He looked at his watch. Half an hour until the appointed time-still too early, but he’d have first choice of a starting position. Meanwhile, he would find ways to pass the time. Walk the course again. Maybe take another look at the engine. His driver’s license was so new that the clothes he wore in the photo hadn’t even been twice through the wash yet, but that didn’t mean he was new to driving. He had been behind a steering wheel ever since his feet could touch the pedals. That was one of the advantages of living on a farm. There were plenty of places to drive without getting on a state road. But this was a far cry from mowing the hayfield with the tractor, and Daddy had never let him do much more than steer the race car out of the barn. He had spent most of his childhood washing wrenches and sweeping up the garage, waiting his turn in the driver’s seat, but his father seemed to think that sixteen was about half the age you ought to be before he’d trust you with his race car, which was ridiculous. Why, the old man hadn’t been much more than sixteen himself when he first started spending his weekends driving dirt track. He hadn’t cared what his parents thought about the matter, but nowadays he seemed to think that inflation applied to age as well as to money. So Harley burned with impatience, knowing that he’d be a better driver than the old man if only he had half a chance to prove it.
He knew the theory. He understood the moves, the tactics. He’d watched racing scenarios play out in everything from toy cars to local dirt tracks, to the occasional race on television-Formula One stuff, mostly, but some of the techniques were the same. And he listened to the NASCAR races on the radio. Sometimes he could see those races better in his head than he could see the ones broadcast on television. He argued about them with his friends, guys like Mike Gibbs, who was so car-crazed that he didn’t have car magazines on his bedside table, car magazines were his bedside table. And Connie Koeppen, another aspiring racer, who was a rabid fan of a surly young driver named Dale Earnhardt.
Connie had been teased mercilessly about his idol’s fall from grace in the past season, ’81. Earnhardt had started his career in a blaze of glory, being named Rookie of the Year and then winning the championship itself the next year, but in ’81 Earnhardt had not won a single race. Connie would argue that he would have won at Charlotte if his ignition hadn’t cut out, and he was looking like a contender in Atlanta, too, before engine failure took him out of the race.
Harley’s favorite was Darrell Waltrip, who had won the championship last year and now was driving for the legendary Junior Johnson. Waltrip was brash and confident, earning himself the nickname “Jaws,” but he had the skill to back up his bravado. Harley thought he wouldn’t care what people called him as long as they respected him-or, even better, envied him.
A race. Finally, after an apprenticeship that had seemed to last his whole life, he was going to see if he really could measure up. Tonight he would be driving for real. A challenge. A taunt really, made by a couple of the school’s older daredevils, ready to cut a new driver down to size.
Connie Koeppen and his buddy Lorne Lupton, a couple of car-crazed seniors, had heard about Harley’s souped-up Trans-Am, and they dared him to pit it against their machine. “Paycheck to paycheck,” Connie had said, thrusting his hatchet face close to Harley’s nose. This wasn’t strictly accurate, since Connie was a rich kid who had an allowance instead of a job, but Harley took his meaning and the challenge.
Koeppen and Lupton thought their joint effort was unbeatable, and they were itching to prove it. Ever since they had pooled their skills and their savings to put together the fastest car they could afford, they had been trying to test their creation against anybody else’s set of wheels, but since they preferred to race for cash instead of bragging rights, nobody wanted to take them on. Until Harley, who had more guts than sense. He knew they would be tough competition. Connie claimed that he had even driven a few dirt track races at the local speedway-without his parents’ knowledge, of course. Doctors’ kids weren’t supposed to be hanging out with the riffraff at the racetrack.
“Bear Creek Road tonight at seven,” Connie had said in the hall after algebra. “Put up or shut up.”
Midnight would have been better. More fitting somehow for such a momentous showdown, but, hey, it was a school night. Lupton and Koeppen might think they were kings of the road, but they had curfews, same as Harley did. So he would be racing against their best shot at a race car, just at dark, for a week’s salary, winner take all.
Harley couldn’t afford to lose. His wages from a weekend job at the sawmill didn’t amount to much, a little less than fifty dollars after they took the taxes out, but it kept his gas tank filled, and sometimes when Daddy ended up a little short from needing a new part for the race car or when he didn’t place in the money in the Saturday race, Harley’s check might mean meat instead of beans for supper that week or paying the overdue light bill. He supposed that he was a fool to risk that money on one minute of hell-bent driving up the darkness of Bear Creek Road, but Daddy could hardly object, could he? Well, he would object, of course, if he knew. He’d raise Cain if he ever found out, but Harley figured that racing was in his blood, so Daddy had nobody to blame but himself.
Racing. Pouring money down a gas tank. Wasn’t that what Daddy was doing at Hickory or Asheville or Wilkesboro most every weekend? It took a chunk of money to run a stock car, even if you did every lick of the mechanic work yourself. You still had to buy parts and gas and tires. Every week. You were lucky if a set of tires got you all the way through one race, which meant that for the next meet, you’d need enough cash to buy a whole new set. Whoever said polo was a rich man’s game ought to try fielding a stock car.
So between the parts and the entry fees and all, a good bit of Daddy’s factory salary went to feed his racing habit, and Harley had never begrudged him a cent of it, even when it meant going through the winter with holes in his shoes. Racing was important. He just wanted to be a part of it-not just cleaning up around the shop, but really in the middle of it, clashing fenders in a red-dirt arena in piedmont North Carolina. Daddy wasn’t too keen on sharing that part of the experience, though. As far as he was concerned, Harley could jockey the wrenches and leave the driving to the old man.
Being the race car driver’s apprentice was getting old now, though. At sixteen Harley thought it was time he found out if he had the knack for it. Even if he lost the race tonight, the run would be worth the money he’d lose just to find out if he could out-drag the brainchild of Lorne Lupton and Connie Koeppen. Maybe if he could hold his own out here, it would be time to ask Daddy if he could go along to the dirt track, too. Or figure out a way to get there on his own.
Lorne Lupton didn’t come from a family with money, so he couldn’t manage a car of his own, but Lorne was one of Nature’s born mechanics. He could probably soup up a lawn mower. Knew his way around an engine blindfolded. That’s where Connie came in. Constantine Koeppen-Connie for short-was no great shakes as a mechanic but he was a daredevil, mad for fast cars and the thrill of a race. His dad was a surgeon at the county hospital, which meant that he could afford the basics of a good ride. Money buys speed-it was the first article of faith in the racing bible.
For his sixteenth birthday, Connie’s dad had bought him a new red Camaro. Within three months he had blown up the Camaro’s engine drag racing, and his cutthroat driving had left the car with more dents than a golf ball, but instead of asking his dad to get him a new ride from the dealership, Connie had gone into partnership with Lorne, who told him what he needed to make the car a contender, and what all of it would cost. After Connie ponied up the repair money, Lorne went to work, replacing the original engine with a 454 out of a wrecked ’70 Impala wagon they’d found at the local junkyard. That heart transplant from seventies’ iron made the Camaro faster than the Chevrolet people had intended for a street rod to go.