The Howling Man (38 page)

He had been driving for 11 hours and he was hungry and hot and tired, but he couldn't stop, he couldn't pull over to the side of the road and stop under one of those giant pines and rest a little while; no. Because, he thought, if you do that, you'll fall asleep. And you'll sleep all night, you know that, Buck, and you'll get into town late, maybe too late to race, and then what will you do?

So he kept on driving, holding a steady 70 down the long straights, and through the sweeping turns that cut through the fat green mountains. He could climb to 80 and stay there and shorten the agony, except that it had begun to rain; and it was the bad kind that is light, like mist, and puts a slick film on the road. At 80 he would have to work. Besides, you have got to take it easy now. He thought, you have got a pretty old mill under the hood, and she's cranky and just about ready to sour out, but she'd better not sour out tomorrow. If she does, you're in a hell of a shape. You know that all right. So let her loaf.

Buck Larsen rolled the window down another three inches and sucked the cool, sharp air into his lungs. It was clean stuff, with a wet pine smell, and it killed the heat some and cleared his head, but he hated it, because rain made it that way. And rain was no good. Sure, it was OK sometimes; it made things grow, and all that; and probably people were saying, by God, that's wonderful, that's great--rain! But they would feel different if they had to race on it, by Christ. It would be another story then. All of a sudden they would look up at the sky and see some dark clouds and their hearts would start pounding then and they'd be scared, you can bet your sweet ass; they'd start praying to God to hold it off just a little while, just a few hours, please. But it would come, anyway. It would come. And that nice dirt track would turn to mush and maybe you're lucky and you don't total your car out, and maybe this is not one of your lucky days and the money is gone and you don't have a goddamn thing except your car and you make a bid, only the rain has softened the track and somebody has dug a hole where there wasn't any hole a lap ago, and you hit it, and the wheel whips out of your hands and you try to hold it, but it's too late, way too late, you're going over. You know that. And nothing can stop you, either, not all the lousy prayers in the world, not all the promises; so you hit the cellar fast and hope that the roll bar will hold, hope the doors won't fly open, hope the yoyos in back won't plow into you--only they will, they always do. And when it's all over, and maybe you have a broken arm or a cracked melon, then you begin to wonder what's next, because the car is totaled, and they'll insure a blind airplane pilot before they'll insure you. And you can't blame them much, either. You're not much of a risk.

He shook his head hard, and tried to relax. It was another 60 miles to Grange. Sixty little miles. Nothing. You can do it standing up, you have before; plenty of times. (But you were younger then, remember that. You're 48 now. You're an old bastard, and you're tired and scared of the rain. That's right. You're scared.)

The hell!

Buck Larsen looked up at the slate-colored sky and frowned; then he peered through the misted windshield. A bend was approaching. He planted his foot on the accelerator and entered the curve at 97 miles per hour. The back end of the car began to slide gently to the left. He eased off the throttle, straightened, and fed full power to the wheels. They stuck.

Yeah, he said.

The speedometer needle slipped back to 70 and did not move. It was fine, you're OK, he thought, and you'll put those country fair farmers in your back pocket. You'd better, anyway. Maybe not for a first, but a second; third at worst. Third money ought to be around three hundred. But, he thought, what if the rain spoils the gate? Never mind, it won't. These yokels are wild for blood. A little rain won't stop them.

A sign read: GRANGE--41 MILES.

Buck snapped on his headlights. Traffic was beginning to clutter up the road, and he was glad of it, in a way; you don't get so worried when there are people around you. He just wished they wouldn't look at him that way, like they'd come to the funeral too early. You sons of bitches, he thought. You don't know me, I'm a stranger to you, but you all want to see me get killed tomorrow. That's what you want, that's why you'll go to the race. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I really am. That's why I ain't popular: I stayed alive too long. (And then he thought, no, that isn't why. The reason you're not popular is because you don't go very good. Come on, Larsen, admit it. Face it. You're old and you're getting slow. You're getting cautious. That's why you don't run in the big events no more, because in those you're a tail-ender; maybe not dead last, but back in the back. Nobody sees you. Nobody pays you. And you work just as hard. So you make the jumps out here, in the sticks, running with the local boys, because you used to be pretty good, you used to be, and you've got a hell of a lot of experience behind you, and you can count on finishing in the money. But you're losing it. The coordination's on the way out; you don't think fast any more, you don't move fast; you don't drive fast.)

A big Lincoln, dipping with the ruts, rolled by. The driver stared. I'm sorry, Buck told him. I'd like to die for you, Buddy, but I just ain't up to it; I been kind of sick, you know how it goes. But come to the track anyway; I mean, you never can tell. Maybe I'll go on my head, maybe I'll fall out and the stinking car will roll over the top of me and they'll have to get me up with a rake. It could happen.

Buck steadied the wheel with his elbows and lit the stump of his cigar. It could happen, OK, he thought. But not to me. Not to Buck Larsen. He clamped his teeth down hard on the cigar, and thought, yeah, that's what Carl Beecham always said: you got to believe it'll never happen to you. Except, Carl was wrong; he found that out--what was it?--four years ago at Bonelli, when he hit the wall and bounced off and went over.

He tightened his thick, square fingers on the taped wheel. He pulled down the shutters, fast. Whenever he'd find himself thinking about Carl, or Sandy, or Chick Snyder, or Jim Lonnergan, or any of the others, he would just pull a cord and giant shutters would come down in his mind and he would stop thinking about them. They had all been friends of his. Now they were dead, or retired and in business for themselves, and he didn't have anyone to go out and have a beer with, or maybe play cards or just fool around; he was alone; and you don't want to make a thing like that worse, do you?

So I'm alone. Lots of people are alone. Lots of people don't even have jobs not even lousy ones like this.

He told himself that he was in plenty good shape, and did not wonder--as he had once wondered--why, since he hated it, he had ever become a race driver. It was no great mystery. There'd been a dirt track in the town where he grew up. He'd started hanging around the pits, because he liked to watch the cars and listen to the noise. And he was young, but he was a pretty good mechanic anyway so he helped the drivers work on their machines. Then, he couldn't recall who it was, somebody got sick and asked him to drive. It was a thrill, and he hadn't had many thrills before. So he tried it again.

And that was it. He'd been driving ever since; it was the only thing he knew how to do, for Christ's sake. (No, that wasn't true, either. He could make a living as a mechanic.)

So why don't I? I will. I'll take a few firsts and salt the dough away and start a garage and let the other bastards risk their necks. The hell with it
.

The rain grew suddenly fierce, and he rolled up the window angrily. For almost an hour he thought of nothing but the car, mentally checking each part and making sure it was right. God knew he was handicapped enough as it was with a two-year-old engine; it took his know-how to find those extra horses, and still he was short. The other boys would be in new jobs, most of them. More torque. More top end. He'd have to fight some.

Buck slowed to 45, then to 25, and pulled up in front of a gas station. He went to the bathroom, splashed cold water over his face, wiped away some of the grime.

He went to a restaurant and spent one of his remaining six dollars on supper.

Then he took the Chevy to a hotel called The Plantation and locked it up. The rain gleamed on its wrinkled hide, wrinkled from the many battles it had waged, and made it look a little less ugly. But it was ugly, anyhow. It had a tough, weathered appearance, an appearance of great and disreputable age; and though it bore a certain resemblance to ordinary passenger cars, it was nothing of the kind. It was a stripped-down, tight-sprung, lowered, finely-tuned, balanced savage, a wild beast with a fighter's heart and a fighter's instincts. On the highway, it was a wolf among lambs; and it was only on the track that it felt free and happy and at home.

The Chevy was like Buck Larsen himself, and Buck sensed this. The two of them had been through a lot together. They had come too close too many times. But they were alive, somehow, both of them, now, and they were together, and maybe they were ugly and old and not as fast as the new jobs, but they knew some things, by God, they knew some tricks the hot-dogs would never find out.

Buck glanced at the tires, nodded, and went into the hotel. He left a call for 5:30. the old man at the desk said he wouldn't fail. Buck went to his room, which was small and hot but only cost him three dollars, and what can you expect for that?

He listened to the rain and told it, Look, I'll find second or third tomorrow, you can't stop me, I'm sorry. A man's got to eat.

He switched off the light and fell into a dark black sleep.

When he awoke, he went to the window and saw that the rain had stopped; but it had stopped within the hour, and so it didn't matter. He went out and found a place that was open and ate a light breakfast of toast and coffee.

Then he drove the Chevy the 13 miles out of town to the Soltan track. It sat in the middle of a field that would normally have been dusty but now was like a river bank, the surface slimy with black mud. The track itself was like most others: a fence of gray, rotting boards; a creaking round of hard, spintery benches; a heavy wooden crash wall; and a narrow oval of wet dirt. A big roller was busily tamping it down, but this would do no good. A few hot qualifying laps and the mud would loosen. One short heat and it would be a lake again.

Dawn had just broken, and the gray light washed over the sky. It was quiet, the roller making no sound on the dirt, the man behind the roller silent and tired. It was cold, too, but Buck stripped off his cloth jacket. He got his tools out of the trunk and laid them on the ground. He removed the car's muffler's first; then, methodically, jacked up the rear end, took off the hack left tire and examined it. He checked it for pressure, fitted it back onto the wheel and did the same with the other tires. Then he checked the wheels. Then the brakes.

Soon more cars arrived, and in a while the pits were full. When Buck finished with the Chevy, when he was sure as he could ever be that it was right and ready to go, he wiped his big hands on an oily rag and took a look at the competition.

It was going to be rougher than he'd thought. There were two brand new supercharged Fords, a 1957 fuel-injection Chevrolet, three Dodge D-500s, and a hotlooking Plymouth Fury. The remaining automobiles were more standard, several of them crash jobs, almost jalopies, the sides and top pounded out crudely.

Nineteen, in all.

And I've got to beat at least 17 of them, Buck thought. He walked over to a new Pontiac and looked inside. It was a meek job, real meek. But you can't tell. He examined the name printed on the side of the car: Tommy Linden.

Nobody. Buck put the rag away, returned to the Chevy. Several hours had passed, and soon it would be 12 o'clock, qualifying time. He'd better get some rest.

He lay down on a canvas tarpaulin and was about to close his eyes, when he saw a young man walking up to the Pontiac. They apparently hadn't heard of the No Females Allowed rule in Soltan, for a girl was with him. She was young, too; maybe 2], 22. And not hard and mannish, like most of them, but soft and light and clean. Some girls always stay clean, Buck thought. No matter what they do, where they are. If Anna-Lee had been more that way (or even a little) maybe he'd of stuck with her. But she was a dog. Why the hell do you marry a damn sloppy broad like that in the first place? God. He looked at the girl and thought of his ex-wife, then focused on the kid. Twenty-five. Handsome, brawny: he thinks he's got a lot, that one. You can usually tell. Look at his eyes.

Buck half-dozed until a loudspeaker announced time for qualifying; he sat up then and listened to the order of the numbers. Twenty-two, first. Ninety-one, second. Seven, third.

He was ninth.

People started running around in the pits; customers drifted up into the grandstands; the speaker blared; then number 22, a yellow Ford, rolled up to the line.

It roared away at the drop of the flag.

Others followed.

When he was called, Buck patted the Chevy, listened to it, and grunted. The track was getting chewed up, but it was still possible to get around quickest time. He eased off the mark slowly as the flag dropped, got up some steam on the backstretch and came thundering across the line with his foot planted. He grazed the south wall slightly on his second try, but it was nothing, only a scratch.

He went to the pits and removed his helmet in time to hear the announcer's voice: "Car number six, driven by Buck Larsen--26:15."

The crowd murmured approval. Buck decided it would be a decent gate and settled down again. The Fury went through at something over 26:15.

Then it was the Pontiac's turn.

"Car number 14, driven by Tommy Linden, up."

The gray car's pipes growled savagely as it rolled out. The track was bad, now. Really bad. Buck felt better: he had second starting position sewed up. No one could drop a hell of a lot off of 26:15 in this soup.

The Pontiac accelerated so hard at take-off that the rear almost slewed around. Easy, 14, Buck thought. Easy. It'll impress the little girl but your ass'll be at the end of the pack.