First appeared in Cutbank Online
Dad was always a body man. Mom said calling him dad would bring us closer, and she was right. I loved Dad for his car. After Mom died and Dad ended up in County, I wanted to drive his car into the ground, but my step-sister wouldn’t have it. She quit school and took a job at the service station and made enough money to keep us eating but not much more than that. I started taking Dad’s cherry Stingray out drag racing and helped bring in a little more, but my step-sister asked where I was getting the money and found the fenders beat up and hit me hard and wouldn’t stop until I swore I wouldn’t bring it out again. Every day after that, every goddamn day, she checked that car. I called her a bitch for not trusting me, but she was right. Jimmy from school… you know, Jimmy Deffès? He’d say, Bring that car out again and race with us, and he wanted to lay some cash down on Dad’s Stingray. I kept telling him, Yeah, Jimmy—I’ll bring it! Just tell me the time and the place, but I wouldn’t show. He’d smack me around the next day and say, What you think I’m messing around here? Car like that can make us some easy money, and you sure as shit ain’t doing anything with it, but Jimmy quit asking, quit talking to me at all, when I figured out I could hit back.