Night of Thunder

“They say he first hit her about three miles back, much higher up the mountain. If she’d have gone over there, the incline was several hundred feet. Rolling the whole way, then smashing into trees, she’d have been dead for sure. As it was, where she finally went off, the distance was only 150 feet or so, and she didn’t hit any of the trees head-on but rather glanced off them. The big thing is, she didn’t roll. The roll is the killer. Somehow, she outdrove him for three miles, and when he finally hit her solid, she kept the car in traction and out of the air. I’d say she saved her own life.”

Bob saw his daughter in the car, in the dark, some big punk fool in a pickup with a brainful of crystal meth and a gutful of Budweiser slamming her, laughing hard, deciding it was fun, and slamming her again and again. He’d like to have a conversation with the young fellow. He’d leave him a check for the facial reconstruction bill but not a penny for the wheelchair he’d need forever.

“Do they have any leads?”

“They have a detective on the case. I spoke to her. She’s very good, she’s broken some big cases. Thelma Fielding. She’d be the one to see.”

Bob looked at his watch. He’d taken a 1 P.M. from Boise to Knoxville via St. Louis, rented a car, and roared the whole way up I-81 to get here this fast. Now it was nearly ten.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Swagger. She’s an outstanding young woman. We all hope for the best for her. Do you have a place to stay? The town is filling up with racing fans, it might be hard to find a room. We have a spare bedroom. The paper has rallied also and there’s lots of folks willing to accommodate you if need be, no matter how long you stay.”

“I’ll go to her apartment and stay there. The nurse gave me her effects when I checked in and I saw the key. I hope you have the address and can give me some directions. Then tomorrow after I see her and talk to the doctors on the day shift, I’ll want to go out and talk to that detective.”

“Just to warn you, this big race screws everything up. It brings in millions and millions of bucks. You could say the whole region lives off this month the year long. But the downside of course is that everybody’s all involved in it, and the cops especially. It’s a royal pain moving around town or trying to get anything normal done.”

“I’m used to waiting,” said Bob. “You might say, I was once a professional waiter. I can wait a long, long time without moving a twitch, you just watch.”

You always fear entering your own child’s private life. What if you make discoveries, learn things you weren’t meant to know, find out intimacies, privacies, discretion that a child always hides from her parents, just to save them worry or knowledge. You can learn too much.

But that didn’t happen. If she had a private life, or any secrets, it hadn’t gotten interesting yet. Nothing indicated a boyfriend, a scandal, a secret. She was dead set on doing well in this job, moving on to another job on a bigger paper and who knows what. Maybe some fancy rag like the Times or the Post, maybe running a smaller, more focused thing. Copies of those papers lay everywhere, as did magazines like The New Yorker and Time and so forth. Her books were all by journalists and novelists. That was her talent. Bob knew: You had to let them be what they could be, just as in his way, although dying young for it, Bob’s own father Earl had let his son be what he wanted, and had encouraged his talents and not held his flaws against him.

After several misturns and dead ends and an involuntary tour of Bristol, even the line in the city where Tennessee magically turns into Virginia and vice versa depending on the direction, Bob had at last found the side road that ran just next to and so close to a Wal-Mart that you’d have thought it was the parking lot, followed it behind the giant store, down a hill, into a little glade of houses, along a creek, and then up into an apartment complex. Hers was on the third floor. He saw a sheeted Kawasaki 350 in the parking lot and knew it was Nikki’s, and that she loved that bike. He wished she’d taken it to Mountain City, because on the bike no redneck high on shit and beer would have outperformed her. He’d seen her ride the damned thing. She could stay with anyone, she could stay with him-he was good-and she’d have left that cracker crashed and burning in the gully, gone home, taken a shower, had a beer and a good laugh, and then a good night’s sleep. She had Swagger blood, after all.