Night of Thunder

Richard then hit the pedestal on which an orange Toyota Camry, Daytona subvariant, was mounted twenty feet above all as part of Toyota’s very polished pavilion. He didn’t hit it straight on; it was more of a glancer, the point being to knock the car to the ground. In this humble desire, he succeeded, and the sleek vehicle pitched nose first into the mud, then toppled like a flipped turtle onto its back. Richard continued his war on the Japanese by clipping the corner of the Toyota structure, a piece of airport-like architecture meant to suggest the future, and his blow was so well considered that half of the roof went down, shattering glass and burying display cars in rubble inside.

He accelerated, took out this or that little place, the details were unimportant to him, saw people flee before him in both terror and glee and-oh, boy, fun, fun, fun till Daddy took the T-Bird away-found himself lined up perfect dead-on zero angle for the concourse of driver retail outlets, those trailer-truck souvenir shops where each of the big guys had heroic portraiture, replica clothing, ball caps, leathers, books, and related vanities on sale.

Richard revved the truck, enjoying himself. It was here he noted with amusement a certain base human truth. It was not he alone who looked upon the organization of commerce, the standardization of currency, the capitalist system, and had a violent impulse to destroy it all. He liked to crush things, sure, but so did lots of Americans. Yep, and it seemed that there were hundreds, maybe thousands, watching him. The moms and the kids and the old guys had fled. Not the young ones, the key NASCAR demographic of fourteen to thirty-six, southern, male, employed, tattooed (at least three), smoker, drinker, carouser, fighter. These guys, in the thousands, had somehow sensed that a show was about to begin.

“Can you hear it, old man?” Richard asked.

The Reverend could. It was soft, a murmur at first, but it picked up, the chant, “Go, Go, Go,” until it became “Go, Go, Go!” and Richard was nothing if he wasn’t the fellow who knew how to play to a crowd.

He punched. The roar rose, the windshield blurred with speed, then jolted with impact after impact, pitching this way, then that, tossing stuff through the air either whole or in many pieces. He fishtailed and jackrabbited his way in a perfect, high-test zigzag of destruction, hitting and smashing the truck trailers, which yielded by tipping or jumping or simply collapsing in shame. In thirty loud seconds Driver’s Row looked like Battleship Row after the first wave of Japanese dive bombers. For good measure, samurai Richard-san pounded the snot out of a cash machine at the end of the formation, and dollars flew everywhere.

Richard heard the cheer of the crowd. He looked in his side mirror and was saddened to see that he had started no fires, though he’d knocked down some electric wires and they bled sparks in a few places, dangerous and beautiful and spectacular at once. Then suddenly one of them ignited something and the fire rose and leaped, at least on one half of Driver’s Row, and soon enough flames consumed a great many of the battered retail installations.

Damn, that was good! Do it git better?

“Richard, my poor Grumleys in the back. They ain’t got no seatbelt.”

“Their heads are too hard for injury. You can’t hurt a Grumley by hitting him in the skull. But okay, let’s go.”

He came next to a little bridge across a gully, initially cut off by traffic blocks set in the earth. But a less important Grumley job had been to wander down there during the race itself and pull them out. Richard rumbled across the bridge, pulled up an incline, and came again to flatness and temptation. Now the speedway was half a mile behind him, the mountain half a mile before him, and the structures on this side of the gully less substantial.

“Go, Richard,” shouted the old man.

This wouldn’t be as fun. It was all ticky-tack, tents and ramshackle lean-tos, all of it held together by aluminum and canvas and tape and twine, representing the lower end of the NASCAR money pyramid. Not corporate power but scavenging entrepreneurial nomadism.

“Ho hum,” said Richard. “Don’t think nothing’ll burn or electrify, sorry to say.”

“Richard, you don’t got to narrate everthing. This ain’t a damn movie.”

“Oh, it is, old man. You’re Tommy Lee Jones, avuncular and charming, but now old and weary. I’m the mean Kevin Costner, not the sensitive Kevin, Caleb is Marky Mark, and maybe somewhere there’s a hero who’ll bring us down, but Clint retired and nobody took his place, so I don’t think so.”