allowance instead of a job, but Harley took his meaning and the challenge.
Koeppen and Lupton thought their joint effort was unbeatable, and they were itching to prove it. Ever since they had pooled their skills and their savings to put together the fastest car they could afford, they had been trying to test their creation against anybody else’s set of wheels, but since they preferred to race for cash instead of bragging rights, nobody wanted to take them on. Until Harley, who had more guts than sense. He knew they would be tough competition. Connie claimed that he had even driven a few dirt track races at the local speedway-without his parents’ knowledge, of course. Doctors’ kids weren’t supposed to be hanging out with the riffraff at the racetrack.
“Bear Creek Road tonight at seven,” Connie had said in the hall after algebra. “Put up or shut up.”
Midnight would have been better. More fitting somehow for such a momentous showdown, but, hey, it was a school night. Lupton and Koeppen might think they were kings of the road, but they had curfews, same as Harley did. So he would be racing against their best shot at a race car, just at dark, for a week’s salary, winner take all.
Harley couldn’t afford to lose. His wages from a weekend job at the sawmill didn’t amount to much, a little less than fifty dollars after they took the taxes out, but it kept his gas tank filled, and sometimes when Daddy ended up a little short from needing a new part for the race car or when he didn’t place in the money in the Saturday race, Harley’s check might mean meat instead of beans for supper that week or paying the overdue light bill. He supposed that he was a fool to risk that money on one minute of hell-bent driving up the darkness of Bear Creek Road, but Daddy could hardly object, could he? Well, he would object, of course, if he knew. He’d raise Cain if he ever found out, but Harley figured that racing was in his blood, so Daddy had nobody to blame but himself.
Racing. Pouring money down a gas tank. Wasn’t that what Daddy was doing at Hickory or Asheville or Wilkesboro most every weekend? It took a chunk of money to run a stock car, even if you did every lick of the mechanic work yourself. You still had to buy parts and gas and tires. Every week. You were lucky if a set of tires got you all the way through one race, which meant that for the next meet, you’d need enough cash to buy a whole new set. Whoever said polo was a rich man’s game ought to try fielding a stock car.
So between the parts and the entry fees and all, a good bit of Daddy’s factory salary went to feed his racing habit, and Harley had never begrudged him a cent of it, even when it meant going through the winter with holes in his shoes. Racing was important. He just wanted to be a part of it-not just cleaning up around the shop, but really in the middle of it, clashing fenders in a red-dirt arena in piedmont North Carolina. Daddy wasn’t too keen on sharing that part of the experience, though. As far as he was concerned, Harley could jockey the wrenches and leave the driving to the old man.
Being the race car driver’s apprentice was getting old now, though. At sixteen Harley thought it was time he found out if he had the knack for it. Even if he lost the race tonight, the run would be worth the money he’d lose just to find out if he could out-drag the brainchild of Lorne Lupton and Connie Koeppen. Maybe if he could hold his own out here, it would be time to ask Daddy if he could go along to the dirt track, too. Or figure out a way to get there on his own.
Lorne Lupton didn’t come from a family with money, so he couldn’t manage a car of his own, but Lorne was one of Nature’s born mechanics. He could probably soup up a lawn mower. Knew his way around an engine blindfolded. That’s where Connie came in. Constantine Koeppen-Connie for short-was no great shakes as a mechanic but he was a daredevil, mad for fast cars and the thrill of a race. His dad was a surgeon at the county hospital, which meant that he could afford the basics of a good ride. Money buys speed-it was the first article of faith in the racing bible.
For his sixteenth birthday, Connie’s dad had bought him a new red Camaro. Within three months he had blown up the Camaro’s engine drag racing, and his cutthroat driving had left the car with more dents than a golf ball, but instead of asking his dad to get him a new ride from the dealership, Connie had gone into partnership with Lorne, who told him what he needed to make the car a contender, and what all of it would cost. After Connie ponied up the repair money, Lorne went to work, replacing the original engine with a 454 out of a wrecked ’70 Impala wagon they’d found at the local junkyard. That heart transplant from seventies’ iron made the Camaro faster than the Chevrolet people had intended for a street rod to go.
Their partnership had made for one formidable opponent. Lorne was the mechanic. Connie Koeppen did the driving. Besides his lust for speed, Connie had a mean streak that would do justice to a tusk hog, coupled with a complete absence of fear, which probably explained his devotion to Dale Earnhardt. Like Dale, Connie Koeppen would do flat-out anything to keep from coming in second. The Camaro had probably cost more than Harley made in a year, between the purchase price and the cost of the parts that Lorne used to soup it up, but Connie didn’t seem to care if he wrecked it or not. He figured that as long as he was careful not to get any speeding tickets, he could always get his dad to finance a replacement. Besides, Connie Koeppen was crazy. Give him an inch, and he’d put you into the river. If you found yourself on a narrow lane, barely wide enough to hold two cars abreast, and if Connie Koeppen was driving the other car, he was bound to take his half of the road right out of the middle-even if he had to bash in his own car in the process-and leave you scrambling along on what was left.
Lorne, a quiet, methodical soul who probably pretended he was the engineer on the Starship
It had taken Harley more than a year of sawmill wages and odd jobs to scrape up enough cash to make his own shopping trip to the junkyard. Before he went, he’d asked for advice from one of his dad’s racing friends, a hurried conversation at the track while his dad was making a test run. The old fellow, a jackleg mechanic, had scribbled a wish list on the back of his pay envelope. After a few weeks of scratching around Harley had managed to locate most of the items he’d recommended.
First, Harley had used his savings and his little bit of Christmas money to buy an old Trans-Am. He’d paid a local farmer to tow the heap to his tobacco barn, where Harley had proceeded to rip out the motor, which he swapped back to the scrap yard for more small parts. In place of the regulation motor, he had installed the 455 out of a wrecked ’70 Bonneville. Then he jazzed it up with a set of Holly four-barrels on an Edelbrock manifold so fine that the result was an uber-motor that could practically pass you in neutral. The old Pontiac was a lot faster than it looked, that was certain.
When he had finished the Trans-Am’s transformation, Harley continued to keep it stashed in his neighbor’s barn. One look under the hood and his old man would know exactly what he was up to, and then he’d be grounded until gasoline was ten bucks a gallon. He was careful not to let Lorne get too close a look at the car, either. On the outside, the Trans-Am still looked like a rusty bucket of bolts, but if all his little adjustments kicked in as planned, the thing should take off like a rocket. Sure, the car was older than the Lupton-Koeppen Camaro, but there was no disadvantage in that. Nobody in his right mind would race an actual eighties’ car when there was sixties’ iron to be had. Harley’s dad always said that the new emission standards had done the same thing to American autos that neutering did to a bull.
It was dark now, but still warm from the heat of the day. Harley was sprawled in the driver’s seat, almost relaxed enough to drop off to sleep when the distant shine of headlights announced the arrival of his opponent and a few carloads of spectators. So this wasn’t to be a private heat between racers, but a public ritual, with half the senior class along for the ride. Just as well, thought Harley. With spectators there’d be some neutral person to hold the money, drop the rag, and witness the outcome. (
The crowd of hangers-on-mostly the guys who hung out at the smoking yard at school-had brought six-packs and a couple of fifths of bourbon. A couple of football players had also brought their female counterparts, girls of the big hair and raccoon eyeliner persuasion, to whom this event would have all the prestige of a prom. Connie would thrive on the attention of an adoring audience, with girls to cheer him on. Harley and Lorne, probing under the hoods of their respective cars, barely noticed that anyone else was there.
Connie was all swagger, strutting around in a Duke Blue Devils sweatshirt-his dad’s alma mater. It remained to be seen if his grades would get him into the university as well, or even if he could be persuaded to go. He tapped Harley on the shoulder. “Did you bring your piggy bank?” he asked. “This race is gonna cost you all of it.”
Lorne still had his nose stuck in the Camaro’s engine, too focused on some mechanical adjustment to care
