As good as the swing through the upper Midwest had been, it was still good to get back to Livonia. Partly it was because we’d be in the same place for several days, but partly it was because it marked the beginning of fair season. As always, we had played a handful of fair dates before the return to Livonia, but after we left we’d be playing almost nothing but those fair dates for months. It was good to see old friends like Hoss and Chick and Hattie again, too.

Hoss, PeeWee, Chick and, yes, Dink had been working in their spare time, and had managed to build us a new 53 car, using a lot of the parts from the old one. It looked pretty darn good, and they’d taken it out to some dirt track somewhere and tested it to make sure that it worked all right. As good as it looked, we didn’t really want to let a new driver take it out and maybe risk piling it up again, but we were short on drivers, as usual. It was something we’d learned we could get away with when we were playing still dates with county fairs. When we ran the twelve car features at the fair tracks the old trick of doubling up in a car during the heats wouldn’t work – plus, we needed Spud running things at those tracks, not driving in those races. With him out we were short two drivers.

Then, wouldn’t you know it, we got lucky. Just about as soon as we got back Vivian told Frank that Skimp Winkelman had called. He’d gotten laid off at Ford Rawsonville and it looked like the layoff was going to last for a few months. She told him that we could always use drivers, and he started packing his bags. She’d no more than hung up the phone when Western Union called with a message from Buckshot in North Carolina asking if we wanted him to come back and drive for us. Then, Frank called her a few minutes later, so she asked him about Buckshot. "Might as well wire him and tell him to come," he told her. He was waiting around Herb’s when Frank and Spud showed up.

He told us that they’d kept Hap in the hospital for three weeks, and he still wasn’t getting around too well so he and Junie had a heck of a time getting him home. Hap was still pretty much in casts and itching like mad, but both of them were expected to recover fully; Junie pretty well was already recovered. Buckshot had spent his spare time in the remaining weeks helping build up a stock car for Junie to run on the local bull rings in North Carolina.

We left the 57 car with Hoss to work on the paint job while we ran the local dates we had scheduled. Spud wound up putting Skimp in the 53 car, and Buckshot in the 27 until the 57 was out of the paint shop. Spud was a little concerned about that since he didn’t have the greatest opinion of Buckshot as a driver, and even he hadn’t figured out why the car wanted to handle kind of spooky. The first night out, I seem to recall it was up in Mt. Clemens, Buckshot got in that car and it was like someone lit his tail on fire. He’d always been struggling to keep up in the past, but right in the first heat he proceeded to grab that car like it had never been grabbed before. He gave Arlene a hell of a battle for the win, and almost grabbed it from her.

"Hey, Spud," I asked as we were watching from the pits. "Did you remember to drop the restrictor plate down after you were done with that car?"

"Yeah, I did," he said. "You think I should drop it down some more?"

"Hell, I don’t know," I told him. "I’ve never seen him drive like that before."

Buckshot was about as pleased as a bug in a rug when he brought the car into the pits. "Shee-yit," he told us. "This thang handles like a car’s supposed to, not all snufflin’ aroun’ like a houn’ dawg in heat like that other’n. Kin I keep it?"

I looked at Spud, and he looked back at me. We both shrugged, exchanging exactly the same thought: Are you sure it’s the 27 that this hillbilly is talking about?

"Yeah, sure," Spud said finally. "If you like it that much, you might as well keep it." That was how Buckshot wound up in the 27 car for the rest of the time he drove for the MMSA, and why the 57 car was put on the box truck as the spare. Buckshot won his fair share and then some with that car after that, and proved to be a pretty good driver for us. Sometimes a car just works for you and it won’t for anyone else, and that was what happened in this case.

As we did every year, we took the cars into Herb’s shop and gave them all a better going over than we could out on the road, and did a few modifications like putting in the big gas tanks for the longer races on those big dirt horse tracks. Our time in Livonia went quickly, as it always did on those summer visits, and soon we were off on the county fair circuit.

A little to our surprise, Vivian actually came along with us for a few days. Well, sort of came along with us – we didn’t see a whole lot of Frank and her there for a while, except right around race time. The two of them were mostly off and gone somewhere, and there was little discussion about where they might be.

As always, being around the county fairs was a fun time, mostly because we were around people who were enjoying themselves. It was all pretty new to Arlene; she’d never gotten to county fairs much as a kid, since her family was pretty city oriented. Sometimes, when we didn’t have anything better to do, the two of us would go out and cruise the midways, watching people and occasionally playing some game or other for the pure fun of it. I recall I won her a little teddy bear one time at some sort of a ring tossing flat joint. Like almost every carnie joint it was rigged in some way or another, but I just got lucky with it.

The midways were fun, of course, but the food was always the big draw to me. I don’t mean the caramel corn and the candy floss, but those food tents put on by Granges and church groups and the like. There we were talking about down-home Midwestern cooking, and as always I put on a couple of pounds.

I remember one time Arlene and I went to eat in one of those food tents someplace in Ohio – it may have been Celina, I’m not sure now. It was along in the middle of a really nice afternoon; we’d had a short jump and had pulled in early, so we had some time to kill. "So tell me," I said, "A year ago did you ever think you’d be doing this?"

"A year ago I couldn’t have dreamed about doing this," she said. "Korea is about as far from this as you can imagine. A year ago I knew I still had several months to put in, and they seemed endless. But in one way, I wasn’t all that anxious to get back, either."

"How’s that?"

"It’s hard to say," she frowned. "I guess you could say that I knew I was doing something useful, something important, something that was making a difference. I’ll tell you what, I was not looking forward to going back to being a plain old RN in a hospital some place, doing stuff that mostly struck me as being boring."

She pulled out a cigarette and I pulled out my lighter to light it for her. "Well, you managed to avoid doing that pretty well," I told her.

"Well, yeah," she said, taking a drag on the cigarette and letting it out before she continued. "You have to admit that this is about as far from being a plain old RN in a hospital some place as you can get. What’s more, I’m glad I’m doing it. It’s fun and it’s washing away some of the bad times I had over there, and God knows there were bad times. But let’s face it, it’s not useful and it’s not important. Right now I don’t really think that it matters all that much."

"I’ve had some feelings along that line," I told her. "I keep telling myself that bringing fun into people’s lives is important in its own way, but there are times that I start asking myself if this is what I should be doing with my life."

"What do you think you ought to be doing with your life?" she smiled.

"Oh, probably teaching school someplace," I shrugged. "I mean, I know I’m going to wind up doing it somewhere sooner or later, but I guess I’m just not quite ready to settle down and get to it. I suspect that once I start doing it, I’ll settle down and do it, and not do much else the rest of my life."

She gave me another smile. "You mean, you probably won’t be doing anything interesting like this?"

"Probably not," I told her. "I suspect that when the time comes for me to quit racing I’ll pretty well have to turn my back on it, or spring is going to come along and I’m going to want to be out in a car somewhere. If I did it, it probably wouldn’t be very fair to my wife and kids."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I’m probably going to pretty much have to do the same thing. I figure I need to get it out of my system now, because the time is going to come when I have to go to work in that hospital or something, have a husband, be a mommy, and live what they call a normal life. I guess I’m not quite ready for that, either. Have you ever thought about getting married, about being a daddy and all that?"

"Only in general terms," I told her. "There was a woman once that I might have married if I’d stayed around her long enough, but I got to realizing that she wasn’t the right one for me in to many ways, so I guess it’s just as well that I didn’t stay around. But she gave me a lot to think about. I think I can say that when the time comes I’ll probably be just as happy being a schoolteacher and a husband and a father as I am racing. How about you? Have you ever thought about getting married?"

"Oh, lots," she smiled. "I think a single woman always has that in the back of her mind. Close, though? Well, there was a doctor once that had me thinking about it, except that he was already married. He didn’t get along with his wife and he came after me real hard. I finally realized that he was going to be nothing but trouble, and that’s what got me thinking about joining the Army. I guess I had visions of being in a nice Army hospital in some place like Hawaii, or maybe in Europe somewhere so I could see some of that. But I never had any thoughts of Korea in mind when I decided to do it. I should have known better, I guess."

"That is part of the risk you take," I smiled. "It was a little different for me, I wanted to get out and see a little of the war before it was over with. As it turned out, what I saw of it was just about enough to hold me. I guess I didn’t get all the adventure I was looking for, because when Frank and Spud came and said come race with us, I was pretty quick to go along. I’ve been doing this over four years now, and there are times that this staying on the move all the time gets a little old. But then, it’s always interesting to see what’s over the hill, see what the next town is like, and see if there are any new stories there to tell."

"I think I know that feeling," she nodded. "This summer it’s always nice to get up in the morning and know you’re not going to be sleeping in the same place that night. You look at some of these carnies and you can see that they live their lives pretty much like that, and I guess I envy them in a way. In the long run I don’t think I’m cut out for that kind of life, but for right now it’s about as perfect as it could be. Like I said, I guess I need to get it out of my system. It’s hard to believe, especially on a day like today, that the season is going to be ending sooner than I want it to, and maybe that’ll be the end of it. I haven’t even thought much about what I’m going to do for the winter, except that I don’t want to go back to Schererville. In fact, I don’t even think I want to be close to there. I spent the last three winters freezing my butt, maybe it’s time to try spending the winter some place where it’s warm."

"That notion has crossed my mind," I admitted. "A few winters ago I spent a couple weeks down in Daytona Beach, and while it was a nice enough town, I guess, at least the weather was halfway decent."

"That might be a possibility," she said. "I suppose you’re going to winter over with the crew in Livonia?"

"I did the past few years," I told her. "Not that there were a whole lot of other places for me to go. Several of us get a house or an apartment together and share out the costs, so it’s not too bad. Boring, but not too bad. The last couple years I’ve spent more time substitute teaching than I have working on the cars. We’re always ready for spring to come long before it gets there."

"Maybe I’ll have to think about it," she smiled. "Do you think you guys would take a woman into your bachelor pad?"

"Don’t see why not," I said. "Hattie spent a couple winters with us. Of course, she and Chick were married at the time, and the rest of us all chipped in for her to do the housework. Somehow, I can’t see that happening with you."

"Yeah, you’re probably right," she smirked. "I’d probably go find a temporary job as an RN some place if I think I might go with you guys again in the spring. Right now, I kind of think I want to run with you again in the spring."

"Well, I’m sure we’d be glad to have you," I said. "We’ve had a pretty good year this year, even if there were a few rough spots."

"It must be a little strange for you, having a woman racing with you."

"It’s a little different," I admitted. "Of course, it helps a lot that you’re right in the thick of things and don’t blame anything that happens to you on your being a woman, and not expecting any special favors for it, either. I know some of the guys were a little reluctant about it at first, but you earned your way, it wasn’t given to you. You’re one of us, now, and that counts for something."

"Thank you," she said. "It helps that it turns out that I’m among friends, and all of you have turned out to be friends. It’s a little strange for me to be the only woman with you, but to get treated like one of the guys. I mean, I’m used to being one of a few women among a lot of guys, and sometimes it got a little scary, and very often it was uncomfortable. I don’t get that feeling with you guys. In fact, I get the feeling that if one of you took a pass at me the rest of you would tear him into little pieces."

"I wouldn’t go that far," I laughed. "But yeah, there would be a few upset people running around."

"It was kind of the same thing in Korea," she shook her head. "Except that it was different. I mean, I could feel that every guy I met had dreams of getting into my pants, and that could get real uncomfortable. An older nurse warned me once that it was a real good idea to not mess around with any guys since it could get out of hand real easily. I took her advice and tried to be a friend to everybody, but not let it get any farther than that. When I came on with you guys here, I realized that was the same thing, not that I haven’t had practice at just being friends the past four years." She let out a long sigh. "I’ll admit, Mel, there are times that I think that while it’s fine to have good friends, I’m also looking forward to the time that I can have a guy who’s more than just a friend."

"It’s a little hard to imagine me in the same situation," I told her. "But you might have the best policy there."

"Oh, I’m sure of it," she told me. "My experience with the last four years tells me that. But Mel, in a lot of ways I think you’re my best friend here. You went to bat for me there in Schererville, and I appreciated it. Since then, I’ve felt that if I needed someone to turn to you were there to be that someone. I just want you to know, Mel, that I appreciate it. It’s like you told me one time, but with the words a little different: all friends are equal, but some are more equal than others. You are more equal than the others in my book."

We sat and talked for quite a while that afternoon, about nothing important, except for the fact that all of it was important in a way. While several of the guys on the crew were good friends, the closest I’d ever had, Frank and Spud and Carnie leading the list and then Pepper and Rocky not far behind, somehow I felt a little closer to Arlene than I had to them. I could talk to her about things that I couldn’t talk to other guys about, things like my visit to Hartford earlier that summer. Well, I told them I’d been there and it had gone all right, but I could tell Arlene about it in detail and examine my feelings about it with her – not that it solved anything, but at least I could talk about it with someone. That’s something that hadn’t happened to me very much.

Don’t get me wrong. I liked Arlene, and I liked her a lot – as a friend. Maybe I even wondered about what it would be like to go beyond being just friends with her, and I’ll admit there was an appeal to it. But I’d already had the feeling that it wasn’t going to go beyond that while she and I were traveling with the MMSA, and that afternoon she’d come right out and admitted it. And, I’d pretty well admitted that things were going to have to be that way, because that’s how I understood it in my belly. Maybe someday things would work out, but I felt that it wasn’t going to be the likely thing to happen.

Although I hadn’t made my mind up by any means, more and more it was becoming clear to me that my time with the MMSA was getting short. Oh, I might decide to stay with it another year or two, because, let’s face it, I enjoyed what I was doing and wasn’t of a mind to quit soon. But I could also see that if the right thing came along I could leave it pretty easily. I had already missed the best time of the year to look for teaching work, but I made up my mind that when another year came around I might just leave the crew at mid-season and go looking for a decent teaching job. Of course, I’d made myself that promise before, and when mid-season came I was all ready to get on to the next race, but now I thought I might be a little more serious about it. In the back of my head I realized that having Arlene in the crew might change that a little bit, but there wasn’t a whole lot more to do but just keep on going and waiting to see what would happen.

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