Checkered Flag Cheater (19 page)

“How about you, kid?” Harlan asked Trace.

“No.”

Harlan and Jimmy turned to look at Mel, waiting a few yards away. Harlan made an exaggerated point of checking his watch. “Okay. We won't leave without you.”

“Thanks, boss,” Trace said sarcastically.

“Hey—are you going to eat these wings?” Jimmy said
to Trace, munching on one as he powered up the big rear door.

“Not now,” Trace said.

Smoky emerged, carefully locked his motor home door, and then he and Jimmy and Harlan headed toward the concessions.

Now that they were finally alone, Trace turned to Mel, who came forward to the Blu hauler. “I need to change before we go,” he said. “Want to come inside?”

“Good girls never go into a rock star's motor home or a race driver's cabin,” Mel said. “But I guess I could—this once.”

The side service door of the hauler was unlocked, and Mel followed Trace inside, and up the little stairs. Trace pushed open his door—then froze.

“Hey, Trace. The door was open.” It was April, the girl from the concessions stand, lying on his bed in jeans and a very tight, very full, blue and white 18x T-shirt.

Mel stumbled against Trace, who tried—stupidly—to block her view. But it was too late. There was a long moment as Mel stared at April. April stared back.

“Oh dear—I guess I should have called ahead,” April said.

“Yeah, me too!” Mel said—and spun around to leave.

“Wait,” Trace said.

“Go to hell,” Mel called over her shoulder. Her feet pounded down the stairs and out of the trailer. Its door slammed hard.

11

When Harlan returned, Trace was sitting in his lawn chair beside the trailer, smoking one of Harlan's cigarettes.

“What the—?” Harlan began.

“Let's go,” Trace said. “Let's hit the road.”

Harlan glanced sideways at Jimmy and Smoky. Smoky disappeared into the Gulf Stream. “Gimme that thing,” Harlan said. He yanked the cigarette from Trace's hand.

Trace stared across the nearly empty pits to the headlights moving on Highway 10.

“Where's your girl?” Harlan asked.

“Gone,” Trace said. “Probably for good.” He slumped forward in the chair, and stared at the ground.

“What the hell happened?” Harlan asked.

Trace looked up at Jimmy. “You said April wasn't here.”

“What?” Jimmy exclaimed. “No way! She ain't working here, and I never saw her anywhere.”

“Well, she was here—in my cabin,” Trace said.

“Damn!” Jimmy said with a pained look.

“But hey, that's not really Jimmy's fault, is it?” Harlan said.

“No,” Trace said. “No, it's not.” Across the empty pits, an eighteen-wheeler rumbled west on the highway.

Harlan pulled up a chair. He sat down. He drew deeply on Trace's cigarette. “I shouldn't have joked about fence bunnies the other day.”

Trace had no words.

“I could talk to her if you like,” Harlan said. “Tell her you're not that kind of guy.”

“I am that kind of guy,” Trace said.

“I wouldn't say that,” Harlan said. “You're handling this whole thing—the billboards, the fans, the attention—way better than I would have. Way better than most guys I know. I'd be like a kid in a candy shop—I'd be knocking over chicks like bowling pins. You're not that way—and you're a damn good driver, too.”

“I want to win—but on my own!” Trace blurted.

Harlan jerked his head at Jimmy, who disappeared into Smoky's motor home. When he was gone, Harlan took another long draw. “You could win on your own. You're a good enough driver,” he said.

“So we
are
cheating,” Trace said.

“I didn't say that,” Harlan said. “You're the one who says that.”

“You don't drive the car,” Trace shot back. “You don't feel what I feel on the pedal. You don't see what I see on the tach.”

Harlan was silent for a moment. “Okay, okay—fair enough.” He lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “I know Smoky's up to something. Nobody knows Chevy motors like Smoky, but I swear on my momma's grave I don't know what he's doing.”

“It has something to do with carburetion—” Trace began.

“And I don't want to know,” Harlan interrupted.

“Maybe a combination of the fuel pump and the carb,” Trace continued, “because it's definitely about fuel flow.”

“Unless you can tell me exactly what he's doing, I don't want to hear about it!” Harlan said.

Trace fell silent.

Harlan let out a long exhale of cigarette smoke. They sat in silence for at least a minute. Then Harlan spoke. “Let me tell you something Darrell Waltrip once said about racing. It was pretty close to this: ‘If you don't cheat, you're an idiot. If you cheat and don't get caught, you're a hero. If you cheat and get caught, you're a dope. Put me in the category where you think I belong.' ”

Trace turned to look at Harlan. “So where do I belong?”

“You belong where you are right now—on top of the
heap,” Harlan said. “With tonight's checkered, you're Midwestern points leader in Super Stocks.”

Much later, in his cabin, Trace felt the big Blu hauler gear down from freeway speed, the Allison transmission braking them—
shoom
, and
shooom
, and
shoooooom
—as it down-shifted. The rig rocked slightly as it slowed to a crawl. Still in his race clothes, he sat up in bed. He had sent Mel at least ten texts—with no reply. Each message was shorter than the last, until there were no more ways to say he was sorry.

He stood up and went to his porthole. Harlan was docking at the diesel pumps at the big Clearwater Travel Plaza, Freeway 94, near St. Cloud, Minnesota. They were headed to Minneapolis for a special appearance at the Mall of America, then on to Wisconsin for racing. This was a serious truck stop, with a long, tight row of eighteen-wheelers on the back side, their drivers catching some sleep, and a dozen pump lanes for “civilian” cars lit by harsh vapor lights. Trace had stopped here often with his parents on the way to Minneapolis and St. Paul—mainly because the place had a major bakery.

Remembering that he hadn't eaten since early afternoon, Trace rummaged through his clothes for his wallet. Below, Harlan clanked the nozzle into the mouth of the saddle tank. Trace headed down, then stepped outside into the cool night air. Smoky and Jimmy were already on
their way to the bakery. Smoky's motor home sat just behind the big hauler, with Harlan on the back side of the tractor, running the fuel. Trace paused, glanced around, then stepped over to Smoky's rig. He tried the door. It was open. With one more quick look around, he slipped inside.

The place smelled like tools. Like fuel and WD-40 and GoJo hand cleaner and Little Trees air freshener. Jimmy's bunk, with rumpled sleeping bag, was over the cab, and Smoky's bedroom was in the rear. In between, covering the little galley kitchen and all available counter and cushion space, were voltmeters, ohmmeters, electrical probes, remote-control devices, little boxes with joysticks that looked homemade, several types of magnets small to large, along with parts and pieces of cell phones. Those were all gathered around several silvery Holley carburetors. Trace picked up the nearest carb. It was way light in his hand—he knew the weight of a Holley two-barrel—and he turned it over. Parts of the underside were missing. He set it down and examined another carburetor. This one weighed right but had bright grinding and polishing marks on the side. Holding it close to his eyes, he saw a nearly invisible slot—with a tiny sliding window—no wider than a pencil eraser. The alterations were machined as finely as an expensive watch.

The door latch clicked behind him. Trace whirled. Smoky stood there, silhouetted in the narrow doorway.

“It's way simpler than you think,” he said. His face was shadowy.

“I'm sorry,” Trace began. He glanced around the trailer.

Smoky shrugged. “I'd do the same thing if I were you—snoop around, try to figure things out.”

Trace looked again at the carburetor in his hand. He touched the altered spot. “It lets in more gas—I knew it,” he said.

Smoky stepped forward and took the carburetor from Trace; he carefully set it back in its place. “No. These were all experiments that failed. Getting more gas through the carb and into the cylinders was the obvious choice. But the best engineering solution is always the simplest—and the least obvious.”

“I don't get it,” Trace said. “If it's not more gas—”

“Then what's the only other answer? Come on—you're a motor guy.”

“More air,” Trace said. “It's airflow!”

Smoky smiled his crooked smile. Jimmy arrived—and drew up in surprise to see Trace inside the motor home.

“I need to know how you do it,” Trace said.

“Why?” Smoky asked.

“Because he's one of the good guys,” Harlan said from behind Jimmy. There was sarcasm in his voice. “He's got the world by the tail, and he can't leave well enough alone.”

“I can understand that,” Smoky said. “I'd want to know, too.”

“Well, I don't,” Harlan said. “And neither does Jimmy. If we don't know, nobody can say we were lying.”

Jimmy looked uncertainly at Smoky and Trace, then turned to follow his father into the cab.

“Come, I'll show you,” Smoky said. “You deserve to know.”

Trace followed him inside the hauler. The bright lights came on—Smoky flinched at the glare, then bent to the hood. Trace unpinned one side and Smoky the other. Carefully they hoisted away the bonnet.

“Take off the air-cleaner collar,” Smoky said.

Trace obeyed.

“Now the air cleaner itself.”

Trace spun off the wing nut from the vertical center pole, and lifted the air filter hoop. Beneath it was the platter-size round plate that the filter rested upon. In the center was the open throat of the carburetor. He leaned in to look at the carb.

“You missed it already,” Smoky said.

Trace cocked his head one way, then the other.

“Just like the tech guys. They watch too many of those CSI shows. They want to do an autopsy, when the answer is way simpler.”

Trace stepped back. “I still can't see how you're getting more airflow.”

Smoky stepped up. With a small pliers, he unscrewed the vertical rod, threaded on top, that held in place the air-cleaner assembly. Every car had one. He tapped it on a roll cage pipe:
ting!
It rang bright and empty-sounding.

“It's hollow,” Trace said.

Smoky handed it over.

Trace looked at its open end. “It's not a bolt, it's a tube.”

“It's both,” Smoky said.

Trace held its open end to his lips, and blew; the pipe whistled like a tiny piccolo.

“It puts more air right down into the carb,” Smoky said. “Increases your cfm by about ten percent.”

“That's why it always felt like I had more than a two-barrel carb.”

“Not always,” Smoky said.

“Just when you thought I needed it,” Trace added.

“Which wasn't often.” There was pride in Smoky's voice.

Trace examined the pipe once more—then held it close to the side of the Super Stock: it sucked against the tin with a sharp
clack!

“Very good,” Smoky said.

“It's magnetized,” Trace said. “That, with the antennas, the satellite dish, the remote controls—somehow you made it open and close.”

Smoky carefully retrieved his pipe. “A magician never gives away all his secrets,” he said, and began to reassemble the air-cleaner parts.

Trace leaned against the car and let out a long breath. “So now what?”

“I guess that's up to you, kid,” Smoky said as he worked.

“I can't drive if I know we're cheating.”

“And I can't not do my job,” Smoky said.

“Your job is to cheat?” Trace said.

“I don't call it that,” Smoky said. “I make cars go fast—faster than other cars. So fast, nobody else can catch them. That's how stock car racing began, and that's how it still is. It's my job to give you the fastest car on the track, and it's the rules guys' job to catch me. I'm only doing what Laura Williams and the people above her hired me to do: ‘Whatever it takes,' they said.”

“What about Harlan and Jimmy?”

“They don't know what I do or how I do it. They're just country boys tryin' to keep racin' and make a living,” Smoky said. “Down South it's tough if your family name ain't Allison or Petty.”

Trace swallowed. He ran his hand along the smooth blue tin of the Super Stock.

Smoky looked sideways at Trace. “And don't fool yourself, kid,” he said. “Racing is way bigger than any one driver. If you walk away, Laura will have another kid behind the wheel tomorrow.”