Scarlet Thunder (3 page)

Sandy Peterson.

She was one of the sport's hottest rookies. Some people thought she was great for racing. Others didn't like her. She had quite a reputation. She was never afraid to speak her mind, and she wouldn't back down when fighting for what was right. She was a great subject for a television special.

Because I had trained myself to see things as if they were filmed and already edited, I wished we had our cameras. I wanted to catch Sandy as she stood among the pit crew. There was a smear of dirt on her forehead, making her light blue eyes seem even bluer.
Sweaty strands of hair stuck to her face. She ran her fingers through her hair as she continued to speak.

“In fact,” she said to George, “there's a wobble there that I don't like. I'm pretty sure it's the rear spoiler. I think I'd like the angle set a little higher.”

During the past five summers with Uncle Mike, I had heard him say again and again that a good director should know as much as possible about a subject before coming to a set. Because of that, I had spent hours and hours and hours reading all I could about stock-car racing. And because of that, I knew the basics about the back spoiler.

As a car travels at high speeds, it cuts through the air. The air flows over the car and catches on the rear spoiler. That pushes the back end of the car down. The higher the spoiler's angle—the more straight up it is—the more air it catches. The good thing about the downward force is that it pushes the tires toward the ground and makes the car less likely to skid. The bad thing is the
trade-off. While more air pushing the car down makes it more stable, it also makes the car slower.

“Set the angle on the rear spoiler higher?” another man said. He moved closer to George and Sandy, almost pushing his way between them. “You could bleed away half a second per lap.”

This man was a shorter, slimmer version of George Lot, but with long hair parted in the middle. I searched my memory and came up with a name for the face. Lance Lot. George's younger brother.

Lance turned his focus toward George. “That spoiler's set at sixty-seven degrees. That gives us the max speed for this track. And we need max speed to win. We can't do that with a driver who's afraid to drive.”

Everyone seemed to freeze.

“Lance, this is not the time or place,” George began. “If you have concerns, bring them to me in private.”

“No,” Sandy said. “I'd rather deal with this in the open. If your brother wants to drive, he should prove himself in a race car.
If not, he can keep his mouth shut. He's not the one who will kiss a concrete wall if the back end slips going into a corner.”

I wished double hard we had the cameras going. Funny thing is, after a day or two, no one notices them. Sure, the first day, people watch what they say and how they look because they're really aware of the cameras. But if the cameras are always around, it doesn't take long for them to become part of the background. And if we had them here, this footage would be great. Just like bad news gets higher ratings, arguments are more interesting to watch than interviews.

Sandy pointed at the car behind her. “I'll bet whatever you want that the spoiler is not set at sixty-seven degrees. You may think it is, but it's not driving that way. I can feel it on the corners.”

Lance spit on the ground. “I set it myself. I know I'm right. I—”

He stopped. Another pit crew member was shaking his head and pointing at the spoiler.

“Looks like someone bent this corner,” the man said. “It's a bit flat.”

Sandy smiled at Lance. She pushed her helmet hard into his stomach. It pushed a woof of breath out of his lungs.

“Fix it, please,” she told Lance. “And find out who had a chance to mess with the spoiler and why. We don't have much more practice time before my qualifying run.”

She left him holding her helmet and walked toward Uncle Mike.

“Hello,” she said, smiling and extending her hand in greeting. “I'm Sandy Peterson. And you must be the famous Mike Hiser, here to give us our hour of television fame.”

“It's an honor to meet you,” Uncle Mike said, shaking her hand.

“So,” she said, “I've got about fifteen minutes before I go back on the track. Let's sit down so you can tell me what you want to do and how you're going to do it.”

The infield of the racing track was filled with dozens and dozens of motor homes and trailers. Many racing people find it easier and cheaper to travel in a trailer as they follow the circuit from track to track.

The three of us found lawn chairs in the shade of a motor home, away from the pit crew. The shade helped but didn't give much relief from the hot wind.

Sandy looked at me as if noticing me for the first time.

“Who are you?” she asked me. “And what are you doing here?”

“This is—” Uncle Mike began.

“I didn't ask you,” she said to him. “Let him answer for himself.”

Uncle Mike snapped his mouth shut. I'd never heard anyone talk to him this way before.

“I'm Trenton Hiser,” I said. “I do all kinds of odd jobs to help things run smoothly. But my real job is to learn as much as I can about directing.”

We had to speak louder than normal to be heard above the engines revving loudly in various places along the pit road.

“Hiser,” she said with a question in her voice. She jerked her thumb at Uncle Mike. “He your dad?”

I shook my head. “My uncle. My parents and sister are in Los Angeles.”

I hardly thought of them when I was away. If being away from home was the price I had to pay to reach my dreams, I had decided it was worth it.

“You look too young to be out of school, let alone to think about becoming a director.”

“It's summer and school is out,” I said. Her amused grin showed me she was teasing. So I gave her a small grin myself. “And you look too young to drive a stock car at this level. Besides, only men should be race-car drivers.”

“Trent—” Uncle Mike began.

Sandy laughed. “I deserved that. Besides, I wanted to see if he could stand up for himself. Sometimes people who get hired because they're family don't have brains or a backbone. This one does.” She flashed me another grin. “We'll get along just fine.”

“I'm starting to see that I can believe some of those press clippings I collected,” Uncle Mike said, smiling. “What was my favorite headline?”

Tapping his teeth, he sorted through his memory. “Yes. I remember: ‘Pit Bull Woman Hangs on for Victory.'”

She laughed again. “That one was better than ‘Ladybug Stomps Back.'”

She shook her head. “You know, in some ways, it's great to be a woman driver. In other ways, it can drive you nuts.”

Uncle Mike leaned forward. The way he did as a director when he sensed he was about to learn something that would help him frame his subject. I knew why. We had discussed this ahead of time. The thing that would make this documentary interesting was the “woman driver” angle.

“It's great,” she said, “for the very reason that you're going to be hanging on every word I'm about to say. You and the rest of the world treat me differently because I'm a woman. That translates into big media exposure. Big media exposure means big sponsorship. When it costs millions a year to run a team, sponsors are important.”

She looked Uncle Mike directly in the eyes. “Let's face it, if I were just another male driver, you wouldn't be here, right?”

I felt guilty, as if she had read our minds.

“Let's not forget that you have won a few races,” Uncle Mike said.

“The fact that you ducked my question proves my point,” she answered. “And that's what's bad about being a woman driver. People can't look past my being a woman and see me simply as a driver.”

She pointed beyond us at the track. “Out there, it takes guts to survive. And, at times, almost a mean streak. Think about it. When a driver bumps your car at two hundred miles an hour to make room for himself on the track, you know it's not a tea party. Especially when a second or so between first and second place might be worth enough money to buy a house. But what happens when I bump back and send someone into the wall? He's the victim, and I'm Pit Bull Woman.”

Again, I wished the cameras were here. I knew exactly what I'd do if this were my film. I'd cut back and forth between her words and some bang-bang race scenes, and there would be some real juice to it.

She looked at her watch. “Anyway,” she said to Uncle Mike. “We don't have much time. Practice days are the only time I have
to really learn the track; they'll have me back in the car any second. So tell me what you plan to do.”

“The usual,” Uncle Mike said. “Cameras everywhere. We'll get a hundred hours' worth of film and sort it out in production.”

“Sounds boring,” she said. “How'd you get this big creative reputation?”

“Ouch,” he said. “A shot like that hurts.”

“Well,” she said, “there's a lot riding on this for me. The danger of giving you permission to film is that you guys might become a real distraction, and that might hurt the racing team. But on the other hand, I couldn't afford to pass up a one-hour shot at prime-time television. So make it worthwhile.”

“I do have one thing in mind,” Uncle Mike said, “to make this different from other documentaries.”

“Good,” she said.

“I want to put lightweight cameras in the car. Views out the front window and back so we can film what's happening around your car. I'd like to have you miked too.
I want you to tell us about the race as it happens: What's going through your mind. What you're trying to do as you do it. I want the viewers to feel like they're on the track right beside you.”

Sandy thought about it for a second.

“You're asking a lot,” she said. “Most of the time I can't afford to be distracted. It's just too dangerous. But there are times during the stretches when I might be able to talk...Okay, you can mike me, but I won't make promises about how much attention I can give you. When I need to be in contact with my pit crew or concentrate on the track, you won't hear me spelling out my race thoughts.”

“No problem,” Uncle Mike said. “Safety has to come first. If you'll also let us record your conversations with the crew, there should be parts we can use in the documentary.”

He grinned. “Like you yelling at the pit crew. Or the pit crew yelling at you.”

She didn't grin back. “You remember our contract says I get to approve the final cut?
Nothing gets on television unless it has my say-so.”

“I remember,” Uncle Mike said. He tried again to get a smile from her. “You think I want Pit Bull Woman mad at me?”

She didn't laugh at his little joke. “This is my career we're talking about. For you, it may be just another piece of work to add to your credits. But this is extremely important to me. It has to be just right. If not, I might lose my sponsorship. That could mean millions of dollars.”

She stood. “And that's what we're up against. I've had a long streak without a win. If you do a good job, and if I manage some good finishes while you're filming, I can keep driving. It's that simple.”

“Trust me,” Uncle Mike said. “This is more than just another piece of work.”

Yeah, I thought, it is more than just another piece of work. If we get it done on time, Uncle Mike gets a million dollars. If we don't, it could cost him a million— or more.

As for me, if we finished on time, my work might get aired on prime-time television. My name might show up on film credits for the first time. I couldn't think of anything I wanted more than that.

The next day, I was down at the track as Sandy Peterson got ready to take her bright red Chevy for a qualifying run.

I was early. And alone. Uncle Mike—after turning purple and nearly popping from anger—was now trying to track down equipment to rent. Our missing stuff had not arrived yet.

The worst part was that it looked like we would miss the chance to film Sandy's qualifying run, which wouldn't help our schedule.

Racing teams at this level have about thirty races a year, traveling the country from as far north as Michigan, all the way south to Florida, from Arizona to New Hampshire. It makes for a regular weekly schedule. Teams arrive at the racetrack on a Tuesday or Wednesday. The pit crews use the early part of the week to tweak the cars. The drivers use the time to get to know the track and try out the changes that the pit crews make.

Thursday and Friday are qualifying days. Only forty teams will make the cut and be allowed to race. The drivers who post lap times in the top forty then drive in Sunday's race. But qualifying means more than that. The fastest qualifiers get post positions near the front. That is important because it's a lot harder to win a race when you have to bang your way through traffic at 180 miles per hour just to find space near the front.

Saturday gave the pit crews a chance to tweak their cars some more, make repairs, even replace entire engines if necessary.
Sunday, of course, is race day. Monday's another travel day, and the cycle starts all over the next week.

We needed footage of a couple of different qualifying runs. I knew that by missing the chance to film Sandy Peterson today, we would have to wait a full week before we'd have another opportunity.

If I were filming Uncle Mike's growing desperation, I would work with a close-up shot of sand trickling out of someone's fist, like time slipping away.

Because that's what it felt like.

“You're with the film crew?”

This question was shouted into my ear above the howl of a car shooting past me. I turned.

The guy asking the question was about my height. But he looked a lot older. Blond, he had a lawyer's neat haircut. He wore dark dress pants and a white polo shirt, neatly ironed. His face was tanned, with crinkles around his eyes and at the corners of his
wide smile. I'm seventeen and everyone over thirty looks ancient to me, so I could only guess his age as somewhere between thirty-five and dead.