Their partnership had made for one formidable opponent. Lorne was the mechanic. Connie Koeppen did the driving. Besides his lust for speed, Connie had a mean streak that would do justice to a tusk hog, coupled with a complete absence of fear, which probably explained his devotion to Dale Earnhardt. Like Dale, Connie Koeppen would do flat-out anything to keep from coming in second. The Camaro had probably cost more than Harley made in a year, between the purchase price and the cost of the parts that Lorne used to soup it up, but Connie didn’t seem to care if he wrecked it or not. He figured that as long as he was careful not to get any speeding tickets, he could always get his dad to finance a replacement. Besides, Connie Koeppen was crazy. Give him an inch, and he’d put you into the river. If you found yourself on a narrow lane, barely wide enough to hold two cars abreast, and if Connie Koeppen was driving the other car, he was bound to take his half of the road right out of the middle-even if he had to bash in his own car in the process-and leave you scrambling along on what was left.
Lorne, a quiet, methodical soul who probably pretended he was the engineer on the Starship Enterprise, had given the Camaro’s engine a high-tech advantage, and Connie had the killer instinct to make the most of it. Harley wasn’t sure what his own special gift was. Desperation, maybe. Nobody could have wanted to win more than he did.
It had taken Harley more than a year of sawmill wages and odd jobs to scrape up enough cash to make his own shopping trip to the junkyard. Before he went, he’d asked for advice from one of his dad’s racing friends, a hurried conversation at the track while his dad was making a test run. The old fellow, a jackleg mechanic, had scribbled a wish list on the back of his pay envelope. After a few weeks of scratching around Harley had managed to locate most of the items he’d recommended.
First, Harley had used his savings and his little bit of Christmas money to buy an old Trans-Am. He’d paid a local farmer to tow the heap to his tobacco barn, where Harley had proceeded to rip out the motor, which he swapped back to the scrap yard for more small parts. In place of the regulation motor, he had installed the 455 out of a wrecked ’70 Bonneville. Then he jazzed it up with a set of Holly four-barrels on an Edelbrock manifold so fine that the result was an uber-motor that could practically pass you in neutral. The old Pontiac was a lot faster than it looked, that was certain.
When he had finished the Trans-Am’s transformation, Harley continued to keep it stashed in his neighbor’s barn. One look under the hood and his old man would know exactly what he was up to, and then he’d be grounded until gasoline was ten bucks a gallon. He was careful not to let Lorne get too close a look at the car, either. On the outside, the Trans-Am still looked like a rusty bucket of bolts, but if all his little adjustments kicked in as planned, the thing should take off like a rocket. Sure, the car was older than the Lupton-Koeppen Camaro, but there was no disadvantage in that. Nobody in his right mind would race an actual eighties’ car when there was sixties’ iron to be had. Harley’s dad always said that the new emission standards had done the same thing to American autos that neutering did to a bull.
It was dark now, but still warm from the heat of the day. Harley was sprawled in the driver’s seat, almost relaxed enough to drop off to sleep when the distant shine of headlights announced the arrival of his opponent and a few carloads of spectators. So this wasn’t to be a private heat between racers, but a public ritual, with half the senior class along for the ride. Just as well, thought Harley. With spectators there’d be some neutral person to hold the money, drop the rag, and witness the outcome. (Or to go for help. But Harley didn’t think of that. He was sixteen and immortal in that first race, and the thought of anyone’s needing assistance never crossed his mind. Maybe if you were a no-holds-barred racer, the thought of a wreck couldn’t enter your head, or else you’d hold back. You’d choke and you’d lose.)
The crowd of hangers-on-mostly the guys who hung out at the smoking yard at school-had brought six-packs and a couple of fifths of bourbon. A couple of football players had also brought their female counterparts, girls of the big hair and raccoon eyeliner persuasion, to whom this event would have all the prestige of a prom. Connie would thrive on the attention of an adoring audience, with girls to cheer him on. Harley and Lorne, probing under the hoods of their respective cars, barely noticed that anyone else was there.
Connie was all swagger, strutting around in a Duke Blue Devils sweatshirt-his dad’s alma mater. It remained to be seen if his grades would get him into the university as well, or even if he could be persuaded to go. He tapped Harley on the shoulder. “Did you bring your piggy bank?” he asked. “This race is gonna cost you all of it.”
Lorne still had his nose stuck in the Camaro’s engine, too focused on some mechanical adjustment to care about the theatrics of the occasion. He looked up only briefly, to say to no one in particular, “Get those other cars out the way. Park them up the road toward Akers Farm, behind the starting point.”
When this was done and the preliminaries had been settled, the dark road was lined with shivering spectators, and Mike Gibbs was standing in the middle of the dark road between the two cars, holding a white handkerchief at shoulder height. Harley hunched over the steering wheel, keeping his eyes on Mike, waiting for the go sign. He had forgotten about the faces peering at him from the sidelines, so intent was he on revving his engine against the brake, with one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake to keep in check until the signal was given.
Harley knew Connie preferred another method of revving up: he aimed for the red line but kept his car in neutral. At the instant the handkerchief dropped, Connie would slam into gear and lunge forward into the darkness. That split-second gear shift would cost him an instant of precious time, but he must have figured that the Camaro had enough power to make up for it. Connie hadn’t even insisted on a coin toss for who had to drive on the wrong side of the road. Since Harley had arrived first, he declared, he could keep the right-hand side. Besides, nobody drove up Bear Creek road after dark, so side-of-the-road was not a factor in the race.
Harley kept his eyes on Mike’s handkerchief, shining in the pool of headlights. He felt a film of sweat on his upper lip and his hands felt so clammy that he had to wipe them on his jeans to make sure that they didn’t slip on the steering wheel at the crucial moment, which was fast approaching. A heartbeat later the white handkerchief began to fall, and Harley slammed the gas pedal to the floor. Tires squealed and the Trams-Am hurtled forward, even with Connie’s Camaro; then the two of them sped down the dirt road, heedless of the shouts from behind them.
A quarter mile farther on-a distance carefully paced out in daylight-Robbie Bradley was leaning against the big sycamore, flashlight in hand, to signal the end of the race. The contest would be over in fifteen seconds. A quarter of a mile in cars that could go from zero to sixty in one breath. Sixty miles an hour-that’s 88 feet per second, then, steadily accelerating to who-knows-what for most of the next 1,320 feet. Fifteen blurred seconds. It was all reflexes. Stomp and go and steer and before you could blink you’d passed the tree and it was over.
Harley gripped the wheel and hung on, focused on the light that Robbie Bradley was waving from his post by the sycamore…Almost there…almost there when the deer burst out of the woods and stopped dead in the glare of the headlights. In the middle of the road.