John D. MacDonald

Elimination Race

In September he knew he would be all right for another chance at the big one in May. The arm was coming back, even though the doctors had said it wouldn’t. So, without letting Sally know, he had got in touch with Rikert, and Rikert had said yes, he was entering two cars, but he had the drivers all lined up and he couldn’t change. And Wade Ralson, remembering the tone of Rikert’s voice, the cool politeness, knew that the word had gone out, knew that the owners considered that Wade Ralson, after twelve tries at Indianapolis, was bad news. Experience couldn’t cancel out bad luck. A third and a fourth in twelve years. And finishing only four times, and then that thing last year.

So one October night, after scrubbing the garage grease off his hands, and after the kids had left the kitchen table, and Sally was at the sink, her back to him, he said, as casually as he could, “I’ve been trying to get a car for next year.” It didn’t sound casual. It sounded too flat and too final.

She stood very still and didn’t move for a long time. Then she held another dish under the tap and said, without turning, “Why, Wade?”

“It’s been the luck. I’ve got the skill and the judgment for one more try. Twelve tries and—”

“You want to try it the thirteenth time,” she said, so softly that he barely heard her.

She dropped the dish in the sink and he heard it smash. She turned slowly and said, “It isn’t for you to decide. I saw you roll and burn, Wade. I saw it happen and I knew you were dead, because nobody could live through that, and I was sure you were dead. And I sat by your bed all those weeks while they were doing the grafts and giving you the plasma. So you can’t say I ever backed out before. All the stinking tracks and the clunker heaps you drove, and that smash at Cleveland and over the rail at Miami...” She took a deep breath. “You and Ginger own the garage, and he’s fool enough not to care if you take advantage of him by running off for just one more time. But I won’t go through it again.”

He had felt his face redden. “You won’t go through it again?”

“No, Wade.”

“Exactly how the hell do you expect to stop me?” he asked.

“You’ll do it. I won’t stop you. I know that. But I won’t be there. I won’t even let myself think about it. And if you come back, maybe we can make some kind of a life, but it won’t ever be the same again. Ever, ever, ever.”

And she had run from the kitchen, leaving him alone there with his righteous anger. One more time. One more chance, and show them all. If a man never tried again after a really bad one, they said your nerve was gone, and he knew his nerve was fine, and he knew he had a good race left before his thirty-seven-year-old reflexes were too far shot to adjust to running like a bomb by the grandstand, knocking two hundred, with the sleek skin of the other wagons just inches away.

And it was all different between Sally and him while he was trying to get a car. He didn’t bring it up again and neither did she, and once he woke up in the night to hear her weeping softly beside him, and he pretended he was still asleep.

She’d always been a good race driver’s wife, with a grandstand smile, but now all that was shot to hell just when he could take the big one, take that sixty thousand dollars lying around loose and waiting for him.

After a while there were no car owners left but Banderson, down on his Florida place, and Banderson said, “I can’t promise anything, but come on down if you can, and we’ll talk it over.”

It was a bad thing dealing with Banderson, because there was something strange about him. He’d put the money into the big cars, and money into the drivers, and it never seemed to mean much to him except the power-sense, the indirect way of killing a man. He got good drivers and they would work with him once and never again.

So Wade drew the money and took Ginger’s good-luck handshake, and Sally’s mechanical parting kiss, with nothing at all in her eyes, and he rode a coach down to Florida, down to Bander-son’s town. He got a room and washed up and took a nap. He checked out and took a cab out to Banderson’s big place on the key, a big, showy, white place overlooking the Gulf. The cab swung up into the circular shell drive and let him out. As it drove away, he stood for a time, aware of how he looked — a little rumpled, a little strained; a big man with hard, oversized hands and a face made of hard bones.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the Cuban servant told Wade he was expected, that there was a room ready for him, but that Mr. Banderson was resting and could not be disturbed until later. When he woke up, he would be told that Mr. Ralson had arrived. If Mr. Ralson cared to go out onto the beach, there were swimming trunks available, sir.

Wade didn’t want to swim, but he did wander out onto the beach, past the patio and swimming pool and barbecue area.

One of the Cuban servants found him on the beach and told him that Mr. Banderson would like to see him by the pool. Wade went back up the sea-wall steps, across the patio, and to the pool. Mr. Oliver Banderson sat at a metal table under the shade of a gaudy umbrella. He gave Wade a brisk smile as Wade came up to him.

“Sit down, Ralson. Nice to see you again. Drink?”

“Thanks. What have you got there?”

“Rum sour. The boy is good at them.”

Wade nodded, and the boy smiled and hurried away. Wade said, “Mr. Banderson, I guess it’s no secret that after last year it’s hard for me to—”

“Let’s not start it that way,” Banderson said. He was a crisp little elderly man with a mocking smile and a faint and disconcerting slant of one eye, so that it was difficult to look directly at him and make any guess at what he might be thinking. “Let’s start it the other way around. You can’t get a car anywhere else, so you’ve come to me.”

“That’s right, Mr. Banderson.”

“And you expect me to risk fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of automobile on you. Plus, of course, the incidental expenses.”

“I think I can win it.”

“So will every other driver next May, Ralson.”

“Check my national rating over the past twelve years, Mr. Banderson.”

“I have.”

“It averages out.”

“And Indianapolis was never up to the average, was it?”

“All the more reason why this might be the year. Last year I did a qualifying lap of one thirty-seven point seven.”

“And on the hundred and fourteenth lap of the big one, you gave the crowd just what they came there to see.”

The boy brought the drink, and Wade picked it up, turning the small glass in his big fingers. He felt dull anger. “And what you were there to see too, Mr. Banderson?”

“I saw a fifteen-thousand-dollar investment going up in smoke.”

“Do I drive for you or don’t I?”

“I have to make up my mind about you, Ralson. I’m entering one car. It has been designed, and it’s being built. I get delivery in March. It will be faster than the track.”

“They’re all faster than the track. That place was designed for eighty-five-mile speeds.”

“I have a driver for my entry. Johnny Harvester.”

Wade stared at him. “Then what’s the gag? What am I doing here?”

“You’ve raced against Harvester. What do you think of him?”

“He hasn’t been scared bad enough yet. If the car is fast enough, and if it doesn’t break down, and if he can get out of every jam he drives into, he can win for you. In two years, if he lives, he’ll be hard to beat.”

“How would you beat him in May, assuming you had the same speed?”

“Get on his tail and keep crowding him until he makes his mistake.”

Banderson took out his billfold, counted out four fifty-dollar bills, and said, “This will cover your expenses of coming down here, Ralson.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. I wanted to talk to you. I’ve talked to you.”

“And now I can go home, eh?”

“Stay around for the party, at least. A bunch of amusing kids.” Banderson looked at his watch. “Johnny Harvester had a tough evening last night. He’s taking a long nap.”

“He’s here?”

“Yes. Don’t you want the money?”

Wade shut his hands tightly and managed to smile. “Thanks. I make out.”

“With a two-bit repair garage?”

“I make out,” he repeated heavily. “But what was the gag? I’d like to know.”

“I’ve made a lot of money judging people accurately. You haven’t got a good race left in you. If you had, I’d prefer you to Johnny.”

“I won’t beg for anything.”

“Isn’t that exactly what you’ve been doing?”

“Pick up the money, or I’ll tear it in small hunks, Mr. Banderson.”

“That might be amusing.”

Wade picked up the bills, tore them in halves, then in quarters, and let them slip from his hand to drift on the Gulf wind. Several pieces fell in the pool, floating on the blue-green water.

Banderson smiled sleepily. “Maybe you still have a chance to drive for me.”

“You keep talking in circles. It’s like a game with you, isn’t it?”

“You want to drive badly, Ralson, don’t you?”

“Just skip it, Mr. Banderson,” Wade said. “Do me a favor and skip it.”

“Here comes our mutual friend.”

Johnny Harvester ambled onto the apron of the pool. He wore yellow swimming trunks. He was tanned from a lot of sun. He stared unbelievingly at Wade and came over. “Oliver,” he said accusingly, “what’s Ralson doing here?”

“Now don’t get nervous, Johnny,” Banderson said.

“I’m not nervous. I just want to know what he’s here for. I want to know I’m driving your entry. For two months now you give me this yes-and-no business, and now here’s Ralson. I thought you were done, Wade.”

“The arm came back.”

“Then why aren’t you back with Rikert, damn it?”

“He has his drivers.”

Johnny sat down at the table. He was puffy under the eyes, and there was a nervous tic at the corner of his mouth. “Oh, fine,” he said bitterly. “This is just dandy.”

“You’ve been doing well, Johnny,” Wade said.

“I’ve been in there a few times. You haven’t done any, have you?”

“Not since the accident.”

Banderson was watching them both. “Youth versus experience,” he said.

Johnny shrugged. “Wade, he likes to keep you on edge. Now he’s using you to make me feel uneasy. But he’s going to pick me, and I think you know it.”

“The confidence of youth, Ralson,” Banderson said softly.

“You know where he’s getting his real kicks right now?” Johnny said. For the first time Wade realized that Johnny was half tight. “He’s got these stock-car kids. They got a circuit and they race here in town every Thursday night. Hopped-up jalopies. Quarter-mile track. Never out of second gear. So Oliver puts up prize money and these kids think he’s a great guy, and all he’s doing is proving he can push people—”

“Shut up, Johnny,” Banderson said. “You’re boring us. Go dive in the pool and wash out some of the liquor.”

Johnny stared at him, then got up meekly and went to the edge of the pool and dived in. He came up on the far side, reached, and took one of the floating pieces of paper. He said, “Hey, here’s a comer off a fifty. And there’s another. What goes?”

“Ralson tore up his expense money, Johnny.”

Johnny stared at them. “It beats the hell out of me.” he said.

When Johnny had swum away, Wade said, “If he were driving for me, I’d try to keep him in better shape.”

“I own the cars. I don’t wet-nurse the drivers, Ralson.”

Wade wanted to get up and leave. He knew it would be smart to get up and leave, and not get tied up in this thing. Banderson was playing with both of them. And yet — a brand-new wagon, a new design, a hot car for the classic. He decided he’d better have another drink. It was uncomfortable to keep thinking of Sally, and another drink would be a splendid cooling idea.

By the time the kids arrived, Wade was a little more than half drunk, and Johnny was a shade ahead of him. There were eight drivers and six young girls. They seemed to Wade to be almost pathetically young. They seemed to be well acquainted with Banderson, with Johnny, with the big house and grounds. They’d brought swim suits. They knew of Wade, knew of the smash, knew his Indianapolis record over the years.

They asked him eager questions while Johnny sulked, and Wade kept drinking as he talked, holding court, and once, in a moment of relative sobriety, he saw that the kids were not so much laughing at his anecdotes as at him, the old-timer with wild stories released by alcohol.

Seeing that he had made himself ridiculous, he shut up and began to drink more seriously. After a vague sort of blackout, he found himself with a lean young girl with taffy hair and bold, undisciplined eyes. Nineteen, he thought. Of all of them, she seemed to be the one willing to listen to him, to admire him.

So he talked to her, and she talked to him, and he found out that she was sore at a boy named Scotty Davis, the boy who had brought her. Scotty, she said, was too terribly young, and she certainly preferred a mature man to some stupid kid who thought he was the hottest thing on the stock-car circuit. He thought vaguely and with regret of Sally, and he told himself that if he made a fool of himself over this kid it would be partly Sally’s fault: she had sent him away with a deadness in her eyes.

Food was cooked outdoors by the Cuban help; everybody ate and it was time to get to the track for the tune-ups. But they had to leave Scotty Davis there, because his girl had angered him so much by her obvious play for Wade that the boy had quite stupidly drunk himself unconscious and could not be roused. Scotty’s best friend, a big-shouldered boy named Vance something, had, out of loyalty and friendship, matched drink for drink with Scotty, and so he was in a rather helpless state — not out cold, but unable to drive.

They piled into the cars and went down to the track, driving around and through the private entrance near the pits — only it wasn’t pits in the legitimate sense, Wade saw, but a field adjoining the track across from the grandstand. It was an asphalt track, a quarter mile around, banked on the corners. Big floodlights turned it as bright as day. Hillbilly music came over the P.A.

Wade was in a kind of dream state, walking around and looking dully at the battered cars. Chassis of ’34-through-’39 Fords, braced with steel pipe. Frames heavily weighted on the left to hold them down on the turns. Hopped-up Ford and Mercury engines, with dual and triple carburetion. Cars were warming up on the track, skittering and whining around like windup toys.

Wade wandered around with the taffy blonde clinging to his arm; she squeezed his arm tightly against her lean, warm body, chatting brightly about nothing.

Banderson and Johnny Harvester found them over in a corner of the lot. Banderson said, “Now here is a sporting proposition, Wade. Johnny has agreed to it. Two of these boys can’t drive tonight. Scotty had Number 48, the gray-and-white job over there. Vance had that bright red-and-yellow Number 18. The mechanics tell me the cars are evenly matched. The final tonight is twenty laps. Take your pick of the two cars, Wade, and Johnny will take the other one, and the winner drives for me at Indianapolis.”

Wade stared at Banderson’s knife-edge smile, glinting in the floodlights. “Lot of drinks... I don’t know.”

“If you refuse, Wade, Johnny drives the big one.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“I’m not a particularly fair sort of person, Wade. Wouldn’t your little friend like to see how you handle a car?”

“Oh, please, Wade, honey,” she said.

Johnny stood by, smirking, and Wade knew that Johnny was thinking of the five months of layoff, of no racing of any kind. But it was still ridiculous to think of using these jalopies as a qualifying test for Indianapolis.

Wade said slowly, “Let me get it straight. The winner gets a signed contract, Mr. Banderson.”

“I promise. You have my word.”

“He’ll run you off the track, Johnny,” the taffy blonde said contemptuously.

Johnny tilted his head back and laughed harshly. “Foxy grandpa is going to run me right up into the stands.”

“It will be a special treat for the crowd, boys,” Banderson said.

“And every one of these punk kids will be out to show us up, if they have to kill somebody,” Wade said slowly.

“I’ll make it more exciting,” Bander-son said, still smiling. “I’ll put one thousand dollars on top of the normal purse for the feature.”

The young taffy blonde got her lips close to Wade’s ear. “Win it for me, darling,” she whispered, “and we’ll celebrate in Havana. That’s a promise, too.”

He looked down into her eyes. They had a feral glitter that reminded him oddly of the look in Banderson’s eyes. In all the big races, there were always the young girls who hung around. Death seemed to attract them. He and Sally had laughed about them many times.

“In Havana, then,” he said to her.

He picked the gray-and-white 48 and went over it with the mechanic while the girl stood close behind him, watching. He gunned the motor and listened, and made adjustments with his big hands. And then he went out and watched the first race. The kids hammered at each other, nudging the cars, banging together, picking up to sixty-five on the short straightaways, dropping down on the curves. They were wild and crazy.

Between races, he took the gray-and-white job around the track, hearing the vague blur of his own name over the P.A., the rumble of applause. He took a slow lap, and then two fast ones, alone on the track, learning the pitch of the curves, the feel of the car. It was a good, hot, responsive little car, with a startling pickup. The liquor began to fade out of him, leaving his lips numb, his mouth acid. The safety strap bit at his thighs, and the borrowed crash helmet was a poor fit. It felt odd to be so completely enclosed. On the last turn, he went high to pass an imaginary car at the rail, and came down and in out of the high turn and skidded on the quivering edge of control, fighting the skid with reflexes dulled by alcohol and his thirty-seven years. He came out of it and drifted to the repair field, passing the two ambulances, the wreckers, the highway patrol car. He drove in to the field and swung back into line.

The kid mechanic said, “How you like it, Mr. Ralson? I bet you Scotty and me, we put five hundred hours’ work on that power plant.”

Wade felt sweat on his thighs. He unbuckled the belt and slid out. “It’s a hot little item,” he said.

“But not the kind of stuff you’re used to, I guess.”

He looked at the kid mechanic. “I can scare myself in it, son. You can scare yourself in a kiddy car, if you find a steep enough hill.”

The young girl came up and latched onto his arm again, and they went out to the rail and watched the next race. It was ten laps. On the first turn, two cars locked and spun and blocked the track. Two more piled into them, and they were pried apart, and, much to Wade’s astonishment, they all were able to join the next start. The girl locked her hand in his, laced her fingers in his, and he felt that her hand was cold and damp with her excitement. The night wind ruffled the taffy hair, and it brushed his cheek.

After the fresh start, one green car took the lead and held it, and then, on the turn in the seventh lap, it threw a considerable chunk of the motor right down through the pan, making an oil slick that spun two cars hard into the rail, crippling them. The rest of the field slowed for the slick patch, going high to miss the oil, and the race ended. Two kids ran out with a sack of dry cement and powdered the oil spot thoroughly. They broomed it down, but it was still a bad patch.

He watched the other races and got an idea of the standard strategy and the way you had to drive them. Then it was time for the feature. He was shocked to discover that there would be twenty cars on the track. He got into his car, and before he drove it out into line, the young girl leaned quickly through the window and pressed warm young lips to his with a clumsy wildness, and whispered, “Good luck, my honey.”

He had saved his cigar and kept it at exactly the right length, and now he thumbed the ash off the end and clamped it in his jaw. He eased out and took the place they told him to. There was a double line, and he was the eighth car back on the outside, and Johnny Harvester was the eighth car back on the inside. They all cut their motors when they were in position.

The announcing was a meaningless blare until he heard, “...and in eighth position on the outside, driving Number 48, we are honored to have with us that grand old man of the Indianapolis classic, Wade Ralson.” There was a long roar of applause. “Mr. Ralson is a house guest of Mr. Oliver Banderson, and when Scotty Davis was suddenly taken ill this evening, Wade kindly consented to drive Scotty’s car. Watch him carefully, folks, and watch years of high-speed experience in action.”

Wade grinned and waved one arm. Harvester was given a similar announcement and got about the same hand.

The blaring mechanical voice suddenly climbed a half octave. “And now listen to this, folks! This is going to be a race to remember. A note has just been handed me. It comes from Mr. Oliver Banderson. Mr. Banderson is putting up an additional thousand-dollar purse to the winner. And — and this is the big thing, folks — there’s going to be a tough private race between Johnny Harvester and Wade Ralson. Whichever of those two gentlemen comes in first in their private race is going to be privileged to drive Mr. Banderson’s Corbin Special in the Indianapolis Memorial Day Classic next May. As the two drivers are evenly matched, and the two cars are evenly matched, both men have agreed to this test. I don’t have to remind you that the win at Indianapolis is worth sixty thousand dollars to the winning driver.”

Wade cursed Banderson silently and heartily. And then there was no time for cursing. He could sense the tenseness of the kids in the other cars, sense their realization that this was a chance to show up the hotshots, to drive their ears off. And with twenty cars on the tiny track, avoiding jam-ups was going to take as much luck as skill. He knew what he would have to do: either gun down through the middle after the fair start, and hope to hit the first turn among the front two or three cars, or else loaf back and ride high to keep clear of the inevitable smash. If Johnny got the jump and made the center alley, Wade would loaf.

The pace car started up, and the double line rumbled and roared and began to move slowly. They moved around the banked continuous turn at the end of the oval and then slowly down toward the starting line, by the high platform where the lap flags and win flags would be flashed. The car felt small and high and rough under him, and there did not seem to be enough room on the quarter-mile track. The straightaways were thirty feet wide, expanding to fifty feet on the banked curves at each end.

A boy in uniform pranced backward down the center of the track, well beyond the starting line, the two flags crossed in front of him, held low. As the lead cars touched the starting line, the boy flashed the green flag for a fair start and ran for his life.

Wade swung hard into the alley slot between the two rows of accelerating cars. The hot little car responded nicely. He bulled his way in, saw Johnny’s car come even with his own, then slide astern — and he felt rather than heard the bang as it hit his tail bracing. The corner was coming up fast. He drove hard through the narrowing slot as the other cars slowed for the corner. He knew that he was at spin-out speed as he hit the corner. His race could end right there, he knew. He moved out a bit, moved close to his right-hand neighbor. He felt the back wheels slide, felt the hard thump as his car banged the one on his right. The impact stopped the skid, and he rode tight against the car on the right all the way around the turn, and then streaked away, running on the outside, going high on the oily turn and coming down in to nip the only front car and take the lead.

As the grandstand slid by, a violent flash of noise and color, he saw two cars locked and against the rail high on the turn ahead, and saw another, which had shot backward into the infield, sending off clouds of blue smoke. He was into the turn then, with no chance to look for Johnny. He cut it as fine as he could, and roared down the straightaway opposite the grandstand. He risked half a look and saw the red wagon coming along behind him, an orange job fighting it for second place. He made the oily turn, and then, when he slowed a bit, just beyond the grandstand, he was banged hard from behind.

He was banged twice more on the turn. Somebody was trying to get inside of him and nudge the back end of his car into a spin. The last knock swerved the rear end a little, and he felt both fright and anger. He thought it was Johnny, and he hugged the rail closely on the oily turn. Soon they would be lapping the slower cars. He had noticed in the other races that the slow cars kept a watch behind and moved out away from the rail with more discretion than valor. He looked quickly and saw that it was the orange job banging away at him, a tight-mouthed kid driving it. Johnny was riding safely behind the orange car, letting it do the work for him. Wade knew he had to dispose of the orange car quickly. He couldn’t run away from it. Wreck or be wrecked. A nice clean game for the children.

He selected the oily turn. He slowed more than usual, hugging the rail, thus tempting the kid to swing high and wide and go around him. He saw the orange flash as the kid gobbled the bait. Wade gunned his car, moving out from the rail. The kid had to swing wider, suddenly, and the oily patch was a poor place to do it. As Wade gunned down the grandstand straightaway, he looked back and saw that only the red car tailed him. The next time around, he saw the orange car jammed hard against the rail, high at the midpoint of the turn, the kid standing beyond it, his face chalky in the lights.

On the next turn, two slow cars swung sedately out for him. He loafed on the turn, serene in his knowledge that Johnny was safely bottled behind him, and then saw that Johnny had gone high and wide, passing the lapped cars on the outside, coming down hard and fast to angle in toward the rail ahead of him. Wade gunned it hard, hoping that the oily turn ahead would force Johnny to drop in behind him. But Johnny leaned in across his right front fender, and Wade had to drop it back to let him take the lead position, take the rail.

There were more cars to lap. Wade and Johnny slid by them on the inside, moving like one car, the red one in the lead, Wade’s gray-and-white traveling five inches behind it. He tried to pass Johnny. Every attempt was beautifully blocked. It was going to go on like this, he realized. He’d cross that line second. He had used up every maneuver he had seen in the earlier races, plus every trick of his own. He watched the flags. Two laps to go. One to go. With the race won, Johnny was treating the oily turn with respect. It would have to be there, if anywhere. Swing it hard and risk the spin? No other car to lean on this time, he thought wryly. If a man could lean on the rail...

He looked at the sturdy, flat boards of the railing on the next-to-last turn of the race. He remembered that the wrecked orange car was flat against the rail on the oily turn. It wouldn’t be too much in the way.

But if the skid started too soon, it would be very much in his way. He felt cold and surprisingly calm. As they headed toward the oily turn, the last turn before the grandstand and the finish line, he swung out the moment Johnny started to slow down. He kept the gas pedal all the way to the floor, turning high. He felt the sickening lift of the inside back wheel. The skid started, and he thought for a moment he would smash into the orange car, but he missed it by inches, and the skid slammed the back end of his car against the fence. He recovered the lost traction at once, banged the fence again, and then rode it all the rest of the way around the turn, pedal to the floor, the back right fender grinding against the boards of the fence.

He came out of the turn neck and neck with Johnny, but with that fraction more of speed that saved him. The steering wheel shimmied badly in his hands, and he knew the fence had knocked a wheel out of line. But he came across the finish line with the hood of the red car even with his door.

He slowed after taking the checkered flag, and Johnny, moving up on the inside, gave him a death’s-head grin. Wade slowed by the pits until the track was cleared and then took the slow winner’s lap, took the applause. He felt drained, old, sick.

There was no triumph in it. Skill, and a damn-fool risk that paid off, and kudos for the “grand old man.”

The crowd was streaming through the gates and across the infield toward the pit field, clots diverging to gather around the smashed cars. He stopped in line by the ambulances, and one of them was moving off with the kid who had been in the orange car. Smashed wrist and broken collarbone, he heard.

There were flash bulbs popping, and reporters with questions, and a yellow-haired girl who clung to him, half crying with pride and with possession.

“Wade, can we print that? That you get to drive Banderson’s entry?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Johnny had disappeared. Oliver Banderson gave him a check, and there were more pictures of the check being handed over.

The noise confused Wade, and he realized he was slightly hung over. The young girl was vibrant within the circle of his right arm. They were shoving things at him to be autographed, and he signed his name in a big scrawl, the girl still inside the circle of his arms.

She went back with him to Bander-son’s house, and Wade left them downstairs and found a telephone and called a cab. He hadn’t unpacked, so there was no need to pack. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw that he had stuck the dead cigar butt back in his mouth. He dropped it into the toilet.

He went downstairs with the bag, and the girl looked confused and said, “I guess we’re going now, Mr. Banderson.” She looked frightened.

Wade looked at both of them, and a lot of things were clearer in his mind. He said gently, “I’m going, sugar. You’re not. Johnny will give your wagon a good ride, Mr. Banderson. Better hunt him up and tell him.”

Oliver Banderson looked neither surprised nor disappointed. “Back to the two-bit garage, Ralson?”

“Maybe that was all I had — one more race in my system.”

The cab came, and he went out, not looking back. The shell drive crunched under his footsteps, and he got in, and asked to be taken to the station.

On the ride into town, he started to think of what he would tell Sally, and just exactly how he would tell her, and how she would look when he told her, and how she would be afterward.

It was terribly important to prove to her that he could have had Banderson’s entry. But that would be in the papers. It was the sort of thing AP and UP would pick up. Human interest.

But there weren’t any good words for explaining the other part. How it wasn’t nerve that was gone, or reflexes, or anything else like that. Just that you could take a look at yourself and find out you were through with something for keeps.

Wade had a hunch that Sally would understand, even if he couldn’t find the words.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Elimination Race