As the grandstand slid by, a violent flash of noise and color, he saw two cars locked and against the rail high on the turn ahead, and saw another, which had shot backward into the infield, sending off clouds of blue smoke. He was into the turn then, with no chance to look for Johnny. He cut it as fine as he could, and roared down the straightaway opposite the grandstand. He risked half a look and saw the red wagon coming along behind him, an orange job fighting it for second place. He made the oily turn, and then, when he slowed a bit, just beyond the grandstand, he was banged hard from behind.
He was banged twice more on the turn. Somebody was trying to get inside of him and nudge the back end of his car into a spin. The last knock swerved the rear end a little, and he felt both fright and anger. He thought it was Johnny, and he hugged the rail closely on the oily turn. Soon they would be lapping the slower cars. He had noticed in the other races that the slow cars kept a watch behind and moved out away from the rail with more discretion than valor. He looked quickly and saw that it was the orange job banging away at him, a tight-mouthed kid driving it. Johnny was riding safely behind the orange car, letting it do the work for him. Wade knew he had to dispose of the orange car quickly. He couldn’t run away from it. Wreck or be wrecked. A nice clean game for the children.
He selected the oily turn. He slowed more than usual, hugging the rail, thus tempting the kid to swing high and wide and go around him. He saw the orange flash as the kid gobbled the bait. Wade gunned his car, moving out from the rail. The kid had to swing wider, suddenly, and the oily patch was a poor place to do it. As Wade gunned down the grandstand straightaway, he looked back and saw that only the red car tailed him. The next time around, he saw the orange car jammed hard against the rail, high at the midpoint of the turn, the kid standing beyond it, his face chalky in the lights.
On the next turn, two slow cars swung sedately out for him. He loafed on the turn, serene in his knowledge that Johnny was safely bottled behind him, and then saw that Johnny had gone high and wide, passing the lapped cars on the outside, coming down hard and fast to angle in toward the rail ahead of him. Wade gunned it hard, hoping that the oily turn ahead would force Johnny to drop in behind him. But Johnny leaned in across his right front fender, and Wade had to drop it back to let him take the lead position, take the rail.
There were more cars to lap. Wade and Johnny slid by them on the inside, moving like one car, the red one in the lead, Wade’s gray-and-white traveling five inches behind it. He tried to pass Johnny. Every attempt was beautifully blocked. It was going to go on like this, he realized. He’d cross that line second. He had used up every maneuver he had seen in the earlier races, plus every trick of his own. He watched the flags. Two laps to go. One to go. With the race won, Johnny was treating the oily turn with respect. It would have to be there, if anywhere. Swing it hard and risk the spin? No other car to lean on this time, he thought wryly. If a man could lean on the rail...
He looked at the sturdy, flat boards of the railing on the next-to-last turn of the race. He remembered that the wrecked orange car was flat against the rail on the oily turn. It wouldn’t be too much in the way.
But if the skid started too soon, it would be very much in his way. He felt cold and surprisingly calm. As they headed toward the oily turn, the last turn before the grandstand and the finish line, he swung out the moment Johnny started to slow down. He kept the gas pedal all the way to the floor, turning high. He felt the sickening lift of the inside back wheel. The skid started, and he thought for a moment he would smash into the orange car, but he missed it by inches, and the skid slammed the back end of his car against the fence. He recovered the lost traction at once, banged the fence again, and then rode it all the rest of the way around the turn, pedal to the floor, the back right fender grinding against the boards of the fence.
He came out of the turn neck and neck with Johnny, but with that fraction more of speed that saved him. The steering wheel shimmied badly in his hands, and he knew the fence had knocked a wheel out of line. But he came across the finish line with the hood of the red car even with his door.
He slowed after taking the checkered flag, and Johnny, moving up on the inside, gave him a death’s-head grin. Wade slowed by the pits until the track was cleared and then took the slow winner’s lap, took the applause. He felt drained, old, sick.
There was no triumph in it. Skill, and a damn-fool risk that paid off, and kudos for the “grand old man.”
The crowd was streaming through the gates and across the infield toward the pit field, clots diverging to gather around the smashed cars. He stopped in line by the ambulances, and one of them was moving off with the kid who had been in the orange car. Smashed wrist and broken collarbone, he heard.
There were flash bulbs popping, and reporters with questions, and a yellow-haired girl who clung to him, half crying with pride and with possession.
“Wade, can we print that? That you get to drive Banderson’s entry?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Johnny had disappeared. Oliver Banderson gave him a check, and there were more pictures of the check being handed over.
The noise confused Wade, and he realized he was slightly hung over. The young girl was vibrant within the circle of his right arm. They were shoving things at him to be autographed, and he signed his name in a big scrawl, the girl still inside the circle of his arms.
She went back with him to Bander-son’s house, and Wade left them downstairs and found a telephone and called a cab. He hadn’t unpacked, so there was no need to pack. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw that he had stuck the dead cigar butt back in his mouth. He dropped it into the toilet.
He went downstairs with the bag, and the girl looked confused and said, “I guess we’re going now, Mr. Banderson.” She looked frightened.
Wade looked at both of them, and a lot of things were clearer in his mind. He said gently, “I’m going, sugar. You’re not. Johnny will give your wagon a good ride, Mr. Banderson. Better hunt him up and tell him.”
Oliver Banderson looked neither surprised nor disappointed. “Back to the two-bit garage, Ralson?”
“Maybe that was all I had — one more race in my system.”
The cab came, and he went out, not looking back. The shell drive crunched under his footsteps, and he got in, and asked to be taken to the station.
On the ride into town, he started to think of what he would tell Sally, and just exactly how he would tell her, and how she would look when he told her, and how she would be afterward.
It was terribly important to prove to her that he could have had Banderson’s entry. But that would be in the papers. It was the sort of thing AP and UP would pick up. Human interest.
But there weren’t any good words for explaining the other part. How it wasn’t nerve that was gone, or reflexes, or anything else like that. Just that you could take a look at yourself and find out you were through with something for keeps.