Free Dying Embers by Robert E. Bailey

“But you’re right—that was a reasonable question.”
    â€œI got just the thing,” said Ben. He took a compact disc out of the console and popped it in the player—somebody doing some very hot licks on “Take the A Train.”
    â€œDuke Ellington?”
    â€œCherry Poppin’ Daddies.”
    â€œThat’s my father’s music.”
    â€œIt’s baaa-ack.”
    On the way back to Forty-fourth, a small white car with a dark top came out of an apartment complex after us.
    â€œNow what?” asked Ben.
    â€œHow much gas have we got?”
    â€œAlmost full. You want to head for the Mackinaw Bridge? Maybe our friend hasn’t seen the Upper Peninsula lately.”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “This beast gets real thirsty on the expressway. If he’s running a four or a six banger, we won’t be able to shake him that way. Just head for the house. If he’s still with us on Cannonsburg Road, turn left on Addison.”
    â€œPlan B?”
    â€œYou know that long curve with the buttonhook on the end as you go by Grover’s Orchard?”
    Ben smiled and stopped for all the yellow lights. At Addison Road we still had company. Our friend had his bright lights on but wasn’t making any attempt to close it up.
    â€œYou want me to do this?” I asked.
    â€œNope. I got it, Pop,” said Ben.
    â€œWe bend this Camaro and we’re going to have to get out of town,” I said.
    â€œI’ll just tell Daniel it was your idea.”
    â€œThanks,” I said. “After you turn on Addison pull over and we’ll do a Chinese fire drill.”
    â€œI can do it.”
    â€œYour mother will kill me.”
    â€œLet’s don’t tell her,” said Ben.
    â€œIt’s going to be hard to cover up when we’re laid out in intensive care under a pile of tubing.”
    â€œI got it!”
    â€œYou’ve done this before?”
    â€œNo,” he said.
    â€œThen you ain’t doing it now!”
    â€œSo, I did it before.”
    â€œWhat do you mean you did it before? Are you nuts? Where do you get off driving like that—your brother’s car—for God’s sake!”
    â€œDaniel’s good at it, too. He showed me. Now I’m better than him.”
    I sighed. “That’s nice to know.”
    â€œIt’s kind of the local challenge,” said Ben, as if he were revealing a secret. “You know, that’s why Grover plants corn on the north side of the road.”
    I knew all about Grover, Grover’s chopped ‘fifty Mercury, and how, thirty years ago, he’d rolled it through his dad’s peach trees that, in those days, had been planted on the north side of the road. The local joke was that Grover’s dad asked him if he was hurt. When he said, “No,” his dad said, “Good—that way I can hurt you myself.”
    Grover recovered, his dad retired, and Grover regularly showed up at the township board meetings to bitch about getting the road closed, or straightened, so that the local “hooligans” would “quit running down his corn.”
    Belding stages a Fourth of July parade every year. Sandwiched between the antique tractors and the high school marching band, the local car buffs show off their chariots. Grover—and his now candy-apple red chopped ‘fifty Merc with “Thunder Road” scrawled across the trunk in gold leaf—never misses the parade. I always check to see if he’s dragging any cornstalks.
    Ben turned off the music and slowed into the turn. I tightened my seat belt.
    â€œTired of that CD?” I asked.
    â€œNo,” said Ben, “I need to hear the engine wind, I don’t want to take my eyes off the road to look at the tach.”
    Our friend had added bright yellow fog lights when he turned north onto Addison behind us. Ben power-shifted through the quarter mile measured by wide white