It sounded oddly brassy coming from such a young girl, but she was very close, and obviously wanted to be kissed, so Frenchie pulled her in close, and put his mouth to hers. Her lips opened and she kissed him with the hunger and ferocity of adolescent carnality.
Then he broke away, winking at her, and throwing over his shoulder, “Watch my dust, sweetheart,” as he headed for the Stude.
A bunch of boys were milling about the car as he ran up.
“Good luck,” one of them said, and a peculiar grin was stuck to his face. Frenchie shrugged. There were some oddballs in this batch, but he could avoid them when he was a full member.
He got in and revved the engine. It sounded good. He knew he could take them. His brakes were fine. He had had them checked and tightened that afternoon.
Then Monkey was driving out onto the road that ran down the center of the old field, over the grade atop the culvert pipe. His Ford stopped, and he leaned out the window to yell at Gloria. “Okay, baby. Any time!”
The girl ran into the middle of the road, as the three racers gunned their motors, inching at the start mark. They were like hungry beasts, waiting to be unleashed.
Then she leaped in the air, came down waving a yellow bandanna, and they were away, with great gouts of dirt and grass showering behind …
Frenchie slapped gears as though they were all one, and the Studelac jumped ahead. He decked the gas pedal and fed all the power he had to the engine.
On either side of him, the wind gibbering past their ears, the other two hunched over their wheels and plunged straight down the field toward the huge steel pipe and the deep trench before it.
Whoever turned was a chicken, that was the rule, and Frenchie was no coward. He knew that. Yet —
A guy could get killed. If he didn’t stop in time, he’d rip right into that pipe, smash up completely at the speed they were doing.
The speedometer said eighty-five, and still he held it to the floor. They weren’t going to turn. They weren’t going … to … turn … damn … you …turn!
Then, abruptly, as the pipe grew huge in the windshield, on either side of him the other cars swerved, as though on a signal.
Frenchie knew he had won.
He slapped his foot onto the brake.
Nothing happened.
The speedometer read past ninety, and he wasn’t stopping. He beat it frantically, and then, when he saw there was no time to jump, no place to go, as the Studelac leaped the ditch and plunged out into nothingness, he threw one hand out the window, and his scream followed it.
The car hit with a gigantic whump and smash, and struck the pipe with such drive the entire front end was rammed through the driver’s seat. Then it exploded.
HERBERT MESTMAN
It had been most disconcerting. That hand coming out the window. And the noise.
A man stepped out of the banked shadows at the base of the grove of trees. The fire from the culvert, licking toward the sky, lit his face in a mask of serene but satisfied crimson.
Monkey drove to the edge of the shadows, and walked up to the man standing there half-concealed.
“That was fine, son,” said the tall man, reaching into his jacket for something. “That was fine.”
“Here you are,” he said, handing a sheaf of bills to the boy. “I think you will find that according to our agreement. And,” he added, withdrawing another bill from the leather billfold, “here is an extra five dollars for that boy who took care of the brakes. You’ll see that he gets it, won’t you?”
Monkey took the money, saluted sloppily, and went to his Ford. A roar and he was gone, back into the horde of hot-rods tearing away from the field, and the blazing furnace thrust down in the culvert ditch.
But for a long time, till he heard the wail of sirens far off but getting nearer, the most brilliant student of Elizabethan drama in the country, perhaps in the world, stood in the shadows and watched fire eat at the sky.
It certainly was not … not at all … a game for children.