19
Before the race, Shar chewed on a stale, melting candy bar. He stood dressed in his fireproof clothing, feeling himself beginning to sweat with an odd, satisfied pleasure. Men ran around him. He watched the stadium: a beautiful curved structure that looked big enough to hold a small city, filled with heads and hands and flashes of bright clothing. Firecrackers were being set off and the start of the race had been set back a few minutes until the offenders had been found or intimidated by the presence of police to put away what firecrackers they had left. “. . . A matter of gravest urgency,” the voice over the loud-speaker declared with righteous passion, “. . . human lives may be endangered by the setting off of firecrackers during the race. You can see why we must insist. . . .”
“A man would have to be damn stupid to mistake a firecracker for one of his tires,” Shar said to someone.
The minutes before the race passed as if in a dream. But Shar saw everything clearly. He liked the look of the day—it was clear and a little windy and, though no rain had fallen for some time, sprinkling trucks had dampened the track to perfection; the track looked good. Fine, hard, black dirt. The infield here was a bright, vivid green; it looked as if it were carefully tended. Shar liked the look of green against the dark brown of the track and the white retaining walls. Everything was clear, everything defined itself with precision. The stadium, nearly filled, bobbed dizzily with humanity, yet this too defined itself clearly. Shar felt none of his usual bitter antagonism for the crowd, but felt instead a peculiar tenderness toward them. From time to time he had toyed with the idea that the spectators did not really come to see drivers be killed, as most people thought, nor did they come—as Max told him—because they wanted to share in the skill and triumph of such speed and such courage. Shar thought that perhaps they came to share the speed, the danger, and the occasional deaths—with exultation, maybe, but with something more than that—and to force themselves into the men who represented them down on the track: they thirsted for death, they were fascinated by it, and envious of it; they gave up their identities to risk violence, but were always cheated because the violence, when it came, could not touch them. Races left some people pale and hysterical. They had surrendered to the insane danger, they had entrusted themselves to one of the drivers—but nothing had happened. If the driver lived they were cheated, and if he died they were cheated. It was a mock communion and Shar understood that only the driver could get any satisfaction out of it—and he was a driver, he would be experiencing it again today, he would urge himself to the traction limit and speed poised on the invisible point at which control turned into chaos—beautiful feeling! The anticipation of the race turned his mouth dry, tripped his heart. He finished the candy bar and threw away the wrapper.
The head mechanic came to instruct him. Shar was putting on his helmet. Wearing the helmet, looking out through the green plastic, he had always seen that the eyes of others were different toward him, as if he were not a part of their humanity. He had made himself different from them. And with the helmet on, the smells of the garage—oil, rubber, dust—would be intensified; he could enjoy them. A slow, hot wind: good. Rubber burning somewhere: good. The sound of engines, shuffling crowds, screams, applause, screeching of tires, angry shouts—all these were good; Shar remembered them with sudden urgency. He went to Mitchie and embraced him. “Wish me luck,” Shar said, to the astonishment of everyone around him. Mitchie stared with a vague blinking smile. Shar wondered at their surprise; hadn’t he ever done this before? He tried to remember himself, but could think of nothing. Had he wasted his life? All life before he had fallen in love was empty, a mockery, a half-world; he could not really remember it as his own. It was love that endeared the crowd to him, that endeared the men to him—men at whom he had hardly glanced for months. He gripped Mitchie’s arm; he thought suddenly that he liked Mitchie, that he had never got to know him. “Good luck, good luck,” Mitchie gulped. “But you ain’t the one to need luck. You never was—was you, Shar?”
“No,” said Shar. “I make my own luck.”
At the car Shar felt the urgency, the familiar excitement, overtake him. His heart pounded joyously. “A damn good car,” he murmured. He ran his hands along its side with obvious pleasure. Yet in spite of the clarity of everything, in spite of the familiarity with which all things presented themselves to him—this race was, after all, no different than any other—Shar felt that he saw the day through a dream, slightly distorting it, withdrawing it from his touch. At the limit of his speed, when he understood that to urge the car farther would mean destruction, Shar had never been able to penetrate through the fine invisible barrier that separated him from other people, from the world, from reality. He had never understood it to be impossible until today. But now, adjusting himself in the car, adjusting his mind mechanically to what awaited him, Shar knew that nothing could help him. He would never penetrate through that film—he would never escape himself. On the other side of his limit there was nothing except violence, mutilation, death; but there was no communion. It was no different from his passion for Karen, which was always blocked, confused, by the girl’s soul. At the very height of love, when Shar reached the limit of his body’s control, there had been no communion—they were two people. Sleeping, they were remote from each other, wandering in separate dreams. Only today, for a minute, had Shar looked into her mind—had they understood each other. He felt that his life had been a preparation for this instant, his education in the narrow part of the world he knew no more than a preparation for this instant; and there was nothing possible beyond it.
There were nine other cars on the track. Shar knew most of the other drivers; there were two new ones, Vanilla Jones and another man, a white man, whose driving he did not know. Rumors had circulated, as usual, about better engines, secret improvements, but Shar knew that the betting was on him, and he accepted this knowledge with gratitude. Shar had been placed at the head of the cars, at the inside, because of his time in the qualifying heat, and he felt a certain pleasure in the position; he was happy to see a driver he knew, in a green car, beside him, and, on the man’s right, the Negro Jones, who looked tense and frightened. Shar saw that he was chewing something, probably gum, and showed his big white teeth in flashes. Shar gripped the wheel and shuddered as the enormity of the situation struck him: a beautiful day, a goddam beautiful day! Above the glinting stadium the blue sky was flecked with clouds, hardening with clouds; it had been hardening like that for thirty years. What was there beneath it that had charmed him? Long roads, new towns, glimpses of the sea—new tracks, new people, anonymity! In such a vast world a man could never be himself for long, for a simple journey through time dissociated one identity from the other: not even the expensive new highways he traveled could link the two times, like towns on a map, together. Shar’s heart pounded with the excitement that he had finally transcended the fragments of his anonymity. He wanted to get out and run back to Mitchie, or to Max, and explain to him: he knew who he was, he knew exactly what he was doing, and why; he was guilty—completely guilty—and his guilt, like his love, had pulled him together. The limit! Shar grated his teeth in impatience. He hated the gloves that kept him from the wheel, he hated the helmet and the goggles that disguised him, denied him humanity; he hated the shock absorbers, the fireproof clothing, the devices invented for safety’s sake—as if there were any protection possible against mortality.
The race began. Shar’s car shot forward. He grinned at the release of power, and the roar of the motor ripped through him. He could feel the other cars behind him as if he were watching the track from a distance, and he looked over to see the drivers beside him—clenched and sweating with the exertions of their magnificent automobiles. Sunlight glared off the hood of the car, mixed with dust and the fleeting white wall and a smell of oil—Shar gripped the wheel, leaning forward in the seat, as if the straining of the wheels at his back worried him. As he covered the stretch and prepared himself mechanically for the turn, he
remembered visions he had had at the starts of other races—visions of brake failure, of a tire giving out, the steering column breaking, a sudden spinning, shuddering, a somersault off the track and against the wall: one, two, three seconds, and the crowd would jump roaring to its feet. But this time he felt nothing.
Shar urged the car faster. Speeding into the turn with the other cars whipping along with him, Shar felt the wheels slide a little—he had boasted once he could calculate the number of inches the wheels on any car he knew would slide. The cars seemed grouped together around the turn, roaring and screeching faintly as if in terror at the precision that separated them from death, but once out of the turn, Shar pulled away again and the green car behind him followed.
The wind was no longer warm but a little chilly. Shar squinted past the glaring hood. He sat low in this car—the center of gravity in this model was lower than in any he had driven before—and the sensation of skimming just above the ground was fascinating. The dirt track with its terrific clarity roared beneath him; Shar wanted to reach out and touch the ground. He took off one of his gloves and dropped it beside him. The wheel felt good to his grip, a little hot from resting in the sunlight. To Shar’s right the driver in the green car, sucking his lower lip, began to fall back. Shar watched out of the corner of his eye as the front wheels disappeared. He felt disappointed. In the stretch before the grandstand he took time to look around—as if in search for faces he knew. A mob of faces jarred his vision: men, women, children, men with hats, men without hats, bald men, fat men, women with fancy hair, women staring at him, children waving flags. All leaped to his eye and were drawn away.
He passed his men. They stood waving locked hands, their teeth grinning at him as he passed. When he came out of the next turn, his nose clogged with dust and his lips grimacing against the wind, he saw that the young Negro was moving up on him. For an instant Shar’s heart expanded with rage. “Bastard!” he shouted across. The Negro, white-helmeted, crouched forward in his car and did not look at Shar.
They stayed together for a while, Shar ahead, the Negro a little behind. Again the turn, the stadium, racing through a tunnel lined with officials and ambulances and platforms with loud-speaker mechanisms attached to them. The crowd screamed, furious at the Negro for inching ahead, impatient with Shar: a vast, drumlike roar. Shar took off his other glove and threw it toward the infield. He could imagine the gaping, fishlike looks on his mechanics’ faces. Shar! Shar! Max would begin to murmur. What are you doing?
Shar urged the car up. He felt the wheels hold in the dirt, hang on as if they were trying to help him. At the turn he did not decrease his speed enough and the back wheels spun out, though not very far, and as if he had been touched, the Negro moved away with discreet skill. Shar squinted over at him: they looked at each other, Shar’s face distorted into a grin, the Negro’s face set rigid in a mask of wrinkles and lines, like that of an old man. In the straightway they raced almost side by side, glancing across at each other. The Negro cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted something; Shar could not hear. His heart had begun to pound so tightly that it hurt him and interfered with his breathing. He breathed through his mouth, sucking in dirt and dust; he spat toward the side of the car, coughing. The sunlight and wind pounded on the front of the car, thumped inside him, jerked the steering wheel and shot with fresh, energetic pain through Shar’s head. He urged the car ahead. He felt it respond to him at once, inching faster, faster than he had ever taken it around a turn—but at the last moment his foot relented, slowed it a little—then he prodded it up again, reeling out of the turn. He looked across to see if the Negro had followed him; he had not; he was a few feet behind. The pounding of Shar’s heart mixed with the pounding roar of the car, both being pushed toward their limits, strained mercilessly, unable to understand what was being done to them. The car protested, beginning to shake. It seemed weightless, as if a sudden wind could send it flying off the track. When Shar looked around again he saw the Negro inching up on him and he thought, while fumbling with the buckle on his helmet, of taking Vanilla Jones with him.
The retaining wall ahead had been whitewashed and glared in the sunlight. Smooth long wall, protecting spectators from sudden death. Shar’s head pounded, filled with sunlight and pain, and he waited for the instant when the onrushing air would be so powerful as to suck his breath away from him, stun him, empty his mind so that he was no more than an animal, a mechanism—but this did not happen. The car went faster, faster. Shar pushed it toward the limit, again he thought of taking Vanilla with him—and, indeed, the Negro seemed to have this in mind, for he would not let Shar go—and he felt with triumph the skill and strength of his body, he remembered the look of his face, his eyes—how proud he had been of himself! How proud of his manhood! How proud of being loved! He could not get the helmet off and so, sheering past the Negro and heading out, off the track, Shar enjoyed one or two more heartbeats before the car smashed headlong into the retaining wall.
20
When Jerry ran up the stairs and into the room Karen was staying in, he saw the bed empty, with sheets and blankets twisted together as if someone in a desperate rage had attacked them. The bed was stained with blood, most of it hardened and dark. “Karen!” Jerry said. He heard a noise in the bathroom and went around the bed. Behind him, toiling up the stairs, Max hung onto the doctor’s arm and was saying something to Jerry in a thick, whining voice.
Jerry opened the door and for some reason kicked it in. The room was filled with steam. “What the hell are you doing?” Jerry said. “Are you in there?”
Max struggled, panting, into the room, “My God, my God,” he murmured, clutching the doctor’s arm. His eyes, stung with sweat, bulged out at the rumpled bed with its bloodstains. “She is dead too. The girl is dead. They are both dead.” Panting, he approached the bathroom door, where Jerry was craning his neck and sucking at one of his teeth. “Is she in there? Karen? What are you doing, Karen?”
Max pushed Jerry aside and let go of his doctor. He went into the steamy room where Karen stood under the shower. “What are you doing? What is this? My God, Karen, do you know what has happened? Do you know where we have been all this time? What I have been seeing? Do you know what has happened?”
Karen stood naked beneath the hot, furious shower. Her hair lay wild against her head and body. “Get out of here!” she screamed.
“What are you doing? Why are you out of bed?” Max cried. “Do you want to bleed to death?” And he clutched at his heart. His face was getting wet, splattered from the shower. He waved at the steam as if he were trying to get rid of it. “Do you know what has happened? Shar is dead—Shar is dead! Shar was killed today on the track! Can you understand me?”
“Get out of here,” Karen screamed. Her voice lifted higher and higher until she could no longer bear it, and she began to sob insanely. “Get out of here! Leave me alone!”
Max backed up suddenly. He took hold of the door and leaned, gasping, against it. He stared at Karen. Behind him the other men, without glancing at each other, began to back up too. “Come out of there,” Max said. “Come out here. We’ll talk to you out here.”
He closed the door. His heavy face was labored, pale, and stricken; when excited, he breathed through his mouth in fast, choking gasps, as if he were a great fish suddenly dragged up out of the sea. He turned to Jerry and his doctor. “What is happening?” he said. “They are rioting out there. What is that noise? What is happening? My God, I am weary of this life—I am sick to death of this life!”
Jerry was leaning out the window. “A bunch of kids, looks like,” he said. “White guys. One of them has a fishing spear—or something.”
“Madness! Everything is madness!” Max murmured. “Where are they going?”
“There’s some men in front of a bar down by the corner, I think they’re going to them. A big mob. Bastards,” said Jerry.
“I have come to Cherry River every year of my life,” Max said angrily. “What is happening
this year? What is this? The world is insane! Shar’s death—that Negro finishing—They have a right to be angry over it, a man like Shar! I would be angry over it myself! But it is madness to do what they are doing!”
“We better get the hell out of here,” Jerry said.
The bathroom door opened. Karen stood in the doorway with a soiled white robe wrapped around her. She was still wet—her face streamed with water and her hair lay against her in savage, dripping clots. “Karen,” said Max, putting out his arms to her, “I have something to tell you. You must prepare yourself. I have some bad news for you—like the last time, though you disobeyed my instructions—some bad news. I—”
“I know Shar’s dead,” Karen said angrily.
Max blinked. “Yes—yes—” he murmured, with his arms still outheld, wavering, “but you—you are not well—So much has happened—Do you understand what has happened?” He had gained control of himself and stood with his big legs outspread, balancing himself; behind him Jerry turned from the window to stare narrowly at Karen, and the doctor, haggard and shaken, with pinched, bloodshot eyes, looked at her as if he could not remember her. “I can hardly understand it myself. There was trouble somehow—on the straightway, not a turn, and he lost control of the car and smashed it into a wall—dead at once, immediately—” He stopped, panting. Again his hand crept to his chest, grasped tightly at the soiled shirt. “They think the Negro driver did it but it didn’t look that way—I’m sure he didn’t do it, didn’t prod Shar or sideswipe him—no—there was an announcement, but—The people blame the Negro and his men. There were some fights in the grandstand, whites and Negroes. Just beer bottles, but—But Shar dead like that! I can’t make myself understand it. . . . But I knew that when it came for him it would be like that; it would be an accident, a child’s death, something done to him suddenly—a broken steering column, brakes locked, whatever it was—they don’t know yet—But so soon, so young a man—”