John D. MacDonald

Death Is a Lap Ahead

Chapter I

Whitey Edison turned in the seat and looked out the rear window of the sedan at the sleek yellow flanks of the racing car which followed with driverless docility. The tarp was roped snugly down over the cockpit, and it rolled on rubber that was useless on the track.

“She follows nice, Whitey,” Bob Oliver said. “I can hardly feel her.”

The speedometer needle hung at fifty. Whitey turned back and looked at the road ahead, then at the oddly heavy wrists of young Bob Oliver.

The kid had a sweet touch on a wheel.

Whitey Edison let his heavy body sag in the seat and half closed his eyes against the afternoon sun. He felt a dull and constant alarm, mingled with surprise that after so many years he should once again be heading for a track, an iron in tow. His wide red face under the thinning thatch of white hair showed a remaining hint of the recklessness which it had held in youth.

If it hadn’t been for the kid’s old man...

The puzzled young voice broke into his thoughts. “What’s eating on you, Whitey?”

“How do you mean, kid?”

“Well, you act like we were heading for a wake instead of for first prize money at the Acme meet.”

Whitey knew that it was the time to give Bob Oliver the full story. Not that it was a pretty story. But the kid should know. Whitey Edison. For a few years they had called him Madman Edison, and he had grinned at the name. With a little better luck he’d have placed first on the bricks on Memorial Day back there in 1933.

Steve Jantz and Whitey Edison. Always jockeying for position, carrying tight competition to all the tracks in the land, plants roaring down the stretches, good friends once the checkered flag flashed down.

O.K., boy, so you edged me in this one. Wait until next week at Miami. Remember how I cleaned you in California?

The same tracks and the same drinks and the same girls.

Steve Jantz had gotten it on a sunny Saturday afternoon on the south curve of a slick macadam track in Louisiana. One of the kids they had both lapped had broken an oil line. Steve’s deck had started to swing when his rubber hit the oil smear on the macadam. In horrified fascination Whitey had watched it swing, seemingly in slow motion. Steve’s Special had sent the white boards flying and it had continued on then, in a slow parabola, smashing with sickening force into the shoulder of rock beyond. With a lurid blast of orange flame, a roil of blue-black smoke, and the thinnest whisper of a scream, Steve Jantz had departed this world.

No more riding Steve’s tail on the turns, stealing his girls, sticking him with bills at the hotels. No more Steve.

When Steve got it, Whitey’s foot had lifted off the gas and he had drifted around to the pit, half falling out of the car, stopping to vomit in the dust and oil.

And he had never had it again. Time trials, sure. But not competition. He couldn’t pass a car. Always it seemed ready to sway, whip the deck around, smash the life from the driver...

He had begun to drink more steadily then. He drank the car away, got a pit monkey job, began to pick up motor lore, acquire cleverness in his blunt fingers. It was a race to see whether the liquor would get him before he became a first class mech. He became a top mech, and lasted about a year. Then, drunk on the job, he had forgotten to tighten down a couple of front end bolts. Len Cassidy, the driver, had spent six months flat on his back as a result. And no one would hire Whitey Edison. “That soak? Brother, you wanna die, go jump out a window. It costs less.”

So Whitey Edison had drifted down and down, working a week here, two weeks there in tank town garages, spending every cent on liquor and forgetfulness.

By the time he hit Brooksport, he was on bottom. Alcoholic ward. Stan Oliver, the kid’s old man, had once been a soak and had straightened out. He wanted to help others. And he had never told the kid that he had found Whitey Edison in a ward and had slowly brought him back to life.

The first day Whitey could hold a wrench he had gone to work in the old man’s garage. Stan Oliver had said, “Whitey, some men can’t paint pictures. Some men can’t build bridges. You and I — why, we can’t drink.”

And so the cure had lasted for four years. Bob Oliver had started to hang around the garage. The kid was crazy about auto racing. He found out that Whitey had been a driver. And a mech. In the fall they had started building the yellow wagon. The body had cost four hundred, battered and used. While Bob had hammered and sanded and rubbed and painted, Whitey had worked on the power plant, starting with a racing block, hand lapping the parts, setting in the overhead cams. Together they had designed and welded the frame.

But Bob had the idea that Whitey had just gotten a little old for the racing game. The kid didn’t know the story. Whitey knew that the kid should hear the story from him. If any of the old-timers were at the Acme Meet, they’d tell the kid quick enough.

But how do you tell a kid that you lost your nerve? How do you make him understand how it is to look at foul smoke rolling up and see in that smoke the strong brown hands, the quiet gray eyes, the good laugh of the guy you buddied around with for a couple of years?

Whitey tried to be firm with himself, but he found himself grinning at the kid and saying, “If I’m quiet, Bob, it’s because I’m worrying about winning.”

“With me driving the car? Don’t worry one little bit, Whitey.”

Whitey saw, in Bob, what he had been years before. Bob had something precious, something he should never lose.

“You’ll remember every trick I’ve taught you, kid?” Whitey said earnestly.

“And I’ll add a few of my own, Whitey.”

“Well, take it easy, kid. You can kill yourself if you want to, but don’t mess up the iron. It’s half mine.”

Bob laughed in quick delight. But Whitey was remembering the look in Stan Oliver’s eyes as he said, “I’m relying on you, Whitey. This stuff is in his blood. I’m hoping he’ll get over it. Just try to keep him...” Stan Oliver had fumbled for the right words, found none, turned abruptly on his heel and walked back toward the grease racks.

Whitey turned again and looked at the yellow hull, the flaring vents. It was a sweet little iron, hot, steady and stable. Guts to spare. They had learned that out on the quiet road where Whitey had found a curve of the proper width, the proper pitch.

With Bob watching, he had settled his bulk behind the wheel, taken the push from the sedan, roared down to the curve and hit it almost wide open, letting up just a hair on the gas, down to the floor again as he roared out of the curve.

At night they had pored over position diagrams, Whitey saying as he pushed the little oblongs of cardboard around. “O.K., Bob. This is you. You’re third. Ten laps to go. You and those two cars are about to lap this car here. He’s riding high on the curve. What do you do?”

“Cut low on the curve?”

“Hell no! They’d bounce you off the track. Stay on his tail, right in his slipstream almost all the way around. Say right to here. Then gun it down to the rail hard and fast with legal clearance and pass him in the stretch. But don’t forget to make sure you’re clear on the left when you cut down.”

“I got it now, Whitey.”

And Whitey had drilled him until he knew that the boy’s knowledge of strategy was etched into him so deeply that in a box he’d pick the right move every time.

In a way it was like racing again. Bob had, in some odd way, become an extension of himself. An extension not subject to his fears. Bob was lean and compact, with big strong wrists, good hands, 20–12 vision and enough courage for three men. When he looked at Whitey the devotion was so clear in his blue eyes that it made Whitey feel ashamed.

He wondered if he was unable to tell the kid about his past because he couldn’t stand the idea of those blue eyes looking at him with amused contempt.

They pulled into the Acme track at nine in the morning the day before the race. Two cars, a gray one with red trim and a battered pale blue job were making lazy laps, the drone of the power plants racketing through the sultry morning air.

A mech clung to the side of the pale blue job, his head close to the bonnet listening for the bugs.

An official gave Whitey the pit assignment and he and the kid unhooked the yellow iron, united the tarp, began to go over it with loving hands. From time to time Bob would straighten up, look at the black oval and sigh.

“How does it look, kid?” Whitey asked.

Bob touched his stomach. “It gives me butterflies. Right here.”

“That’s what it should do, Bob. A guy who is bored by the whole thing can’t drive worth a damn.”

Whitey felt the same thrill as he looked at the wide expanse of empty stands, the pennants sagging in the morning heat, the dark oval. But as he smelled the familiar reek of hot oil, scorched rubber and blistering paint, he wanted with all his heart to get in the sedan, turn away from the track and never come back. He could not understand the impulse that had made him do this thing. It was tied up so closely with his utter defeat. It seemed almost as though he had been forced to come back to a track just to know how much he had lost. Self-respect. Honor. Pride.

He squatted in the dust and began an inch by inch inspection of the casing of one of the brand-new tires.

Together they polished, adjusted, checked. They filled the tank with the special mixture. Bob’s lips were pale as he pulled on the helmet, slid down behind the wheel. He snapped the goggles over his eyes and tried to smile as Whitey handed him the gloves.

“Bob,” Whitey said, “you keep an eye on pressure and r.p.m. and take three slow ones to get the feel. Keep a wide clearance on those two wagons out there. If everything is O.K. on the three slow ones, take three at a good clip and check again. Then take three flat out.”

He gave the yellow car a push with the sedan, turned back to the pit, parked close against the rail, got out and leaned against the rail, his fingers tightly clenched.

The hazy sun glinted on the polished metal, and the motor droned. When Bob went by the pit again, he waved.

Whitey noticed that the blue wagon was off the track. He thought nothing of it until a mild cool voice said, “Well, well. My favorite lush! What wave of bar whiskey washed you up here, Edison?”

He turned quickly, his lips stiff. “Carter!” he gasped.

Sig Carter, tall, lean, weathered, looked at Whitey’s stained hands and said, “What damn fool is letting you mech for him?”

“It’s the son of the man I work for, Carter. He’s a good boy. Bob Oliver.”

“Never heard of him. He must be green. This is a fat purse down here, Whitey. A lot of big time will be around. Your green boy’ll get run into the ground. That is, if you don’t get stinko and forget to fasten the tie rod ends.”

Whitey felt his face redden. He doubled a big fist and turned slowly toward Sig Carter. Carter looked at the fist in mild surprise, laughed nastily and walked away.

Whitey felt his anger slowly drain away. After all, he had no right to be angry. Sig Carter was merely expressing what all of them had a right to feel. A sudden alteration in the sound of the motor on the mile-long oval snapped him to attention. Bob was letting it out. He watched carefully. His timing seemed good. The car snugged down against the macadam and whined smoothly around the curves.

As the motor pitch changed again, he took out a stop watch, thumbed it as the yellow iron flashed by. As it came around again he stopped the hand. Thirty-one and two tenths seconds for the lap. Very nice indeed! Thirty seconds flat would be a hundred and twenty miles an hour.

Bob took two slow laps and coasted in. He jumped out, grabbed Whitey’s shoulders and swung him around in a grotesque dance.

“We got it, Whitey! We got it!”

Whitey forced himself to scowl. “Hell, boy, it’s easy to make time with nobody on the track.”

But Bob refused to be dispirited. They checked it over again, added the minutes of running time to the motor log, checked temperatures.

“Notice anything?” Whitey asked.

“A little flutter on deceleration, when it’s about halfway unwound. Not serious.”

Sig Carter came up again — a stocky wide man with somber deep-set eyes matching Carter’s long strides. Whitey forced himself to say, “Hi there, Yobe. Bob, meet Sig Carter and Wally Yobe. This is Bob Oliver, boys.”

Bob’s eyes widened and he shook hands eagerly. “Gosh, it’s nice to meet you guys. I know your national rating. I never thought I’d be on the same track with you two.”

Wally Yobe smiled briefly. “Nice iron, kid. Who built it?”

“Why, Whitey and I built it,” Bob said proudly.

“You have any parts left over the last time you pasted it together?” Sig asked, glancing meaningly at Whitey.

It was obvious that Bob didn’t get the joke, if any. He laughed nervously. “No, it’s all there,” he said.

“You got a good enough mech, kid?” Yobe asked.

Bob frowned. “Whitey and I can handle her. Whitey does the real tough mech work.”

“That’s what I meant, kid,” Yobe said, no smile on his lips.

Whitey heard himself laugh loudly and unnaturally. “You boys are great kidders. Yes, sir. Great kidders.”

Bob joined in the laugh. Both Carter and Yobe smiled briefly and walked away. Yobe turned and called back, “Don’t give us a bad time out there tomorrow, kid.”

Bob worked silently for a few minutes. Then he straightened up and made a smear of dirt across his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand. His eyes were puzzled. “Those guys acted funny.”

“How so?”

“Well, I thought that when you got together with the guys you used to race against, you’d be pounding each other on the back and all that stuff.”

Whitey shrugged. “Well, you know bow it is. Sometimes you have more in common with some people than you do with other people.”

“They kidded you in a funny way, Whitey.”

“Did they? I didn’t notice,” Whitey said.

Chapter II

Sucker Punch

They had lunch together at a stand near the track. When they got back a few people were drifting into the stands. They had come to watch the time trials. By then most of the irons had arrived. Whitey counted twenty-five. He guessed off-hand that probably six or seven wouldn’t qualify. That still left a very packed track for the race. Three hundred laps. Two and a half hours of bitter, deadly grind, the sort that leads to complete physical and nervous exhaustion.

The sleepy track of the morning hours suddenly began to have a deadlier look, a competitive look. Whitey wondered about death. He looked down the line of cars, wandering which one, twenty-four hours from that moment, would be headed on the grind that would leave it a mass of scrap that might have to be torch-cut to haul away.

The track was bitter hot all through the afternoon. About half the time trials were run and four cars couldn’t qualify. Whitey recognized two more drivers from the old days. Veteran drivers. Skip Morgan and Red Lariotti. And neither one of them came near him. He saw Bob looking at him with puzzled concern. He began to wish that the kid had been told about Whitey Edison and about how a man can lose his nerve and his courage and all the things that hold him together.

At dusk they took their bedrolls from the sedan and spread them on the dust close to the yellow wagon. Bob wandered off down the pit line. Whitey knew that he couldn’t stop the boy, that he couldn’t prevent the boy from going and talking to the others. Whitey snapped his cigarette away and said a silent prayer. If only none of the others, the old-timers, would let the kid know until after the race was over. Then it might not make so much difference. But to have it happen before the race...

After a time he dozed off. He woke up with a start, and it took a few moments for him to realize where he was. In a neighboring pit a floodlight had been rigged. A poker game was going on, pebbles weighing the cards against a gusty breeze that had come up to cool the night.

The floodlight cast edged shadows across Bob Oliver’s face. He was sitting near Whitey, his hands locked around his knees. Whitey couldn’t read his expression.

He yawned and said, “How do the other crates look, Bob?”

“Maybe you want to be sociable, Whitey? Maybe I should go get you a bottle?”

“They went out of their way to tell you, didn’t they, kid?”

“Not very far out of their way, Edison. You’re kind of a legend, you know. A yellow legend.”

“Kid, maybe you’re being rough about something you don’t know anything about.”

“I know all about it, Edison. When they started to tell me, I started to ask questions. They all had the same story. You were a brave guy, weren’t you? And then you fizzled out like a wet match.” A hint of tears came into the boy’s tight voice. “Hell, Whitey, if you’d told me, I could have thought up some excuses for you. But you tried to hide it from me. You filled me full of gunk about what a great driver you were. You were a yellow driver and a drunken mech.”

“What I was and what I am are two different things.”

“Are they, Whitey? Are they? You haven’t got a bottle in your hand right now. How soon will you have one? Tomorrow? Next week?” The boy stood up.

“Don’t forget we’re partners in the car, kid,” Whitey said softly.

“I can’t squeeze you out until after the race, Edison. But our partnership ends then and there. Don’t kid yourself.” He walked away, his shoulders stiff and square silhouetted against the floodlight.

Whitey sat, feeling very old and very alone. He smoked a cigarette, got up with a sigh, went out onto the highway and caught a bus to town. He sat in a back seat, staring woodenly out the window. Several times he licked his lips. Hell, it was easy to move along. Another town, another garage. Maybe a few hours or weeks of forgetfulness in between.

He rode the bus down into a street of bars. He got off and made his pace slow as he walked to the nearest one. He bellied up to the bar, ordered a double rye in a hoarse voice.

The bartender took the bill, gave him a dime change.

Whitey Edison stood for a long time at the bar, looking at the deep tobacco brown of the liquor in the heavy glass. His blunt fingers were white against the edge of the bar. He could hear Bob’s voice, “...haven’t got a bottle in your hand right now. How soon? Tomorrow?”

Bob’s voice was somehow confused with the half-forgotten voice of Steve Jantz, a voice that spoke with a distant eerie hollowness. “You lucked out, Whitey. Pure luck. If you hadn’t hit that south turn too high in the sixth lap...”

Other voices: “Edison, I refuse to tolerate drunkenness among the employees of this garage. Draw your time.”... “Pal, if you’re hungry, go see the Salvation Army.”... “Three canned heat? That’ll be thirty cents.”

With a wide sudden sweep of his hand he knocked the glass spinning, turned toward the door, ignoring the bartender’s angry yell.

Bob wasn’t at the pit. He took a walk down the line, staying well in the deeper shadows, listening for the boy’s voice. He wasn’t on the line. Whitey went back to his bedroll. It was still too warm to slip inside it. He stretched out on top, but he couldn’t sleep.

The luminous dial on his watch said three o’clock when he heard the distant raucous singing. He propped himself up on one elbow. The singing grew louder. Two lights near the front of the stands made a feeble glow across the asphalt.

They stopped near the yellow wagon to put a spirited and out-of-key finale to “The Old Mill Stream.”

“Goodnight, you guys!” Bob yelled thickly, the words slurred. They went down the line, ignoring the men who yelled at them to shut up. Bob stumbled against the yellow iron, dropped onto his bedroll.

Whitey went over, squatted beside Bob and touched his shoulder. Bob pulled away. “Lemme alone,” he muttered.

“Kid, you got to drive tomorrow! What are you trying to do?”

“I’ll drive fine. Any old time Bobby Oliver can’t drive why...” The words faded off and the boy began to snore.

Whitey went back to his own bedroll. His cigarette end glowed red against the night. He held it so tightly between his thumb and finger that it was difficult to draw on it. He had recognized the voices of two of the other singers. Yobe and Skip Morgan. He guessed that neither one of them had taken on as big a load as Bob had. He wondered how many of Bob’s drinks had been forced on him in such a way that it would have been too hard to refuse. He wondered how much of the drinking was due to the shattering of Bob’s belief in his friend, Whitey Edison.

At last he slept.

In the morning Bob was sullen and unapproachable. He said, “Edison, you check over the car.”

Whitey looked at him. The boy’s color was bad and his hands were shaking.

Whitey shrugged and began to check the car, losing himself in his work. He came to with a start over an hour later to hear the speaker blaring. “Oliver, Robert — driving an Edison Special. Ready for qualifying heat.”

He looked at the stands, spattered with the light spots of color of men with their jackets off, the gay cotton dresses of the women and the kids. They had come early. They wanted a good seat from which they could watch death in the hot afternoon.

Bob came running up, his face flushed, his mouth oddly loose. He clapped Whitey on the shoulder. “How we doin’, Whitey, old boy? Running like the clock the man talks about? Good old Whitey’s got it all tuned up.”

Whitey caught the ripe smell of alcohol on the boy’s breath. “You been drinking, kid?”

“Best thing in the world to straighten you out. Sig and I split a few. Feel wonderful now. Where’s the gloves? Come on, damn you! We got to roll it.”

Whitey stood very still, barely breathing. His eyes were narrowed. He looked at the boy’s flushed face, and he remembered a few awkward words that Stan Oliver had said before turning on his heel and walking away.

Whitey looked at the oval. He smiled placidly. He held out the gloves in his left hand and said, “Here you go, kid.”

Bob reached for the gloves. Whitey brought his big meaty right hand up from the ground. It exploded on the point of Bob’s chin. The boy’s shoulders smacked against the yellow deck of the car and he bounced off onto the dust, face down.

Breathing hard, Whitey looked down at him. He dragged the boy over to his bedroll, unbuckled the helmet and pulled it off.

The official came up, his voice high and irritated. “What’s the delay here? Didn’t you hear the P.A.?”

“Sure, but my partner doesn’t feel so good. Whitey Edison driving the Edison Special. Have him change the announcement.”

He settled down behind the wheel, his eyes just above the cowl, looking along the gleaming yellow slant of the hood.

The motor caught after he was pushed forty feet. He pumped it, felt the surge of power that pushed him back against the pads. The oval was empty. For half the first lap it was like driving too fast along a macadam road. Then the objects on either side began to blur. The white fence rushed at him, spun away behind.

He caught the flag out of the tail of his eye, pushed the pedal the rest of the way to the floor. Once again the acceleration pushed him back hard, his neck against the leather cushion. An angry world screamed by him, roaring at him, tilting and slamming by him with an almost physical impact. He took it flat out, pulled back a notch going into the west corner, slammed it back down again to whip the responsive car out of the turn.

The straightaway gave him enough push so that he had to drop it back just a bit further on the east corner. Then the stands were a gray blur on the right. In the distance the flag twinkled, flashed down and he went by.

He lifted the throttle, took the entire lap to slow down under compression, eased it into the pit and cut the motor. He heard the announcement then. “Whitey Edison, driving the Edison Special, qualifies with a one lap speed of one hundred fifteen and six tenths miles per hour.”

There was a mild murmur from the stands. It was fair speed. Not good enough to win the best post positions. Good enough to qualify with an adequate margin.

His fingers were stiff from just one lap. He pushed the goggles up, wiggled out of the car, feeling soft and old and too tired.

Bob approached, his face white with anger, a dull red patch on his chin. Sig Carter, sardonically amused, stood behind the kid.

“Just what are you trying to do?” Bob said thickly, his voice dangerously low.

“Yeah,” Sig said. “Ain’t you getting a little virtuous in your old age, Whitey?”

Whitey knew that he could drop the helmet, gloves, goggles in the dust, turn and walk off the track. It would be far easier than trying to force himself into the main go.

“You can’t drink and drive, kid,” he said softly.

“Maybe you can’t,” Bob said. “These other guys can. So can I. Put up your hands, Edison. Nobody sucker-punches me and gets away with it.”

“Give it to him, kid,” Sig said softly, his eyes shining.

“Just a minute!” Whitey snapped. The tone of his voice stopped the slowly advancing boy. Whitey pushed by him, walked up to Sig. Sig tensed. “This is private, Carter,” Whitey said. “Move along.”

“I like it here,” Sig said.

Whitey slammed a big hand into Sig’s middle, stepped inside the looping right and knocked the lean man down with his own right. Sig gasped in the dust, his eyes momentarily glazed. He shook his head to clear it.

“Now go home,” Whitey said.

Sig got up slowly, moved off with painful dignity, with apparent unconcern. Fifteen feet away he turned and said, “Better let the kid drive, Whitey. I might take it in my head out there to send you after Steve.”

Whitey swallowed hard on the nausea that filled his throat. He turned, grabbed the front of Bob’s shirt in his left hand, slapped the kid backhand and forehand across the mouth in steady rhythm, backing him slowly up against the iron pipe fence at the back of the pit.

He stopped slapping. Bob stood woodenly, a trickle of blood on his chin.

“Sucker!” Whitey hissed. “Chump! No-good green kid! Suckered right out of a chance to build a rating. Look at you! You can’t even stand straight! The smart boys sucked you in, laddy. They were afraid of the car. You wouldn’t last fifty laps. This is a man’s work, kid. It isn’t for big-mouth boys. I’ve got half the car. And I’m driving. Get that straight!”

Bob said uncertainly, “They told me you can’t drive.”

“Maybe I can’t, kid. I don’t know. But there’s no doubt about you. I’m sure you can’t drive.”

Bob twisted away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His fists were doubled. Whitey stood calmly and stared at him. Bob finally turned away, his shoulders slack, his feet scuffing in the dust. He sat at the edge of the pit, his head cradled on his knees.

For a few moments Whitey had felt that the clock had turned back, that he was a driver, like he had once been. But the fear was deep inside him. It had merely been waiting. Fear was a quiet gray, viscous pool that lapped slowly at the walls of his heart. Forgotten for a moment, it began to seep up through him again, parching his mouth, tightening his throat, coating the heavy palms of his hands with oily sweat.

He looked down the line, saw Sig Carter standing next to Yobe. They were talking. Yobe was laughing.

A car whined by, flat out, the wind of its passage spiraling up dust-devils at the edge of the pit. It was a virulent orange car. Above the cowl he saw the unhelmeted bristle of Red Lariotti’s bullet head. He watched with professional interest, gauging the stability of the orange iron as it hit the west corner. Lariotti was a contradiction of terms, an old driver and an uncautious driver. He shouldn’t have lived so long.

Whitey looked at the track and knew he would have to drive the race. The yellow car, which had looked so sleek, so reliable, suddenly had a sullen, deadly look about it. The look of a blued-steel barrel pointed at his head. The gleam of a yellow knife, cool across his throat. He wanted a drink badly. He wanted the courage that a drink would give him. He looked at his watch. Starting time, three hours away.

Chapter III

The Man Behind the Wheel

Whitey ate very lightly, very slowly, forcing relaxation on himself so that the food would not knot his stomach. He bought adhesive, a wide type, and he taped his middle, drawing it tight across the small of his back. He shaved his wrists and taped them too, not so tightly as to cut circulation, but enough to give support.

When he got back to the pit, Bob Oliver was gone. The stands were full and the overflow was beginning to spread along the fence. But not on the curves. No man was fool enough to stand at a curve.

It took a precious half hour to locate a willing kid who knew something about cars, to hire him, to coach him in the teamwork necessary to gas the iron quickly, yank rubber and replace it. He gave the kid chalk and a blackboard and told him to keep track of laps, of his position, to hold up the board every fifth lap until two hundred and ninety laps had been completed. Then every lap to the end.

Inside he had the cold feeling that he would never live to the two hundred and ninetieth lap. But maybe it didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference. If he died on the track maybe Bob Oliver would be cured of the bug, of the racing disease. And that would be almost a fair return for what the kid’s father had done for Whitey Edison.

Something had happened to his vision and his hearing. All colors were intensified and all sounds. The startling vividness of everything intensified his desire to live, fighting against the fatalism that had begun to fill him.

The race was scheduled to start at two. At one-thirty the stuttering roar of motors killed all other sounds. Whitey watched the racing cars, picked out Red Lariotti’s orange job, the battered blue iron driven by Sig Carter, Wally Yobe’s job in battleship gray, Skip Morgan driving the Ace Special in fire-engine red.

They had their positions. Whitey wedged his bulk behind the wheel, chilled in spite of the heat of the sun. He had checked every inch of the car. There were nineteen entered. Five abreast in three rows, four in the last. He was second from the inside rail in the second row.

He was pushed and for painful moments the motor wouldn’t catch. At last it did and he joined the slowly circling cars which were loosely edging into position. At a few minutes after two the formation was reasonably tight, going down the far straightaway, the white pacemaker sedan leading. The sedan upped its speed coming around the east comer and the power plants began to blare. Down the straightaway, the stands on the right. Perfect formation. The sedan gunned over the starting line, darted out of the way. The blue flag flashed down and the formation jumped ahead, gaps beginning to widen.

Still too tightly bunched, they roared down at the west comer. It was very unlike the qualifying heat. The outside world was a blur, a stream of misty color. The cars around him were solid and real, apparently motionless, his speed being measured only in reference to theirs.

The vibration shook him and the wheel hammered his wrists. The crash helmet tugged at his head and he sank down a fraction of an inch. The tires of nineteen cars made a wet, ripping counterpoint to the crescendo blast of hot exhausts.

They were packed too tightly at the curve. Whitey held his breath, stared straight ahead, utilizing the side vision that enabled him to see the car on either flank. The man on the right moved in too close, and he drifted down toward the left, seeing a gap ahead of him, holding the car in trim through the banked curve, gunning it into the open place as he straightened out, sensing that if he hadn’t gunned it, the car on his right would have forced him down into the car on the left.

Ahead they were thinning a little on the straightaway, Lariotti’s orange job almost down to the east corner, lengths in the lead. He guessed that he was in sixth place, possibly fifth. A good place to hold for a few laps while they thinned out.

He had a sudden sense of well-being and realized that it was because the fear had not begun to oppress him. The sense of well-being faded as he remembered that he had not yet been forced to pass a car. He had squirted out of a gap, but purely from the instinct to avoid a tangle.

The car ran sweetly, seeming to flatten on the straightaway, seeming to hug closer to the macadam with every increase in speed.

The east comer flashed by smoothly, the stands on the right in the straightaway streaming by like a gay torn ribbon. A blunt snout crept up on his right, on the outside. He rode high toward the curve, slowing slightly, teasing the man on his right to back away and try an inside shot. The snout dropped back suddenly and, as he rounded me curve he put it to the floor, took it down close to the rail, risking a quick glance and seeing that the man who had made the bid was a good five lengths back.

He thought. If I can fight off all bids, if I can hold it right here, maybe the car will last better than the boys ahead and I can place.

But he knew that he was deluding himself, that he was putting off the decisions that would have to be made.

He came into the west corner, saw the car spinning ahead of him, gauged its spin, saw that it was carrying up toward the outside rail, sufficiently slowed to be out of danger. He flashed by it, instinctively leaning in on the curve, clearing it by a good dozen feet. But he had slowed. As he came out into the straightaway, a battered blue car edged up, the snout even with him, on the inside.

He held the position, managed to draw away from Sig a foot or so. He went high on the corner, Sig riding below him. Out of the corner he tried to hold position, but Sig had a shorter route, and in the straightaway Sig’s nose was in front, his deck even with Whitey.

They roared down at the next corner. Sig moved up a little, forcing him out. He felt his footlift, without conscious volition. He dropped back, drifted down the rail, Sig riding three lengths ahead, his bid successful. In anger, Whitey stamped hard, rode up on Sig, moved into the man’s slipstream, taking advantage of the little tug of air behind the battered blue iron, backing off for legal clearance on the curves, edging up again on the flats.

He heard the distant muted whine of the siren, and, as they flashed by the stands, he saw a crumpled car piled against the concrete wall, a man lying curiously twisted and very still about eight feet from the red flames that licked at the blistering paint.

But there was no time to think. The curve was on him. The sight of the flames had made him dizzy and sick. It was with surprise that, the next time around, he saw the big chalked “15” on the board — the “4” below it. Fourth place at the fifteenth lap. Seven and a half minutes of the two and a half hours behind him.

Fourth place. That meant that of the three cars ahead of him, one was Lariotti, one was Sig Carter. Either Morgan or Yobe would have to be behind him. Either one would want to make a bid. Two men out of the race. Thirteen cars behind him.

There was no more sense of well-being. He found himself wishing that something would happen to the power plant. Something bad. Something that would put him out for keeps. The motor droned with horrible efficiency.

The vibration began to have its usual hypnotic effect — down the straightaway, ease off for the curve, slam into the straightaway again, curve coming up, ease off a little, lean in, slam it down again.

Lap after lap, the blue car riding ahead of him as though the two cars were joined.

On the back stretch they screamed by a slow car with such speed that it loomed up and was gone before Whitey could make the slightest response. He felt the sweat pop out on him. He had barely seen the black smoke boiling from under the bonnet, sensed the motorless quiet of the car.

Had it been three feet closer to them... He knew that it was not one of the leaders ahead of him. They could not have slowed down to that extent in such a short space. Thus it had to be one of the ones behind.

Thirty laps — fifty — eighty. Forty minutes gone of the two and a half hours. The vibration and the sickening speed ate into him, inflaming unaccustomed muscles. His hands began to blister through the heavy gloves and his right foot ached with the effort of the precision control.

He felt as though he were being beaten with a vast club.

And as yet he had not made a bid at a car ahead.

Ninety laps. The gray nose of a car came up on the outside. Wally Yobe was making his bid. Yobe was in so close and Sig, ahead, was so close to the rail that Whitey was boxed. He couldn’t fight Yobe’s bid without over-running Carter. He guessed that Carter had not seen Yobe as yet.

Yobe ran neck and neck with him around the curve, mouth tight, face expressionless, hidden by helmet, goggles and pattern of dust.

On the straight, Yobe moved up. Sig Carter went into the far curve at dangerous speed, opening up a wide gap between the blue and yellow cars. Wally Yobe gave up his bid to take Carter’s spot, and eased down into the open space. At the ninety-fifth lap Whitey saw that he was running fifth.

He knew that there was more stuff under the hood of the yellow car than either Yobe or Carter could call on. The difference was the man behind the wheel. He felt shame and yet shame couldn’t conquer fear.

He rode along in fifth place, making no attempt to creep up on Wally Yobe, riding in Yobe’s slipstream the same way he had ridden in Carter’s. The line of three cars, riding nose and tail, edged out and Whitey saw that they were overtaking another car. He knew that the other car had been lapped.

He watched as he crept up on it. He watched in horror. His hands clamped more tightly on the wheel and he fought the impulse of his foot to lift. Carter passed it. Yobe crept up on it, passed it. His nose crept up on it. He held position around the curve. The straightaway was open. Yobe was pulling away. He had lifted off for the curve. Time to blast. Yet he couldn’t push down. The lapped car drew ahead. He nosed in behind it, weak and sick.

In the distance Carter and Yobe continued to move away. Another nose came up on the outside. He let it go by. At the hundredth lap he was in sixth place.

Chapter IV

Shortcut To Suicide

He was physically ill. His head began to nod heavily. He knew his danger, held tightly to the wheel, caught in the automatic series of motions necessary to get around the banked curves, hold his position. With the lapped car ahead of him he could no longer give the yellow wagon full gun.

It was hard to think of what race it was. He wondered what track he was on. The sun beat down on him and the stench of oil was in his nostrils. He shook his head like a stunned animal. He was confused. He muttered thickly, the wind tearing at his lips, “Must have had a bad night. Where’s Steve?”

Sure. Good old Steve. He couldn’t remember whether Steve had been with him or not. But it was a cinch that Steve was in the pack someplace, strong hands on the wheel, that mad wonderful glint in his gray eyes. Steve could handle an iron like nobody else, except maybe Whitey Edison. Steve would be in that deep blue job of his. Shining blue. The blue of the summer sky at dusk, or of deep water.

The corner tore at his arms and as he flattened it out in the straightaway, he looked across the track.

His numb lips spread in a wide grin. No use looking for sly Steve Jantz on the other side of the track. Old Steve would be creeping up behind him, waiting like a big cat, to steal a lap on him.

In the straightaway he thrust his foot down hard, swung out, but not so far as to lose distance. The snout of the car he had been following moved back, back, out of sight behind him. He squinted far ahead, saw the battered blue, the gray. Two cars ahead. Nice guys. He couldn’t remember their names. Time to ride up on them.

He fed the yellow car, feeling the constantly rising whine of power, the drumbeat of the tires.

After the run around the bank, the gray wasn’t so far ahead. He had it on the floor, inching up, waiting until the last possible moment before the curve, and then letting it up the smallest fraction of an inch, sensing the imminence of the lift of the inside wheels, leaning hard to cut that lift, laughing again as the gray seemed to move back toward him.

After one more wild corner he moved up even, and the name of the driver came to him, Wally Yobe. Sure. But Wally looked funny. As though Wally, that eager kid, had grown old overnight.

Wally moved out a little, forcing him higher than he wanted to go. The hell with that. Wally should know enough to get out of the way. The track always belonged to Whitey Edison and Steve Jantz.

He let Wally force him high, then he lifted off the throttle, letting the compression brake him, cutting to the inside, pouring on the coal again, surging ahead to cut Wally on the inside as they came off the corner. Wally tried to move in a little but he was too late. The yellow nose was out in front and Whitey pushed it down to the floor, held it steady as a rock, letting Wally move in and then decide it was healthier to move back out and give a hot man room.

The blue car was ahead. He took a quick glance back at the gray, gauging the distance. Then with a mad twist of the wheel he rode out to the right, blocking Yobe, moving out on the blue, creeping up on the blue. He sensed Steve Jantz behind him, bulling his way through the pack in the same manner, always on the thin, brittle edge of control.

Funny how this yellow car seemed faster than anything he had wheeled before. A nice wagon. Sweet and hot.

The driver of the blue gave him a quick, startled look. Why, that was Sig Carter!

Best way to take Sig was always to bluff him on the corners. Ride high and wild. He went onto the outside, and as the oval tipped for the banked turn, Sig was below him. Don’t pass on the turn. Hold it right there, steady and true. But blast a fraction of a second before Sig does.

The yellow car jumped, but Sig moved out. What was Sig trying to do? Run him into the stands? Sig should know by now that Whitey Edison can’t be bluffed. If Sig wanted to ride him out of the race, Sig was coming too. At the impact he’d go downstairs and roll with it. It had happened before. A few ribs gone, a concussion.

Sig moved over on him. Closer and closer. Whitey held it steady, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Sig’s humming rubber moving in, inch by inch. The turn roared down at them. Sig would ease off on the turn. Whitey kept the throttle tight on the floor. He leaned far to the left. He flashed out ahead of Sig, but the inside wheels lifted a few inches. When they touched again it hurtled the car in a crazy dash toward the inside fence beyond the turn. He fought the wheel, feeling his deck slide under him, half hearing the smack as he knocked white wood from the fence, fighting again, the car angling toward the outside fence, his throttle still full on, never letting up, and suddenly he had it under control, arrowing for the turn, Sig Carter well behind him.

He laughed. Let old Steve try that a few times. That’s what turned the hair gray. He steadied down and concentrated on hitting the turns at the best possible speed. Maybe he could lap Steve. That would be something to give him a ride about. Sink the needle in him. Tell him he was loafing out there. As he spun down into each flat stretch he looked far ahead for the glint of sunlight on deep blue, on the familiar tilt of Steve’s head. He listened for the distinctive throaty blast of Steve’s iron.

He couldn’t remember his pit position, and he didn’t know where to look for the board. What lap was it? How long was this damn race? Never mind. Keep going until you have to hit the pit or until they flash a flag in your face.

He risked a glance at the whole track. Maybe twelve, thirteen cars. He couldn’t pick out Steve.

He looked at his right front rubber, saw the hazy area on the outside rim. A rubber flap. He listened and heard the tiny hum. It probably got ripped loose back there when he’d nearly cracked passing Sig.

Better hit the pit right now. He checked fuel. Good for fifteen more laps anyway. But take care of the works all at once.

But which pit?

He cut it fast on the east corner, took it close to the inside rail, braked, looking for Buzz Gowan, the best mech in the business. But a brown-haired kid was waving him in, jumping around.

He went in. He rubbed a hand over his face. The kid was slapping his back. As he tried to get out from under the wheel, he sensed the heaviness of his own body.

He rubbed a hand across his face.

The boy he had hired and Bob Oliver switched the rubber, and the mixture was being squirted into the fuel tank.

Suddenly he knew that the years had gone by. Steve Jantz was dead. The dark blue car wasn’t on the track. Something stung his eyes.

The kid, his eyes glowing, was pushing him. “Roll it, Whitey! Roll it! You’re second place. Get going!”

Blindly he got behind the wheel. The kid yelled, as he pulled away, “Fifty-one more laps. Whitey, you’re wonderful!”

His lips twisted as the car gathered speed. Wonderful! Crazy as a loon. An old man having whiskey dreams behind the wheel of a ton and a quarter of death. An old man who used dreams instead of guts.

In slower rhythm he settled down to the pace. The gray and the blue were ahead again, but they’d need a pit stop. Beyond them was the bright orange car he’d seen before. That was number one. Lariotti.

No harm to move closer to Sig and Wally. He tucked in behind them. Two laps later Sig moved off and spun back into the ruck as he went into the pit.

The orange car that had been far ahead was gone. Ten more laps. As he came out of a turn, the orange job went by him and by Yobe, skittering along barely on the edge of control.

Lariotti again. He’d made his stop, and pulled back into the lead.

Whitey wasn’t interested.

He saw the board — “275” — twenty-five more miles. He had to come out of his dream and wrench the wheel to get out of the way of Yobe as he turned off. The orange car ahead had slowed a bit. Lariotti wasn’t taking any chances of mechanical failure. He’d hold his lead, fight off the bids and the race was in his pocket.

Second money for Whitey Edison. They didn’t have to know that he made second money because he went crazy out there in the sun, because he lost a few years and he was racing against a man who had been long dead.

He was eight lengths behind Lariotti. Crazy Lariotti.

Play it safe, Whitey. Take your second place. Don’t make a bid. He cut Lariotti’s lead down to six lengths.

Yet he knew that he wouldn’t make a bid. It wasn’t in him. The craziness was over. His arms were lumps of lead. White fire burned behind his eyes.

He glanced at the board. Two ninety-four. Six more laps to go. Three minutes more. He risked a look. The nearest car was the blue, way back at the last corner. Third place for Sig Carter.

He rode into the turn, Lariotti four laps ahead.

There was no increase in motor noise as a dark blue car passed him. It went faster than any car can go. Yet it seemed to drift along.

When he saw the familiar wave of the hand, he knew that it was Steve.

Whitey Edison made his bid to pass Lariotti. The redhead was a shade too high. Whitey tucked his nose between the inside rail and Lariotti’s deck. It was a tight fit. He saw the movement of Lariotti’s head and he fed the gas to it as the orange car tried to run away from him.

Faster and faster and faster. High whine. Roar. Flat smack of wind. Hammering vibration. He felt as though he were being hurled from an enormous sling.

He clung tightly, not letting Lariotti move out ahead. By staying where he was, Lariotti had to take a wider sweep, move a fraction of a mile an hour faster.

But Lariotti kept building up the tempo.

On the west corner Whitey sensed that both cars were going into it too fast. To brake would be quick death.

He saw Lariotti’s inside wheels lift. Two inches off the macadam they poised, began to lift further. Lariotti’s head disappeared suddenly as he went downstairs. The orange car bounced, hurling fragments in all directions, a sideways roll and an enormous end for end bounce off the top rim of the banked corner.

His face a mask of steel, Whitey held the car on the edge of control, and when he returned to the same corner, he noted, almost absently, the smoke drifting up from the place where Lariotti’s car had disappeared.

He made the east comer, the grandstand a flowing bank of misty color on his right. The checkered flag flashed down and he lifted his foot, letting the compression brake him in a last slow circuit before he coasted up in front of the stands.

He had to be helped from the car. And when he was out he could barely stand.

They were gathered around him. Judges, officials, drivers, pit monkeys, people who had come over the fence.

“How’s Lariotti?” he asked.

“O.K.,” someone said. “Banged up a little and scorched, but O.K.”

Whitey turned and looked into Bob’s face and he knew that everything was all right again between them.

Sig stood near him, hand outstretched. Whitey looked down at the man’s lean hand and slowly grasped it.

“Welcome home, boy,” Sig said softly.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Death Is a Lap Ahead

Chapter I

Chapter II Sucker Punch

Chapter III The Man Behind the Wheel

Chapter IV Shortcut To Suicide