Fastback Beach (2 page)

When she opened the car door I hopped out too. “You play on the team, don't you?”
she asked. I nodded. More on the bench, I could have said, but she'd find that out soon enough. “I'll cheer for you extra loud,” she said.

Feeling brave I asked, “Are you going to the dance after the game?” When she nodded I said quickly, before losing my nerve, “Could I come by for you?” She took the scrunch thing out of her hair and threw back her head. Her hair bounced and flew around her face. Then she looked at me with those brown eyes. “Sure!” she said.

“Nice work,” Larry said when I got back into the car. “You never moved that quick on the field!”

I laughed. “She's cool.”

“Naw!” Larry drawled. He threw the car into drive and punched the gas pedal, as always.

Our team won, and I played well enough to not embarrass myself. I could hear Mackenzie's voice cheering me on, even leading a
special cheer for me. You know … “Give me an M! Give me an I! Give me an L! Give me an E! Give me an S!
Miles Derkach, Miles Derkach
…” and the cheering squad went into this locomotive cheer that they do. Felt great.

After the game I went home to clean up.

Mom watched me. “Is this a special night?”

I nodded.

“Got a date?”

Nod again.

“Who with? Anyone I know?”

“Don't think so. They just moved to this area. Mackenzie Morash.”

“Oh, the transmission people.” Mom smiled.

Of course she'd know the name. She works in the office at RPM Auto Parts.

“I guess you'll need some money, to take her out later for something to eat.” She handed me a fifty. She wouldn't take it back.

“This girl might be special, Miles,” she said. “Treat her right.”

Is she clairvoyant or something?

After court, Mom drives Kenny and me to our house, then goes off to work. We hang out, listen to tunes, play around a bit — but who can concentrate? We talk about court and my sentence. I tell her a bit more about how it happened. But before I blow it and tell her how I'm really innocent, Kenny cuts in.

“That was cool, Miles, admitting your guilt. And you didn't say a thing about anyone else.”

So we forget about the court case and the day, and Larry and Spider, and everyone else but Kenny and Miles.

I wake to the phone clanging like a fire alarm.

“Yeah?” I groan into the receiver.

“Good morning, Miles,” says a voice I can't place. “Aren't you supposed to be somewhere by now?”

“Who's this?”

“
This
is Ms. Kirkpatrick, and I'm giving you fifteen minutes to be dressed and standing on your front steps.”

“Huh?” My brain burns rubber getting up to speed.

“Just be ready, Miles. I will be pulling into your driveway in exactly fifteen minutes — and I don't like to be kept waiting!”

She hangs up with a slam.

I go over to the fridge, take out the milk and drink it half down right from the carton — a habit that sends Mom to red-line. I notice the lightbulb has burned out in the fridge. I'll change it, later. I throw a couple of whole wheat slices into the toaster. When they're ready, they shoot out like torpedoes. Gotta adjust the spring on that toaster. I'm good at fixing stuff, but I don't have much time.

I shower and throw on a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. My knees show through the holes the way I like ‘em. I hear a horn honk. I'm thinking up some words to express how I feel about being hassled when I see Ms. Kirkpatrick peering through the glass in the door. I should sue for invasion of privacy. I grab my jacket and yank open the door. She thrusts something at me.

“Here. Read this newspaper on the way over. Get current.”

“What?”

She's thrown me off-track. I trot behind her like a dog, clutching the morning paper, and slide onto the front seat of her car. It takes a moment to realize what I'm sitting in. The rich smell of leather upholstery grabs me first, and I glance at the dash. Since when did social workers start driving Mercedes?

I smile. “Let's race!”

Ms. Kirkpatrick laughs, and the car moves swiftly and silently down the street. I lean my head back and look through the sun-roof. I could get used to this! Quad speakers wrap around an old rock tune. I'm tapping my fingers on my bare knee, looking out the window of this great machine, when I see Larry the Lark waiting for the light to change. His eyes shine like Maglites when he spots me. I turn away from the window.

“Where are we going?” I think to ask.

“To your appointment, one hour late!” she states.

“Oh, yeah.” I dig into my jacket pocket for the crumpled bit of paper. Ross-burn Community Association. Ned Barnier, President.

We pull up in front of a house. The hedge is perfectly trimmed and there are flower beds everywhere. Worse, I spy lawn ornaments: a mother deer with Bambi fawns, Snow White's dwarves holding birdbaths, even a wishing well! I look at the sign on the front door: Ned and Millie Barnier — Welcome, Friends!

I groan and close my eyes.

A man and woman appear at the door. I've seen their type before. Experts at baking banana bread, playing Scrabble and telling old war stories. They'll call me Sonny. I slide down into the leather upholstery.

“Sit up!” Ms. Kirkpatrick snaps. “Say good morning. And smile. Because, Miles, this is your lucky day.”

“Miles, what do you like to do best?” Mr. Barnier pulls up a chair and sits down. I notice that he drags one leg a bit and his speech seems slow.

What
do
I like to do best? Well, how about sleeping in, eating, watching TV, hanging out with Kenny and Lark, fixing old things that other people throw away? I tell him the last one.

“Well, now!” Mr. and Mrs. Barnier flash twin-beam smiles. “Is there anything in particular you like to fix?”

“I'm good at motors,” I say. “But I've also fixed appliances, fridges, lawn mowers, even some old radios and TVs.”

“What about cars?”

“We worked on an old Ford pickup, a junker, in shop class, got it running pretty good.”

“You worked on a Ford truck engine?”

Mr. Barnier's onto something, but I don't know what.

“I'd like you to start your hundred hours of service by doing something rather ordinary,” he says slowly. “Would you mind cleaning out my basement? When you finish that, you can start on the garage.”

I look over at Ms. Kirkpatrick. I know I have no choice.

“I'll pick you up at 4:00,” she says. “After today you can figure out bus schedules and get here on your own.” She thanks the Barniers and leaves.

Hour one, only ninety-nine left to go.

Mr. Barnier takes me downstairs, not to a musty basement but an old-fashioned family room. Shining pink and gray square tiles cover the floor. “No carpets — we like to dance!” Mrs. Barnier says brightly. Knotty-pine walls. A U-shaped bar at one end, and an ancient stereo that plays those big long-play records. I laugh out loud, imagining these old fogies waltzing around to Glenn Miller's band. Or whatever they play.

“Here's your job for today, Miles,” Mr. Barnier says. “See these boxes? They're full of magazines. I'd like you to sort them by date and by title. They go back to 1953:
Hot Rod, Rod and Custom, Car Craft
.”

He goes upstairs and I kneel down to open the first box. A smell of old paper. Weird old cars. Articles like “Chopping a Deuce Three-Window” and “Open Drive-lines for Your Old Ford” and “12-Volts for Flatheads.” I look at the dates, 1953 to 1969, all mixed up. I start a pile for each year, then make piles
below that for each different title, but they're mostly
Hot Rod
.

I recognize some of the magazines. Suddenly I'm a little kid again, sitting in the shop watching The Team build stock cars — my dad, or Duke as they called him, and his buddies Crock, Jazzman and Butch. The cars were similar, but the hot rods in these magazines were built for drag racing while Duke's team was into stock cars. But the love of machines and speed was the same.

When Mr. Banier opens the door and comes down, I smell food. How long have I been here? It seems like just a few minutes.

“Hey, Miles, it's lunchtime. Are you hungry?”

I wipe my dusty hands on my jeans and smile. “Nope, never thought of it!” I say, and I'm being honest. This is the first time in my life I could have skipped lunch and not missed it.

Mr. Barnier kneels down, nearly losing his balance for a moment. He grabs onto a table and slowly settles himself on the floor
beside me. “Stroke,” he says, smiling a bit crookedly. “Had a stroke a year ago. I'm in pretty good shape now, but I can't do what I used to.”

He picks up a magazine. “I remember buying this issue new — seems like just last week. Buzz Lowe and his dad Dean were a hot team.”

I look at their pictures — dad and son, both with military haircuts, looking like marines.

Mr. Barnier points to a photo of a car. “Buzz Lowe's roadster pickup went in the 12s, and only 283 cubes. Pretty hot for those times.”

“What does that mean, the 12s?”

“That's the elapsed time from a standing start in a quarter mile. Zero to 110 miles per hour in twelve and one-half seconds. This old hot rod would leave your five-liter Mustangs and Z-28s like they were tied to trees.”

“I'm impressed,” I say.

“I was a hot-rodder all my life,” he says. “Built my first rod in 1957 when I was sixteen.”

I feel as if Mr. Barnier doesn't know, or care, that I'm in the room. He's talking to himself, or to the memories pictured in the magazines.

“ … a '39 Ford coupe, full-house flathead, had it real low, loud pipes, painted it black with some amateur pinstriping. That car had no trouble attracting female riders — and the law.”

“Was it like these cars in the magazines?”

“You mean you never saw a hot rod?”

“Oh yeah! I know this guy, his brother has a Trans Am. It's pretty hot.” I don't tell him how “hot” it really is and that it belongs to Spider's brother. Spider told me that most of the parts on it were stolen, everything from the stereo to the wheels.

“A
Trans Am!
” Mr. Barnier spits the words. “I'm talking
real
hot rods! The cars that started it all, the roadsters and coupes. The ones that used to race on the dry lakes in southern California. That's where all these street machines came from.”

“What kinds of cars?”

“I guess the first hot rods were Model T roadsters with souped-up four-bangers. Then came the flathead Fords, then the overheads.” He looks at me. “You like working on engines?”

“Yeah, but I never had a chance to do too much,” I say. “At school, in shop, we worked on single-cylinder Briggs and Stratton engines.”

“They're for lawn mowers and compressors. You said you worked on a truck engine.”

“We found an old V-8 from a '63 Ford truck. We hauled it to the school shop from the junkyard. We got two of them, in fact, and scrounged parts from one to fix the other.”

He laughs. “What did you do to the engine?”

“Pulled it apart. It was seized up and we had to free it. We didn't have any money so we had to take parts off the other engine and mix them up to get them to work. I did
the heads — the valve job — I ground valves and lapped them in.”

“That's a fairly technical operation. What kind of a machine did you use?”

Mrs. Barnier calls down from the top of the stairs. “Come and eat before every-thing's cold!”

“Okay, Ma!” Mr. Barnier calls. He turns back to let me answer his question.

“We had a Sioux grinder at the school shop. I hand-lapped the seats with compound and a suction cup.”

“Well, seeing how you're such an expert on valves — I need to do the heads on my engine. Maybe someday we can ask permission from your teacher and use the school's shop facilities.”

“Sure.”

“Your dad ever teach you mechanics?”

“Yeah, he did.”

Duke Derkach, my father, was a “racing wrench” in the days before racers had big sponsorships. Two or three guys built the car, and the best man drove. Perhaps it wasn't the
best place for a kid to hang out, but nearly every weekend Dad would take me to the shop where I'd hand out tools or beers and drink pop and munch potato chips. That's where I got handy fixing things.

Dad and his friends always acted like big-time racers. They called themselves The Team, with Crock as crew chief, Jazzman the engine specialist, Butch the body fabricator, Dad the mechanic and me the mascot whose presence was supposed to bring them good luck.

Mr. Barnier waits in silence as I, like he's just done, lose myself in memories.

“Yeah,” I say finally, “my dad taught me a bit about mechanics. He was a stock- car racer.”

“What track? I might know him.”

“Here, at Speed Boss, but he moved to Toronto and then to the States,” I say hurriedly. “I don't know where he's racing now.” I stand and offer Mr. Barnier my hand. He takes it to pull himself upright.

“I'm hungry,” he says quickly.

“Me too.”

We go upstairs and dig into big bowls of homemade soup, a heaping platter of sandwiches and warm peach pie.

At 4:15, Ms. Kirkpatrick dumps me off at home and I saunter into the house. Mom is home, which is fine, we get along okay most of the time. But today, drinking coffee at our kitchen table, is Mr. Right, also known as Jeff.

Jeff is the head accountant for some oil company. Button-down shirt, color-coordinated tie, $500 suit, pants pressed to cutting edge, shoes shining like mirrors. What does she see
in this loser? Probably a backlash against Dad, like one of him was maybe enough. Jeff stands when I enter and extends his hand. I still haven't shaken my nice-guy personality from being at the Barniers' all day so I grab it and smile. Mom raises a surprised eyebrow.