The Speed Queen (6 page)

Living on Death Row is like living in a small town. It's slow and everyone knows everyone's business. The population's stable, not like in general, where you have people coming through all the time. There are four of us —me and Darcy on one side, Etta Mae Gaskins and Lucinda Williams on the other.

Etta Mae's next in line after me. She beat an old man in her apartment building to death for his social security check. She was just trying to get him to sign it, she says, but things got out of hand. She hit him with the bar from a towel rack, one of those clear ones. She's a whistler. Any time of day she'll just break into song. You don't notice it after a while and then suddenly you're whistling too. Darcy turns her boombox up so she won't hear her, but I don't mind. She knows lots of old songs you forget, like "The Sunny Side of the Street." Sometimes when I've got my atlas out I pretend they're on the radio and Etta Mae's got this big band behind her and an old-style microphone. Etta Mae's older than the rest of us. She's got high blood pressure so she gets special meals. Once at lunch the trusty with the cart gave me the wrong tray, and I saw what they gave her; it was all boiled, and no Jell-O, no soft drink. I know it's hard on her, because she's always talking about her Aunt Velma's chicken-fried steak and her biscuits and gravy. When we get on food, we can go.

Lucinda is new and hasn't calmed down yet. Last month she scratched Janille's cornea and they took her off to solitary. She shot her boyfriend's wife when she was eight months pregnant, then waited till her boyfriend got home and shot him in the you-know-what. She says she didn't do it. It's a joke around here hut you can't laugh.

"Like you innocent, Miss Cut-their-head-oft-and-stick-it-in-a-plastic-bag. And you. running over that little girl. You both going to hell, you dumb ugly trash. That's right! And Etta Mac, you gonna hold the door For em."

It's tunny cause we were all like that at first. She still cries at night. She goes through her cigarettes too quick. She'll learn. Etta Mae'll take care of her.

In general population there's a lot of violence, a lot of people moving through. Someone'll melt the end of a toothbrush and stick a razor blade in it. It's not to kill, they just want to mark the other gal up. There's no respect, no sense of being in this together. Over there, you get a lot of denial—gals saying it was the last deal, the last trick, the last job, they were going to quit right after that, like it was bad luck they got caught. A lot of wouldas and couldas. You don't get that here. Just the amount of time breaks you down, makes you accept things about yourself It teaches you things you didn't learn outside, like patience and humility and gratitude. It's like religion that way.

We're locked down twenty-three hours a day. The other hour they let us out to use the exercise yard one at a time. We get a shower once every two days. We get three meals. You think you'd look forward to those things but you don't. They just slide by. Lunch always surprises me.

We all do things. Darcy writes poems. Etta Mae paints and makes origami. Lucinda will have to come up with something, otherwise you lose it.

I drive. I open up my atlas and I've got the Roadrunner pegged at 110, headed for the Grand Canyon, the high desert empty' on both sides, snow in the ditches. I'm cruising through Albuquerque, the neon of the motels shimmering off the hood. It's like they haven't caught me. No one knows where I am. I swing into the drive-in window of a liquor store and pick up a chilled six of Tecate, slide into a Golden Fried and order the carne adovada burrito for ninety-nine cents. Driving all night, I'm three hundred miles out of Needles and the radio's pulling in Mexico. In six hours I'll be on the Santa Monica pier, the water running in underneath me. At the end, I cut a neat three-pointer and head east again, into the blur of convenience stores and Pig Stands, highway cafes and adobe trading posts. The families of accident victims plant white crosses by the roadside, the names almost too small to read —Maria Felicidad Baca, Jesus Luis Velez. The night burns away and Monument Valley comes up like a cowboy movie, like the sequel to
Thelma & Louise
. The Modern Lovers are on the 8-track and that tach is nailed.

Roadrunner, Roadrunner

going fast in miles an hour

gonna drive past the Stop & Shop

with the radio on

It's been eight years. I've been everywhere.

What I'll miss most about the world.

Everything.

My son. I'll miss having fun with him.

I'll miss french fries. I'll miss that first big sip of a cherry slush that freezes your brain and gives you a headache. I'll miss carnivals and amusement parks, state fairs. I'll miss the Gravitron and the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Zipper and the Whip, the Spider and the Roundup, the Roll-O-Plane. I'll miss how your stomach jumps when you go over the top of the Ferris wheel. I'll miss tunnel cakes and roasted corn, Fried pies and turkey legs, Sno-Kones. I'll miss driving. Ill miss sticking my hand out the window and feeling how heavy the air is.

I already miss a lot. I miss Lamont's belly and how he used to leave a dab of shaving cream behind each ear. I miss our place, our bed —our Roadrunner, obviously.

Weather. Movies.

I don't know, everything. It's a bad question to ask right now. Just say I'll miss living.

I feel remorse for my crimes, the ones I did commit, and I feel remorse tor the lite I was living then. If I could change any one thing, it would be the drinking. That put me on the road to a lot of the other problems.

It's easy to blame other people or circumstances, but I won't. I liked to drink, it's that simple. I liked sitting in the booth at the Conoco and taking a tug of vodka whenever I felt like it. You'd feel it glide warm into you and everything was right. Outside, lights slid by all sparkly when it rained. Inside, all the cigarettes were in rows, all the gum and Life Savers. The heater felt good on your shins, and you'd watch the traffic at the light, everyone in a hurry to get somewhere and the rain coming down, the wipers going. It made you laugh and take another sip. It made you wish your life could just stay that way.

That was the problem —you were always trying to get back there, to that same place. And you were always ready to try. Between Garlyn, Joy and me, one of us always had something going on. We had good times, the three of us, but I look back and wonder if they were worth it. The last time I saw Garlyn she was living in her mother's basement and working at Pantho's Mexican Buffet. We were there for dinner; Gainey was throwing his spoon all over the place and finally spilled his water. She had three stitches in her lip from falling down the cellar stairs. I asked if she was still seeing Danny, because he used to hit her. She was. She said Joy had just gotten fired from the County Line for dumping a platter of hot links on a customer. We laughed because it was just like Joy. That was ten years ago. I don't know what's happened to either of them since.

I'd like to say I'm sorry to all the relatives of the Closes, Victor Nunez, Kim Zwillich, Reggie Tyler, Donald . . .

Anderson — Donald Anderson. He was the manager.

I'm sorry, I do remember them, I just can't remember all eight at the same time. Five men and three women, I know that. I'm missing one of each.

What I'd like to say to their families is that I pray for every one of them each and every day. Mr. Jefferies said that Mrs. Nunez wanted to be here tonight. I wanted to invite her, but the state wouldn't let me. I wish she could come. I wish they all could. I'm sure they're outside right now. If that makes the loss of their loved ones easier on them, then fine. In the paper the other day, Mrs. Nunez said she hoped it would be painful, and that I should be killed the same way her son was. I did not kill Victor Nunez. I'd also say that what Natalie did to Kim Zwillich was worse, but I haven't heard her parents complaining in the paper.

Margo Styles. She was the one at the drive-thru window. So there's one more.

What do you say to someone in this situation? I'm sorry isn't good enough. That I'm going to die isn't good enough. I wanted to make a public apology a few years ago, but Mr. Jefferies warned me against it. Forget it, he said, you cant win. All you're going to get for it is grief.

The cop. Sergeant Lloyd Red Deer. He was the reason Mr. Jefferies moved the trial to Oklahoma. New Mexico's still ticked off about that. Mr. Jefferies said that if he weren't a cop, I might have gotten off with life. I'd say I'm sorry to his family and the tribal police, but I don't think it's right that his life counts more than Margo Styles's. When you become a policeman, you understand that the job has some risks and you choose to accept that — like the guy in Desperation. Margo Styles didn't have that kind of choice.

I'd say I'm sorry, but what good does that do anybody?

To Lamont, I'd like to say I loved you then and I love you still. I don't know why you did what you did, but I forgive you. Jesus forgives you. You will always be the man I love.

I have more but it's private. I'll tell him when I see him.

I'd ask him why. That would be his book.

How do you tell exactly when you fall in love?

There wasn't any dating like real dating. We were too old for that. We didn't have to play games.

At first we mostly drove around. Cruised the A&W, the Del Rancho, the Lot-A-Burger. We'd buy a cherry limeade and cruise Kickapoo till we got hungry. Listen to tapes.

Lamont's dash was all correct, all the way down to the factory 8-track. We'd go to the Salvation Army or the flea market out at the Sky-Vue and pick up whole boxes of them for nothing, all the classic stuff— Iggy and the Stooges, Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath. When the weather was nice, Lamont would pop the top and turn it up so loud the bass kicked you in the shins. He liked Cream and Jimi Hendrix when we made out. "Little Wing" was our song, the Derek and the Dominos version. Sometimes Lamont would sing along with it, like it was about us. I saw Sting do a cover of it the other day on MTV; it was pretty wimpy.

We'd do stupid things like go bowling or hang out on the seesaw by the Krispy King. We even went fishing once. But mostly we'd cruise.

That 442 was a car. Lamont bought it at the Auto Auction south of town for a thousand dollars and did a full body-off restoration. He loved to talk about what he'd done to that car. He replaced the 400 with a bored-out 455 and swapped the factory tranny for a Muncie rock crusher with a Hurst shifter. He wrote away to Oldsmobile for the original color scheme, he dug through wrecking yards for new seats, he rechromed the bumpers. When he'd see another Cutlass, he'd ask me what year it was, what on it wasn't correct. He liked it that I knew. He was like my dad at that.

The first time Lamont let me drive it I got a ticket. I bet you've got a copy of it. If you don't, you can look it up; it was the Saturday before Thanksgiving, 1984. It was late. We were driving back from Amarillo on I-40. We'd gone to the West Texas Rod and Classic Roundup to look for an exhaust manifold, and his eyes were tired. We'd both done a few black beauties, but he was starting to see things —trails floating like neon over the road. I told him to pull into the next rest area. I could tell he didn't want to, because he knew we'd have a fight.

He hadn't let me drive it yet. It was his baby. Every Sunday he'd wash it by hand, dunking a sponge, then wax it till he could see himself smile in the reflection. Anyone would resent it after a while, but I didn't. He was a kid like that; it was the one thing he owned that made him happy. So I was ready to say it was all right, that we could park in a far spot and try to close our eyes for a little bit.

He pulled in by the dog-walking area but didn't turn the car off.

"Why don't you take over," he said.

He didn't tell me not to do anything, he just got out. We crossed in front of the hood, kissed and got back in.

I was used to a stick from Garlyn's Tercel but I needed to do everything perfect. Lamont put his mirrored shades on and slumped down in the seat. I turned the stereo off so I could hear, jammed the clutch in and searched for reverse. I thought I'd stall, so I fed it some gas and we jerked back.

"Easy there," Lamont said, like Dennis Weaver in "McCloud." It was one of his things.

I rolled through the semis and turned down the long on-ramp. There was almost no first gear, just a few seconds' worth. We reached forty-five in second and blew through the yield sign. Third pressed me into the seat. I laughed and recovered and slammed it into fourth. In the mirror, traffic was dropping back. I was hunched over the wheel, gritting my teeth from the speed.

"How's it feel?" Lamont asked.

"Fast," I said.

"Go ahead, take her up."

I checked the tach and punched it. It was my first time over a hundred. It was like a video game; you had to move over so you didn't run up the backs of the other cars. The wheel shook in my hands; a drop of sweat rolled down my ribs. If we lost a tire, we'd fly across the median and mow down the wedge of oncoming cars like bowling pins. I started giggling.

"Yeah," Lamont said. "That's how it feels."

He reached over and felt me up, and I thought I'd lose it.

"You cold?" he said. "Just happy," I said. That's when we passed the trooper.

One Saturday, my dad drove us out Route 66 to Depew. He put a jacket and tie on, and my mom gave him a hard time. He had a pillow to sit on so he could see over the wheel. He pointed things out like we couldn't see them ourselves. There was nothing to see really, just the old house and a few barbecue places on the way — Bob's, the Pioneer, the Rock Cafe. Between them were miles of barbed wire, a few head of cattle, dry creek beds, red dust. On the fence posts hung old tires with NO HUNTING or WILLIAMS FOR SENATE painted on them in white. Behind the weedy tourist courts, the stripper wells nodded like they were tired. It was dumb, but my dad had grown up there. We stopped for a barbecue sandwich about every hour. My dad was loving it. He had his sunglasses on and his elbow out the window, his finger drumming the steering wheel.

Now you go through Saint Looey,

Joplin, Missouri,

Oklahoma City is oh so pretty.

You'll see Amarillo,

Gallup, New Mexico,

Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona,

Kingman, Barjtow, San Bernardino.

"Is this fun or what?" he said, and my mom looked up from her book like he'd said something. She'd grown up there too but didn't seem to care.

I sat in back, waiting for the next stop. At every new place I got another cherry Coke, and by the time we reached Depew, my teeth were gritty and I wanted out of the ear. My dad teemed to be driving slow on purpose. My thoughts kept knocking into each other.

"Quit kicking the back of my seat!" my mom said. "And stop bouncing!"

"She's just having fun," my dad said, and started bouncing on his pillow.

My mom used the Lord's name. "Help me," she said. "I'm surrounded by lunatics."

My dad slowed and pulled into our old drive. There was a car there, an ugly old Nomad with Texas plates. Beside the chicken house leaned our old furnace. My father stopped and we all got out. I'm sure there was some wind. My hair was long then and always got in my mouth. Jody-Jo's house was still there, and his chain around the tree, but the glider was gone. There were two bikes on the porch with banana seats and tasseled handgrips.

My dad went up the steps ahead of us and rang the bell, and a minute later a lady came to the door. She was older than my mom, and shorter. In one hand she had a wet paintbrush. She looked at us like we were lost.

"Hello," my father said, and while he was explaining everything, a man in an OSU sweatshirt came to the door. He opened the screen to shake my fathers hand.

"Terry Close," he said, and everyone said hello.

"And this is our Marjorie," my father said.

When Mrs. Close shook my hand, the paint left a white streak on my palm.

They had two girls about my age, I forget their names. They said hi and disappeared up the stairs.

Now there's something you could do —like in The Dead Zone or The Drawing of the Three. I could touch Mrs. Close's hand and see her in the trash bag. Would that be neat? Or Natalie in the living room, or the fire.

At the time, all I saw was their furniture covered with drop cloths and the bare bulbs of the lamps. The fresh paint made me sneeze.

Mr. Close was sorry we'd come all that way, but they had to get the room done. He wished they weren't so busy. It was nice of us to drop by. Maybe we could get together sometime.

"You can bet on it," my dad said.

"Fantastic," Mr. Close said. "Hope to see you again soon."