Running Wide Open

  “How are you holding up?” Kasey asked.

  Race grinned. “I could do this all night.” But he needed help with his helmet strap, and as soon as he got out of the car he planted himself on a stack of tires.

  “You gonna be okay for the main?” I asked, handing him a bottle of Gatorade.

  “Sure. My battery will be recharged by then.”

  A few guys came to talk to Race during the Super Stock heats, but by the time the Street Stock main began, the stream of well-wishers had dwindled. That made it doubly shocking when Jim slunk into our pit area.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Race took a second to shoot me a ha, I told you so look before turning to acknowledge his prodigal friend. “Good to see you, Jim.”

  Jim stood with his hands jammed awkwardly into the front pockets of his firesuit, giving Race a cautious once-over. “You’re looking good.”

  “Yeah, I’m through the worst of it. How’re you doing?”

  “All right.” Jim glanced down at the cracked asphalt of the pit road, then back at Race, who was still resting on the stack of tires, but managing to look cool doing it.

  “I feel like an ass for putting this off so long,” Jim said, “but I want to apologize. I shoulda been there. I let you down.”

  Race smiled. “You’re here now.”

  Guilt and disbelief glinted in Jim’s eyes. I knew just how he felt, being let off the hook when he didn’t deserve it. For a second, I could almost sympathize.

  “I damn near killed you,” Jim said quietly.

  “No,” Race said. “I damn near killed me. You just had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone tells me there was nothing you coulda done, and I believe that.”

  An incredulous half-smile flitted across Jim’s face. He shook his head. “You’re somethin’ else.”

  Race grunted, dismissing the comment. “So what was that crap, letting me get around you in the heat?”

  Even in the dim light, a flush of shame stood out on Jim’s cheeks. He shrugged and looked away.

  “Well, it better not happen again. I’ve got new door bars and the best helmet money can buy. You’re not gonna hurt me.”

  Jim laughed, but before he could say anything he was interrupted by Ted Greene’s growl. “Let’s line ’em up, Sportsmen!”

  “You heard the man,” Race said, struggling to hide the effort it took to push himself to his feet. “And I better see some serious driving out of you.”

  As Jim walked away, I shook my head at Race’s capacity to forgive. Much as I couldn’t fathom it, I admired it. I didn’t think I’d ever be capable of that kind of compassion.

  Fatigue was beginning to sap what coordination Race had, so Kasey helped him with his helmet and belts. “Thirty laps is a lot to ask of yourself, especially this late at night,” she said. “Just remember no one will look down on you if you drop out early.”

  Race reached for the ignition switch. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You’re wasting your breath,” I told Kasey as the Dart rumbled away.

  “I know, but I had to try.”

  I turned toward the back pit exit. As I watched the cars line up, my confidence dropped a few hundred RPMs. What if Race couldn’t do this? Even worse, what if he couldn’t face up to the fact? In spite of what he’d told us about making safety his first priority, pride could easily wedge its way under his throttle and keep him from backing off.

  The Street Stock winner collected his trophy and pulled into the pits. Ted Greene motioned the Sportsman class out onto the track. They circled around to the front stretch and parked on the start-finish line, then the announcer launched into introductions, rattling off car numbers and sponsor names in a machine-gun blast of words. He made it back to the final row in under a minute.

  “And in the 8 car, from Eugene, Oregon, sponsored by Eugene Custom Classics, Rick’s University Video, and Willamette Electrical Supply—he shouldn’t even be out here tonight folks but why let a little thing like a near fatal injury stop him—RACE MORGAN!”

  The crowd went nuclear, completely overpowering the announcer as he went on to sing Addamsen’s praises.

  The announcer finished his spiel by commanding the drivers to start their engines. With a ground-shaking roar, they obeyed. The pack pulled forward, building momentum as it circled the asphalt. Then, snap, the green flag was out and fourteen cars engaged in a free-for-all heading into turn one. Addamsen got the jump on Race, slipping between Denny and Tom Carey. Following his lead, Race shoehorned his car in behind the black Camaro.

  For several laps, chaos ruled. Then speed and experience reshuffled the deck, sending the slower drivers to the back of the pack. Race clawed his way up to sixth place only to lose the position to Denny. Addamsen left both of them behind. By lap ten, he’d taken the lead.

  During the next dozen laps, Denny picked off the slower cars, working into third place behind Schrader and Addamsen. Race couldn’t keep up. He’d gotten stuck behind Johnny Quinn, a mid-pack driver, and was having no luck finding a way around him.

  “He’s getting tired,” Kasey noted.

  “Nah, he’s still got plenty of fight in him,” I said, even though I knew damn well that under ordinary circumstances, Race would’ve got around Quinn within two laps. “He’ll pull out a top-five finish, just you watch.”

  It wasn’t like it would take a miracle. He was still sixth, and there were eight laps to go. Then Tom Carey, who was always a strong runner, slipped into seventh and started banging at Race’s back door.

  “Now it’s time to start worrying.”

  Almost before the words were out of my mouth, Benettendi, a lapped driver just ahead of Quinn, got squirrelly coming out of turn two. He nailed the guy he was trying to pass. Both cars careened down the backstretch in a cloud of tire smoke that stank of burning rubber. Quinn avoided them by darting down low, but Race was too far to the outside to follow. Pulling wide and hanging two tires out into the weeds, he squeezed past Benettendi with a grating metallic shriek. So much for that new door skin.

  As Race tore past the second car, the driver overcorrected, swinging abruptly to the right. His bumper dinged the Dart’s rear quarter panel, knocking Race sideways in front of Carey. But before the 8 car could spin around completely, Race let off the gas. The tires bit, he gunned the engine, and the Dart rocketed into turn three to overtake Quinn.

  A half-step behind the action, my heart went into jack-hammer mode as the spicy perfume of wild mint hit my nose. “Damn!” I said, trying to shake off the sudden adrenalin surge.

  Then the flagman whipped out the yellow.

  “Not good,” said Kasey.

  No kidding. The lineup would revert to what it had been before the wreck, costing Race the position he’d just gained. Even worse, an extended caution at this point would siphon his reserves, leaving his tank near empty for the restart.

  The pack slowed to a crawl, making a wide sweep around the mayhem on the backstretch. Benettendi managed to get his car rolling, but a flat and a punctured radiator sidelined the guy who’d hit Race. In addition, two other drivers had skidded on the spilled water, crashing to add to the destruction.

  Five full laps passed before the tow trucks got the damaged cars off the track. It took the clean-up crew another four to clear the debris and spread cat litter on the puddles.

  “Could they move any slower?” I grumbled as one of the officials directed the line of cars through the clay granules to clear the dust. Race must be running on sheer determination by now.

  After three more laps, the chief steward nodded. The flagman held up the tightly rolled green. Cinching up like beads on a thread, the field of cars growled down the backstretch. I remembered what Race had told me the week before about restarts. The drivers had to hold their positions until the leader took the green, but after that, it was anything goes. This would be Race’s best chance to gain some ground.

  The green flag flashed. Addamsen’s Camaro sur
ged out of turn four. Race, noticing from his spot on the backstretch, charged past Quinn on the outside.

  “Yes!” I shouted. Fifth place. Now if he could just hold onto it.

  Easier said than done. Tom Carey had also gotten the jump on Quinn. His white Camaro might’ve been welded to the Dart’s bumper, for as close as it followed. I sucked in a breath and held it. Just one screw-up, one moment of weakness, and it would all be over.

  In those last laps, Race’s strategy changed. He quit pursuing the fourth place car and put all his effort into keeping his position. Carey hounded the Dart through the corners, pulling up to within half a car-length on the straightaways. But Race held his ground. The checkered flag fell, and he crossed the finish line with Carey still trailing.

  “I told you he could do it!” I swung around to hug Kasey.

  The Dart growled down the pit road and pulled up beside us. It sported a gash that extended the length of the driver’s door and bisected the duct-taped 8.

  “I don’t know whether to congratulate you or give you hell for staying out there,” Kasey said, lowering the window net.

  Race laughed. “I think I’d prefer it if you just handed me my Gatorade.”

  “You know you’re going to regret this tomorrow.”

  Race flashed her an exhausted grin. “Wanna bet?”

  He had to rest before climbing out of the car, but by the time the Super Stock main was over, he’d perked up enough to greet the fans that poured into the pits. The usual autographs were out of the question. Race could hardly hold onto his Gatorade bottle, let alone a pen. But Kasey had anticipated that problem, getting him to sign some photos of the Dart in advance. Even though the signature was barely legible, none of the kids swarming around him seemed to care.

  I stepped back from the melee, spotting a familiar figure picking her way through the hard dirt ruts of the infield. Grandma. Wearing white cotton slacks, her best sandals, and that ever-present dignified posture, she looked out of place in the crowd.

  “Hey, Grandma,” I called as I jogged up to meet her. “Race is sure gonna be surprised to see you here.”

  “Not as much as you might think. He left a ticket for me at the front gate.”

  “Seriously?” I felt my mouth stretch into a grin. “So what did you think of the races?”

  A pale glow from the track lights illuminated the grimace on my grandmother’s face. “They scared me half to death.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but you gotta admit, Race really kicked some butt.”

  Grandma raised an eyebrow at my choice of words. “He does seem to have a knack for it,” she admitted. “Though I’m not sure I’ll ever really understand the appeal.”

  I took her arm and pulled her toward the Dart. “What’s there to understand?” I said. “It’s in his blood.”

  And in that moment I realized with absolute certainty that it was in mine, too.

  Free Excerpt: Getting Sideways

  Engines howl. The scent of racing fuel, sharp and sweet, fills my nose. I squint across the infield, trying to make out what’s happening. Tom Carey’s Camaro—stark white under the sickly glow of speedway lights—clips the corner of my uncle’s back bumper. And then Race’s car is in the air. The engine revs. The underside of the Dart is exposed for one timeless second before all four tires slam down on asphalt. Out of nowhere, Jim Davis’s car appears and smashes into the yellow 8 on the driver’s door.

  Bang! Something hit the desk in front of me and I jumped. Heart pounding, I blinked at the latest issue of our school paper, The Axe.

  “Wake up,” Megan—the editor and my awesomely hot girlfriend—said, teasing me with a smile. “Your story’s on page four.”

  Under any other circumstances, that smile would put me totally at her mercy, but I was too shook up to do anything but flip open the paper with a trembling hand. Damn. It was bad enough the dream had to invade my nights, stealing my sleep. Couldn’t I at least get a little peace at school?

  But the tired feeling that had burned a hole through my brain all day disappeared when I saw my first published story, complete with byline. Foreign Exchange Students Bring Culture to South Eugene, by Cody Everett. Pride shivered through me. Race was gonna love this.

  We spent the class distributing papers, and that rush stayed with me the whole time. When the bell rang to end seventh period, I took one last peek at my story before tucking it into my folder, grabbing my backpack, and heading outside.

  After a cool, foggy morning, the October sunshine was like discovering half a bag of M&Ms in an old jacket pocket. It convinced me to walk to the auto restoration shop where I worked three afternoons a week.

  With my school just north of Amazon Park, I could take the winding path that led along the slough for most of the sixteen blocks. The cottonwoods were starting to turn yellow, and the sun, which had warmed the air to near seventy, was baking a sweet scent out of the first of their fallen leaves. I could’ve really gotten into the walk if exhaustion hadn’t hit halfway through, making me sorry I hadn’t taken the bus.

  I trudged on until I reached 33rd then let my eyes fall shut as I waited for the walk signal. Memories of the nightmare flickered across the back of my closed lids, the same sequence as always. The only time the dream was different was when it was about a funeral.

  I opened my eyes to chase away the images, but I’d seen them so many times in the past three months, two weeks, and three days, they were permanently etched into my brain.

  The light changed. I sprinted across Hilyard, jogging the last block to Eugene Custom Classics. The best way to forget the whole mess would be to replace it with something else—like showing Race my story. After all the nagging he’d done to get me to sign up for journalism, he’d be jazzed to see my name in print.

  My mood took a nosedive when I saw that my uncle’s van wasn’t parked out in front of the shop. If Race was running errands, he could be gone until closing.

  I detoured through the office, tossed my backpack and leather jacket onto the scruffy couch, and went to hunt down Kasey. She owned the place and should’ve been my uncle’s girlfriend, but . . .

  “Hey, Kasey,” I said when I found her lying under the midsection of a ’63 Thunderbird. “When’s Race gonna be back? He run to get parts or something?”

  “No, he went home. He had a headache.”

  My stomach pinched in on itself. “He left with the quarterly payroll taxes still due?” Race had been working on straightening out Kasey’s business records for months. One of his biggest gripes was how she always filed her taxes late and had to pay penalties. If he was letting that slide, he must be feeling pretty lousy.

  “He finished up this morning and dropped the paperwork off with the accountant on his way to the house.”

  I stood staring down at the half of Kasey that wasn’t under the T-bird.

  “He’s fine, Cody.”

  “I know that!” Instantly, I was ticked at myself for letting my worries get away from me. Again. Kasey had enough to deal with. She didn’t need me giving her crap.

  As usual, she ignored the outburst. “Why don’t you get started on those parts over by the solvent tank? There’s at least a couple of hours worth of work there—and wear the gloves this time.” Kasey was always big on safety, even before the wreck.

  “All right, all right.” Much as I hated how those big floppy things slid around on my hands, I didn’t like the way the solvent made my skin go tingly, either. I considered showing her my story—Kasey had been reading my stuff as long as Race had, and she shared my passion for books—but I didn’t want to interrupt her in the middle of a job.

  I snagged a shop coat from the rack by the office and pulled it on over my I’m marching to a different accordion T-shirt. When I flipped the switch to start the flow of solvent, the acrid, chemical scent drifted up to wrinkle my nose. In spite of it, the act of washing parts always soothed me. Scrubbing the nooks and crannies to clean away grease was a mindless sort of work, and it gave
me time to think. There was something comforting about doing a job that produced dramatic results with so little skill or effort.

  As I scoured black gunk from a small block Chevy intake manifold, I tried to figure out the details for a short story I was working on. But I was too tired to concentrate, and each time I focused my thoughts on the plot, they zipped off on their own, taking me back to the end of June. Why the hell couldn’t I put that night behind me like everyone else had?

  “Are you almost finished?”

  Kasey’s voice startled me. I jumped, sloshing solvent down the front of my shop coat and nearly dousing my new Converse high tops. As I turned away from the tank, her blue eyes met mine, full of sympathy. That look always made me feel like I should’ve done a better job of keeping my problems to myself.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Kasey said, squeezing my arm above the top of a long rubber glove. “Headaches are perfectly normal after a traumatic brain injury—you know that. Race is exactly where he should be in his recovery.”

  I stared down at the dusty concrete. “I wanted to show him my newspaper article, that’s all.”

  Kasey seemed to think the headaches bothered me because I was worried Race might still keel over. It wasn’t that. At least not too much. I just couldn’t stand the way they took me back to that night.

  Kasey’s fingers tightened around my arm. “He’ll still appreciate your story in the morning. Why don’t you leave it on the kitchen table and I’ll read it when I get home?”

  I nodded, not looking up. “Sure.”

  “It’s six o’clock,” she added. “Jake’s heading out. He says he’ll drop you off. Unless you want to wait for me?”

  I slid my foot back and forth against the smooth concrete. On Wednesdays she worked late because Race and I were normally at his shop, messing around with my Galaxie.

  “How long are you gonna be?” I asked.

  “Another hour or two.”

  “I guess I’ll go now.”

  Kasey dropped her hand to dig some money out of her pocket. She unfolded the bills—all faced the same direction, grouped by denomination—and pulled out a ten. “Stop and grab yourself something for dinner,” she said, handing it to me. “There’s no sense cooking just for yourself.”