After Benjy strapped himself into the Deathmobile’s safety seat, I gave his shoulder harness an extra strong yank just to be certain it was secure.
“Dad, I can’t breathe,” he gasped. “Too tight.”
“Tortoise,” I insisted as I slightly loosened the belt. “You’re a tortoise, not a hare!”
“Dad?”
“What?”
“It’s practice laps. There are only a few other cars out there.”
I sighed. Seeing the giddy goofiness of the cars, drivers, and crews, I thought I had relaxed. But now Benjy was strapped into the race car, the race would soon become real, and all my worries and fears were back in spades. “Just be careful out there,” I finally said.
“I will.”
I handed him the radio headset and he attached it to his helmet. “We’ll call you on the radio if we want you to slow down or come into the pit, okay? And whatever the pit says is law. Period.”
“We practiced that, Dad.”
“If the radio doesn’t work, we’ve got the signs and flags to communicate. Right? And you’ll watch the track officials for their flags too. Right?”
“We learned all that at the drivers meeting, Dad.”
“And you’ll talk to us on the radio if anything goes wrong. Right?”
“Dad,” Benjy sighed, “I want to practice and we’ve talked about this ten billion times.”
He was exaggerating wildly, of course; we’d actually gone over it only about nine billion times. “Just be careful out there,” I repeated. “I love you. I don’t want anything to happen.”
“I know,” Benjy said. He turned the key and the Corvair’s engine came to life, ringing and whining. Under his breath, he repeated to himself his checklist. He scanned his mirrors, dropped the Powerglide transmission lever into Drive, released the parking brake, glanced back over his shoulder, pulled out onto pit road, stopped at the exit to get clearance from the official, and then merged onto the racetrack. Like he’d done it a thousand times.
“Take it easy, Aunt Mildred,” Kenny said to me. “He’ll be fine.”
“Look, I can’t help it,” I vented, talking way too fast. “I’m his father, he’s my son. So quit calling me Aunt Mildred and quit telling me to stop worrying. It makes me worry even more.”
“Just chill out, man!” said Kenny, raising his hands in surrender. “It’s not like you’re sendin’ him off to war. Let’s just have some fun, okay?”
“I definitely vote for fun,” Lydia seconded.
“Don’t encourage either Kenny or Benjy,” I replied to her pointedly. When she thought I wasn’t looking, she eyed Kenny and threw up her hands in bewilderment.
I moved away from both of them to the other end of our pit stall and trained my binoculars on Benjy. He was up to speed and maneuvering through Summit Point’s S-curves. On my practice laps, I’d slowed the Deathmobile to a crawl and still managed to bounce it over the track’s raised curbs. But on each S-curve, Benjy smoothly handled the entry and exit.
“He’s done half a lap, and I can already see he’s a better driver than you,” Kenny shouted at me over the roar of the practice cars passing by. “We won’t measure his lap times in hours.”
“I set a good example for him! And you!” I shouted back.
I saw Kenny call Benjy on the radio headset. Whatever Benjy said in reply, it made Kenny cackle.
I came back over. “What?”
“He said, ‘For every rookie driver, there’s a first time for everything,’” Kenny reported. “What the heck does that mean?”
I knew that phrase by heart, and my knees got rubbery. He was reciting his NASCAR racing video game monologue. Reciting was one thing, but what if he really started racing that way, fender to fender with Denny Hamlin, while trying to keep from dying at Talladega? That settled it. The heck with what Kenny and Lydia and even Benjy thought of me; I had to watch him like a hawk. If his tortoise turned into a hare for even a second, I was pulling the plug.
As the pace car—a Pleistocene-era tow truck—pulled off into the pit lane, the 66 cars that managed to drag themselves onto the asphalt track took the green flag, and the Grand Prix du Garbage was underway. The crowd of nearly a hundred cheered wildly as the cheap racers accelerated in an ear-splitting roar, thanks to dozens of broken mufflers. The lead car, courtesy of a lucky pick in the lottery, was supposed to be the Smoking Butt, a vintage Volkswagen microbus transformed by paint and plastic into a rolling cigarette. But before it even reached the starting line it was in fact smoking from its butt; coughing badly, the Butt pulled into the infield. Stop Childhood Obesity—a Plymouth minivan transformed into a giant rolling Twinkie that had been riddled with machine gun fire—took the lead.
In our pit, waiting for Kenny to drive the Deathmobile across the starting line, Benjy quickly did some math. “Eighty cars were entered. Fourteen never made it to the starting line. That means we can’t finish worse than sixty-sixth place!”
“The Smoking Butt’s out!” Lydia shouted gleefully. Indeed, the Pleistocene wrecker was already preparing to haul the stricken VW back to the garage. “Don’t you know smoking is bad for you?!” she jeered at the Butt’s pit crew, a few stalls away from us. She was ecstatic—until she saw Benjy’s ashen face. “What’s the matter?” she cried. “We haven’t even started and we’re already up to sixty-fifth!”
“The Volkswagen is the only other car in the race besides ours with an air-cooled rear-mounted engine,” Benjy fretted. “And it broke down before it even started.”
Just then, after drawing a dismal 77th starting position in the lottery, Kenny urged our Corvair across the start. A round of cheers rose up from the grandstands and pits as the fans recognized him. He waved, and gave us a thumbs up while passing our pit stall.
“GO, KENNY!” Lydia screamed, jumping and kicking. “GO!”
Benjy stuck his fingers in his ears. “You’re louder than the cars!” he complained to her.
“I can’t help it!” Lydia giggled, punching him playfully. “I always wanted to be a cheerleader! Don’t tell anyone!”
Fifty minutes later, Benjy held up our pit sign signaling Kenny to come into the pits to change drivers. But Kenny flew past, ignoring him, just as he’d ignored him for the past 10 laps. “He won’t come in!” Benjy shouted at me. “The schedule says we were supposed to change drivers twenty minutes ago!”
Not only was Kenny staying out on the track, ignoring our agreed schedule of driver changes, but he was also racing like the Hare from Hell when we’d all agreed to drive like a tortoise. The Almightiest Judge of the Grand Prix du Garbage delivered the official standings to our pit, and they showed Kenny now in 24th place. In less than an hour, he’d moved the Deathmobile up 42 places. “What if a Corvair actually won one of these fiascos?” asked His Honor giddily, suddenly forgetting all his cautionary talk about being a tortoise.
It was mind-boggling. With the Corvair’s small engine and an automatic transmission, Kenny gave up ground to nearly every other car on the straightaways. But in the corners, he reeled every other car back in and then left many in his dust. Entering a turn, he ducked inside the other cars, tight to the inside, barely twitching the wheel and sacrificing no speed. Exiting, with the Corvair’s heavy rear end anchoring the car to the pavement, he punched the accelerator while everyone else was still braking, exploding past cars that had no idea he was even in the same corner. The Corvair was riding on rails, effortlessly working its way toward the lead.
In other words, he was setting the worst possible example for Benjy. Turning my back on Benjy and Lydia so they couldn’t hear me, I called up Kenny over the radio. “What are you doing out there?!” I demanded.
“I’m racin’,” he said. “What’re you doin’?” Real snarky.
“We agreed to change drivers every half hour.”
“Dang, my watch stopped,” he drawled. “Eat some Corvair dust, Twinkie!” he cackled as he passed the Stop Childhood Obesity minivan. “It’s low-fat!” With its front-wheel drive and front engine layout, the Twinkie waddled obesely into the corners and had fallen out of the lead.
“You left your mike open and I heard that,” I fumed. “You’re setting a fine example for Benjy. What about driving like a tortoise? What about switching drivers after half an hour?”
“Damn mike keeps sticking open,” Kenny said, flicking his talk button on and off to unstick it; static sizzled in my ear like machine gun fire. He waved to us as he passed the pit, yet again ignoring Benjy’s sign ordering a pit stop, then came back on the radio. “Look, I’m thinkin’ Benjy should drive next.”
“No,” I said, then slowly repeated our pre-agreed plan. “I will drive the second shift to see what it’s like before he goes out.”
“Yeah, well, like they said in Iraq, the battle plan is always excellent—until the first shot’s fired.” With the mike stuck open again, I could again hear his cackle. “Look, for him, it’ll be a piece of cake,” Kenny continued. “You, on the other hand—I’m afraid you’ll wreck the car. Or break it. Then he wouldn’t get his chance to drive today and that would just kill him.”
“I’m not going to wreck or break the car,” I protested.
“All I’m sayin’ is, he and I got the talent for drivin’ this Corvair, and you don’t, and we all know it. He races next, then you.”
I was silent. I didn’t know for certain if Benjy was that talented a driver; he hadn’t yet turned a lap in a real race. But as much as it hurt to admit it, I did know for certain that I was not a talented driver. The racer’s instincts of when to press hard into a turn, what line to take, where to start and stop braking: I had none of them. Just watching our practice laps, Kenny had seen that Benjy had the monopoly on racing talent in our family. Now he was calling me on it.
“Well?” Kenny asked, setting up the Saab Story for a pass through the S-curves. He swung wide around the last S-curve and left the Vikings in the Fred Flintstone-mobile behind. “You drive like Betty Rubble!” he mocked.
“Benjy won’t want to change the order,” I argued. “He can be pretty rigid.”
“Tell him it’s captain’s orders. He’ll understand.”
The Alien-bearing hearse from Area 51 had just pulled into the pits with steam billowing up from underneath. That moved the Deathmobile up to almost 20th position. More than 30 cars had dropped out, and traffic had thinned out considerably. The racing looked a lot easier.
“Kenny,” I said. “He will be a tortoise. He will not be trying to win this race. Right?”
“Whatever,” moaned Kenny. “We could win it. Piece of cake.”
“This is important to me, Kenny. It’s not a joke. He’s not trying to win.”
“He’s not trying to win,” Kenny conceded. “I’m not trying to win. We will not win. Are you happy?”
“Okay,” I conceded at last. “Bring it in.”
“Roger that,” said Kenny.
“Benjy!” I shouted, waving at him to come over from the pit wall. “You’re driving next!”
He came over, eyeing me questioningly. “The plan is for you to drive next,” he said.
“Kenny’s the captain and this is his order,” I explained, peeling off the safety suit we were sharing. “We’re a team, we gotta be flexible, and we gotta follow the captain’s orders.”
“I don’t know,” said Benjy, un-persuaded. The idea of changing the driving order had thrown him a dozen curve balls all at once.
“Benjy,” said Lydia, putting a soothing hand on his shoulder. “When the manager at McDonald’s gave me an order, I had to follow it. Right? Or else, I got fired. That’s the way it works when the captain of the team gives an order. You have to follow it.”
He couldn’t resist her. “Right,” he finally said. “Okay.”
Lydia helped him wriggle into the tight safety suit. As Kenny eased the Deathmobile into our pit stall and shut it off, I rolled his chair over to the car.
“He ain’t ready yet?” Kenny groused, sliding into his chair from the safety seat. “Man, this’ll be the slowest pit stop in the history of the automobile. We’ll fall back twenty places!”
“We aren’t winning,” I reminded him testily. “We don’t care about winning!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kenny mocked. “A guy cain’t have fun anymore.” Then he heard the ovation for him from the fans in the grandstand and the other race teams in the pits. He took off his helmet and bowed, beaming. Then he needled the crew in the pit next to ours that was fueling up the Fuzz Ball, their salvage police car. “We don’t need no stinkin’ gas,” Kenny teased. “We’re gettin’ great gas mileage and still blowin’ yer doors off!”
Kenny signaled me to lean down so he could speak softly. “I think I sold those Fuzz Ball guys a Corvair. For real. They talked to me about it before the race.” He gestured to me to come closer and his voice grew so soft, I could barely hear it over the roar from the track. “When I got back from Iraq,” he said, “and I was in the hospital, and the days were bad, the physical therapist would tell me to imagine what my best day ever would be like, because one day, if I did the rehab, I would live it. This is not that day. This is a better day. So I really don’t care where we finish. Because I already won.” He paused, then asked softly, “But don’t tell Benjy, okay? Let him race like it means something. He’ll have more fun that way.”
I desperately wanted Benjy to be a tortoise, but I couldn’t resist Kenny’s plea. As Benjy climbed over the wall, his helmet, gloves, and safety suit finally on, I nodded my agreement. “Move your tail, Kid!” Captain Kenny ordered gruffly. “We got a race to run!”
“Yes, sir!” Benjy opened the door and buckled himself into the safety seat while I reviewed with him an endless stream of cautions he’d now heard over nine billion times. Nodding intently, he adjusted his seat and mirrors, murmuring his pre-drive checklist.
“Radio check,” I ordered.
“Benjy to pit!” came through loud and clear in my headset.
With no more cautions to give, I had nothing left to say except, “Fire it up.” The Deathmobile started eagerly.
“I love you, Benjy,” I said.
“Okay,” he replied.
I stepped back as he checked his mirror a final time, put the Powerglide in Drive, and cautiously nosed the Deathmobile out of the pit like a turtle sticking its head out of its shell.
“Be a tortoise!” I shouted after him. Kenny glared at me. “I can’t help it,” I told him.
“Rock and roll, Benjy!” Lydia screamed at the top of her lungs. “Woo woo! Put that hammer down!”
I glared at her. “We’re driving like a tortoise, remember?”
“Sorry,” she apologized. “Closet wannabe cheerleader.” She didn’t sound very sorry.
Kenny intently watched Benjy merge the Deathmobile onto the track ahead of the Fuzz Ball. “Great,” he moaned, sensing trouble. “That cop car is on his tail, they got a cop car engine, and they’re heading to the S-curves.” He grabbed the radio headset from me and put it on.
Through my binoculars, I saw Benjy give way ahead of the S-curves and let the Fuzz Ball pass him and open up a long lead. But in the curves, it had to brake hard as it wallowed from side to side. Meanwhile, Benjy confidently glided the Deathmobile through the turns, maintaining his speed so that he was soon right back on the Fuzz Ball’s tail. “That was good, guiding him on how to handle that police car,” I said to Kenny.
“I didn’t say a word to him,” Kenny replied. “He did it himself.” He winked at Lydia, who hopped from one foot to the other, craned her neck, and ran up and down along the pit wall to watch every second of Benjy’s drive.
In the back straightaway now, the Fuzz Ball used its gargantuan cop car V-8 to pull away from the Deathmobile. But entering the tight bus-stop turns, where the cars had to almost stop to go around a bus shelter, the cop car had to brake early and hard. Benjy stayed close, then in the last corner ducked low and inside as the Fuzz Ball’s bulk forced it out wide until it was nearly off the track and into the grass.
“HE PASSED THE FUZZ BALL!” Lydia exploded, jumping and spinning in the air. “Take that, you Big Fat Energy Hog!” She high-fived Kenny, then tried to high-five me as well, but held back when she saw my glare.
“Sorry,” she apologized again. “I just can’t help it. Aren’t you excited?!”
“You’re fine,” I said. “I’m just not there yet.”
“WELL, I AM!” she blasted, turning back to the track and cheering wildly as Benjy left the Fuzz Ball behind and took aim at his next pass—the alien-bearing Area 51 hearse now back on the track after pit repairs. “Eat that alien up, Benjy! Balls to the Wall!”
“Lydia!” I shouted.
“Let him alone,” she barked back to me. “Let. Him. Go.”
I glared at her. Hard. And she glared right back. Finally, I turned away from her to watch Benjy drive. Fortunately, he wasn’t hearing Lydia’s shouts, because he wasn’t driving Balls to the Wall to pass Area 51. Instead, he bided his time. For one, two, then three laps, he brought the Deathmobile past our pit, stalking the Alien hearse. He drove modestly, even stolidly, yet on each lap he gained a few precious car lengths. Like a pro, he was setting the hearse up for a pass.
Something was wrong, though. I wasn’t sure what, but, each time the Deathmobile passed our pit, I knew something was very, very wrong.
I looked over to the grandstands where the crowd was hanging on Benjy’s methodical pursuit of the hearse, cheering him on. “Deathmobile!” saluted the partying fans, hoisting beer cups as Benjy flew past, gaining on the hearse. If only they’d known how we got here: that, just a few months earlier, Benjy wouldn’t or couldn’t get out of bed after his college rejection; he wouldn’t go to the DMV to apply for a driver’s license because he was certain he’d be rejected; the only racing he’d ever done was in his video game; he had no friends. And then he let a “different, but not disabled” car enter his life. And that car had changed everything.
“DEATHMOBILE!” the crowd roared again as Benjy finished another lap, now just two car lengths behind the hearse.
Yes, something was very wrong. And I had to put a stop to it. “Let me talk to him,” I said to Kenny, holding my hand out for the radio.
“You can’t,” replied Kenny. “The mike is stuck open again.”
“Is he talking?”
Kenny shrugged evasively. He reluctantly surrendered the headset. “Don’t get all Aunt Mildred about it. He’s driving incredible.”
I put on the headset and listened.
Stalking the Area 51 Alien-Bearing Hearse down the back straightaway at Summit Point, Benjy Bennett, the talented rookie who has taken the Grand Prix by storm, knew the hearse was loose. It seemed to want to roll over in every turn.
Still, Benjy was part of a team and he had strict orders. He was the tortoise in this race. But it’s the tortoise that eventually wins the race, not the hare, so at some point the tortoise must pass the hare. That time had come. It was time for the tortoise to make his move.
There would be no nudging. There would be no swapping paint. This was not some kid playing a video game. No, the New Kid on the Block knew the difference between luck and skill, and he couldn’t rely on luck anymore; there was only his skill. He would have to outthink and outdrive the hearse and everyone else on the track today.
Benjy was now on the bumper of the hearse as he passed the pit again, and again the crowd cheered him on. At the end of the S-curves, he made his move. The hearse had carried too much speed into the final curve and had to lock up and smoke its brakes to stay on course. Benjy held his speed and easily slid by. He’d patiently waited for the hearse to give him his opportunity, and he’d taken it.
“DEATHMOBILE!” thundered the crowd after he pulled ahead of the hearse. And as Benjy roared past the grandstand, Lydia became the cheerleader she’d always wanted to be, leading the fans chanting, “DEATHMOBILE! DEATHMOBILE! DEATHMOBILE!”
Every bone in my body said all this was wrong, terribly wrong. As I heard Benjy plot his next pass into the open mike, I removed the headset. I had seen and heard enough. His talking to himself sounded so appropriate, such a welcome change from the same reciting I’d heard every morning for the past five years. And he was driving responsibly, even beautifully. That only strengthened my resolve. I had to take action.
Kenny saw my misgivings. “It’s harmless,” he said. “He talks to himself. Don’t make a big deal out of it. Just let him race. He’s a natural.”
I handed Kenny the head set, then marched to the pit wall and held up our sign ordering Benjy to pit. A half mile ahead of the Alien hearse now, he saw the sign as he passed and gave a puzzled thumbs up, even though the stop wasn’t on the schedule.
“He wants to know why he has to come in,” Kenny relayed from the radio.
“Tell him it’s because his mike is stuck,” I shouted to be heard over the engines.
“I cain’t tell him his mike is stuck when his mike is stuck! Ben, just cuz he’s reciting is no reason to pull him in. We don’t need the radio. Most teams don’t even have radios.”
“He’s doing great!” Lydia shouted at me. “He’s not doing anything wrong! Why do you have to ruin it for him?”
Kenny put his hand on Lydia’s arm to calm her down.
“I am his father,” I said tersely. “I don’t need to explain or justify anything to either of you.”
Kenny and Lydia threw up their hands—I was a jerk, ruining everything.
“Look, this is important to me,” I tried to explain. “It’s between Benjy and me. I don’t expect you to understand.” I left them and walked over to the pit wall.
Following race rules to the letter, Benjy slowed to a safe speed and eased his way down pit road, then expertly turned into our stall. He shifted the car to neutral, pulled up the parking brake, turned off the engine, and hopped out of the car. “What’s wrong, Dad?” he shouted at me.
With a can of black paint that I’d found in Kenny’s tool chest, I hopped over the pit wall and completely sprayed over the “Death” in Deathmobile on Benjy’s door. I hated that word. I never wanted to hear it again.
Above where I’d painted over “Death,” I wrote “Life.”
“From now on, we’re driving the Lifemobile,” I informed Benjy. “Is that clear?”
“Okay,” said Benjy. He eyed me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Now get back out there and race,” I ordered. “Carefully.”
Benjy didn’t wait for me to change my mind. He hopped back in the car and had pulled onto Pit Lane before I realized I’d forgotten to tell him to unstick his mike button. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t need my help out there.
I walked back over to Kenny and Lydia.
Lydia nodded, slowly raising her hand for a high five, and I gladly slapped it.
Kenny offered his hand, and I shook it. He held on, then pulled me down into an embrace. He was crying.