This was one of those times that I just knew there was going to be trouble before the night was over with.

I didn’t expect much trouble selling the idea of a woman driver to the crew, and I don’t think Frank or Spud did, either. After all, everybody left with us except Red had been with us the year before when we had Lillian traveling with us, and nobody raised a gripe about it. Of course, Lillian was fucking everybody on the crew, so that made things a little different. Arlene’s father, on the other hand, was sure to pitch a bitch.

Well, Frank did catch a few bitches from the crew about having a woman driver. I’m not sure whether it was because she was a woman or because most of the guys had watched Arlene and I go at it out on the track, and realized that they were going to have their hands full if they had to race her.

Of course, I had explained to Arlene that we considered that we were putting on a show. While we were racing, we also were concerned with being nice to the equipment and not taking any needless risks like Hap and Junie had done the night before. This was always the hardest thing to get across to a new MMSA driver and there had been plenty that we’d tried out over the years that just didn’t get the message, including two guys that were laying in hospital beds right at that time. That was part of the reason that our results were all mixed up all the time. I could have won more than I did in those days, but by then I knew in my bones to back off to get out of a hairy situation, rather than just go all out all the time. Sometimes when you eased up on the gas in some of those situations you could lose several spots and the race – but there was always tomorrow night when the run of the race might come out different.

It would not have surprised me any if it took Arlene a while to learn that, and as it turned out that first night we didn’t really want her learning it right then, anyway.

Since it was still early and there were a couple hours before we had to race, Arlene got in her Studebaker and headed off to her home to get started packing up stuff to get on the road with us. I guess she must have told her dad what was happening, because it wasn’t long before he came storming out to the track, bringing Arlene and her brother with him. He was just about fit to be tied over the fact that we’d even let his precious daughter even drive one of our cars, much less ask her to travel with us. "She can’t drive a race car! I won’t let her!"

In the process of him running off at the mouth, it came out that he’d talked to the guy that Arlene had borrowed the hot rod from the night before, and even though she’d done well with it he had to take it back. Getting invited to drive a midget had blown that up in his face, and now he was trying to bully Frank and Spud. Those two never bullied too well, and the fight was on.

"Look," I finally said, trying to make peace. "I know she can drive a race car. I watched her drive last night, and I drove against her today. She’s got a couple rough edges but she’s darn good."

"Oh, hell," he sneered. "She got lucky last night. Willy could have driven rings around her."

"Tell you what," I told him. "Why don’t we settle this on the track? Willy, you’re a good driver, right?’

"I don’t think I’m too bad," he said. "I’ve been driving for years."

"He’s damn good," Arlene’s father – his name was Tom – snorted. "He’s got a lot of feature wins here, and is in the running for the track championship."

"Good," I said. "Frank, Spud: Buckshot isn’t going to be back tonight is he?" I figured not, and went right on talking. "What do you say we put Willy in Buckshot’s car and we’ll just see who’s faster. If Arlene beats him, she can come with us. If he beats her, she stays home. Does that sound fair?"

"You can’t let a woman race," Tom complained.

Arlene didn’t look too thrilled with the idea, but I gave her a grin and a wink, hoping that she understood that I was up to something.

"That wouldn’t be fair," Willy said. "I could run rings around her."

"But if we went and did it that way, and she beat you, it’d settle whether she could drive or not, right?"

"Well, yeah," Willy conceded.

"That would make it a fair trial, wouldn’t it?" I smiled.

"Oh, do it," Tom snorted. "Maybe that’ll prove that it’s a crazy notion."

"It’s got to be a case of who outruns who on the track," Frank offered. "I mean, if the car quits or a crash happens to screw things up, it doesn’t count."

"Fair enough," Willy said, confident of his ability.

"OK, good," Frank said. "I’d say be here about six thirty and bring a helmet that you’re comfortable with."

"We’ll settle this once and for all," Tom scowled as he and Willy turned and stomped off.

"Mel," Arlene said as they walked off. "Are you sure about this? Willy is pretty good."

"Don’t worry," I grinned. "You had, what? Thirty or forty laps at speed to get the feel of the car? It’s a little different than driving a hot rod, isn’t it? He’s going to get into it cold. That’s going to count for something."

"I hope you’re right," she shook her head. "If he beats me I’m going to have my nose rubbed in it the rest of my life."

"Look on the other side of the coin," I laughed. "When you lap him, you’re going to be able to really rub his nose in it. Like I said, Arlene, don’t worry. I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve lapped the 69 car this season."

"I thought these cars were all pretty equal," she frowned.

"I read in a book somewhere, ‘Some animals are more equal than others.’ Some cars are, too."

"Ohhhh," she smiled. "I get it. The deck is stacked."

"I probably shouldn’t have told you that much," I grinned. "You’re still going to have to drive hard but smart. I mean, drive like you did this afternoon and you’ll be all right. Like I told you earlier, you need to work on your tactics some, but your driving is right there. You don’t need to take any crazy risks." I went on for a bit about taking care of the equipment and some of the standard drill; Frank and Spud put in a bit about it too.

After a while, I got Spud off to the side. "I’m guessing you never got a chance to change the restrictor plate in the 69 car," I said.

"No, I’ve been too damn tied up at the hospital and everything else," he said. "You really want her with us, don’t you?"

"She’s an interesting woman, I’ll give you that," I said. "Beyond that, you know about what I do. I sure don’t have her pegged for being a track honey or a Lillian, that’s for sure. But we need drivers and I think she’ll do well."

"I don’t doubt that part of it," he smiled. "Jesus, her old man pisses me off. I’m sure glad you thought of that. It’ll put him in his place all right. Since she’s familiar with the 2, I think I’ll have John drive the 77 tonight."

"Good," I said. "I was going to suggest that. You’re going to drive the 27, right?"

"Yeah, that’ll give us a full show with the cars we have running. We’ll just have the track’s regular crew do the flagging." He shook his head and smiled. "You know, Mel, remind me never to play poker with you. You can be goddamn sneaky when you want to be. It’s got to be Carnie’s influence, I never taught you that."

"I may have learned a trick or two from Carnie over the years, but I’ll never be a master at it like he is."

When Tom and Willy stomped off, Arlene’s ride went with them, so she stayed with us. Since we had some time, several of us piled into cars and drove to a nearby hash house for some dinner.

I have to say that Arlene fit in with us right from the beginning. Now, you have to remember that except for John and Dewey, all of us were veterans. Some of us, like Spud, had been out where the shooting had been a fair amount so we all could appreciate a woman who had spent two years not far behind the lines doing what she had done. Now, you get a bunch of men together, especially veterans, and we could be pretty foul mouthed, it goes with the territory. Most guys tried to watch their language around women, but every now and then something would slip out. It was just a little bit awkward having a woman around at that dinner, but about the fourth time that someone slipped and had to say "Excuse me" Arlene had enough.

"Look, you shitheads," she said conversationally. "You bastards don’t have to watch your goddamn language around my fat ass. I’ve fucking been there, I know all the goddamn words, and no shit, I use them when I goddamn well fucking feel like it. Now quit being pussies, and someone pass the goddamn grease."

I think most of us got a little red in the face at that. After that Arlene might drop an occasional swear word into a conversation to make her point, but for the most part our language got cleaned up quite a bit, too. In that one statement, Arlene became one of us and I never heard another gripe from anyone on the crew about our having a woman driver running with us. From then on, Arlene was one of the guys, except for having longer hair and a funny looking chest. Well, not funny looking on her; in fact, it looked pretty good on her but it would have looked funny on a guy.

We got back to the track in plenty of time and started in on the normal pre-race chores, giving the cars a wash down, making sure they were all together and full of gas, and like that. Right at six-thirty Arlene’s dad and Willy showed up on schedule. Tom was huffy as hell, of course, and apparently he’d been filling Willy pretty full of it because he acted pretty arrogant as well. I spent a few minutes telling him about the car, about the transmission and the starter and so forth, and of course he knew it all. "Damn funny midget," he complained.

"Right," I told him. "They were built special for what we do. We have starters because we don’t have the time or the extra hands to piss around with push trucks. We have transmissions because we’re running all different sorts of places. This way we can use cheap Ford parts rather than expensive quick-change rear ends. If something breaks we can easily find something to replace it." I didn’t tell him much about driving the car, other than that we drove this track in second gear. If he knew so damn much I figured he didn’t need advice from me.

We had a quick driver’s meeting, more for Arlene and Willy’s benefit because the rest of us had heard it before. "Normally what we do is start in reverse order of our finishes the previous night," Spud explained. "Except that we usually put new drivers at the back so they’ll be out of the way if they can’t keep up. He went on to explain that we were going to start six cars in the first heat and five in the second. Arlene and Willy would be on the back row of the first heat, with Arlene on the inside. I was going to be ahead of Willy on the outside.

With all that taken care of, we had to wait for a heat of hot rods to run before we got on the track. We lined the cars up in the pits in starting order and stood around watching the hot rods bend each other up. As I recall it was a real slam bang race, and there were like four cautions in the first ten laps, and the wrecker had to make several trips. Finally there was a wreck bad enough that they had to throw the red while it was cleaned up. Tom and Willy were standing off to the side, with Tom still pumping Willy full of shit.

While we were waiting, I wandered over to the 2 car, where Arlene was standing beside it, watching the race. "Nervous?" I asked.

"Yeah, a little," she said, nodding her head in their direction. "I’m afraid they’re cooking up something. I don’t know how much to believe you that I’ve got a better car."

"Not to worry," I told her. "I’ll block him a little and fall back before the flag drops. You should have a hole right in front of me. Get into it, run the high line and he won’t get near you."

"You seem pretty sure of it," she smiled.

"I know what I’m talking about," I told her.

She shook her head. "You must want me to come with you pretty bad."

"That’s not it at all," I said. "The last time I saw my father and my brother they ganged up on me and tried to pull a fast one. I didn’t let them get away with it. I see the same thing happening to you, and I’m on your side, so I’m willing to help out a little. Some of the other guys are going to be feeling that way too, so they may cut you a little slack. We don’t really have anything rigged or like that, but we’re all pulling for you."

"I wish I was as confident about it as you are," she shook her head. "You got a cigarette?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, pulling out a pack of Luckies and extending it to her. "Hell, I could stand one myself."

I pulled out my Zippo, lit her cigarette and mine. She took a deep drag on the weed, let the smoke out, and leaned back against the 2 car. "This has all been very frustrating," she said. "I mean, I’ve been gone from home for years. Four years in college, then four years in the Army, and ever since I got home last week Dad has been trying to make a little girl out of me again."

"That’s kind of what happened with me," I agreed. "I wasn’t gone that long, but I’d been a staff sergeant and in charge of a motor pool, so I figured I’d earned my spurs. But no, I got home and it was like I was back to being a high school kid. I wasn’t going to put up with it."

"I’d just about made up my mind that I wasn’t going to put up with it either," she said. "But hell, I decided I was just a little tired of being a nurse, and I needed to find something fun to do to shake Korea out of my system. This looks perfect and I hope it’ll work. If it doesn’t I’m going to have to look for work as a nurse and it won’t be around here."

"Unless something goes way, way wrong it’s going to work," I tried to reassure her. "You said you’ve only been home a week? I figured you’d been back a while."

"A little over a week," she said. "Two weeks ago I was still working the night shift in surgery. Things have slowed down a lot from when I first got there but every now and then we’d get a flood of casualties in. Either we weren’t doing anything or we were so damn busy we didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. Then, one day, I pack my stuff, get driven down to Kimpo, and I’m on a plane for Tokyo. I had to hang out there for a day or so but I flew back commercial. I spent a day doing the tourist thing in San Francisco, and then flew home. Right now Korea seems an awful long ways away, but it almost seems like I’m going to have to wake up and head into surgery again."

"You’ll get over it," I told her. "Hell, Okinawa seems like another lifetime, almost. I sometimes think that we live a little rugged here, but I think back to what it was like there and this is the lap of luxury." I glanced out at the track; they’d cleared away the wrecks and were signaling the cars to start again. "Guess we’ve got another couple minutes, and then we’re going to have to get saddled up," I told her. "You come here often?"

"Not all that much," she shook her head. "I did when I was a kid, Dad and his brother were always racing, but that ended with the war, of course. I came here a bit when I was home from college, but mostly not. I raced some up in Milwaukee when I was in college there. I had this old jalopy that couldn’t get out of its own way, but it was fun to get out on the track with it when I could."

"Milwaukee?" I asked. "Milwaukee State? That’s where I graduated from, in 1950."

"I graduated in 1948," she said. "We would have been there about the same time. I guess we didn’t run into each other, at least I don’t remember you."

"I don’t remember you, either," I told her. "If I’d met you I think I would have remembered. We must have not been around the same part of the campus very much."

"Well, I was in the nursing school, we pretty much stayed to ourselves. What were you doing?"

"History, teacher’s ed.," I told her, taking one last drag on my cigarette and tossing the butt in the dirt. "I’ve never done much with it, except I substitute teach some in the winters. As far as I know, you and I are the only college graduates on this crew."

"That’s if I make it onto the crew," she shrugged.

"You’ll make it," I told her. "Seriously, think positive. You’re going to do fine. The only person that can beat you is you. Go out there, drive your race and do your best. That’s all you’re going to need."

"Thanks, Mel," she said. "It’s good to know that you believe in me."

"Like I said, it’s all up to you." I heard the roar of the hot rods getting going on their race. "Suppose we better get saddled up," I told her. "It won’t be long, now."

"I guess," she said, stomping her cigarette out in the dirt and pulling on her helmet. I left her to get settled in her car, while I went over and got in the 66.

Somehow they managed to make it through the rest of the hot rod heat without another wreck or yellow flag. As the winner pulled up to the starter for the checkered flag to make his victory lap we were waved out onto the track for our warm-up. It strikes me that Pepper was on the pole but I guess it doesn’t matter. He took us around pretty slow for a couple laps, then picked up the speed considerably as we headed into the "one to go" yellow and white flag. He picked it up quite a bit more after that, and we all followed.

I hung back just a little, nothing out of line, and when the field took off running I was just a little slow on the uptake, like I’d promised Arlene. It didn’t take any more than that to get a clear car length in front of me. She slid in front of me, and we were off. She got right up on the high line by the fence and opened her up, with me right behind her. I could see out the side that Willy was right behind me as we went through turns one and two, but he fell behind noticeably as we went down the back stretch. I didn’t think about it a whole lot more than that because Arlene was going like a house afire in front of me.

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