1

The New Car


Come on, cowboy. Let's take a ride."
The pair of legs sticking out from beneath the red race car didn't indicate whether their owner had heard the command from the taller dark-haired man standing next to the vehicle. The slender body they were attached to stayed under there, deliberately finishing up applying torque to a stubborn bolt. Finally, slowly, the heels dug in, and the creeper rolled out. The unnatural brightness from the overhead fluorescent lights fell on the young man's face, revealing tanned features and longish hair so blond it looked sun-bleached—though sunlight certainly never found its way beneath the race car.
"Will, you know I want to finish up with this today," the young man said. His eyes squinted and his white teeth flashed as he grimaced. Even with the grime and sweat on his face, he was clearly movie-star handsome. And, at the moment, just a tad bit irritated. "I got my eye on a first-place trophy this weekend, even if nobody else on this team seems to."
"That old rear end'll still be here when we get back if one of the other boys doesn't get to it first," was all the tall dark-haired man offered in reply.
"Aw, all right then," the kid answered peevishly, pointedly dropping his wrenches with a clatter on the shop's cement floor as he climbed to his feet.
Technically, he supposed, Will Hughes was his boss, and he was bound to do his bidding. Will could order him to stand on his head and stack bowling balls if he so desired.
Will was crew chief on the 06 Ford race car, and Rob Wilder, the tall blond kid, was only its driver. No denying the pecking order on that rather well defined organizational chart. And if Will Hughes ordered him out from beneath the car and proceeded to drag him off on some time-wasting joyride, Rob figured he had no choice but to obey the man.
But if the rear end of the car came ratcheting right out from under him smack-dab in the middle of next Saturday's race, well, that was no fault of Mr. Rob Wilder. No, sir!
Wilder stood, dusted himself off, slipped out of the coveralls, hung them on a nail near the door, and then followed Hughes outside, muttering under his breath the whole while.
Will could tell the kid was irritated, but he simply ignored him
Once outside the shop, the bright sun and warm temperature surprised Rob. The first few days of October had been unseasonably cool so far, even for the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. It had been downright cold that morning before daylight when he had shown up at the shop. He had been unable to sleep and eager to get something done, so instead of wearing out a spot spinning idly in his bed, he'd climbed out of the sack, came on to the shop, and gone to work before any of the others had even thought about showing up. The first thing he had done, though, had been to turn up the thermostat on the big electric heaters.
But this day had turned out nice, as if Nature was having a last gasp at hanging on to summer, despite the Technicolor leaves and frosty nights that already heralded an early winter.
Now, despite his annoyance, Rob couldn't help but notice what a glorious day it had turned out to be, and he was glad to be out in the midst of it. He admired the golden sunshine and bright blue sky as they eased along in Will's big pickup down the long gravel drive that led to the highway. An empty trailer on the hitch bounced noisily behind them. The kid even felt a twinge of guilt that he had been wasting one of the last beautiful days of the year underneath a race car in a stuffy, noisy old shop. Lately, more than one important person in his life had been urging him to slow down, enjoy the beautiful things in life, and not to allow his only view of the world to be through the windshield of a bright red Ford race car as it Zoomed around an asphalt oval somewhere. But he was driven toward a goal, reaching for a prize that was near at hand, and he didn't want to lose sight of it when it was so tantalizingly close.
He cranked down the truck's window and breathed in the clean, warm mountain air. Beside him, Will Hughes hummed tunelessly. Rob wished the man would turn on the radio and dial around for someone who could actually carry a melody. But he decided not to let that aggravating racket bother him either. Still, he couldn't figure why, for the life of him, will had insisted that he ride along with him just go pick up some parts. His boss had been vague when he asked him. But now, when Rob glanced over at him and thought about asking again, he decided simply to let it ride. Will was gazing straight ahead, his eyes half-shut behind his mirrored sunglasses, likely thinking about something seriously technical about the car while he made all that irritating noise.
Will's World—that's what the rest of the crew called it when the boss would go stone-faced for chunks of time, then suddenly emerge from his trance having solved a particularly knotty problem with the racecar's setup. Or having worked out a whole new way to do something that had baffled them all so far. It would do no good to ask him what he was thinking about when he drifted off to Will's World. Will Hughes was a graduate mechanical engineer, and sometimes the language he spoke might just as well have been Swahili to Rob Wilder and the rest of the team. Or he would simply ignore the questioner until he was ready to provide the solution.
Even now—his dark hair carefully combed, his golf shirt and khaki slacks unwrinkled, his shoes carefully shined—Will Hughes looked more like a banker on the way to a golf outing or an architect off to survey a project than he did the crew chief of one of the hottest teams on the Busch Grand National stock car racing circuit. He was ten years older than Rob, about the same height, with darker hair and eyes, but considerably stockier than his almost-skinny young driver. Still, they sometimes seemed more like brothers. Donnie Kline, the crew's jack man and chief mechanic, had dubbed them Dumb and Dumber, Yin and Yang, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, as well as a long list of other colorful and often profane names that he used interchangeably. Billy Winton, the man who had put the team together in the first place, in keeping with the family theme, simply referred to the two of them as "the sons I never had."
But all the kidding didn't belie the fact that both young men were happily living their dream. Will Hughes was the subject of much speculation in the racing press and the garages around the circuit. Many swore to know for a fact that the North Carolinian would soon announce a jump to this team or that one over in the Winton Cup garage. That he would certainly confirm any day now that he would catapult to the sport's big league and leave Billy Winton's relatively new Busch Grand National team behind.
The same loose tongues wagged endlessly about Rob Wilder, too. They had heard from someone in the know that the hot-driving twenty-year-old sensation from down near Huntsville, Alabama (Rocket Rob they had named him), would soon make a move himself, jumping to a new ride and joining the superstars and new young guns over there in Winston Cup racing. That old Billy Winton would just have to go fishing for another hotshot to pilot his bright red Ford. After all, the kid had won the pole position for the Daytona Grand National race in February, the first race of his first full year. And he had own the race in Nashville outright. He might have been driving Grand National for a little over a year, might still be inexperienced and might sometimes show it, but he was already one of the most popular drivers out there. And definitely one of the most promising. Surely he would soon leave Billy and Will and the 06 Ford behind and make that seductive leap for the stars.
There was little truth to any of the garage gossip. Sure, Will had been approached by some of the well-funded multi-car teams. And a couple of teams-in-the-making had pulled Rob Wilder aside and made overtures. But Billy Winton and Will Hughes had built this team from the ground up. They had their hot young driver already, as good a crew as there was in racing, a sponsor that was solidly behind them, and they were more than ready to make their own jump all together in one big red package. And to make the jump directly from their little launching pad tucked among the hills and hollows of far eastern Tennessee.
As flattered as Rob was with the offers, he knew he had a good thing going in the Winton garage and that the opportunity to run with the big boys would come when the time was right. The folks he had cast his lot with were the ones he wanted to be in his pits when that time finally came. He knew he owed everything to Billy and will, and he was confident he could best reward them by staying right where he was.
"Where'd you say we were going?" Rob finally asked Will, a puzzled look on his face. They had turned west on the highway, not east toward town.
"Get some parts," Will answered cryptically.
"Yeah, but where? Next parts store this direction is halfway to Charlotte."
"Jodell's."
Okay, that made sense. Chandler Cove was so small it didn't even make road maps, but its environs were home to two very successful racing teams: Billy Winton's and that of racing legend Jodell Bob Lee. And Winton's operation often bought engines and borrowed parts from Jodell's first cousin and chief engine builder, Joe Banker.
The proximity of the two shops wasn't mere coincidence. Jodell Lee had grown up there in Chandler Cove, had gotten his start driving when he delivered his granddaddy's moonshine liquor to thirsty customers up and down that whole end of the state and into far western North Carolina. And he had run his first race back in the mid-fifties in a pasture just up the way. Then, in the late sixties, Billy Winton had joined the Lee team as a mechanic—more by accident than anything else—and he had been, for the better part of two decades, a member of one of the winningest teams in the game. Billy had eventually retired to his farm to ride herd over a few head of hobby cattle and some well-placed investments. But the lure of the sport had been too strong to resist. He was back now. Back with Will and Rob and the 06 team. Back with a vengeance.
"All right," Rob said, confirming his understanding. "To Jodell's."
Will turned then and grinned at the youngster. Sometimes the kid could get himself coiled up just a little bit too tight. But that intensity was one of the things that made him such a natural race car pilot, too.
"Glad it meets with your approval, cowboy."
"I just wanted to finish with that rear end, that's all."
"Look, Donnie or one of 'em will get that done. Haven't you figured out that Billy pays you to steer that thing, not to do surgery on it."
Rob sighed. They had plowed this same ground many times before.
"I just think I have a better feel for the car if I know how she's been put together."
"Thank the Lord you don't have the same notion about airplanes!"
This time Rob Wilder grinned back, but he still had that familiar intense look in his deep blue eyes.
Just then, Will slowed to make the turn into the narrow drive that suddenly popped up at the side of the highway. As they made their way between the rows of big chestnut trees that lined the driveway, they could see the old house ahead where Jodell Lee had been born, where his grandparents had raised him. There, too, was the old unpainted barn they had once used for a race shop, and where they had kept Grandpa Lee's whiskey car running before that. Several large modern outbuildings were scattered along the hill behind the barn. They housed the paint, fabrication, and engine shops. The barn itself had recently been converted into a small museum filled with mementos and trophies and photos the Jodell Lee team had collected through the years. The team's offices were now inside Grandma Lee's old house. It had been restored years earlier for that purpose. Jodell's daughter, Glynn, occupied the family home on the other side of the drive from the offices. Named for the legendary driver Glenn "Fireball" Roberts, she now operated the museum and helped manage the team's business affairs. Out of sight, around the next bend in the driveway, was where Jodell's stately brick home hid from curious fans who came calling sometimes.
Lee Racing was better than forty years old and had been carefully built up to be one of the most daunting operations in the sport. Lately, though, the coming of multi-car teams had put a crimp in their success. As one of the last competitive single-car contingents left in Winston Cup racing, they still managed to win a race or two each year, but even that had become a struggle. The days of claiming a half dozen or more victories each year were long gone.
Will Hughes pulled up next to the huge shop building and then backed the trailer up toward a large overhead door that was now closed tightly. The door was used for the team's big race hauler and the tractor that towed it to pull in and out of the shop. Both men hopped out of the truck and walked in the direction of a nearby entrance.
Will ignored a renewed look of puzzlement on the kid's face.
"Why didn't we just pull up to the loading dock around back?" Rob asked. He didn't relish having to carry boxes of heavy parts all the way from the parts room on the other side of the shop, halfway across the building, and then out the side door to the truck.
Will couldn't suppress a sly grin. "This is where Waylon told me to park. He said what we're picking up is waiting for us over by this door."
"So what are we picking up that's so dad-blamed mysterious?" Rob asked, clearly perplexed. He had assumed they were to being back some suspension parts or maybe a couple of sets of headers that had been tuned for some of the tracks they would be racing on over the next few weeks. But will was acting like it was some kind of military secret.
Why the trailer when that stuff would fit in the bed of the pickup? And why park at the big door instead of at the loading dock?
"Aw, it's just some stuff we need to go racin'," Will answered as he disappeared into the shop door.
The inside of the building was brightly lit and race cars in various states of repair or preparation were resting everywhere. The striking thing most visitors noticed, though, was how clean and organized the place was. It could almost have been a surgical suite in a hospital, littered with exotic equipment and implements.
"Well, if it ain't Mutt and Jeff!" Waylon Baxter called from across the shop. He often tired to outdo Donnie Kline when it came to nicknames for Will and Rob, but so far that had been the best he had come up with. Will met the big man halfway across the wide shop and shook his massive hand. Rob lingered behind, peering longingly into the cockpit of one of the Lee Racing Fords that had caught his attention. "your little skinny buddy excited?"
"I haven't told him yet."
Waylon winked, then tiptoed over to where the kid was sprawled in the driver's side window of the race car, examining its dash. He suddenly goosed Rob hard in the ribs under both his arms. The kid jerked spasmodically, bumped his head hard on the car's roof, and then squirmed backward out of the window. The big man guffawed and slapped his things in merriment while Rob massaged the crown of his head and pretended to be stunned and staggering about.
"Way', don't you know it's dangerous to slip up on an Alabama boy like that? We've been known to be totin' a possum-guttin' knife, you know. And sometimes we cut first and take excuses later."
"Shoot, I could give up a slice or two off this belly and not miss it a' tall," Baxter said, patting his ample gut and still laughing. Waylon was the son of Bubba Baxter, another longtime members of Jodell's team. Bubba had been with Lee since the very beginning and now his son was the crew chief.
"This is one fine-looking race car," Rob offered, laying a loving hand on the vehicle he had been examining.
"We're taking that one down to Homestead. If we get lucky and some time to test, we might can even get her on the pole."
"How about this one over here?" Will called to them from across the building, over near the big door. " This one and good?"
Waylon and Rob wandered that way.
"Yessir, that's one fine car," Baxter intoned. " That's the one Rex drove to second place in the 600 in charlotte back in May."
Rex Lawford was the driver for Jodell Lee's Winston Cup team.
"She's beautiful," Rob said lovingly as he stroked a fender. Lovely maybe, but only to someone who could see beyond the car's ugly coat of gray primer and lack of a driver's seat or even a steering wheel. "As Pretty as any girl I've ever seen."
"Really?" Will asked cocking his head sideways with a funny look on his face.
"Well…uh…almost, anyway."
"Hmmm. Waylon, can I borrow your phone long enough to call a certain Miss Christy Fagan out there in California?"
"Will!" Rob whined.
Christy Fagan was the sister of one of the principals in the company that sponsored the Billy Winton o6 ford. And Rod had proceeded to fall head over heels love with her the first time he had seen her. He tended to be Protective of her and overly defensive in the face of the barrage of jabs he had to endure from his crew over the relationship. The kid took the romance as seriously as he did his racing, and that made him an even more attractive target for the barbs from Donnie Kline and the rest of them. But he simply chalked it all up to jealousy. Christy Fagan was actually one of the most beautiful, most wonderful women he had ever met. Even more beautiful and wonderful than the primered-up seatless Ford race car he was caressing at the moment. Unfortunately, Christy was in school in Los Angeles, Twenty-five hundred miles away, and the gorgeous race car was close at hand.
"Well, Rob, what do you really think of her?" Waylon asked.
"I'd give an arm and a leg to drive her in a Cup race," he answered without hesitation.
Waylon had hit the button, activating the motor that lifted the heavy door and allowed the warm air and sunlight to spill inside. The race car looked even better in the bright light. Rob couldn't keep his hands off her. He walked all the way around, studying the sleek lines of her body, fondling her. He always loved the feel of a race car, any well-puts-together race car.
"Well, you better get to choppin'," Waylon said. "She's yours now."
Rob's eyes grew wide, and he stopped romancing the racer. "What do you mean? Will?
"That's right. Billy bought this old jalopy off Odell. Odell's been adding some new car they've built for the quad-ovals like Charlotte and Atlanta, and he needed to get rid of—"
But a sharp happy whoop from the kid interrupted Will's explanation. Rob proceeded to dance his way all around the car.
"I guess that means you don't like her…" Will started, but Rob gathered him up and began to dance him around the car, too. Waylon, and several of the other Lee crew members who had wandered over to get a glimpse of daylight, hooted at the sight.
"If you'll quit acting like a fool and help us push the thing out to the trailer, we might get to take her home before Odell changes his mind," Will panted, freeing himself from the kid's grip.
But Rob suddenly stopped dancing and looked almost serious. "You lied to me, Will," he said, nearly sorrowfully.
"What do you mean?"
"You said we were coming over here to get some parts."
"Well, we did. I never said they wouldn't be all attached to one another, now did I?"
Rob grinned sheepishly and then seemed to have another quick thought. "When can we run her? In Winston Cub, I mean?"
"Well, sir, if we ever quit jawing and get her on the trailer, we intend to try to qualify her for Atlanta the last race of the season. But at this rate, we won't even be back to the garage by then!"
It was no secret in the Winton shop that they would make the move to the Winston Cup circuit the next year, even though they had carefully avoided the subject with the media so far. They had been setting that plate all year in relative secrecy. But with the tight battle for position they were fighting in the Grand National points race, Rob had assumed Billy and will would not do anything to detract from that effort this year.
But suddenly, it all made sense. The Atlanta Cup race in mid-November was to be held a couple of weeks after the last Grand National event was run at Homestead, south of Miami. The move to the next level was, in reality, going to be a giant leap for the team, like a player going from a good college football team to the NFL in a single bound. The Atlanta race would give them a running start at spanning the chasm.
They pushed the car out into full sunlight, the racer rolling easily since it was still missing its engine and transmission. A couple of the other boys in the shop came over to help them push it up onto the trailer. Once the job was done, and while Will and Waylon chained the car in place, Rob stood back and stared at the Ford's sleek lines, It was hard to believe this was going to be his car, his chariot that would deliver him right into the midst of the greatest automobile racing on the planet.
Will was still standing there, jawing with Waylon and some of the others.
"Don't we have stuff to do back at the shop?" Rob asked impatiently.
"Now you're in a hurry?" Will replied.
Waylon chimed in: "We're just talkin' racin'. Talkin' and talkin' a break. Shoot, me and the boys have been going like a house afire since seven o'clock this morning. It's nice to stop and get a breath of fresh air and some sunshine."
That much was likely true. Teams this time of year often worked twelve- and fourteen-hour days in the shop. But soon they were on the way back, the kid constantly twisting around in the seat to make sure the car and its trailer were still obediently tailing them.
Back at the shop, Rob continued to dance around the new car as Donnie and several of the crew rolled it off the trailer. They shoved it through the big doorway and over to one of the prep areas inside the shop. Donnie looked over the car for a few minutes, sizing it up like a sculptor perusing a chunk of marble he was about to begin chiseling away on. Then he spit some of his wad of chewing tobacco into his cup, tapped the car's fender with a fist, and then ambled on back to work. They had another car they had to make faster and prettier much sooner than they did the new one.
Soon the others had drifted off as well, pressed by the work that needed to be done to load the truck and get everything else ready to go. They would have to pull out before daylight Thursday morning and it was getting to be Thursday quicker than they needed it to.
They all left Rob Wilder standing there, still admiring the new car.
While the others worked, Will Hughes spent the early evening in his office going through the volumes of notes the team took at every single race. He was reviewing Billy's scribbling and his own precise writing so he could decide what final setup they would put under the car for Saturday's race. It was tedious work, crunching in a staggering number of factors, including the age and type of the racetrack's surface, what setups had worked before, the steering geometry, and, lastly, the weather, which was likely just as important as any of the other things. Spread before him on his desk was a blizzard of papers including the long-range forecast, still more notes he had borrowed from Jodell Lee's team, as well as complicated charts and computer spreadsheets detailing various spring-and-shock combinations.
Will had actually begun writing some computer code in Visual Basic, trying to rough out a program that he hoped might do some of this work for him, but the constant burden of the season had prevented him from nursing that project along very far. He had even toyed with the idea of seeing if their sponsor, Ensoft, might take over the project if he turned over his code and specs to them. They were a major software company, after all. But he had not even had the time yet to do that much.
After a couple of hours of the tedious matching and cross-tabbing, his head was pounding from the strain, his eyes crossing from studying all the charts and figuring in all the engineering math he was doing in his head. Finally, he looked up at the clock. It was nine-thirty already, the day practically spent.
Reminded of the late hour, his stomach growled ominously; insistently. He had missed both lunch and dinner again. Good thing his wife, Clara, was a saint and knew full well that she shared her husband with a far more demanding mistress. She had understood the particulars of Will's chosen profession when they spoke their vows in front of an altar draped with checkered flags in the Baptist Church in Statesboro, North Carolina. Luckily, they still loved each other too much to let such hindrances get in the way of their marriage.
Will pulled off his reading glasses and massaged his pounding temples. Where had the time gone?
There had been nothing but silence from the shop for at least the last hour or so. Donnie Kline had stuck his head in the office door as he left. "Rear end's in. We can finish up everything else tomorrow. We might actually get that buggy ready to race after all," he had reported.
"Good job, DK. Go tuck your young'uns in for the night."
"Young'uns? I got young'uns? Ain't been home in so long I forgot! They already callin' me Uncle Daddy."
"See you bright and early."
"'Night, bossman."
Will settled back in trying to bring the work before him to a stopping point. After a few minutes he gave up and shoved aside all the spreadsheets and charts. He would need a new day and a clear head if he was going to make any sense of all that data. Right now, his circuits were fried.
He rolled the chair back from the desk, stretched his long legs, stood, unhooked his jacket off the back of the doorknob, and flipped off the light switch in the office. But then he saw that the shop was still brightly awash with the garish light from the overhead fluorescent tubes.
"Dang it, Kline!" he muttered out loud. Donnie knew to cut off the high-powered lights when he was the last of the crew to leave.
He crossed the shop and was reaching for the row of switches on the wall over the main workbench when he happened to glance over at the new car they had towed home that afternoon. Something caught his eye, and he was forced to do a double take.
There, sitting in the driver's seat, was Rocket Rob Wilder.
What on earth was the kid doing in there? As Will walked over to the car, he could see the kid's hands on a steering wheel he had fitted on the column, and that he was sitting in a makeshift seat he had apparently installed. The youngster was staring straight out the windshield at the wall, his eyes hooded, a fierce look on his smooth boyish face. But his expression looked for all the world as if he were taking determined aim on some brazen competitor who ran just ahead of him, that he was sizing up the so-and-so for an inside pass before another swift lap was done.
Will could only shake his head and smile. What had he and Billy Winton done to deserve such a committed driver, one who would rather win a race than eat when he was hungry?
"Kid, you gonna pass him or punt?"
Wilder almost jumped out of the race car's wobbly interim seat. "Lord a'mercy, will. You scared me out of ten years' growth."
Hughes kneeled down next to the car and looked sideways in the window at Rob.
"How long you been in there?"
"I don't know. Hour, maybe." He couldn't tell his crew chief about the vice. The voice that urged him to climb inside the car and become one with the machine. It was the same voice that sometimes rode with him when he raced. The one that always seemed to have the right suggestion for where to place the nose of the car in a particularly tight point in a race. "I was just checking her out, getting familiar with her, that's all."
"An hour? You been sitting there an hour?"
"Maybe a little bit longer. You know me, Will. Ain't never met a race car I didn't like. I figure me and this old gal are going to be spending a lot of time together, and I just wanted us to get to know each other better" Rob Wilder grinned crookedly. He knew how goofy that must sound to will. And how much crazier it would sound if he told him about the voice.
"Aw, I guess that's not a bad idea," Will finally agreed. He doubted he would ever fully comprehend the almost mystical connection the skinny blond-headed kid seemed to have with a piece of machinery like this one. But he knew for a fact that it was a good thing for them all that he did. A good thing indeed. "So what kind of car is she going to be"
"Fast," Rob answered without a second's hesitation.
"Well, she's not going anywhere at any speed tonight. Let's get out of here. I've already missed dinner for the second time this week, and Clara's likely got me a bed made out in the doghouse with Shep." He stood and stretched out of the kinks in his legs. "Wanna grab a bite of supper with me on the way home? I believe I could eat an anvil if some body fried it for me and I had some ketchup"
"Sounds good."
Rob had suddenly realized how ravenous he was, too, but he sat there behind the wheel of the new car a moment longer anyway while will switched off the lights and checked the locks on all the doors.
The two men finally headed out the door toward their trucks, the crew chief leading the way and the kid driver following along behind him. They talked for a moment, decided which one of Chandler Cove's two fast-food places would most likely still be open, then climbed into their respective vehicles and pulled away. Will led in his shiny sport truck with the red and orange running lights atop the cab, followed closely by the kid, rattling along in his own battered old pickup with the single headlight blinking and the Crimson Tide-Alabama license plate on the front bumper hanging by one bolt and a piece of wire. As they pulled out of the gravel lot and onto the driveway, Rob already had some hip-hop song thumping away on the ancient truck's new and completely out-of-place stereo system—the system Donnie Kline insisted had cost more than the truck itself was worth. He claimed, too, that the loud volume the kid usually maintained would soon disintegrate the old truck right down into a pile of rust.
Across the yard and up a gently rising hill, an older man with reddish-gray hair and the beginnings of a paunch sat there in the dark at his kitchen table, idly sipping steaming black coffee from a big mug. Through the curtains that billowed gently in the soft night breeze, he had watched the pair leave the shop building, talk quietly together for a moment, then climb into their trucks and pull away.
Once they had left, once distance and the chirping of the crickets had wiped out the trucks' engines and the kid's pumping music, it was again a still, quiet evening there on the hip of the mountain. So quiet the older man could hear the faraway mournful call of a whippoorwill. The stars were especially brilliant this night, the moonless autumn sky clear and black and impenetrably deep.
Anyone else might have felt lonesome there in that big house all be himself, in the quiet stillness of the night. But not Billy Winton. He knew he was surrounded by more friends than anyone deserved to have in one life. That he was fortunate enough to spend most of his days in the company of folks who shared with him his most abiding love, his passion for stock car racing and for winning.
And even then, if someone wanted to press the point, some of his oldest and dearest friends—Jodell Lee, Bubba and Waylon Baxter, and Joe Banker—were only about the length of a Talladega Superspeedway lap over the mountain that rose up from his own back porch steps.
No, he didn't feel lonesome at all. Instead, he felt especially blessed this dark stardusted night. Blessed to have the crew chief he had on board. Blessed to have had the amazing young driver dropped into his lap. Blessed to have been able to assemble such a talented and devoted race team and have them loyal to him and to his dreams of excellence.
As he stood and walked over to the old-fashioned percolator still bubbling away on the stove eye, he though once again how fortunate it had been that the chemistry between the kid and the crew chief had been so perfect from the very beginning. Talent and skill were hard to find. Talent and skill and chemistry all in one team package were downright rare. One never knew in this game. Egos and mad-ons had likely destroyed more race teams than crashes or sour cars ever had.
As he poured himself another mug of the strong chicory coffee, Billy Winton smiled contentedly. He could not have forged a stronger bond between a driver and a crew chief if he had blacksmithed it that way. It was by far the most solid he had seen in his thirty years of racing, and he was delighted it was happening right there in his own garage, on his team.
But then, as he stepped through the front door and out onto the wide porch, and as he eased down into one of the came-bottomed rocking chairs that waited there, Billy Winton had a sudden revelation.
He actually had seen such a bond before.
That magical pairing had been between a wildly determined up-and-coming young driver and a wiry, redheaded kid fresh out of the Army and coming off a couple of tours in Vietnam. A steely-eyed racer with natural ability and supernatural grit. A red-haired kid with a fiery ponytail, a tattoo, and a special touch with a wrench. And an even more exceptional knack for knowing how to handle people.
That was the bond that had been formed between Billy Winton and Jodell Lee once upon a time.
It had been pure serendipity when Bubba Baxter had picked up Billy that night long ago as he hitchhiked in the rain, bound for no place in particular. Pure dumb luck that Bubba had been driving the Lee racing rig and that the chance encounter had led to all those wonderful years. And eventually to all that was spread out down there below where be sat, too.
As he gazed up toward the Milky Way, Billy Winton decided that what he had percolating in the shop just down the hill from the house was nothing more that a still-brewing reincarnation of himself and Jodell Lee. It was yet another bond developing between strangers, men whose only connection had been a race car and the intense desire to get all they could out of it so they might, together, win the prize they had been eyeing individually.
First prize.
Billy smiled, took another sip of the sky-black coffee, and listened contentedly as the echo of the whippoor-will's call ricocheted off the mountains.

Copyright © 2000 by Kent Wright & Don Keith