Death Is a Lap Ahead

Chapter I

Whitey Edison turned in the seat and looked out the rear window of the sedan at the sleek yellow flanks of the racing car which followed with driverless docility. The tarp was roped snugly down over the cockpit, and it rolled on rubber that was useless on the track.

“She follows nice, Whitey,” Bob Oliver said. “I can hardly feel her.”

The speedometer needle hung at fifty. Whitey turned back and looked at the road ahead, then at the oddly heavy wrists of young Bob Oliver.

The kid had a sweet touch on a wheel.

Whitey Edison let his heavy body sag in the seat and half closed his eyes against the afternoon sun. He felt a dull and constant alarm, mingled with surprise that after so many years he should once again be heading for a track, an iron in tow. His wide red face under the thinning thatch of white hair showed a remaining hint of the recklessness which it had held in youth.

If it hadn’t been for the kid’s old man...

The puzzled young voice broke into his thoughts. “What’s eating on you, Whitey?”

“How do you mean, kid?”

“Well, you act like we were heading for a wake instead of for first prize money at the Acme meet.”

Whitey knew that it was the time to give Bob Oliver the full story. Not that it was a pretty story. But the kid should know. Whitey Edison. For a few years they had called him Madman Edison, and he had grinned at the name. With a little better luck he’d have placed first on the bricks on Memorial Day back there in 1933.

Steve Jantz and Whitey Edison. Always jockeying for position, carrying tight competition to all the tracks in the land, plants roaring down the stretches, good friends once the checkered flag flashed down.

O.K., boy, so you edged me in this one. Wait until next week at Miami. Remember how I cleaned you in California?

The same tracks and the same drinks and the same girls.

Steve Jantz had gotten it on a sunny Saturday afternoon on the south curve of a slick macadam track in Louisiana. One of the kids they had both lapped had broken an oil line. Steve’s deck had started to swing when his rubber hit the oil smear on the macadam. In horrified fascination Whitey had watched it swing, seemingly in slow motion. Steve’s Special had sent the white boards flying and it had continued on then, in a slow parabola, smashing with sickening force into the shoulder of rock beyond. With a lurid blast of orange flame, a roil of blue-black smoke, and the thinnest whisper of a scream, Steve Jantz had departed this world.

No more riding Steve’s tail on the turns, stealing his girls, sticking him with bills at the hotels. No more Steve.

When Steve got it, Whitey’s foot had lifted off the gas and he had drifted around to the pit, half falling out of the car, stopping to vomit in the dust and oil.

And he had never had it again. Time trials, sure. But not competition. He couldn’t pass a car. Always it seemed ready to sway, whip the deck around, smash the life from the driver...

He had begun to drink more steadily then. He drank the car away, got a pit monkey job, began to pick up motor lore, acquire cleverness in his blunt fingers. It was a race to see whether the liquor would get him before he became a first class mech. He became a top mech, and lasted about a year. Then, drunk on the job, he had forgotten to tighten down a couple of front end bolts. Len Cassidy, the driver, had spent six months flat on his back as a result. And no one would hire Whitey Edison. “That soak? Brother, you wanna die, go jump out a window. It costs less.”

So Whitey Edison had drifted down and down, working a week here, two weeks there in tank town garages, spending every cent on liquor and forgetfulness.

By the time he hit Brooksport, he was on bottom. Alcoholic ward. Stan Oliver, the kid’s old man, had once been a soak and had straightened out. He wanted to help others. And he had never told the kid that he had found Whitey Edison in a ward and had slowly brought him back to life.

The first day Whitey could hold a wrench he had gone to work in the old man’s garage. Stan Oliver had said, “Whitey, some men can’t paint pictures. Some men can’t build bridges. You and I — why, we can’t drink.”

And so the cure had lasted for four years. Bob Oliver had started to hang around the garage. The kid was crazy about auto racing. He found out that Whitey had been a driver. And a mech. In the fall they had started building the yellow wagon. The body had cost four hundred, battered and used. While Bob had hammered and sanded and rubbed and painted, Whitey had worked on the power plant, starting with a racing block, hand lapping the parts, setting in the overhead cams. Together they had designed and welded the frame.

But Bob had the idea that Whitey had just gotten a little old for the racing game. The kid didn’t know the story. Whitey knew that the kid should hear the story from him. If any of the old-timers were at the Acme Meet, they’d tell the kid quick enough.

But how do you tell a kid that you lost your nerve? How do you make him understand how it is to look at foul smoke rolling up and see in that smoke the strong brown hands, the quiet gray eyes, the good laugh of the guy you buddied around with for a couple of years?

Whitey tried to be firm with himself, but he found himself grinning at the kid and saying, “If I’m quiet, Bob, it’s because I’m worrying about winning.”

“With me driving the car? Don’t worry one little bit, Whitey.”

Whitey saw, in Bob, what he had been years before. Bob had something precious, something he should never lose.

“You’ll remember every trick I’ve taught you, kid?” Whitey said earnestly.

“And I’ll add a few of my own, Whitey.”

“Well, take it easy, kid. You can kill yourself if you want to, but don’t mess up the iron. It’s half mine.”

Bob laughed in quick delight. But Whitey was remembering the look in Stan Oliver’s eyes as he said, “I’m relying on you, Whitey. This stuff is in his blood. I’m hoping he’ll get over it. Just try to keep him...” Stan Oliver had fumbled for the right words, found none, turned abruptly on his heel and walked back toward the grease racks.

Whitey turned again and looked at the yellow hull, the flaring vents. It was a sweet little iron, hot, steady and stable. Guts to spare. They had learned that out on the quiet road where Whitey had found a curve of the proper width, the proper pitch.

With Bob watching, he had settled his bulk behind the wheel, taken the push from the sedan, roared down to the curve and hit it almost wide open, letting up just a hair on the gas, down to the floor again as he roared out of the curve.

At night they had pored over position diagrams, Whitey saying as he pushed the little oblongs of cardboard around. “O.K., Bob. This is you. You’re third. Ten laps to go. You and those two cars are about to lap this car here. He’s riding high on the curve. What do you do?”

“Cut low on the curve?”

“Hell no! They’d bounce you off the track. Stay on his tail, right in his slipstream almost all the way around. Say right to here. Then gun it down to the rail hard and fast with legal clearance and pass him in the stretch. But don’t forget to make sure you’re clear on the left when you cut down.”

“I got it now, Whitey.”

And Whitey had drilled him until he knew that the boy’s knowledge of strategy was etched into him so deeply that in a box he’d pick the right move every time.

In a way it was like racing again. Bob had, in some odd way, become an extension of himself. An extension not subject to his fears. Bob was lean and compact, with big strong wrists, good hands, 20–12 vision and enough courage for three men. When he looked at Whitey the devotion was so clear in his blue eyes that it made Whitey feel ashamed.

He wondered if he was unable to tell the kid about his past because he couldn’t stand the idea of those blue eyes looking at him with amused contempt.

They pulled into the Acme track at nine in the morning the day before the race. Two cars, a gray one with red trim and a battered pale blue job were making lazy laps, the drone of the power plants racketing through the sultry morning air.

A mech clung to the side of the pale blue job, his head close to the bonnet listening for the bugs.

An official gave Whitey the pit assignment and he and the kid unhooked the yellow iron, united the tarp, began to go over it with loving hands. From time to time Bob would straighten up, look at the black oval and sigh.

“How does it look, kid?” Whitey asked.

Bob touched his stomach. “It gives me butterflies. Right here.”

“That’s what it should do, Bob. A guy who is bored by the whole thing can’t drive worth a damn.”

Whitey felt the same thrill as he looked at the wide expanse of empty stands, the pennants sagging in the morning heat, the dark oval. But as he smelled the familiar reek of hot oil, scorched rubber and blistering paint, he wanted with all his heart to get in the sedan, turn away from the track and never come back. He could not understand the impulse that had made him do this thing. It was tied up so closely with his utter defeat. It seemed almost as though he had been forced to come back to a track just to know how much he had lost. Self-respect. Honor. Pride.

He squatted in the dust and began an inch by inch inspection of the casing of one of the brand-new tires.

Together they polished, adjusted, checked. They filled the tank with the special mixture. Bob’s lips were pale as he pulled on the helmet, slid down behind the wheel. He snapped the goggles over his eyes and tried to smile as Whitey handed him the gloves.

“Bob,” Whitey said, “you keep an eye on pressure and r.p.m. and take three slow ones to get the feel. Keep a wide clearance on those two wagons out there. If everything is O.K. on the three slow ones, take three at a good clip and check again. Then take three flat out.”

He gave the yellow car a push with the sedan, turned back to the pit, parked close against the rail, got out and leaned against the rail, his fingers tightly clenched.

The hazy sun glinted on the polished metal, and the motor droned. When Bob went by the pit again, he waved.

Whitey noticed that the blue wagon was off the track. He thought nothing of it until a mild cool voice said, “Well, well. My favorite lush! What wave of bar whiskey washed you up here, Edison?”

He turned quickly, his lips stiff. “Carter!” he gasped.

Sig Carter, tall, lean, weathered, looked at Whitey’s stained hands and said, “What damn fool is letting you mech for him?”

“It’s the son of the man I work for, Carter. He’s a good boy. Bob Oliver.”

“Never heard of him. He must be green. This is a fat purse down here, Whitey. A lot of big time will be around. Your green boy’ll get run into the ground. That is, if you don’t get stinko and forget to fasten the tie rod ends.”

Whitey felt his face redden. He doubled a big fist and turned slowly toward Sig Carter. Carter looked at the fist in mild surprise, laughed nastily and walked away.

Whitey felt his anger slowly drain away. After all, he had no right to be angry. Sig Carter was merely expressing what all of them had a right to feel. A sudden alteration in the sound of the motor on the mile-long oval snapped him to attention. Bob was letting it out. He watched carefully. His timing seemed good. The car snugged down against the macadam and whined smoothly around the curves.

As the motor pitch changed again, he took out a stop watch, thumbed it as the yellow iron flashed by. As it came around again he stopped the hand. Thirty-one and two tenths seconds for the lap. Very nice indeed! Thirty seconds flat would be a hundred and twenty miles an hour.

Bob took two slow laps and coasted in. He jumped out, grabbed Whitey’s shoulders and swung him around in a grotesque dance.

“We got it, Whitey! We got it!”

Whitey forced himself to scowl. “Hell, boy, it’s easy to make time with nobody on the track.”

But Bob refused to be dispirited. They checked it over again, added the minutes of running time to the motor log, checked temperatures.

“Notice anything?” Whitey asked.

“A little flutter on deceleration, when it’s about halfway unwound. Not serious.”

Sig Carter came up again — a stocky wide man with somber deep-set eyes matching Carter’s long strides. Whitey forced himself to say, “Hi there, Yobe. Bob, meet Sig Carter and Wally Yobe. This is Bob Oliver, boys.”

Bob’s eyes widened and he shook hands eagerly. “Gosh, it’s nice to meet you guys. I know your national rating. I never thought I’d be on the same track with you two.”

Wally Yobe smiled briefly. “Nice iron, kid. Who built it?”

“Why, Whitey and I built it,” Bob said proudly.

“You have any parts left over the last time you pasted it together?” Sig asked, glancing meaningly at Whitey.

It was obvious that Bob didn’t get the joke, if any. He laughed nervously. “No, it’s all there,” he said.

“You got a good enough mech, kid?” Yobe asked.

Bob frowned. “Whitey and I can handle her. Whitey does the real tough mech work.”

“That’s what I meant, kid,” Yobe said, no smile on his lips.

Whitey heard himself laugh loudly and unnaturally. “You boys are great kidders. Yes, sir. Great kidders.”

Bob joined in the laugh. Both Carter and Yobe smiled briefly and walked away. Yobe turned and called back, “Don’t give us a bad time out there tomorrow, kid.”

Bob worked silently for a few minutes. Then he straightened up and made a smear of dirt across his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand. His eyes were puzzled. “Those guys acted funny.”

“How so?”

“Well, I thought that when you got together with the guys you used to race against, you’d be pounding each other on the back and all that stuff.”

Whitey shrugged. “Well, you know bow it is. Sometimes you have more in common with some people than you do with other people.”

“They kidded you in a funny way, Whitey.”

“Did they? I didn’t notice,” Whitey said.