A few minutes later Telzey was back working at peeling the decals off of Will’s Sundance, but thinking about all she’d learned from Mel that morning – not just the driving, but how much cars and racing were a family affair. Even Will’s grandmother had been a racer, and a fairly successful one, from what she’d heard.

In the time that she’d been gone with Mel, Will had finished up with the fender and had gotten busy pulling things out of the interior of the car so it could be painted. It really wasn’t necessary, but he’d told her that it made things look so much more professional, and she agreed. After that, he’d gotten some bodywork tools and started out banging out some of the more minor dents in the car, doing a fair job of rolling them out, and that pretty well kept them busy for the rest of the morning.

It was getting after noon before Ray called a halt. “I suppose we could go home for lunch,” he said, “but I think I’m in the mood to eat out. Anyone up for going down to the Chicago?”

Telzey had never been in the Chicago Inn, which was right on the other side of the overpass from the General plant, but she was not about to pass the suggestion up. They all piled into Mel’s car and drove down to the restaurant, which was fairly busy. They were able to get a table right away, but before the waitress came to take their order Telzey noticed Kayla was sitting in a nearby booth with another girl about their age and two older women.

Kayla noticed Telzey about the same time and called out to her, waving her over. “Back in a minute,” Telzey told the Austins, and headed over to the other table. “Mom,” Kayla said, “this is Telzey Amberdon, I told you about her. Telzey, this is my mom, Emily, my friend Rachel and her mom.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Mrs. Holst said. “I see you’ve fallen in with fast company.”

Telzey frowned at the line, and then said, “Oh, you mean the Austins. They’re pretty neat.”

“They are,” Mrs. Holst grinned. “I know Mel better than the rest, he taught me to drive and was my teacher in a couple classes in high school. What have you been doing with them today?”

“Working on Will’s car, mostly,” Telzey smiled. “It’s kind of fun.”

“Well, don’t be a stranger,” Mrs. Holst said. “You’re welcome to come over and hang out with Kayla when it works out that you can.”

“I probably will sometime, ma’am,” Telzey said. “Kayla has been a lot of help to me.”

“Yeah, we’ll have to get together after school sometime, if Will ever lets you go,” Kayla grinned.

“I have been spending some time with him, but it’s been fun,” Telzey said. “I probably should get back.”

“Sure,” Kayla said. “Telzey, I’ll see you at school Monday. You know, if you want to go out for softball you probably ought to be thinking about it. The signup is this week.”

“Probably not, but I’ll think about it,” Telzey replied. She really wasn’t interested in softball or any school sports and already had made up her mind that she’d rather spend her time messing around with the Austins and their cars, but she had to be sure that it was going to last.

Back at the table with the Austins, she decided to put the question straight to the test. “Kayla wants me to go out for softball,” she said. “I’m not real crazy about the idea if there’s something I can do at the track to be useful, what with the racing season coming on and all.”

“I can’t imagine Kayla playing softball,” Will snorted. “She and Rachel are the best middle school runners in the county. Rachel goes to a different school, but I’m pretty sure Kayla will be running track.”

“That’s what I think,” Telzey agreed, “so if I went out for softball it would be with people I don’t know. I’m not very good and it might cause my asthma to kick up. Besides, I’d rather be hanging out with you, and that means all of you.”

“Well,” Ray replied, “things are a little slow right now in terms of what you can do, but as soon as we get closer to the season and the grass starts to grow I’m sure that we can find things for you to do. We’ll have to teach you how to run the tractor, but that shouldn’t be any big deal.”

“That settles that, I guess,” Telzey smiled. “I didn’t really want to go out for softball anyway.”

A few minutes later, while they were waiting for the waitress to bring their food, Mrs. Holst came over to the table. “Ray, Mel, I’ve got to get together with you one of these days,” she said. “Isn’t your season starting pretty soon?”

“Four weeks from today,” Mel replied. “It is getting close.”

“Are you going to be doing anything special this year?”

“Pretty much like normal,” Ray told her. “Pony Stocks, Street Stocks, and Sportsmen every week, Mods every other week, and a special show of one kind or another almost every week and we’re still trying to fill a couple holes. That’ll mostly be Mini-Cup cars, Vintage Racers, and Late Models. We’re trying to get Legends cars in here sometime, but we haven’t got it nailed down yet. Plus, we’ll do something special for intermissions every week so the crowd doesn’t have to complain about being bored. Not all that is nailed down, either.”

“You’ve been pretty good about that,” Mrs. Holst smiled. “I was thinking about it the other day and I thought maybe you ought to get Bert Woodward to bring Big John over. That’d give the crowd a thrill.”

“Thought about it,” Ray grinned. “You’re right, it would be a heck of a show, but the only place that we could fire that thing is in the pits, and the insurance company would have a hissy fit if we didn’t clear the place out. That means everybody would be in the overflow pits and griping about it, and that would about have to be the impact zone, too. We just don’t have enough room for that thing. We also thought about having him bring over a Napoleon or two and have him shoot them at an old junk car, but there’s no good backstop.”

“Too bad,” Mrs. Holst grinned. “I think it would make for a heck of a show. Let’s try to remember to get together sometime in the next few days so I can talk about a season opening article and some advertising.”

“Yeah, we’re going to have to do that,” Mel agreed. They talked pleasantries for another couple minutes until Mrs. Holst said goodbye followed by her daughter and friends toward the door.

“I almost hate to ask this,” Telzey piped up as soon as Mrs. Holst had left, “but what’s Big John? And what’s a Napoleon?”

“Big John is a medieval trebuchet,” Mel laughed. “You know what they are?” Telzey, smiling, nodded, and he went on. “I’ve seen him toss a tire and rim a couple hundred yards with it. It is pretty wild to watch, but it wouldn’t be good to be near if something went wrong. A Napoleon is a Civil War cannon that fires about a three-inch ball. It can make a heck of a dent in an old junk car, and I’ve seen him do it.”

“He runs a museum called Malvern Hill out north of town,” Will added. “They have firing meets out there once in a while. They’re really cool. We’ll have to go out there some time.”

“I have to admit, it sounds like fun,” Telzey grinned. “I’ve seen real artillery fired and mostly it just makes a big noise. You don’t get to actually see it hit anything.”

“Maybe we ought to think about Big John again,” Ray said thoughtfully. “If we put it down in the pits in turns one and two, right at the end, and shot it toward the woods, it might work.”

“The only problem with that is that it’s right in the direction of Phil Hartmann’s house,” Mel replied. “I mean, there’s no way Big John could throw something that far, but we’d sure hear about it if we tried. Hartmann is a pain in the butt, and there’s no point in stirring him up unnecessarily.” He turned to Telzey and explained, “This guy moved out here from Detroit, built a house, and then decided the track was too noisy and has been trying to shut us down. Since we’ve been here a lot longer we’ve had the upper hand, but some time we’re probably going to have trouble. I’m not too worried about it. He’s tried to get a couple dairy farms closed down because they smell too bad for him, and that’s just part of life when you live in the country.”

“But he doesn’t see it that way,” Ray shook his head. “He’s from Farmington Hills, so he obviously knows more about anything than any of us local yokels. If you don’t believe it, just ask him, he’ll tell you that.”

“He likes Farmington Hills so well, I wish he’d move back there,” Mel agreed. “Then I wouldn’t have any problem with Big John tossing a tire and rim into the woods.”

*   *   *

They headed back to the shop once they finished with lunch. Ray wrapped up whatever he had been doing on his Late Model, and turned to working on the sweeper with Mel. Will explained that they’d bought the sweeper cheap at a municipal auction and that they used it to sweep up the oil-dry after wrecks, and occasionally to clean up dirt and trash. “It’s probably as old as Dad is, but it works, at least sort of,” he explained.

Will and Telzey spent most of the afternoon working on the body of Will’s car. Once the decals had been removed, he showed her how to use body putty to fill in small dents, while he went to work with a disc sander to smooth everything out. He said that the car probably wouldn’t stay good looking all season, but he at least wanted to start the season with it looking decent. The body putty was a little messy and the dust thrown up by the sander was worse. Her jeans and sweatshirt were soon pretty dirty, as was her hair, and she knew that about the first thing that she would do when she got back to her grandparents’ house was to take a very serious shower.

Telzey was just coming to that decision when the door opened and Will’s brother Chuck walked in, with a short, pretty blonde tagging along behind. Telzey had only barely met Chuck since he was usually gone somewhere, and they probably hadn’t exchanged twenty words. She assumed that the girl was his girlfriend Ashley, and her guess was confirmed a few seconds later when Will whispered, “Oh, the Princess has decided to hang out with the scum of the earth for a while.”

What Telzey had heard about Ashley from Will wasn’t exactly favorable – he thought that she was stuck up and snooty, and thought she was better than anyone else around. She was a cheerleader, with all that meant, and according to Will she’d bugged Chuck into joining the football team so she’d have a football player boyfriend. In one look Telzey decided that Will had her tagged just about right – she had a look on her face that said she thought there were better places she could be. She was beautiful, with long blonde hair that hung close to her waist, jeans so tight they must have been painted on, and wearing a tight sweater that showed off what chest she had, which wasn’t much. She had to be two or three years older than Telzey at least.

“Gonna work on your car today, Chuck?” Ray asked.

“Got a couple things I want to look at,” Chuck replied. “Ashley has got some things she needs to do.”

“Chuckie, I can’t hang around here all afternoon,” Ashley whined in a really grating voice that reminded Telzey of fingernails on a chalkboard. “I’ve got things to do.”

“Ashley, Honey, I’ve got to work on the car at least a little if I expect to do any good this year,” Chuck protested.

“You can work on the car some other time,” she whined again.

“Just give me a few minutes,” he tried again. “It’s not going to take very long.”

“Well, hurry up! I don’t want to have to waste my afternoon here.”

Chuck headed out to the back room, with Ashley tagging along behind. You could almost see the steam blowing out of her ears as they went. They weren’t gone long before they came back through, heading for the door. “Later, Dad, Gramps, Bro,” he said over his shoulder.

Once they were outside, Ray spoke up, “I sure don’t know what he sees in her.”

“Oh, I can spot what he sees in her,” Mel laughed. “It’s just that what he refuses to let himself see is the part he’s going to have to grow up about or he’s going to be in a world of hurt.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Ray agreed. “I sure hope he gets to working on that car if he intends to do any racing this year.”

*   *   *

The school cafeteria had pizza for lunch again on Monday. This was not unusual, for pizza was on the menu at least once each week and sometimes twice, which wouldn’t have been bad if it had been fairly decent pizza. However, it was barely edible, and Telzey could think of plenty of things that she’d rather eat. Once again she was sitting with Will in the lunchroom. He had told her that Chuck had managed to work on his car after all. When he’d dropped Ashley off after their date, he’d headed out to the shop and worked on it until dawn, then came home and slept all morning before going over to her house to do whatever it was that they did. “He’s not going to be ready to go racing when the season opens at that rate,” Will summed up.

About that time Kayla came by, carrying her lunch tray, and sat down with them. “So is it true what I heard about you two?” she said without preamble.

“I don’t know,” Telzey shrugged. “What have you heard?”

“Well, Sarah said that Carol Lynn said that her sister caught the two of you, making out, all covered in dirt and grease out at your dad’s shop, Will,” Kayla smiled. “That doesn’t sound like the two of you.”

“We were out at the shop when Ashley was there, that much is true,” Will snorted. “But we weren’t making out or anything, we were working on my race car.”

“No grease,” Telzey shook her head. “Body putty and dust, yes, we were a mess.”

“I figured it was something like that,” Kayla replied. “According to Ashley, you’re, and I quote, ‘that little grease monkey that hangs around with Will,’ end quote.”

“That sounds just exactly like something Ashley would say,” Will frowned. “We were working on my car and she was griping about the fact that Chuck even wanted to look at his. There was no way she was going to help him with it. I guess that means that any girl that wants to work on her friend’s car must be some sort of freak.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Kayla nodded. “I’ve never exactly been a member of the Sarah Hitchcock fan club, and that especially includes her sister. I don’t know which one of them is worse. They only live to put someone else down.”

“You know, that’s one good thing about only being here for a short time, and moving a lot,” Telzey said, a little disgust showing in her voice. “I don’t have to worry about putting up with her for the rest of my school career. I’ll be out of here in probably less than a year. Dad was home within weeks of when the war was over with the last time. If that happens, I might be gone by next fall.”

“Unless something goes wrong,” Will said soberly. “Then you might be stuck here even longer.”

“I don’t think so,” Telzey said confidently. “Things seem to be going pretty good. But even so, as long as I have friends like you two I don’t much care what someone like Ashley thinks or says.”

“They can cause a lot of trouble,” Kayla said, “but it’s not like you have to be friends with them. I’ve had problems. Carol Lynn and her crowd do everything they can to put me down because I like to run. I just ignore them. They can’t stand to see someone do well at something they don’t do.”

“Or not do something they do,” Will snorted. “At least if some of the stories I hear about them from some of the guys have any truth to them. Chuck hasn’t said a lot but I get the impression that Ashley isn’t exactly as pure as the driven snow, if you know what I mean. That probably has something to do with why he puts up with the stuff she gives off.”

“Makes sense to me,” Kayla laughed. “I’ve heard those kinds of stories, too.”

“So is it better to have a reputation of being a slut or being a grease monkey?” Telzey asked pointedly. “I mean, given a choice, I know which one I’d rather have. At least I try not to dump on people for the decisions they make, but when you have someone that acts like Ashley it’s hard not to.”

*   *   *

The next couple of weeks passed quickly. The war was rapidly progressing, and more and more Telzey began to think that there was a good chance that her parents would be home sooner, rather than later. While she spent a fair amount of time following the war, she wasn’t quite as obsessive about it as she had been earlier – after all, unlike earlier, she now had other things to think about, too. Telzey’s time after school was spent either with Kayla or Will, and much more with the latter.

She and Will continued to spend a lot of time out in back with the kart and the ATV, often racing each other around the improvised oval, but sometimes just running through the woods. However, with the racing season coming on, she and Will spent more after school and evening time at the shop, putting the finishing touches on the 89 car and helping Chuck with his Street Stock – at least when he wasn’t with Ashley or she wasn’t around, which was often the case.

The weekends were spent out there, too – Saturdays working on the cars like the first weekend in the shop, or more and more doing little chores around the track trying to get it ready for the season. For example, all of them turned to on giving the kitchens of both concession stands a thorough cleaning, and the rest rooms also got a going over, along with quite a bit of painting. Telzey spent most of one morning with a paint brush and roller, painting the spectator side of the wall between the grandstand and the track, just to improve the appearance.

But there was time for other things, too. Mel took her out in his car several times, for half an hour or an hour, just letting her drive around and get comfortable with it. Quite often at least part of these sessions were on the track proper, and the old man let her run a little faster than before, giving her hints about how to drive the track.

One Saturday in April, they were out for one of their sessions when Mel had her pull up to a building at the track that they hadn’t been to before. “I think you’re ready for this,” Mel smiled as he opened the overhead door of the building.

There were several pieces of grounds-keeping equipment sitting inside, and in the back there was an older sedan. They headed over to it, where Telzey discovered that it looked almost as if it wanted to be a race car. Like the other cars, it had the interior removed and replaced with racing seats and five-point harnesses, but there were two seats instead of the usual one. There was a roll cage, and the glass had been removed. “I try to give new drivers a turn or two around the track in this with me,” Mel explained. “You can push this quite a bit harder than you can a street car.”

One of the strange things about the car was that it had operating doors, unlike the regular race cars where they had been bolted or welded shut. By now, Telzey knew how to get in and out of a race car through the window, but the opening doors proved to be more for Mel’s sake. He was, as he explained, not quite as limber as he used to be, and clambering through a window really wasn’t an option for him any longer.

After putting on helmets, they started out with Mel driving, and Telzey could see that he was going a lot harder than she’d ever seen him do before. Still, she could see the smoothness of long practice – this was something that Mel had been doing for much of his life, and if his reflexes weren’t what they had been fifty years before he was still well ahead of the car and what it was trying to do. As he drove her around the track, he used the microphone and headsets in the helmets to teach her quite a bit about how to set up a line, how to choose a braking point and use the brakes, and how to save the brakes by using a proper line.

Once he’d demonstrated for a few laps, Mel pulled to a stop near the start/finish line and told her, “Let’s switch.” Telzey thought that she’d gotten used to driving now, even driving fast, but as she unstrapped herself from the five-point harness and got out of the car, she found that she could barely make her legs work to walk around to the other side. This was as close as she had ever been to the real thing in full size!

Mel had her take it easy the first few laps, just to get the feel of the car and the higher speeds, but soon she was pushing it some, driving it deep into the corners, hearing and feeling the tires working as she worked her way around them. Once she’d gotten over the newness of it, the actions seemed normal – she felt as if she had a good feel for what the car would do, what it wouldn’t, and was getting a good feeling for where its limits were.

She didn’t notice how many laps she’d run but she thought she was running them pretty fast, and Mel’s instruction made her feel as if she was improving with each lap. Other than listening to his occasional instructions, she kept her attention on the track, trying to focus on all of the details needed to drive a really solid lap. It was something of a disappointment when she heard his voice in the headset in the helmet saying, “Why don’t you slow it up and stop for a minute?”

It only took seconds to drift to a stop at the start/finish line. “You’re doing good, but you need a breather,” Mel told her. “I’ve had a stopwatch on you, and you’re about a second and a half off of the record lap for this car, and that’s darn good for a first try. Let’s talk for a minute about a couple things I noticed, and then I want you to try to run a different line, higher or lower like you would have to do if you were trying to pass someone.”

They did several more sessions of several laps each, broken by Mel having her slow down so he could talk to her without breaking her concentration. Finally he told her, “Why don’t you take it back up to the barn?” That was disappointing since she felt like she could drive that old Chevy sedan hard all day. However, as they turned off the track at the back stretch entrance to the overflow pits, she happened to glance up and saw several people sitting in the small bleachers near the entrance – and realized that she’d been set up, at least a little bit, since those people were Will, Ray, and Ginger. She’d had no idea that anyone was watching at all.

She drove Mel over to the storage building, parked the car and started to unbuckle. “No, don’t bother,” Mel grinned. “Why don’t you do a few laps by yourself? I’ll flag you when you go by the back stretch entrance if I need to talk to you about something.”

Telzey was so astounded she could hardly speak. Mel was going to send her out on the track to hot lap the car by herself! He must have thought that she was really doing all right! “I’ll . . . I’ll be careful,” she promised.

“Just maintain your focus on what you’re doing and you’ll do fine,” Mel told her as he got out of the car and closed the door. Still scarcely able to believe it, Telzey put the car into reverse, backed it up enough to turn, and dropped it into drive, heading for the track. She pulled back through the pit entrance, got the car into second gear like she’d been taught, and got down hard on the throttle.

Somehow, without Mel in the car it seemed as if she were going a lot faster, or at least that things seemed to be happening a lot more quickly. She barely had the car going straight out of one corner when she had to be setting up for the next, and it seemed like she barely had time to breathe in between. She drove lap after lap, trying to keep her line, trying to be smooth, trying to drive deep enough into the corners and not brake too soon. This was more like it! This was the kind of thing she had been dreaming of ever since she first got interested in watching racing with her folks – she was out on a race track, running laps as fast as she could go.

She had no idea how many laps she’d run, but finally she happened to notice someone standing by the back stretch entrance waving a checkered flag, so she guessed that was the signal to bring it in. It was too soon, much too soon! She wanted to stay out there much longer, to really get to enjoy the new thrill. But, being obedient, she ran hard through turns three and four, then backed off the gas and let the car drift down the front stretch and turns one and two before she dabbed lightly on the brake to slow up enough to turn into the back straight exit. She saw Mel pointing at the shed where the car was kept, so drove over there, stopped, and shut it off.

In only a minute or so, Mel and the rest of the Austins were over at the car, where she just sat quietly catching her breath. “So how’d it feel?” Mel asked when he was close enough to call out.

“Wow!” she replied. “Mel, that was so cool! Did I do all right?”

“You did just fine,” he smiled. “You trimmed almost a second off your earlier time. Of course, that might just be the effects of not having my fat butt in the car with you.”

“I did? Wow! How does that compare to a Pony Stock?”

“That’d be a real good lap in a Pony Stock,” Ray grinned. “Of course, you’re driving a rear-wheel-drive V-8, not a front-wheel-drive Pony. That thing is a lot closer to a Street Stock, and it’d be a reasonable qualifying time, considering that it’s not an all-out race car.”

Telzey was reluctant to get out of the car. The last half hour had felt so good! But she knew she had to do it, so she undid her belts, took off the helmet, and got out. “Darn, that was fun!” she exclaimed to the waiting Austins. “I sure would love to try to do it for real.”

“You know,” Ginger smiled, “maybe we ought to set up a Powder Puff race for intermission on opening night. They’re usually not too intense. I don’t think she’d be in over her head or anything.” To Telzey, the thought was entrancing. A Powder Puff race wasn’t quite a real race, but it would be pretty close to the next best thing – and maybe it would happen.

“Yeah, we could do that,” Ray agreed. “Our intermission program is a little light for opening night, anyway. You think Pony Stocks or Street Stocks?”

“I can think of half a dozen women who have run Powder Puffs in the past in their husband’s or boyfriend’s Street Stocks,” Ginger said. “But there’s no real reason you couldn’t mix Pony Stocks and Street Stocks, at least for a Powder Puff, where nobody’s too serious, anyway.”

“I’ve always been against that,” Mel said. “The car weights are too different, and the lines in the corners are too different. Then you mix in pretty inexperienced drivers, it gets a little iffy.”

“I wouldn’t want to run two different classes for an intermission program,” Ray protested. “I guess Street Stocks, then. We’ll have to call around and see who we can get to run. I suppose Telzey could use this car for something like that, if her grandparents will approve her running at all.”

Telzey’s excitement, which had been rising quickly as the conversation continued, suddenly crashed. It was hard to believe that her grandparents could possibly let her go racing, even in a sort of stunt race like a Powder Puff. They had been set up to be her legal guardians while her parents were in the Gulf, so they had the authority to approve her doing it, but realistically a decision like that would be taken to her parents. Her grandparents had seen her driving the kart and the ATV, enjoying it and doing well with it, so even though they hadn’t seen her at the track they might be willing to go along with it. But her parents? They were pretty cool about a lot of things, but somehow that was hard to believe. “I don’t . . . I don’t know that they’d let me do it,” she said in a deflated tone.

“It can’t hurt to ask,” Will suggested. “You don’t know what they might say.”

“I think I can talk to them for you,” Ray offered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d go along with it.”

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “It seems like too much to hope for. But it’s not going to happen if I don’t ask.”