The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [28]
Then people jumped from the driver’s side of both cars, already shouting, waving fists. Next somebody climbed out of the car that’d been headed the other way, and now that guy was running toward us, and I realized only then we hadn’t gone anywhere, just sat here against the curb, watching it all.
I pulled away, headed for the Mark Clark on-ramp only a quarter mile or so ahead, hoped whoever it was running along behind us and yelling wouldn’t be able to see my tags.
I watched in the rearview, saw the man finally give up, stop right there in the middle of Dorchester Road.
And then saw the pickup swerve out of the whole thing, one headlight busted out, his tires squealing. The back end wagged one way and the other, the driver trying to get hold of a straight line, one that would deliver him right to us, headed up the ramp and onto a freeway that wouldn’t let us off until we were over the Ashley River, a good couple of miles from here.
Here came Tabitha’s hard breaths, a high-pitched shard of sound, and I looked at her. She had both hands to the dash, looked forward and behind us and forward again, and I could only push harder on the gas, push harder and harder, and forget easing anything into any gear.
The freeway was a freeway: big and wide and empty this time of night. The first thing I did was cut across for the fast lane, the little yellow reflectors set down in the concrete skipping past beneath us, and I looked down, saw we were doing seventy, just like that. I’d never gotten it going this fast, only drove the speed limit. I still had only my learner’s permit, and then I felt something small in my throat, thought it might be a laugh too scared to get out: here I was, with only my learner’s permit, doing seventy in the middle of the night and being chased by who knew who, me not even old enough to be at the wheel after sunset by South Carolina law.
I looked to Tabitha, tried hard to get a smile out, and said, “Did your brother juice this baby up? Because neither me nor Unc has.”
She stared at me a second, then quick moved her hands on the seat, the dash, the floorboard, and came up with the pen and paper.
I held the note to the window, caught the words in the light from a passing freeway lamp: He worked on it, we went places. That’s all I know. The letters were shaky now, like they were under water.
“Let’s hope he did,” I said, and looked in the rearview, saw a single headlight back there, rolling up the on-ramp.
The pedal was flat on the floor now, and I glanced down again, saw we were up to seventy-nine, and still the needle moved up, the sound of the engine big and loud and ready to burst, the steering wheel trembling in my hands. We were on the way up the bridge over the Ashley now, to our left the marina and boat ramp, rows of lit-up boats anchored out there and going by too fast. Then I looked back to the freeway, gray concrete and tall lamps lining it, ahead of me the lit-up green highway sign: HWY 61 1¼. I looked in the rearview, the pickup gaining on us now. We were up to eighty-five, still on the rise up the bridge.
I edged to the middle lane so I could take the off-ramp. I didn’t know this area over here, West Ashley, like I did North Charleston; knew only that 61 North headed to Summerville, a good twenty or so miles away, the road a two-lane hung over with live oak. And if I went south, there was a street off 61 that went over to the back end of Citadel Mall, the big place with Sears and Dillards and Belk and the movieplex.
I glanced in the rearview. They were still gaining, and now we were doing eighty-nine, that wheel trembling even harder in my hands. But it felt, too, like we were above the ground, the tires trying hard to hold us down on the concrete, like we were just gliding along here, and I knew this feeling was a dangerous one and a good one at once: we were doing near ninety, gliding along, but if I turned the wheel we’d