Night of Thunder

“Don’t think so. Only way would be if whoever I’m looking for has very sophisticated phone intercept capability. Government quality. No, not these boys. Smokeless powder is about as sophisticated as they get. It ain’t the CIA or even the mafia. It’s some boys who aren’t sure the wheel is going to last. Charlie, I’m about to leave town. You keep working on what I told you, and I’ll check back from Bristol, okay?”

“Yes sir. This is kind of cool.”

After disconnecting, Bob tried Nick again. Agh! Where was he?

He called Terry Hepplewhite, the clerk at Lester’s, about whom he still worried. But he found Terry in fine spirits with nothing to report. He had half a mind to pay for a vacation or something, but saw in an instant that wouldn’t work. Thelma’d be all over it if Terry suddenly vanished. No, Terry had to sit it out, at least until whatever happened happened, his case was processed, and police interest had moved elsewhere. Bob thought, That was another mistake. I shouldn’t have involved that kid, I should have stuck around and taken the heat. Man, am I losing it? I have made a batch of bad decisions on this one, and maybe I am just making things more difficult than they are. But there was nothing left to do but get out of town, so that sheriff didn’t drop down in his Blackhawk again.

He threw his laundry into his duffel, and went to the car. He drove aimlessly, hoping to smoke out anybody following, but his sudden turns and reverses uncovered nobody. For all of it, he was in the free and clear.

The route took him up and down Iron Mountain on 421, across Shady Valley, where he stopped and refueled and got a bite to eat. He then crossed Holston Mountain and, twenty miles out of Bristol, almost immediately hit the Race Day traffic he’d sworn to avoid by leaving early. That plan lost, he settled in for the long haul: the drive across the valley, a backup at the approach to the bridge over Holston Lake, and then into really heavy stuff as he got close to the speedway itself, which was twelve miles outside of Bristol. He hated traffic. He was too old for traffic. Traffic was no fun. The only good thing about traffic was that nothing bad could happen in it, because nobody who did anything bad could get away. There was too much traffic.

He looked at the map, thought maybe he could figure out a way around the mess. It might be longer in miles but it would keep him driving and engaged instead of crawling. That was always his theory in other situations: it’s better to drive at speed even if it takes longer than to endure the frustrations of the slow stop-and-go.

But none of the other routes really offered much in the way of possibility. He had to remember that hundreds of thousands of people were on the march, and that every single route would be slowed down. It was just physics: That many cars on those few roads computed to simple congestion no matter what. You had to accept it, not let it screw you up.

So he just tried to stay relaxed, giving himself up to the radio, running from country western station to country western station, occasionally nesting on the Knoxville 24/7 news station, hoping there might be new information on the two Grumley boys who’d tried to kill him. But there wasn’t. That story was dead, as was the killing of the meth addict Cubby Bartlett. Nothing lasted more than a day in today’s news cycle.

Why didn’t Nick call? With Nick’s help, he could find out in minutes who these Grumleys were, what their involvement foretold, and who, possibly, they were connected to or working for.

But Nick didn’t call.

Finally, around four, he hit the city limits, and forty minutes later crawled past the speedway itself. It was the same, only worse. The huge structure dominated the valley, but it was aswarm with crowds. Traffic just crawled, and people wandered through it en masse. Most of the husky fellows who herded families through the merriment seemed to carry coolers full of beer on their shoulders, and NASCAR ball caps were perched on every head from the youngest to the oldest. The pilgrims were dressed any old way, mainly in cut-off jeans and tank tops, and everybody smoked or had a beer in a caddy. The women wore flip-flops, and a few even seemed to have bras underneath their shirts, but mainly it was down-home as it could be. Not a tie or a jacket anywhere in sight, just thin clothes, heaving flesh, a sense of complete ease. This was the night of nights, the Night of Thunder.

On both sides of the road-he’d turned from 421 to the Volunteer Parkway-even more booths had been set up, so that the strip appeared to be a vast bazaar. There wasn’t hardly anything NASCAR you couldn’t buy, except possibly body parts or DNA samples, and every merchant seemed to be doing land-rush business, all of it cash. Smoke hung in the air from the barbecue grills, and even the tee-totaling Baptists were selling water bottles to raise money for their prayers.