Dogwood Afternoons

PART ONE
1
Andrew Mavis here, goddamn.
It is a nudge past eight o'clock on the morning of eighteenth April, nineteen sixty-four, a Saturday, and I am running high down the back straight of the Terminus Motor Speedway, a new track to the Circuit, two miles around and flat-bellied in the turns, narrow as streaked lightning on the straights and greasy as owl shit everywhere. I cadge a glance at the thin red tachometer needle, quivering steadily at 7250, and with an uncanny accuracy that amazes even me, I estimate my speed at one hundred and eighty-three bulldog miles an hour, give or take a tick. And do you want to know what I'm thinking? I am thinking this: Andrew, old buddy, at this precise moment there is no one else in the whole world who is moving across the face of God's fanciful earth in a racing stock car, or in anything else, quite as rapidly as you are. You are the man. You are the only one. You are dialed in to zero. This is what you were born to do and now, at the advanced age of twenty-three soon to be twenty-four, youare doing it. You are really doing it. Where is my silk scarf?
The clear-eyed sun raises one eyebrow over the third-turn guard rail and soon will flicker-blind me on each passage. No problem. From the shadows in the same turn, trickles of the morning's heavy dew slide down the slight banking. In the center of the infield there stands a grove of dogwood trees. Now, who in his right mind would build a race track so slick and flat and narrow as is this, yet plant dogwoods right where the paying customers can't see through them to the other side of the track:
What's happenin' offen number two, Grover?
Don't rightly know, Jeremiah. Cain't see fer the dogwoods.
Yet they are strangely transfixing. The lush blooms are so heavy with the early mist that the dark and gnarled boughs bend gently to the ground, puffs of melting ice cream on a stick. My balls tingle. I'm revved up, wired, strung tighter than a fiddle. I lean forward. My knees and elbows, all gangly and akimbo, embrace the padded steering wheel, wrapped with yards and yards of sticky black electrical tape. So hard do I strain against my shoulder harness and lap belt that tomorrow I know I'll have the blacks-and-blues tattooed across my chest and belly with such definition that they might as well be painted on. It happens all the time. I like my belts cinched tight. I can feel the car more; establish a oneness with the car that isn't there if I'm loose and flip-flopping around. Particularly now. Even with the belts drawn taut, my slim-hipped body slides side to side across the width of the contoured driver's seat, shaped not for me and only vaguely with me in mind.
I am a visitor here.




Last night the Peterbilt rig, eighteen wheels and forty feet long and thirteen feet high, rolled into Four Corners, seventy-two loblolly country miles north of Terminus, and blew its air brakes to a stop on the square in front of the copper-green statue of old Colonel Stokes. Wynn and I were with One-Eye chowing at Miss Dee's, and from our window booth we stared bug-eyed, at least I did, as two mechanics dressed in white--white slacks, white polo shirts, white jackets, even white shoes and shoelaces--jumped down from the high cab door and walked across the cobbled square and through the door of the small cafe. They nodded to One-Eye, not knowing Wynn or me from the off ox.
You fellows lost? asked One-Eye, knowing that Four Corners was not the most direct route to Terminus from anywhere.
Miss Dee still serve steaks and tamales? asked the taller of the two. His nonchalance barely stayed the civil side of arrogance. His nose was bent, my guess was by a tire iron.
Assured that she did, the shorter of the two, his face and neck a prickly red from midday racing suns, said, Then we ain't lost a'tall. We'll take our dinner here and be at Terminus in ninety minutes' time.
We wolfed our food, Wynn and I, and together hurried out into the spring night's cool fog. The transporter, like the clothing of its mechanics, was white-on-white, save for a brilliant chrome maidenhead and chrome wheels and a wide black slash on either side of the trailer that ran the diagonal from front high to back low. Inside the monster rig, we knew, were two race cars and enough spare parts for at least one weekend of racing. The cars could be rebuilt from scratch on the spot if circumstancesso contrived. On the cab doors, in bold and calligraphic script, were the words: Dorsen Motor Company Racing Team. And below: Team Manager Jean-Pierre Andriotti. And farther below: Drivers Clyde Warden and Dink MacIntosh. Around this last name was a fine black box. Six weeks before, Dink had flown his two-lung Apache through the roof of the state liquor store in Anarchy.
Roll them out, said One-Eye.
He and the two Dorsen mechanics had materialized silently behind us. With some reluctance, I thought, Bent Nose and Red Face complied. They lowered the tailgate of the trailer, placed a ramp of wood and steel behind, and ever so gently let out the hand winches that tethered the cars inside. And then they were there in front of us in the empty square, sleek in the light from the bright cafe and from a rising crescent moon. They were otherworldly, ghostly, and all in white save for the same black stripes on the transporter, only these stripes began at the center-front of the hood and flowed along the sides of the cars until they reached the rear quarterpanels and trailed off into the night. Their night-rider unreality was enhanced by an absence of decals or other paintings, even numbers. In Gothic script two fingers high beneath the driver's-side window on one, I read: Andrew Mavis; on the other: Wynn Tatum.
Wynn feigned a faint and fell limply backward into One-Eye's arms. I whistled low and long and walked timelessly around both cars, shark-mean and glistening in the phantom light.
Wynn recovered himself and smiled, his bloodhound face bemused and enigmatic.
Are they equal? he asked.
As equal as we can make them, said Bent Nose. Youcan work with us tomorrow, if you think it's needed, to get them where you feel they ought to be.




I balloon-foot the accelerator at the entrance to turn three. Flame and raging gases boil through the exhaust headers. The edges of the searing heat seep through the floorboard and warm my feet, a good feeling.
One day two years ago, when I was learning how to drive and the Circuit seemed no closer than a dream, I drove forever round and round the dirt at Four Corners, seeking to find the feel of my car and doubting whether I ever would. One-Eye in the pits pinched his stopwatches and shook his head on every lap as I wrestled with my erratic charge, the fire in my brain building with each passage. I smelled smoke; I looked down at the floorboard and saw smoke. I spun the car to a dead-dime stop and bailed out to seek on hands and knees the cooling infield grass. Only then did the pain from my right heel override my anger and frustration.
You didn't feel the pain until you'd left the car? asked One-Eye with curiosity and awe. It was a broken weld. I checked.
My mind was elsewhere, I said as One-Eye lanced the glistening blister and let the juices gush. My mind was filled with thoughts of how to turn this shit-box left.
I gestured toward the car, which maintained innocence.
Now, I wear square-toed cowboy boots from Billy Winslow's General Store on the square and wrap the heel of the right with foam-rubber pads secured with asbestos tape. My left foot I can plant against a side bar of the roll cage. And though it's been two years, and more, the skin is tender still.
I talk to myself at speed, whether I'm scrubbing tires or racing ding-dong on a superspeedway such as this, though I've yet to do so much of that, or banzai banging in the forty-lappers on the little dirt bullrings such as that whore of a track in Four Corners, where there's slam-bam thank-you-ma'am kamikaze fun without tears every night out. Ah, Andrew, will you ever touch the dirt again? Also, for the record, I yell, scream, rant, rave, pound the steering column, scratch my balls, and make obscene gestures at the littlest old ladies I can find and also at the youngest and most stacked. I show no favoritism. If still my unbound energy offers to make bile in my guts, I sing, loudly and profanely, or mime posey words of calm and soothing. My favorite thus begins: Buffalo Bill's / defunct / who used to / ride a watersmooth-silver / stallion ...
I slide through number four and can hear the tires screech wheek wheeek wheek as the car drifts to the outside rail. Where begins the front grandstand, twenty-seven thousand glistening aluminum state-of-the-art empty seats, the car grabs hold and I aim for the apex of the slight dogleg bend on the main straight. Already I've experimented some, and if I cut the bend so that my left-side tires kick up red dust--damn narrow racing groove--I'm on the perfect line for turn one, not that far distant. A second beyond the apex, I pass the pits. The other car is there, and Wynn, a matchstick stuck between his teeth, starts to climb in through his driver's-side window. One-Eye lifts the chalkboard. 5-L, it says: five laps left. Next to One-Eye, Andriotti snaps his stopwatches. One-Eye wears coveralls and shitkickers; Andriotti sports a silk suit from Hong Kong, a tapered tailored shirt from Carnaby Street, a pair of soft-leather shoes from Italy. I've never seen his shoes dusty. I've never seen any part of Andriotti thatwas anything but immaculate. No wonder they called him the Watchmaker when he was racing fancy cars in Europe before the war and after. He's a nice man, I think--courteous, friendly, though not lovable.
One-Eye, now, he's different, and I don't ever mind saying I love that old man. Not so old. He looks younger than he ought to look, given all he's been through. I can't remember the last time anybody called him Mr. Rivers, or even Wendell, with the accent such that it comes out Wen-dell. Certainly nobody in Four Corners ever has. He has always been One-Eye.




I am the man. I am on the point and my balls tingle. I have been waiting for this moment for three months, since the day in January when we all assembled around momma's kitchen table: Wynn and his daddy, Spencer; me and my crippled daddy, Wylie, who, without his brace, used a straight-back chair as a walker to make his way to the table, his left leg dragging behind him; and One-Eye and Andriotti. A sodden winter's rain that had curled in over the gray mountains to the north, called the Quahills, played a snare-drum rhythm on the roof.
Andriotti cut to the nut right away, his lilting voice an alliance of wondrous accents, all of them Continental, some of them affected for the drama of the occasion.
I can't offer either of you a factory ride, he said, but our shop in Ashley Oaks has one position open, for what you Americans call a gofer. It's the shit work. You push brooms. You make coffee runs for the boys. You haul the race-car rigs to hell and back. The pay is a dollar twenty-five an hour and you don't punch the clock after fifty hours. I can't say more, but if there's free time you might get help on a car of your own. And if that works out ...
He shrugged, knowing he had said enough. He could have lured Wynn and me halfway round the world with a lesser promise.
When he left, we looked to One-Eye for his wisdom.
He likes you boys, One-Eye said. He's seen what you can do up here on dirt, and unless my guess is all askew, you've both got solid futures, if not with him, then with someone else. But they didn't call him the Watchmaker for nothing, when he was driving the fancy cars. I would trust Jean-Pierre with my life, but he's also as calculating and political as they come. The real reason for this opportunity--and it's a true opportunity, make no mistake--is Clyde Warden and Dink MacIntosh. Jean-Pierre's been with Dorsen six or seven years now, and he's already fired Clyde twice and Dink three times that I know of.
For what? asked Wynn, all innocence.
For insubordination, said One-Eye. For showing up at a race track so drunk it's a wonder they could fire up their cars. For crashing cars. For doing all the things that Clyde and Dink are famous for doing. Jean-Pierre's always hired them back, though. He's a generous man, but there are two things he can't forgive. One is Clyde and Dink not winning races for Dorsen. The other is Clyde and Dink winning races for someone else--for Ford or Chrysler or General Motors.
One-Eye, he tells me, I fly back to Detroit on Monday morning and my boss has spread a carpet so he can call me in on it, a special Jean-Pierre Andriotti carpet.
Jean-Pierre, he says, have we got the best cars on the Circuit?
Yes, I tell him.
And are Clyde Warden and Dink MacIntosh the two best drivers on the Circuit?
Yes, I tell him again.
And at the shop in Ashley Oaks, do the boys there lack for anything?
No, I tell him.
And does Research and Development up here in Motor City stay ahead of the game? Give you speed parts nobody else has? Give you dyno tests and wind-tunnel tests? Even figure out a cheater gas tank? Those back-yard mechanics down there don't know everything, right?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I say.
So why didn't we win the race? asks my boss.
Because our two hero drivers walled their race cars, I respond.
And why did they do that, Jean-Pierre?
Because they were funnin' each other and didn't watch out where they were going.
So what kind of people are you dealing with down there?
Well, sir, they swung down out of the trees.
One-Eye paused for the laughter. Even Wylie cracked a smile.
Andriotti's tired of dealing with gorillas, said One-Eye to Wynn and me. He's worn out working with legends. Someday down the road he'd like to hire himself a real race-car driver.




So I am not now racing, not at eight o'clock on a dew-filled Saturday morning. Neither am I scrubbing tires.
My car moves easily to the top lane as I straight-line up the second half of the dogleg toward turn one. I glance at the black box sitting on the floorboard beside me. It is exactly one foot square and four inches high. A dozen wires protrude, seven of them attached to the car andfive to me. According to Andriotti, this is a test of a new car on a new race track. The probes measure engine temperature, shock travel, spring loading, weight transfer, sway and anti-sway. All to help build a better, safer, faster Dorsen race car.
And to tell you how the kiddies treat the cars and handle the pressure, I had mumbled while strapping up.
Andriotti didn't respond except to raise his left eyebrow and look mildly hurt. But it's obvious, at least to me, that we're doing more than testing cars and trying out to be a gofer, especially now that Dink is dead and to my knowledge Andriotti's yet to hire up a new chauffeur. This is our audition, Wynn's and mine. A lightning flick of the dice and one of us is headed for the stars, the other back to driving dirt and dreaming others' dreams. Are Wynn and I destined to be tied together forever, just as were our fathers?
There's a tiggle of understeer. To set the car for turns, I have to yank the wheel once more often than I'd like, to break the tires loose and set the car adrifting to the cushion of air travel inches off the concrete walls. Meeting the air is the same as falling into a pile of fresh-cut hay or being wrapped in a woolly blanket. I run down the back chute as close to that wall as I can get--oh, maybe I'll fall off it a little--and there I'm protected and secure, as safe and happy as I ever was in momma's arms.
Three laps left, the signal. Two laps; one. I pass the pits to start my last hot lap and sneak a glance through the creamy dogwoods to the far side of the track. Wynn's car grumbles low on the backstretch, warming up. I quickly overtake him and wave in quick salute, then scream through three and four and kick the apex. One-Eye waves me in, perfunctorily. Andriotti clicks hiswatches a final time. Reluctantly, I hit the kill switch on the steering column and coast in sudden silence.
When I reach the pits and stop, Bent Nose quickly probes each tire to measure temperature and wear. Red Face writes down the numbers, which I pray will confirm the understeer I've felt, then shows them to One-Eye and Andriotti, not to me.
I sit, not bothering to unstrap, very much alone, and a strange discomfort floods over me. Where is Wylie? He should be here to witness this, for he would find a satisfaction in this trial of his son. So I think. But Wylie cannot be here, of course. Of course. He lies in cold ground, buried with little grief, so says his only progeny, not two weeks from this day.




Once, when I was eight or nine or ten and scavenging through our house, I found a treasure. It was a black cardboard box about the size of the one on the floorboard next to me now, wrapped with a faded pink ribbon. Inside the box was a photo album, the tiny snapshots mounted with black corners on the heavy, musty pages. One picture I remember above all others. Wylie is holding a baby no more than four months old, and the baby is me. We are in the back yard of our house. In the background is our latticed porch, darkly screened against the heavy summer sun. Wylie wears a light-colored shirt, long-sleeved, open at the neck, its collar stiffly starched. Though I am naked, Wylie holds me close, and my tiny hands reach out for his bobbing Adam's apple. A crescent of a smile breaks my face. Wylie is lean, sturdy, gentle: fatherly. The angle of the picture gives prominence to a slight balding spot at the very top of his head. We are clearly taken with one another. Later--was it days, weeks, years?--I triedagain to find the picture box, but it was gone. Such is memory that I now remember not only the details of the photograph but as well the taking of the picture. Wylie held me close, and I grasped for his brilliant eyes, his slender nose, the rough stubble of his chin, and his bobbing throat. Click.
A box of photographs hidden from me forever.
Copyright @ 1985 by Kim Chapin