Scarlet Thunder (4 page)

“Yeah,” I shouted back.

“Tim Becker,” he said. He stuck his hand out. I shook it. The breeze running across the track pulled at my hair. But his hair stayed neatly in place, like he'd made a helmet with two cans of hairspray.

“I do public relations for Sandy Peterson,” he said.

“Hi,” I said. “I'm Trenton Hiser.”

Only Uncle Mike called me Trent. I had decided that when I got famous, I would always insist that the world call me Trenton.

He nodded. “Thought so. Where's your uncle? I hear you guys are on a tight schedule, and Sandy's the next car on the track.”

“My uncle does things his way,” I answered. This guy's unspoken criticism of Uncle Mike bugged me. I didn't feel like adding that Uncle Mike's way at this moment included scrambling to rent equipment.

“Good, good,” Tim said, keeping his smile wide. “I like to hear he's in control.”

He didn't say anything for a few seconds. In that time, the car on the track flashed the length of about five football fields.

The car slowed and entered the pit road. It became quieter around us but not totally quiet. It seemed like there was always the sound of revving engines. But with no car screaming around the track, the sound of other engines dropped to background noise.

Tim pointed at a large electronic clock and whistled admiration.

“Look at that lap time—29.568 seconds. Close to the track record. Sandy's got her hands full if she wants to start near the front.”

I knew this track was 1.058 miles long. I quickly did the math. The average time was 120 miles per hour. Average, including corners. I bet he'd gone up to two hundred on the stretches. This was the kind of drama that made for a good show. Again, I wished we were filming.

“Tell me a bit about what it takes to have a good run,” I said. The more background I knew, the better.

“Sure,” Tim said. “That's part of my job.”

He pointed at the track. “See that ribbon of rubber?”

My eyes followed his finger. I saw a long thin line on the track, rising in places and dipping in others.

“Drivers call that the fast groove,” Tim continued. “The cars lay down that rubber as they follow the best line around the track. They need to enter some turns high and come out low. With other turns, the opposite is true. It all depends on how the turn is banked. The secret is to find the line.”

He moved his arm to show me some skid marks leading to the concrete wall that banked the track. “Of course, there are some lines you don't want to follow. That driver might have been on the right line, but at the wrong speed. You see the result.”

I nodded.

“The right speed is everything,” Tim said. “You've got to push it to the absolute max
because pole positions are determined by the hundredths or thousandths of a second. A half second can cost you up to twenty-five pole positions. On the other hand, if you hit the turn too fast, you slide out of the groove. You might not crash, but it will put you out of rhythm for the next corner and cost you time.”

The loudspeaker announced that Sandy Peterson was about to enter the track.

“You watch,” Tim said as we both looked to the pit road for her bright red car. “She'll stand on the throttle and try to build some heat into her tires. This isn't a race, so she doesn't need to worry about wearing them out. She just wants them hot and sticky as soon as possible.”

He was right. She roared onto the track. Thousands and thousands of people in the stands stood. Their yelling and screaming matched the roar of the Chevy.

“I'm a little worried about her.” With the noise level up, Tim had to shout again. “She's got the car as loose as possible.”

“Loose?”

“She wants maximum speed. She had the pit crew set the weight and tires and spoiler to hold the road as lightly as possible. She doesn't want anything holding her back. But that makes the car tougher to handle.”

I was listening to Tim, but my eyes were following the red Chevy. As Sandy came out of the third turn, the car's back end started to slide. I expected her to steer into the skid to straighten her line.

But the slide got worse. The back end spun around and took her backward into the concrete wall.

Bang!

The car bounced off the wall and spun around so fast I couldn't count how many times it turned.

One tire came off the rear and seemed to bounce lazily across the track.

It was headed right toward us.

I didn't move because it didn't seem like a big deal. It didn't look like it was coming very fast. Then, before I knew it, the tire nearly hit us. It flew past us onto the infield and slammed into a motor home behind us.

Bang! It rocked the motor home, then settled to rest below the dent it had made.

“Um, wow,” I said. I really wished I'd had the handheld camera. “That would have been awesome for the documentary.”

“Wow?” Tim said. “That tire could have killed us! I feel like I've been shot at and missed. Sandy just blew a qualifying run. And all you can say is ‘That would have been awesome for the documentary'? You must have ice in your veins.”

“Thanks,” I said. Directors aren't supposed to care about their subjects. They are just supposed to observe.

Out on the track, I saw Sandy pulling herself from the damaged car.

I was glad to see that she was okay. It would have been terrible if she had gotten hurt. Uncle Mike couldn't afford to lose more time.

Let me tell you what's gone wrong now,” Uncle Mike said. He sat in a chair across the hotel room from me.

It was eight o'clock. Between us sat a tray full of dirty dinner dishes left from our room-service meal. Who needed a mother to cook, I always said, when all you had to do was pick up the telephone and call downstairs.

“I hope it's not a lot,” I said. I really wanted to see my name on the screen.

“Since Sandy didn't qualify, we'll have to wait an entire week to get any footage of her on the track.”

He leaned back in his chair and sighed. He rubbed his face with both hands. He sighed again.

“We can at least do interviews with some of the crew during the week, right?” I asked. “I mean, at least we'll be getting some work done while we wait.”

“I suppose,” Uncle Mike agreed. One of the great things about being his nephew was that I could be in on a lot of his brainstorming sessions. And Uncle Mike never minded listening to my ideas. “But part of what's going to make this documentary so great is tying in all the interviews to actual races. At best, all we're going to get is some background material. And meanwhile, the clock will be ticking on my deadline.”

More face rubbing. “Not only that, but it looks like there are some problems with the footage we did in San Diego.”

“The deodorant commercial?”

“That one,” he groaned. I could tell he was thinking about the disaster with the mice. “You know how we spent all that extra time on retakes?”

I nodded.

“Somehow,” he said, “a lot of that footage was out of focus. I might have to fly back to Los Angeles this week and spend a few days doing some emergency work to pull it together.”

“Out of focus? Which camera?”

He shook his head. “Brian's. I just don't get it. He's normally my best cameraman. It seems like everything is going wrong lately.”

“We'll still be able to finish the racing documentary on time, even if you have to go back to San Diego, won't we?” I asked.

“Only if nothing else goes wrong,” he answered. “Let me tell you, if I didn't have a little backup insurance, there's no way I could sleep at night.”

“Backup insurance?”

Uncle Mike grinned. “Yup. We could have a dozen disasters, and in the end, my one good break can make up for it.”

He got up, poured himself a glass of water and drank it slowly. Almost like he was keeping me in suspense on purpose. But then, a good director always has a good sense of drama.

“You see,” he began, “about a year ago, I read this book I really liked. It was a true-life story about a woman who ran a railroad company in the 1800s. Thing was, she knew she couldn't do business as a woman, so she disguised herself as a man and stayed in disguise her whole life. It wasn't until she died that anyone found out the truth. Now this book had been out at least ten years, and was so forgotten that I was able to buy a two-year option for only ten thousand dollars.”

Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money to me. But compared to the millions sometimes spent in Hollywood, it was nothing.

And Uncle Mike didn't have to explain to me what an option was. It simply gave him the right to make the book into a movie. Nothing else. But to make the movie, he would first have to line up millions of
dollars of production money. Next he'd have to line up the actors and actresses. Only then would he have to pay for the movie rights to the book, which might be a half million dollars. But if he couldn't line up money or actors, he'd be out only the original option money. And the whole time he owned the option, no one else could make the book into a movie.

“Are you curious who wrote the book?” Uncle Mike asked, grinning above his glass of water.

“Of course,” I said.

“Some unknown,” he said. “Which was another reason I got the option for peanuts. At least she was unknown at the time. Her name is Viola Moses.”

“Viola Moses!” I said. “She's...She's...” This was so amazing, I couldn't even get the words out.

“She's the Oscar-winning screenwriter who came out of nowhere this year. Having the option to her book is like winning the lottery.”

“No kidding,” I said. Uncle Mike now had something that everyone in Hollywood would beg for.

“I've been making some calls over the last month,” he said. “It looks like it's going to be easy to line up big money for the movie. And some big stars. This option can take me from award-winning documentaries to a major blockbuster.”

“And after one blockbuster,” I said, “you'll be able to pick the best movies to direct...”

He kept grinning. “And now you see why I took a chance on the deadline for this racing documentary. The million I make on the bonus will allow me to own a good chunk of the movie myself, which means even more money in the long run.”

What a dream come true. Could there be anything better than fame and fortune in Hollywood?

Uncle Mike continued. “And I can't lose. Globewide Studios offered me two million for the option, right after the Oscars. That, plus they would let me direct. I told them no, because I wanted it all for myself. But if
I don't make this deadline, at the very worst, I go back to them and accept their offer.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Very good. You don't have a thing to worry about.”

“That's right,” he said. “Nothing at all.” Wrong.

Finally, almost a week later, we were able to actually shoot some race footage. Our cameras and other equipment caught up with us in Talladega, Alabama, a city that looked just like all the others to me. I had learned from Uncle Mike that what really mattered was the set location. As for the different cities, they were just a hotel room repeated again and again and again.

Sandy had qualified for the race, which was great for our documentary. And today's
filming location was in the Scarlet Thunder pit space, just off pit road, just off the racetrack.

There wasn't much room. Not when about forty other teams each needed a pit along the road.

Of course we gave the Scarlet Thunder pit crew all the space it needed. We fitted our cameras wherever there was space around the crew and the tires and the tanks of gasoline and the toolboxes.

Although I had a handheld camera and permission to roam wherever I wanted, I had decided to stay close to Uncle Mike. I had an idea that it would be cool to film the crew as it filmed the action. Maybe some of that footage would fit into the documentary.

I watched closely. Uncle Mike was filming Tim Becker, the public relations man. Tim was hooked up to a mike because the noise of the track was so loud. That was the only way we could get any vocals from him.

At the same time, cameraman Brian Nelson zoomed in tight on Tim's face.
Brian was a skinny guy in jeans and an untucked Rolling Stones T-shirt. This was the same Brian who had let his camera go out of focus in San Diego. Although Uncle Mike had gotten angry over Brian's carelessness, it was the first time Brian had messed up. He'd been with Uncle Mike for years, and normally he was one of the best cameramen around. Uncle Mike was sure he wouldn't make the same mistake again.

Uncle Mike had the rest of his crew shooting the race itself. Later, in the post-production edit, we would use the PR man's comments in voice-over to tie the segments together.

I stood near Tim Becker, listening as the race continued. Out there on the track, the cars were a blur of color. I kept my camera on Tim's face, but I did it from a weird angle.

He ignored me, just like everyone else did. That was the great thing about being so young. No one—except Uncle Mike—figured I could do anything of value. It let me be just like a fly on the wall, listening and watching and nearly invisible.

“Races are won and lost on pit stops,” Tim Becker was saying. “Sandy stays in close contact with the crew on her radio. They try to make the best decision possible on when to bring her in.”

I looked over at George Lot. His tall body was frozen as he gave total concentration to the race. I got a quick shot of him, then turned back to Tim Becker. His face looked square in my viewfinder.

“Right now,” Tim said, “even if the pit stop is only twenty seconds long, it might cost her half a lap or more. She's in fourth place. A pit stop might move her back to tenth. If the pit crew is a few seconds slower than it should be, she might drop back to fifteenth.”