In times of plenty and in times of want, Sunday morning means church. It is the one constant for people of faith, no matter their daily travails. If anything, the Depression makes the church stronger. If there is no money for food, for clothes, for medicine, there is still the scripture. Not only does the scripture endure, it’s free.
The church outside of Caledonia is a frame building on a rise above the town, with a cedar roof and high windows along each wall. It is in decent repair; it could use a coat of paint but in these times there is no money for that. The preacher hasn’t been paid for nearly a year now. If the parishioners can’t scrape together funds to pay the minister, then a gallon of paint is out of the question. He gets by on the meager donations to the collection plate each week, and his uncanny ability to show up on people’s doorsteps at mealtime.
There is a cemetery with tombstones dating back to the 1600s behind the building and that’s where Bobby is hunkered down, watching the congregation arrive, some on foot, some riding mules and driving horse and buggies, a few driving motorcars.
Bobby keeps out of sight, behind a crypt that houses an obscure general from the Revolutionary War. He is waiting patiently, watching the vehicles arrive. He is headed for Wilkes County, a hundred and twenty miles away, and he is tired of walking. He has no interest in the rattletrap Model T coupes, the Dodge trucks or the Chevrolet sedans. He is waiting for a Ford V8. He’d left the stolen Buick an hour or so out of Asheville. He wouldn’t risk the police catching up to him. Or Luanne neither. He can’t say which of the two concerned him more.
After a time, he decides he is not to be rewarded this Sabbath and will have to settle on one of the lesser vehicles already parked in the churchyard. After mingling beneath the maple trees for a time, the congregation has now filed inside, and the organist is playing “Just A Closer Walk With Thee.” Bobby scans the vehicles once more and decides on a 1929 Dodge truck. Dodge made a good flathead six.
But then he hears the familiar chug of an engine and the grinding gears from an inexperienced downshift. A moment later a 1936 Ford roadster pulls into the yard. A callow youth with slicked-down hair, wearing a white linen suit gets out of the car, looks at himself in the rearview mirror, runs a comb through his pomade, and goes inside.
The roadster is nearly new and Bobby can see the V8 emblem on the grille. He stands watching, wary that somebody might come outside, to go to the privy or retrieve something they may have forgotten. Inside the church, the preacher begins to sermonize. Bobby knows there will be another hymn coming shortly, and he waits for it.
When he hears the voices launch into “How Great Thou Art,” he makes his way through the trees and tombstones to the churchyard. He glances into the roadster’s interior, hoping to see the key in the ignition, but it isn’t there. He retrieves a length of wire from his coat pocket and quietly lifts the hood on the passenger side, then runs the wire from a live connection on the firewall to the distributor. He gently closes the hood, gets into the car and hits the starter button on the floor. The engine fires up at once. He glances at the church. A small girl of five or six is standing by one of the tall windows, watching him. Behind her, the parishioners are facing the other way and giving the hymn their all. Bobby keeps his eyes on the little girl as he eases the gearshift into low. When he starts out, she waves to him and Bobby waves back.
Bye-bye.
The Ford is as smooth as silk. Bobby takes the county road down to the highway and heads north towards Wilkesboro. He figures the church service, depending on the preacher, would run anywhere from an hour to three, and that will give him plenty of time to get out of the county. By the time the car is reported stolen, Bobby might even be in Wilkesboro. He’ll leave it in a lane outside of town somewhere and within a day or two the slick-haired swain will have his roadster back.
But then things rarely go as planned. Or at least, things in Bobby’s world rarely go as planned. Coming to a stop sign thirty miles out of Wilkesboro, he spots a cardboard placard, nailed to a fence post at the intersection. The sign reads:
RACING TODAY 2 MILES
There is an arrow pointing to the right beneath the words. Bobby sits at the intersection for a moment. Wilkesboro is left. Wilkesboro, where he can be in less than an hour. Where he can ditch the stolen roadster and make his way to his Uncle Stan’s place. His uncle is a smithy; maybe he can help Bobby find employment. A new start. No more gas station jobs. No more Luanne and her flighty dreams of bank robber fame and movie stardom. No more stolen cars. Well, aside from the one he’s currently driving.
Wilkesboro it is. Bobby turns left.
But, as the pen is mightier than the sword, the pull is stronger than the will. He makes it less than a mile before he slows down, cranks the wheel, and puts the roadster into a skidding U-turn, dust flying. He heads back east.
The race is being held in a fallow field a few hundred yards off the main road. Two or three dozen men have gathered to watch as eight or nine vehicles, family sedans and farm pickup trucks for the most part, prepare to race. Bobby pulls up in the roadster and heads for the starting line—marked by two bales of hay. A heavy-set man with a bushy red beard appears to be in charge. He carries a pad of foolscap on a clipboard and is moving from car to car. He looks up as Bobby rolls to a stop, giving the roadster a critical once-over as Bobby climbs out from behind the wheel.
“Something I can do for you?
“If you’re the man in charge, you can,” Bobby says.
None of the other “race” cars were worth more than thirty or forty dollars. The big man looks at the roadster again.
“You intend to race this car?”
“Yes, sir,” Bobby says. “More ‘n that, I intend to win.”
The big man shrugs his indifference. “Two-dollar entry, winner gets half. We won’t get started here for a bit.”
Bobby hands the man a dollar bill and the rest in change, then signs the sheet where the man indicates. The big man doesn’t bother to look at the signature. Bobby gets back in the car and wheels the roadster to the rear of the pack. He reaches for a stick of Beechnut and chews while he waits. Men with sledgehammers and steel fence posts are still laying out the route. It is a half hour before the racing begins.
The race is just shy of complete chaos. Half the drivers are as raw as a north wind and have no idea what they are doing. Cars spin out in the dirt and crash through the fences. Green farm boys, driving pickup trucks “borrowed” from their fathers, hold the gas pedal to the floor. Two blow their engines to pieces. A Studebaker coupe overshoots the track and flips over three times. The engines are loud, the smoke and exhaust creating a thick cloud over the field. The fans—local youths primed with pints of busthead—are ecstatic.
Bobby maneuvers the roadster through the melee like an artist, sliding through the corners and flying down the straights. From time to time he scrapes fenders with the other cars, then pushes past them. He wins easily. Crossing the finish line, he slides the roadster to a stop and climbs out, cool as ice. Bobby is in his element, the only place he really feels at home. The man in the wild beard approaches, counts out ten dollars and hands it over. Bobby is congratulated by the crowd. Somebody hands him a jar of moonshine.
Soon there is talk of another race. Some of the farm boys want another shot at Bobby and his roadster, even though he’d trounced them all. Bobby is fine with the prospect. It would mean ten more dollars in his pocket for one thing but more than that, it is another chance to race. Truth be known, he’d do it for free.
He is standing along the fence, nipping at the pint, when the police car arrives. The decal on the sedan door reads: Alexander County Police. It doesn’t take much to decipher why the sheriff has shown up. When the man climbs out of the car, he puts his hat on and heads straight for the stolen roadster. Watching from fifty yards away, Bobby hands the pint to the nearest farm boy and slips through the fence and into a cornfield. Within seconds he is out of sight.
The sheriff has a look at the Ford roadster. Noting the damaged fenders and grille, he beckons over the bearded man in charge.
“Who’s driving this here vehicle?”
“Why, some stranger,” the man says, looking around for Bobby. “Pulled in from nowhere, said he wanted to race.”
“Where is he?”
“He was here not one minute ago. But I don’t see him now.”
“What’s his name?” the sheriff asks.
“I couldn’t say,” the man admits. “Like I said, he was a stranger.” He realizes something. “Wait now.. .he signed the sheet.”
The man retrieves his clipboard from the running board of a truck and brings it over to the cop. He points out the signature, reading it himself for the first time. “Well, hell.”
“Franklin D. Roosevelt,” the sheriff says.
At that moment, the man who is clearly not the president of the United States emerges from the cornfield a quarter mile away, steps out onto the main road heading to Wilkesboro, and sticks out his thumb. An approaching Mack truck downshifts to a stop.