Running Wide Open

  “You must be the infamous nephew,” he said in a voice almost as big as he was. He held out a huge, grubby paw. “Name’s Denny Brisco. I’ve known your uncle since before he could see over the steering wheel.”

  I shook his hand. “I’m Cody.”

  Denny grinned. It wasn’t one of those three-hundred-watters that Race could blind you with, but it was pretty close. As he opened up his mouth to say something else, a harsh voice interrupted.

  “Morgan!”

  The shout came from a guy in a black firesuit a little ahead of us in line. The salt and pepper hair and beard that outlined his weathered face made me guess he must be pushing fifty.

  “Yeah?” Race said.

  The guy pointed a Hamm’s beer cup at my uncle. “You were damn lucky tonight.”

  “And how’s that?”

  “If I hadn’t blown that tire in the heat, you’d still be seven points behind me.”

  “Six,” said Race.

  The guy seemed momentarily stumped by the correction. “Well, you’re lucky you got the chance to make ’em up.”

  “Lay off, Addamsen,” said Denny.

  “Yeah,” Jim added. “I didn’t see you having any tire problems in the main. What’s your excuse there?”

  A couple of guys hooted. Addamsen muttered something under his breath. The driver ahead of him finished at the pay-off window, and Addamsen took the guy’s place, making out like he was too busy signing the sheet to concern himself with the rest of us.

  “Next week we’ll see,” he said, brandishing his cup at Race again as he turned to walk off. “You just wait till next week.”

  “Hell, if you’re gonna get serious, maybe I oughta hook up those other four plug wires,” Race said.

  Denny chuckled and slapped Race on the back with a hand that could have leveled an elephant. “You tell him, buddy. You drove a damned good race.” He stepped up to the window and signed the sheet, then picked up his envelope. “’Course that means there ain’t as much money in here as I might like.”

  Race grinned as he squeezed past to collect his own payoff.

  “So are we gonna see you at the Little R tonight?” Denny asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Good. You can buy my dinner.”

  Laughter erupted around us.

  “Hell, Denny,” Race said, giving the guy a rueful look, “it’s not like I just won Darlington.”

  More laughter.

  Denny winked at us. “I’ll be lookin’ for ya, Race.”

  Something told me he wouldn’t be the only one. Addamsen watched us over his shoulder as he descended the bleachers. The thunder in his expression made me really glad that I didn’t race in the Limited Sportsman class.

  Chapter 4

  Even though it was after eleven when we left the speedway, Race dragged me to a cafe called the Little R. Kasey followed in the Charger.

  Trucks with car trailers filled the parking lot, overflowing into the business across the street. Inside, the place was packed full of guys in firesuits and women and kids wearing T-shirts that advertised their favorite driver.

  Race motioned to a booth that backed up to the one occupied by Jim and his family. I waited to see where Kasey would sit then slid in beside her, earning a raised eyebrow from my uncle as he settled in across from us.

  A scrawny, dark-haired kid, maybe eight years old, scaled the back of the booth and wedged himself between Race and the wall.

  “Robbie Davis!” scolded the woman sitting across from Jim. “You sit your butt right down, and don’t ever let me catch you doing that again!”

  Giggling, the rug rat slithered southward until his chin was resting on the tabletop.

  Jim reached over the back of the seat to ruffle his hair. “Where’d that traitor son of mine go?”

  Robbie snickered.

  “Well, Morgan, it looks like you’ve got yourself a kid.”

  “Yeah,” Race agreed. “That’s seems to be happening to me a lot these days.”

  Robbie beamed at my uncle. “Got any quarters?” he asked.

  Race stood to check his pockets, plopped two coins on the table, then ducked out of the way when Robbie snatched them up and bolted for a candy dispenser by the door. As Race resettled himself, the waitress came by distributing menus. I opened mine with interest. The speedway burger I’d eaten earlier was feeling pretty lonely all by itself in the depths of my stomach.

  “Order whatever you want, kid,” Race told me. “But don’t expect to make a habit of it. I don’t win all the time.”

  “And it’s a good thing,” said Jim. “If you did, you’d probably wake up one morning to find my son camped out on your doorstep.”

  Robbie returned with a handful of fruit-shaped candy and shot his dad a sassy grin as he waited for Race to let him back into the booth.

  “So how much is it worth to win a main event?” I asked, looking at Kasey.

  “I believe it’s around three hundred dollars this season.”

  “Cool. I guess I’ll have the steak, then.”

  “Just one?” asked Race, swiping a lime green candy from the pile in front of Robbie. “Are you sure that’s gonna be enough?”

  While we were waiting for our food, Robbie slid a napkin and a red felt pen in front of Race.

  “Draw something,” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “Surprise me.”

  Race scribbled on the napkin. Within seconds a cartoon emerged of the black #1 Camaro stranded a few feet from the finish line. Steam shimmered up from its hood as Addamsen’s fist shook from the driver’s window.

  Jim, who was watching over Race’s shoulder, chuckled. “In your dreams,” he said.

  Race finished the sketch and pushed it toward Robbie.

  “Cool,” the kid said, a grin sliding over his face.

  An image flashed momentarily through my mind. A pencil drawing of a 1970 Superbird. Something suspiciously like jealousy swelled inside me, but I smothered it. Why should I care who Race buddied up to? I eyeballed the little suck-up, but he was too busy studying the cartoon to notice.

  “My kid must have a couple dozen of those damned things pinned on his wall at home,” said Jim.

  “When Race is a famous Winston Cup driver his drawings are gonna be worth a million dollars,” Robbie informed us. He folded the napkin and stuck it in his pocket.

  “In your dreams,” I muttered, echoing his dad.

  * * *

  Our food came, and I dug into my steak, absently listening to the conversation. It had drifted to the topic of sponsorship. Drivers financed their addiction by weasling money out of business owners in exchange for plastering that company’s name on their race car. Apparently, this wasn’t something that was easy to do.

  I looked at Kasey. “So what made a successful business woman such as yourself wanna team up with the likes of ol’ Speed here?” I asked, waving my fork at Race.

  Kasey toyed with a tomato in her chef’s salad as she considered the question. “Oh, he just impressed me, once.”

  “Impressed you?” Jim quipped. “Race did that?” He looked at my uncle and shook his head.

  “In the Enduro two years ago,” said Kasey.

  “Oh, yeah,” Race said, “you decided to sponsor me that same night. That impressed you?”

  “Hell, Morgan, I think that one even impressed Addamsen,” said Jim.

  I skewered my steak with my fork, lifting it and tearing a chunk off with my teeth. “What’s an Enduro?”

  Jim laughed. “Someone’s idea of a bad joke, if ya ask me.”

  I glanced at Kasey, knowing she’d give me a real answer.

  “It’s a long race, usually about a hundred and fifty or two hundred laps,” she said. “But the drivers aren’t allowed to make any modifications to their cars. All they can do is strip them of the glass and interior.”

  “That’s supposed to be impressive?”

  “Not generally,” Kasey said, “but it is an opportunity for the a
verage person to race. And the purse is a thousand dollars.”

  “Radical,” I said. “So, what happened?”

  Kasey hesitated, casting a look at Race that was a little too sentimental to be purely professional. I wondered what the real story was between them. I had a pretty strong suspicion Race had the hots for her, but Kasey was harder to read.

  “Well, your uncle was driving a Pinto—”

  Laughter derailed my attempt to swallow, and a piece of steak caught in my throat.

  “It might help if you chewed first,” Race suggested.

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  Kasey raised an eyebrow at me but continued her story. “He was driving a Pinto, and actually doing fairly well with it. Out of fifty cars, he and two others were the only ones on the lead lap. Race was in third place.”

  “In a Pinto.” I shook my head.

  “The fourth place car was two laps down,” Kasey continued, “and the rest of the pack was even further back. There was really no reason why Race shouldn’t have finished third. No one else could have caught up to him.”

  “But someone did,” I guessed.

  “Nah, kid, some over-anxious punk spun me out.”

  “On lap 198,” Kasey added, “which meant there were only two laps left. The Pinto went sailing off the top of turn three and high-centered. Race managed to dislodge it by shifting into reverse, but when he tried to put it back in first, the linkage apparently jammed.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “He finished the race in reverse.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “She’s telling the truth,” said Jim.

  “In reverse?”

  Jim nodded.

  “He couldn’t get up to a competitive speed,” Kasey said, “but he was two laps ahead, so it really didn’t matter. All he had to do was keep out of the way of the remaining cars—there were about twenty still running—and finish the race.”

  “So, did he?”

  “Almost. On the last lap, as Race was coming out of turn four, the fourth place car caught up with him. The driver tried to pass on the inside, but he came out of the corner a bit too fast and his car began to fishtail. He hit the Pinto in the right front fender. Race must have seen it coming because he steered into it. Instead of spinning him off to the side, the other car pushed him across the finish line.”

  “No way.”

  “It’s true,” Kasey said. “And if that wasn’t dramatic enough, another driver came out of the turn, saw the checkered flag, and decided he was going to win it.”

  “He wasn’t even on the same lap,” Race added. “He just saw that flag and went after it like a bull.”

  “And?” I asked, directing the question at Kasey.

  “This new car, a Chevelle, hit the water spilled by the car that ran into Race. It spun out and slammed both of them into the wall.”

  “Plastered that Pinto against the concrete like a bug on a windshield,” Jim said.

  “And it didn’t explode?” I asked, remembering all those old stories I’d heard.

  “No,” Kasey said. “It didn’t have to. Everyone in the crowd thought it was all over for Race, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said, “those Pintos aren’t much more than an engine wrapped in tin foil. And that was before the insurance company started getting serious about making people put roll cages in Enduro cars.”

  “My Pinto had a roll cage,” said Race, slightly insulted.

  “Yeah,” Jim said, “and that’s the only reason you’re still here. Hell, I bet they didn’t even have to crush that thing when they got it to the wrecking yard.”

  Race laughed. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “It was bad enough,” said Kasey, frowning. “The crowd let out this horrific roar, then the other cars reached the finish line, and it was worse than a demolition derby. When the dust and steam finally cleared, only two or three cars were still capable of moving.

  “The Pinto’s passenger side was wrapped around the front end of the Chevelle, and the driver’s door had been flattened against the wall. With the poor lighting, the dust in the air, and the steam rising out of all the punctured radiators, no one could see what was happening.”

  “It was a regular zoo,” Jim added.

  “Well, obviously he didn’t croak,” I said.

  “Of course he didn’t croak.” Kasey’s eyes reflected her opinion of my cavalier remark. “The flagman and some other officials tried to get through the wreckage to the car. But before they could, Race crawled through the passenger window out onto the hood of the Chevelle. He stood up, gave the crowd that smart-aleck grin of his, and took a deep bow.”

  I looked at Race doubtfully. He shrugged in response.

  “I had to do something. All those people were staring at me.”

  “It was a riot,” Jim said. “The crowd loved it.”

  “I’d had my eye on Race for awhile, even though I’d originally intended to sponsor a car in a higher division,” Kasey said. “It was plain he was a hard charger who had a real rapport with the fans. The Enduro clinched the deal. Anyone that crazy and determined to win deserved all the help I could give him. I went down to the pits at the end of the night and asked him if he wanted a sponsor.”

  “And all this time I thought it was because I was driving a Dodge,” Race said.

  “Well, that didn’t hurt,” Kasey admitted.

  Race tipped his Pepsi glass at me. “Just so you’ll know, having people track you down to offer you sponsorship doesn’t happen very often in the racing world.”

  Like I cared. “You’re crazy,” I said, stealing one of his fries.

  “Yeah,” Race grinned. “And you know something? Your mom knew that when she sent you to live with me.”

  Robbie snickered.

  “It woulda been a better story,” I said, “if the Pinto had exploded.”

  Chapter 5

  Race slept like a cat in a coma the next morning, but I woke up feeling like I’d swallowed a porcupine. It made no sense. There was nothing to envy. I didn’t give a damn about racing, and it wasn’t like my uncle lived a glamorous lifestyle. So why did I feel snarky about last night?

  I fixed some breakfast then turned on MTV, not bothering to lower the volume when Ozzy cut in with Bark at the Moon. Race didn’t twitch. Didn’t anything faze him? I inhaled the cereal then retreated to my room to find something to alleviate my boredom.

  Reading would’ve been my first choice, but none of the books I’d brought were new, and I wanted something fresh. Until I started school or figured out how to get to the public library, I was out of luck.

  Nintendo would’ve been my second choice, but Mom had rendered the machine useless when she’d confiscated my games as punishment for drinking out of the milk carton. She was always over-reacting like that, and Dad never did anything to stop her. He’d just hide behind his newspaper while she reamed me a new one then grounded me for three weeks for not wiping up the orange juice I spilled on the counter.

  I rummaged through my boxes in the closet and came up with a dartboard and a handful of shuriken. Cool. It had been a long time since I’d gotten any practice.

  I hung the dartboard on the closet door, lit a cigarette, and stepped back to take aim. The expertly balanced oriental throwing star whizzed through the air, penetrating the board. Thwack!

  The noise startled me, and for a second I hesitated. Not even my uncle could sleep though that. But when I thought about last night—how popular Race was, how everyone at the track seemed to love him—something dark stirred inside me and I wanted to wake him up. I followed with a second star, and then a third.

  “What the hell’s going on back there, Cody?”

  “Nothin’, Speed. Don’t let it concern you.” The darkness swelled as I thought about my uncle’s flawless driving skills, and his hot crew chief, and little Robbie Davis worshiping the ground he walked on.

  I threw another shuriken.

  “Cody!”

 
I threw a few more.

  “Please, kid. I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Don’t let me stop ya, Speed.”

  “My name’s not Speed.”

  A moment later, Race appeared in the doorway, looking ridiculous in only a pair of U of O Fighting Ducks boxers. His hair stuck up in tufts, and his eyes smoldered with annoyance.

  I let fly with a shuriken before pulling the cigarette from between my lips. “What’s wrong with Speed?” I asked, flicking the ash at a cereal-encrusted bowl on the dresser. “It’s just as good a name as Race.”

  “God, kid, do you have to hassle me so early in the morning?” He glanced at my Beer, it’s not just for breakfast T-shirt. “And don’t you think you could find something a little more appropriate to wear?”

  “Nothin’ in your rules about a dress code,” I said. “What the hell kind of name is Race, anyway?” I let loose with another star. It missed the board and penetrated halfway through the thin paneling of the closet door. Race winced.

  “Grandma and Grandpa didn’t actually name you that, did they?”

  I knew they hadn’t. But nobody would be caught dead with his real name, and I wanted to see him squirm when he said it.

  “They named me Horatio,” he said evenly. “Not that it’s any of your damned business.”

  I turned around, giving him a look of undivided interest. “Horatio? Ho-ra-tio? Well, now. Isn’t that original.”

  “Not especially. They’ve been naming the firstborn sons in our family that since God was a little boy. You’re lucky Saundra’s your mother, instead of your father.”

  “What?” And then I got it. The accident of one misplaced Y chromosome had spared me that fate and saddled him with it instead.

  “Forget it,” Race said. He’d regained his composure, and now looked more burned-out than pissed.

  Somehow, the fact that I couldn’t set him off made me want to do it that much more. I took one final drag off my cigarette and crushed it out in the bowl. “So,” I said, “You score with Kasey yet?”

  Race gaped at me like I’d shot a puppy. Then his mouth clamped shut and his jaw knotted tight. Bingo. Almost entirely by accident, I’d discovered his Kryptonite.

  “Listen, you little—”

  “Nope, I guess you haven’t.”