Night of Thunder

“I have to say, partner, you are some kind of cowboy. We don’t have a guy who could come close to you, and we’ve got some damn good guys. What’s the secret, Bob? What explains you? No one knows you better than me, and I don’t know a thing.”

“My old man was the real hero. I’m just his kid, trying to live up to him, that’s all. That plus good old USMC training, some kind of natural skill, and what can only be called Gunfighter’s Luck. Wyatt had it, so did Frank Hammer, Mel Purvis, Jelly Bryce, D.A. Parker, all those old boys. I seem to have just a touch myself.”

“You have what they have for sure, and it isn’t luck. It’s something else. Arkansas boy like you ought to know the term for it. ‘True Grit’ ring a bell? If not, try Japanese: ‘Samurai.’ Sound familiar? You were there. Marine Corps. ‘The Old Breed.’ Bet you heard that one. Or go back to the ancient Greeks: ‘Spartan.’ Any of it mean a thing?”

“Don’t know, Nick. Maybe it’s just stupid luck. And maybe it’s just who I am, that’s all.”

“Okay, go home, rest, enjoy. You’ve earned it. Get fat. Have more kids. Die in bed in forty years.”

“I intend to. First though, I’m heading back to Knoxville, to pick up my wife and daughters. Boy, am I sick of that damned drive down and back. After I git quit of this part of the country, ain’t never driving that I-81 spur again. Sorry you didn’t get your bad boy, that driver. That one must sting.”

“We’ll get him. If he was expecting a cut of the cash, he came up short, which means he’ll have to work again soon. We know what to listen for this time.”

“Bet you do get him, too.”

“If Nikki remembers-you know, anything, but a face would be best. You have my number. This time I’ll answer.”

“You don’t think-”

“He’s long gone. Believe me, this guy is not hanging around when there’s all this law enforcement buzz.”

The two said goodbye with a little hug-the sort masculine men not given to emotion but feeling it nonetheless are given to perform-and then Nick climbed awkwardly into the seat, and his driver took him away. Bob watched his closest-maybe his only-friend go, then turned, and headed to his own car, now much-loathed, the little green, rental Ford that had hauled him so many places. He had half a mind to buy a really nice Dodge Charger, blood red, the big V8 engine, spoilers, the works, to celebrate surviving another one of his things.

Feeling the omnipresent pain in his hip, he negotiated his way to the little vehicle to see, astonishingly, that someone had pulled up in a brand new Dodge Charger, his dream vehicle, though this one was death black and gleamy. The door opened, and a familiar figure stepped out. It was that young Matt MacReady, who’d taken USMC 44 to a fourth in Bristol.

“Howdy, Gunny. Heard about this meet, thought I might find you here.”

“Well, Matt, how are you? Congratulations on your run.”

“Sir, it wasn’t nothing compared to your run, what I’m hearing. I just drive in circles and nobody’s shooting.”

“Well, most of what I did was crawl in circles, hoping not to get shot.”

“Sergeant Swagger-”

“Bob, I told you, son.”

“Bob, Big Racing won’t ever say a thing, but I came by to thank you just the same. If that thing had come off, it would be a stain. You stopped it. A cop told me you stopped it alone. So, no stain. No ugliness. No memories of bad things. In fact, in some perverted way, I think everybody who didn’t die or lose their business kind of enjoyed it. But the race is still the thing.”

“Thank you, Matt. Everybody seems to think I was an FBI agent and now even the FBI’s pretending to that one, so it looks like it’ll clear up okay for me and I can get back to my front porch.”

“I doubt anything’ll keep you on a front porch. But there’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“This guy, the driver?”

“Yep.”

“Think I know who he is.”

This got Bob’s full attention.

“All right. That puts you ahead of everyone else in this game.”

“He’s the man who murdered my father. On the track, twenty years ago. Ran him hard into an abutment, killed him, everybody knew it was murder, but there was no investigation because Big Racing didn’t want an investigation and a scandal. They just ran him out of the game and made sure he never got on another track again.”

“So he was a racer?”

“The best. Would have been a god. Trained by the hardest taskmaster, made hard and cruel by a hard and cruel mentor, trained to show no mercy, to intimidate, to win or die trying. A monster, or maybe a genius, or maybe the best racing mind and reflexes ever put in one body. Who knows what he might have been? I grew up hearing rumors about him-anytime there was some strange guy winning an unsanctioned event like a coast-to-coast or a mountain climb or some slick driving in a bank robbery getaway, I always thought it was Johnny.”

“You sound like you know him.”

“I do. I once loved him. I guess I still do, no matter what. He’s my brother.”

FORTY