already broken the record -- or at least I thought we had -- but I couldn't be sure and Ackerman had gone rigid in the passenger seat, no longer keeping track of the stopwatch. He had been yelling numbers at me every ten or fifteen seconds for almost an hour, but now he was getting nervous. His eyes were wild and his hands were braced on the black leather dashboard. I could see that his confidence was slipping. What he wanted now was a handle, but that was out of the question. We had left all our handles at the top of the hill, in the shadow of Hilo Prison, two minutes ahead of the record and miraculously still alive.
Concentrate, I thought. Stay on the fall line, don't touch the brakes, use the gears and don't blink. . . This is dangerous, we are almost out of control.
But not quite, and the car had amazing balance. It was finally on its own turf, functioning at the top of its form, and I didn't have the heart to slow it down. Far out in front of us I could see, through the clouds, a white line of surf hitting up on the rocks around Hilo harbor. It stretched off in both directions like a line drawn with chalk, the lush green coast of Hawaii on one side and the deep gray swell of the Pacific on the other. The bay was full of whitecaps, and no boats were out. . . a bleak Sunday morning in Hilo, the capital city of the BigIsland. The population is mainly Japanese, who tend to sleep in on Sundays, and not many of whom are good Catholics.
I had already taken this into account, along with other ethnic factors, when the Speed Run was still in the planning stage. . . About six hours ago, in fact, when the bars closed in Kona and Ackerman let slip that he was planning to leave for a Tuna Tournament in Bimini the next day, or at least very soon. . . which alarmed me, because I had very definite plans to use his new yellow Ferrari to set a new land-speed record for running the Saddle Road.
June 4, 1981
Kona
Dear Ralph,
I am hunkered down in my place at Thug Central, watching the sea puppies out there on the break and running up huge bills while I postpone my departure one day at a time and hang out like some kind of funky Chinook drunkard up here on the balcony waiting for the big one to strike, like I always knew it would. . .
And I can almost smell the bastard now, circling out there, just a few feet away from the hook. . . but this time he's acting different; this time I think he's interested.
Things have changed since you left, Ralph. I shaved my head again, for one thing. And I also dropped out of sight. . . but not out of mind, at least not for Captain Steve. I call him constantly, about any problem or even any random idea that happens into my mind: Hunting wild pigs? Typewriter ribbons? Deep Diving on acid? Why is the Tanaguchi market out of Dunhills? Who rents jeeps? How far to the volcano? Where is Pele? How fast can a white man drive on the Saddle Road
at sunset? Why am I here? Who has Da Kine? Where are the fish? Has Rupert called? Can you cash another check for two hundred? Why won't Norwood return my calls about sacking the gravesites? Who was Spaulding's mother? Why can't you get a job?
Usually it is Laila who calls him to ask these questions. Which makes him doubly nervous, because in his heart he knows it's weird. But he always returns her calls. And then she calls him back, for more details. . . so they spend a lot of time together, doing business and telling jokes.
And getting things done. Which frees my brain a bit and gives me time to focus. I type all night and prowl the roads by day, looking for Pele. She hitchhikes a lot, they say, usually in the form of an old woman. So I do a lot of driving and I pick up many hitchhikers, especially old women. . . but age is a hard thing to be sure of at 55 miles an hour; and the lazy shameful truth is that on any hot afternoon I can be found cruising Alii Drive
in my T-top Mustang