The Subaru racer’s brights slashed through blackness. At the rally course’s every turn skidding tires rocketed stones into the forest sanctuary. Up and down, side-to-side, the driver’s hands worked the steering wheel. His feet danced on the pedals in a symphony of practiced motions: downshift; double-clutching; then, speed-shifting to higher gears only to downshift once more. The sleek machine fishtailed on the gravel curves and turns, assaulting the service road’s primitive contours to the timings of his navigator’s stopwatch.

             Melodic piano chords of a Beethoven sonata played through his earphones while the driver’s eyes exchanged quick glances from the tachometer to the white light dancing in a roller-coaster choreography. In a tight turn, the safety harness pressed hard against the CD player pocketed in the one-piece racing outfit, causing a switchover to a light and lively Mendelssohn concerto.

The rich smell of the pines occasioned their way through the open windows mingling with road dust, lubricant and high-octane fuel. Thin scarves covered the occupants’ nose and throat. Night goggles protected their eyes. Vent fans blew out air at the highest setting.

The taste in the driver’s mouth was Gatorade, sucked through a tube fitted into a canteen-thermos at his side. Several aspirin had been popped hours earlier to ease a stabbing headache, as were Tums for a turned out stomach. The vomit taste lingered. Stupid, just plain stupid. What was I thinking? Bonnie’s pregnant. We’re going to have a baby. When did that happen anyway? How could that be? Doesn’t matter, the wedding’s announced.

And, only now does Rea Ann come onto me. What’s with that?

Damn those tequila shooters. Gotta race to run. Six hours wasn’t enough time to get on the other side of Rea Ann. Damn Tequila. And, it wasn’t just ‘one for the road.’

 Sick bitch! It sure wasn’t love, just pure pleasure when that bitch whispers ‘paradise’ and sucks at my ear. No wonder the guys talk about her. Man, when she unleashes her sexy side and demands you give in to her as though your body belongs to her, ain’t nothing stopping her.

Hangovers do not mix with night racing. Stupid shit, Chet! Damn her, pushing her skirt up those fine legs.

“Yeah, Rea Ann, we all know where you keep your fucking red lipstick!” said the driver. No one heard his outburst: neither his partner nor race headquarters.

Angry, he gripped the wheel hard enough for his hands to ache. The road was his focus but he couldn’t help remembering her hand sliding down under his belt buckle. He needed to listen to the music to keep balance – to maintain hand to eye coordination – avoiding thoughts of the seductress. Its volume dulled his senses, he felt more than heard the engine whining, and the thunderous rock pounding the tires took.

Past the delicate harmonies, staccato words punctured his thoughts, music and the road, “Chet, point-five miles to a real deep downhill with a sixty-degree turn to the left. Advise you slow for it.” It was the speaker in his helmet, the voice of his borrowed, passenger-seated navigator, Phil Albright. Albright’s lap was a morass of maps, a calculator in one kid-gloved hand and a stopwatch occupying the other, all tethered to a huge clipboard with mock stability.

             “Awright, awright! I haven’t touched the brakes but once or twice the last forty-five minutes of this run, but given this dive, I will. You okay with that, Man?” Chet had forgotten the man’s name already.

             “We’re making great time, Chet, this stage ought to be yours, so let’s end it on all fours, okay? I’ve been quiet up to now. I know you know this road, seeing as it’s your home rally course and all. But, it’s new to me. Got it?”

“Quiet,” said the driver, “I need music to keep the road flow going. Stow it.”

“What’re you so touchy about. Bet it’s that row you had with Grobian back there, right?” Rousing violins in a triumphal march filled his CD’s music playing. Chet Rakoff ratcheted the volume dial up a few notches.

             The lights splashed far out on the straightaway before giving way to a steep downhill. As advertised spoke Chet’s inner thoughts anticipating the floating sensation they were about to experience flying over the transition coming off the flat road’s drop-off point. He downshifted. He knew he needed more ‘slow’ to navigate the controlled skid of the long curve ahead. In mental calculation judging the distance, he tapped the brakes. Nothing! “What the ...” were the words blurted into his helmet’s mike. Chet pressed hard on the brake. No response. Albright was yelling something he didn’t hear. Chet clutched, but couldn’t catch a lower gear. The speedometer stayed unchanged at seventy miles per hour. Adrenalin hit the heartbeats as they braced for impact. Chet’s desperate pull at the emergency brake came too late, the machine, without wings, became airborne. Unblinking headlights stared into huge upper branches of great trees, which mauled the intruder, swiping at its occupants, whipping its pine boughs through open windows, scratching and punishing the interior. In that twinkling instant Chet thought of Bonnie and his unborn baby.

###

Mesmerizing. If you look at them long enough, there’s a mesmerizing ‘strobe effect’ of blue-white-red that keeps on flashing in your head even after your eyes are closed. I always hated those ‘gumballs’ that sat atop the old cop cars like the ones on these Michigan Highway Patrol cruisers. Looks like the County Mounties and Forest Service called in the professionals. I expect Hiawatha National Forest’s nighttime creatures are curious to know what the hell is going on? Tonight, it’s about Death. Everyone’s always curious about that subject – it’s human nature to speculate about one’s own mortality. I know it works that way with me.

             The infamous female voice from Race Safety Control is near-hysterics in my helmet’s headset. The ‘override directive’ she’s spouting shows in my navigator’s face and Jim’s not one given to panic. The race is yellow-flagged. All of us are stopping at the crash site. Chet Rakoff just went and got himself killed.

“God I hate it when this happens,” I said to Sarge. “Did I hear Rea Anne right? Albright his co-driver survived. That’s strange.”

             I joined the driving crews and see the shock of the moment smacked on the faces of the other racers standing at the dirt road’s biggest curve. We look like a bunch of naughty schoolboys on the playground looking down at our playmate that just fell off the monkey bars and broke his arm. Instead, we’re spoiled brats playing the adult, high-risk game of ‘road rallying.’ We’re crazy little-boy members of the USARC – that stands for the U.S. Auto Racing Club – it indulges our ‘sport’ because we pay for this expensive thrill seeking: driving half-million dollar customized stock sports cars, built with special engineering and ‘big ass’ roll bars. We’ve got the money to afford the indulgence – most of us own businesses. We make the time because like Tom Cruise’s character ‘Maverick’ in the movie TOP GUN, “We have the need for speed!” And...we know what we don’t like – that’d be a racetrack – same turns, same curves, and same straight-aways. Boring.

As for me, I own a trucking line, been divorced three times and probably heading on the fourth. Had my three kids by the second wife – she demanded big-time insurance naming the kids as beneficiaries. She’s the trustee. Racing fast cars on dirt roads in national forests at night does things to wives. Let’s face it, women are security-seekers, they like things ‘safe.’ That’s why the insurance companies stupid enough to underwrite these Kamikaze races and charge exorbitant fees, dictate safety directors be female.

             For the Club, that’d be Rea Anne Solc. She’s got the contracted authority to stop a race for any reason she might think up – any moment, anywhere, safety issue or not. At least she’s supposed to be safety-minded. What she is, is something way different. She is something ‘else’ – whoa, Lordy, Lordy ... and those legs of hers go all the way up, and up. Lordy, Lordy.

             Jim Sargeant’s my map-reader, co-driver and navigator – he’s been my best friend since grade school. Jim built, tunes and increases the performance of my Mustang Cobra month after month. Because of it, Sarge thinks the Cobra’s his. But, it’s not. He knows it and he’s pissed about it. Just the same, Sarge’s also my head mechanic for my trucking business – a regular gear-head fanatic. The truckers and mechanics love him, at both the shop and here on the race circuit. Not me, that is, they don’t love me – and, it really you know what? It doesn’t matter. Really. I have Sarge. I’m the asshole at the top. I like it up here. That’s part of my charm. I’m the wild-hair, but I make the deals, contract the routes, swill the whiskey with the brokers and distributors, while little gray-haired Frances runs the books and Sarg keeps the guys driving my trucks on the road, except of course, when I demand that he gets his sorry ass out of the shop and here to race with me.

             Am I reckless? Yep. Do I take risks? You bet. I’ve won the overall 12-race championship trophy three years back – won four of the last six races even after ‘mechanicaling’ out of two. In last year’s series I ended up with only a third place trophy and, true to my reputation, I climbed all over Sarg’s butt because of it. This year this is our fifth race, no ‘mechanicals’ but I’ve only got one second place finish. Damn these new fearless kids. ‘Big Money’ joined our club and hired them to race their cars. These days my dollars have to compete with the manufacturers.’ Then, they go out and hire these punks to race with us so they can have the bragging rights on their commercial promotions. All of us now have stickers and endorsements on the bodies of our racers for the club’s fund-raising. This year, there are some really heavy-duty contracts.

The truth is, we need more money for the blood-sucking liability insurance. Premiums went skyrocketing since the manufacturers got into the act, there are more of us, and we’re going much faster. It’s a ‘Catch 22’ situation, and, there ain’t no insurance without a safety program director.

             All of the world’s automakers that make a sports car for the average dickhead to afford, throw their prestige names and rigs into our Club’s road rally competition. Prize money purses are getting bigger: they’re creeping up over $100,000 a race with $250,000 for the overall series winner. Shit, the year I won I got $45,000 and lots of parts credits not counting my free drinks for a year – that’s the insiders’ racing code payoff. USARC has them all ante up big time, and that goes for the parts boys too. They all pony up with dues that defray the horrendous cost of insurance. This risk coverage is set in the ionosphere to meet the potential of forest fires, the desecration of national forest ecosystems we terrorize, to say nothing of the driving teams high-speed destruction and deaths. Like tonight’s. The Club’s oldest driver and car customizer – Dan Grobian, built Chet Rakoff’s car. Dan was about to become Chet’s new father-in-law. Guess that’s not going to happen. With only daughters, Dan adopted Chet into his car group way back when. Grobian didn’t mind it when Chet knocked up his middle daughter. Everyone kind of expected that to happen inseparable as they were with raging hormones running amuck – all of us have caught them doing ‘it’ in our motor pools.

             So, here we are gathered at the side of the embankment, looking at Chet’s own version of ‘car-henge.’

             “Looks like Chet tried to fork himself somehow into that tree. Never seen that done before, course who would try and make that kind of attempt anyway?”

             “Stow it, Barney, now’s not the time for your goddamn black humor. Nothing’s gonna cheer us up,” said Luke Dale, six-time rally champion tied with Dan Grobian with the most wins through the years. “It’s all the pressure from the money. Hell, I’ve skidded through my share of curves too fast pushing controlled turning slides to the road’s edge before, we all have, including Chet down there. We’re all pushing the envelope more than we ever did before, that’s all.”

             “What I want to know, is how the hell that scared little shit, Albright didn’t get whacked along with Chet?” said Sarg.

“Nobody likes that sniveling little accountant. Heard tell the little weasel’s now in the private investigator business,” I said.

             “He’s a rodent. Who let him in the Club anyway?” asked Dale.

“That’s my boy down there,” said Grobian walking up, standing at the front of the group, “he’s way too young to be headed for his dirt nap.” We all nod our heads in agreement.

“Any of you boys know what the hell happened? Was someone pressuring him, crowding him?”

“Nope,” said Luke Dale.

“Even with all of these new kids, you boys know we’re all supposed to be kept at fifteen minute intervals. Did some new hotshot driver try to pass him or something?”

             “Naw, nothing like that, Dan. Look’s like he just lost it in the turn,” said one of the drivers, “too fast and too close to the edge on one of his turn-slides.”

             “Bull, Chet was as good as any of us. He was climbing the standings, keeping pace with the new manufacturers’ young hired young guns,” countered Grobian. “Shit, he was even ahead of our favorite asshole, Will Jacobson. Ain’t that right, Will?”

What could I do, I had to answer. “Yeah, Dan, the old asshole. That would be me I expect. Yeah, I’ve been behind Chet all year.” I noticed many of the guys were smiling at my words but were working hard to hide it in deference to Dan’s loss. No one wanted to make the big guy mad either. Not even me on this particular occasion.

“My family’s going to disown me for killing that boy. That’s how they’ll see it. I’ll be the one to have to tell my little Molly that her new husband-to-be got himself killed. Now he’s lost to us and especially her,” he said as he made his way down to the wreckage. Over his shoulder he got in a last word, “I better not find any of you holding things back from me, ya’ll hear me?”

             Sarg whispers into my ear, “Looks like he was going 80 miles per hour.”

             “Don’t we all?” I replied.

             “No, Will, not all! It’s the crazies like you that these newcomers imitate. They don’t drive like Dan and Luke, they watch after your style, like Chet down there.”

             “Don’t lay that on me, Jimbo, “he hates it when I call him that,” they’re all big boys. They know what they’re getting themselves into. Like I always say, ‘Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.’”

             “Yes you do say that, and you’re a Classic Asshole! And you know Will, sometimes I wonder why I keep you as a friend? You’re being my boss is bad enough.”

             “Could you be any louder, Sarg? The crowd is gathering to listen to us hollering, thank you very much.”

             “Naw. You boys go right on with your speechifying. Don’t let us bother you none. G’won, keep it up. Y’all got great entertainment value,” adds Barney Mason, the Club’s unofficial jokester.

             “You know, Barney,” I say, “I know what an Asshole I am, but you’re even a bigger one. Hell, I’ve even seen the ground where you lay down sometimes after one of your Jack Daniels’ ‘naps’ and there’s a great big hole where you lay most times.” Barney doesn’t even know what I’m saying, nor do I.

             “And, what the hell does that all mean?” Barney pounds back.

             “Fact is Barney,” I spout refusing to answer his question, “heard tell that you were such a liar that you needed to pay your neighbor every night just to call your dog home for you!” The rest of the drivers are really howling it up in laughter with this stuff.

             “Naw. That’s not true, Will, you got him topped with good measure,” Sarg says. “Your own women and children hate your guts, and talking about dogs, yours won’t even hang around your sorry ass unless you tie a pork chop around your neck. Your parents learned that trick when you were a little kid, just so the critter’d play with you, you sorry sack of shit.”

             The small gathering’s laughter filled the dark timber and the uniformed law enforcement types took special note of it. Meanwhile, more blue-white-red strobes of cop reinforcements shined brighter and brighter in the forest’s blackness.

I let Sarge get the last word in. I didn’t want to escalate the argument to a ‘no-return’ status. Sarge’s too important to me and, truth be known, deep down, I know he’s right. But it’s okay because that’s the way it is. Barney’s just a ‘goofus,’ he doesn’t matter. My ego doesn’t need any healing. I am who I am, but there weren’t no pork chop around my neck, even when I was a little tyke.

             Separating myself from the crowd, I head out into the woods to take a leak. Just as I’m zipping up, a bigger-than-big highway patrol officer with a peeved expression on his face gives me the ‘come-hither’ sign with his trigger finger. The others told him to talk to me. Bastards. Guess he was asking who the head asshole of the group was and, as per usual, I was elected.

Why am I always picked out of the crowd? Do I just look guilty? What is it about my face? I saunter over to meet him halfway when he keeps fast marching towards me. His eyes penetrate like two deep pee-holes in the snow. He can’t be thinking this was all my fault. Hey, I have no guilt. It’s not in me. Not my nature. I figure it must be the ‘Ranger-Hat’ set at his eyebrows that always give these guys the edge with the first words of any conversation.

             “Why do you boys do this?” he asks.

             “Ah, crashing Officer Fife, is not on anyone’s agenda when we start a race.”

             “That’s not what I’m asking smart ass. Let me rephrase. What motivates you guys to race these cars on dirt roads at night?”

             “I don’t know Sheriff. The sport of it, I guess,” is my lame reply.

             “Let me get this straight, Sparky, from what I’ve just learned in the preliminaries from dispatch. You ‘scissor bills’ get permission from the Forestry Service to race high speed on dirt roads in the dark so fast you need motorcycle-type helmets with speakers just to communicate with the guy setting right next to you in the car?”

             “Yep. That’s about it, Mr. Mounty, sir. Would Officer Dudley work?” I say to him knowing that I am really asking for a fistful, but I just can’t help myself, with or without an audience. I quickly keep talking. “We keep the windows down, so when we crash, breaking glass doesn’t cut us so bad. Howling wind is hard to talk over at high speeds. That’s why there’s football helmets with intercoms. As a matter of fact, I used to have a crash bar on my old one I had left over from high school football.”

             “My, my, isn’t that special. I figured you for the moron that played without a helmet.”

“Let’s not get personal now, Dudley.”

  Let me ask you something, and, if I were you, I wouldn’t call me ‘Mr. Mounty,’ or even think about Dudley Dooright, and, for the record there Ace, I’m not Canadian.”

             “Sorry ‘bout that. I’ll try to be more respectful.” He was a huge, huge man. “Fire away. What’re your questions?”

             “Are you paid to do this?”

             “What? To race?” He nods in the affirmative. “Not me. Some others are, but not for the older Club members. To us, it’s a hobby.” I pause for breath and guess as to how I can say something to “Mr. Heavy Duty” without ending up spitting out teeth. “It’s like this, Chief, I spent over $250,000 on my car over there, to say nothing of the expense to haul it from California to Maine, February through December, ten races every year.”

             “You must be wealthy. Are you rich, Mr. Sparky?”

             I nod with a smirk, tongue in my cheek.

             “Anyone ever tell you this is nuts?”

             “Yep. All of my wives.”

             “What are you now, some kind of Mormon?”

             “Now there’s a perspective.”

             The repartee with the large-sized patrol officer ends when another State Trooper summons him. “Hugh, you better come down here and have a look at this.”

             I turn to Sarge and mouth the words, “Hugh as in ‘Huge,’” and Sarge gives me the disgusted look.

We watch the show as “Huge” and two others pry open the driver’s door with a crowbar while several racing pairs work to get Chet’s map man – Phil Albright, out of the passenger’s side. The big roll bar saved Albright’s life. Just the same, when he spilled unconscious from Chet’s racer, he must have fallen seven or eight feet. It looks like two different accidents: one that snuffed Chet with the driver’s side of the racer, winning the riding lawn-mower look-alike contest; and, Weasel Albright’s side which looks like not much more than ‘whiplash-city’ – the ‘Rodent’ is up walking around with only a neck brace. Good thing the ambulances haven’t arrived yet. They’d have him immobilized on one of those boards with his head fastened down tight – that’d be the safety-minded thing to do. Where’s Rae Anne anyway?

             My new “friend,” Trooper ‘Huge Hugh,’ along with his officer buddy is donning rubber surgical gloves to examine Chet’s body and take pictures – real close up. Deciding there is nothing much for me to do, I tap a kidney. When I return to the road I notice Sarg has gone back to take ‘nap time’ in the car, so I slip back into my Mustang’s trying to pass the time nibbling on the contents of the dinner box provided by the local organizers. Road rally races are supported by local merchants who knock down a few coins setting up little booths full of food, beverage, T-shirts ‘n caps, and rubber tomahawks. They sell to the morbid-curious, bored locals, bystanders and car lovers in the daylight hours when the Club lures them with our cars. These ‘Looky Lou’s’ travel great distances to check out our ‘wheels.’ They gather around our racers parked in the town square-turned race pit-stop area scheduled for the full day before the race. It’s like a carnival – those Fridays before each rally. The Club has its own round of parties – the sponsors see to it. It’s required drinking.

             “An apple, it’s always an apple in these cardboard lunches and the damn thing’s are always soft,” I observe to Jim.

             With his seatback in the full-recline position from under his baseball cap slid down over his eyes, he replies, “Tell it to someone who cares, Ass Wipe.”

             He was dozing – the guy can catnap during a gunfight. I lean back to rest ignoring his mouth. The latest word from ‘safety headquarters’ is that the race is “postponed indefinitely, pending a full investigation by the Michigan Highway Patrol.” It’s Rea Anne at her authoritative ‘best’ as she finishes with, “...this is like, definite, for now...over. All drivers call me back for check in...now!”

             I pipe back in my turn with the others by number, “Ah, that’s a Roger Wilco here with Will in Car Eleven, Rea Anne, over.”

             “I thought Jim Sargeant races with you?”

             “Rea Anne. He does. Roger is my wing man.”

             “You know the rules, Willis Jacobsen, you can’t have three men in a car. We’re talking disqualification here, Will!”

             “First of all, Rea Anne, only my mother gets to use ‘Willis’ – it’s Will to you, Rea Anne, always, forever and a day. Got that? Now, as for Roger, God is my co-pilot.”

             “So, okay. I get it. Which one is God? Sarg or Roger?”

             “Actually, Rea Anne, it’s Andy. You know that, don’t you?”

             “What?” Why would I think that God’s name is Andy?”

             “You know, from the Sunday school song, ‘...And He walks with me and He talks with me....’”

             “Will Jacobsen, sometimes you can be a real ‘dick.’ We got a death in the family and you get sacrilegious....”

             My mental imaging pictures Rea Anne in the black teddy she always wears under her safety management outfit – “it’s easier for me to take a pee in the woods” – standard readiness rationale. “You seem a bit agitated there Rea Anne. Why don’t you come on out to the crash site so I can confirm what I’m guessing you got on under your orange jumpsuit. I need a good paddling. I’m a real bad boy.”

             “Your such an asshole.”

             “Thank you. You do know Rea Anne, it’s only your pure, innocent love that’s kept me going all these years...and your sweet talking ways.”

Just as things are starting to get fun rapping with the Safety Director, there’s a tap-tap on the Mustang’s rolled-up window that’s been warding off the cold and keeping the bugs out. It’s Hugh the Trooper. I roll down my window a good five inches.

             “Gotta minute there, Sparky?”

             “Wanna apple there Ranger?” I reply trying to fit the soft red orb through the open crack.

             “I’ll show you some soft apples if you and Rip Van Winkle there, don’t step out of the vehicle and flash some picture ID! Then again, I’d love to have you resist and let me try to pull you out through five inches of open window!”

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