Phoenix (17 page)

About twenty minutes later, we veered southwest. The outside temperature gauge on the dashboard read ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit.

The SUV stopped abruptly before a gated ranch road that looked like all the other gated ranch roads we had passed. Murphy got out and punched a code into a keypad, and the gate opened.

I leaned over to Hú Dié and whispered, “Did you get the digits?”

“No,” she replied. “His body was blocking the keypad.”

“I couldn’t see it, either,” I said. “Too bad.”

Murphy got back in and pulled through the gate,
which closed behind us. We drove over a hilly, winding dirt road for quite a while before I saw what had to be the training facility.

The building stood alone. There wasn’t a tree or bush within five hundred yards. It was a single-story structure about three times the size of Hú Dié’s bike shop and was built of tan cinder blocks. A rectangle with a flat roof, the building had just a few windows that I could see, and all were made of smoked glass. I only saw one door.

It didn’t look like any training facility I’d ever imagined. It looked like a miniature prison.

The driveway ended in a large parking lot, part of which was covered with a metal roof. There was room for several dozen vehicles under there, but I saw only three. One was a battered old full-sized pickup truck. One was a black SUV like the one we were in, and the last was a large touring motorcycle with a huge windshield, a gigantic dashboard, rigid saddlebags, and an Indiana license plate. I guessed that the SUV belonged to the team, while the pickup belonged to Murphy. As for the motorcycle, I had seen it before. It used to belong to Ryan’s father. Dr. V must have gotten it from Ryan’s mother.

There was one other item in the parking lot. It was a combination RV/horse trailer. The front half was a camper, while the back was basically a mobile barn with room for a couple of horses and their associated tack. These were a common sight in the horse-friendly statepark campgrounds that Grandfather and I sometimes visited in Indiana. My favorite trails were categorized as
nonmotorized multi-use, which meant that hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders all frequented them. I’d ridden through so much horse dung, I considered myself an honorary cowboy.

Murphy parked the SUV in the shade of the carport, and we all climbed out. I heard the buzz of a large fan from inside the horse trailer, and the hum of an air conditioner atop the camper. There was a long power cord running from the camper to the building. I glanced back at the trailer and saw the swish of a horse’s black tail between the trailer’s aluminum slats.

“Ain’t but one horse in there,” Murphy said. “Name’s Theo. I suggest you leave him be. That tin can’s been our home for six months straight. Made him skittish as all get-out.”

Hú Dié looked at him. “You’ve lived here half a year? Why?”

Murphy grinned. “I wasn’t sure you could speak English, young lady, though Dr. V heard from the travel agent that you could speak it very well. I’ve been overseeing this here building construction.”

“It looks finished to me,” I said.

“Contractors are out, but I’ve got a few more finishing touches to take care of inside before Thursday.”

“What happens Thursday?” Hú Dié asked.

“Rest of the team arrives,” Murphy replied.

I looked at all the empty covered parking spaces. “So, who’s here now?”

“Just Dr. V and Ryan.”

“Until Thursday?”

“Yep.”

I was liking the sound of this more and more. Fewer people would make the job of snooping around for the dragon bone easier.

Hú Dié fanned herself with one hand. “It is sooo hot out here. Why did you bring your horse?”

“Dr. V also hired me to build him a cyclocross course that he laid out,” Murphy said. “The trail is a mile and a half long and the regulation three meters wide. That’s a lot of ground to beat down. I rode Theo over it every morning and evening for five months, rain or shine. He’s a big quarter horse. Weighs near thirteen hundred pounds. Got the job done a month ahead of schedule.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Good idea. I’ve seen what horses can do to a trail.”

Murphy nodded. “Ain’t nothing gonna grow on that course for years.”

“Can we see the course?” Hú Dié asked.

“Sure enough,” Murphy said.

“Wait,” I said. “Can we see it some other time? I’m exhausted.”

“It’s in your best interest if I show you the course now,” Murphy said. “Trust me on that.”

I frowned, trying to figure out what he meant, when Hú Dié suddenly squealed, “Oh, look, Phoenix! He’s so cute!”

I turned toward her, expecting to see Theo’s nose poking out between the trailer slats. Instead, I saw the
head of a large, friendly-looking dog in one of the camper windows. I’d never seen one like it before. Its coat was short and tan-colored, and its muzzle was black. It had medium-sized floppy ears and a thick neck, but its face was long and narrow, and its nose was huge. It was as if a mastiff had been crossed with some kind of hound. The dog’s lazy eyes appeared to be smiling, and its tongue lolled happily out of its mouth over bulging jaw muscles.

Hú Dié looked at Murphy. “Is he nice?”

“Sweet as pie.”

Hú Dié stepped up to the window, and the dog leaned toward her. She placed her hand on the glass, and the dog went ballistic. It curled its lips back into a vicious snarl, slamming its face into the window. It growled savagely, working its massive jaws up and down against the glass. Saliva ran down the window like rain.

Hú Dié jumped back, and the dog stopped as though someone had flipped a switch. It pulled away from the window, its tongue flopping back out and its eyes as happy and lazy as ever.

“You call that
sweet
!” Hú Dié shouted. “What kind of pie do you serve here in Texas?”

Murphy chuckled. “Keep your hands off me and my property, and that dog will love you all day long. Do me wrong, and beware. A couple years ago, a man broke into my trailer. Both his arms and one leg were all kinds of broke before I pulled old Bones off him.”

I cringed. “Bones? Is that his name?”

“Yep. Ain’t seen a bone yet that that dog can’t snap with a single chomp. He’s a black mouth cur. A huntin’
dog. Best nose in the county and strongest jaws in the state, I’d wager.”

“I think I’ve seen enough,” Hú Dié said. “Can we please go to the cyclocross course now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Hú Dié and I followed Murphy out of the carport. We walked behind the training facility, and I saw a treeless field that was flat compared with the surrounding area. A wide, winding cyclocross course had been pounded into the low, dry grass and was interspersed with manmade obstacles that made me begin to wonder what on earth I was doing here. I’d never ridden a course like this before.

I turned to Murphy. “Are you sure this can’t wait?”

“Stop being such a sissy,” Hú Dié said. “Give us the details, please, Mr. Murphy.”

Murphy nodded. “Dr. V designed it. I didn’t know the first thing about bike racing before this. My specialty is constructing buildings, but Dr. V seems happy enough with the course. It’s a loop. There’s the start/finish line.” He pointed to a deep line that had been gouged into the ground across the width of the course. “Eighty percent of each race will take place out here in the open, where folks can see the riders. The course snakes around quite a bit, which will give spectators plenty of places to stand to watch the action. Dr. V tells me that cyclocross isn’t like mountain biking or road racing, where fans sit in one spot for hours, only to see their favorite rider zip past for two seconds. If I had a choice, I suppose I’d rather watch cyclocross. The other twenty percent of the course twists
and turns through some thick scrub, trees, and hills out of sight before looping back here to the field and the obstacles I made. Let me show them to you.”

We walked over to a long sand pit as wide as the course. A course-wide mud bog that was even longer followed it.

“Rules dictate that a race includes at least three different types of terrain,” Murphy said. “This course is mostly compacted dirt. However, that sand pit is a hundred yards long, and the mud bog is two hundred yards long. I installed fifty sprinkler heads and set them to run every couple hours to keep it from drying out.”

I recalled a saying I’d once heard: “If it ain’t muddy, it ain’t cyclocross.” Whatever. Mud was much cooler in its natural form, on a mountain bike trail.

We walked past the sand and mud, and I saw three large pieces of solid wood that had been set on edge about twenty feet from one another.

“They call those hurdles,” Murphy said. “Each is sixteen inches high and an inch wide, and they span the width of the course, per regulations. Riders usually get over ’em by climbing off their bikes, throwing their bikes over their shoulders, jumping over all the hurdles, then getting back onto their bikes to continue the race. Seems like a whole lot of work to me, but rules are rules. Got to have at least three hurdles.”

Following the hurdles was the worst section of all. It was a pair of tall, wooden staircase towers connected by a long, narrow plank.

Murphy pointed to the structure. “Each course is
supposed to have a ‘defining feature.’ Ours is what I call the Wooden Tightrope. That plank is three feet wide, thirty feet long, and fifteen feet off the ground. A rider needs to get off his bike, carry the bike up the stairs, run across the platform, go down the other staircase, then get back onto the bike and keep riding. After that is the start/finish line.”

I shook my head at the ridiculousness of it all and considered the course’s overall length and layout. I knew cyclocross races were usually based on time as opposed to a predetermined number of laps, with the average time length being one hour. Racers did as many laps as they could as fast as possible, and when the lead racer began what would be his final lap to get to the one-hour mark, a signal was given so that all the racers knew this would be their last trip around the track. I figured I could crank out a lap here in ten minutes on my mountain bike, assuming twenty percent of the track was beyond the hills like Murphy said. If racers could do the same on a cyclocross bike, then that would give crowd members six chances to see their favorite rider trip over a hurdle, face-plant into the mud, or break his neck falling off the Wooden Tightrope.

Silly, not to mention dangerous.

“What do y’all think?” Murphy asked.

“It’s beautiful!” Hú Dié exclaimed.

I shrugged. “I’ll decide after I ride it.”

Murphy looked at me and smirked. “That’s fair. I’ll get my answer soon enough.”

“What do you mean?”

Murphy nodded toward the building.

I turned and looked at the back of the training facility. It was just like the front, except the single door on this side was about eight feet wide and eight feet tall. It was a roll-up loading bay door like the one at Hú Dié’s shop. I heard a garage door opener begin to whir, and the door rose. Ryan and Dr. V were standing behind the door. They headed toward us.

Ryan was decked out in a black and green Team Vanderhausen racing kit—short-sleeve zip-up jersey with custom graphics, padded riding shorts, and matching socks. He wore fingerless riding gloves and a helmet, as well as mountain biking shoes, like most cyclocross riders. His jersey and riding shorts were skintight. His arms looked nearly as big as my legs, and his legs were as big as Civil War cannons. He was pushing a cyclocross bike, and streams of hateful energy shot out of his eyes like laser beams toward me.

I swallowed hard and looked at Dr. V.

Dr. V was wearing a Team Vanderhausen racing kit of his own and a huge smile. He, too, was pushing a cyclocross bike. However, the bike wasn’t for him. It was sized for someone smaller—someone roughly my height.

“Phoenix!” Dr. V said. “So nice to see you. Ryan has been
dying
to show you his new playground. What do you say to a friendly welcome race?”

I glanced from Dr. V to
Ryan and then to the cyclocross bikes they were pushing. I suddenly felt more exhausted than ever. I realized that while it was early afternoon, my body still thought I was back in China, where it was something like two a.m.
tomorrow
. Crossing the international date line really messed up a person’s sleep patterns, and my naps on the multiple airplane flights hadn’t seemed to help much.

I looked at Dr. V. “Sorry. I can’t race right now. Too much jet lag. Besides, it’s like a thousand degrees out here.”

“A bit of exercise will do you good,” Dr. V replied in a good-natured tone. “It will help your body adjust quicker to the time change. As for the heat, how about you only race a single lap? You can at least do that much, can’t you? I’m eager to see what you are capable of doing.
Professional racers deal with the stress of travel on a weekly basis.”

I looked at Ryan’s riding gear. I didn’t have any of my own yet. I’d given my clothing and shoe sizes to the travel agent to pass along before I’d left China, but my official team kit was going to take a couple of days to make, and even longer to ship. It was coming all the way from Italy. Dr. V demanded nothing but the best.