Checkered Flag Cheater (7 page)

“But hey, I've been there,” Harlan said with his Tennessee drawl. “I once drove straight through from Tennessee to California to see a girl—and she was married.”

“How'd that turn out?” Trace said.

“Don't ask,” Harlan said.

A raspy laugh came from Smoky.

Jimmy Joe stepped outside, wiping his hands on a clean grease rag. “Yep, we've all been there,” he said cheerfully to Trace.

“Who's this ‘we'?” Harlan asked. “I've never seen you drive any farther for a girl than the nearest high school parking lot.”

“He picks them up in Wal-Mart,” Smoky said, hacking at his own joke.

“Anyway,” Harlan said to Trace, “Laura from headquarters is pissed that you missed that promo thing at Oskaloosa.”

“Pissed pissed?”

“I think so,” Harlan said. “She's sending Tasha down here to talk to you.”

“No big deal. I'll work it out with them,” Trace said.

“Maybe I should work it out with them,” Jimmy Joe said, checking his fingernails on one hand and then the other.

Harlan spit. “Those girls are so far out of your league you couldn't get a date with either one of them if you had a NASCAR ride.”

“Speaking of rides, what are you gonna do with that car you bought in Indiana?” Jimmy asked.

Trace shrugged. “I hadn't thought about it.”

“I'll take care of it,” Jimmy said.

Trace tossed him the keys. Jimmy Joe was Trace's half friend, half assistant. He was in his early twenties, slender but wiry, with sandy hair cut in a semi-mullet. He bunked in Smoky's motor home, while Harlan took the Freight-liner sleeper cab.

Harlan squinted at Trace's dusty car lot special. “How long you did you drive on that skinny spare?”

“Since Minnesota,” Trace said.

“What did I tell you, Pops?” Jimmy said. “Trace is one lucky guy.”

“But lucky in love? That's the question,” Harlan said, and drew on his cigarette. There were guffaws from the crew.

Trace was already inside his cabin, peeling off his stinky clothes on his way to the shower.

“One hour in the sack, max,” Harlan added, his voice muffled by the wall. “You can sleep when you're old.”

Trace awoke a minute later (it felt like) to thudding on his cabin door.

“Visitor,” Harlan called.

Trace groggily checked his watch, then staggered out of bed. He had slept for less than an hour. He pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, then opened his door.

“Ouch!” Tasha said. She was Laura's assistant from the Minneapolis office, a cool, twenty-something woman originally from Chicago who shifted his gears every time he saw her. She looked him up and down.

“He's all yours,” Harlan remarked to Tasha, and headed down the short stairs.

Trace tried to slick back his hair. He and Tasha had a brief hug, but it was not the full-body kind she usually gave him.

“What's up?” Trace asked.

“What's up? You blew off that exhibition race and promo shoot in Iowa, so I had to drive down here and chew your butt out. That's what's up.” Tasha was always fairly direct about things.

“Had to go home, sorry,” he said.

“The one thing that Laura hates—and me, too—is when people don't keep to the schedule. It's sort of a thing all the way up the chain at Karchers and Ladwin Agribusiness—the name you see, of course, on your paychecks.”

“Sorry,” Trace said.

“Sorry doesn't cut it,” she said. “About eighty percent of life is showing up.”

He and Tasha usually had a good vibe between them, but not today; she was all business.

“It won't happen again,” Trace mumbled.

“It had better not. Anyway, how was prom?” Tasha asked, her voice softening just a bit.

“A disaster,” Trace said.

“They usually are. And Mel?”

“She's great.”

“Worth the trip?” Her voice was teasing now.

“For sure,” Trace said, blushing slightly.

“Boys,” Tasha said, and clucked her tongue. “Can't shoot 'em, can't live without 'em. Anyway, I'm gonna let you do your race thing, but we still need to talk later. A little matter of Sheila from MOHS.”

“Damn,” Trace said, and turned down the corners of his mouth.

“Exactly,” Tasha said, her voice serious again. “But nothing we can't handle—if you get your act together.”

“Time to saddle up, kid,” Harlan called from below in the trailer. “Heats start in less than an hour.”

“So later, all right?” Tasha said. “I'll catch the feature from the stands, then see you after the races.”

When she was gone, Trace splashed cold water on his face, then pulled on his racing suit and headed downstairs. At floor level in the long hauler, Smoky was leaning over a carburetor on the stainless-steel bench. He wore a surgical-type headlamp with a light and a magnifier lens. In his bent, stiff fingers was a voltmeter or something similar; it had red and black probe wires.

“Whatcha doing?” Trace asked.

Smoky jerked the carb behind him, out of sight. “I'm doin' what I'm doin',” he croaked. He turned to Trace and kept his hands behind his back.

“Just asking,” Trace said.

“You drive, I take care of the car, remember?” Smoky asked.

“Sure,” Trace said with a shrug. “I just drive.” He passed by Smoky and out into the warm spring air.

“It's a long third-mile track,” Harlan explained as they walked toward the entrance. “Not all that high-banked, so Jimmy's got your front suspension pretty tight, and quite a bit of toe.”

Trace nodded, but he was counting Super Stocks as they walked along pit row. Eighteen so far.

As Trace and Harlan moved along, the energy of a speedway gearing up for racing began to pulse inside him. The exhibition season was over. Tonight the summer points chase started for real, and the pits were a carnival
of activity. Brightly lettered fluorescent graphics and decals made the cars look fast even standing still. On his knees beside a battered Modified, a pit man flapped a floor jack handle like a one-winged bird trying to fly. A dust-bunny teenager bounced a freshly mounted tire—
poom-poom-poom
—toward a waiting hub. At the rear of a black Super Stock, a scruffy guy poured blue-tinted fuel into the red hummingbird nose of a deep-throated funnel. The sweet scent of 110-octane racing fuel hung in the air. Farther down the line came the sharper, nose-biting odor of methanol exhaust. It mingled with the burnt smell of smoking black rubber worms that fell from the tire-siping irons, and the odor of the concession shack's deep-fat fryer, which was clearly in need of an oil change. Air tools chattered, tire irons clanged, generators hummed, grinders rasped as crew members roughed up new tires for better bite. Country music twanged from one race-car trailer; heavy metal pounded from the next. The big-cat snarl of a Chevy engine came again and again as a motor man blipped his throttle linkage, and announcements—broken up by all the other noise—crackled intermittently over the pit loudspeaker.

“Indiana was red clay, South Dakota is black dirt—but not heavy gumbo,” Harlan said. They were on the track now, and Trace kicked at the clumpy soil. The big sheeps-foot roller, pulled by a tractor, had left its uniform pattern of pockmarks—which would be pressed full soon enough by the pounding of race-car tires.

“Jimmy's got a new siping pattern he thinks is right for
your rear tires. If you don't like the bite, let me know,” Harlan said.

“He's usually right when it comes to rubber,” Trace said.

“I hate to agree,” Harlan said, and spit; he was proud of Jimmy in a gruff kind of way.

Trace looked around. Other than their dirt, speedways were pretty much the same: grandstand, infield, pit area either in the infield or to the side, and concessions. Dakota State Fair Speedway had a cluster of grain elevators just across the railroad tracks, and open fields behind. As they turned back toward pit row, Trace and Harlan paused to let a race rig rumble past. A shiny Ford pickup pulled an open trailer with an orange Super Stock swaying on top. The decals were local ones from Norfolk, Nebraska.

Trace looked twice at the kid riding shotgun in the truck. A small dude with a buzz cut and brown eyes, but the cauliflowered ears and slightly bent nose of a wrestler. It was Jason Nelson, a high school driver who had run strong in the Team Blu tryouts. He signaled to his father, who braked their truck and trailer.

“Howdy,” Jason called to Trace. He had a weirdly deep voice.

Trace lifted his chin.

“How's it been going with Team Blu?” Jason asked.

“Good,” Trace said. “Lots of travel. All exhibition races so far.”

“But points tonight,” Jason said.

“That's right,” Trace said.

“How's the track look?” Jason asked.

“Fast,” Harlan said.

Jason grinned. “Just the way ah like it.”

“Me, too,” Trace threw back.

“Gotta go,” Jason's dad said gruffly. “We're running late today.” He let his eyes travel over the Team Blu hauler.

“See you out there,” Jason said to Trace, and the Nelson rig rumbled forward.

“That kid's a driver?” Harlan asked.

“And then some,” Trace said. “He's fast.”

“He looks like he's in fifth grade,” Harlan said.

The evening's Dakota State Fair Speedway Invitational lineup included five classes: Limited Street Stock, Street Stock, Midwest Modifieds, Modifieds, and Super Stocks. The more expensive Late Models were on their own circuit, and had less flexibility to attend special race nights like this one.

“Super Stocks run last,” Harlan said, reading Trace's mind.

“Which means a dry, slick surface,” Jimmy added, “but I'll have you set up for it.”

“They don't pay you enough, Jimmy,” Trace said.

“Hear that, Pops?” Jimmy crowed.

“Yeah, yeah,” Harlan answered. “Who's the one who drew a number 95 for Team Blu?”

Jimmy instantly looked hurt. “Trace wasn't here yet, so you told me to do the draw.”

“Should have had Smoky pick for us,” Harlan said.

Smoky was a gambler who loved to stop at every casino they saw.

“Well, Trace has got his work cut out for him,” Harlan said. “We start in the fourth row, outside, third heat.”

“Dead last, in other words,” Trace said.

“Yep,” Harlan said.

“Hey—no problem,” Trace said. He walked alone over to the pit bleachers to watch the Street Stock classes. The beat-up, full-bodied old Monte Carlos rocked and rolled around the track, their slush-bucket suspensions tilting the battered bodies through the turns, their motors straining to pull them down the straightaway. Last year that had been him—no sponsor, a flatbed trailer, a run-what-you-brung racer. Standing beside the fence were the pit crews, the fathers, and a couple of motor head mothers; they cheered, pumped their fists for their cars, their drivers, their kids. They slapped one another on the back, laughed, swore, bummed cigarettes, paced. Grassroots racers. That part of racing would never change.

Another thing that never changed for Trace was his prerace nerves. On race day he was always hungry because he couldn't eat until after the races. Driving a stock car was no different from being a basketball player, a football player, or any kind of athlete. The closer it came to race time, the more the butterflies came alive inside his stomach
and fluttered their tickly little wings. He headed back to his crew.

Jimmy came across the pits pushing a hand truck that carried a white, square-sided fuel jug; blue racing gas sloshed inside. Most race teams bought their fuel on-site from a centrally located parts depot—which also carried tires, tubes, fuel filters, and air filters, as well as basic suspension parts that racers tended to break, such as shocks, front and rear springs, and tie-rods. Smoky waited in the small doorway of his trailer. Jimmy hoisted up the fuel jug; Smoky lifted it inside, then closed the door.

“We should carry our own drum of fuel,” Jimmy said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Wouldn't have to buy it and lug it around.”

“It's dangerous to have a barrel of gas in the hauler,” Harlan said. “Let's say we're at a red light and some crazy ass in a Kenworth is asleep at the wheel. He rear-ends us, we go up like a bomb. Trace's cabin would be ground zero.”

“Great,” Trace said.

“Plus if you carry your own fuel, the other drivers think you're cheating,” Harlan said.

“Hey, we got ourselves a bang-up driver—we don't need to cheat,” Jimmy said cheerfully.

Harlan was silent. From behind the closed door of the hauler, where Smoky worked, came the faint clinks and thuds of tools.

Trace glanced at his watch. “Are we going to see the car pretty soon?” he asked. All the other race cars sat beside or behind their haulers, poised to go.

“When Smoky's ready,” Harlan said.

That was not for another half hour, when the Midwest Mods—the class just before Super Stocks—were already under way. Smoky finally appeared in the little doorway and signaled to Jimmy Joe, who hustled inside and powered open the tall rear door of the stacker trailer. Then, with a handheld controller, he winched the lower Team Blu Super Stock backward down its ramp and into daylight. The car was immaculate, as always—the prettiest Super Stock in the pits. Having a second car on the stacker rack above was the ultimate luxury for any dirt-track racer: if Trace wrecked one night, they were ready to go the next night with the second car. They could not, of course, switch cars between a heat and a feature—a standard rule in racing.

Trace slid into the narrow cockpit feetfirst—right foot, then left—and got settled. Harlan handed Trace his helmet and gloves, then went to work cinching Trace's sixway seat-belt harness, neck brace, and sternum protector. The aim was to be one with the full-containment racing seat. Driving a stock car was not for people who were claustrophobic.