Saturday night took Team Blu to Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Rivers Speedway, one of Trace’s favorites. It was a tight, very high-banked quarter-mile track—and the site of the Team Blu tryouts last summer. Back then he had arrived with his father in their Chevy Tahoe and a dusty duffel bag full of racing gear. Now he rumbled down pit row in the cab of the big blue rig, past the World of Outlaws trailers.
“Look out, boys, here we come!” Harlan hollered at the national teams.
“We’re not there yet,” Trace said, but Harlan and Jimmy weren’t listening. Their enthusiasm was hard to ignore; it made him forget about last night. Tonight, the World of Outlaws sprint cars would put fifteen thousand fans in the stands. Trace had been coming to Rivers Speedway since he was a kid. To be here tonight—in the pits with a Super Stock—was to run with the big dogs.
Harlan eased the Blu hauler past the green Shaker State tractor-trailer of Rizer Racing family fame; on the other side of pit row was last year’s points winner, Lonny Marzones, and beside him the black No. 12x of Jack Roverstein. The big rigs were lined up in even rows like checkers on a board. Their generators hummed like a choir stuck on one crazy note. Smoky had to park his motor home on the far side, though it was still within sight of the track. He kept his satellite dish folded down. Just after Team Blu found its slot, parked, and opened the big rear door, Cal Hopkins walked up.
“Whoa!” Trace murmured under his breath. Cal Hopkins was as famous as dirt track drivers got; he was the one who had spotted Trace at Headwaters Speedway, and also the one who had run last summer’s Super Stock tryouts for Team Blu.
“Hey there, Trace,” he said. Trim, wide-shouldered, and with silvery cropped hair, Hopkins looked like an old-school fighter pilot.
“Hi, Mr. Hopkins,” Trace said.
Cal smiled. “Call me Cal. We’re both racers now.”
“Thanks,” Trace said as they shook hands—though he still couldn’t bring himself to call him Cal.
“Heard you been tearing it up out there,” Cal said.
“Not sort of—for sure,” Harlan said as he came forward to shake hands.
Jimmy hung back by the car; he was not good around famous people.
“I thought you’d do well,” Cal said as he looked over the Blu Super Stock.
As they talked, Lonny Marzones walked by. “Cal!” he called, and the two men came together for a quick handshake and a man-hug. Marzones, also in his racing suit, was a stocky, round-faced guy with an easy smile.
“You know this kid?” Cal asked Lonny.
“Can’t say as I do,” Marzones said as he turned to Trace.
“Trace Bonham,” Cal said. “He’s an up-and-comer, a kid to keep your eyes on.”
Trace and Marzones shook hands. “Nice rig for a Super Stock,” Marzones said as he looked at the Blu hauler.
“Thanks,” Trace said. Standing with Cal Hopkins and Lonny Marzones left him a quart low on words.
“Looks like you nailed a major sponsor. You guys should move up to sprints,” Marzones said to Trace with a wink.
“We might be doin’ that soon,” Harlan said from inside the trailer. Jimmy, pretending to be busy, peeked over the side of the Super Stock.
“If there’s time tonight, you should take a couple of laps in my backup car,” Marzones said.
“Are you serious?” Trace blurted.
“Where else you going to learn?” Marzones said. “I’ll mention it to my crew chief and the pit honcho. There’s usually a break in the action at some point. A speedway should always have a car on the track, even if it’s going around ten miles an hour.”
“Ten?” Trace said.
Marzones gave Trace a friendly slap on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, son. If it’s doable, I’ll send somebody down later to get you,” he said.
Cal and Marzones walked on, talking about the old days. When the two drivers were out of sight, Jimmy popped up from behind the blue Super Stock.
“Did you hear that?” he said.
“Yeah,” Harlan said gruffly, as if nothing big had happened. “It’s just racing.”
Team Blu readied the Super Stock for time trials. No one from the Marzones team came by (Trace kept glancing down pit row), and eventually it was time to take the track.
After rolling up over the berm and down onto the black, tacky dirt of Rivers Speedway, Trace scrubbed the tires left and right—but there was little time to get relaxed: after one lap, the on-track flagman circled his finger, and Trace powered up for his time trial.
Maybe it was his Super Stock tryout here last summer, maybe it was the Blu car itself, maybe it was the lift from being among the top-dog racers—or maybe it was his time with Sara Thursday night. Whatever it was, the cockpit felt like an easy chair. Trace was loose and relaxed. There was no clear line between his body, the racing seat, the clutch, the accelerator, the gauges, and the tires. He pitched it hard through the corners, then ripped down the straightaways as if he owned the dirt. His laps were 16.45 and 16.39.
“All right,” he shouted, punching the tin roof with a gloved fist. He came hot—too hot—into the pits. A steward gave him a universal palms-down wave, and Trace braked to a throaty idle down pit row. Back at the trailer, Harlan pretended to yawn as Trace rolled up to a stop.
Jimmy, slumped over, pretended to be dozing in his lawn chair.
“Real funny!” Trace said.
Harlan lunged forward to catch Trace’s helmet, and Jimmy doubled up in a fit of laughter.
“Way to go out there,” Harlan said, giving Trace a fist bump. “All you, kid!”
The comment brought Trace back to ground level. He looked across to Smoky’s Gulf Stream. The little satellite dish was still down. “Yes,” Trace said. “All me.”
The time trials dragged on through the four classes: Super Stocks, Midwest Modifieds, Late Models, and finally sprints. But Rivers Speedway ran a tight ship, with one car accelerating onto the track as the previous one left. Trace and the Blu crew gathered at the fence to watch the sprint cars. The heavy concussions from their exhaust headers echoed inside Trace’s ears even though he wore foam plugs. Watching the sprints at ground level made clear how powerful—and twitchy—they were. Too much throttle too quickly and it was instant spinout. But sprint cars were built to take the corners; drivers threw the cars into controlled, tire-spinning power drift, and torque and g-forces lifted the skinnier inside front tires until they only skimmed the dirt. On some cars, the left front tires dangled off the ground through the entire turn; on others, the smaller front tires dipped and tapped the dirt like eagles scooping fish from the surface of a lake.
“See that?” Harlan shouted, his voice almost noiseless in the roar. He was pointing at Lonny Marzones’s car. “He keeps all four tires on the dirt.”
Trace nodded.
Jimmy shouted, “It may look cool to show daylight under that tire, but you’ve got more control with all four on the ground.”
Trace nodded. It made sense.
Suddenly someone tapped Trace hard on the shoulder. An ATV had come up close behind. “You Trace?” asked the driver, a guy about Trace’s age; he remained on the ATV.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go. We’ve been looking all over for you,” the driver said. He wore Lonny Marzones’s cap and crew shirt.
“Yahoo!” Jimmy shouted.
Trace jumped onto the back of the ATV, and held on as they sped off to the Marzones hauler.
The Marzones crew chief was waiting, hands on his hips, like an unhappy father. “I hate when Lonny does this,” he said as Trace arrived.
Trace glanced uncertainly at the crew chief.
“That’s Bob,” the ATV driver murmured over his shoulder to Trace. “Don’t take him too seriously.”
Bob gestured for Trace to get off and come forward. “That’s why it’s called a backup car—so it’s there if we need it,” he said. “But you can have a couple of laps during intermission, before they start the heats.”
“Great!” Trace said, trying not to sound too eager.
“He looks about the same general size as Lonny,” the crew chief said to the others on the Marzones team. “Let’s get him strapped in. Use some pads if his ass is too skinny.”
If Trace’s Super Stock cockpit was a tight fit, the sprint car’s interior was tighter still—like being buckled into a straitjacket. He did end up sitting on some flex-foam pads that wrapped around his hips. “Use this helmet—it goes with our safety system,” Bob said.
Trace pulled on a fresh Team Marzones helmet, then leaned forward to be fitted for a head and neck support (HANS) device; it was a sturdy fiberglass tongue that ran flat against his spine, upward to a stiff collar around his neck, which itself was hooked to several rings on Trace’s loaner helmet, with its built-in receiver. “This system is designed to cut down your newtons,” Bob said.
“My newtons?” Trace said.
“Not talking Fig Newtons here,” Bob replied as a younger crew member stiffened Trace’s range of head and neck movement. “Newton the scientist. G-forces are what kill you when you wreck—which you damn well better not.”
“Don’t worry,” Trace said. He could look only a few degrees left or right; his arms had only inches of lateral movement.
“Worrying is what Lonny pays me for,” the chief said gruffly as he watched his men work.
“He’s good to go!” a crew guy said to Bob, who stepped forward and tugged at all the belts just to make sure.
Bob himself hooked up Trace’s window net. “Okay, let’s get this over with,” he said to his crew.
The sprint car was push-start, and Trace concentrated on the starting sequence: transmission in gear (little lever on the right); fuel switch to On position.
“Ready?” Bob called.
Trace took a breath and gave a two-fingered wave forward.
A push truck bumped behind him and pressed Trace forward, down pit row. The sprint car’s brake was a down-press pedal, not a forward leg-throw as in most cars—not that he planned on using much brake. As he approached the track entrance, Trace flipped the ignition switch to On—and the engine coughed alive.
Alone on the track, Trace idled along—no throttle applied—at somewhere close to thirty miles per hour. The 700-plus horsepower engine was less a motor than a force of nature—the rumbling inside an active volcano or the deep-lung cough of a far-off thunderstorm. The slightest tap to the gas pedal broke loose the rear tires: he had instant, unlimited power.
On his first lap he concentrated on keeping a consistent, steady pace through the turns and down the straights. He had watched enough sprint car action to know that slowing for corners was the sure sign of an amateur. He quickly completed two laps, but the on-track flagman did not wave him to the pits. The Marzones crew members and chief stood near the pit exit; on Trace’s third lap, Bob circled a finger for him to bring up the speed—but slowly. Goose bumps washed over Trace’s arms.
Gradually he built up speed to a half throttle. Fighting the impulse to slow for the turns, he pitched faster into them—and trusted the car. The gathering g-forces signaled “spinout!” but the squat, fat-tired car—pressed downward by the rooftop airfoil—twisted the high-banked clay turns like a waterslide car flung sideways through its curved chute. Trace plunged out of the corners and down the straightaway—with the next turn in his face within seconds.
He powered through the turns, fighting the feeling that the big tires were going to shred or roll over off their rims. Again he flashed by the Marzones crew, none of whom did anything but watch. He brought his speed up still more. By the fifth lap, he was running close to three-quarters throttle, and breaking off sharp, tight, controlled drifts through both ends of the track. He found a rhythm—an actual count inside his head—which helped him hit the corners just right and kept him from getting squirrelly out the back side.
The flagman threw the checkered, and the crew chief waved Trace in. He backed off immediately. Slowing, he took the engine out of gear before the pit exit, then coasted off the track with enough momentum to get partway down pit row. There he remembered to turn off the fuel switch. When the big engine starved and died, he switched the ignition to Off.
A local push truck rocked him from behind and rolled Trace the rest of the way to the Marzones hauler.
“Nothing to it, right?” Bob asked. His men unhooked the window net and began to unbuckle Trace.
“I wouldn’t say that!” Trace answered, rolling his neck to loosen the muscles.
For the first time, Bob showed a hint of smile. “It was a trick question, kid.”
Trace removed his helmet, which Bob stepped forward to take, and then Trace pulled himself backward from the cockpit. Lonny Marzones walked over, warm and sweaty-looking in his racing suit. “You must have a sprint car hidden away somewhere, right, son?”
“I wish,” Trace said. He wanted to give Marzones a huge hug, but settled for a long, pumping handshake. “Thanks.”
“You looked comfortable out there,” Marzones said.
Trace let out two lungfuls of air. “I think I held my breath the whole time!”
The Marzones crew laughed—the good kind of laugh.
“We wouldn’t have known by watching,” Marzones said, “and that’s the main thing. It’s what we do—driving as in life—we try to make it look easy.”
By then Harlan and Jimmy had arrived.
“What do you think, chief?” Marzones said to Harlan.
“About what? I was over getting a hot dog,” Harlan said.
“Yeah, right,” Trace said.
Marzones turned to his own crew chief. “How about you, Bobby?”
Bob quickly put his hard-boiled face back on. “He didn’t wreck.”
“Pay no attention to them,” Marzones said to Trace with a smile. “I think you could move up tomorrow.”
When Marzones was gone, Trace went to his cabin and called Mel. He had to tell somebody about his sprint car laps. She picked up on the first ring, and they talked for twenty minutes—until Harlan pounded on the door.
“Gotta go,” Trace said.
“I wish I was there with you tonight,” she said.
“Really?” Trace said stupidly.
“Really,” she said. “Now go drive fast.”
Trace’s dream night continued in the heats. Starting second in the second heat, he maintained his placement—missing a checkered flag by a nose. His car was quick out of the corners but a half note slow down the straights. Still, a second place would put him well up to start the feature.
Smoky took the Blu Super Stock inside the hauler, so with time to kill, Trace wandered down pit row. He headed away from the big sprint car haulers—he was, after all, only a Super Stock driver—and gravitated toward the grassroots end of the pits. Pits had their pecking order. On the far side were the homemade flatbed trailers, the retrofitted furniture trucks, the worn-out but repainted tractor-trailer rigs. There was music and the smell of home-cooked food—burgers and barbecue—on grill kettles. Trailer doors were open wide, wives and husbands worked on their cars in front of God and everybody. Young motor heads hung close by the family race cars waiting for a chance to help. Family teams were laughing, arguing, working together. Trace found himself walking slower in order to listen, to take it all in.
“Hey, you look hungry,” a large woman said. Behind a cloud of greasy smoke she was turning chicken wings on a propane grill. To the side was a beat-up gray Super Stock. The scene was like the old days, back at Headwaters Speedway when he drove his old Street Stock. When his dad was with him in the pits.
“No thanks. I’ve got to drive,” Trace said.
She squinted and waved smoke away from her face. “Come by later, then. There might be leftovers,” she said.
“Maybe I will,” Trace said.
She looked more closely at him as the air cleared. “Hey, ain’t you that Blu driver?”
“Yep,” Trace said.
“That’s me.”
She looked sideways to her team’s flatbed trailer, where three guys pounded on a tire. They looked like a father and two grown sons—her family—but she didn’t call to them; they were too busy telling one another how to get the tire off the rim. “So what brings you down to this end of the pits—the cheap seats?” she asked Trace with a throaty laugh. She kept turning chicken wings.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Something in his voice made her cock her head to look twice at him; she put down her tongs and stepped away from the grill and the smoke. Like that of the Carhartt lady, her face had seen some road, some weather. “Must be the down-home cooking,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Must be,” Trace said.
“Seriously, come by later. All you’d have to do is sit in a lawn chair and eat. My family is entertainment enough.”
In the feature race, Trace started in the fourth row, inside. After the sprint car, his Super Stock felt wide and slow—like a school bus. But Jason Nelson, two rows back, was a good wake-up call; by lap 2, orange tin loomed in the dust and thunder just off Trace’s right side. Nelson rocked him hard coming out of turn 4. Trace lost his line, and saw Nelson push past him on the high side. With full gas pedal, Trace spun and wallowed across the soft shoulder of the infield, kicking up chalk dust and barely missing a big bumper tire. When he fought his way back into traffic, he was running in the middle of the pack.
A restart on lap 10 closed up the field. As he bumped and tapped within the tight parade of cars leaning toward green, Trace heard himself say, “Come on, Smoky!”
His engine started to wake up on lap 12. It was nothing he could point to—not rpm or responsiveness in the throttle—but more like an increase in personality. The field had spread out, and Trace began to reel in cars one by one. He found bite on the high side, and better bite down low. Nelson was running third, but Trace set his sights not on him or the two cars ahead; rather, he began to race against the track. As long as he had room to move, he stayed on his best line and concentrated on nailing his lift spots; then it was hammer down, and out the far side of the turn. Focusing on the track rather than individual cars, Trace felt his lap times tightening—but running down the leaders was a gradual process. If on a circular track Train A is averaging 80 miles per hour, and Train B, only three car lengths behind it, is averaging 82 mph, how long does it take Train B to catch Train A?
Until lap 17.
Trace finally got tight behind Nelson—and began tapping his rear bumper pipe to get him loose. Nelson stayed on task and kept his line—making sure to swing his butt wide in the corners in order to take up two lanes. Trace finally got his nose inside Nelson’s rear quarter panel, and held it there until he could make the pass down low.
After that, he had two laps to catch the leader. His engine kicked up another notch—he felt the surge this time. It was a strong enough punch that Trace threw a millisecond’s glance sideways as he passed the pits. Smoky’s motor home sat with satellite dish fully erect. Its cup pointed directly at Trace.
The fix was in.
With new power, Trace swung wide and streamed by the leader on the outside. He actually backed off the gas for the final lap, but still streamed under the checkered flag by two car lengths.
After his weigh-in, and the photo op, he headed to tech lane. There a small cluster of drivers—including old man Nelson—waited. Jason’s father was out of control. He swore, kicked dirt, and jabbed his finger toward the Blu Super Stock.
The chief pit steward nodded and nodded, then gestured for Nelson to go away—back to his trailer. Jason Nelson hung to the side, watching.
“Great going, kid!” Harlan shouted over the engine noise.
Trace didn’t reply.
“You ran them off the track tonight!”
Trace set his jaw. “Don’t thank me,” he muttered as he got ready for the usual tech circus.
“Huh?” Harlan said. “You drove the hell out of that car tonight.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Trace began, but the pit steward walked up.
“I know, I know,” Harlan said to him. “Take it to the tech shed.”
“If you already know, what does that tell me?” the steward replied.
“It tells me, ‘Hurry up and get done so we can pick up our check,’ ” Harlan replied.
Trace sat inside the car, as usual, as the tech guys swarmed over it. Being teched was like being in a traffic stop: take orders from the authorities, and say as little as possible. But after twenty minutes, the tech guys picked up their tools and walked away.
“Thank you,” the tech chief said. “You’re good to go.”
“No—thank you!” Harlan said sarcastically.
When the Blu Super Stock returned to the hauler, Trace turned to look at Smoky’s trailer. The satellite dish was down, folded up and put away.
“I need to talk to Smoky—and you, too!” Trace said. He was still cranked with postrace adrenaline—a swirl of emotions.
“Later,” Harlan said. “You’ve got company.”
Cal Hopkins and Lonny Marzones walked up to congratulate Trace. He did his best to put on a happy face. After that, a few fans lingered for autographs on 18x T-shirts, but the Modifieds were roaring, and Trace was soon finished.
“You wanted to talk to me?” Harlan asked.
Trace paused. Let out a breath. He was coming down from his checkered flag high—to a checkered flag low.
“Later,” he said. “But for sure later.”
“Okeydokey,” Harlan said with a shrug.
Trace headed to his cabin, where he used the toilet, then sat on his bunk. He took some more deep breaths, and ate an apple. When he came downstairs, the Blu Super Stock was strapped down in travel position, and the big rear door was closed. There were men’s voices outside, but no one was inside.
He stepped over to the car. He stared intently at the nearest hood pin. Just then voices from outside—Harlan’s and Smoky’s—grew louder, and the side door clattered. Smoky stepped in.
“Nice driving,” he croaked to Trace.
“Thanks,” Trace said. He turned to face him. “But I couldn’t have done it without you.”
There was a moment of dead airspace.
“None of us could do any of this without each other,” Harlan said. “That’s what a team is.”
“Shucks, Pops, you’re making me all weepy,” Jimmy said from behind.
“Dry up,” Harlan said.
With the hauler locked tight, and Smoky wearing his floppy hat and sunglasses, they all walked over to watch the Late Models—with a stop beforehand at the concession shack. Trace pretended that this was just another night at the speedway, but he glanced over his shoulder, back toward the Blu hauler. He touched his pocket to make sure he had his keys to the side door.
“I’ll have the chicken with dirt,” Harlan said to the plump girl.
“Got the chicken, dirt’s free,” she said. She was redfaced and steaming from the heat of the fryers, but still smiling.
“Nothing for you?” Harlan asked Trace.
“Stomach’s a little iffy. I’ll eat later,” Trace said.
“Too much fun driving that sprint car,” Smoky said.
When Harlan, Jimmy, and Smoky had their cardboard trays of food, they all made their way to the pit bleachers.
“Mmmmmmmm-mmmh!” Harlan said, sniffing the air. “The only smell better than speedway chicken is V-8 methanol.”
“You’re sure happy tonight,” Smoky said to Harlan with his gravelly voice.
“Another feature win. Cal Hopkins and Lonny Marzones in our corner, life is good—eh, boys?” Harlan asked.
“Yahoom,” Jimmy said, his mouth full.
“Sure,” Trace said. “Life is great.” He could feel Smoky’s gaze.
“Big checkered flag, sprint car seat time—did you call your girlfriend yet?” Harlan asked.
“Which one?” Jimmy asked.
They all laughed—except Trace.
“His real girlfriend,” Harlan said. “That tall, skinny blonde from Headwaters, the one who doesn’t like us.”
“Mel,” Trace said.
“She’s not that skinny,” Jimmy said with appreciation.
“Yes, I called her,” Trace said.
“I would, too,” Harlan said.
During a restart in the Late Model feature, Trace gestured to the crew that he was heading over to the concession area. Harlan nodded and turned back to the action on the track. When the green flag dropped, and the cars strung out, the Blu crew’s faces pitched left, right, left like those of spectators at a tennis match. Trace started toward the concessions; then, after one more glance behind, he headed back to the Blu hauler.
With his key he let himself inside. The Blu Super Stock hood was still warm. He carefully unpinned it. Setting it aside, he removed the circular air cleaner, then leaned close to the carburetor. A Holley two-barrel. Standard issue—at least from outward appearances. He looked at it from all sides, and even took some cell phone photos of it from all directions—especially down the throat. Why he took pictures, he wasn’t sure: if experienced track tech guys couldn’t see an issue, how was he supposed to?
He buttoned the hood, making sure to position the four bonnet pins exactly as they had been. Then he straightened up and looked around the trailer at the various tool drawers labeled REAR END and STEERING and BRAKES and more—including two padlocked drawers marked SMOKY. He squinted to look closer, then bent down. A flat metal washer about the size of a dime was stuck on the outside of the first drawer. With a fingernail, Trace pried it loose—but the washer didn’t fall to the floor. It swapped sides and went clack! back against the steel-sided drawer. Trace tried it again. The magnetic pull of the drawer front was strong enough to suck the washer from the palm of his hand: schwack!
Just then a key slid into the lock; Trace scrambled away from the drawer. He managed to be rummaging in the BATTERIES drawer when Smoky stepped inside.
“Find what you’re looking for?” he asked in his sandpaper voice.
“I need some batteries—triple A—for my TV remote.”
Smoky looked around the trailer, as if making sure everything was in place. Then he said, “I thought you were hungry.”
“Can’t take the grease,” Trace said. “Thought I’d grab some snacks from my fridge.”
“So you’re going to watch TV while the races are on?” Smoky asked.
“I just wanted to check the NASCAR results.”
Smoky paused. “There’s double A batteries in there but not triple A.”
“No big deal,” Trace said, turning away. “I’ll find some later.”
As he headed to the cabin door, Smoky watched him all the way. “You forgot your snacks,” he said.
In the sprint car feature, several local sprint cars joined the World of Outlaws on the track, but they didn’t have the engines to compete. Still, the local fans cheered for the “farmers,” as Harlan called the independent cars, one of which—the Moffett Farms sprint—hung tough in the middle of the pack. But the World of Outlaws cars gradually took over the top ten or so places. Lonny Marzones and Larry Rizer had a hard bump in the far turn, spinning Marzones through white chalk dust and into the infield. As yellow lights flashed and the sprints rolled along under the caution flag, Marzones’s car sat dead. A push truck, lights flashing, quickly tucked in behind—but Marzones waved him off. The driver and two on-track officials crouched to look underneath Marzones’s car—then one of them waved for a tow truck. One sped over, then backed up, cable dangling, and hoisted Marzones’s front end off the ground.
“Damn,” Trace said. “He was running third.”
On the hook, Marzones got a free, slow ride back to the pits. Trace and Team Blu left the pit bleachers, and were waiting with the Marzones crew when Lonny arrived. His right front tire dangled like a bird’s broken wing. Behind, the race thundered up without him.
“All right, boys, you know the drill,” Bob said to the crew. He seemed almost cheerful.
“Tough luck,” Marzones called, tossing out his helmet. “Larry and I got our signals crossed in turn 2.”
“Looked that way,” Bob said.
“Oh well, that’s racing,” Marzones said, his voice muffled as he pulled himself out. Then he stood and hitched himself upward in a little shimmy that most drivers did (if they were male) when they got out of the car. He spotted Trace to one side.
“What do you think, Trace?” he said.
“I liked it,” Trace answered. “Up until you got hammered.”
Marzones shrugged. “You got to like it all, son,” he said, “because a bad day at the track is better than a good day in real life—ain’t that right, boys?”
His crew laughed as they worked on the car, and Marzones disappeared into his trailer.
Trace met his father again after the races. He had driven over to the speedway alone—no Linda this time.
“You want to get something to eat?” Trace asked.
“Sure!” his father said. He seemed surprised.
They headed down to Whitey’s Café, near the Red River and the flood dikes.
“Did you happen to notice that Marzones car all alone out there during intermission?” Trace asked.
“Yes. He must have been tuning and testing.”
“That was me in the car,” Trace said.
His father’s brown eyes widened. “Are you kidding?”
Trace couldn’t hold back a grin. He told his dad the whole story.
“Damn! That is something!” his father said. “You looked great out there!”
“It went all right,” Trace said.
“Jeez, Son, you’ll be running with the big dogs before we know it!” His father drummed his fingers sharply on the table.
Trace was silent. Then he glanced around the café, and back to his father. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, Son—anything.”
“Have you ever cheated?”
His father drew back slightly; his gaze flickered sideways, then back to Trace. “You mean, like, cheated on your mother?”
“No—not that,” Trace said quickly. “I mean in business.”
His father took a moment to answer. “I once bought an eighty real cheap from this old farmer because he didn’t get along with his family, and he didn’t like real estate agents. Called them ‘bloodsuckers,’ and threatened to shoot the next agent who showed up. He sold it to me just to spite everybody else.”
“But it’s not like you lied to the old guy,” Trace said.
“No. I was in the right place at the right time—like you with this racing thing, Son.”
Trace toyed with a little creamer cup.
“Why? Is something wrong?” his father asked.
Trace shrugged. “Sort of,” he began. “All I’m allowed to do is drive. They never let me even look at the engine.”
“Lonny Marzones doesn’t work on his engines,” his father said.
“I’m not Lonny Marzones,” Trace said.
“True,” his father said. “But you have a professional team behind you.”
“Yeah,” Trace said, lowering his voice. “But some nights we have way too much engine.”
His father was silent.
“It’s like we’re running a four-barrel carb. Or something . . .” Trace trailed off.
“Have you had any trouble in the tech inspections?” his father asked.
“No.”
“Well, there you have it,” his father said, leaning back. “You’re probably still not used to a genuine, pro-built motor.”
Trace took a sip of his water.
“And anyway,” his father continued, “most people would say it’s the driver who wins races—not the car.”
The waitress came with their steaks. Trace’s dad flashed her his big smile, but she was looking shyly at Trace. “More water?”
“Sure,” Trace said.
She returned with a pitcher. As she poured, she blurted, “You look just like that race-car guy on the Blu commercials.”
“He is that guy,” Trace’s father said.
“Oh my gosh!” the waitress said with a tiny shriek.
“Please,” Trace said to his father.
“Well, you are him,” his father said to Trace. It was like his father hadn’t heard any good news for a long time.
The waitress blushed deeply—and sloshed water from her pitcher. “Oh shoot!” she said.
“Hey, it’s all right,” Trace said, grabbing a napkin.
“Don’t worry about it—it’s only water,” his father said.
As the waitress went away, Trace’s father’s eyes dropped briefly to her backside. “What a sweetheart,” he said.
Trace let it ride—the waitress and the motor thing. The moment was past.