December 1969

Northern Alabama

A town too small to have its own psychiatrist.

Fast Eddie witnessed a horror when he was a child. Four years later, at seventeen, he suffers from dangerous depression and terrifying out of body experiences. He believes he’s losing his mind. Twice a week he drives sixty miles each way to see his psychiatrist.

For this day’s appointment, he has two friends along for the ride: Corey, a teenage bootlegger, and Mike, a feckless romantic on his way to Vietnam as a Marine.

Fast Eddie drives a Plymouth GTX, a late 60’s muscle car that can top hundred-thirty on a straightaway. They are traveling U.S. Highway 278, a two-lane black top that rose, fell, and twisted through lower Appalachia. It’s a dangerous road—little white crosses dot the roadside commemorating crash fatalities in the past. For Fast Eddie, it’s a fun road. Cigarettes, adrenalin, and the hypnotic euphoria of driving at speeds that meant certain death for the slightest mishap gives Fast Eddie his only respite from the dread of having to face another night of terror in his own bed.

The drive over Fast Eddie is already pushing his car to its limit when he encounters the legendary bad boy Manfred piloting a car even more powerful than his. Their race through the mountains and crossroad communities is beyond reckless and borders on madness. But none of the three in Fast Eddie’s car are willing to admit their fear and put a stop to it. At the end of the race, outside of a farmhouse a mile off the highway, Fast Eddie encounters an insane woman from his past who brings his life’s great horror back to his consciousness. Once with his psychiatrist, Fast Eddie fully engages with his family’s terrible tragedy.

Badly shaken, Fast Eddie makes the drive back home at a reasonable speed until he again encounters Manfred. This begins a race with no restraint or regard for anyone’s life, least of all their own. When it ends, Fast Eddie enters a mystical state which strikes him speechless and inert. Only from here can he begin to climb out of his darkness.

For Mike the afternoon makes him face the reality of what he had done by enlisting. He comes to terms with it the only way he can.

For Corey the afternoon is just another day in the bootlegging business.

For Fast Eddie, and all the guys he ran with, the Star Poolroom was where all trips began and ended.