Drag-Strip Racer (2 page)

He unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, and stumbled out of the car. He saw the blue Camaro pull up on the other side
of him. Then
Bill Robbins piled out of it and came running forward.

“You okay?” Robbins asked worriedly.

“I’m not sure,” Ken said, and looked at his left foot. “My foot jammed against the floorboard when I hit the guardrail. I
might have sprained or broken it. I don’t know.”

“Did you lose control?” Robbins wanted to know.

“The brakes gave.”

The ambulance arrived and pulled up beside them. Two paramedics jumped out of it and hurried toward him.

“You okay?” asked the shorter of the two, a stout, reddish-haired guy about twenty-five.

“Okay except for my left foot,” Ken answered.

“Lie down,” the medic advised. Both he and his partner got on either side of Ken and helped ease him to the ground.

Ken saw a figure racing across the field toward them, hair flying. Janet’s eyes were wide with panic as she came running up
to him. She stopped and stared down at him as he lay there. A medic had removed Ken’s shoe and was examining his injured foot.

Ken felt the gentle, probing fingers. Then they
found a tender spot that flared with hot-iron pain as the medic pressed his thumb against it.

“I’m afraid you’ve got a fracture, my friend,” the medic said. “Hold still. I’ll get a stretcher and take you to the hospital.”

Janet gazed at the medic as he rose to his feet and started toward the ambulance. “Can I go with him?” she asked. “He’s my
brother.”

“You sure can,” he said.

T
HE GARAGE DOOR
was open and the car II was gone. So was Li’l Red. It had been parked under the towering oak next to the garage.

Dana rubbed the dark fuzz on his chin as he remembered that today, Saturday, was a big day for his kid brother. He was going
to trial-run the Chevy for this afternoon’s Eliminator contest. Well, good luck, old buddy, he thought, as he climbed off
his motorcycle.

He yanked off his black helmet, hung it over a handlebar, and rubbed his dark hair vigorously with his hands. Then he combed
it back with his fingers and headed for the house, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his mouth. Just before he reached
the front porch he took a deep drag from it, inhaled the smoke into his lungs, then
dropped it and squashed it with the heel of his right boot.

His taut, tall frame moved with easy grace as he stepped up to the door and turned the knob. The door was locked.

He knocked, but there was no answer.

“They must’ve all gone to watch their favorite son do his thing,” Dana muttered out loud.

Dana reached for the ring of keys he kept on his wide belt, selected one, and unlocked the door.

He went in, closed the door behind him, plunked his long, angular frame down on an armchair, and yanked off his boots. Then
he stretched out his feet, wiggled his toes, and laughed.

“So Ken thinks he’s going to make out like good old Uncle Louis, does he?” he said, again voicing his thoughts out loud. “Bull.
He’ll never be able to carry a candle to that old-timer.”

Anyway, he thought with some bitterness, that racer should have been left to him. Ken was no hot-rodder. He was at home with
books, not a racing car. He had sat on a motorcycle only once in his life and Dana remembered he had to coax him to get on
it then. Why leave a racer to a sixteen-year-old kid when he was afraid to ride pillion on a bike?

Why? Because Ken’s the good boy of the
family, that’s why, Dana answered his own question. Tell him to do something and he’ll jump to it like a puppet on a string.

“Well,” he said aloud, “not me. I’m eighteen and I’m going to live my own life. I am what I am, and I’m not going to change
it—for Mom, or Dad, or Ken, or anybody else.”

He glanced at his wristwatch. Ten after twelve. Well, he’d better make himself a sandwich and get back to work before twelve-thirty,
he thought. He was doing a job for Nick Evans—painting the walls of his pool parlor—and Nick didn’t like to have his help
late. Even part-time help.

He slid off the armchair, went into the kitchen, and headed toward the refrigerator. He saw a note taped to the door and leaned
over to read it.

Dana,

We’re at the hospital. Kerfs foot was fractured in an accident.

I’ve made a couple of sandwiches for you.

If you can come to see your brother, please do.

Mother

He picked up the note, read it again, then wadded it up into a ball. How do you like that? he thought. The first day of his
race and Ken had
to go and fracture his foot. That proved that he was no racer. He should stick to his books, or that wood sculpturing hobby
he had recently started.

Dana tossed the wadded paper into the garbage container, opened the refrigerator door, and hauled out the two bagged sandwiches
along with a can of beer. He thought of going to the hospital to see Ken, but wasn’t particularly interested. A fractured
foot was no big deal. Ken was lucky he hadn’t broken his neck.

He ate the sandwiches and reconsidered. His parents would want him to see Ken, so he decided he would. The hospital was out
of his way, but he didn’t have to stay there for more than a few minutes. No reason why he couldn’t get back to Nick’s in
time.

He finished the beer, tossed the empty can and bags into the garbage container, locked the house, and biked to the hospital.
He found out from the receptionist that Ken was in the emergency ward, and went to it. He didn’t hurry. His heels clicked
on the tiled floor like a slow-running clock.

The whole family was there—his mother, father, Janet, and ten-year-old Lori. The moment he stepped into the room they turned
to him simultaneously, looking as if they were surprised to see him.

Dana noticed, as he had before, that at thirty-nine his father looked ten years older, very gaunt from his serious diabetic
condition, but sun-browned from his regular stint in the garden he loved so much. His mother, by comparison, was almost as
fit as she had been as a young woman.

They exchanged greetings, then he stepped up to the bed where Ken was lying, his left leg in a plaster cast.

“That’s a heck of a way to learn that racing is a man’s sport,” Dana quipped. They shook hands. “What happened?”

Ken explained. “And don’t tell me I can’t race it,” he added firmly. “What happened to the brakes could’ve happened to any
car.”

Dana shrugged. “Right.”

“Dana, I think you should check over those brakes for him,” his father cut in.

Dana looked at him. “Why?”

“Ken thinks they might’ve been tampered with.”

Dana laughed. “Tampered with? Who’d tamper with the brakes on that car, anyway?”

“Hooligans,” snapped his father. “Doing it for kicks. Anyway, Ken says he checked the car out thoroughly and hadn’t found
anything wrong. I would appreciate it if you’d do it.”

I wonder if he’d be that concerned about me, Dana thought. Ever since he could remember, both his mother and father seemed
more worried about what happened to Ken than they ever did about him.

“I’m a motorcycle man, Dad,” he said. “What I know about cars you can stick into a valve cap.”

“Then ask that friend of yours. Taggart,” his father suggested.

“Scott Taggart?”

“Yes. He races cars, too, and he fixes them. He should be able to find out if the brakes were tampered with or not.”

Dana rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Scott Taggart raced a small block Chevy II but had never managed to come out better than
third runner-up in the two years that he competed. Along with the Chevy, he owned a Honda motorcycle, and what he knew about
both kinds of vehicles could keep him in a good, steady-paying mechanic’s job for a long time. He just didn’t seem to like
steady jobs.

Dana shrugged. “Okay, Pops. Whatever you say,” he said.

“Dana—please,” said his mother, looking hurt at the way he had addressed his father.

Dana inhaled, then shook his head and clamped his teeth as he exhaled. “Sorry. Okay,
Dad.”
He
turned back to his brother and forced a weak grin. “Don’t run off and do something crazy, okay?” Then he stepped toward his
mother, gave her a peck on the cheek, smiled at his sisters, and headed for the door, the heels of his boots clicking sharply
on the vinyl-covered floor.

The cold voice of his father stopped him. “Dana.”

Dana paused, turned, and faced him. His father’s bad eye, the left one, and the good eye fixed firmly on him.

“Yeah?”

“The garage man said he’d have a tow truck haul the car to the house at about two.”

“I’m through work at three,” Dana told him.

His father nodded.

Dana turned away and walked out. In the hall he took another deep breath and shook his head. He and his father hadn’t gotten
along since Dana’s elementary-school days. It seemed that there wasn’t a thing he did that was right, and, through all the
years that he was growing up, the situation hadn’t changed. Sometimes he thought it was getting worse.

He got back to the pool parlor, secretly hoping that Nick wouldn’t see him coming in. But the suave, dark-complected owner
of the only
pool hall in the small town of Wade, Florida, was sitting behind the cash register in a close conversation with a blond.

“Hi, Nick,” Dana greeted him as he headed for the hall where he’d left the paint can and brush. Behind him he could hear the
solid crack of cue balls breaking, then the quieter sounds of balls striking one another.

Nick nodded to him. A few seconds later Dana heard footsteps behind him. He turned and saw that it was Nick, smoke curling
up past his eyes from the cigarette he held between his lips.

“You’re late,” Nick said. He glanced at his watch. “Eight minutes late.”

Dana felt a tightening in his stomach. “Ken got in an accident. I rode to the hospital to see him.”

“What happened?”

“He fractured his foot. He was running some passes with his racer this morning.”

“Too bad.”

“He’ll be okay.”

Dana bent over, picked up the screwdriver lying on the covered paint can, and began prying off the lid. He wished Nick would
leave. The guy made him nervous.

He got the lid off, picked up the stirring paddle, and began stirring the paint. He went a little too
fast and spilled some of it over the edge of the can and onto the paper the can was sitting on. Hands unsteady, he picked
up the brush and wiped it off.

“Take it easy,” Nick cautioned. “That stuff’s expensive.”

“Sorry.”

“See you around.”

“Right.”

He watched Nick turn and leave, the tip of the cigarette glowing red as Nick inhaled on it. Dana suppressed a curse. The last
thing he wanted was to let Nick think he could scare him.

He worked ten minutes overtime to make up for arriving late at noon, then telephoned Scott Taggart from a pay telephone a
block away from the pool parlor. He explained about the accident and Ken’s wish to have the brakes on his racer checked.

“Why does he want them checked?” Taggart wanted to know.

“He thinks they might’ve been tampered with. Can you be there in half an hour?”

“Make it an hour. Have you got a hydraulic jack?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. See you.”

The family was all at home when Dana got
there. Ken was resting on the sofa in the living room.

“I’ve called Scott Taggart,” he told Ken. “He’ll be here in about an hour.”

“Good,” his father said.

It was almost four-thirty when Scott drove up on his black, red-trimmed Honda. From the living-room window, Dana watched him
park next to the trailer on which the little red racer had been secured again. Then he walked out to meet him, trailed by
Ken, who managed awkwardly on a pair of crutches, his cast-encased leg hovering slightly above the ground. The girls, Janet
and Lori, were on either side of him, as if watching out for him should he miss a step and lose his balance.

Greetings were exchanged as Scott unsnapped his helmet and hung it over a handlebar of his motorcycle. Slim, brown-haired,
and beady-eyed, he had acquired the nickname “Rat” from the racing establishment.

He and Dana lowered the ramp. Then Dana unlocked the chain and they pushed the car off the trailer. Dana noticed the crumpled
left front fender. The fat repair bill his brother faced came immediately to his mind. Well, that was Ken’s worry. He had
to expect things like this to happen.

He went and got the hydraulic jack from the two-car garage, jacked up the front end of the car, and Scott began to examine
the brakes.

Dana, Ken, and the girls watched him with avid interest. Dana expected that his father was watching from a living-room window,
too, although he didn’t turn around to see.

Within minutes Scott came up with a discovery.

“The master cylinder’s shot,” he said.

Dana saw Ken’s eyes cloud over with doubt. “How can it be?” he said. “There was no leak.”

“That’s because the cylinder’s all rusted inside and the plunger’s worn out,” Taggart explained. “The minute you hit the pedal
that last time, the plunger dropped out and you had no brakes.”

Ken nodded. “Okay, Scott. Thanks. What do I owe you?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

Dana glanced at his brother, and for just a moment he wondered if Ken might have suspected him of tampering with the brakes.
Ken knew that Dana would have liked to have the little red Chevy for himself, and it might be possible that he thought Dana
might pull a malicious trick.

But I couldn’t pull a dirty trick like that, Dana thought. Never.

I
THINK
you’d better give it up before something else happens. Something much worse than a fractured foot,” said Ken’s father.

The older man sat in the chair by the window, rocking back and forth with his hands clasped on his lap. The sunlight pouring
in the window surrounded his face with a glow and hid the lines that creased it.

“Please don’t tell me to quit, Dad,” Ken said. “Accidents can happen no matter what I do. Once I get the master cylinder fixed
on Li’l Red I’ll make sure that she’s in tip-top shape every time I get on a racetrack. I promise.”