death on Wheels

     And this time, I don't reckon he's fixing to lose.

     

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