Thunder King

3. Thunder Bargain

There were fourteen cars in the big deal. Five, five and four. I was on the outside in the row of four. Brick was on my left. With the helmet and goggles covering his face, I could still tell what he was thinking. He glanced at me and sneered.

The stands were packed. A hundred thousand people anxious to see somebody kill themselves. Ice cream, soft drinks, peanuts, spun-sugar and death.

The two slow circuits gave me the feel of the wagon. It was sweet iron. It had that tingling in it that you associate with a thoroughbred. The wheel had a light touch, lighter than I cared for.

Brick edged over and put his hubs against mine. I felt the shock. It was a damn-fool thing for him to do, even at forty. I leaned against him, knew he would bounce back, so I watched his hands on the wheel. I moved away just as he did.

When he swerved back I met him, saw his startled jump. And there were two passengers in the Franzetta-Gorf. Me and my hunch. Me and fear. Me and the old guy with the grass-cutter.

I have always been a careful guy, avoiding personal feuds on the track, taking chances only when I could figure the odds.

But this was going to be different. A lot different. I knew that Brick was angry enough to kill. If he was good, he’d kill me. If he was clumsy, he’d kill both of us. If I was lucky, he’d kill himself.

When we got the flag, the surge of motors was like a rising roar of rage, and the fourteen cars jumped ahead. Five was too many to go into the first turn abreast; even four was too tight.

As I was on the right, I took the first curve as high as I could, hoping to see a slot ahead as I came out of it, a slot into which I could cut, and flatten out against the rail for a straight drive that would get me out of the ruck.

Everything in the world was blurred but the steady shapes of the cars around me. It is a funny feeling. As though all the cars stood still and the track was unreeled under them. The constant roar and scream and whine dies away, somehow; you forget the noise and it is like a nightmare where you are wheeling the iron in dead silence, with the wind plucking at your face. Not much wind. The design of the cowl whips a lot of it over your head.

Right out ahead of you is your front rubber, the tread a gray-black blur, and if the rubber is running true, the edges are as sharp as though cut with a knife. A little wobble and the rubber blurs along the edges and then it is time to cross your fingers.

The vibration turns you into lead and leather, and numbs you, and when it is over, a physical beating would have been easier. One hundred laps of roaring hell.

I rode the first turn high, and no slot opened up, and Brick’s nose crept up my deck. Too close. Much too close. I had a few inches left, and I took them, but still he angled in at me. I wondered if I had made him too mad — if he would try to ride me off the track on the first curve.

Still he came in and I knew that soon his front right wheel would be inside my left wheels, and nothing could save us from locking.

Nothing behind me. I cut power suddenly, got a flat hit on my left front from his right rear; there was a thud, and a white splinter flashed up from the fence and he was by me. I cut back into safety, watched the rubber for side blur, found none, and shaking with relief and anger, I gave it all it would take.

By then he had a hundred feet on me, and he was bulling his way through the kids. They moved for him, but Putner, Waybo and Wilkinson were in the pack. They wouldn’t budge.

I took the hole he made and clung to it

Skid Wilkinson and Sam Waybo bottled him in what I guessed was the third lap. Wilkinson was low and by the inside rail. Waybo was high, and a half length back. Brick had his nose right in the pocket. I saw what was happening, and went very high to get above Waybo.

As we came out of the south turn I gave it everything and jumped ahead, forging by Waybo. My hope was to get far enough ahead in the stretch so that I could angle down and reduce speed to something sane for the north curve. Waybo, an old hand, gave his iron more stuff, with the idea of caution making me drop back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brick come around his tail to creep up on me, no longer bottled, and it was no time for Joe Gartner to be cautious.

I went into the north end of the track so fast that I leaned hard to the left, hoping that the extra pound or two would keep the inside wheels from lifting. Even so, the deck swung, the rubber screamed, and I thought I saw the left front lift an inch or so clear.

I shot out of the turn, using the incline down toward the inside rail, and boiled by one of the kids who had managed to stay out in front in his home-made job up until that point. But a dull, dark red nose appeared on my right, and I knew that as I had passed the kid on the inside Brick had gone by him on the outside.

It wasn’t racing any more. It had gone beyond that — it was controlled suicide. The track wasn’t built for the speeds we were hitting. The cars were, but the track wasn’t and neither were Brick and I.

He went high and cut down toward me, and I gunned it as I started to come out of the turn. He slid back, still cutting in, and I felt a jolt, a tiny squeal. It was a sound I have heard only three or four times. His front left, at high speed, snubbing against my right rear. It is a sound you don’t want to hear often. The guy was crazy. Crazy with rage. And I had told him to stay out of my way.

There were two distinct fears. One was the fear of not being able to squeak around the ends of the track at the speed I was making. The second was the fear of what the madman behind me, the redhead with his pinched, bitter face, his thin, sneering lips, might do.

Crazy laps. Cars pushed beyond the outermost limits of their iron endurance. The haze came, the haze of the long grind, and I squinted at the pit. The next time around they told me it was lap fifty.

My trouble was that I wasn’t as crazy as Brick was. Eight years of competition gave me respect for the black track, the high, dizzy curves.

His nose came up on my right and I rode the curve high, too high for him to cut down in front of me. The nose dropped back, and just as I was breathing again, he crept up on me on the left, and once again he was edging me toward the outside, as he had back on the first turn.

But this time I wouldn’t drop back. This time he wouldn’t bluff me. I thought of the dark eyes of Jane Wall and the funny angle that I had seen on Johnny’s wrist. Not this time, Brick.

So I held it as steady as a rock and watched his front right. He edged up and moved in so that for seconds on end the three tires were traveling in the same track. My two left tires, and his front right in between them. Death was riding with us then.

Death was sitting on the hood of the green-black job, chattering at us and rubbing dry hands together in anticipation.

He swung away and I thought I had won, but when he swung back he came so far in that his front right was inside my two left tires. Maybe I screamed. Maybe I did nothing. I don’t know. We wheeled high around the curve in that position. I pulled my left leg back as we hit the straight stretch and shoved my knee up against the bottom edge of the steering wheel, to hold it rigid.

Then, spreading my lips in a horrible grin, I lifted both arms, shook hands with myself, glancing back at Brick.

I dropped my hands back onto the wheel. There was a thud, a wrenching jolt, and the whole skyline of Darido was whirling around me to the tune of screaming, burning rubber. Cars loomed up from nowhere and, as the wheel was useless, I folded my arms around my head and slouched in the seat, waiting for death.

There was the grinding crash of tortured metal, a hot flare of flame that scorched my face, and my car jolted to a stop, stern first, against the outside fence just beyond the turn, and then began to roll straight across the track toward the inside fence. Care were whining down at me. I wrenched the wheel hard to the right, and the motor gasped, popped, coughed, jerked my head back as it caught, as an orange car went by me with a full inch to spare. I lined it along the fence, trying to think.

Was this death?

Then I saw the paint blisters along the side of the cowl. Those weren’t imaginary. I saw the scorch mark on my left glove. That wasn’t imaginary. I was driving like a man in a dream. I waited for the red nose of the Jeyett Special to creep up.

But it didn’t. When I flashed by the pit I gave the signal to tell me where I stood. The board went up and it said “2.” There were cars ahead. I had no way of knowing who was leading. I passed them all. I bit down on the nausea and passed them all. And when I leveled out, after passing them, a checkered flag came down and I heard the tempo of the other motors change and a voice inside me said, “Look, Gartner, when they flag you with a checkered flag, it means you’ve won. Now stop at the pit after you go around again, and they’ll tell you if you’re dead. If they don’t look at you, you’re dead, son.”

At first, with the noise of the crowd and all, and with the presentation and confusion, didn’t know that I didn’t know what had happened.

I understood a little bit when I saw the angry scar, the torn mouth of metal just above my right rear.

Johnny told me, with Jane looking on, grave and quiet.

“We could see that he was trying to ride you out. He didn’t care if he killed himself, too. Jane couldn’t watch any more. Then I saw your arms lift and saw you turn. For my money, that’s what scared him off. Gidge Putner was right behind you.Ч”

“I guess Brick, suddenly scared, tried to slew out and drift back. But it was too late. Your wheels locked and his front right bounced up over your left rear. It tipped him and he took one roll before Putner hit him. You disappeared in the flame burst when the tanks on both the Special and the Walker Super went up, and then you came out of it in a that took you up to the fence.Ч”

Gidge — he came out of it. Running. But he was a ball of fire. They hooked the two cars and dragged them through the inside fence.

“Brick never knew what hit him.”

Later, we ate solemnly, without much joy. The news cameramen were around to take flash shots of the three of us. Over coffee, the spell seemed to lift a little, and we began to look at each other with that hey-ma-we-won look.

Johnny rubbed his thumb and first two fingers together and said, “We’re rich!”

“And just because of that crate of yours,” I said. “To tell you the truth, kids, I was afraid of that iron. It had a mean look. It hasn’t got that look any more. Now it looks as friendly as a pup.”

“It’s got enough stuff for another couple of years,” Johnny said.

I looked quickly at Jane, expecting the flare-up. But she had a remote look in her dark eyes and a little smile playing around the corners of her mouth. Softly she said, “We could take it down to Houston for the Christmas races and—”

Johnny and I exchanged quick and knowing looks. Johnny started to laugh.

“Remember, Janey?” he said. “Those things are dangerous. What’s the point in wheeling around and around and around?”

“There’s something more to it than that,” she said, confused.

“It’s too dangerous for us,” I said, severely.

“It is not!” she snapped. “My goodness! Anything is dangerous. Why, even if I were married to somebody who washed high windows and—”

Johnny laughed delightedly and said, “Joe, that’s a proposal if I ever heard one. With a witness, too!”

“No gentlemen would say no,” I said.

She looked down at the tablecloth, but under the table my hand found hers.