Running Wide Open (5 page)

It didn’t look like he planned on eating much now. Other than Kasey’s sandwich, the fries were the only thing he’d ordered. It was none of my business, though. I reached for my second Whopper and, because Race was ignoring them anyway, helped myself to his fries.

“Hey, those are mine!” he hollered, grabbing my wrist. Startled, I dropped them.

Race shot me a smoldering look. “Don’t you have enough food without stealing my dinner?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call an order of French fries
dinner
.”

“What are you, the nutrition police? Excuse me if I refrain from getting my dietary advice from the human garbage disposal.”

“Don’t tell me you were actually considering eating something?” Kasey teased. “In a half hour or so, you’ll be climbing into that car.”

Race stopped glaring at me long enough to glance in her direction. “I was trying not to think about that,” he admitted. He pulled a couple fries out of the bag and took a defiant bite.

I heard a bark of laughter and turned to see the driver of the 4 car giving Race a devilish look. “Is that so?”

He sauntered over to lean against the van. “You mean you’re ignoring how knotted up your stomach’s gonna feel when you’re waiting for the main event to start?”

Race eyed him warily. “Yeah.”

“And you’re forgetting the way your car jolts when you hit that rough patch of asphalt right before you pull onto the track?”

“That’s right.” Race folded a couple more fries into his mouth.

“And you’re just putting it out of your mind, how all those fans will be hollering your name while Addamsen bangs away at your bumper and tries to stuff you in the wall?”

Race’s jaw faltered in mid-chew.

“And
heaven forbid
you should think about what’s gonna happen when we get the green and fourteen cars try to jam into turn one all at once.”

Race swallowed hard. “Guess I better take the van back out to the parking lot.” He got up and dropped the rest of his fries in my lap. “Have at it, kid.”

The driver of the 4 car laughed.

“Cody,” said Kasey, “I’d like you to meet your uncle’s closest friend, Jim Davis.”

* * *

Stock car racing mostly seemed to be a lot of waiting around. Waiting to go out on the track for practice laps, waiting to qualify, waiting for a turn to compete. Throughout all this, Race kept trying to strike up a conversation with me, commenting on someone’s car or offering an explanation I hadn’t asked for. It was hard to keep my mind from drifting. I couldn’t see the attraction of sitting around a dusty field, enduring endless noise and watching a bunch of guys drive in a circle.

Even if I had been interested, it was impossible to make sense of what was going on. The classification of cars was the biggest mystery. Some of them looked like they’d come straight off the street—other than being beat to hell—while others had bodies fashioned entirely out of flat sheet metal panels. The one thing I could tell was that a lot of the stock-looking ones were Camaros. I’d never been a gearhead like my buddy Mike, but I knew what a Camaro looked like because he drove one. Even though he was only a freshman, he already had his license. There were advantages to being held back in first grade.

The mind-numbing tedium didn’t seem to bother Race and Jim. They sat around talking carburetors and camshafts and other stuff that made no sense to me. Race had one of those little blue Nerf footballs and was making an unsuccessful attempt to spin it on an outstretched finger.

Occasionally Kasey glanced in my direction and smiled. Every time she did, I thought my bones would liquefy.

“So, Kasey,” I said, wanting her to fix those blue eyes on me again. “That car you were driving earlier. What was it?”

“A ’68 Charger RT.” Another smile. My bones slipped one more notch down the scale from solid to liquid.

“Is that, like, a Ford or what?”

Jim snorted.

“It’s a
Dodge
, kid,” said Race. He tossed the football in the air.

“Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you with this one, Morgan,” Jim said.

“How about the race car?” I asked, hating that they were stealing Kasey’s attention and burning me in the process.

“It’s a ’74 Dodge Dart,” said Kasey.

“Which is also a Mopar,” Race added. “Kasey’s crazy about ’em.”

“Mopar?” Jeez, couldn’t they speak English?

“Miscellaneous Odd Parts Assembled Ridiculously,” supplied Jim, smirking at Kasey.

“It’s a name for Dodge and Chrysler products,” she explained. “And, Jim, it must shame you immensely to be beaten by inferior equipment every week.”

“Ha!” said Race, chucking the football at his “closest” friend.

Jim ducked. The ball bounced off the side of his race car, leaving a dusty mark right in the middle of the number 4.

“Sportsman ‘A’ dash! Time to get lined up!” A guy wearing a black and white striped shirt and sporting a Paul Bunyan-style beard bellowed as he strode down the asphalt strip that separated the rows of cars.

Jim leaned over to get the football, spiraled it expertly into the back of the Dart, then got up and slipped through the window of his own car. The seconds it took my uncle to navigate through the bars of the roll cage to retrieve the ball was all it took to get Paul Bunyan on his case.

“Move it, Morgan, or I’ll bump you out of this race!”

Kasey handed a battered helmet into the #8 Dart, where Race was hastily belting himself in. Race jammed it on his head, fumbled with the strap, and—almost before Kasey had finished hooking up the netting that covered the driver’s window—roared off to join the other cars. A pungent aroma lingered behind the Dart, familiar yet different. It was like gasoline, but a more gourmet version, sweeter and packed with excitement.

“So who’s the Nazi?” I asked.

“Ted Greene,” said Kasey. “He’s the chief steward. It’s his job to make sure everything goes smoothly in the pits, and he takes it very seriously.”

“No shit. That dude needs to learn how to chill.”

* * *

Even though I found the whole racing bit boring, I couldn’t help seeing that my uncle fit into that world like a geek at a Star Trek convention. Everyone seemed to know him. A spike of longing caught in my chest as I stared at his car, lined up with the others near the back pit exit. It must be so cool to have everyone treat you like a hero. Race didn’t hide anything about himself, and yet the people at the track liked and respected him. I’d never have the guts to let it all hang out like that.

Kasey and I watched the Dart and three other cars pull out onto the track. They circled slowly for a couple of laps, arranged in two rows of two, weaving back and forth.

“Why are they doing that?” I asked. We’d moved to the concrete wall up by the front stretch, where we could get a good view of the start-finish line.

“They’re warming their tires so they stick to the track better.”

Race’s Dart, on the inside of the back row, bore down on the bumper of Jim’s #4 Camaro. The pack bunched together as it came down the backstretch and into the corner at the north end of the track. Engines revved, getting serious. The cars thundered out onto the front straightaway and the green flag snapped in the flagman’s hand.

Clustered tighter than the fingers in a fist, the pack tore into the first turn. On the outside of the front row, the yellow #9 car let the slightest gap emerge between itself and Jim’s Camaro. Immediately, Race swooped into the opening. The last car, a black Camaro with a glittering silver #1, followed as if sucked by the vacuum Race left behind. Within seconds my uncle was in the lead, the black car directly behind him. Jim trailed by a few yards, and the yellow car fell into last place.

The driver of the black #1 was as aggressive as a pit bull and twice as fast. Every lap he pulled almost even with Race on the straightaways and rode the Dart’s bumper so close through the corners that you couldn’t see daylight between the two cars. Race managed to stay ahead of the black Camaro, but just barely. After four laps the race was over.

As Race pulled up to the start-finish line to collect his trophy, another pang of envy flared inside me. I reminded myself of how he and Jim had joked about my automotive ignorance, and a surge of resentment swept the ache away. How was I supposed to know the difference between a Ford and a Dodge?

I hung back when Race came into the pits. Kasey’s smile brightened and she congratulated him, but she didn’t get all gushy like most girls would’ve. I was beginning to get the idea that it would take a lot more than winning to get a reaction out of her.

“Good run,” Jim said, even though he’d been beaten by inferior equipment again.

While Race worked his way out of the car, I kicked back on a stack of tires and lit up a smoke, taking a slow, cool drag to calm the churning inside me.

“So, how do they figure out who runs what?” I asked Kasey. I dropped my attention to the top of the toolbox, where a faint layer of dust had formed, and doodled with my free hand. I could feel Race’s eyes studying me, but I didn’t look up.

Kasey launched into an explanation that left me totally confused. The only thing I caught was that there were three classes and Race was in the middle one, Limited Sportsman.

“That last event was the Sportsman ‘A’ dash,” Kasey said, as if I was supposed to know what that meant now that she’d bombarded me with information. Then she said something even a normal person could understand. “Your uncle had the second fastest qualifying time tonight.”

Of course he did. I glanced at Race as he guzzled a quart of orange Gatorade. “So you’re telling me he kicks ass?”

“He’s second in the points right now.”

“Huh.” I took a final pull off my cigarette, threw it down, and crushed it with the toe of my shoe. Kasey watched like she couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t jumping at the chance to join the Race Morgan fan club. Fortunately, my stomach gurgled just then and bailed me out.

“I’m starved,” I told Race. “Got any money?”

The glow of victory faded from his face as he dug a few crumpled ones out of his firesuit. I stuffed the money into my hip pocket and took off for the concession stand.

* * *

Race couldn’t have been
that
good because he only took third in the heat. Jim won and immediately shot Kasey a smart-assed comment about his superior equipment coming through for him. The dude in the black car had a flat and finished last.

While the first Super Stock heat was getting underway, a young guy ambled into our pit to hit Race up for some advice on how to get his car to stop “pushing.” I would’ve told him to take a hike, but Race didn’t seem to mind giving away his secrets.

“If you want help with your set-up,” he said, “you should ask Kasey—she’s the brains behind this operation—but you can compensate for the car being tight by changing the way you drive it.”

“I can?”

“Sure.” Race pulled a sketchpad out of the top of his toolbox then drew a diagram of the track, showing the guy how to enter the corner to compensate for the way his car was handling.

I shook my head and walked away. Why would he want to help the competition like that?

We waited some more. It got dark, and then cold. My uncle’s class lined up for their big finale, but a string of crashes in the race before it caused another delay. A spicy odor hung on the wind—a scent I wouldn’t normally associate with cars.

“What’s that smell?” I asked Kasey.

“Wild mint. There’s a big patch of it in the infield off turn three.” She handed me a cup of hot chocolate she’d gotten from the concession stand. “So are you having any fun tonight?”

“It’s been a thrill a minute. I can hardly wait to do it again next week.”

Kasey laughed. “The waiting can be frustrating,” she admitted. “Especially when the officials can’t seem to get their act together and restart the race after a wreck. But you’ll like it once you learn more about the sport and start meeting people. Racing gets in your blood. You’ll see.”

I sincerely doubted that.

“You’ll also see that your uncle isn’t nearly the chump you seem to think he is.”

I blew on my hot chocolate. “I never said he was.”

“You didn’t have to. The fact that you’ve ignored him the whole evening has spoken volumes.”

I studied Kasey through the steam that wafted from my drink and dissipated into the night air. Didn’t she know I could do a lot worse than ignore him?

“He’s a good person, Cody, and he’s only trying to help.”

Right. Like the guy from Big Brothers and Sisters back in junior high who blew me off every week with some asinine excuse. Or my English teacher last fall. He’d acted like my best buddy because I could string a few coherent sentences together, but the first time I actually asked him for something, he couldn’t spare two minutes of his precious time.

“I don’t need any help,” I said.

* * *

The waiting continued. I lit another cigarette. Boredom had forced me to burn through nearly an entire pack that evening. I’d have to be careful. The twenty I’d snuck out of Dad’s wallet the night before I left Portland wasn’t gonna last long, and there was no way in hell I could beg money off Race for smokes.

Finally, the chief steward waved the Sportsman class onto the track. The cars waited on the front stretch while the announcer blazed through a rapid-fire series of introductions for each of the drivers. This time Race was in the last row of a pack of fourteen cars. The guy in the black Camaro was right beside him.

“If Race qualified so good, why’s he at the back?” I asked.

“They run an inverted field here,” Kasey said. “It makes for a better show when the faster drivers have to work for a win.”

The flagman waved the green flag and, as Jim had predicted earlier, the cars tried to slam through the first turn all at once. Row after row, they rushed into the corner two and three wide. It was amazing that no one bit it.

After the first couple of laps the chaos sorted itself out. The slower cars settled into position, and the faster ones worked their way forward. The black #1 Camaro, which had slipped ahead of Race at the start, began to snake its way to the front of the pack. Race was right on his ass. It got a little dicey a couple of times when the two of them came up on slower cars that were engaged in a battle of their own. Some of those guys wouldn’t give an inch, and the black Camaro, like an overpowered bulldozer minus the scoop, threatened to plow right through them.