The Speed Queen Read online

  THE SPEED QUEEN

  STEWART O'NAN

  FOR MY DEAR STEPHEN KING

  I suppose you'll call this a confession when you hear it.

  — RAYMOND CHANDLER/JAMES M. CAIN DOC ALE INDEMNITY

  I been drivin' all night, my hand's wet on the wheel.

  — golden earring "radar love"

  THE SPEED QUEEN

  SIDE A

  TESTING. 1. 2. 3

  I hope you don't mind but I wrote this first part out, so I'll just read it now and get it over with. Mr. Jefferies helped me with it. I hope that's okay.

  Okay, let me just read it.

  Before I begin I'd like to say that I'll try to remember everything as best as I can, though sometimes I know it won 't be right. What you wan! to know about happened eight years ago, before I found the Lore). I was a different person then, a person I don't completely understand even now. That's not an excuse, nor u the drugs. I take full responsibility for the things that I did do —no more, no less. I maintain my innocence and consider my sentence unjust. I also think it's important for the public to know that legally I oppose capital punishment of any sort, not just in my own case.

  Was that okay? You don't have to use it if you don't want to. Mr. Jefferies said we might put it right at the front of the book. He said you might want to cause it makes it more real —based on a true story, like. I don't know anything about writing a book, so anything like that is up to you. Mr. Jefferies said I should just do it to avoid any legal problems.

  It's a novel, right? So it's supposed to be all made up. It should have a thing at the beginning like at the end of a movie — everyone in this isn't supposed to be alive or dead — even though everyone knows that's not true. I bet everyone asks you about Jack in The Shining and whether that's supposed to be you. You say no, I bet, or maybe he's just a little part of you. This'll be more like Dolores Claiborne meets The Green Mile, but still. As long as you say it's fiction and put that thing in, you're okay, you don't really

  have to answer that. But Mr. Jefferies said that that based-on-a-true-story thing is tricky, so I said, sure, let's put it in.

  You probably already read Natalie's book. Let me just say here that very little of it's true, and none of the big things. I know why she said what she did, but it's not true. That's one reason I wanted you to do the book. After people read yours, no one'll believe hers.

  Thank you for all the money. It's all going to go to Gainey when he's old enough. My mom won't see a penny of it, Mr. Jefferies said he'd see to it.

  I like Mr. Jefferies. He's the only one who's done anything for me in this whole thing. I know he feels bad that we lost. I know he feels that he lost, but that's not true. We did the right thing, pleading not guilty. I am not guilty. He didn't know the judge was going to be so tough. You should have seen him right after we lost, he gave me this little hug anyway, but I could tell he thought it was his fault. And how can you tell someone it's not?

  My mom says she would've paid for someone better. This is after the fact, of course. She's always generous when it's too late.

  That part about being against the death penalty was Mr. Jefferies' idea. He's against it. Personally, I'm for it—which is funny cause I wasn't when I came in here. You meet people in here there's just nothing else to do with. It's like the Psalm says: Preserve thou the righteous and let vengeance take the wicked. And there is wickedness in the world, there are evil people, men and women both. But Mr. Jefferies, he's been working so hard for me I figure I owe it to him. It doesn't mean that much to me one way or the other.

  Anyway, it's important for me to say all this before I begin. Mr. Jefferies said he'll listen to the tapes before he sends them to you, in case I say something illegal. He'll make one copy for you and one for Gainey when he's eighteen and keep this one for his records.

  Legally, Mr. Lonergan and nobody on the stall are supposed to listen to these. I've got nothing against Mr. Lonergan, he's always been fair with my privileges, but this is private business. I know that legally you own these, but I'd appreciate it if you kept them to yourself. You can use it for your book because it's fiction but not for anything else. I know this is strange asking you this, since if things go the way they're going you can't really answer me, but if you could write to Mr. Jefferies with your answer I'd appreciate it.

  I think that's it. Like you asked me, I didn't look at the questions ahead of time. There's a lot of them. I'll try to answer them as best I can before midnight. Janille is here but no one else, so there's no reason for me to be anything but honest. Sometimes I might not say what you want me to, but I'm just going to be honest. You can make up whatever story you want. I just want you to know the real one first.

  1

  Why did I kill them?

  I didn't kill them. It's not even a question.

  You think you'd start with something like my mom or dad or what I was like when I was a kid. Show me riding my tricycle out behind the chicken house, my hair in pigtails, buckteeth, something cute like that. Then you could say, she was a normal gal and look what happened to her. And you'd figure it out. You'd go back and look at everything that happened and say, look, it could happen to anyone.

  But I'm glad it's you. When Mr. Jefferies said you bought the rights I didn't believe him. I was over on the Row then. Darcy next door said, "No!"

  "Yep," I said, "it's true."

  "No," she said.

  I just nodded.

  "What about Lamont?" she said, and I said you'd probably have to talk to his folks.

  I'm sorry they didn't give you permission. Lamont would have wanted to be in the book. He liked your books. It's kind of a shame you'll have to change our names. It's dumb; everyone'll know it's us.

  Why did I kill them?

  I didn't kill them. I was there, but I didn't kill anyone.

  I know exactly what happened though. It's pretty boring, actually. It's pretty normal. I don't think people will be that interested. But if anyone can make it interesting, you can. You'll make it funny too, which is right. Sometimes it was really funny. Even now some of it's funny.

  I've read all your books. I know that sounds like Annie Wilkes in Afuiery, but it's true, really. I liked Misery James Caan was really good in it. Brian j Song was on the other night. Janille rolled the set over so I could watch.

  Janille's all right —right, Janille?

  Janille and me get along all right except for Oprah. Janille can't stand that Oprah lost all that weight. Janille thinks she looked fine before the diet; I think she holds it against her. I think Oprah's someone who tried to change herself and succeeded, and I respect that in a person. We fight about this all the time. We could both stand to lose a few pounds. It's all that junk from the vending machines. We'll take a break —that's what Janille calls it —and have some Funyuns and an RC, or split a Payday when we're being really bad. This is usually around "All My Kids" or "One Life to Live." Definitely before Oprah.

  I kind of rely on TV in here, that and the Bible. Tonight they say I can watch as much as I want. I can order anything I want to eat. I can pretty much do anything I want. They say I can have a sedative about four hours before. The last gal they did here took it —the famous one, Connie Something, the gal who cut up all those truckers. By midnight she was just a mess, all crying and her feet going all over the place. They had to carry her in.

  Janille doesn't know this, but Darcy slipped me three white crosses before they moved me over here. I've been saving them for tonight. I figure what the heck, I've got to do this thing for you. I'm going to do them right after dinner. I'll tell you when they kick in. You'll probably be able to tell anyway.

  That was my nickname in the papers —the Speed Queen. I've always moved a little faster than the rest
of the world. That's why I'm here, I guess. I don't always stop to think, I just want to go. Lamont used to say I was built for speed. It's true; the world's always seemed a little slow to me. It's chemical, I think. Everything I used to do just fed into that. When I was using, I didn't have to eat or sleep or anything, just get in that Roadrunner and go. Now I've got a few things that calm me down. My relationship with Jesus, obviously. Gainey. Knowing I've only got so much time left. I think I always knew I'd hit some kind of wall. It's like that movie Vanishing Point, the guy out there in the desert in that big old Challenger, just hauling around with Cleavon Little on the radio. In the end he hits the blade of this bulldozer and the car just rips into flames, little pieces of sheet metal falling in slow motion like snow. That's the kind of life I wanted back then. I guess I got it, huh?

  I've been over here twice before. The Death House. Actually it's kind of nice. The mattresses are new, and the walls don't sweat like the old ones. Two-tone —light gray over dark gray, the line right at neck level. Steel John, steel mirror. The only bad thing is there's no windows. It drives Janille crazy.

  The last time I got my stay early in the morning, the time before that around dinnertime. My dinner was already here, so they let me have it anyway —barbecue from Leo's, the ribs crusty, sliding right off the bone. Say what you like about Oklahoma, but the barbecue is amazing here. That and the gas is cheap.

  They use lethal injection here. It's kind of disappointing. New Mexico used to use the chair but then they changed to it too. Mr. Jefferies made sure we came here; he thought the publicity would kill us in New Mexico.

  Kill us —it's a joke.

  Remember Foghorn Leghorn? That's a joke, son. I never thought he was funny until Lamont and me did some bong hits in bed one morning and he turned on the cartoons. He smelled good in bed, that's what I always remember about Lamont. He was always good to me that way. He used to kiss me right on my heart.

  Lamont taught me a lot. Some of it was good. I won't pretend like it wasn't.

  I wish it was the chair. The chair makes me think of heaven. It's like a throne.

  The table for the injection's shaped like a gingerbread man. It's got ten straps.

  It's not the needles I mind. My veins are better than they've been since high school, thick as worms. Everyone says it's supposed to be like going to sleep. It's not going to be like that. I don't know what it's going to be like. Last night I pictured it was like flushing your radiator and putting in new antifreeze. They say the gal who killed those truckers broke two of the straps — and those are new straps. But it sounds good to most people, sleep.

  Sister Perpetua said there were four stages I had to go through. She wrote them down for me —denial, anger, grief, acceptance. She was right, kind of. Since I've been here I've been through all of them. The problem is, one stage doesn't just end and then the next one kicks in. They get all mixed up with each other. They're all going at the same time.

  Why did I kill them is something I'd expect from Barbara Walters or someone. You're not going to start there, are you? You think you'd start at the beginning —not with me as a little girl but maybe when I hooked up with Lamont. Because we had a year or so there before Natalie came along. Good times. We were both working and Lamont bought that Hemi Roadrunner. We used to cruise Sooner from the big Sonic down around the Whataburger, just snuggling up on that bench seat with the Ramones grinding out a wall of sound, jumbo cherry slushes in the cup holders. You could start there and show how much we were in love and how normal we were and then how everything went wrong. That's what I'd do.

  2

  Lamont used the gun first because he had to. It was an old Colt he got from a dealer in Midwest City. He traded him a patched-up gas tank from a '70 Torino. It had an eight-round clip and the kind of safety on the back of the grip you had to hold down with the meat of your thumb. It kicked so hard the first time I fired it that the hammer put a dent in my forehead.

  You can get all of that from the police reports. You're just testing me, like the questions at the beginning of a lie detector test. I've done some of those, and I'll tell you, they don't all work.

  I think what I'm going to do is answer the questions in order and then maybe when I'm all done put them in the order I think they should go in. Cause right now this is backwards. The important thing isn't whether I killed them or how, it's everything. My whole life really. That's what you paid for, isn't it?

  He used the gun first and then Natalie used the knife. I don't really see the difference. I didn't use either of them anyway.

  And it's a dumb question. How could I use the knife first?

  There were five of them and one of me, and back then I weighed like a pound.

  Not that it was self-defense at that point. Mr. Jefferies said it was going to be murder even though I didn't do it. The question was, was it second degree or first, and how many counts of each? That's not even including the Closes and all of that.

  But that should go later. First I think you'd want to talk about me growing up in the country. In the newspaper no one ever mentions I'm from the country, and I think it's interesting.

  My family was my mom, my dad and me, and our dog, Jody-Jo. He was a basset hound the color of a Fudgsicle except where he'd turned white. He was old and had bad dandruff and farted a lot. He didn't like to play with you. He'd just lie under the glider, and when you wanted to rock, he'd get up and say something before he walked off. His back legs moved kind of sideways. He was my mom's dog from before they got married, and my dad refused to clean up after him. My mom had a shovel around the side of the garage, and a trash bag.

  The house though. You ever see Bonnie and Clyde! It was just like that. The next house was a mile down the road on each side. This was right on Route 66, the old one. All day I'd sit on the glider and watch the cars come by; my dad taught me all the names — Chieftain and Starfire, Rocket 88. The nearest town was Depew. In back we had an old chicken house and back behind that a pond the dirt turned red. The house was yellow and had two floors. I don't remember any of the furniture except a piano that was always broken. You'd hit a key and nothing happened.

  The wind was the big thing there. It really did come sweeping down the plain. I don't know if you've ever been out here, but don't forget to put that in the book. Make it windy like every other day. You could say it's windy tonight, that all those protesters outside the gate are getting their signs and coffee cups blown around. Or say I can hear it whistling around the Death House like a ghost. Something like that, just get it in, you know how to do it.

  Out there the big worry was tornadoes. April and May was the season. If you saw one, you were supposed to call the police in Depew, then open your windows a crack and wait in the basement. We had an old mattress down there, and when the warning came on the radio, my mom would take me and Jody-Jo down and we'd sit on the mattress and eat Ritz crackers with peanut butter until the radio said it was okay. Depew had a siren; on a calm day you could barely hear it. But I never saw one. All I remember is every few days the wind would take one of my mom's sheets off the line and dip it in the pond and she'd fish it out, cursing like you never heard.

  There weren't any chickens left in the chicken house, just dust from the feathers that made you sneeze and a smell like ammonia. Behind the house was a little hill I'd ride my tricycle down. I'd pedal as fast as I could and then when the pedals were going too fast to catch up with I'd hold my feet out and let the pedals go crazy. I used to fall off a lot. When I went inside, my mother would slap the dirt off my dress. It was kind of like a spanking. "What have you been doing?" she'd say. "Haven't I told you a million times not to do that? What's wrong with you?"

  My tricycle had plastic tassels that came out of the handgrips. You could hang on to them like reins. You couldn't steer so good with them, but that made it more exciting.

  When I was four I broke my wrist. I was riding down the hill when the front wheel hit this dip. The wheel turned and I went over the handlebars
and the trike came down on top of me. I thought I was fine. I was used to that kind of thing. I got up and tried to pick the trike up, but my hand wouldn't do what I was telling it. I went inside and told my mom.

  "What did I tell you?" she said. "I told you but you wouldn't listen to me, would you? Now do you see what happens?"

  And I didn't listen to her. They put a cast on my wrist that my fingers stuck out of, and when I came back I got right back on my tricycle. A few days later I had the exact same accident again, except this time the cast hit me in the side of the head and completely knocked me out. I woke up a little later and went inside. I didn't tell anyone, but in bed that night I could hear like a radio in my head, just soft so you couldn't make out what they were saying.

  I know what you re thinking but it's not true. I was better the next day. I've never heard any other voices. If you want to do something with that, then fine, but that's not my story, that's yours.

  If you do, you might say it was the spirit of a Pawnee squaw. A few years ago some people from the university dug up a whole ditchful of bones near Depew. They think it was a massacre that got covered up. You might say it was the sole survivor's ghost coming back to find her husband and babies. (You could do it in parentheses or italics so we'd know it was a voice in her head, like in Pet Sematary.)

  We lived on Route 66 until I was five, when my dad got a job at Remington Park and we moved closer to Oklahoma City. I was excited about moving, but sad too, leaving the pond and the chicken house, the little hill.

  I guess I should take this time to apologize to the Close family. Lamont and me are honestly sorry for causing them all such pain, and I wish I could undo what's done. I can't. I hope my death will be some comfort to their family. I'd like them to know that we had nothing against Maria and Terry Close, and that they were not involved with the drug business or anything illegal, like the newspapers say. They just happened to be living in that house at that time. As a Christian I pray they've found their reward just as I hope to find mine tonight.