It had come down to a choice between the rent or glasses for his youngest.

He was $800 short on the rent for the building that housed his business. It was all the profits from the last two weeks at the garage after most of the bills had been paid. Smoked-out glass and LED lights emitted an ethereal bluish glow like some bioluminescent sea creature.īeauregard leaned against his Duster as Warren pontificated about the invincibility of the Oldsmobile. A dark green body with chrome Mag rims and chrome trim that ran across its surface like liquid lightning. He was strutting around his ’76 Oldsmobile Cutlass. I done outrun more cops than the Duke boys in the Olds! You ain’t just beating the Olds, homeboy!” a guy named Warren Crocker crowed. Come on, the Olds done sent many a boy home with his pockets lighter. For real though, y’all ain’t got nothing for the legendary Olds! She does 60 in second. “Ain’t none of y’all motherfuckers ready for the legendary Olds! Y’all might as well go on back home to your ugly wives and try and get some Tuesday night pussy. The second “E” had disappeared from the word “SPEEDEE.” Beauregard wondered what had happened to Carter. The cheap paint flaking away like dried skin. The sign was beginning to yellow with age. It creaked as the breeze moved it back and forth.ĬARTER SPEEDE MART the sign proclaimed in big black letters set against a white background. The wind caught the sign hanging above his head from the arm of a pole that extended twenty feet into the air. He thought a lot of people spent a large part of their life doing the same thing. Beauregard closed his eyes and strained his ears. A choir of crickets and whippoorwills tried in vain to be heard.

The rich, acrid smell of exhaust fumes and burnt rubber. The air was cool and filled with the scent of gas and oil. In addition to the Chevelle, there was a Maverick, two Impalas, a few Camaros and five or six more examples of the heyday of American muscle. There were about a dozen other late-model cars parked haphazardly in front of the old convenience store.

The bass from the sound system in a nearby Chevelle was hitting him in his chest so hard, it felt like someone was performing CPR on him. Laughter filled the air only to be drowned out by a cacophony of revving engines as the moon slid from behind the clouds. Beauregard thought the night sky looked like a painting.

Book blacktop wasteland