Checkered Flag Cheater (10 page)

“It's not the reading part. I just freeze up in general. I can't do tests.”

“You could pass both parts easy,” Trace said. “It's not like you can't drive.”

“That's what Pops tells me. I keep telling him I'm gonna do it, but then at the last minute I get the shakes and I chicken out. I'm twenty-two years old and don't have a driver's license—ain't that sad?” he said with a laugh. He turned to leave.

“What are you going to do down in the trailer?” Trace asked.

“There's always stuff to do. Clean up. Sweep. Or I'll just sit by the car,” Jimmy said.

“You can stay here.”

“Naw. Pops wouldn't like it.”

The following two days, Trace chipped away at his MOHS assignments. They didn't take long once he set to work; it was starting that he hated.

He got permission to write a research paper on the concept of the Volkswagen. His adviser, Sheila, thought it was the “perfect” topic for Trace, being that he was a car guy—though she asked him to make it more than just research. “Make it an argument,” she e-mailed.

“Huh?” Trace typed back. Team Blu was parked at a Wi-Fi rest stop near Spearfish, South Dakota.

“Not an argument argument, where people are shouting at each other, but a logical argument. As in making a case for one side or the other,” she replied.

Teachers—they were never satisfied with the original idea.

“What sides do you mean?” Trace typed back.

“Make one up. Take a position for or against. For example, that ‘people's car' issue that you mentioned—it's a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your personal interest.”

“It's a good thing,” Trace wrote.

“There you go,” she replied. “And don't paste big chunks of stuff off the Internet. Do most of your research there if you have to, but the writing has to be your own. If
you borrow something and use it, be sure to cite where it came from.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Trace muttered.

“And one more thing,” she wrote. “One of your sources has to be an actual book or magazine article that you found in an actual library.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Trace typed. “I'm on the road all the time.”

“Where are you now and where you headed?”

“Spearfish, SD–Billings, MT,” he wrote. When she didn't reply right away, he Googled “Hitler and Volkswagen.” A ton of stuff came up instantly: the crazy Carhartt lady had been right. Trace clicked on one article about Hitler meeting with Ferdinand Porsche in 1933 to talk about a “people's car.” Porsche designed the small car, then started his own company after World War II.

Trace's e-mail icon flashed. It was his teacher, sending the addresses of the public libraries in Gillette, Buffalo, and Sheridan, Wyoming, along with Hardin and Billings, Montana.

“Here you go. Any one will do! j Sheila.”

“Cute,” Trace muttered. “No need. Just found everything I need online,” he typed back.

“Online research is overrated. In your citation put the name of the librarian you talked with—in person—and the phone number of the library.”

“Okay!”

After Sheila went away, Trace scanned through online articles, looking for facts and key quotes that he could
use, and trying to avoid wacko sources. One site had “proof” that Hitler was still alive and had designed the Hummer.

In the middle of this, the Freightliner rumbled alive. Trace grabbed his cell phone.

“Can we hang here another half hour or so?” he said to Harlan. “I'm doing my homework online and I need the wireless.”

“How'd people do homework before the Internet?” Harlan grumbled.

That night, Team Blu stopped at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Gillette, Wyoming. As usual, Smoky tucked his little motor home tight alongside the Freightliner. They all ate together at a Denny's; as usual, Smoky wore his wraparound sunglasses and Bardahl cap. Trace was used to the glances that waitresses and people nearby sneaked at Smoky, but when they gawked, Trace made it a point to stare back at them.

“It's all right. It don't bother me,” Smoky said to Trace.

“It does me,” Trace said.

Smoky's narrow, scarred mouth turned upward in a part of a smile.

After supper Harlan and Smoky headed off to a casino. Jimmy came up to the cabin and played Xbox while Trace worked on his paper.

“I wish I could type,” Jimmy said after a while. “I just hunt and peck like a damn chicken.”

“They've got sites online, with timers to check your speed,” Trace said.

“Timers?” Jimmy looked over at Trace. “Whoa.”

“You don't have to use them,” Trace said. “It's not a test—they're just for practice.”

Jimmy returned to giving his thumbs a serious workout.

Trace pushed ahead on his paper, getting most of the writing done, and even a start on the bibliography page. After an hour, he powered down and grabbed an Xbox controller. They played until three a.m., when Harlan and Smoky came back laughing and bumping around and cheerful.

“Pops must have won ten bucks,” Jimmy said. His phone beeped. “I gotta go,” he said quickly.

The next morning Trace's cell phone rang just after ten a.m.

“Two-hour warning,” Harlan said. He, too, sounded groggy. “We got our mall thing at noon. And remember—Laura wants you suited up.”

“Got it,” Trace mumbled. He turned over in bed.

“We don't want any more trouble from headquarters,” Harlan said.

Trace closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep—waking up when the engine rumbled alive and the air brakes hissed. He took a quick shower, pounded a small carton of orange juice, then got dressed. It felt weird putting
on his racing suit when there was no race. Embarrassing, actually. Like the suit was not a suit, but a costume, and he was an actor.

Trace grabbed his cell phone. “What?”

“Whooo-ee! Look at this,” Harlan said as he braked the big rig.

Trace stepped to his porthole window and peered out. A mall was a mall, and a parking lot a parking lot—but in the center of this one were blue flag banners stretching in a giant half circle, with a Team Blu billboard erected as a backdrop. A bright blue refrigerated truck, medium-size, sat waiting.

“I guess we're in the right spot,” Trace said.

“Show-and-tell time,” Harlan said. He eased the Freightliner into the lot and slowly up to the billboard and the Blu beverage truck.

Trace headed down into the trailer, where Jimmy was unhooking the Super Stock's tie-downs. When the car was cable-ready, Jimmy opened the service door. There was a sudden commotion outside—girls' giggling voices—and Jimmy jumped back into the trailer and slammed the narrow door behind him. “There are people out there!”

“Yes,” Trace said. “This is a mall.”

“No, I mean, girls.”

“Girls are good.”

Jimmy's phone beeped. “Okay, okay!” he said, no doubt to Harlan. Jimmy took a breath, and headed back outside.

A minute later there was rattling at the rear of the
hauler. The electric motor hummed, and the tall door, like the ramp of a castle lowering, let a flood of sunlight into the trailer. Trace shielded his eyes. As his vision focused, faces came into view—a couple dozen young girls, middle-schoolers, began to shriek.

“Trace! Trace!” they called.

“Hey,” Trace said.

“Over here,” Harlan called to Trace.

There was a table set up next to a kids' swimming pool (blue of course) filled with ice and Blu energy drinks. Trace headed down the ramp, and the giggling girls crowded around.

“Here you go! Free stuff, kids!” the beverage truck guy called. He started tossing bottles of Blu. Some of the girls, and some teenage boys who had been hanging out at the perimeter, turned to catch theirs, but at least half of the girls stuck tight to Trace as he made his way to an autograph table. It was ready with a chair, pens, a stack of bright blue drivers' cards, and Team Blu T-shirts.

“Can we have a picture?” one mom asked. Her daughter, cute and short, giggled.

“Sure,” Harlan said. “Step right up, ladies.”

Trace kept his sunglasses on, and the girl leaned in close and put her arm tight around him. The camera flashed—why, Trace was not sure, as it was bright sunlight.

“Thanks!” the girl said—then rushed off shrieking.

“Next,” Harlan called.

Trace signed cards and T-shirts as fast as he could. The
line behind grew rather than shrank. He tried to say something, at least, to each kid. “Where'd you hear about Team Blu?” he asked one mom-and-daughter combination.

“You're on TV,” the mom said. She was a big, weathered blonde—a biker type with tattoos.

“We are?” Harlan said. He was right behind Trace.

“Yeah!” the daughter said. “The Blu ads are really cool!”

“But your hair is shorter in them,” the mom said, smiling at Trace. “I like it longer.”

“Could you sign my arm?” the daughter asked.

“No body parts,” Harlan said.

“I wish this was Sturgis,” the mom said. “You could sign my—”

“Next!” Harlan said.

Off to the side, Jimmy and Smoky (through a crack in his window) kept an eye on the Super Stock—which drew its own crowd. A bunch of men, clearly car guys, leaned over the unbuttoned engine compartment, or into the cockpit, or else knelt to look underneath the Super Stock. Jimmy, in his company T-shirt, stood nearby; most of them, Jimmy included, held a plastic bottle of Blu.

“Jimmy needs to get his license,” Trace said to Harlan as he signed the next card.

“He told you that?”

“Yup,” Trace said. “Hey, thanks for coming today!”

“That boy ain't right,” Harlan said softly. “Something missing inside him. I don't know what it is, either.”

“Could you sign my—”

“No body parts!” Harlan said. “Maybe it was his mother. She was wild. Died when he was only ten years old.”

After a couple more young girls, the next one to step up to Trace's table was a brown-eyed cutie, dark-haired and about thirteen. “Hi there,” Trace said.

She blushed, which made her even prettier.

“You're going to be really beautiful,” Trace said to the girl as he scribbled his name.

“She already is!” her mother said from right behind the girl; she grabbed her daughter's elbow and marched her away from Trace.

“Mother!” the girl screeched, and they walked off jawing at each other.

“Nice move, kid,” Harlan said as Trace signed the next T-shirt.

“Sorry. It just slipped out. Hey—thanks for coming today!” Trace said. He signed the next T-shirt.

Harlan said, “Car crash. That's how she died.”

After the promo event, they saddled up and drove out to Gillette's Thunder Speedway just to look around.

“If you go off the track, you're certainly not going to hit any trees,” Harlan said as he stepped out. He lit a cigarette. Beyond the empty speedway was open butte country; a power line's skinny towers shrank away, each
one smaller, until the drooping lines disappeared in the plains. A couple of buzzards wheeled slow circles high overhead.

“Hey, the World of Outlaws sprint cars stop here,” Jimmy said.

“Man, I'll bet they pack in the cowboys,” Trace said, with a glance at Jimmy.

“We should race here, Pops!” Jimmy said.

“Nooooo way!” Harlan said, and faked a giant shiver.

“What is it about cowboys?” Jimmy asked.

“Not sure,” Harlan said, taking a deep drag. “You're afraid of clowns, I'm afraid of cowboys. Maybe it's the hats.”

After Gillette, Harlan pointed them straight west, toward the front range of the Bighorn Mountains. Trace rode up in the cab to get a better look at the rising landscape.

“You ain't ever seen mountains before?” Harlan asked Trace.

“Sure. I've been out West a couple of times with my old man, hunting.”

“Hunting what?”

“Elk.”

“Ever get one?”

“No.”

“That's good,” Harlan said.

“Good?” Trace said.

“Those big wide horns, and the way they stand around
in the water eating lily pads—it would be like shooting a duck on a pond,” Harlan said.

“That would be a moose you're talking about,” Trace said.

Jimmy, stretched out behind in the sleeper, snickered.

“Elk, moose,” Harlan said.

“They're sort of similar. They both have antlers—not horns,” Trace said.

“Antlers, horns,” Harlan said, and shrugged.

“There's a difference,” Trace said. “Antlers fall off every year, horns don't.”

“If you know that kind of stuff, you've had plenty enough school,” Harlan said.

“Which reminds me: we have to stop at the public library in Sheridan,” Trace said.

“What?” Harlan replied, turning to Trace.

“Keep it on the road, Pops,” Jimmy said.

Trace explained it in general terms. “It's like an assignment,” he finished.

“Where in Sheridan is this library?” Harlan said.

“Right downtown, I think.”

“Downtown? Where we gonna park this rig?” Jimmy asked.

Harlan squinted ahead toward the mountains. “I can park this baby between the coffee and the cream. It's libraries that scare me.”

“And cowboys,” Jimmy said.

After Buffalo, Wyoming, the Freightliner diesel and the Allison transmission buckled down through the rock
and roll of U.S. 90. The land pitched upward, and Trace leaned forward in the cab to get a better view.

“You should see the Blue Ridge Mountains,” Harlan said. “Not as tall and sharp, but prettier in my mind.” He stared at the rising hills ahead. “This country makes me homesick.”

The public library was near the intersection with Main Street. Harlan docked the big blue hauler right out front and put the flashers on. Like most truckers, he let the diesel idle.