All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (15 page)

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

Then it was time for me to roll around to the start line. I watched in my side view mirror as she walked back to the spectators. She was still smiling when the flagger gave me the nod.

The trick with drags like that is not to win by too much. You wanna feel out the other guy and win by just enough. You go smoking the first couple of guys you race and pretty soon nobody wants to race you, and they sure don't wanna put any money on it.

Billy had a Trans Am, '73 I think, and for an automatic, it had some oomph, but when we came outta the squeeze between those dunes, I stepped into the Cuda and kept a car length ahead of him all the way to the finish line. He was a loudmouth, but he was a good loser. Paid up and said, “Not too shabby considering how much weight she's hauling.”

“Maybe next time,” I said. To remind him he pretty much always lost to me.

I raced four more guys after that. Beat a Camaro, and a Charger same year as mine, and then got my ass handed to me by this scrawny Mexican kid in a Corvette with a 427 under the hood. I knew I wasn't gonna beat him, which was why I only put twenty bucks on it, but I wasn't planning on getting smoked that bad.

I only raced him so that when I was paying him, I could give him the number for the shop.

“You bring it around, I'll give you a good deal. Make it look as nice as it rides,” I said.

“It still beat you, man.” He gave me this chin-up look, like we were gonna get into it.

“Yeah, well, you'd look better beating me with a new paint job.”

After that race, Wavy and me took a break for a while. I sat up on the hood, watching the other races, and she sat down on the bumper while I braided her hair. She never kept braids in it, but my sister taught me how to do it a couple different ways. Just something to do with my hands.

“What is this, a hair salon?” this guy walking by said.

I shrugged him off, but a couple minutes later, he was back.

“You racing tonight?” he said.

“Yeah, I took her 'round a couple times. You wanna go?”

He didn't say nothing, but he walked around the Cuda, looking it over. When he came back around to the hood, he was grinning.

“Looks like that saying is wrong. I guess you
can
polish a turd.”

“The question is whether you can beat it,” I said.

“Hundred bucks.”

Now I didn't have a clue what he was driving, but I didn't care. Anybody wanna walk up to me and talk that kinda shit, I'll give it a go.

I nudged Wavy and she hopped off the bumper, so I could get up.

“Hundred bucks.” I stuck out my hand and we shook.

“See you up at the starting line, Chief.”

“Asshole,” Wavy said, not really under her breath.

“Somebody oughta wash your mouth out, little girl,” he said.

“You wanna ride with me while I go beat this guy?” I said.

Wavy nodded. We were gonna show that jackass a thing or two.

We pulled up alongside him and I didn't know what to think. I leaned out my window and hollered, “What the hell is that?”

“Mazda RX-7!” the guy yelled back. Might as wella said, “Martian Armpit Smeller.” Some kinda ricer car.

It looked brand new, but newness don't count for a thing. My old Polara was proof of that.

Either way, I figured if his car had any go, it'd be at the start, and I was right.

When we came off the line, he was in the lead. I did like always, hung back a little to see what he had. In the squeeze, I was half a car length back from him, but I pushed on through, and coming out the other side to the open flats, I put my foot to the floor. That Barracuda damn near redlined on rpms, the speedometer needle squeezing up past 105. Wavy was laughing out loud, when we reached the finish. Guy in his rice burner ate our dust.

We coasted down to the turn around and circled back to get our winnings.

I pulled up at the end of the row of cars and shut the engine off. Before we got back on the road, I wanted to make sure I hadn't rattled nothing loose. As soon as I popped the hood, a couple guys come over to look. They couldn't quite believe I'd hit 105 in the quarter mile.

The guy in his Mazda came barreling in while we were standing there. He threw it into park and jumped outta the car. Didn't even bother to shut the door.

“You fucking bumped me, asshole!” He grabbed my arm to turn me around, so I put my hand on his chest to make him step back.

“I didn't bump you,” I said.

“You fucking bumped me in the tight spot!”

“Show me. You show me where I bumped you, because I wanna see it.”

The guy stepped around me and started looking down the side of the Cuda.

Now I shoulda been trying to throttle him back, but I went and popped off with, “New car. Maybe you don't got the hang of it yet.”

“You fucking bumped me, dickface!”

By then we had an audience. Some of them started looking over the cars, too, but there wasn't a mark on the Cuda. Because I hadn't bumped him. He prolly clipped that dune.

“I don't see anything,” Billy said.

“Motherfucker!” The guy kicked the front quarter panel on the Cuda. He wasn't wearing boots, just sneakers, so I figured worst he'd done was give me a scuff, but that was bullshit. I went to grab him, but he backed up, right into Wavy. She shoved him back, and he smacked her.

I grabbed the front of his jacket and slammed him into the side of the Cuda. If somebody was gonna put a dent in it, it'd be me. I punched him in the face until I was the only thing holding him up. Then I dropped him on the ground and kicked him a couple times for good measure. Next thing I knew, I had Billy on one arm and Wavy on the other, pulling me back.

“You better stay down, man,” Billy called to the Mazda guy. “He's liable to stomp a mudhole in you. I seen him do it.”

Before I could, a couple of guys who knew the Mazda asshole came and got him by the arms. They walked him over and sat him on the bumper of somebody's Charger. I turned around and got my head cleared enough to see Wavy standing there with a big red mark on her cheek.

Nobody stopped me when I walked across to that asshole's crap car and planted my boot in the door. I kicked it half a dozen times, stove that fucker in. If he could still drive himself home, he was gonna have to get in from the passenger side.

WAVY

I've been hit harder. The guy didn't even knock me down, but Kellen went crazy. After he kicked in the car door, he came back to me with a black cloud look on his face. He leaned down to look at my cheek, close enough I could see tiny freckles of blood on his face. Not his blood.

“Goddamnit,” he said. “I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm so sorry.”

He tilted my head up and brushed his thumb over my cheek.

“We need to get some ice on that before your eye swells up.”

People whispered as he opened the car door for me to get in. The guy in the Mazda was sitting on the bumper of another car. His face and his blue satin jacket were covered in blood.

“You still owe me a hundred bucks,” Kellen said to him. Then he slid into the front seat next to me and started the car.

I sat in the middle and Kellen kept his arm around me while he drove. He breathed out hot and angry on top of my head.

“I'm sorry, Wavy.” He apologized until I had to say something.

“Not your fault.”

He kissed the top of my head five, ten, fifteen times.

At the gas station, while Kellen pumped gas, I folded my arms on the window ledge and watched him. He was calmer, but he was still under his black cloud.

He leaned down to kiss me again, and I wanted to go on being kissed, but instead he went in to pay for the gas and get some ice for me.

While he was inside, two police cars pulled into the gas station. One sheriff's deputy, one highway patrolman. The cops got out and walked over to the car, looked at the tags.

I knew what could happen when a dark cloud and the police came together, so I opened the door and got out of the car. That way, when Kellen came out of the gas station and saw the cops, I was there to take hold of his hand, where his knuckles were bloody. Even though I knew it would hurt him, I squeezed his hand hard, to hold him.

“Evening, officers.” Kellen squeezed my hand back, so I knew he understood me.

“This your car, sir?”

“Yes, it is.”

“We had a report you were causing trouble down at the barrens south of Garringer. Is that true?”

“No, I wouldn't say I was causing trouble.”

“We had a report you assaulted somebody and vandalized his vehicle.”

“I was provoked,” Kellen said.

“Provoked how?”

“That son of a bitch in the Mazda hit … her.” The hesitation was because he didn't know what to call me. A lie? Daughter, sister, niece? Or the truth?

“Is that true, young lady?”

I stepped away from Kellen, closer to the cops and their flashlights. I pushed my hair back to show them my face. I hoped it looked as bad as it felt. From the way the cops frowned, it must have.

“What was I supposed to do?” Kellen said. “Am I supposed to put up with some asshole punching her?”

“And who exactly is she? She looks a little young to be out this late,” said the deputy.

“I'm taking her home now.”

The patrolman almost laughed, but the deputy frowned.

“Let's see some ID,” he said.

Kellen got out his, but I didn't have any.

“And who's the girl?”

“Wavy Quinn.” I liked my name in Kellen's mouth.

“Does your mama know you're out with this guy?” the deputy said.

“Yeah, her folks know she's out with me.”

The two cops stepped back and whispered to each other for a few minutes.

Then there was so much arguing it hurt my head. The deputy said I couldn't leave with Kellen. He said, “We need to speak to her mother,” and “We're going to have to book you anyway, so why don't we just go down to the station?”

“You're seriously gonna arrest me for whooping that asshole? Because look at her, you can see he hit her. I got witnesses. So why are you riding my ass? Why aren't you out arresting him?”

“Don't you worry, sir, we're taking care of him,” the patrolman said.

“How's that? I don't see you taking care of him. I see you hassling me over bullshit.”

“We just want to talk to her parents, okay?”

“Okay, fine. They're gonna tell you what I'm telling you.”

At the police station, when the deputy called the farmhouse, nobody answered. Mama had probably turned off the ringer. Then he called Sandy's trailer and nobody answered there either. I sat in a chair in the sheriff's empty office while the deputy took Kellen to charge him for assaulting the guy in the Mazda. It was only a misdemeanor, so Kellen got to post bail right there, but he still had to have his picture and his fingerprints taken.

He came back, wiping ink off his hands and arguing with the deputy. His name tag said Vogel.

“I'm gonna have to call Children's Protective Services,” Deputy Vogel said.

“What the hell for?” Kellen's black cloud was back. Bigger.

“Because we got a minor here and not knowing who she is, I can't let her go with you.”

“How about this? Why don't I go get her mama? Take me an hour to get there and an hour to get back. Think you can wait to call somebody 'til then?”

“I couldn't get CPS out here before then anyway. I just don't want to release her to somebody who doesn't have any business taking her.”

Kellen's mouth got hard, but he didn't say anything to that. He ran his hand over my hair and said, “I'll be back, Wavy.” He glared at the deputy. “And can you get some ice for her eye?”

After Kellen left, Deputy Vogel brought me a bottle of pop and an ice pack, but I didn't touch them.

Being in the sheriff's office was a lot like when Mama got arrested, but at least I was dressed with my boots on. When they arrested Mama, I had to sit in the police station for hours, just in my nightshirt, while strangers walked in and out and talked to me. And tried to touch me.

The deputy didn't try to touch me, but he sat at the sheriff's desk, asking me questions.

“So how do you know Mr. Kellen? Or Mr. Barfoot? That's his legal name.”

I stared through him.

“Where did you two meet?”

I crossed my arms over my chest to let Deputy Vogel know he was wasting his time.

“Not at school, I'm guessing.”

Ha ha ha.

“You know this isn't his first assault charge?” he said.

I knew. Kellen didn't get those scars on his knuckles from playing poker or fixing motorcycles. He got them from pulping guys in the face.

“He's got himself quite a rap sheet. Doesn't hardly seem like the kind of guy a sweet girl like you should be hanging around.”

I was so sweet. Like a lemon drop.

I stared through the deputy until he had to get up and walk around the station to get away from me.

It was almost five o'clock in the morning when Kellen came back. I recognized the sound of his boots on the tiles outside the sheriff's office, but it wasn't Mama with him. Clicky heels, but too slow. I turned and looked out the window blinds. Sandy.

She looked tired but beautiful. A different kind of beautiful than Mama, who was dark. The sun was always shining on Sandy. Her hair was as blond as mine, but big and hair sprayed. She wore lots of makeup, and tight jeans and a tight T-shirt with no bra.

“Hello there, ma'am,” the deputy said. He sounded surprised, and I could tell he thought Sandy was sexy. He kept looking and looking at her. It made me wish I looked older. If I looked more like Sandy, the cops wouldn't think I was too young to be out with Kellen.

“Hi, sweetie,” Sandy said to me. “You ready to go home?”