Night of Thunder

What was new today was that some kind of trailer park had been constructed in the immediate vicinity of the structure itself and proudly wore a kind of midway carnival banner that said NASCAR VILLAGE.

It was all jammed up with pilgrims of the faith. He saw that it was a little neighborhood composed entirely of trailers, trucks, and vans that had the specialized capability of converting to retail outlet by opening up into a kind of high counter. From behind that counter, dozens of men and women, all in NASCAR regalia, sold yet more souvenirs, most all of it driver oriented, worshiping the cult of the guy that pressed the steel around the oval at speed and risked death in the process. He had time to examine the setup at length, because the traffic had stalled almost to a creep, and it wasn’t long before he noted the Matt MacReady trailer, just as big and busy as any of them, with young Matt’s face emblazoned everywhere and the USMC 44 digital-camouflage pattern spread everywhere.

You couldn’t but think about the money. If it was a religion, part of the observance was the cash transaction, as dollars were traded for official NASCAR gear and the official stuff evidently demanded a premium over the Chinese crap that the imitators and hustlers sold in their little stalls across the way.

Someone’s sure getting rich, he thought. All that damn money. Turns people to fools.

Then at last the traffic cleared, and he sped away from NASCAR Village and the speedway toward the green mountains ahead.

NINE

Why, O Heavenly Father, why, he beseeched. Lord, how thou tests me. Lord, I am thy humble servant, please send me relief.

God was busy. He didn’t answer.

So the Reverend Alton Grumley was left to his own bitter devices, and they told him, goddamnit, things wasn’t happening as they’s supposed to. Curse that girl!

He left his tiny office off the gym floor of the rec center of the Piney Ridge Baptist Prayer Camp and stepped out into the heavy, pressing heat of an August afternoon in Tennessee, and in a yard meant to accommodate Baptist jumping jacks and deep-knee bends, saw before him sweaty men struggling with an entirely different set of rigors.

“Jesus Christ, no,” shouted Brother Richard to a gaggle of Grumleys who fought with a device at the base of a large truck. It was a graceful, but surprisingly heavy, steel construction that rode its own smallish steel wheels. It was called a hydraulic jack, and was used for lifting the left or right half of a vehicle off the ground. It was crude, old, disobedient, and annoyingly stubborn. It hated Grumleys and Grumleys hated it. What they had to do with it, they had to do fast. Getting Grumleys to do something fast was like getting cats to dance. It just hardly didn’t ever happen.

“You monkeys!” screamed Brother Richard to all the sweaty, tattooed Grumley beef-the sun was high, the sky cloudless; bugs and skeeters, drawn by the stench of flushed Grumley flesh, swooped and darted. “You can’t do nothing right. You, balding guy, what’s your name again?”

“Cletus Grumley, Brother Richard.”

“You don’t come across when he’s trying to get the air wrench on the lugs. You wait till he’s got ’em coming out, then you git on around. It’s gotta work smoothly or you get all tangled up, the tires roll away, and many a race, in fact most races, are lost in the pits where the big muscle boys like you haven’t practiced enough, and it ends up looking like a Chinese fire drill.”

“Yes sir. But Mosby stepped on my heel, Brother Richard, which is why I done spilled forward. Wasn’t going forward, wasn’t meaning to, just got tripped up by Mosby.”

“Mosby, you a cousin or a son? Or maybe both?”

“Don’t know, sir. Heard it both ways. Not sure which gal is my real ma. Was raised by Aunt Jessie, who may have been the Reverend’s third wife, or maybe his fourth. I tripped on Cletus because someone, either Morgan or Allbright, pushed me.”

“Morgan, Allbright, slow down,” said Richard. “Slooowwwww downnnn.” And he tried to indicate calmness, lack of excitement, craziness by a kind of universal gesture for calming, pressing both flattened hands down as if to say, “Bring it down a notch.”

“It’s Morgan’s sweat,” said Allbright, “it stinks so it makes me want to throw up.”

“Ain’t my sweat,” said the one who had to be Morgan, “it’s your own damn farts you be smelling, Morgan farts more than any white man in this world and most Negroes.”

The issue was syncopation. An air-driven power wrench and the high-strength hydraulic jack had to be dragged sixty feet, set under the edge of the truck, and the truck jacked up. The power wrench had to tear loose the lugs. The old tires had to be yanked off and dumped, the new ones slammed on, the lugs power-wrenched tight. It had to be done fast, really fast, and the boys had been trying so hard. But maybe this wasn’t a Grumley sort of thing. There was no one else, though, time was short, and Race Day was approaching.