Night of Thunder

But these were Grumleys, greed-driven and sensation hungry, the brains scientifically bred out of them, so they had no hero. No calm voice took over and soothed, not even Caleb’s, as that unhappy warrior simply sat as still as possible, clutching the huge Barrett.50, trying to breathe through blood, while dreaming of driving the Barrett’s butt into Richard’s strange, disguised head and watching it shatter. The rest got through the ordeal of the ride on the strength of their considerable sheer meanness, their similar hunger to pulp Richard when the day was done, and dreams of swag and whores and drugs and other cool Grumley things.

It was dialogue. It was not oration, still less a lecture, and least of all some kind of pontification. No, it was chat, conversation, attention to nuance, cooperation, and teamwork. This is how you climb a hill that doesn’t want to be climbed in a big vehicle that doesn’t want to climb it. Richard listened and talked with the components of the adventure. He felt the traction in each tire, not a chorus, but the voice of each as the expression of a personality; he felt the play between torque and transmission even in the crude containment of the automatic gear shift as these two dynamisms bartered their way through the complex transaction. He felt the tremble of vibes from the shocks, the subtler orchestration of announcements from the enhanced diesel as the Xzillaraider had blown out the parameters of the performance package, and the diesel fuel burned hot and long and fierce, turning its own chambers a molten red, threatening to go volcanic at any second. On top of that, through the imperfect vision cones of the illuminating headlights, Richard read the curves, finding the ideal line in each, read the texture of the mud in the road, divining where its gelid smoothness contained strength and where only watery treachery. He sensed which logs could be crushed, which knocked aside and which, still strong, had to be avoided. It was a complex negotiation, and he was right that few men in the world could have done it, and few would have wanted to.

It seemed to take forever, and Richard at a certain point felt his muscles locked against the wheel as if the wheel was the enemy and the addition of his human strength could make a difference. He cued himself to relax, and felt the iron melt from his neck. Though bathed in sweat, he felt at last a kind of relaxation, because it occurred to him that that which he feared most-a sucking pool of mud that would engulf him to above the hubcaps-would not befoul him.

“Jesus Christ,” said the old man, “I think you done it, boy. I think we going to make it.”

The truck broke from gnarled, mythic wood into a kind of grassy meadow and it suddenly occurred to Richard that there was no more hill to climb.

He brought the truck to a stop. He opened the door and almost fell out, limp with exhaustion, spent and wasted and hungry for vacation. He sucked coolish air, felt coolish air against his brow. He looked, saw stars, pinwheels of ancient energy, dancing light years off. Jesus, what a fucking thing.

“We here, boy, we done it,” sang the old guy. From behind came an outpouring of Grumleys as the boys liberated themselves and had a moment of pure bliss. They were on top of the world. Ma, we’re on top of the world. From hating Richard, they flew to loving him. Richard had never been so admired in his life. He felt like a rock star as hard Grumley hands pounded him on the back.

“Okay, boys, you git that dough on the roof,” yelled the old man, and then turned to speak on the cell, “Tom, get that bird in and get us the hell out of here. Time to go home.”

As behind him, the Grumleys set about to move the money bales to the roof of the truck so that they could be tossed into the hovering chopper, Richard moseyed off a few yards and came to a vantage on what he had done.

He looked down from a thousand feet on the vast structure of the speedway and the NASCAR civilization that had spread forth and put roots down upon the plains.

He saw wreckage. He saw fire. He saw a thousand emergency service vehicles spitting out goobers of red light. He saw smoke, drifting this way and that in the wind, he saw the crushed, the broken, the smashed, the atomized. He saw pain, disbelief, destruction, disaster. He saw the beast wounded. He felt in himself an insane pride in the ruination. Sure you could have detonated a bomb like some A-rab boy-fucker, or opened up with a Glock like a sad, sick Korean kid, or any of another dozen methods of high-octane take-down, but to drive through it, to smash and grind and pulp and express the ultimate contempt in traction and horsepower-say, that was pretty fucking cool. It was so Sinnerman. He felt a sense of profound fulfillment.

Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.

But then he heard it. They all heard it. The sound of a motorcycle as it churned up the same hill they’d just mounted.

“It’s the goddamned Lone Ranger,” somebody said.

THIRTY-SEVEN