Night of Thunder

He called upon God in his majesty to send wisdom to his young prodigal, he who had failed, send wisdom, humility, respect for elders, all those things a good Christian boy should show his religious mentor.

“Thou hast failed,” he said, in a power-voice, all throb and vibration. “Thou hast failed because thou did not pray for guidance hard enough. Thou must pray, Brother Richard, and give the soul in totality to the man upstairs. Only then will he listen.”

The Reverend was a scrawny old boy, with slicked-back hair, all pouf and vibrant with gray and hair oil, big, white, fake teeth, and dressed in a powder blue, three-piece suit from Mr. Sam’s big store. His sons and nephews had a joke. “Daddy’s tailor,” they’d say, “is Wah Ming Chow of Number 38 Industrial Facility, Harbin, Szechwan Province, China!” and get to laughing up a fit.

“You damned boys, the devil will take you!” he’d howl in rage, and then laugh harder.

But the boys weren’t there now. In fact only one parishioner listened to the Reverend. He was a raw-boned fella of indeterminate age-fellows like him could be thirty to sixty, all hardscrabble, southern school of hard knocks and rough roads, indomitable, relaxed, tougher than brass hobnails, not the sorts to get excited but exactly the sorts to avoid riling-who now sat in the front row of the meeting hall, in tight, faded jeans, beat-up boots, a blue, working-man’s shirt, and a Richard Petty straw cowboy hat both shabby and cool pulled low over his eyes. He wasn’t the sort who took the hat off indoors, church or no church. He had on a big pair of mogul sunglasses too, as King Richard commonly wore, and sported a mustache and a goatee, though the hair wasn’t real.

“Old man, you do go on,” he finally said. “I am getting extremely tired of all this show.”

“You was given a job, and you failed. If I wanted failure, I’d have sent my own damn sons. They so dumb, they guarantee failure, God love ’em.”

“They are dumb,” said Brother Richard, so called for his resemblance to the real Richard Petty and what was assumed to be a common NASCAR heritage. “But that’s okay, because they’re lazy, too.”

“They are good boys,” said the Reverend.

“Not really,” said Brother Richard.

“Anyhows, we in a porridge-pot o’ trouble now.”

“I agree. After all, she saw me. Not even you have seen me. If you had to describe me, you’d come up with, ‘He looks like Richard.’ So I guess they’d send out Richard on the circular. But by that time, I wouldn’t look like Richard.”

“Everyone knows that hair is phony,” said the Reverend.

“It doesn’t matter what they know. It only matters what they’ve seen.”

“Anyhow, you were highly recommended to me by at least three sources. It was said by all, ‘He’s the best. Nobody like him.’ Yet when I need you most, you fail.”

“There are some things I can’t control. I can’t control the fact that the girl drives like a pro. She must have raced go-karts. You can learn a lot in the damn little things. Ask Danica. Who knew? I’ve done that job more times than you can know, and nobody ever fought so hard or made so many good decisions at speed. If the world were fair, I’d be marrying her, not trying to kill her.”

“Yessir, but as I have noted in many a sermon, the world ain’t fair. Not even a little bit.”

“Anyhows, I am as upset as you. She saw my new face and it wasn’t cheap, not in money, not in time, not in pain. She’s the only one that’ll identify me.”

“You should have had on one of your disguises.”

“I didn’t have time. You called me and I was off. I had to kick hell to even catch her. Like to might have been smeared to ketchup by a logging truck, some of the turns I took.”

“Whyn’t you finish her? You could see the car didn’t roll. If it don’t roll, you got problems.”

“I am not smashing a girl’s head in with a rock or cutting her throat. Among other things, if you do that, then all the law knows it’s not a hopped-up kid and is a murder and maybe you got state cop investigators, maybe even FBI, and lots of trouble. It only works if everybody agrees it’s some kind of hit-run thing by some kind of speed-crazy, NASCAR-loving jackrabbit with the brains of a pea. That’s what I’m selling. But there’s an issue of what I do and what I don’t do too. I don’t kill up close where there’s blood. It’s my car against theirs, and I always win at that game. Nobody can stay in that game. If I kill up close, hell, I’m just another Grumley.”

“Car agin’ car, you didn’t win this time, Brother Richard.”

“Now I don’t like that one, Rev. This whole shebang you’ve got set up-well, someone has set up, as I don’t believe you got the native intelligence of a porcupine-”

“You are so insolent to your elders. You should respect your elders, Brother.”