Lester’s question didn’t seem to register with Charlie at first and he just kept on driving. Perhaps he didn’t hear him, as Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous was blasting really loud from the Craig PowerPlay eight-track, that part where “Cowboy Song” runs straight into “The Boys Are Back in Town,” which normally Lester would know better than to interrupt. It had been a couple of hours since they had left the Zippy Mart and initially everything had gone fairly smooth. They were friendly with Dale. Not best buds or nothing, but he always had good dope and would let them shoplift if no one else was in the store and only occasionally asked for a kickback. He was stuck way out of town and he didn’t really know anybody out there and it got lonely and spooky whenever he had to pull that seven-to-three shift, so he was generally glad to see Lester and Charlie come in, even if it was just to steal something. Dale would call the cops thirty or so minutes later and say some “colored kid” had driven off with some gas, might have shoplifted too. Then he’d describe a customer from earlier in the evening. This was before they installed cameras everywhere, back when you could get away with stuff like that.
The Chevy Chevelle SS was nearly ten years old and was pretty much ragged out. It had originally been a dark metallic green but now had oxidized to a color somewhere between piss and rust. It burned oil and leaked some too, needed new tires, and Charlie had to pump the brakes a little before every stop sign. The stereo was the only thing fully working on it and it had seen better days. Charlie had only a few tapes, but they all were what the ad on TV referred to as Freedom Rock and he usually ended up playing Thin Lizzy anyway so it didn’t matter.
Charlie was small-framed but strong with muscular arms and close-cropped dark curly hair. He had a chipped front tooth and the blackest of eyes but he always looked like he was smiling or about to.
Lester was slightly taller and much skinnier than Charlie. He had greasy hair, fair skin, and peach fuzz on his upper lip like a boy five years younger. His ragged jeans were slightly too big for his thin frame, and his Willie Nelson T-shirt was faded. He was more or less a permanent part of Charlie’s passenger seat, staring out the windshield and as agreeable as a dog. Charlie could always count on Lester for a yes vote to whatever he suggested, and Lester could always count on Charlie to drive and have a cooler full of beer and some weed. Maybe even a little blow. What the hell else was there to do?
Charlie had bought his Chevelle secondhand from the mama of its original owner, Jimmy Ray, who had died in the passenger seat of a buddy’s Camaro in a crash a few years earlier. Jimmy Ray’s mama liked Charlie since he’d helped put out her aunt’s kitchen fire, and she couldn’t stand looking at that car anymore. She practically gave it to him just to get it out of the driveway. It was still in pretty good shape when Charlie got it, but being a Chevy, its door handles kept coming off and the roof liner kept falling down and the suspension had become mushy and the steering loose. But it always started when he turned the square key. It would flat-out shit and git, as they say, and that big 396 had the greatest low-rumble sound in the world. It guzzled gas, which by 1979 had become a little expensive after the oil embargo, and the fuel gauge didn’t work anymore so Charlie had to keep it topped off, but he loved that car more than anything in the world and always talked about what a classic it would someday be and how he was going to one day get the cash to fix it up to showroom condition and keep it that way. Besides, Charlie could get rubber from twenty miles an hour, and once he’d gotten it up to a hundred and twenty-five going across the Natchez Trace Bridge. He named it Jimmy Ray after its late original owner and he and Lester liked nothing better than hauling ass down some backcountry roads with the windows down and the stereo blasting and the wet summer air blowing through their hair.
“Think we should check on Dale?” Lester asked again.
They pulled over to the side of the Gunwaleford Road and Charlie handed Lester the oval key and he got out and opened up the trunk. Dale was lying in there amid the spare tire and some clutter. He was tied up with a hankie loosened at his mouth like a gag that no one had bothered to tighten. His eyes were rolled back in his head and he appeared to be dead.
“Oh shit, Charlie,” Lester just kept saying over and over.
Charlie got out and stood next to Lester, staring into the trunk but not saying a thing as Lester started stammering the way he always did when he got excited or scared.
After a while Charlie closed the trunk and got back in. Lester was still standing outside carrying on about Dale’s not breathing until finally Charlie yelled for him to get the fuck back in the car. Once Lester got in, Charlie pulled out slowly and carefully began driving toward Whipperwill.