Running Wide Open

“No, kid, it’s just . . .” Race’s voice trailed off. He rubbed his face as if he’d suddenly been stricken with the monster of all headaches.

  “Well, that’s what it is, right? You don’t think I’m old enough. But it’s perfectly okay that you did it.”

  “Cody,” Race pleaded.

  “What the hell is it with people? Don’t you think kids have any rights?”

  “Listen—”

  “No, I’m not gonna listen! I’m not a baby! Either it’s right or it’s wrong. It’s not okay just because you were older!” I kicked his drafting table. An assortment of pens and pencils fell off, rattling to the floor.

  “Okay, you’re right!” Race said. “It was just as bad when I did it. But you can’t take these chances. You’ve already had one run-in with the cops.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe I like having you around.”

  I glowered at Race across the living room. Then, slowly, I sank down into the laundry chair. He liked having me around? I mean, I knew he didn’t mind me being there, but he actually wanted me?

  Race looked steadily at me. “You can’t keep doing this, Cody—taking stupid chances and losing your temper. Actions have consequences. You can’t go around doing whatever you want and expecting to get off scot-free.”

  It was too much—the seriousness in his eyes, the reasonable tone of voice, the admission that he liked having me around. I couldn’t look at him. “So . . . what do you want me to do?” I asked, staring down at my Converse high tops. “Put it back?”

  “Hell no. You’d get busted for sure. But if you ever do something like this again I’ll kick your ass.” Race flopped back down in the tangle of blankets on the couch. “Now go to bed.”

  I got up and headed for my room. Behind me, Race muttered in exasperation. “When people pawn a teenager off on you, they oughta send along an owner’s manual.”

  Chapter 9

  Cool as Race seemed to be, I wasn’t ready to let him in on my secrets, so I did my writing down by the river or while he was at the shop. I never let him see me with a book, either. But a couple of days after the street sign incident, the front door opened without the usual warning rattle of the van pulling up in the driveway.

  Startled, I jammed the book I was reading down between the seat cushions. Race leaned through the doorway, too preoccupied to notice.

  “Hey, kid, you wanna give me a hand? I need help pushing the van.”

  “Why?”

  Race grinned sheepishly. “I ran out of gas.”

  “And of course you didn’t drive past a single station on the way home.”

  “Just help me get it out of the road, then you can give me all the crap you want.”

  Rain sprinkled us as we hiked out to the main drag, where the van sat in the turn lane, blocking anyone who might want to make a left into the trailer park.

  “Let’s just get it into the driveway,” Race said, “and I’ll walk down to the gas station when the rain quits.”

  Sure, that would be easy. It was all we could do to get the thing moving. Then, when the front wheels hit the ramp where the street met the sidewalk, the van balked and threatened to roll back on us. If I didn’t wind up with a hernia, it would be a miracle.

  “Good enough,” Race hollered as we pushed his monstrosity up in front of the dumpster. The skies unloaded on us before we could make it back to the trailer.

  “There’s this little thing on the dash called a gas gauge,” I told Race as I sprinted up the steps. “You might want to consider looking at it some time.”

  “Doesn’t work.”

  “What, you can build a race car, but you can’t fix a simple thing like that?”

  “Don’t you ever give it a rest?” Race asked. “I swear you could try the patience of a saint.”

  “You’re the one who said that if I helped push the van I could give you all the crap I wanted.”

  Sighing loudly, Race sank onto the couch and began rifling through the junk on the coffee table. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it. I cringed as he proceeded to hunt through the wadded up blankets, inches from the spot I’d stashed my paperback.

  “You seen the remote?” he asked

  “Uh, no.” I scanned the room distractedly in hopes I might spot it before he proceeded too much further with his search.

  Race reached down between the cushions. His eyebrows arched upward in surprise when he pulled out my book. “Hey, I remember reading this.”

  For a moment shock overshadowed my sense of self-preservation. “You read To Kill a Mockingbird?”

  “Sure. In freshman English. I know it may come as a surprise, but I am literate.” He held the book out to me, resuming his search without another word, and I realized I’d been given the perfect alibi. As long as school was in session, Race wasn’t gonna look twice at me for reading.

  Once I learned I could hide behind the guise of studying, I stopped worrying about Race discovering I was a freak. I even quit being paranoid about working on my stories when he was around. As a result, every time he caught me with my notebook, he got more curious about what I was doing.

  “You’re still working on that assignment?” he’d say. “What is it, a journal or something?”

  “Notes for the CIA,” I’d tell him. Or, “Addamsen’s paying me to document your racing secrets.” I knew he’d never sneak a look. He was too pathetically honest. But I kept my notebook stashed whenever I wasn’t writing in it, anyway.

  That Saturday we got rained out again. I took up hermitage in my room with Neal Shusterman’s latest book, not because I was afraid of Race seeing me with it, but because his gloomy attitude was too contagious.

  “It’s just a race!” I said. “They’ll have another one next week.”

  “Someday you’ll understand, kid.”

  “God, I hope not.” The day I let a bunch of beat-up cars rule my life was the day I’d throw myself in front of a bus.

  * * *

  One of the best things about living with Race was hanging out with Kasey. She seemed to know a little bit about everything, and if she didn’t know something, she knew where to find out about it.

  Kasey had breezed through high school in three years, then college in another three. She’d designed some kind of timber processing machinery in her final year, sold it to a logging company, and made a pile of money. That money was what she’d used to start her business, Eugene Custom Classics. Race called it a restoration shop, but Kasey explained that she also modified old cars, swapping engines or making changes to the bodies. And lots of people brought their cars to her for general repairs, since it seemed to be getting harder to find mechanics who’d work on stuff from before 1970.

  Race took me over to Kasey’s shop a lot the first month I was in Eugene, but it wasn’t until the beginning of June that I got to see her house. It was a Friday night, and she was having a barbeque.

  “There’s a certain irony here,” Race explained as we drove through a woodsy neighborhood on the butte behind the University. “This street sort of peters out a little ways past Kasey’s, but it starts up again on the other side of 30th Avenue, and that’s where my parents live. In the ritzy part of town, naturally.”

  “I take it we won’t be going there any time soon.”

  “Not hardly.”

  That was fine by me. While I had to give Grandma credit for taking the time to come see me once a year, I’d never looked forward to her visits. Three days of etiquette lessons, forced cultural experiences, and mind-numbing shopping expeditions were not my ideal way to spend a summer weekend.

  Kasey’s place was all brick and cedar. A long staircase led from the driveway to a deck that ran the entire front length of the house, providing an awesome view of downtown Eugene.

  Jim was there when we arrived, sitting at a picnic table with his kid and his wife Laurie.

  “Cool shirt,” Robbie said.

  “Thanks.” I’d found it at a crazy little shop on 13th near the U of
O bookstore. It read, Don’t make me release the flying monkeys. Amazingly, Race had started giving me an allowance after the pizza incident, providing me with funds to supplement my wardrobe. I guess he wasn’t convinced I wouldn’t forge a check. His generosity surprised me a little because he could hardly afford to pay his bills, and I knew he’d never ask my dad to send more money.

  “Cody, would you like something to drink?” Kasey asked. “The cooler’s full of pop. And I picked up some Guinness for you, Race. It’s in the fridge.”

  “I say, will we be having the Guinness tonight?” mocked Jim in the worst Irish brogue ever to pass through human lips. He held up his Budweiser as if to offer a toast.

  “Forgive me for not being able to choke down that swill you drink,” Race said. “It’s a damn shame they allow people to waste good hops that way.” He went to collect his beer, nearly tripping over an enormous tabby cat that scrambled out the screen door under his feet.

  “This is Winston,” Robbie informed me, leaning over to drag the animal up onto his lap.

  I tapped a cigarette out of my pack and was about to light up when I saw Kasey frowning at me. She never said anything about my smoking, she just eyeballed me like I’d blown a spelling bee by messing up on the word “dog.” I tucked the Camel filter away and helped myself to a Pepsi.

  “So how are things down at the shop?” Jim asked Kasey. “You ever get it sorted out with that employee who was giving you trouble? What was his name—Harley?”

  “As a matter of fact, I had to let him go yesterday.”

  “So now you’ve just got Jake,” Race said. He sat down beside me at the table.

  “And a Mustang that needs to be wrapped up by Friday. It’s going to be a busy week. But if I work through the weekend, I think I can manage.”

  “You need some help?” Race asked.

  “I can’t ask you to bail me out. You’ve got customers of your own.”

  “You’re not asking, I’m offering.”

  Kasey smiled. “And I appreciate it. If I run into trouble, I’ll give you a call.”

  A car pulled into the driveway and a couple minutes later Denny and his family joined us on the deck. It surprised me that Denny hung out with Jim and Race, because he seemed to be a lot older—probably forty. His kids were younger than Robbie, though. I hoped nobody was expecting me to entertain the little ankle biters.

  As it turned out, they were pretty good at entertaining themselves. In fact, it looked like they were having more fun than I was. While they ran around the property playing hide and seek, I hung out on the deck with the adults. Naturally, all they talked about was racing. I had to amuse myself by plowing through a bowl of Doritos and trying to sneak occasional swigs off Race’s beer.

  “So what’s this rumor I hear?” asked Jim, tipping his chair back on two legs.

  For the third time, Race slid his bottle of Guinness out of my reach. “Which rumor is that?”

  “The one about Addamsen having you stuffed into the wall tomorrow night.”

  Kasey looked up from the grill where she was flipping burgers and chicken. Winston wound around her legs. I could identify with the cat—my stomach was growling at the rich, smoky smell of the meat.

  “I haven’t heard anything about it,” Race said.

  “The way I heard it, he was gonna pay Tom Carey fifty bucks to do it,” Jim continued.

  “Fifty bucks!” said Race. “I’m only worth fifty bucks? Hell, when Chris Ackerman got stuffed into the wall last season everyone said Tom got paid a hundred.”

  Kasey didn’t even crack a smile at Race’s comment. Closing the grill, she came over to sit with us. “Where did you hear about this?”

  “After practice Wednesday night,” Jim said.

  “For heaven’s sake,” said his wife, Laurie, “the man was drunk. You know how he gets when he’s drunk.”

  “He didn’t look any different than usual to me.” Jim’s comment earned a chuckle from everyone but Kasey.

  “So what did he say?” Race asked.

  “Oh, he just mentioned that crack you made awhile back, about hooking up the other four spark plug wires.” Laurie was obviously trying to dismiss it. “He had an audience, and too much to drink, so he was bragging.”

  “If it bothered him that much, you’d think he’d have taken me out the following week. He had plenty of opportunity.”

  “Well, everyone knows that’s not what’s really got his knickers in a twist,” Denny said. “Fact is, you shamed him good, taking the points lead. But he’s got better sense than to wreck you.”

  “That’s why he’s hiring Tom to do it,” Jim said.

  Laurie smacked her husband’s shoulder. “Just stop! You’re not funny.” She glanced at Kasey, then at Race, like she was trying to read whether they were the least bit freaked by the news. “Nothing’s going to come of it,” she said. “You hear this sort of thing all the time.”

  “You scared, Race?” I asked, smirking at him.

  “Hell, no. And leave that beer alone.”

  “Laurie’s right,” said Kasey. “Nothing will come of it. And if it does, Race is perfectly capable of dealing with whatever happens on the track.” She got up to check the food again. I studied her as she piled the meat onto two plates. Her expression was as calm and businesslike as ever, but there was something in it, some little hint of preoccupation, that told me she was worried. And Race thought she didn’t care.

  On the way home that night, I brought it up, but Race laughed it off.

  “Kasey doesn’t worry, and even if she did, it wouldn’t be about some stupid rumor.”

  “I’m telling you, she likes you. She bought you Guinness. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “Yeah, good taste on her part. Generosity and friendship. Anything beyond that is your imagination, kid.”

  I gave up. She could probably send him an engraved wedding invitation, and he’d find a way to write it off.

  Chapter 10

  The following evening, Addamsen took fast time. It must’ve appeased him because nothing out of line happened in the trophy dash, which Race won. Nothing much happened in the heat, either, other than Denny’s carburetor going south. Addamsen took that race, bringing himself back up even in the points.

  “You gonna get the lead back in the main?” I asked Race a little later. He was sitting on his toolbox, sketching one of the Street Stocks that sat across the pit road from us. Taking advantage of the fact that Kasey had wandered over to the concession stand, I lit up a cigarette.

  “I’m gonna try.” Race coughed and waved away the cloud of smoke I’d accidentally sent in his direction. “That is, if you haven’t killed me off by then, getting toxic waste in my airspace.”

  “Whiner,” I said. But I blew my next lungful away from him. “So, you think Addamsen’s gonna try anything?”

  “Nah, it’s just a rumor.”

  “But a few weeks ago he said—”

  “Kid, people shoot their mouths off all the time. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “He seemed pretty serious to me.”

  Race gave me a speculative look, a grin slinking slowly across his face. “You’re worried about it.”

  “I am not!”

  “You think he’s gonna try to do me in. You actually care.”

  My face went hot and I looked away. “Get over yourself.”

  Before my uncle could taunt me any more, Denny stepped up beside us, smelling strongly of that high-tech gasoline. “Hey, Race, you still got your old carb?”

  “Sure. If I can find it.” Race closed the sketchbook and got up to root through the parts boxes. “Here it is.”

  “Thanks, I’ll get it back to you next week.”

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked as Denny rushed off. “What if he beats you tonight?”

  “Then I’ll congratulate him on driving a good race.”

  “But—” it didn’t make any sense. Why would you want to help the competition, especially if you wer
e so close to losing the points lead?

  “Look, kid, it’s just the way things are. Racers help each other out. If I needed something, he’d be the first guy to give it to me. Hell, I’ve seen him lend out his spare race car so people could keep up their points when they wrecked.”

  “He’s got a spare race car?”

  “Yep, Big Red, a ’69 Chevelle. It’s the car he drove before he built his Camaro.”

  For a few seconds I pondered how fanatical a person had to be to have a whole extra car. Then something occurred to me. “How can that carburetor even work on Denny’s car if he’s not running a Dodge?”

  “Because it’s not stock, it’s a Holley. All the Sportsmen run the same kind of carb.”

  I shook my head. “I’m never gonna figure out this racing stuff.”

  Race laughed. “I didn’t think you wanted to.”

  * * *

  The Street Stock main took forever. Every time they got the race restarted someone wiped out. Usually when things were slow, Race and I tossed around his blue Nerf football, but the Sportsmen were already lined up, so I was on my own. I cruised over to BS with the paramedics.

  “Back for more stories of blood and gore?” Alex asked as I boosted myself up onto the hearse’s fender.

  “I thought you said you wouldn’t talk about that stuff.”

  “I won’t.” Alex checked out my T-shirt. “‘As is.’ Cute. I need to get one of those for Steve.”

  “One of what?” asked Steve, returning from the concession stand with a couple of hot dogs, a Pepsi, a bag of Fritos, and a red licorice rope.

  Alex indicated my shirt.

  “Hey,” Steve said. “I might be fat, but at least all the parts are in working order.”

  “Are you trying to insinuate something?” asked Alex.

  “Me? Of course not. Why, is there something to insinuate?” Steve hefted himself up beside me. The fender sank a couple inches under the added weight.

  While we waited for the Street Stocks to finish, I listened to Steve and Alex swap insults. There was one final wreck—a nasty collision in turn three that sent the fragrance of wild mint wafting through the pits—and I had to hop off the fender so the paramedics could zip onto the track to check things out. They were back almost immediately.

  “No dead bodies,” Steve reported. “No severed limbs or spurting blood. You disappointed?”

  “Only a little.”

  “You two are sick,” Alex said.