The final “hit you from behind” came on the very last lap of the race, with Rusty Wallace in the lead, barreling for the finish line, when the colorful number 24 car-Jeff Gordon, the Wonderboy-smacked Rusty out of the way to win. Wallace managed to keep control of his car, and took second place, followed by the number 8 car, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., running third.
Bill Knight tapped Harley on the arm, and motioned for him to take out his earplugs.
“What?”
“You were right! You predicted the outcome of the race. You said Gordon and Wallace were the drivers who wanted to win the most, and that Jeff Gordon probably would win. And he
Harley nodded. Gordon had won. Just his luck. He felt a little cheap taking the credit for the gift of prophecy, when all he had been doing was indulging in a little pessimism with his prediction. Who had he
The crowd was beginning to push its way out of the grandstands now, though why anybody bothered to hurry was more than Harley could fathom. Fifty-plus thousand cars all trying to leave an area at once to proceed on just two lanes of blacktop in each direction would result in a traffic jam of biblical proportions. (
Justine must have left the corporate skybox the minute the race ended, because she fought against the tide of departing spectators, made it down the steps to their row, and rushed up to Harley, big-eyed with some new revelation. “Did you notice that Little E. finished third?” she said. “Get it?
Harley sighed. “Well, it means about $131,000 to Junior,” he said. “And there’s another three in that sum for you. I wouldn’t read any more into it than that.”
Justine rolled her eyes. “Well, I think it means something,” she said. “All those threes.”
He sighed again, but it was useless to argue with a mystic. Maybe he ought to introduce the group to Hector the Shaman. Come to think of it, Hector’s prophecy had been right on the money. Harley was glad he hadn’t asked the Speedway mystic about Earnhardt, though. He was afraid of what Hector might have said.
Chapter XI
Three miles back on Bear Creek Road-just about the only flat, straight stretch in the whole county. At least one without oncoming cars to worry about. The perfect Thirteen-Twenty: Just over a quarter mile of straightaway, creek on one side, woods on the other; a fine and private place. It was late April, the first time since winter that the narrow road was dry, and by now most of the potholes would have been filled in with gravel by the farmer who lived at the end of the lane. Newly minted leaves ruffled in the night breeze, and moonlight silvered the tree branches, turning the dirt road into a white river shadowed by the blackness of Bear Creek rippling alongside it.
Harley Clay Moore had been the first to arrive that night. He had skipped baseball practice (which he wasn’t much good at anyway) to get home early and tinker with the engine, and now it was as ready as it would ever be. He had to leave before his dad got home, though. If the old man saw him working under the hood, he’d be bound to guess what was going on and then Harley wouldn’t have had a cat’s chance in hell of getting out that night. So he had taken a package of Twinkies for dinner and driven out to Bear Creek Road before it was even dark. He was too nervous to wait anywhere else, half afraid that if he delayed his arrival, he would chicken out and not show up at all. Taking advantage of the solitude before the others arrived, he had walked up and down the Thirteen-Twenty, the quarter-mile straightaway, checking for rough patches, noting where the edge of the road was clear of logs and boulders. In a drag race that lasted only a couple of heartbeats, there was no use trying to figure out the best place to make his move. There wasn’t time for strategy in a drag race. Later on, though, if he was good enough, there’d be real races when tactics did matter. Finally he might reach the big leagues of NASCAR: three-hour campaigns that played out like battles, where supplies and strategy counted for as much as skill and courage.
As a last resort for killing time, he’d brought his English book, more as a distraction than out of dedication. Harley was nobody’s idea of a scholar. He passed the time until sunset trying to finish the reading assignment in the gathering twilight, but he found that he was reading the same sentence over and over. Too keyed up to focus on a page full of long, peculiar words.
He looked at his watch. Half an hour until the appointed time-still too early, but he’d have first choice of a starting position. Meanwhile, he would find ways to pass the time. Walk the course again. Maybe take another look at the engine. His driver’s license was so new that the clothes he wore in the photo hadn’t even been twice through the wash yet, but that didn’t mean he was new to driving. He had been behind a steering wheel ever since his feet could touch the pedals. That was one of the advantages of living on a farm. There were plenty of places to drive without getting on a state road. But this was a far cry from mowing the hayfield with the tractor, and Daddy had never let him do much more than steer the race car out of the barn. He had spent most of his childhood washing wrenches and sweeping up the garage, waiting his turn in the driver’s seat, but his father seemed to think that sixteen was about half the age you ought to be before he’d trust you with his race car, which was ridiculous. Why, the old man hadn’t been much more than sixteen himself when he first started spending his weekends driving dirt track. He hadn’t cared what his parents thought about the matter, but nowadays he seemed to think that inflation applied to age as well as to money. So Harley burned with impatience, knowing that he’d be a better driver than the old man if only he had half a chance to prove it.
He knew the theory. He understood the moves, the tactics. He’d watched racing scenarios play out in everything from toy cars to local dirt tracks, to the occasional race on television-Formula One stuff, mostly, but some of the techniques were the same. And he listened to the NASCAR races on the radio. Sometimes he could see those races better in his head than he could see the ones broadcast on television. He argued about them with his friends, guys like Mike Gibbs, who was so car-crazed that he didn’t have car magazines on his bedside table, car magazines
Connie had been teased mercilessly about his idol’s fall from grace in the past season, ’81. Earnhardt had started his career in a blaze of glory, being named Rookie of the Year and then winning the championship itself the next year, but in ’81 Earnhardt had not won a single race. Connie would argue that he would have won at Charlotte if his ignition hadn’t cut out, and he was looking like a contender in Atlanta, too, before engine failure took him out of the race.
Harley’s favorite was Darrell Waltrip, who had won the championship last year and now was driving for the legendary Junior Johnson. Waltrip was brash and confident, earning himself the nickname “Jaws,” but he had the skill to back up his bravado. Harley thought he wouldn’t care what people called him as long as they respected him-or, even better, envied him.
A race. Finally, after an apprenticeship that had seemed to last his whole life, he was going to see if he really could measure up. Tonight he would be driving for real. A challenge. A taunt really, made by a couple of the school’s older daredevils, ready to cut a new driver down to size.
Connie Koeppen and his buddy Lorne Lupton, a couple of car-crazed seniors, had heard about Harley’s souped- up Trans-Am, and they dared him to pit it against their machine. “Paycheck to paycheck,” Connie had said, thrusting his hatchet face close to Harley’s nose. This wasn’t strictly accurate, since Connie was a rich kid who had an
