Downers Grove (13 page)

“I am not repressed!”

“Are so!”

“Well compared to you maybe.”

I stared out the window, watching the sun fall behind the cornfields. Long shafts of blood-orange light swept through the hardy green stalks. I wasn't sure what to expect at the speedway, and at the same time I knew better than to have any expectations. Who knows what was going through Bobby's mind. He might have another girlfriend. He might have two or three.

T
HE
dirt lot was jammed with tailgate parties. People stood around smoky grills scorching hot dogs, burning hamburgers, washing it down with cold beer. Tracy found a parking spot out back near the edge of the woods. She was wearing white shorts, matching clogs, and a tight, pink baby doll top that curled over her pierced belly button like wrapping for expensive candy. Sporting a wicked tan, she had major accessories: a yellow plastic comb poking from her back pocket, a cloth ankle bracelet, and sparkle-silver fingernail polish. I looked kind of lame in comparison, wearing my faded blue summer dress and dirty pink Converse All Stars.

The speedway wasn't as fancy as I'd imagined. The track wasn't even paved. The lady at the gate looked like she'd been living in the ticket box for the last twenty years. One of her eyes was dead, so it seemed like she was looking both ways at the same time. She handed us two paper tickets, which were
torn in half by the guy in the yellow windbreaker as we passed through the gate. Tracy and I walked under the bleachers to the pit area, where the cars were parked, but the security guard wouldn't let us into the back lot.

“No pit lizards until after the show.” He smiled like someone you could never trust in a million years.

“Look!” Tracy pointed. “There he is. Coming out of the brown trailer.”

Bobby was wearing a white leather bodysuit with various ad patches sewn onto his chest, a swooping cursive
Bobby
was stitched in red over his heart. He put on a red glitter helmet and climbed into his car, feet first, through the window. One of Bobby's friends from the garage closed the front hood and latched it with a thick chain and lock. The car ignited and roared to life. Bobby rolled out onto the track.

“C'mon.” I took Tracy's hand, and we walked back toward the stands. “I'll buy you a beer.”

We went back under the grandstand to the burger shack, a small open-faced trailer that sold cotton candy, peanuts, but mostly Miller beer. I ordered two, got carded, flashed the guy my fake ID. No problem. The sweaty paper cups were stuffed into a cardboard tray. I gave the old-timer his five bucks.

“It's so loud.” Tracy held her hands over her ears.

The crowd was mostly guys in muscle tees and baseball hats, some farm boys, lots of spill from the petroleum plants, guys with beer guts and pink sweaty faces who like to drink until they pass out. We climbed up into the grandstand to find seats, and settled for an out-of-the-way place near the top. The rickety bleachers seemed to wobble every time the crowd got excited. Some of the benches were still sticky from the night
before; scraps of snack-food—peanut shells and potato chip bits—were scattered all around. I pulled Tracy's comb from her pocket and gave my hair a fine-tuning.

Floodlights on huge wooden poles burned overhead. A fire truck was parked at one end of the track, and beside it was an ambulance with the back door propped open. The restraining walls were a series of billboards: Winston, Miller, Pepsi, Skoal, a local Jiffy Lube, an excavation company, and a gas station. The paint was peeling from all the signs, most of them severely outdated with logos from the past.

“So are you going to move in with the astronaut or is his family moving in with you?” Tracy asked.

“I told you, things didn't go so well in Vegas. It seems like the knight in shining armor lost some of his gleam. And even if they do patch it all up, Mom can't sell the house as fast as she shackled the astronaut.” I cupped my chin in my hands, rested my elbows on my knees. “I'll be long gone by the time my mom's picking out new wallpaper patterns. I just hope she didn't blow it.”

“I thought you hated the guy.”

“Yeah, but it's better when she has a louse than no louse at all.”

“How's your brother taking all this?”

“My brother's satellite needs new batteries.”

“Your brother could be a god, that's his problem.”

“If Jesus came back do you think he'd reincarnate as a rock star or a homeless person?”

“I think if he came back, he'd definitely keep a low profile. You heard what they did to him last time.” Tracy looked into her beer cup.

“Let's get back to your brother. He's due for a relationship, right? I mean, now that your mom might marry Dan, he's a free man, right?” Tracy billowed a huge sigh, as if all the air had been let out of her balloon.

“That beach is closed. I don't know why you insist.”

Tracy stared into the speedway lights and the patch of faint stars beyond them. “Maybe I'll go to college next fall and have an affair with my English teacher,” she said, sounding more desperate than ever.

“What if he has hair on his back?”

“Nobody in my fantasies has hair on his back! Why do you always have to ruin everything, now I'll have to think up a new one.”

“Like that'll be real hard.”

Cars entered the dirt track one after the other. Revving down the straightaways, swerving around the corners, they didn't have the low rumble you'd expect, it was more of a high-pitched whine like giant lawn mowers circling the house. I set my beer on the bench in front of us and kept my hands cupped over my ears. A few cars were still in the pit area, getting last-minute adjustments from their crews. They all looked homemade, and the big fat tires reminded me of my brother's old Matchbox cars, each of them painted with colors as bright as a fishbowl: play school yellow and swimming pool blue, day-glo orange and cherry soda red.

Tracy pointed out a patch of manhood nearby, a couple guys in flannel shirts wearing blue jeans two sizes too big. They both wore their baseball caps backward, one with a feed-store brand and the other sporting John Deere's green and yellow.

“I think I'm developing a thing for gangsta farm boys,”

Tracy said. “I'll bet they drive pickup trucks and listen to Eazy-E.”

I could tell Tracy was getting bored, so I offered to buy another round of beers. We bought a souvenir program, checked out all the blurry photographs of the other drivers. Nobody even came close to matching my mechanic, but Tracy found a few she might let drive her home. We sat on a picnic bench under the stands trying to avoid the noise, but it was everywhere. The ground was littered with red-and-white-striped popcorn boxes and sheer white hot dog wrappers. Tracy picked through the grass, looking for coins dropped from the pockets of people in the stands, but all she found was a lime green butane lighter.

We went and stood by the fence for the beginning of the race. The cars circled by in a single-file line behind an old green Chevy El Camino pace car with mag wheels. I recognized Bobby's car in the middle of the crowd. When they reached the far side of the track the green flag was waved, and they were off. One car after another zoomed by us. It was really loud and smoky. The lead car quickly lapped the last car, then it all got very confusing. It was hard to tell who was in front and who was in back, as well as how many laps had already been completed. I kept checking out Bobby, urging him on, keeping my fingers crossed that he didn't get hurt. An announcer barked the play-by-play through the ancient squawking P.A., but I couldn't understand a word of it.

Everything seemed orderly until the red car tried to pass the orange one and suddenly lost control and crashed into the yellow car near the last turn. The yellow car spun around in a circle and then hit the high wall and splattered into pieces. The
crowd jumped to its feet and the bleachers shook wildly. It felt like the whole thing was going to come tumbling down. The red car rolled into the muddy infield and died, its engine spraying a geyser of steam. Bobby slipped through the wreckage unscathed and was near the front of the pack. The driver of the yellow car climbed out of his car and ran into the infield. A yellow flag came out, and all the remaining cars settled back into a single-file line, gliding around the track at a slower speed. A tow truck arrived and began to push the debris out of the way.

“This is gonna take a while,” I said. “Let's go pee.”

We went and stood in line for the Porta Pottis. The ground was muddy and it smelled so bad I had to hold my nose. I opened the door with my pinkie to avoid germs, tried squatting without touching anything. Murky light leaked through the floor vents, every surface seemed to shine with scum.

Tracy went after me. “I hate when there's no toilet paper,” she said, coming out of the plastic booth, combing her shiny blond hair for about the zillionth time.

We went back toward the grandstand, standing for a while near the fence up front. The cars seemed dangerous up close, and the wheels threw up clods of dirt that sometimes shot through the fence. The green flag was waved and the cars went even faster. The blue car snuck up behind Bobby and squeezed him into the lower part of the track, then passed him on the outside. Around they went, side by side, bumper to bumper. On the next turn, Bobby tried to pass the blue car on the outside, but was sideswiped into the wall. A huge stream of orange sparks splashed over the restraining wall. Bobby held the car steady, but let up a bit around the turn. The blue car
got caught in traffic and Bobby was immediately back on his case. Bobby faked like he was going to pass on the outside, but then slid down low on the inside of the dirt track and cut off the blue car. A massive cloud of powdery dust was forming overhead. I could taste little sandy bits in my mouth. Bobby was in second place, I think. I looked over at Tracy, she was getting into it.

“Did you see that move?” she asked.

The cars roared up the straightaways, then slid through the corners of the circular track. They seemed to be going faster as the race evolved. Bobby was putting serious pressure on the lead car, staying right on him, when all of a sudden, the gold car clipped the rear tire of the green one and scraped up against the near wall, giving everyone in the front rows a good scare.

“It would be just my luck to be killed by a flying tire or something,” Tracy said. “I suggest we move back up into the bleachers.” When I reminded her of the curse she walked all the way to the top.

“So what are we gonna do after the race?” Tracy was getting anxious.

“I'm sure there'll be some sort of party,” I speculated.

“But what if he loses?”

The crowd jumped to its feet and burst into cheers when the announcer said there was only one more lap to go, The man in the tower swung a large white flag over the track, signaling the drivers. Bobby was right on top of the lead car, making moves like he wanted to pass. At the first turn, it seemed they were trying to push each other off the track. Around the back side Bobby went high and then tried to sweep down behind the lead car, but was cut off on the turn. The
announcer's voice rose into a frantic scream as the two cars banked into the final stretch. The crowd was hollering at the drivers. Nose to nose, the cars grew louder and louder as they approached the finish line. People in the crowd were screaming. I couldn't tell who was going to win, but the barker yelled it out, “Number forty-seven, Tony Kaiser!” The crowd jumped up and down as the cars roared under the checkered flag. My beer went sailing down into the grass below.

“That was so close!” Tracy screamed. Bobby's car slowed down on the far side, and I could see him swearing all the way from here. We watched him roll past the grandstand, turn off the track, and park in the pit area beside the brown trailer.

“C'mon.” I pulled Tracy by the arm. We wormed our way through the crowd toward the restraining wall's chicken-wire fencing. Tracy wanted to jump down onto the roadway, but I held her hand. We watched Bobby climb out of his car. He threw his red helmet on the ground and kicked the dirt.

“Looks like he's in a fun mood,” Tracy said.

People began to file into the parking lot. The crowd was evaporating, the stands almost empty. We walked toward the pit. I saw Bobby's friends loading the car onto the trailer. Bobby stood beside the truck. He looked wired, like somebody who just got off a roller coaster.

“Hey, Bobby!” Tracy called out.

Bobby looked over. I waved my arm. He didn't seem to recognize us at first, but then smiled and walked over to the gate, pressed his fingers through the chain-link fence. I could tell he was sad.

“I didn't know you were here,” he said.

“Well, thanks for inviting me,” I protested.

“It was a last-minute thing.” He sounded defeated, almost embarrassed. “Did you see me get my ass kicked again?”

“Looked like fun. Can I ride in the backseat next time?”

“Excuse me.” Tracy tapped me on the shoulder.

“Bobby, this is my best friend Tracy.” I introduced her.

“Hi,” he said, giving her the once-over. Tracy tossed back her hair, letting him get the most of his inspection.

Bobby was preoccupied with losing and kept looking over at the winner and his crew standing around their car. “That fucker pushed me into the wall because he knew I was about to take him.” He kicked his foot against the fence.

“Cheaters never feel good about winning,” I said.

Bobby looked over at me. “How'd you guys find out about this?” he asked, suspicious and paranoid as ever.

“It was in the paper,” I said.

I wondered if Bobby knew the cops were looking for him. Somebody must have tipped him off by now, somebody at the gas station. I wanted to bring it up, but there were a lot of people standing around.

“We're gonna have a few beers back at the garage,” he said. “You want to come by?”