Thunder King

1

Hoop, the pit boss, and me — we decided that it wouldn’t do our morale any good to watch the amateur events, watch the hot rod kids smash themselves to death on macadamized sucker trap that passes for a track at Darido, California, so we spent our time putting the last touches on the Jeyett Special.

Big Arch Jeyett had gotten more than a little rough when Brick Arlen didn’t even place the iron at Indianapolis, and you can’t blame him. It isn’t exactly a hobby with him.

After numerous words too harsh to mention, the four of us found ourselves with the sedan, the tool truck, the Special on the trailer, and all the tools, heading for a circuit of the hard-track meets.

There is Bud Hoop who is the pit boss, a guy who thinks motors live and breath. For him, they do. Gil Forrester, who never says more than two words a month, is the mech, and Brick Arlen and me, we are the drivers, doubling in the pit for switching rubber and such. My name is Joe Gartner and if I knew what was good for me, I would be back on the dirt hacking at track records that don’t go higher than eighty.

This four-day meet at Darido is like a consolation when you miss the big one. And we shuddered to think of what Big Arch would say and do if we missed the pipsqueak main go at Darido.

Anyway, we are in a garage off the track, Hoop and me, hearing the high whine of the amateur irons, when Brick Arlen comes in, a funny look on his face.

“Hey,” he says, “there is a guy out there who is nuts. He drives like he’s got eight hands and like he’s playing tag.”

“So what?” Hoop says. “We won’t have to worry about him. You can’t push one of those irons into the big one.”

Brick is like he doesn’t hear him. Brick is, of course, a redhead, with a bunch of features too close together in the middle of his face. He has a sneer and a cocky way with him, but on bricks, macadam or dust, he could place on a kiddycar.

“His name is Johnny Wall,” Brick says.

At that I straighten up slow, dropping the wrench so that it bounces nicely off my toe. But I hardly feel it. “Johnny Wall? Skinny guy with black hair and one helluva big scar on his face?”

“Same one.”

I had seen Johnny Wall before. I had seen him edge me at the turn on the dirt at Worcester, and slant down. I had seen him spinning like a doll against the sky when Ed Murph, now dead, broke Johnny’s back. And Johnny was driving again!

“Yeah,” Brick says. “A guy tells me Wall figures to take that merry-go-round out there to get the dough to lift an attachment on a big wagon that he wants to wheel in the main. Joe, you and I better hope he misses out, the way the guy drives. He’s nuts.”

And that was more than something for Brick Arlen to say.

By the time we got back out, Johnny Wall had gotten the winner’s flag and I watched where he drifted in. The tow boys were pulling two hulks out of the infield.

I went on down just as Johnny climbed out of the stripped stock, his goggles in his hand. He wiped his face and looked at me.

“Hell!” he said. “You’re Joe Gartner.”

I shook hands. “Guilty,” I said. “Brother, I never thought I’d see you on a track again.”

His eyes seemed to cloud. A girl came out of the back of the pit. She wore a stained bandanna to cover her hair and there were smudges of grease on her face. Her hands were square and capable.

“Johnny shouldn’t be on a track,” she said.

He grinned at her. “Janey, meet Joe Gartner. Joe, this is my sister. Best pit man in the country.”

Jane’s handshake was firm, but her eyes were worried. Her voice was low, a very nice sound.

“Are you with it, Joe?” Johnny asked.

“Right. I joined up with the Jeyett outfit about eight months ago. We got a Special here — Brick Arlen and me wheeling it, Bud Hoop in the pit and a mech named Gil Forrester. On the big day at Indianapolis, we lost eight laps with brake lock and throwing oil, and didn’t place. The boss’ll have our scalps unless we bring in first iron here at Darido.”

Janey’s dark eyes suddenly flamed as she turned on Johnny. “You see? You won’t stand a chance. Please give it up, Johnny!”

Johnny gave me an embarrased grin. He said, “The gal wants me to take a Detroit job that I was offered. I keep telling her that I’ve got to wind up a big one first. We’ve got every dime in this Darido meet.” He turned to Jane and said, “Look, honey. One hundred times around the two-mile oval. Suppose I put it in front and ride it there all the way. Fifty bucks for the lead car in each lap. There’s five grand. Another seventy-five hundred for first money. Say another seven or eight for endorsements. There’s twenty thousand.”

“And maybe you die, Johnny,” she said, and her lips were thin and tight.

He shrugged. “So does everybody.”

She turned to me with a helpless gesture. “We shouldn’t let you in on the family argument, Joe. But I wish he—” The tears came suddenly and she turned and walked away, her back straight and proud.

I had a beer with Johnny. It all came out. After the big smash at Worcester, he spent nine months in a cast. And all the time he was wondering if he had lost his nerve. He didn’t tell me that, but I knew. You don’t fly through the air with the greatest of ease without getting some marks on the inside where they don’t show.

A month after he got out, when he was trying to hire himself out as a driver, their father died, and with the insurance he had decided to get his own wagon for the hard tracks and see what he could do.

After the beer we wandered down to the rented garage and he showed me the wagon. It was an evil-looking iron. Green black in color, with a bronze sheen on it, low snout and hood vents that made you think of some kind of animal with it’s lips lifted in a snarl.

Then he unbuttoned the bonnet and showed me the power plant. It was clean enough to scramble eggs on.

“What the hell is it?” I asked.

“Special job. Franzetta-Gorf. Two hundred and fifty cubic inch displacement. Double overhead cams. A hell of a lot of stuff.”

I frowned. Memory awakened. “But a plant like this should cost at least thirty thousand bucks and—”

“It didn’t. Remember Whitey Devlon?”

Suddenly I remembered. When it had rolled a year ago, Whitey had tried to go downstairs, but the centrifugal force got him and the car tore him in half.

Johnny’s grin was strained. “So in the trade they figure it’s a bad luck plant and I got it for peanuts. The chassis is different, but three guys died behind that plant without ever damaging it much. Three times and out. This time it’s in. I would have been in the big one last month, but we were in hock.”

“Your sister doesn’t like the idea,” I said softly.

He gave me a sharp look. “Joe, I got to ride out in front once more. I’ve been aiming at this for a long time. Nobody stops me. Understand?”

And I understood. Sometimes it works out that way. It’s a stubbornness that is born out of fear. The worst sort of fear.

In the morning of the following day, Brick and I helped Hoop and Gil set up our pit, and the devil’s brew of high test, alcohol, benzol and acetone was in the pressure drums ready to be squirted into the Special. After we were through, I wandered over to Johnny Wall’s pit. They had picked up a local mech who seemed to know his business. The Franzetta-Gorf twinkled in the sun, and even standing still it looked as though it were ready to surge ahead.

By noon there was a sprinkling of white shirts in the stands and it was time for the speed trials. The track record at Darido was 115.6, not too far behind the record for the big time.

We had decided that it was my shot at the speed and qualification trials, so at two o’clock I shoved the rubber plugs in my ears, pulled on the crash helmet and snapped it under my chin, slipped on the goggles with the massive sponge rubber rims and edged my way down into the seat of the Special. She is a dark, dull-finish red, with the cowl shaped to the size of the steering wheel.

After a short push the big power plant caught, coughed, sputtered, and settled down to a rising drone of power. I took it slow twice around to feel out the track. The macadam was like black velvet, but I found an uneven patch in the backstretch a third of the way in from the north corner, and marked it for future reference.

I don’t like speed trials. In a race you’ve got a reference point, the deck of the iron ahead, but in a speed trial you’re out there alone. The first lap and a half was like driving the family car on a country road. I gave the signal, and dug in as I whined down toward the starter. The flag was a flash out of the corner of my eye and the Special started doing what it was built for. It took over. I was the guy in there steering it. It snugged down nice on the perfectly banked end of the oval, and as it started to straighten, I fed it all it would take. At that speed yon don’t just go by something. No, it grows and leaps at you and the air, plus the motor noise, makes it go paahhh! at you as you whistle by. The vibration turns you to leather and the drone makes you feel like your head would fall apart like a tangerine without the skin.

I took my fast lap, caught the flag, and floated around with decreasing speed, turning into the pit.

I had my disguise off when the time was anounced over the P.A. “Joe Gartner, driving the Jeyett Special qualifies at one eighteen point eight, just three tenths under the one-lap record established by Jig Devine in nineteen forty-six.”

There was a spatter of applause and I waved at the stands. Five minutes later Brick, Hoop and I leaned on the rail and watched Johnny Wall in the Franzetta-Gorf take two slow laps, and catch the flag.

Concrete, bricks and macadam are a hell of a lot different from the dirt. In the dirt you have to skid it into the turns and whip your deck. If you just don’t give a damn, you can do the same thing on a hard track, but it rips your rubber to bits and in a long race what you may gain is wiped out by the times you got to pit yourself to switch rubber, to say nothing of the possibilities of a bad blow and upsy-daisy over the wall.

When he hit the first turn I felt Brick stiffen, because there wasn’t any decreasing tempo of that big power plant. To skid on the hard tracks, you have to watch it, because if your deck swings a shade too far, you lose more than you gain; a shade further than that, and you spin like a ballerina on the snow.

Rubber screamed and he took the turn high, nothing but the beautiful banking keeping him on. He kept it high, then slammed down in toward the rail, going inside the rough spot, gunning it like a madman, hitting the south corner, screaming the rubber again, digging in and driving hard for the finish.

I had held the watch on him and I didn’t believe it. I thought the watch was wrong until the P.A. boy, with an edge in his voice said, “John Wall, driving the Franzetta-Gorf, qualifies in one twenty-two point four for a new one-lap record!”

He got more than a spattering of applause. Brick said, “I told you! The guy’s nuts! What the hell is he trying to do?”

“Could he need the dough?” Hoop said. “The new record-holder gets himself two hundred fifty bucks. It cost him maybe a hundred fifty in rubber to do it, so he’s a hundred ahead.”

“There’s an easier way to make money,” Brick said.

The other irons were around, so I took myself a little walk to say hello to old friends and look over the competish. The ones to worry about, I found, were Gidge Putner, driving one of the old Walker Supers; Sam Waybo in a Dillon-French that was five years old, but still a warm iron; Skid Wilkinson in one of his usual bailing-wire jobs out of which I was he could coax some miles; and Robby Harkness in an experimental Sternevaunt.

After shooting the breeze and kidding around, and looking over some unknown kids in make-shift irons, I came back and told Hoop that our biggest trouble would be Johnny Wall, and that Harkness might turn out to be bad if the Sternevaunt held together.

If the three of us happened to go sour in the power, or if one of the wild kids creamed us out, the big event would go to Waybo, Wilkinson, or Putner.

Hoop agreed.