Drag Strip Racer Read online

  “Just great!” she cried.

  He ran the car again and again, each time feeling that he had done better than the time before. It was nearly noon when he decided that he and the Chevy had had enough. The overcast sky had been slightly burned away by the sun, which glowed like a dim yellow ball behind fragments of clouds that flowed in front of it. It hadn’t rained and it wasn’t likely to.

  They returned home and, because Mrs. Oberlin was working and would not be home till shortly after four o’clock, Janet fixed lunch for Ken, Lori, their father, and Dana, who had pulled into the driveway only seconds after Ken.

  “Well, had her on the track?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How’d she do?”

  “Just fine.”

  “You didn’t have trouble with that bad leg?”

  “Not a bit.”

  Over lunch he explained what he’d like to do. He’d like to race Li’l Red as soon as possible and he was going to ask Dusty Hill to sponsor him.

  “Why Dusty?” Dana wanted to know.

  “Because he can afford it,” Ken said. “He’s got a parts store and a garage. And, as far as I know, he hasn’t sponsored a driver in a race this year yet.”

  He looked at the faces around the table for a reaction. His father’s eyes came up from beneath tired lids and fastened wearily on him.

  “I’m not too crazy about your racing, you know that,” his father said. “And neither is your mother.”

  “It’s safe, Dad, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Ken tried to assure him. “It’s not like the oval races, or the Indy 500.”

  “Safe? Your brakes gave once, didn’t they?” his father reminded him, a dark glint in his eyes. “What makes you so sure something else won’t happen the next time? Or the next?”

  “There’s some risk, sure, Dad,” Ken replied quietly. “But anything that’s worth shooting for is risky.”

  He loved his father very much, but there was that bit of overcoddling that he couldn’t stand. His father still treated him as though he were a little kid.

  Ken knew it stemmed from his earlier years—before he had reached his teens—when he was so shy he played mainly by himself, or with his sisters. He and Dana had seldom played together Dana was much more outgoing than he, and had a lot of friends in the neighborhood with whom he’d rather play.

  He glanced at his sisters now and smiled as he saw reassurance on their young faces. They were both for him one hundred percent.

  “What do you think, Dana?” he asked his older brother. “You for me or against me?”

  At one time he didn’t care what Dana thought. He was sure, ever since the will had been read, that his brother resented Uncle Louis’s willing the car to him. Nonetheless, Ken wanted his brother’s approval.

  “I’m for you, brother,” Dana answered, a cynical smile on his lips. “After all, what else in this world do you really care to do, anyway?”

  Ken prickled, but kept his temper. “Maybe lots more than you think, Dana,” he said, and wished he had kept his mouth shut.

  Two days later he drove the pickup to “Hill’s Automotive Parts,” Dusty’s store in the Wade Mall. He arrived early, hoping to get there before the customers started to come in, and found the owner in less than a cheerful mood near the rear of the store. Dusty was shoving some of the larger parts on the floor from one place to another, doing it angrily, as if it were a job he detested.

  A bell over the door had clanged as Ken entered, but Dusty either hadn’t heard it or was deliberately ignoring it.

  Ken walked across the floor, skirting a display of clutches and brake shoes, and paused a short distance away from the store owner.

  “Be with you in a minute,” Dusty said, continuing with his work without glancing up.

  “That’s okay, Mr. Hill,” Ken said. He steadied himself on the crutches, letting the cast-covered leg rest on the floor.

  Dusty stopped working then and looked up at him. Sweat glistened on his face. “Oh, hi, Ken,” he said. “Didn’t know it was you. How you doing?”

  “Okay.”

  Dusty bent over and started moving parts around again. Ken watched him, suddenly realizing that something was different about the place. It wasn’t the change Dusty was making, either. It was something else.

  In a moment he realized what it was. The big 350-turbo engine that had been sitting near the center of the floor was missing.

  “Did you sell that engine, Mr. Hill?” Ken asked.

  “Wish I had, kid,” Dusty said grimly. He straightened up, took a handkerchief out of his back pocket, and wiped the sweat off his forehead. In his mid-forties, his hair was still dark, but receding. “Some rot-bellied devil broke in here last night or early this morning and stole it. That’s well over a thousand bucks, you know that?”

  FOUR

  NOTHING ELSE was taken, Dusty told Ken. Just the engine.

  Ken wondered whether to tell Dusty now what he had come here for. He felt he should wait.

  “You’re pretty busy, Mr. Hill,” he said. “I’ll be back later.” He headed for the door.

  “Wait a minute. Can I do something for you?”

  Ken paused and turned. His eyes focused on Dusty’s. His heart hammered. “Well, I was going to ask you if—if you’d like to sponsor me in my races.”

  Dusty frowned, and his eyes lowered to Ken’s cast-encased leg. “You expect to race with a cast on that leg?”

  “No problem. I did about ten passes on Monday. Had no trouble at all.”

  Dusty stared at him. Then he took a deep breath and started to look about him as if for another box of parts to move.

  “Ken, I feel for you, believe me,” he said. “But you’re pretty young, you know. You’re just getting your feet wet. Drag racing ain’t for everybody.”

  Ken felt as if a needle had been stuck into his skin. “It is for me,” he said. “I can drive, Mr. Hill. I can drive better than you thinks.”

  Dusty moved a box, straightened up, and shrugged. “Okay, maybe you can,” he admitted. “But you’re too late, anyway. I’ve already signed up with a driver. I guess I should have told you that in the first place.”

  Ken froze. He eyed the older man steadily for a few seconds before he could swallow his disappointment.

  “Mind telling me who?” he finally asked.

  “Scott Taggart. I guess you know him.”

  Ken nodded. “Yes, I know him. When did you sign up with him?”

  Dusty thought a minute. “Two days ago,” he said.

  Ken nodded again. He stood around awhile longer, then turned and headed for the door. “Sorry I bothered you, Mr. Hill.”

  “No bother, Ken,” Dusty’s voice trailed after him.

  He opened the door and walked out, squinting against the morning sun. He kept his head down as he hobbled across the sidewalk, stepped off the curb, and started toward his pickup parked in the lot.

  Anger and hurt set in his eyes as he thought of what Dusty had said. “You’re just getting your feet wet. Drag racing ain’t for everybody.”

  But Dusty’s sponsoring Scott “Rat” Taggart was the last straw. Taggart had not acquired the nickname “Rat” by chance: he had earned it.

  Five years ago, when Scott was fourteen, he had entered a race by using an older friend’s birth certificate. He was caught and disqualified, but not until several days after the race was over.

  Another time he had used nitrous oxide in his gas, an offense in all racing classes and categories except Top Fuel and AA/Funny cars. He had told the officials he hadn’t known it wasn’t allowed. But every other drag racer had known it. Why hadn’t he? There wasn’t a soul in the racing crowd who didn’t believe that Scott Taggart had lied through his teeth.

  You would think that Dana, who had told all this to Ken one night about a year ago after he and Scott had been biking together for a couple of hours, would have dropped Scott like a hot potato. But, no. They still chummed around, although not as much as they
used to.

  Anyway, Scott had been disqualified repeatedly in races all over the county. One time a member of the racing clan dubbed him with the nickname “Rat.” And it had stuck ever since.

  Ken heard a car drive up as he approached his pickup, but he didn’t look around at it. He didn’t want anyone to see the dismal expression on his face.

  But a voice called out his name and he paused, feeling he had to look up now. He glanced at the car as it swept around in a quick turn and pulled up in the vacant space two cars away from his. It was a black, two-door Plymouth owned by no one else but the person he had just been thinking about, Scott “Rat” Taggart.

  But it wasn’t Scott’s voice that had called to him. It was the voice of the girl sitting beside him—pretty, dark-haired Dottie Hill, Dusty’s seventeen-year-old daughter.

  “Oh, hi,” he said, at the same time thinking, What in heck is she doing with him?

  He let a frown linger on his face, remembering the two times he had taken her to the movies, and the few times he had danced with her at school functions. Then he turned away, opened the door of the pickup, put in the crutches, and got in.

  He started the pickup and headed for home, embittered by the thought of Dusty’s signing as a sponsor for Scott “Rat” Taggart. Well, he couldn’t deny that Scott was a good driver. He had scored a lot of points in Pro Stock races—although he had never come in better than third runner-up—and had several trophies to show for it. Dusty, no greenhorn in the business, must have known a competitor when he saw one.

  Ken wondered what to do to ease the pain of Dusty’s turning him down and thought of going to a movie. But that was out. The theaters in Wade didn’t open till one-thirty.

  There was really only one place that would do—the Candlewyck Speedway—and he promptly headed for it. He got there in half an hour, parked next to the bleachers, and for the next hour and a half he watched the Plymouths, Omnis, Chevies, Mustangs, Camaros, Hornets, Fords, Buicks, Oldses, Pontiacs, and a bristling white Chrysler run passes on the quarter-mile strip.

  “Snakeman” Wilkins was in a Plymouth, “Little Beaver” Applejack in a Mustang, “Battle-scar” Jones in a Ford, Jim “The Toad” in an Olds. Their names were printed in glowing colors across the sides of their cars, which themselves were painted in sharp, contrasting colors. The first thing you noticed about these cars was their owners’ pride in how they looked. And then, the way each car reflected the personality of its owner. Ken wondered if someday he’d be worthy enough to have earned a nickname and join that reputable clan. “Limp-along” Oberlin? “Wolfman” Oberlin? The possibilities were limitless.

  Dana was in the backyard working on his motorcycle when Ken finally went home. He was bare to his waist and his hands were black from grease and oil.

  “Nick give you the day off?” Ken found himself asking as he hobbled over to his brother.

  Dana straightened and shoved his long hair away from his forehead with the clean part of his arm. “I’m taking it off, brother. Where you been?”

  “At the track. But I went to see Dusty Hill first.”

  Dana eyed him expectantly. “What’s the verdict?”

  “He’s already sponsoring a driver.” Their eyes held. “Scott Taggart.”

  “Rat? Since when?”

  Ken shrugged. “Since two days ago. Another thing: somebody broke into Dusty’s place last night or early this morning and stole that three-fifty turbo engine he had sitting in his store.”

  “Oh, no.” Dana shook his head sympathetically, then narrowed his eyes as he grasped the full impact of what Ken had said.

  “Early this morning?”

  “Yes, or last night.”

  “Hm,” Dana muttered, shaking his head. Then he resumed work on his black and red Kawasaki, a KE125 model. The Takasago steel rims and Nitto tires were as clean and sparkling as if he had just bought them off the assembly line.

  “See ya,” Ken said, noticing that his brother seemed more interested in working on his bike than talking with him. Then a movement caught his eye toward the rear of their yard. He grinned amiably as he saw his father hoeing the garden. Dad was wearing that wide-brimmed, tattered straw hat that he had had for as long as Ken could remember.

  The girls weren’t around. They were probably in the house or playing with some of their neighborhood friends, Ken thought.

  He hobbled to the garden to talk with his father, and wasn’t there more than ten minutes when he heard the Kawasaki start up. Surprised, he turned and saw Dana tearing away on it, dirt squirting up like sparks behind its rear wheel.

  FIVE

  FIVE MILES out of Wade, Dana turned off the highway onto a road that was flanked on one side by a cow pasture and on the other by tall, gangling palms. He reduced the speed of his motorcycle almost to idle so that the noise wouldn’t carry to the small ranch house nestled about an eighth of a mile off the road among a thick set of trees.

  Some one hundred yards from the highway the dirt road curved to the left, sweeping around a tall, sprawling grapefruit tree.

  Dana drove off the road to the left side of the tree, shut off the engine, dismounted, and leaned the motorcycle against the tree. Weeds were chest-high around the tree and he doubted that anyone who happened to drive by could see the bike.

  He ran across the road, hopped over a ditch, ducked through a wire fence, and headed toward a garage that was set away from the house.

  He kept bent over, not wanting to risk having someone at the house see him. He knew of at least five shotguns kept inside that he had seen with his own eyes, with the shells for each of them easily available.

  A green pickup and an old Dodge were parked in the driveway. Both had rust scales on the fenders, but the Dodge looked worse. Its front right fender was battered and the front door on the same side was caved in.

  Dana reached a side window of the garage and peeked in. He had to wipe the dirt off the glass to see through it, but it didn’t take long for him to spot the suspicious-looking tarpaulin-covered pile set on a couple of planks near the rear of the garage. He grabbed the wooden parts of the window and tried to force it open. It wouldn’t budge.

  He stood awhile, wondering what to do to get inside. He had to see what was underneath that tarpaulin.

  Well, why not try the door? he thought. If he just kept down and out of sight, he should be able to make it.

  He ducked low as he scurried to the front of the garage, peeked around its corner, saw no one, and turned the knob of the door. For a scant second he was afraid it might be locked, although it never was, not whenever he’d been here.

  He pushed the door and it slowly opened. He entered quickly and closed the door quietly behind him. Then he headed toward the rear of the building. The smell of grease and oil was thick in the air. The garage was like an automotive parts store, except that the parts were old and used and left haphazardly all over the place.

  He reached the hidden bulge on the planks and felt tension begin to creep through his body as he grabbed an edge of the canvas and lifted it. His expectations were realized as he unveiled a brand-new engine. He read the HP on the head, 350, and then looked for the ID.

  He found the place where it was supposed to be, but the numbers were gone. Filed off.

  Dana pursed his lips. “Rat” really deserved his nickname, he thought. And my family calls me a black sheep! I’m a kitten compared to Scott “Rat” Taggart.

  Last night he had stayed at the pool parlor shooting pool and guzzling beer with a couple of guys after work. Nick had wanted him to stay till midnight, at which hour he had promised to re turn from an appointment and take over till closing.

  Instead, Nick didn’t return till 2 A.M., which was okay with Dana. It was more money in his pocket and he had nothing else to do, anyway.

  Then, while he was heading for home on his Kawasaki, breezing down Palmetto Avenue, he had seen a pickup pull up into a lane that led to the rear entrance to the stores of Wade Mall. It could’ve been brown, b
lue, or green—any of the dark colors—exactly which he couldn’t swear for sure. He could hardly see the driver who, he remembered now as he thought back to that moment, had seemed to duck back against his seat. In the night shadows next to him sat a couple of passengers, both of whom had tried to keep out of his sight, too, now that he thought of it.

  But the white sign on the door was plain: HILL’S AUTO PARTS.

  Dusty’s working late, he had told himself. Or was it Rooster?

  But that pickup looked different. Wasn’t Dusty’s white?

  One other thing had caught his attention, but had not sufficiently registered at the time. The first three letters on the license plate: SRT.

  There was only one person he knew whose license plate started with those letters. Scott “Rat” Taggart. In spite of the connotation in the name “Rat,” Scott was proud enough to use it in his initials.

  But the letters had not meant anything to Dana at the time. Not until Ken had told him about the theft of the engine had the pictures of a puzzle begun to fall into place. Seconds later, while Ken was out there in the garden shooting the breeze with his father, Dana had gone to the telephone and called up Dusty to check out the color of his pickup. It was white, Dusty had told him. And when Dusty had wanted to know who was calling, Dana had simply said, “A friend.”

  As for the “Hill’s Auto Parts” sign, it didn’t take a genius to paint one and tape it to the side of a pickup.

  He pulled the tarpaulin back over the engine and headed out of the garage, careful to crack the door open and peek out before he made his departure.

  The coast was clear. He hurried around to the side of the garage and then back through the brush to his motorcycle, feeling good that his hunch was right. He had never considered Scott a real friend, anyway—he had never felt he could trust the guy. This dirty business of Scott’s stealing an engine from Dusty Hill at about the same time that Dusty had agreed to sponsor him in races was proof that he was exactly what his nickname said: a rat.

  Dana finally reached the spot at the side of the ditch that was directly across from the tree against which he had propped his motorcycle. Glancing again toward the house to make sure no one was watching him, he sprinted across the road.