The Highway Kind(35)

“Kind of rich for my blood.”

Walter looked at Jason, who smiled in his way that said serial killer. Girls walked backward when Jason entered a room.

The kid brother, Mike, lit a cigarette and stared at his shoes, a pair of saddle-colored stacks that I’d seen in the window of the Hanover store in the shopping plaza.

“Tell you what,” said Walter. “You can have the ounce for nothin’ if your ’Cuda can take my AMX in the quarter-mile.”

“What if I lose?”

“You owe me double. A hundred.”

“So you want me to race with your Rambler.”

No one called the AMX a Rambler or considered it one. AMC had replaced the ultra-vanilla Rambler badge years ago and was making pretty good cars now. Ramblers were slow and boring. Ramblers were for guys who only stuck the head in when they fucked their wives.

“Can you handle it?” said Walter.

“When?” said Ted.

“Right now.”

Ted shrugged. “Pull it over to the line.”

“Ricky might want to get out,” said Walter, “so you’re not carrying the extra freight. ’Course, he don’t weigh but a hundred pounds.”

I reckon I was around one thirty-five then, but the comment cut me, just as it was meant to.

“Rick’s my copilot,” said Ted. “He can stay.”

Walter and his brothers walked away.

“Fuckin’ slopes,” said Ted, and shook his head.

The Mahoney brothers had an Irish last name but slanted eyes. Their father, retired army, had been stationed in occupied Japan after the Big One and had brought home a bride.

The crowd, standing around their Chevys, Fords, and Mopars, sensed an imminent race and shifted their attention to our cars. Walter got into the driver’s bucket of his ride and cooked the ignition. It was a 390 four-barrel with a four-speed BorgWarner stick and Go Package trim: Magnum 500 wheels and hood stripes. Like the Vette, it was a two-seat American muscle car.

We pulled up to the starting line, drawn in chalk on the road. The end point was a street sign by a utility house a quarter mile ahead. No one worried about oncoming traffic. Few used this road at night.

A peroxide blonde named Helen stood between our cars and raised her arms, just like that girl in the James Dean movie had done. We’d all seen that flick on TV.

“Strap in, Rick,” said my brother, and I pulled the seat belt across my lap and clicked it home. Ted had pulled the shifter down into first and gripped it. He stared straight ahead. He didn’t once look over at Walter Mahoney, who was revving the AMX.

Robin Trower’s “Daydream” was playing from Ted’s eight-track deck. I remember that to this day. Trower was making love to his Strat, going into his delta-to-the-universe, blues-drenched final solo as Helen dropped her arms and we came off the line in a rush that pinned me back against my seat. Ted punched the accelerator as he upshifted into second and left rubber on the street. He didn’t fishtail and kept us straight. For a moment I saw the AMX in my side vision, a blurred steel sheet of cream, and as we hit third it was gone, I mean disappeared, and we were in a black tunnel of speed. My heart thumped in my chest as I felt my smile go ear to ear. We crossed the plane of the street sign and it was over. Ted was a wheel artist. He had it.

We turned around in the parking lot of the utility house. When we came back onto the road, Walter was idling and waiting. We went nose to asshole beside him.

“You caught second pretty good,” said Walter. His tone was flat.

“I did get it,” said Ted. “When can I pick up that weed?”

“Come by the house tomorrow, in the afternoon.”

“See you then.”

“War hero,” said Walter under his breath as he pulled away.

Ted and I drove home. I thought that was the end of it.


The Mahoneys lived in their parents’ brick rambler on a street lined with them. Late in the afternoon the day after the race, we went around the back of the house, where the property graded down. Jason’s Harley, outfitted with ape hangers, was on its kickstand there. We entered the open back door and walked through a laundry and storage room to a large finished basement. This was the Mahoney brothers’ lair.

Walter was seated on a torn-up couch beside Jason, who was spooning ice cream directly out of a tub. There was chocolate dripping in his Vandyke. The youngest, Mike, was seated in a chair that was as shredded as the couch, staring at a cigarette between his fingers as if it held meaning. A fog of pot smoke hung in the air, and Uriah Heep, hard rock for burnouts, played from a compact stereo set in a corner of the room. A purple bong was on a cable-spool table beside an upturned shoebox cover that held a bunch of weed.

Ranger, their shepherd mix, got up on all fours and growled at us as we entered the room. The brothers had been blowing pot smoke in Ranger’s face since he was a puppy, which had made him the opposite of mellow. Cannabis had done the dog no favors.

“Ted the man,” said Walter by way of greeting, and added, “You too, Ricky.”

Ranger, still growling, edged toward us and bared his teeth.

“You got my ounce?” said Ted.

“Do a couple of bongs with us first,” said Walter.

“Yeah, sit a minute,” said Jason.

“Put that fucked-up animal away and we will,” said Ted.