Running Wide Open (14 page)

“Are you all right?” Kasey asked.

“Yeah, but the car’s a mess.” Race glanced from the Dart to Kasey with hint of weary humor. “I know, I know . . . one of these days I’m gonna break something you can’t fix.”

Kasey shook her head. “I wasn’t going to say that. But I won’t have much time to help you put her back together. Finishing that Mustang is really going to cut into my evenings.”

My anger flared. How could they be so matter-of-fact about the whole thing? It wasn’t like it was an accident. “You’re not gonna just let Addamsen get away with this are you? You need to go kick his ass!”

Race swiveled to face me, the muscles in his jaw hard as concrete. “Cool it.”

“Aren’t you pissed? How can you not be pissed?”

“Of
course
I’m pissed, kid. Why do you think I’m not over there hashing it out with the officials? You wanna see me deck someone and get us all tossed outta here?”

I felt Kasey’s fingers tighten around my upper arm in a subtle but distinct warning.

“Shit,” I said, pulling away and kicking a stack of tires.

Kasey’s eyes pinned me for a few seconds, then she must’ve realized I had enough sense not to be the spark that set off Race’s dynamite.

“Well, let’s take a look and see how bad it is,” she said.

It was bad. One by one, Kasey listed the damaged parts: a tweaked spring shackle, a broken axle, two cut tires, a bent wheel, an irreparably twisted fender and front bumper, a mangled upper control arm, and a couple wasted tie-rod ends. None of it made sense to me, but it sounded like someone was in for a lot of work and expense.

Kasey and Race had just finished wrestling the rear end back into place and swapping out the two flat tires when Ted Greene appeared.

“So?” asked Race, wiping his hands on a grease rag.

“I know what you want to hear, Morgan, but I don’t have an answer for you yet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Race.

“It means that until we look at the videotape, all we’ve got to go on is what the flagman saw. And he said you were both being pretty aggressive.”

“What?” Race’s controlled expression dissolved into disbelief.

“You
did
spin him, Morgan.”

“He cut down on me!”

“If he did, I’m sure it’ll show up on the tape.”

Race’s fingers clenched white over the grease rag. It was seeing that, more than feeling Kasey’s Spock-like grip on my shoulder, that kept me from telling Greene where he could shove his video.

“You mean to tell me a little bumping can justify deliberately wrecking a guy after the race is over?” Race demanded. “If that’s the case, what’s to keep him from slamming into me in the pits?”

Ted sighed, stroking his long and generous beard. “Look, I’m sorry, but we don’t have a rule that specifically covers an incident like this. It’s never happened before.”

“Never?”

“Well, not as long as I’ve been here.”

“So now what?”

Ted gave Race a steady look. “We’ll watch the tape tonight and try to come up with an appropriate penalty. I’ll give you a call in the morning.”

Race eyeballed the chief steward for a long moment, then nodded curtly and turned away.

I had to hand it to him. He sure had a handle on his temper.

Chapter 11

Sunday morning I hooked my boombox up to the speakers in Race’s stereo system and stuck in a CD sampler from five years before, when the technology was still new. Selecting the appropriate track—the roar of a low-flying aircraft—I maxed out the volume and pushed ‘play.’ A fighter jet blasted through the trailer, rattling the windows.

“Son of a—” Race bolted upright, gripping the back of the couch with one hand and clasping his chest with the other.

I collapsed on the laundry chair, laughing so hard no sound came out.

“Very funny,” gasped Race as I slid to the floor to roll around. He hoisted himself off the couch and hit the ‘stop’ button.

“Dude!” I panted, finally able to catch a breath. “The look on your face!”

“It would be a mistake to think I’m merely writing off all your little pranks,” Race said. “A big mistake.”

The phone rang and Race stepped over me to answer it. It occurred to me that Race’s revenge might include confiscating my only source of tunes, so I scrambled up, yanked the speaker wires out of my boombox, and reattached them to his stereo.

“You’re kidding!” Race said into the receiver. “That’s it?” He scowled as he listened to the response. “So that’s the last word?” Another lengthy pause. “All right. Well, thanks for letting me know.” Race dropped the phone into its cradle and looked up to see me watching. “That was Ted Greene. The officials decided Addamsen’s gonna lose his payoff for last night, but he’ll get to keep his points.”

“What? That is
so
bogus! He coulda killed you!”

“Hardly,” Race said with a hint of a smile.

“But what about your car? It’s gonna take a lot of work to fix. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Yeah, probably every waking hour of my time this week. Which means we better get a move on.” Race pulled a T-shirt and jeans from the pile on the chair. “I’m gonna grab a shower, then we’ll hit the wrecking yard, okay?”

“But how can they do that?”

“It’s called politics, kid. You better get used to it because you’re gonna run into it anytime you participate in an organized activity. Try to fight it and you just get pegged as a troublemaker.”

“So Addamsen’s gonna get away with it?”

“Looks like.”

“That’s not fair!”

Race shook his head as he turned to lumber down the hallway to the bathroom. “Kid, don’t tell me you’ve reached the ripe old age of fifteen still believing life is fair.”

* * *

Since I’d passed the written test and gotten my permit a few days before, Race let me drive to the wrecking yard. It was closed on Sundays, but Kasey got special privileges because she did a lot of business with them. She’d called ahead so the owner’s son, Phil, would know to expect us.

Barefoot, shirtless, and smoking a cigarette, the guy answered the door of the trailer outside the gate. “Don’t let the dog scare ya,” he said, handing Race a key and gesturing at the Rottweiler chained to an old Jeep by the fence. “He can’t get loose, he just likes to run his mouth.”

“Right,” said Race.

“Chryslers is down that-a-way.” Phil indicated the northwest corner of the yard. The cigarette bobbed from his lips as he spoke.

“Yup—been here before.”

Dropping his smoke, Phil crushed it with his bare heel before going back into the trailer. I raised an eyebrow at Race, who shrugged and started walking.

If you had to waste time scrounging in a junkyard, it was a good day for it. The sun was warm, a breeze swayed the tall grass surrounding the cars, and birds chattered like a playground full of out-of-control third-graders.

“Whoa, dude! Check it out.” In front of me sat the coolest car in the world. It was big and boxy with tons of chrome, and square taillights the size of afterburners on a jet. The headlights—two on either side—sat back under fenders that arched up like the brows of a bird of prey. “This is totally choice.”

“Needs a little body work,” Race commented.

“What is it?”

“A ’65 Ford Galaxie.”

“How much do these things go for?”

“A boat like that? Hell, I wouldn’t pay more than three, four hundred dollars for it even if it had a straight body
and
an intact windshield.” Clearly, Race wasn’t appreciating the coolness factor of the Galaxie. I gave him a look of strained patience before sticking my head through the driver’s window to check out the interior.

“You don’t seriously want a car like this?”

“Sure I do. It’s a classic.”

“It’s a boat,” Race corrected. “You’ve gotta measure the gas consumption in gallons to the mile.”

“So?” I pulled my head out of the Galaxie. “Just look at the size of that back seat. Y’know, if I had a car like this, you could borrow it and take Kasey for a little drive—”

“You don’t know when to quit, do ya, kid?”

I rubbed my hand over the roof, the chalky red paint coming off on my fingers. “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Anyway, you’ve got a van.”

Race raised his hand, pretending he was gonna smack me, but I ducked out of the way, laughing.

“C’mon, let’s get to work,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of parts to pull.”

I followed him down the dusty path, casting one last glance over my shoulder.

“Tell ya what, kid—if you quit with the smart comments about Kasey, maybe I’ll buy you one of those gas guzzlers for your birthday.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, either that or a moped.”

“Yeah, right.” For a second there, I’d almost thought he meant it.

When we got to the Chryslers, Race located a Dart and stomped down the grass in front of it.

“No yellow jackets, that’s always a good sign,” he muttered as he dug a can of WD-40 out of the toolbox he’d brought along. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve found living in some of these wrecks.” He wiggled under the front of the car to spray lubricant on the bolts that held the bumper in place. The stuff had a minty, almost medicinal smell.

“Hand me the 9/16ths wrench,” Race grunted.

I dug through the toolbox, wondering how I was gonna figure out what a 9/16ths wrench was until I realized they all had little numbers engraved in them.

“Here.” I crouched down in the weeds beside him. “So, you’re just gonna let Addamsen off the hook?”

“Well, I’m not gonna wreck him, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Why not? He wrecked you.”

“That’s his style, not mine.”

I sat back in the grass and lit a smoke. The sun felt good, almost intoxicating. Only two more weeks and school would be out. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do with my time, but I was still looking forward to summer.

“So what’s the big deal about this championship, anyway?” I asked. “You act like it’s more important than winning an Oscar.”

“It is.”

“Why?”

Race worked quietly for so long I thought he hadn’t heard me. “It’s just something I’ve wanted since I was a kid. Winning a championship—well, it’s the ultimate way of saying you’ve made it. And there’s the added benefit of sticking it to my dad. He never thought I’d be successful at anything.”

“Didn’t you win the Street Stock championship?”

“Nope. Missed it by two points the last year I ran in that division.”

Two points. Man, that must’ve been a pisser. I leaned back in the grass, cushioning my head with one hand. “So how’d you get into this racing stuff, anyway?”

Race chuckled. “That one I’d have to blame on my uncle Ernie. He was a big NASCAR fan. Saundra and I loved him because he was such a kick in the pants, but my parents couldn’t stand the guy.”

“What was wrong with him?”

“You mean besides having the audacity to be blue collar and proud of it? Mostly it was marrying Dad’s baby sister. And it didn’t help that he corrupted me. When he’d come to visit, we’d catch whatever bits and pieces of a race they were willing to show on
Wide World of Sports
.”

“And that got you hooked?”

“Pretty much. Ol’ Ernie took great pleasure in annoying Dad by nurturing my interest in racing. He was the one who gave me my nickname.”

“I’ll bet Grandma and Grandpa loved that.”

“Not nearly as much as they loved it when I started talking about racing, myself.” He broke the final nut loose then slid out from under the car to bully the bumper off the front end. “It was bad enough, me watching that stuff on TV, but the idea of their kid driving one of those things—well, it was enough to get me excommunicated from the family.”

“I thought you excommunicated yourself.”

Race dropped the bumper at my feet. “I just finalized the deal. My parents had already made it clear I wasn’t acceptable Morgan material.”

Noting the harsh glint in my uncle’s eyes, I decided it might be a good idea to change the subject. “So this championship,” I said, snubbing out my cigarette on the bottom of my shoe. “Wouldn’t it be easier to win if you drove like Addamsen?”

Race snorted. “Addamsen’s got no class. I’d rather finish last than stoop to his level. There’s no way I’m gonna have little kids thinking I’m some kind of cheat or bully.”

“You’re so noble.”

Race shook his head. “You can give me all the crap you want, kid, but there’s something to be said for knowing what you believe and sticking by it.”

* * *

After dropping me off at the trailer, Race went to work on the Dart for the rest of the day. When the phone rang late that afternoon, I ignored it. Since there wasn’t one at the shop, I knew it couldn’t be my uncle. The answering machine picked up and I heard Dad’s voice. “Uh, yeah, Race, with Cody’s karate lessons starting this week, I just wanted to be sure that last check was going to be enough. Let me know if you need more. And Cody, if you hear this message, how about giving me a call? I’d like to know how you’re doing.”

Yeah, right. It would take more than a stupid phone message to make me believe that.

Race didn’t make it home until after nine o’clock that night, and on Monday he only came back to the trailer long enough to grab something to eat.

“You okay with making dinner for yourself?” he asked, slapping together a PB & J. “I’ve gotta get down to the shop.”

“Isn’t that where you’ve been?”

“No. I was helping Kasey with the Mustang. She can’t afford to be late with that job. She’s still trying to build her business.” Race put all the sandwich fixings away, stuffing the peanut butter in the fridge and the jam in the cupboard in his rush.

“Don’t you have your own customers to worry about?” I asked, swapping the jam with the peanut butter. I was a little peeved about having to cook for myself again.

“Yeah, there’s an ad I’m working on for one of ’em, but it doesn’t need to be done until Monday. And I don’t want you mentioning it to Kasey. If she knew, she wouldn’t accept my help.”

* * *

Race was gone all evening, and I didn’t wait up for him. It was after eleven-thirty when I heard the door creak open. I got up and padded out to the front room. Race stood in front of the open fridge, examining its contents.