Checkered Flag Cheater (11 page)

“Coming in?” Trace asked.

“No way,” Harlan said.

“Come on—it won't hurt you.”

“I'll go,” Jimmy said, surprising both Harlan and Trace.

“See?” Trace said. “Jimmy's not afraid.”

“Okay,” Harlan said. He looked in the mirror, adjusted his red bandanna, then followed Trace and Jimmy.

The library's reference desk was staffed by an outdoorsy-looking middle-aged woman with a reddish ponytail streaked with gray hair.

“Can I help you?” she said. Her eyes went from Trace and Jimmy to Harlan, who still wore his sunglasses.

Trace explained his assignment, which made the woman smile. Her name tag read
JUDY
.

“Well, I like your online teacher for sure,” she said. It didn't take her long to show Trace the computerized catalog. “We might not have any books for you here, but certainly we can find some articles on microfiche.”

“I'll look for books first,” Trace said.

She left him alone, and Trace clicked through the screens. Sometime later, he looked around; the librarian was showing Harlan the magazine and newspaper section. Then she pointed to the blue rig outside the windows. Harlan nodded. They stood there talking. They were still talking several minutes later, when Trace headed across the library toward them.

“I've never met a real crew chief,” the woman said.

“I'll bet not,” Harlan said softly.

“You don't have to whisper,” the librarian said to Harlan.

“I don't?” Harlan whispered.

Trace paused and pretended to look at a book on the shelf; he hated to ruin the magic.

“When's the last time you've been in a library?” she asked Harlan.

“Been a while,” Harlan said, his voice cracking just above a whisper.

“Some men are afraid of librarians,” the woman said. “I don't know why.”

“I never met a librarian like you,” Harlan said, his big neck starting to color.

The woman blushed, too.

Trace cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said to her. “Could I get some help with the microfiche?”

An hour later, as they pulled away from the library, Harlan gave a toot from the air horn. The librarian stood on the front steps and gave a wave.

“Who-ee!” Harlan said. “I wished I lived in Sheridan.”

“No you don't,” Trace and Jimmy said at the same time.

“Or within striking distance, anyway,” Harlan said, glancing in the side mirror.

“I've got her name and phone number,” Trace said.

“Are you serious?” Harlan asked.

“Part of my assignment. Had to prove that I stopped,” Trace said.

“I'll have to get that phone number from you sometime,” Harlan said, faking a yawn.

“What's it worth to you?” Trace said. He flashed Judy's business card in front of Harlan's sunglasses.

Harlan snatched at it. “Give me that!”

“No way,” Trace said.

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

The Billings Motorsports Park speedway lay several miles north of the city, toward Roundup. “It's fast and it's dirt!” was the BMP motto, and, as speedways went, it was better than many. To the north were buttes and open plains, but close in, early-bird fans had already spread out their blankets and stadium seats here and there on the sturdy aluminum bleachers. To the side, the pits were alive with race teams setting up. Harlan joined the lineup of haulers at the pit gate, and slowly crept ahead with the Team Blu rig. He kept looking in his side mirror.

“What?” Jimmy asked.

“Take a look behind,” Harlan said.

Only a few haulers back was the open trailer with the orange No. 77x of Jason Nelson.

“He's everywhere,” Trace muttered.

“I thought that kid was from Nebraska,” Harlan said.

“He is,” Trace said.

“What's he doing way up here?”

“Points?” Jimmy said, craning his neck to look.

“Billings is a long haul from Nebraska,” Harlan said.

Trace was silent. When they finally reached the pit shack, the team got out and stepped up to the counter for the computer draw. Trace touched the mouse: number 97.

“Could be worse,” said the cheerful girl at the pit shack computer.

“Yeah—like 100,” said another girl. The two of them laughed.

“Thanks a lot,” Harlan muttered as he paid for four pit passes.

“Four?” the first girl asked, looking behind as she laid out wristbands.

“That guy in the little motor home—he's with us, too,” Harlan said.

“Two vehicles will cost extra,” the girl said.

“No problem,” Harlan said.

“Couldn't do without your motor guy, eh?” said someone behind in line. It was Jason Nelson's father.

Harlan gave him a long stare, but said nothing.

Beside his father, Jason lifted his chin at Trace. “Hey, man.”

Trace nodded back.

“Swap motors tonight?” Jason's father asked Team Blu. “Just for the hell of it?”

Harlan spit to the side. “Ignore those farmers,” he muttered.

“Here you boys go,” the pit shack girls said.

Trace, Jimmy, and Harlan held out their arms; the girls looped their wrists with colored bands and sealed them.

“What about his?” the younger girl said, glancing toward Smoky's motor home. She held the fourth wristband.

“He's kind of . . . handicapped,” Harlan said. “He'll drive up and put his arm out the window. Could you do his wristband?”

“Sure,” the girl said.

Harlan pulled the Freightliner up far enough to let Smoky stop his mini–motor home by the shack. Then he, Jimmy, and Trace hung out Harlan's window to watch. As the shack girl came forward with Smoky's wristband, Smoky held out his arm. The pit shack girl flinched—nearly tripped—at the sight of his claw-fingered hand.

“Yes!” Jimmy said, and pumped his fist.

“We are sick, sick puppies,” Harlan said as he geared the hauler forward.

Smoky followed close behind, like a little dog following a big dog, and parked alongside the big hauler. Soon the rear door came up, and Jimmy and Harlan rolled out
the Super Stock. The early appearance of the Blu car surprised Trace.

“Are we ready to race?” he asked Smoky.

“We're always ready to race,” Smoky rasped.

Trace glanced up toward the roof of Smoky's motor home. The little satellite dish was not erect.

Trace started last in the third heat. The track was hot, black, and dry. “I swear it's got coal in it,” Jimmy had said earlier, holding up a handful of dark dirt for Harlan's inspection. But Trace got good bite out of the corners, and he finished third of eight cars.

“Looking good,” Harlan called as Trace rumbled up to the hauler. From habit, Trace braked before the loading ramps and killed the engine. “Setup is on the money,” he said, tossing his helmet to Harlan, “but the top end felt doggy.”

“Smoky says we're good,” Harlan said. “Fresh rubber is all we need.”

Trace glanced inside the trailer at Smoky, who looked off toward the track.

In the feature, Trace started in the fifth row, outside—about the middle of the pack. Jason Nelson sat third row inside. Trace worked his butt off, high and low, to move up several slots, but some of the local cars were not set up right, resulting in spinouts and yellow flag after yellow flag. It was a race with no rhythm or flow.

On the fourth restart, single file, Trace powered up in
sixth place, with Jason Nelson in third. Due to wrecks and mechanical problems, the field of Super Stocks was significantly down—Trace could count only a dozen cars. In any race there was always a moment, a window of opportunity. With ten laps remaining and the cars starting to string out, he found a high line and got ready to take names and kick butts. He mashed the pedal to the floor, but something was missing. He couldn't pull by anyone, least of all Jason Nelson. There was just enough motor to get him into third place, where he hung on as the laps counted down. Nelson caught a break on the last yellow flag; the car in front of him spun out, which put Nelson in second place for the restart. Yellow flags closed up the field, and Nelson managed to get his nose inside yellow No. 27, a local car, on the green flag. The two of them banged away at each other for the final laps, with Nelson winning by a car length. The end of the race was a crowd-pleaser, with Trace finishing a close third.

Coming off the scales, he paused alongside Nelson and gunned the engine. Nelson nodded back—and grinned like a fool. Trace spun up dust and headed to the pits.

Jimmy was waiting by the hauler with the cable; Smoky was nowhere to be seen.

“Good going!” Harlan said as Trace pulled himself from the cockpit. “Third place every night would win a season's points chase.”

Trace wiped sweat from his forehead. “If I had the motor we had in Huron, we'd have a checkered flag.”

“I'll have Smoky look at it,” Harlan said.

“I told you after the heat race that it was doggy,” Trace said, and kicked dirt.

“Don't get your shorts in a wad,” Harlan said. “I'm happy with third.”

“I'm not,” Trace said.

“That's what I like to hear!” Harlan said.

“Next time you'll have all the motor you need,” Smoky said to Trace. His gravelly voice came through the screened window of his motor home. “If we win every night, people will think we're cheating.”

Harlan and Jimmy laughed like that was the funniest thing in the world.

8

Team Blu convoyed east across North Dakota, heading for Fargo and the Friday night races at Red River Valley Speedway. On the way, they did promo stops in Bismarck and Jamestown; the crowds were bigger each time. In Jamestown, Trace signed T-shirts and leaned in for pictures as three Blu beverage guys handed out free stuff.

“It's the power of television,” Harlan remarked as Trace worked to shorten up the never-ending line.

“Nothing to do with me?” Trace asked, scribbling his name on another driver card. After an hour, his signature had turned into a chicken scratch, but nobody seemed to mind.

“Nope,” Harlan said. “With TV ads and free stuff, we could put Jimmy in the car and still draw a crowd.”

“Thanks a lot,” Trace said.

“Yeah, thanks, Pops!” Jimmy called from over by the car.

At this point in the afternoon, they didn't care what people heard them say. The line moved forward like an assembly line; Trace scrawled his name like a factory worker ratcheting down the same nut again and again. He signed for two full hours, making sure to get to everyone, after which he dragged himself inside the trailer. His wrist hurt.

“I think we've gone viral,” Jimmy said.

Trace headed up to his cabin and took a shower. He let the hot water run over him until it turned cool, but as he toweled off he still felt greasy. Gritty. Something. Signing autographs was like a sugar high—fun at the moment, but afterward it left him feeling edgy and empty. He was happy when the big diesel engine rattled alive and the hauler began to move. He flopped onto his bed, closed his eyes, and counted the Allison nine-speed gear shifts. When they were rolling down the highway, he always slept like a baby, but never until Harlan reached freeway speed. It had something to do with the silky flow of the transmission, the rocking motion of the trailer . . .

He woke up much later to silence. It was very early morning, and they were parked at a rest stop somewhere in the middle of North Dakota. He got up, pulled on a sweatshirt. The trailer was quiet below. He stepped outside into low, pink sunlight and the fresh, wet scent of
prairie. It had rained during the night; flat spring wheat fields stretched far away south. Closer in, a black-and-white magpie fluttered in the thin grove of trees; a blue jay sat perched on a Dumpster, looking expectantly at Trace for a handout.

He was stiff from sleeping, and took a walk to stretch his legs. Behind the rest stop was a shallow drainage ditch with a narrow ridge on the other side. He leaped across, then began to walk along the field. The weeds and grass were silvery with dew. A hen pheasant flushed—startling him—and he paused to watch it flutter and glide, flutter and glide, to where it touched down in a patch of tall grass. He swung his own arms wide to loosen his shoulder muscles, and breathed deeply. If he closed his eyes, it felt like he was ten years old, and back on the farm. He walked on, glancing occasionally behind at the silent, shiny blue hauler—if its engine fired up, he would have to hustle back—but the only sounds were the intermittent whir of freeway traffic, and the sudden call of a meadowlark. That was a sound from when he was kid; meadowlarks were mostly gone from Minnesota, and he walked carefully forward until he saw it, perched on the stub of an ancient gray fence post. The bird had a yellow throat with a black tie. It sang and sang; no other meadowlark answered.

At that moment a door clacked back by the hauler. Trace turned. Harlan walked to Smoky's motor home and rapped sharply on the slide-out; Smoky handed out a pack
of cigarettes. Trace took a last look at the meadowlark and the glistening blue-green fields, then turned back.