“If you refuse, Wade, Johnny drives the big one.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“I’m not a particularly fair sort of person, Wade. Wouldn’t your little friend like to see how you handle a car?”
“Oh, please, Wade, honey,” she said.
Johnny stood by, smirking, and Wade knew that Johnny was thinking of the five months of layoff, of no racing of any kind. But it was still ridiculous to think of using these jalopies as a qualifying test for Indianapolis.
Wade said slowly, “Let me get it straight. The winner gets a signed contract, Mr. Banderson.”
“I promise. You have my word.”
“He’ll run you off the track, Johnny,” the taffy blonde said contemptuously.
Johnny tilted his head back and laughed harshly. “Foxy grandpa is going to run me right up into the stands.”
“It will be a special treat for the crowd, boys,” Banderson said.
“And every one of these punk kids will be out to show us up, if they have to kill somebody,” Wade said slowly.
“I’ll make it more exciting,” Bander-son said, still smiling. “I’ll put one thousand dollars on top of the normal purse for the feature.”
The young taffy blonde got her lips close to Wade’s ear. “Win it for me, darling,” she whispered, “and we’ll celebrate in Havana. That’s a promise, too.”
He looked down into her eyes. They had a feral glitter that reminded him oddly of the look in Banderson’s eyes. In all the big races, there were always the young girls who hung around. Death seemed to attract them. He and Sally had laughed about them many times.
“In Havana, then,” he said to her.
He picked the gray-and-white 48 and went over it with the mechanic while the girl stood close behind him, watching. He gunned the motor and listened, and made adjustments with his big hands. And then he went out and watched the first race. The kids hammered at each other, nudging the cars, banging together, picking up to sixty-five on the short straightaways, dropping down on the curves. They were wild and crazy.
Between races, he took the gray-and-white job around the track, hearing the vague blur of his own name over the P.A., the rumble of applause. He took a slow lap, and then two fast ones, alone on the track, learning the pitch of the curves, the feel of the car. It was a good, hot, responsive little car, with a startling pickup. The liquor began to fade out of him, leaving his lips numb, his mouth acid. The safety strap bit at his thighs, and the borrowed crash helmet was a poor fit. It felt odd to be so completely enclosed. On the last turn, he went high to pass an imaginary car at the rail, and came down and in out of the high turn and skidded on the quivering edge of control, fighting the skid with reflexes dulled by alcohol and his thirty-seven years. He came out of it and drifted to the repair field, passing the two ambulances, the wreckers, the highway patrol car. He drove in to the field and swung back into line.
The kid mechanic said, “How you like it, Mr. Ralson? I bet you Scotty and me, we put five hundred hours’ work on that power plant.”
Wade felt sweat on his thighs. He unbuckled the belt and slid out. “It’s a hot little item,” he said.
“But not the kind of stuff you’re used to, I guess.”
He looked at the kid mechanic. “I can scare myself in it, son. You can scare yourself in a kiddy car, if you find a steep enough hill.”
The young girl came up and latched onto his arm again, and they went out to the rail and watched the next race. It was ten laps. On the first turn, two cars locked and spun and blocked the track. Two more piled into them, and they were pried apart, and, much to Wade’s astonishment, they all were able to join the next start. The girl locked her hand in his, laced her fingers in his, and he felt that her hand was cold and damp with her excitement. The night wind ruffled the taffy hair, and it brushed his cheek.
After the fresh start, one green car took the lead and held it, and then, on the turn in the seventh lap, it threw a considerable chunk of the motor right down through the pan, making an oil slick that spun two cars hard into the rail, crippling them. The rest of the field slowed for the slick patch, going high to miss the oil, and the race ended. Two kids ran out with a sack of dry cement and powdered the oil spot thoroughly. They broomed it down, but it was still a bad patch.
He watched the other races and got an idea of the standard strategy and the way you had to drive them. Then it was time for the feature. He was shocked to discover that there would be twenty cars on the track. He got into his car, and before he drove it out into line, the young girl leaned quickly through the window and pressed warm young lips to his with a clumsy wildness, and whispered, “Good luck, my honey.”
He had saved his cigar and kept it at exactly the right length, and now he thumbed the ash off the end and clamped it in his jaw. He eased out and took the place they told him to. There was a double line, and he was the eighth car back on the outside, and Johnny Harvester was the eighth car back on the inside. They all cut their motors when they were in position.
The announcing was a meaningless blare until he heard, “...and in eighth position on the outside, driving Number 48, we are honored to have with us that grand old man of the Indianapolis classic, Wade Ralson.” There was a long roar of applause. “Mr. Ralson is a house guest of Mr. Oliver Banderson, and when Scotty Davis was suddenly taken ill this evening, Wade kindly consented to drive Scotty’s car. Watch him carefully, folks, and watch years of high-speed experience in action.”
Wade grinned and waved one arm. Harvester was given a similar announcement and got about the same hand.
The blaring mechanical voice suddenly climbed a half octave. “And now listen to this, folks! This is going to be a race to remember. A note has just been handed me. It comes from Mr. Oliver Banderson. Mr. Banderson is putting up an additional thousand-dollar purse to the winner. And — and this is the big thing, folks — there’s going to be a tough private race between Johnny Harvester and Wade Ralson. Whichever of those two gentlemen comes in first in their private race is going to be privileged to drive Mr. Banderson’s Corbin Special in the Indianapolis Memorial Day Classic next May. As the two drivers are evenly matched, and the two cars are evenly matched, both men have agreed to this test. I don’t have to remind you that the win at Indianapolis is worth sixty thousand dollars to the winning driver.”
Wade cursed Banderson silently and heartily. And then there was no time for cursing. He could sense the tenseness of the kids in the other cars, sense their realization that this was a chance to show up the hotshots, to drive their ears off. And with twenty cars on the tiny track, avoiding jam-ups was going to take as much luck as skill. He knew what he would have to do: either gun down through the middle after the fair start, and hope to hit the first turn among the front two or three cars, or else loaf back and ride high to keep clear of the inevitable smash. If Johnny got the jump and made the center alley, Wade would loaf.
The pace car started up, and the double line rumbled and roared and began to move slowly. They moved around the banked continuous turn at the end of the oval and then slowly down toward the starting line, by the high platform where the lap flags and win flags would be flashed. The car felt small and high and rough under him, and there did not seem to be enough room on the quarter-mile track. The straightaways were thirty feet wide, expanding to fifty feet on the banked curves at each end.
A boy in uniform pranced backward down the center of the track, well beyond the starting line, the two flags crossed in front of him, held low. As the lead cars touched the starting line, the boy flashed the green flag for a fair start and ran for his life.
Wade swung hard into the alley slot between the two rows of accelerating cars. The hot little car responded nicely. He bulled his way in, saw Johnny’s car come even with his own, then slide astern — and he felt rather than heard the bang as it hit his tail bracing. The corner was coming up fast. He drove hard through the narrowing slot as the other cars slowed for the corner. He knew that he was at spin-out speed as he hit the corner. His race could end right there, he knew. He moved out a bit, moved close to his right-hand neighbor. He felt the back wheels slide, felt the hard thump as his car banged the one on his right. The impact stopped the skid, and he rode tight against the car on the right all the way around the turn, and then streaked away, running on the outside, going high on the oily turn and coming down in to nip the only front car and take the lead.