Drive

Chapter Eight

As a kid, new to town, he’d hung around the studio lots. So did a bunch of others, all ages, all types. But it wasn’t the stars in their limos or supporting players arriving in Mercedes and BMWs he was interested in, it was the guys who sailed in on Harleys, muscle cars and jacked-up pickups. As always he stayed quiet, hung back, kept his ear to the ground. A shadow. Before long he’d heard word of a bar and grill these guys favored in the grungiest part of old Hollywood, and started hanging out there instead. Some time in the second week, two or three in the afternoon, he looked up to see Shannon settling in at one end of the bar. The barkeep greeted him by name and had a beer and shot in front of him damned near before he sat down.

Shannon had a first name no one used. It got listed on credits, nether end of the scroll; that was about it. Up from somewhere in the South, hill country, everyone said. The Scots-Irish ancestry of so many of those hill folk showed in Shannon’s features, complexion and voice. But what he most looked like was your typical redneck from Alabama.

He was the best stunt driver in the business.

“Keep ’em coming,” Shannon told the barkeep.

“You need to tell me that?”

He’d sucked three mugs dry and thrown back as many shots of well bourbon by the time Driver worked up courage enough to approach him. Stopped with the fourth shot glass on the way to his mouth as Driver stood there.

“Help you with something, kid?”

A kid not much older (he was thinking) than those streaming home from school now in buses, cars and limos.

“Thought maybe I could buy you a drink or two.”

“You did, did you?” He went ahead and tossed the shot back, set the glass gently on the bar. “Soles of your shoes are mostly gone. Clothes don’t look much better, and I’d wager that backpack holds damn near everything you own. Been some time since you and water touched base. Plus you probably haven’t eaten in a day or two. Am I on track here?”

“Yes sir.”

“But you want to buy me a drink.”

“Yes sir.”

“You’ll do just fine here in L.A.,” Shannon said, gulping a third of his beer. Signaled the barkeep, who was there instantly.

“Give this young man whatever he wants to drink, Eddie. And have the kitchen send out a burger, double fries, coleslaw.”

“Got it.” Scribbling on an order pad, Danny tore off the top sheet and clipped it with a wooden clothes pin to a hoop he then spun towards the kitchen. A hand back there reached for it. Driver said a beer would be fine.

“What do you want from me, boy?”

“My name’s-”

“Hard as it may be for you to believe this, I don’t give a flying fuck what your name is.”

“I’m from-”

“And I care even less about that.”

“Tough audience.”

“Audiences are. That’s their nature.”

Danny was there with food not long after, never a long turnaround, places like this. He set the platter down before Shannon, who inclined his head towards Driver.

“For the kid. I, on the other hand, could use another couple soldiers.”

The plate slid his way and Driver tucked in, thanking them both. The bun was soggy with grease from the burger, fries crisp on the outside and meaty beneath, coleslaw creamy and sweet. Shannon nursed his beer this time. While the shot stood patiently by, waiting.

“How long have you been out here, boy?”

“Better part of a month, I guess. Hard to keep track.”

“This the first square meal you’ve had in that time?”

“I had some money, to start with. It didn’t last long.”

“Never does. In this city more than most.” He allowed himself a measured sip of bourbon. “Tomorrow, the next day, you’re going to be every bit as hungry as you were ten minutes ago. What are you gonna do then? Roll tourists on Sunset for the few dollars they have on them and traveler’s checks you won’t be able to cash? Hit convenience stores, maybe? We’ve got career professionals for that.”

“I’m good with cars.”

“Well then, there you go. Good mechanic can get a job anywhere, anytime.”

Not that he couldn’t do that, Driver told him. He was damned near as good under the hood as he was behind the wheel. But what he did best, what he did better than just about anyone else was, he drove.

Finishing off his shot, Shannon laughed.

“Been a long time since I took to remembering how that felt,” he said. “Feeling so full of yourself, so confident. Thinking you can eat the world. You really that sure of yourself, kid?”

Driver nodded.

“Good. You want any kind of life out here, you even expect to survive, not get eaten up, used up, you damn well better be.”

Shannon finished his beer, settled the tab, and asked if Driver’d care to come along. Dipping into the six-pack Shannon had bought off Eddie, they drove for a half-hour or so before Shannon nosed the Camaro over a low ridge and down a slope into a system of drainage canals.

Driver looked about. A landscape not all that different, really, from the Sonoran desert where, in Mr. Smith’s ancient Ford truck, he’d taught himself to drive. Bare flatland ringed by culvert walls, an array of shopping carts, garbage bags, tires and small appliances not unlike the random saguaro, scrub and cholla he’d learned to maneuver about.

Shannon pulled up and stepped out of the car, left the motor running. Last couple of beers dangled in their plastic web from his hand.

“Here’s your chance, kid. Show me what you have.”

So he did.

Afterwards they went for Mexican food to a place on Sepulveda the size of a train boxcar where everyone, waitress, busboy, cook, seemed to be family. They all knew him, and Shannon spoke to them in what Driver later discovered was perfect idiomatic Spanish. He and Shannon had a couple of scotches to start, chips and salsa, a blistering caldo, green enchiladas. By the end of the meal, several Pacificos having passed by on parade, Driver was fairly wiped.

That morning he woke up on Shannon’s couch, where he lived for the next four months. Two days later he had his first job, a fairly standard chase scene in a low-end cop show. Script had him hitting a corner, taking it on two wheels, coming back down-simple, straightforward stuff. But just as he pulled into the turn Driver saw what could be done here. Swinging in closer to the wall, he dropped those airborne wheels onto the wall. Looked like he’d left the ground and was driving horizontally.

“Holy shit!” the second-unit director was heard to say. “For God’s sake print that-now!”

A reputation was being born.

Standing in the shadow of one of the trailers, Shannon smiled. That’s my boy. He was working a top-grade movie four stages over, swung by on a break to see how the kid was doing.

The kid was doing all right. The kid was still doing all right ten months later when, on a perfectly routine call, a stunt the like of which he’d done a hundred times, Shannon’s car went over the edge of the canyon he was speeding along and, cameras rolling, catching the whole thing, plunged a hundred yards straight down, somersaulted twice, and sat rocking on its back like a beetle.