The Outside Groove (22 page)

“Good news, huh?” I said.

Big Daddy smiled but didn't look up. “Very good,” he said and took a swig of beer.

“The Pembroke team is sending two people to the Firecracker 50,” Mom said. “They sounded very interested in bringing Wade onboard.”

“Onboard, as in, down ... wherever they're—”

“North Carolina,” Big Daddy said, finally looking at me over the tops of the pages.

“He'd move there?”

“That's the idea.” Big Daddy kept reading.

“It's an amazing opportunity,” Mom said.

“He'll be a Tarheel.”

“Sorry?” Mom said.

“I said he'll be a Tarheel. That's what people are called in North Carolina. I don't know what it is, exactly.”

“Oh.” Mom let out a little laugh. “That's right.”

Big Daddy set his beer can down, and I could tell from the sound of it clanging on the table that it was empty. I got up to get him another one. On my way back to the table, I popped the top. He looked at me and smiled in a way that I hadn't seen in the longest time: a
That's-a-good-girl
smile. “Thanks, Case,” he said as I set the can down.

“You're welcome.” I leaned against the counter and watched him take a drink, trying to pick up any final clues about his mood. He let out a satisfied “Ah!”

“The Otters,” I said.

Mom gave me a curious look, and Big Daddy kept reading.

“That's the Cray College mascot. They're the Otters.”

“The Tarheels and the Otters then,” Mom said with another girlish laugh.

Big Daddy turned back to me, smiled, raised his beer can in a toast. “Go, Otters,” he said.

I watched Big Daddy read for a few more moments, struck, as I had been out at Uncle Harvey's, by how much he resembled his older brother. But they really did live in separate worlds now—my father with his dutiful wife, his established business, our modest but comfortable home, his daughter on her way to the college of her choice, and his son poised to make the Circuit dreams come true that had eluded him. How did the two brothers end up on such different planets? The question nagged at me, but, still, something told me that to pollute this blissful moment with questions about Uncle Harvey would bring that other world into this one, where it was not merely unwelcome but forbidden. Forbidden. No one had told me it was forbidden to discuss Uncle Harvey there, but I knew it was. Just plain was.

Yet I also knew that I would ask the questions on my mind—just not that night. I decided to let my father enjoy a moment he'd been dreaming about since he was Wade's age. Maybe it'd prove to be what he'd needed all along to reconnect with that other world, that other life that really was part of his world—his family—whether he accepted that or not.

“I'm going to run some errands,” I said and headed for the garage door.

“Not too late, OK, Casey?” Mom said.

“Not too late,” I replied.

Graduation day was a bit of a letdown. Anticlimactic. Not that I'd been expecting fireworks. The humidity inside the Flu High gym didn't help matters. After Marla Dietz's speech, on the theme of seeing individual differences as potential assets to society, which made sense as a topic for her, given that she was known for being different—perfect, in other words—my mind began to wander. At one point, during a speech by Dr. Hollingsworth, our principal, I almost fell asleep. But when Hollingsworth started announcing a round of scholarships, I got elbowed on both sides by Brad Lambert and Ruby Loh. When I looked up, Hollingsworth was beaming at me from the stage, holding a scroll with a blue ribbon. I went up and received the award.

It wasn't until I returned to my seat and unfurled the paper that I discovered the local Rotary Club had given me a small scholarship for no apparent reason. As I listened more attentively to the rest of the ceremony, I learned that several local organizations were giving scholarships, each going to a student who had done well academically while also doing something else pretty well—athletics, community service, that sort of thing. I certainly didn't mind having the extra cash, but part of me also wondered if I were getting this scholarship because everybody knew that I was going to Cray College and that it was going to put a financial strain on Big Daddy—and, by extension, on Wade LaPlante Motorsports. Maybe this was the Rotary Club's way of helping Wade out, even though he'd barely graduated Flu High.

***

Early the next day, Sunday morning—race day—I looked in the shop for Uncle Harvey but didn't find him. I checked inside his house, but he wasn't there either. I sat on the front stoop and took note of how well his flowers were doing. A few moments later, I got up and walked to the shop as Jim rolled up in the wrecker. That's when I saw Uncle Harvey coming out of the tin shed with its back to the pasture, the one with the motorcycle frame leaning against it. He was wiping his hands on a rag and wore a look of intense concentration as he crossed the yard, dodging smashed car bodies and his boat. When he finally saw me watching him, he seemed startled. “There you are,” he said, as if he'd been looking for me and not the other way around.

“Everything all right?” I said.

“Fine, fine.” He gestured for me to step into the garage, where Jim was setting two cups of coffee and a bottle of orange juice on the workbench. “Your rig's in good shape.” He gestured with a thumb toward the wrecks scattered around the yard. “I hauled out some new springs. You should like your setup all right. I want to watch the weather, though. This haze is burning off awfully fast. You might have to make a last-minute decision about your tire pressure, but your crew should be able to handle that by now.”

“I imagine so.” I watched Uncle Harvey step up to the workbench and take one of the coffees.

“The juice is for you, Casey,” Jim said.

“Thanks, guy.”

I kept watching Uncle Harvey as he blew on his coffee, his eyes narrowed, his brow wrinkled. Again, I noticed the resemblance to Big Daddy. I resisted the urge to ask him to come watch me race, because I already knew what his answer would be.

At Demon's Run, I ran my practice laps and then more or less stood back as my crew worked. It was as if they'd been doing this for years. I told them what I knew: Car felt a little tight, but, otherwise, he settled well in the corners. They conferred about the tires, measured them with the stagger gauge, and inflated and deflated them with the portable air pump. When they were satisfied that they had the tire pressures right, they began sharing the intelligence they'd gathered on the other racers.

“Word is, Dale Scott's got the fast car today,” T.T. reported.

“Kirby Mungeon is talking about taking you to the wall again,” Tammy added.

“He doesn't scare me. Where am I starting?”

“Third,” Bernie said. “Kirby's at five.”

“He'll never catch me.”

“Allen Jervis is in the fourth position, and he's been complaining about his steering all morning,” Tammy said. “You're going to have Kirby on your butt for all twenty-five laps, Casey.”

“Guess I better get a car between us.”

“That means getting out in front of Dale Scott,” T.T. said with a grim nod. “He's starting in second. Good luck. Larry Greer, car 44, is on the pole.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

Bernie handed me my helmet. “Beatable, Larry. Doesn't like the bump-and-run.”

“Neither do I,” I reminded her. Seeing Fletcher, Lonnie, and Wade walking down pit row, I turned my back to them and stared at the track.

***

Out on the racecourse, I tried to block out Bean's tedious nattering about “the vixen in car six'en” as I followed the pace car around. I focused on the flagman, watching him like a redtailed hawk from a telephone pole. He rested the flag on his right shoulder. The pace car cut to the infield, the field compressed, and the flagman shuffled his feet. I slipped up to Larry's rear bumper and backed off, drifted out toward Allen Jervis on my right, and backed off. Around turn four, seeing the flagman favoring the green, I matted the gas along with the leaders and got ready to rip a hole in the race.

The only hole I ended up ripping in anything was in the palm of my right-hand racing glove, probably from twisting the steering wheel in frustration as I ran a clean but absolutely uneventful twenty-five-lap sprint. With my eyes darting back and forth from the rearview mirror, where Kirby's F
RENCHIE
'
S
F
IREWORKS
49 truck clung to my tail, to Dale's right rear wheel, I struggled to pick up a position. I drove a good line and felt my tires settle Theo in the corners like he was running on rails. But I couldn't gain a foot on Dale, and I never lost Kirby by more than half a car length. And I never got out of third place by the time I was zipping underneath the checkered flag.

The crowd hardly cheered at all, although there were a few boos as Kirby finally gave me the tap on the rear bumper he'd been threatening. Behind my back. A bump from behind. What bravery. Even Bean seemed speechless in the face of such a boring run.

“Good race, Larry,” he said, and I could've sworn I heard him yawn into the mike. “Larry Greer is your Road Warrior winner, folks, with Dale ‘the Dude' Scott in second and our vixen in car six'en, Casey ‘the Lady' LaPlante, taking third. Thundermakers, please report to your pits. And, race fans, get ready for a special treat—the Granite County Antique Car Club is here to take us back to the golden age of the automobile with a few classic laps around the high-banked oval.”

***

I took my pit crew, minus Jim, who had to get back to work, out for a third-place celebration at the Coffee Pot Café, which I knew would be empty until dinnertime, since everyone in town was still up at Demon's Run, watching the
real
race, the Thundermaker Sportsman division. I tried to seem happy about my finish and let the Sharks know that they were the best friends I'd ever had, even though I still feared for Jim's life when I heard them talking about him as a romantic prospect. I also tried to hide the pain in my gut from how I'd left things with Fletcher. Tried. I knew it was futile to try and hide anything from the Sharks. I waited for the moment when Bernie, who was sitting next to me, bumped me with her shoulder and said, “Let's hear it, Casey. You need to get this
out.
”

“I'm all right,” I said. “I'll get over it.” I almost added
when I'm gone,
but the thought of being away from the Sharks made me sad every time I thought of it.

I noticed Mr. Hart, the café owner, eyeing me through the window connecting the kitchen and the dining room. I could only see his eyes, but the way they squinted made it seem like he was smiling.

I smiled at him just in case.

“Congratulations, Casey,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, hoping that he didn't come out of the kitchen to talk about my college plans because that would
force
me to think about leaving the Sharks behind.

He turned up the volume of the radio back in the kitchen, and I heard Bean's voice:

 

“...
amazing story, folks. She comes out of nowhere, Casey ‘the Lady' LaPlante, a solid third-place finish here today, and as I reported just before the break, we have learned that she's your Demon's Run Fans' Pick for the Firecracker SO Extravaganza. It seems she's already left the track, but, Casey, wherever you are, get yourself a Thundermaker ride, and you can make Demon's Run history being not only the first female racer, but the first sister-and-brother competitors we've ever heard of. Don Blodgett, Demon's Run director of racing, do I have that right? Is this a first?”

“
Well, it's definitely a first for Demon's Run. I can assure you of that.
”

“And how much do you think that factored in the fans' choice here, the novelty of maybe seeing Casey and Wade run against each other?”

“Oh, I think that had a lot to do with it. I mean, she's a good driver, there's no question, but Thundermakers are a different breed. And, well, if she can even get the equipment to race
—”

“Can she? Can she get a Thundermaker car? Anyone going to lend her his ride?”

“It'd have to be someone who didn't qualify to run based on today's results. So that limits the prospects right there. And, Bean, generally speaking, the sponsors don't love the idea of having another driver in their car. ”

“I also hear a lot of people, I'm talking about the drivers, they don't like the attention she's getting and would just as soon not see her run. ”

“Well, the fans apparently feel differently about that.”

“Yes, the fans have spoken. We need to break for a commercial, but there it is—Casey LaPlante is the Road Warrior Fans' Pick for the Firecracker SO. And that's going to be right here at Demon's Run Raceway next Sunday, Independence Day, the Fourth of Juuuly. Come on up. Bring the whole family. And we'll be right back with our Thundermaker wrap-up after these messages.”

 

Mr. Hart turned the volume down and stood there smiling for a few moments, hands on his hips. “How about that?” he finally said.

I didn't know what to say, so I just said, “It sure is some thing. ”

“It's worth a few slices of pie at least,” Mr. Hart said. “On the house.” He returned to the kitchen.

“So, what does this mean?” Bernie said.

“It doesn't mean anything.”

“It means you can run in that Thundermaker race,” T.T. said, always a stickler for details.