Checkered Flag Cheater (3 page)

“How did you find out that Melody has a date?” his mother asked. She clearly wasn't ready to let go of the prom thing.

“I still have a few friends from home,” Trace said.

“Like?”

Trace shrugged. “Amber Jenkins.”

“That red-haired girl driver?”

“Yes. She told Sara Bishop, and Sara told me,” he said.

“Who's Sara Bishop?”

“She lives in Fargo and drives her dad's Super Stock,” Trace said. “I've seen her a few times on the road, different speedways. She and Amber stay in touch. Race girls—it's a long story.”

“Sounds a little like a soap opera,” his mother said with an amused glance.

Trace stared at his mother. “You look good, Mom,” he said, in part to change the subject, but also because it was true. He wanted to say, “You seem happy.”

“Well, prom plans aside, your racing life seems to be going well,” his mother said. The coffeepot gurgled as it finished.

“All exhibition races so far,” Trace said. “They give us a chance to test and tune our cars. The points season starts Sunday night in South Dakota.”

“That means you'll be closer to home this summer, yes?” She poured herself a cup.

Trace nodded. “Mainly tracks in the upper Midwest. Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming. That's the WISSOTA sanctioning area.”

“And Iowa? That's a big race state.”

“Iowa is under IMCA. Different sanctioning organization, different rules.”

“I've never understood that stuff,” his mother said.

“It's fairly simple,” he said. “Different car classes and different rules for different areas of the country. Super Stocks at WISSOTA tracks are tube-frame cars built just
for racing. In Kansas and Texas and most Southern states, Super Stocks are full-bodied, factory-built cars once driven on the street.”

She nodded. “Tell me about your crew. The team.”

“Our engine builder, Smoky, is a genius and then some,” Trace said.

“What do you mean?” his mother asked. Like mothers can, she had picked up something in his voice.

“I mean, all drivers should have such good motors,” Trace said—and left it at that.

“But it takes some driving skill, too, yes?”

Trace couldn't help but smile a little. “I guess,” he said.

She sat down facing him. “I have to tell you that I still feel kind of dumb,” she said.

“About what?” Trace asked.

“The whole racing scene. It's a guy thing that I should have taken more seriously. It might have helped—with me and your father, I mean . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Trace couldn't think of anything good to say.

“So, better late than never, I've started to watch the Speed Channel,” she said.

“No way!” Trace exclaimed.

“I like the Barrett-Jackson classic car auctions,” she continued. “I have a blast trying to guess the final price of a car. Who knew that the cars from back in the day would be worth so much? The other night this '68 Dodge Charger went for over two hundred thousand dollars.”

“Mom—you're turning into a motor head.”

“Should have done it earlier,” she said. “If I had been
on the ball, I'd have been advising my clients to buy 1960s muscle cars rather than stocks and bonds.”

“For sure,” Trace said.

“I also like those shows where they build a motorcycle that's one of a kind,” she continued, “or else take a perfectly good car and totally customize it. But then they do that annoying father-son argument thing—nobody's getting along and the stress level is rising as the deadline approaches, and—”

“Can I have some coffee?” Trace interrupted.

She paused. “Sure! I'm sorry. You hardly ever drink coffee—I should have asked.”

Trace was silent.

“And the father-son thing—I wasn't implying anything about you and your dad. I think the two of you have done all right, actually.” She brought his coffee.

“Sort of,” Trace said.

She patted his arm. “Better than that. Are you in regular touch with him?”

“Sort of,” Trace said.

“Like, how often? About what?”

“I text him results after every race. He texts back.”

“That's it?”

“Pretty much,” Trace said.

Trace's mother swallowed. She stood up to wipe the counter; she always had liked clean, bare counters with no crumbs. “Does he know you're coming home?” she asked with her back to Trace.

“No.”

She straightened and turned. “Are you planning on telling him?”

“Yeah. I'll call him when I get closer.”

“That would be good,” his mother said. For a moment she dropped her chin and let out a breath.

“What?” Trace asked.

“You want to know the main reason I watch car shows?”

Trace waited.

“They keep me close to you and your dad,” she answered.

Trace went over and hugged his mother. She let him hold her for a long moment. Then she said, “I have to meet this computer tech guy at work, and you need to get on the road.”

“I could use a shower,” Trace said.

“I was hoping you'd say that,” she said, pushing him toward the guest bath.

“Okay, I'm going!” Trace said in a little kid's voice—which brought a laugh from his mom.

After a long, hot shower, Trace came back to the kitchen. His mother was dressed for work and waiting. “School!” she said. “You have to tell me about your online classes.”

Trace shrugged and sipped his coffee. “It's going all right.”

“Just ‘all right'?”

“I've got this teacher I've never met who e-mails me all the time. If I miss a deadline, she calls me.”

“That's a good thing,” Trace's mom said.

“I guess,” Trace said.

His mother was silent a moment. “I think sometimes of all the things you're missing. I mean, from regular high school.”

“Like sitting in a classroom bored out of my skull?” Trace replied.

“I'm sure online classes are right for some kids—” his mother began.

“For me it's the only way,” Trace said, cutting her off. “I can go to school and I can race—it's all good.”

“What about next year, though?” she said. “What about college?”

He shrugged. “I can do college classes online, too—or go to a real college later. Right now I need to focus on racing.”

His mother paused. “When I advise my clients about money, I always recommend a diversified portfolio, not keeping all your eggs in—”

“I know what
diversified
means,” Trace said sharply. “I'm not stupid.”

His mother was silent a moment—as if she was counting to ten. “No, you're not stupid. All I meant, Trace, is that you seem to be putting racing ahead of your education.”

“You sound just like my online school counselor.”

“I like her more and more,” Trace's mom said.

“Right now, racing is my education,” Trace continued. “It's gonna be my career. I can go to college anytime.”

His mother fell silent. “We need to have a family talk
about this—but not now,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Back to prom: do you have a tux?”

“I've got a black sport coat at home. I think it still fits.”

“Wear a white shirt with it,” his mother said as she gathered up her purse and briefcase. “And a nice bright tie. And shave, all right?” She hurried over to give Trace a last hug. “I really have to go. Just pull the door shut when you leave. Make sure it's locked.”

“Got it.” He wanted to say more—that he was happy she was happy—but he didn't get it done. She was already in motion, walking quickly, carrying her slim briefcase as she headed out. After her garage door growled up and then down, Trace returned to the quiet living room. An empty house, a familiar couch—there was time for a quick nap. Just a short snooze, a half hour max. He stretched out, pulled a knitted woolen blanket over himself, and turned his face into the brown leather. It smelled faintly of home, wherever that was these days . . .

“You got enough top end?” Smoky asked in his froggy voice. Trace had gotten used to the croaky sound, but never fully to Smoky's shiny pink, earless head and his stub nose. A stock car crash and a fire had left Smoky short on head accessories. His fingers, too, were twisted and pink.

“Never enough top end,” Trace called from the cockpit of the blue Super Stock.

He had won his heat at Creek County Speedway, in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. Trace's answer brought a hoarse laugh from Smoky, a guy who never asked a question unless he knew the answer. Trace had so much top-end power that he could pull any car on the track; it was as if the local Super Stocks all had one dead cylinder.

“You make it any easier for the kid, he'll forget how to drive,” Harlan said to Smoky. Harlan was a burly, ponytailed, Lynyrd Skynyrd–loving good ol' boy from Tennessee.

“We wouldn't want that!” Jimmy Joe hooted from underneath the Team Blu Super Stock. Only his jeans and scuffed cowboy boots were visible. From inside the Super Stock's cockpit, that was Trace's usual view: Jimmy's boots, Harlan's butt crack, and Smoky's dark ear hole cocked toward the engine, his pink claw fingers on the throttle linkage.

“Pump it again,” Jimmy called to Trace.

Trace pressed the brake pedal. “Still soft,” he called.

“Good drivers don't need brakes,” Harlan said. “They race with the throttle.”

“Pump it slow,” Jimmy called to Trace.

Trace pressed down the pedal. The open brake line let loose a juicy fart:
pbbpbpbpbppp!

“That warn't me!” Jimmy called.

“Don't come out from underneath there if it was,” Harlan said.

The vinegary-sweet smell of brake fluid wafted into
the cockpit, and Jimmy's wrench clinked as he rapidly tightened the bleeder nut.

Soon Trace headed out for the twenty-lap feature, which had yellow-flag restart after yellow-flag restart. Each time, the cheerful woman's voice in his helmet receiver sent Trace to the rear. She was up in the announcer's booth, the lead lap counter and position spotter (every speedway had one), who kept one eye on the cars and the other eye on her computer screen. But he didn't get angry—which clearly meant that he was dreaming all this—and it didn't matter, because after each restart he came flying back from the rear of the pack, picking off cars one by one, finding a sticky line high or low—either way—to win the feature by half a lap ahead.

At the scales, a local driver waited for him, and shook a fistful of cartoon-size green bills at Trace: engine protest. This meant a formal, by-the-rules challenge for Team Blu to prove that it was not cheating. But that didn't bother Trace, either, because nobody ever found anything out of spec with Smoky's engines. He motored off to the tech shed for the teardown. There, the chief pit steward motioned for Trace to get out of his Super Stock and lie down on the battered table. He obeyed—he had nothing to hide—and the tech guys, holding silvery wrenches and micrometers, gathered around him like a surgical team. They began removing his right arm . . .

 

 

“Aargh!” Trace called out. He sat up sharply and shook his right arm. It had fallen asleep, and hung on him like a dead branch. He shook it hard—it began to tingle—as he blinked away the racing dream. He was still at his mother's place in Eau Claire, but the light had brightened in the windows. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at his watch.

“Damn!” It was almost noon. He had slept more than four hours. That couldn't be right; he blinked to focus his eyes, found his phone, and slid it open. It confirmed his wristwatch reading: 11:55 a.m.

He swore again, threw off the blanket, and stood up, doing some math on the fly. He was still six hours from home. In the best case, he would arrive with prom ready to get under way.

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