Night of Thunder

“I think it did,” said Red.

They didn’t talk for a while, except in some kind of code.

“Great traction, all the way through. He’s left footing. Seems to find the ideal line a lot. Say, I really like his angle.”

“His angles are damned good, considering the corners are all unknown. I also like how soon he gets to the ideal, early in mid-corner. He rides this one real good and ain’t fighting it none.”

“This boy’s been in a hundred-mile-per slide before, I think. Like his traction. He ain’t hardly ever on two.”

“I think so, too, Matt.”

“Mr. Swagger, you got any other pictures? What I see is a damned fine driver knocking the little foreign job off the road. I will say, this girl of yours, she’s a damned cool hand. Suppose she gets it from her daddy.”

“Her mommy, more ’n likely. Yes, I didn’t know what to make of these. Mr. Dewey told me when he was done he one-eightied and flew back up the road to make sure he didn’t miss nothing. He stayed on the road a longer time than I asked him to, and way, way back he came upon some other skids. Now, it may not be the same guy, but it sure looks like it to me. Same width of track, same density of color. You’d have to make a tread comparison to be sure, but as I said earlier, don’t believe much in coincidence.”

He handed the two photos over, and the two men looked hard at them, then back several times at the actual pocket-of-engagement sequence.

“Well,” Red finally said, “that ties it up with a ribbon.”

“It sure does,” said Matt.

“So tell me what you make of it.”

“As I say, where he’s whacking her, it’s hard to make it out, other than he’s a good driver, so’s she. The cars are banging together, speed’s up near a hundred, she keeps turning inside him, he skids out-don’t lose it though-and goes after her.”

“Yes sir.”

“But see these here? They’re bad news, I’m afraid.”

Bob didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to find out the worst. The world was so much better for everybody if this was just one drunk or hopped-up farmboy who wanted to put a lick on another car, just like his hero, the late Dale Senior.

But that wasn’t to be.

“Now here we are, ten miles before the accident, and see this here turn he made. And here’s another one. He’s ru

“But it’s not like he’s chasing her, in the sense that he sees her and is closing,” Bob said. “It means, in other words, miles before he makes eye contact, he’s going like hell to catch her.”

“Well, he’s sure going like hell,” said Matt. “He’s not just ru

“That’s good driving.”

“No, sir. That’s great driving. Most civilians don’t know how to corner, even cops and good young racers. It takes time and some investment of guts and fender metal and a lot of good luck to learn the trick. You find that ideal angle that don’t feel right, but it is right. You ride that angle, at a certain point you brake but as she starts to skid, you got to play left-foot-right-foot, making the car dance, so that you can be speeding up before you’re on the straightaway ’cause if that’s where you’re stomping it, you’re already too late. And in all this, if your timing ain’t right you’re upside down in flames and hoping the foam truck gets there before your hands and feet burn off, never mind the busted neck.”

“I see.”

“Gu

FIVE

The Reverend Alton Grumley pronounced a mighty sermon, full of Baptist hellfire and damnation, in the meeting hall of the Piney Ridge Baptist Prayer Camp a few miles outside of Mountain City on old 167, just before it hit new 67.

He called upon God in his majesty to send wisdom to his young prodigal, he who had failed, send wisdom, humility, respect for elders, all those things a good Christian boy should show his religious mentor.

“Thou hast failed,” he said, in a power-voice, all throb and vibration. “Thou hast failed because thou did not pray for guidance hard enough. Thou must pray, Brother Richard, and give the soul in totality to the man upstairs. Only then will he listen.”

The Reverend was a scrawny old boy, with slicked-back hair, all pouf and vibrant with gray and hair oil, big, white, fake teeth, and dressed in a powder blue, three-piece suit from Mr. Sam’s big store. His sons and nephews had a joke. “Daddy’s tailor,” they’d say, “is Wah Ming Chow of Number 38 Industrial Facility, Harbin, Szechwan Province, China!” and get to laughing up a fit.

“You damned boys, the devil will take you!” he’d howl in rage, and then laugh harder.

But the boys weren’t there now. In fact only one parishioner listened to the Reverend. He was a raw-boned fella of indeterminate age-fellows like him could be thirty to sixty, all hardscrabble, southern school of hard knocks and rough roads, indomitable, relaxed, tougher than brass hobnails, not the sorts to get excited but exactly the sorts to avoid riling-who now sat in the front row of the meeting hall, in tight, faded jeans, beat-up boots, a blue, working-man’s shirt, and a Richard Petty straw cowboy hat both shabby and cool pulled low over his eyes. He wasn’t the sort who took the hat off indoors, church or no church. He had on a big pair of mogul sunglasses too, as King Richard commonly wore, and sported a mustache and a goatee, though the hair wasn’t real.

“Old man, you do go on,” he finally said. “I am getting extremely tired of all this show.”

“You was given a job, and you failed. If I wanted failure, I’d have sent my own damn sons. They so dumb, they guarantee failure, God love ’em.”

“They are dumb,” said Brother Richard, so called for his resemblance to the real Richard Petty and what was assumed to be a common NASCAR heritage. “But that’s okay, because they’re lazy, too.”

“They are good boys,” said the Reverend.

“Not really,” said Brother Richard.

“Anyhows, we in a porridge-pot o’ trouble now.”

“I agree. After all, she saw me. Not even you have seen me. If you had to describe me, you’d come up with, ‘He looks like Richard.’ So I guess they’d send out Richard on the circular. But by that time, I wouldn’t look like Richard.”

“Everyone knows that hair is phony,” said the Reverend.

“It doesn’t matter what they know. It only matters what they’ve seen.”

“Anyhow, you were highly recommended to me by at least three sources. It was said by all, ‘He’s the best. Nobody like him.’ Yet when I need you most, you fail.”