Checkered Flag Cheater (8 page)

“I need to breathe,” Trace muttered as Harlan tugged the shoulder belts still tighter.

“You can breathe after the race,” Harlan said.

Once his gloves and helmet were on and secure, Trace gave a thumbs-up sign to his crew. “Fire in the hole,” he called. He flipped the toggle On switch, then touched the rubber starter button.

RRRRRuupppp!
The big Chevy engine coughed and caught—then settled into a rumble. As Smoky leaned over the long front nose, Trace blipped the throttle a couple of times. Smoky listened, then nodded and pointed toward the track as if to show Trace where to go; it was an odd little ritual, but it was theirs. Every team had them.

Trace's heat included Jason Nelson in the second row outside. Glints of orange, like late sunlight through leaves, were all Trace could see of Nelson in the pack. As the drivers scrubbed their tires in a rumbling, weaving parade, Trace breathed deeply in order to stay loose.

“One lap to green,” a woman's twangy voice said through his helmet receiver. Trace rocked his steering wheel to make sure the quick release was secure, then fell into line down low. A silvery local Super Stock, No. 69—the racing world's least original race-car number—tucked in alongside him. Trace ignored him, and made a point of keeping his nose tight against the car ahead; he was loaded, locked, and ready to pull the trigger.

At the green flag roar, he let No. 69 surge forward, then cranked across his rear bumper to the outside. He took a high line through turn 1, but held back when No. 69 swung his butt sideways, taking up two lanes. Trace had been there before; drivers liked to tap the front corner of a trailing car just enough to make it squirrelly—or send it bass-ackwards off the track. The resulting yellow flag was usually ruled the fault of the car that spun out. Any driver who caused two yellows was done for the night, so there
was no reason to take a chance on receiving the first yellow.

After a couple of laps, traffic spread out, and Trace went hotfoot. He pulled No. 69 and another car on the high side, and, in the eight-car heat, dove into fifth place—close enough to see Jason Nelson, who was now leading the pack.

Heat races were only ten laps (sometimes less), and Trace worked hard to get into third place by the time the white flag waved. He had a shot at second place, but didn't want to risk a wreck or a spinout; the goal, always, was to get to the feature race with the car in one piece, so he streamed under the checkered flag comfortably in third place.

After crossing the scales, he rumbled up beside Jason Nelson, who had stopped his No. 77x for a checkered flag photo. Trace braked, nodded his way, and Jason pointed back; it was a courtesy moment among racers. Then Trace spun his tires and headed to the pits—where Harlan beckoned him toward the trailer's rear ramps.

Trace killed the engine. Even before Trace got out, Jimmy had hooked up the cable and was ready to winch the car inside.

“What?” Trace said.

“Smoky wants to check over the engine.”

“Runs fine!” Trace said, loosening his neck collar.

“Smoky didn't like something,” Harlan said.

Trace shrugged and climbed out. He was only the driver.

Harlan and Jimmy had a few questions about how the car handled, after which Trace walked over to the small pit concessions to get a bottle of water. He was standing in line when Jason Nelson walked up to him. Nelson was munching on a nacho platter swimming in bright orange cheese.

“I expected to see you on my ass there at the end,” he said.

“No rush,” Trace said. “It's a long season.”

“Most teams run out of money before the season's over,” Nelson said, “but I guess that won't happen to you.”

In the feature, Trace and Jason Nelson lined up bumper to bumper, with Jason behind. Both were well back in the twenty-two-car feature. Some lineups put faster cars farther back to make them work their way up through the pack. This prevented a follow-the-leader type of race—a single line of cars chasing one another's tails—which was boring for everybody, especially the fans.

Jason Nelson clearly didn't plan to be stuck behind Trace for long. On the slow lap before green, he wedged his nose underneath Trace's bumper and kept it there like a tow truck trying to push-start a car. Trace swore, and rode his brakes. His rear end lifted partway, and his back tires lost bite.

“No. 77x—back it off!” said the woman's voice.

Trace's rear end settled groundward, but it was hard bumpety-bump until green.

At thunder-up, Nelson quickly swung around Trace on the high side. Orange tin lurched tight alongside and stayed there—until the corner. The track was always shorter on the inside line, and Trace pulled most of a car's length in front of Nelson. Down the straightaway it was the same story: Nelson came alongside but couldn't make the pass, then lost ground in the corner. Each lap, the blue and orange Super Stocks powered down the straights as if welded side to side. This kept up for three laps, with Trace pushing Nelson slightly higher each time.

On lap 4, Trace came up too fast on a white Super Stock, and made a split-second decision to go high—and pinch Nelson onto the marbles. Nelson knew enough to stay off the drier, pebbly rim of the track; he braked and knifed low, sliding by the white car on the inside. Then he squeezed the white car's line—forcing him upward, toward Trace. Trace thought he was safely past the guy, but the white car's nose clipped Trace's rear quarter panel. Tin crunched—and knocked Trace loose. He cranked the wheel wildly right, then left to avoid spinning out, and by the time he found his line again, Nelson was out of sight ahead. Trace had fallen back several places and now ran in the last third of the pack. By the time he picked off some cars to reach the middle of the pack, it was already lap 10—which was when his engine came alive.

Trace felt it. It was nothing obvious, like Beau Kim's nitrous bottle kicking in, but more like what a near-miss crash did to the heart rate. His tach reading jumped 300 rpm; on the floor he suddenly had another half inch of
pedal. Something had let loose—probably one or more piston rings—and when this happened, the pistons ran freer in their cylinders: it was the surge just before the engine blew. Trace glanced behind, expecting a cloud of blue smoke—oil blowback—but there was only dust and stock cars. His instinct was to back off and save what was left of the motor, but that was last year talking. This year a fresh motor was ready to go in the Blu trailer. He kept the hammer down.

The Super Stock engine found its sweet spot, and Trace pushed it to the limit. He took a high line for a couple of laps, pulling cars like they had fallen out of gear, then played down low, looking for daylight toward the front of the pack. Nelson's orange tail, bright as a monkey's butt bouncing through the jungle, came up quickly. He was running third.

A spinout somewhere behind brought out the yellow flag, which positioned Trace on Nelson's back bumper for the restart. Rather than play bumper cars, Trace gave Nelson a half-car length of breathing room.

“Try me,” Trace said inside his helmet.

Nelson fell for it: on the restart green, he faked an engine lag—a moment's hesitation—that was really a tap on his brakes. Since there were no brake lights on race cars, who was to know? It was an old trick: sucker the driver behind into a rear-ender, and in the process make him slice a front tire or break a tie-rod. A yellow flag usually resulted. As in real-world driving, the race car that
rear-ended another was at fault—and got sent to the back or, worse, into the pits.

But Trace was waiting for it. He swung low at the same moment that Nelson braked—and came past him on the inside as if pitched forward from a giant slingshot.

“Sucker!” Trace shouted as he broke through the dust into first place—where no one came close to him for the final five laps.

After the race, Trace crossed the scales and then proceeded to the victory circle. Only the photographer waited. None of the other cars paused to salute him. Trace emerged backward through his window and pumped an arm to the stands. There was scattered clapping from this South Dakota crowd—Tasha cheered loudly—but also scattered boos and jeers from the cowboy hats.

“Cheater!” someone called. It was picked up by several other voices in the stands. “Cheater! Cheater!”

The photographer, a fat guy with thick glasses and a pale face, handed Trace the checkered flag and knelt down for the photo. “Folks here don't like you much,” he said from behind the camera.

Trace fixed a smile on his face. “No big deal,” he said, not breaking expression.

After the photo, Trace headed to the tech lane, where he pulled in behind the other four top-finishing Super Stocks, which were going through inspections one by one. His engine was hot, and Jimmy waited with a fire extinguisher full of water. Trace kept the rpm up while Jimmy
sprayed the radiator. Thin jets from the silvery can—their squirt gun—hissed into clouds of steam; slowly the temperature-gauge needle drifted down out of the red. “We're good!” Trace called, and Jimmy stepped back from the hot fog, his face speckled with watery mud.

The other cars were finished with brief inspections. A tech guy bent down to Trace's window. “We'd like to see you in the tech shed,” he said, and pointed.

Trace shrugged and drove forward, turning left into a metal-roofed garage. Bright lights came on to greet him.

“Take the lid off,” the main tech said to Jimmy. Harlan, close by, was chewing a toothpick.

Jimmy quickly unpinned the hood; he and Harlan lifted it free. The tech guys gathered around. One removed the air cleaner and shined a flashlight into the throat of the carb; another guy worked the butterfly choke. The tech guys operated in silence except for the
clink
s of small wrenches. After a couple of minutes, they stepped back without comment.

“Next we'd like to look at your valves,” the chief tech man said.

“You might as well relax,” Harlan said to Trace. “Looks like it's going to be a while.”

Jimmy was ready with a small socket and ratchet; he removed the valve covers. The tech guys bent over the exposed valve springs and rocker arms, which were shiny with warm oil. Using micrometers as well as a feeler gauge, they measured clearances. After a few minutes of this,
they straightened up and stepped back, poker-faced. “Looks okay,” one of them said.

“Yeah, well—I never seen a Super Stock run like that,” said a voice from the side. It was Jason Nelson's father. Jason, still in his racing suit, stood beside him.

“Me neither,” the chief tech guy said to Harlan. “So we're going to pump a cylinder. See what you've got.”

“Have at it,” Harlan said.

“Let's do number 4,” the tech said to Jimmy, who bent over and spun out the spark plug of cylinder number 4. As he worked, he looked up at Trace with nervous eyes; Trace flashed him a thumbs-up. Beside Jimmy, Harlan removed two rocker arms so the valves to cylinder 4 would remain tightly closed, then loosened the ignition coil wire so that the engine would turn over but not start.

“Okay. Do your thang,” Harlan said, stepping back.

A tech guy came forward with what looked like a complicated bicycle pump; it had a short nose, a screw-in nipple, and a graduated tube with a disk inside; its purpose was to measure cubic inches of air—the displacement of a cylinder. After twisting the gauge's nose into the spark-plug hole, the main tech man nodded to Trace—who touched the starter button and turned over the engine.

The guy squinted at the volume reading. “Again,” he called.

Trace obeyed.

After three revolutions of the motor, the tech guy held
up a hand. “We're at 44.95,” he announced. “Times eight cylinders, that makes”—there was a pause as he did the math—“359.6 cubic inches.”

“There you go,” Harlan said. “No way we're over 360 inches.”

The tech chief leaned in to read and confirm the cylinder displacement, then turned to Harlan. “Next we're going to take a fuel sample.”

Harlan's lips tightened slightly. “Like I said, have at it,” he said with a shrug. He moved to the rear of the Super Stock, took off the smaller, back lid, and removed the gas cap from the fuel cell.

A tech approached with a handheld device that looked like a meter reader; it was attached to a small, silvery container the size of a coffee cup.

“Octane analyzer,” Harlan said to Trace. Harlan took off his sunglasses. With pale white eye sockets and squinty eyes, he looked smaller, less certain.

The gas guy pumped fuel into his container, then set the whole device on a stainless-steel counter and punched some buttons. Several tech guys gathered around.

After a few moments, the gas man turned toward the car. “It's 109 octane,” he said to the chief tech guy. “The rule is 110 or under.”

“Well, hell—we paid for 110 octane from your speedway supplier,” Harlan said as he put his sunglasses back on. “We should get a discount.”

“Don't press your luck here,” the main tech guy said evenly.

“Anything else?” Harlan asked.

The main tech guy looked at Trace and the blue Super Stock, then turned to Harlan. “Not at this time. But we still don't like the way your car ran away from everybody,” he said, wiping his hands on a clean rag.

“No legal Chevy motor runs like that,” Jason's father muttered.

“Money talks and bullshit walks,” Harlan threw back at the older Nelson. “Next time protest our engine. We'll be happy to take your money.”

“Okay—we're done here!” the chief tech said, and motioned to clear the building. “You're free to go,” he said to Trace.

When Jimmy and Harlan had finished putting the top end back together, Trace fired the Super Stock motor and chirped his tires on the way out of the tech shed.

Back at the trailer, Tasha was waiting. “What was that all about?” she asked.