Night of Thunder

It was just like all the others: the blind-side approach, the perfect angle, the perfect hit just beyond the left rear quarter panel, the satisfaction of the thump as metal hit metal at speed, possibly a flash of horror as the doomed driver looked back, even as, predictably, he overcorrected as he felt control vanish and the side of the road beckon, not realizing that the overcorrection was the killer. Then the weirdness visible in the rearview mirror as the car twisted and lost traction, always seemingly in slow motion, and began to float as it separated from the surface of the planet. Once it floated, it pirouetted, almost lovely for a thing so full of death. Then it hit, as gravity reasserted its command, and bounced, jerked, spun, disintegrated, throwing up heaps of dust. Possibly it disappeared, going off a precipice or down an incline, but it didn’t really matter, for the velocity-interruption of the strike of car to ground produced more torque than any human body could withstand, and spines, like toothpicks or straws, snapped instantly. If the car hit a tree, hit a rock, hit an abutment, burned, shattered, splintered, erupted, it didn’t matter. Its cargo was corpses by the time the ultimate worked itself out.

He had them he had them he had them. He was in the blind spot, he found the angle, he veered for the fatal smash-

Where you gonna run to, all on that day?

A curiosity. Unprecedentedly, before he struck, the van disappeared. No, it didn’t disappear, it braked hard but well, instantly jettisoning its speed, and in a nanosecond was out of the kill zone as he oversped. But as it disappeared, it also revealed. That revelation was another vehicle, just ahead, so close to the first that it had been hidden by the height of the van. In another nanosecond Brother Richard discovered that it was a Dodge Charger like his own, only glistening black, the V8 6.7 liter Hemi, 425 horses raring to go.

In that second, too, he recognized the profile of its driver. It was his brother, Matt, the NASCAR hero, whom he’d always adored but whom he also hated, for Matt had the life that he, Johnny, so wanted.

Matt nodded.

The Sinnerman knew what would happen next.

Matt slid inside him, came left hard, hit him just beyond the rear quarter panel, and he felt the traction going as the car floated left. Before he could stop himself, he overcorrected, and the car launched at 140 miles per.

Where you gonna run to, all on that day?

You’re not going to run anywhere. There was no place to run.

He was floating, his tires lost contact with the surface of the earth, the moon was bleeding, the sea was boiling, the car was rolling, all on this day.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This one began the second I saw the Speedway at night, loaded with fans, frenzy, and happiness. I thought: What they need is a good gunfight! I recommend a trip to Bristol whether it’s a racing weekend or not, for that view of the hugeness of the structure in the greenness of the valley is shocking and somehow awesome. It stands for man’s monumental imagination and his ability to impose his will on nature. On the other hand, if those aren’t your values, you’d better stay away. Anyhow, I was down there visiting my daughter, Amy, who, like Nikki, is a reporter for the Bristol Herald Courier, and she’s just as gallant and intrepid as Nikki, even if I’m a far cry from Bob Lee Swagger. Without giving it a thought, I had bumbled into the most fantastic American spectacle I’d ever seen and knew I had to do something with it.

The confluence of daughter and setting suggested a plot, though it took a while to get it all straightened out. In the early going, the story was going to revolve around an attempt to fix a race and would have required penetrating NASCAR culture to a far greater extent. Ten minutes into a race convinced me that “fixing” was impossible, so I diverted to something more gun-centric and fireworks-intensive. Had a hell of a good time doing it, too.

Thanks to the usual suspects and some newcomers as well. Thanks to Amy for inspiring it, thanks to NASCAR for being so much fun to write about, thanks to the millions who attend NASCAR events, for their good humor, enthusiasm, charisma, and consumption of beer in epic quantities. Thanks to Gary Goldberg, who became a sort of majordomo of the book, and figured out, among so many things, how much $8 million in small bills would weigh. Thanks to John Bainbridge for proofreading, to Lenne Miller, Jay Carr, Frank Starr, Mike Hill, and Jeff Weber for good counsel and morale. Thanks to Jean, as usual, for going along on my mad flights with a good spirit. Thanks to Folk Village, and XM-15 for playing “Sinnerman” at the precise moment I was trying to get a handle on the driver. Thanks to Ylan Q. Mui at The Washington Post for her help with Bob’s Vietnamese. Thanks to the professionals: my agent, Esther Newberg, my publisher, David Rosenthal, and my editor, Colin Fox.