CHAPTER 7

"Garbage Man Charged In Step-Daughter's Death" the headlines in the second section of the Enquirer read the next day. He had also been charged with the robbery of Ev Everson's saloon Friday night. The article went on to say that Otis Purdy Davis, 51, on parole from the Ohio State Prison for GTA, was being held in the Hamilton County jail without bond. Besides the auto theft conviction and a few drunk and disorderlies, he had a couple of previous convictions on gambling charges, and had done eleven-twenty nine on one of them six years ago. He had admitted the robbery, but denied the killing. He had broken down sobbing before reporters, claiming he loved his step-daughter. He was being represented by a Public Defender.

Well, that was one mystery solved: he had robbed the saloon. And he was involved in gambling, too. Maybe that was the link with Vito Siri. Maybe he worked for Vito or something. I wondered if my Grandparents knew about his shady past. He had been living next door as long as I could remember. People in Calhoun didn't come and go much; most families had been there for a long time and the population remained static. Ricky liked to say that every time a girl got pregnant some guy left town. Grandpa snorted when he read the paper; Grandma looked worried and went to work in the kitchen, scrubbing and mopping and banging pots and pans around.

Grandma set up an old brown card table for me in a corner of the living room when I came to visit so I would have a place to build model cars. I considered myself to be pretty much of an expert model builder. I had won first place in a contest last year at a hardware store back home with a '57 Chevy convertible. It hadn't been a convertible when I bought the kit, but I screwed up the roof so I cut it off and made a convertible out of it. I painted it blue and built a little display for it out of a shoe box with cotton around the tires and a mirror underneath the car. Most of the other kids just brought in their entries and put them on the shelf with no display or anything. One kid painted his with a brush. He was kind of goofy, fat and myopic. His name was Donner, and we used to tease him about being a cannibal.

My latest project was a '32 Ford coupe by AMT. I had built a bunch of them. It was one of my favorites, and I made every one different. This one was candy apple red, the same color as Nick's car, with a blower and huge drag slicks. Not a street machine. I made myself a Fizzie and started work on it after lunch, but I couldn't really concentrate on it for thinking about the murder. I wondered what the Ol' Man's cell was like. Like you see in the movies? Was he just sitting around or was he out back breaking up rocks or something? Maybe he was on a road gang.

I saw a road gang once, when I was six or seven. Grandma and Grandpa sometimes took me on a trip somewhere when I visited them, usually to the Smoky Mountains, but this time we were somewhere in Georgia on our way to Florida. That's where I learned to swim, at Daytona Beach on the Fourth of July. I remember the fireworks.

There weren't many Interstates in those days and we were going down some two-lane county road and we stopped at a roadside park to eat and about the time we got all the food laid out here comes a big truck and all these guys in striped suits get out and start working on the road right across from us. Wardens in uniforms and straw hats and sunglasses holding rifles got out and stood in the shade watching them as they worked in the hot sun. I thought it was pretty neat, but Grandma said it made her lose her appetite, so we had to pack up and go on down the road and find another place for our little picnic.

So I sat there at the card table trying to glue the left header to the right side of the engine and wondering what was going on. I wondered where Reba's body was. In the morgue laid out on a cold slab being examined by a medical investigator? Did they do an autopsy in a case like this? Was there a tag on her toe that said DOA?

I wondered what Nick was doing. How he felt. What he was thinking. I wondered if it was true what Ricky had said yesterday about anything that didn't kill you just making you stronger. I suppose that could be possible. But it seemed like being that strong would hardly be worth the effort if you had to go through that much shit to get there. Was Nick strong and tough because of his difficult childhood? If he was, I guess he could handle Reba's murder without going off the deep end. As for his sister, her death seemed to bother him less than the fact that she had been a drug-addicted prostitute, and I guess I could understand that.

I wondered if the cops had really suspected him of the murder like we thought. I guess they probably had, until they heard our story. It was lucky for him that we had all seen him bringing Reba home. And that I had seen Ol' Man Davis drive off later.

It sure looked like Ol' Man Davis had done it, all right, though I wasn't sure what his motive might have been. Man, it made me feel sick to think of him grabbing Reba around the neck with his fat grubby hands and choking her until she was dead. Nick should have killed him that night.

I wondered what it felt like to kill someone with your bare hands. Shooting someone or stabbing someone was one thing, but to feel the life going out of someone while you choked her...

I gave up on my model and decided to go see Nick. Ricky was off to Cincinnati with his Mom and I felt like I would go nuts just sitting around the house all day.

Nick lived with his widowed Aunt Velma at the other end of Calhoun about six blocks away. Calhoun was only eight or ten blocks long and four blocks wide at the widest point, with a couple of narrow roads on the outskirts where the unsociable ones lived. Dogpatch, down by the river, wasn't really considered part of Calhoun.

Velma was a secretary for a big executive at the refinery. Her husband had been killed at the refinery several years ago when a

tank blew up, and she didn't really have to work, what with the insurance money and social security, but she just didn't know what else to do, Grandma said. She was pretty old, about 45 or 50, I thought, but still kind of good looking. She was always real nice to all us kids and she helped out at the school when they had a field trip or a Halloween party or something.

She had a neat little white frame house with blue shutters and a screened-in front porch and flowers in the front yard along with a little Negro jockey holding a light, and a birdbath with some fake swans stuck nearby in the lawn. I guess all that stuff went well with the wing glasses she wore.

Grandma said she was pretty lonesome after her husband's death; they didn't have any kids and her family was scattered out all over. Nick was her only sister's boy, so when he had gotten in so much trouble she offered to take him in. Nick laughed at her for being so square, but I knew he was grateful to her and there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for her.

I had never just casually dropped in on Nick before, but I felt more comfortable stopping by since we'd had that talk in his car Friday night. Maybe he wanted to talk to someone. I figured Velma would be at work.

Velma didn't have a car; she'd sold the Packard when she became a widow, and when Nick moved in he took over the garage, turning it into a shop to work on his car. He had a '53 Studebaker in there now that he was restoring. It was up on blocks and the doors were off and most of the interior was out. He had finished rebuilding the engine and was about ready to go to work on the body, which was in pretty good shape - no rust, just a few dings and a dent in the left quarter panel. He had the Chevy idling in the driveway and was just closing the garage door when I walked up.

"Hey, man," I said cheerfully.

"Hey, Champ."

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Goin' to Cincy for some parts."

"For the Studie?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"Wanna go?"

"Sure."

Nick looked a little tired. There were dark circles under his eyes and stubble on his chin. He had on an old black T-shirt that was turning gray from so many washings and he chewed on a toothpick. He had a Camel stuck behind his ear. He gave me a cigarette and we hopped in the Chevy and headed out. The rain had stopped that morning, the sky was blue, and the air smelled clean. It was hard to believe what had happened over the weekend. Nick got the Marcels on the radio and I settled back with my arm out the window.

"Gotta pick up the speedometer cable and the carpeting," he said. He was acting real cool, like nothing much had happened.

"Ah. How soon you think you'll get the whole thing done?"

"Well, I gotta finish the interior, then do the body work and get it painted. Couple, three months. I'm not in any big hurry." He leaned back in the seat, one hand carelessly on the wheel, the other fiddling with the radio. "The Great Pretender" came on.

We were out of town, now, on Highway 52, headed for Cincinnati. Traffic was light, no cops were in sight, the Chevy was running great. The engine throbbed solidly and powerfully, waiting to be unleashed. I hoped he would get on it a little, burn some rubber, smoke the tires.

We went a couple of miles in silence, just listening to the radio. We head the Shirelles, Fats Domino, Dion, the weather report (sunny, highs in the upper 70's), news about the US launching a satellite that would face the Earth as it - then Nick changed the channel; he never listened to the news. I wanted to say something about Reba, but I didn't know how to start, and I waited for him to bring it up.

"Heard what you told the cops," Nick finally said. "About seein' Ol' Man Davis takin' off in the middle of the night."

"Oh, yeah."

"Glad you were up late. Those cops were lookin' at me a little funny."

"You mean they suspected you of the... murder?"

"Looked like it."

"Man, that's crazy."

"You get a good look at the Ol' Man?"

"Not really. It was pretty dark."

"You see him come back or anything?"

"No, but I saw something else, too. I saw you bring Reba home."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I didn't exactly tell the cops the whole story." I had been dying to tell him about Debbie. "Debbie Shelton was having a slumber party that night and Ricky and I went over there to see what was going on."

Nick didn't say anything; just kept driving.

"So we were outside Debbie's bedroom window goofing around with the girls when you brought... Reba... home."

It was hard to say her name. "But we couldn't tell the cops we were over there, y'know. We'd all get in trouble. So Ricky and I didn't say anything about it and the girls said they saw you."

"Huh."

"Yeah, and lemme tell you what happened..." So I told him about Debbie and me on my Grandparent's back porch; I knew he wouldn't blab about it to anyone. About halfway through the story I began to wonder if I was doing the right thing, talking about my girl friend when he'd just lost his. But I was just trying to cheer him up. Well, OK, I was bragging, too, but I kinda thought he would think it was pretty cool. And I guess he did, because he grinned for the first time that afternoon and said: "Way to go, Champ."

We drove a few more miles in silence. "Teen Angel" came on the radio. Fine, a song about a dead girl friend. Damn, play somethin' new! Nick didn't even change the station.

"I'm gonna miss her," he said softly when the song was over.

"Yeah, she was really a nice girl," I said, stating the obvious. Damn, couldn't I think of anything else to say?

"Her ol' man had her all fucked up. I coulda killed him that night," Nick said vehemently.

"You almost did, man. That was great!"

"He was givin' her a bunch of shit that night."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, he robbed the saloon, y'know."

"Yeah, it was on the news."

"She told me about it Saturday night. She had been babysittin' for her sister Friday night and nobody was home when she got back so she wasn't sleepin' too well and she heard the Ol' Man come in about three. So she got up to make sure it was him and she saw him stuffin' a big wad of money in a dresser drawer. Vito Siri had been over to see him that afternoon."

"Yeah, I saw him."

"Well, he came over for some money. Reba heard 'em talkin'. The Ol' Man owed Siri a bunch for some gamblin' debts and he wanted it real bad."

"So that's why Siri was hangin' around."

"Anyway, the Ol' Man

promised Siri he'd have the money the next day and when Reba heard about the robbery she knew where the money in the dresser drawer had come from.."

"She was gonna tell on him?"

"I dunno. She told him she was. But she was mad, and she would say shit like that when she was mad and not mean it and be sorry later."

"Then that's why he... did what he did." There was the motive I'd been wondering about.

"They'd been arguing about it when I came over to pick her up. 'Course I didn't know that at the time, and when I saw him grab her and drag her back in the house I just lost my temper."

He turned up the radio and stomped on the gas pedal.

We didn't talk anymore for awhile.

We were at a stoplight on the highway just outside of Calhoun when a car pulled up next to us gunning its engine. It was Neal Nance in his Ford. Like I said, they had run each other at the drag strip a few times, but Nance had never won.

"Punk," Nick muttered.

Nance looked over at us and revved his engine again. The light was about to change. We were the first two cars in line. Come on, Nick, blow his doors off.

The light turned green and Nance was off with a squeal of tires and a cloud of burning rubber. Nick just eased off the line casually.

At the next light Nance smirked at us and revved his engine again. Nick clenched his teeth together, his jaw muscles working. Then he calmly flipped his cigarette out the window and into Nance's car, then laughed as Nance scrambled to find it and toss it out.

"You sonofabitch!" Nance screamed.

"Punk," Nick said it louder this time.

Nance started to get out of his car, but thought better of it and stayed inside.

The light was green, now. There were a couple of cars behind us, one with some girls I had seen at the Top Deck.

"You chicken, Palladino?" Nance hollered, his face red. "Don't wanna run 'em?"

"Anytime, any place, punk," Nick growled.

"You name it!" Nance was hopping mad.

"Tonight at Longnecker. Ten o'clock," Nick shrugged. "Pink slips."

Pink slips! Wow, title for title. Winner gets the other car.

The cars behind us weren't honking. They were too busy digging us.

"OK, tonight. Pink slips," Nance screeched, his voice getting higher the madder he got. "Ten o'clock. Don't be late!"

"Don't worry, punk," Nick said out of the corner of his mouth.

Then the light changed and Nance was off in another cloud of burning rubber.

Longnecker was a stretch of abandoned road that ran next to Dry Fork Creek at the bottom of Longnecker Hill, off the Old River Road past the gravel pit. It was straight and level and made a good drag strip, and kids raced out there once in a while, though not usually for pink slips. The only problem with it was that at the end of the nearly half-mile stretch there was a sharp turn, and if you didn't slow down in time you would go crashing through the rickety old wooden guard rail and down a steep embankment into the creek, which was shallow and rocky at that point. A guy named Rocky Martelli was killed like that on New Year's Eve a couple of years ago. His girl friend, Shelley Hancock, tried to OD on her mother's sleeping pills the next day, but she survived and the family moved away.

"Wow, man, you had him so mad he didn't know what he was doin'!" I said.

"Ah, he's been askin' for this."

"What are you gonna do with another car? And a Ford, at that."

"Aah."

"He's never beat you yet. You guys have run, what? a half dozen times at the strip."

"Yeah."

"He must think his car's faster than it used to be."

"It ain't. Even if it was he wouldn't know how to drive it."

I had Nick drop me off a block from home; I didn't want G&G to see me drive up with Nick. We were having pork chops for dinner for a change, and I'm sure chickens all over Ohio and Kentucky were rejoicing.

"I'll see ya tonight, man," I said.

"Later."

"Thanks for the ride."

I went over to Ricky's after dinner. Aunt Kathryn was out in the garden and Uncle Bill was in his hammock drinking iced tea and reading the sports page. Ricky was watching "To Tell the Truth."

"It's the guy in the middle," he said.

"Sure, it is," I said dubiously. He was always trying to guess which one it was.

"Yeah, he'll stand up in a minute," he said confidently.

"Hey, guess what?" I said, flopping down on the sofa next to Ricky and fiddling with his baseball glove. "Nick's gonna..."

"Run Neal Nance for pink slips tonight."

"Shit."

"At Longnecker at 10:00."

"How'djou know?"

"I was talkin' to Toody."

Toody was one of his sister's girl friends. She had been in the car behind us on the highway that afternoon. Word must be all over town by now.

"And I got us a ride," Ricky said.

"Good deal." It was a long walk out there, though we could surely get a ride back with someone.

"Who with?" I asked.

"With whom."

"Who in the hell with?"

"Kenny."

Ricky's friend with the funny eye.

"Can you get out?"

"Yeah." I'd think of a good excuse.

"Here he goes, the one in the middle," Ricky said, excited. The one on the left started to stand. "Sit down you lyin' bastard," Ricky said to the TV. He sat back down and the guy in the middle finally stood up. "Hey, hey, see? Me and Tom got him." Tom Poston, panelist.

"Tom and I," I said. "Congratulations."

Ricky turned the TV off.

"Hey, 'dja read about the Ol' Man in the paper?" I asked.

"Yeah, it was on the news, too."

"Yeah, we watched it. Grandpa said maybe the rest of the Davis's'll move now."

"Jeez, what a loss to the community."

I told Ricky about riding in to Cincinnati with Nick.

"What'd he have to say?" he asked eagerly.

"He told me why the Ol' Man robbed the saloon," I said casually.

"No shit?"

"No shit."

A pause.

"Well, why? Goddamnit."

I chuckled and told him about the gambling debts that the Ol' Man owed Siri.

"Hmm. That explains why Siri's been hanging around and why Nick and the Ol' Man got into it. And it gives the Ol' Man a good motive for killing Reba, doesn't it?

"Yeah.."

"But I'd still like to know what Lanny and Nick were talking about."

Kenny had a '49 Ford flathead painted primer gray that ran some of the time. A lot of guys had scored in the back seat of that car - Ricky probably more than most - but I don't think Kenny ever did. The car was famous for rocking back and forth as it sat parked at the dark end of the parking lot at a dance or a football game.

"Those two guys must really hate each other," Kenny said as we sputtered out of town. "What the hell happened this afternoon?"

"Nance was just being a smart-ass." I said.

"Bad timing," Kenny said.

"No shit."

"Those two go back a ways," Ricky said. "Nance used to date Reba, y'know."

"What!?" I said. Another bit of surprising information from Ricky.

"Yeah. She was kinda going with Nance when Nick first came to town, but when she met Nick, Nance was his-to-ree."

"Well, hell, no wonder he hates Nick," I said.

"And Reba, too," Kenny added.

"Yeah, he never had anything nice to say about Reba after that," Ricky said.

It was only 9:30, but there were already a bunch of cars parked along the side of the road at Longnecker. Kids were sitting on the hoods of their cars drinking beer and radios were tuned to WSAI. Word had sure got out. I had wanted to bring Debbie, but Ricky wasn't with Sherry and she might feel out of place and I didn't know Kenny all that well and I didn't want to say anything.

Joe Crump sat on the hood of his car with Dodie Moss drinking a beer. She looked mighty fine in her yellow polka-dot dress and no shoes. Crump had on a T-shirt with a monster driving a Corvette airbrushed on it. Ricky said hi to him and he threw an empty beer can at him.

"Crazy motherfucker," Ricky muttered.

Some of the Caretaker showed up, led by Dover on his orange and black Panhead. They lined up their bikes at the starting line and lit cigarettes and popped brews. They had some girls with them, stringy-haired blondes, mostly, wearing black leather and tattoos.

We found a spot to park, between an Edsel and a '55 Nomad, and bummed a couple of beers and settled back to enjoy the show. Much of the talk was about Reba's murder and how rough it was on Nick, especially after his sister and all, and how we all felt sorry for him and wasn't the Ol' Man a sumbitch and they hoped he got what he damn well deserved and he should have stayed in jail when he was there before and the whole Davis family was a blight on the community, except Reba, and we all felt sorry for her.

The weather was nice; not too warm, a few clouds drifting past the moon, stars shining. An owl hooted. A truck went by on the Old River Road. The water in the river made a lot of noise as it rushed over the rocks.

Nick showed up a little before ten; he had his headers unplugged and the Chevy rumbled noisily and sweetly. He eased up to the starting line, listening to the engine as he revved it up a couple of times, and cut it off. He got out, leaned against the fender and lit a smoke nonchalantly. He had on jeans and a black T-shirt and was wearing a silver ID bracelet that I knew Reba had given him for Christmas.

Everybody fell over themselves saying hi to him; even Dover came over and had something to say.

Then Neal Nance showed. He had his girl friend, Anne Smedley, with him. She looked plenty worried behind her freckles. Nance still looked pissed off. He pulled to a stop next to Nick and climbed out of his car. The crowd became quiet and pulled in closer to the two of them.

Nick stood against his car, arms folded, looking at Nance through his cigarette smoke.

Nance had a 352 Interceptor engine in his black '55 Ford with a four barrel carb, four-speed tranny, and mag wheels. Fluffy dice hung from his rear view mirror. It was a goer, but he'd never beaten Nick.

"Gotcher title?" Nance asked stiffly through tight lips. He had on his straw hat Sam Snead hat and wore and a red and green striped shirt with a smudge of grease on the pocket.

"Right here," Nick answered, waving a paper carelessly. Nance dug a piece of paper out of his back pocket and Nick handed them both to me.

"Here ya go, Champ. Hold on to these for a coupla minutes."

I felt honored and I put the papers carefully in my shirt pocket.

There was a red Pontiac parked a couple of cars down from Kenny's car with four girls in it. I had noticed them when we drove up; pretty nice lookers. Now a cute little blonde wearing a short skirt and a letter sweater hopped out of the front seat and ran up to Nick and Nance.

"Can I start you guys?" she pleaded in a little-girl voice.

"Candy Hamilton," Ricky whispered to me. "Lookit those panties in her hand."

Damn! She did have a pair of red panties in her hand. What the hell?

Nick raised his eyebrows at Nance. Nance looked at Candy and shrugged. She had the job.

Then they got into their cars and started them and nosed up to the starting line, a Caretaker eyeing their bumpers, making sure they were both where they were supposed to be. Nick was on the right lane, Nance on the left. They revved their engines. Candy ran out in front of them, waving the panties in the air. Had she just taken them off? That sure was a short skirt she had on. It was red, too, and billowed out just a little as she ran. The crowd was really going, now, hollering and whistling as the two racers revved their engines even louder. Some of the Caretakers kicked their Harleys to life and rode down to the finish line, which was barely visible at the end of the gloomy stretch of road. I guess they were going to be the judges.

The noise from the two engines was deafening. Candy, quivering with excitement, stood in the flare of the headlights with her panties raised over her head. Every eye was on her, especially both of mine. Her legs were spread apart and her skirt was riding up a little on her thigh as she held her right arm in the air. She licked her lips.

Then she clenched her eyes shut and swept her arm down and the Chevy and the Ford roared off the line, squealing tires and burning rubber past her.

Nick took off straight, but Nance fish-tailed a little, his tires breaking loose. Too much gas pedal, I thought. Nick was right, Nance wasn't a real good driver. But he got it under control and was a car length behind Nick when he hit second gear. The cars looked like rockets as they zoomed down the dark road, their tail lights becoming smaller as they got closer to the finish line. Everybody ran after the cars, cheering and hollering, to get a better look at the finish. It was impossible to tell who was ahead, but as Nance hit third gear his car suddenly hopped up in the air a foot or two. Then he started skidding sideways, to the left, straight toward the group of Caretakers that sat by the side of the road at the finish line.

They all hollered and threw beer cans at him, but he couldn't get the car back under control and he took out the last bike in line as its owner dove to safety over the guard rail. The bike, a custom job with silver skulls painted on the tank, exploded in a million pieces as Nance crashed into it. The collision slowed him down and he slid off the road, ran down a small tree, and banged and bounced against the guard rail, crashing half way through it. When the car stopped, it was poised precariously on the brink of the rivers' embankment, the rear wheels a few inches off the ground. Everyone stood as if frozen, staring at the car, steam hissing from the busted radiator, wobbling at the brink of the thirty-foot declivity into the rock-strewn river. Suddenly Nick appeared, running to the car, yanking the passenger door open. The sight of him broke the spell and everyone started yelling and running to help. A bunch of us tried to hold the car from sliding over the edge while Nick dragged the half-unconscious Nance out. He got him out just in time, and, with a screech of metal against rock, the black Ford went over the edge and disappeared into the darkness.

By now a dozen cars had been pulled around and their headlights were aimed at the scene. Nick's car sat idling by the side of the road past the finish line, the door hanging open. Nance lay on the road in the harsh light, blood trickling down his startled white face from a cut on his forehead. His girl fiend, Anne, was bent over him, crying. The Caretaker, "Cockroach" it read on his leather vest, who had lost his bike climbed back from where he had disappeared over the guard rail and was standing by the side of the road brushing weeds and twigs from his clothes and staring in disbelief at his handlebars hanging ten feet off the ground from the branch of a tree. The rest of his Harley lay all over the southwest part of Ohio.

"Holy shit!" Ricky said. "Holy fuckin' shit!"

"You OK, Nick?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"You saved Nance's life, man!"

"Aahh."

"You got him out just in time. That car is gone forever."

Nick got out his Zippo and used it on a Camel. Nance had gotten shakily to his feet with the help of his girl friend.

"Hey, motherfucker!" It was Cockroach, mad as hell. "You no-drivin' sonofabitch, that was my bike!" He had Nance by the shirtfront, shaking him.

"Hey, man.." Nance mumbled.

"You let him alone!" Anne said, trying to push Cockroach away.

"I'll kill you, you bastard!" Cockroach hollered.

"Let him alone!" Anne said.

Cockroach drew back to hit Nance, who cowered behind an upraised arm. He looked cowardly and pitiful, and Cockroach must have thought so, too, because he opened his fist and just slapped Nance disdainfully a couple of times with his big hand, sending him stumbling backwards.

"You got insurance, creep?" Cockroach growled, coming after him.

"Yeah," Nance mumbled through a bloody lip, backing up.

Cockroach, only slightly mollified, still looked like he wanted Nance's ass, but Dover, hirsute and tattooed, walked up.

"Let him go, 'Roach," he said, hitching up his jeans over his beer belly and stepping between Cockroach and Nance. "Creep's done lost his car, he's hurt." Dover had a rough, gravelly voice that carried a lot of authority, and he was used to people doing what he said.

"But, man..." Cockroach moaned.

"Creep says he's got insurance." Dover cast a dark glance at Nance. "Right?"

"Right," Nance mumbled.

"C'mon, 'Roach," Dover said, putting an arm around his shoulders. "We'll come back tomorrow with the truck and pick up the pieces. You can ride back with me."

Candy walked up to Nick and stood on her tip-toes and kissed him on the cheek and handed him her panties. This drew a big round of applause and whistles. He smiled at her and stuffed them in his pocket and she scampered off.

Somebody gave Cockroach a swig from a half pint of Old Charter and he let Dover lead him away and he got on the back of Dover's Panhead and the Caretakers kicked their bikes alive and rumbled off. This broke things up, and everybody hopped in their cars and hollered back and forth telling one other where they were going. I saw Candy going off in the Pontiac with her friends and I wondered where they were headed. I handed the titles back to Nick and he held out Nance's to him with two fingers.

Nance looked at him in surprise, then took it and stuffed it into his ripped shirt pocket.

Nick got into his Chevy and fired it up and Nance walked over to him. "Wha'dja do all that for, man?" he said. He sounded like he was accusing Nick of something.

"Ah," Nick waved it away and put the car in first gear.

"No, I mean it, man. You don't owe me nothin'." Nance looked real uncomfortable, digging at the ground with one penny loafer. "But, thanks. Anne said it was you pulled me out. I didn't know what was going on."

Nick lit a smoke and revved the Chevy up a couple of times, real casual-like. "I just don't want my competition gettin' killed off. Looks bad." Then he turned the Chevy around and drove off.

Next

Chevy Summer