Contents

  Praise for Can’t Shake the Dust

  Can’t Shake the Dust

  Copyright © 2024 C.H. Hooks. All rights reserved.

  Dedication

  Quote

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  Praise for Can’t Shake the Dust

  “The great racetrack in Darlington is called ‘Too Tough to Tame.’ The same might be said of C.H. Hooks. I kind of expect it on his tombstone, though I hope it’s in another 100 years. Can’t Shake the Dust, told from multiple points of view, never disappoints. It’s so easy to say ‘This is one wild ride,’ I know, but this is one wild ride. It belongs on the tragi-comic shelf with Harry Crews, Barry Hannah, et al.”

  —George Singleton, author of You Want More”

  “With Can’t Shake the Dust, C.H. Hooks gives us a raucous, red-eyed ballad of high-test tears and ground-pounding laughs that’ll cling to your soul like the red dirt of the title, making you remember the heart is a kind of engine, too.”

  —Taylor Brown, author of Wingwalkers and Rednecks

  “Strap in and let C.H. Hooks take you on a gonzo ride through the racing circuits and strip malls of South Georgia. Can’t Shake the Dust is a singular addition to the South’s raucous storytelling tradition. As much about aging as coming of age, Can’t Shake the Dust takes you beyond-the-track and into the blue-collar lives of those who can’t quit this beautiful, DIY sport. At once hilarious, strange, and tender—this brilliant novel you won’t soon forget. Long live the Lemons racing dynasty!”

  —Caleb Johnson, author of Treeborne

  Can’t Shake the Dust

  C.H. Hooks

  Regal House Publishing

  Copyright © 2024 C.H. Hooks. All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Regal House Publishing, LLC

  Raleigh, NC 27605

  All rights reserved

  ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781646034994

  ISBN -13 (epub): 9781646035007

  Library of Congress Control Number: TBD

  All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.

  Cover images and design by © C. B. Royal

  Regal House Publishing, LLC

  https://regalhousepublishing.com

  The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.

  Regal House Publishing supports rights of free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of artistic works that enrich and define culture.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Elizabeth, Margaux, and Brer

  Quote

  The tattoo’s removed

  but your heart’s still black and blue

  and the only thing worse

  than hitting rock bottom

  is rock bottom

  hitting you

  -Scott Ballew, “High Times”

  1

  Little

  They say my daddy could’ve been the best racer there ever was, but that didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t breathe.

  Dirt.

  My nose was caked, and I could taste it in my teeth when I sucked through my lips, searching for a little bit of air to keep me running even when my car’s engine had found the shit-canned end of its own life—again. Might as well have left our house out on the track.

  My roll cage rattled like a can. Every time another one of those assholes lapped me, I could feel the whole world rattle, like somehow Jesus was out there playing soccer with me and the car as the ball. My car was named Lemon Party II because Daddy wrecked the first one. More like, Daddy got wrecked in. Didn’t really do it his ownself. Somebody put him into the wall, but he still wouldn’t tell me who it was. I had enough to deal with driving against those folks’ kids.

  Another car passed, and it felt like I might get sucked out through the window if I wasn’t strapped down so tight. Folks called me Little, just ’cause I was the youngest out of me and Daddy and Big Bill, my grandpaw. And I guess I was little once. But I’d stretched and leaned out, about as tall as Daddy now, but somehow the name stuck. My daddy got called “Wild” and that still makes sense.

  When the whole flock of cars passed they blew more dirt into Lemon Party II. My sleeves got a shower, a loose dust of gray clay and red dirt. The birds would try to bury me. Dang noisy birds flying around, circling and pecking just like those assholes did at school. When the draft tried to pull me out, I thought I might fly into orbit, find some far star even while my own childhood tried to twinkle the fuck out. Believe me, I could blink past the cloud of dust and find some dark sky out past the lights. Someplace I’d rather have been. Then I’d see the whole slew of them coming back around, lap twenty-something by then, and I’d do just like Daddy told me, what he wished he’d have done, and I’d tuck my legs into the seat real tight, push them over to the console. I’d do that, hope I didn’t get T-boned, and dream about a place more permanent, a place that wouldn’t roll away, and listen to all fourteen years of my life breeze by until they passed again.

  Instead, there was more dirt. My foot had slipped off the clutch mid-shift. The car stalled. It wouldn’t restart. The only time it turned over, I’d given it too much gas and it sounded like somebody was playing ping-pong under the hood.

  Now I was in another race I couldn’t finish.

  I could read the signs through the dust. Don’t know how many times I read the Lucas Oil ad over on the wall next to me. I somehow always ended up parked in the same spot. Usually around lap two out of twenty-five. I knew I couldn’t, that it wasn’t possible, but I swear I could hear those other kids laughing over the spattering of mud when they passed.

  The officials didn’t stop the race to move my car. The dirt and mud covered the pair of large lemons and one smaller lemon hanging from the same stem. My mama, Nanny, painted the lemons on the door about a million years ago. She told Daddy the white paint would look like a flash when it flew around the track. Mama didn’t come to the races to see that wasn’t for real.

  The other cars crossed the finish line and I watched Daddy limp over to the tall fence. He propped himself against the chain links and I barely pulled my scrawny ass out before the tow truck driver was hitching up to the bumper.

  “Good race, boy,” Daddy said. He was trying to smile. Trying to believe his own words till they got gobbled up by somebody’s busted muffler. I could barely hear. Dirt was stuck deep in my ears and I knew I’d find mounds like anthills on my pillow the next morning. I’d spit grayish-red when I brushed my teeth. The collars of my school-uniform shirts would have these streaks that would smudge over time, till the whole thing was a different color than the original white. They expected clean and pure at the St. Francis Catholic School. They dragged me along on scholarship when I was for sure the only Methodist.

  Flies swarmed the lights high at the top of poles and the pale glow was just bright enough to make me have to squint over at Daddy. Made it a little bit easier to hold back tears.

  “Made it longer than last time.” Daddy scratched his right leg like he did when he was trying.

  I looked back over at my car. The tow truck revved and dragged my car through the dirt, the bumper drawing pictures in the dirt. We’d made the roll cage out of patch welds and reclaimed steel. Now the car didn’t have a wheel touching the ground. I’d been drawing pictures in the outfield at T-ball only a couple years before. The tow truck took the turn out of the track too tight. It kept pulling even when the Lemon Party II was stuck around the corner and the rear bumper popped off.

  “We’ll get it all fixed up,” Daddy said.

  “I could be the best that ever lived.” Don’t know why I mumbled those words or chose that second to do it. They say you are what you eat, and I’d been fed that goddamn line so many times from Daddy. He watched the car disappear around the corner too. I missed its tail in a blink. The bumper was still rocking, real slow, in the dirt.

  “What I always said.” Daddy scratched his leg again.

  I walked across the track, pant legs of my racing suit puddling over the tops and backs of my Pumas, and aimed loosely at the gate between the track and stands. The suit was Daddy’s from when he was my age. He limped along beside me.

  The stairs at the track were cement and the stands were built solid as a tank. Daddy always said we’d hide under there when the ’pocalypse came. I was used to taking stairs slow. Never knew a time when Daddy could move quickly. The tap of his prosthetic left leg, the one Daddy called his “gone leg,” kept time and we tapped-tapped up the stairs. Once we topped them, we started down the ramp to a string of windows. All the winners were lining up to cash in. We stopped at a big blue trashcan and Daddy pulled a wad of tickets from his pocket. He looked at them a final time or two, half-expecting the result to change, then dropped them in the can. We kept walking toward the chain link gate and pushed through the turnstile. Everybody else was getting in their cars and such. I held Daddy’s arm without him asking. I didn’t even have to look. Was happy to do it.

  “Bet for me?” I asked, looked at his face and watched the squinting of his eyes. Daddy looked straight ahead, wincing a little with each swing of his leg. He had deep cut wrinkles around his mouth. They could have come from the sun or stress, and were half-hid by shaggy hair hanging down and out from his hat—a Goodyear patch centered on his forehead. He’d picked that up from some podium a long time ago.

  Was pretty sure I wanted one too.

  “Always do.”

  “Why?” I asked, but I also thought I knew that answer. Daddy watched his feet while we walked. He sniffed real hard and I waited for a bump of confidence. I’d been racing for two years. Same time as when Mama started working the night shift and I’d been indentured into cutting grass for Daddy’s lawn company. I was promised a life of racing. It was one I didn’t ask for but knew I needed to love.

  “It’s gonna happen.”

  Daddy’d been a dirt track racer and a winner. His career was for sure shorter than Senior’s. He told me he’d met Mama when he was winning, and she had dreams of a two-year interior design distance course and was one of the top waitresses at Wing Breakers. Daddy said he’d won races when she was there, and didn’t do so hot when she wasn’t. He lost the leg when she was at the refreshment stand waiting on a bag of fresh chicharrónes.

  I was in her belly by then.

  We walked out over the gravel lot. The fall breeze pushed white dust off the ground and the clouds and wisps looked like ghosts. Those dusty ghosts reminded me of being a little kid, just like the smells and sounds of the track. I felt the wisps and the dirt find the holes in my Pumas and looked up just in time to watch this dark-haired lady’s jean shorts bounce across the parking lot. Her skin crept out from under the denim like the crescents of white were moving toward full. She reached her car first, parked a few spaces closer than us. It was fancy and shiny, like a pace car, like something I thought a winner would follow back when I thought I could still win. I recognized George’s mama in the reflection of the fancy tinted windows. She saw me looking, turned her head over her shoulder and winked, then pulled the denim back down. I smiled all stupid and hoped I didn’t have dirt covering my teeth.

  Daddy somehow missed the view as he searched for his keys and tried to pull them from jeans that were tight enough now to burn his knuckles when he pulled his hand out of the pocket. I kept looking, my head on a swivel till we got to the truck and I nearly bumped into it. Daddy was still searching and I kept my hand on the door handle, tried to get grounded. I felt something else familiar, heard something I recognized too.

  “Woohoo!”

  My head got knocked from behind, made it tip forward, and I looked down in time to see a Diet Coke can rattle on the ground. I saw the can wobble and thought of my mama, how she used to hold me in one arm, a Diet Coke in the other when she rocked me to put me to bed. I felt the cool liquid from what was left in the can run down the back of my neck. It heated by the time it touched my back, pure from me being pissed. Gravel slung from the oversized tires of the truck behind me. The fancy Dodge Diesel sucked the air real tight and hung out in first gear and when I turned to see who’d thrown the can, the chips of gravel hit me in the face, stung my cheeks, and let me breathe in those ghosts I’d been staring at a second before. I was pissed at myself for turning and smeared the dust when I wiped the water from my eyes. Thing that pissed me off the most was that I knew who threw it. I already felt like I probably had a callous and a permanent dent in my skull from Coke cans that had caught an edge on the thin skin of the back of my head over the previous two years. It didn’t change what I said.

  “Fuck off, George!”

  The gravel hit Daddy’s truck and landed in the bed. George’s daddy, “Go Get ’em George,” caught second gear and the truck took off into the bright blue night. Only the echoing sound of a giant farting muffler and the floating layer of chalky dust stuck around.

  “Watch your mouth.” Daddy looked in the truck bed. “We can use some of that in the driveway, anyhow.”

  I wiped the ghost dust off my face and spat. My lips were bleeding, maybe from biting the bottom one earlier waiting for the race to end, maybe from drying out and cracking. That was the first I’d tasted of it, and in the parking lot light, the drops made a dark spot on the ground.

  Daddy was in the cab of the truck and leaned across the seat to unlock my door. I brushed off my pants and climbed in the creaking Ford. The worn-out, red-cloth insides smelled like cigarettes and the faint sweetness of vodka. Daddy slid an old Coke can out of the center console and drank. He pursed his lips and no matter how parched I was, I knew I couldn’t ask for a sip.

  “I’m pretty hungry.” I said. I opened the glove compartment, found a tissue and blew. When I checked the results I was impressed at how scant dirt had come out. I must have swallowed it earlier.

  “Yeah, me too.” Daddy took a final sip from the can and tossed it out the window. It rattled and bent on the gravel. He’d aimed for the trash can as he pulled away. “Let’s find us some dinner.”

  The night was quiet and it was late. Don’t know how late. The clock on the dash had frozen on 9:12 years ago. There was no traffic, only a thick marsh fog that sat fat on the road and misted the windshield. We passed Hungry World, the marquee of the old theater where the Baptists set up shop to give out free dinners for the starved. But it was dim. I think we’d both hoped for a freebee tonight, some sort of win. We drove on.

  A familiar glow swelled in the distance. Even the fog couldn’t keep its colors from permeating the night sky. My stomach growled because I’d missed breakfast. There was no lunch. The groceries ran out on Thursday. The last meal I could remember had come from the school cafeteria, could have been Thursday too.

  Daddy pulled us into the Taco Bell parking lot and slinked into a parking space. A few spots down, two teens, maybe a couple years older than me, sat in lawn chairs in the back of an oversized truck bed. Another sat on the roof of the cab. I turned and looked the other way, pretended they weren’t there.

  “You getting a chalupa?” I asked Daddy.

  “Nah. That’s the big money. Go for the dollar menu. Just get me a couple tacos. You got any money?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t?” I turned back to look at him. Through the window, I saw the boys out there were looking at us. They were having a laugh. I felt some dread in my belly and tried to think it was hunger rolling around in there.

  “I bet it on you.” Daddy took his hat off and put it on the dash. He held his palms over his eyes and pushed till I imagine he saw some stars. “What’d you do with that fifteen bucks I gave you?” Daddy pulled his hair back, then put his hat back on.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24