We’d had a short jump into Corpus Christi, and had gotten in early without a whole lot to do that afternoon. It was about time for the new True magazine to be out, and I could always enjoy spending a couple hours with it. I was thinking about heading into town to see if I could find a magazine stand or something; if I couldn’t find True I figured I could find Argosy or one of those other men’s magazines that were popular in the fifties but somehow disappeared along in the sixties. It would be something to do for a while. I hadn’t gotten past the thinking about it stage when Arlene came by my Ford. "Hey, Mel," she said, "I hear they have a pretty good beach over on Padre Island. How about if we go and check it out?"

I hadn’t had much time alone with Arlene since the season started, so needless to say I thought it was a great idea. If nothing else, it might give me a chance to see if the engine was still running, so to speak. It didn’t take us much time to get on the road in the Ford, heading for the beach.

I was just a little surprised at the place – it was big and flat, and the sand was hard, like at Daytona Beach. There was no problem driving on it. There weren’t a lot of people around, but I decided to head south for a bit so we could be off by ourselves. After three or four miles I found a place that filled the bill pretty well. "Looks like this is the place," I told her.

"Out in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?" she said. "Guess there’s no bathhouse in walking distance."

"Don’t see one," I said. "I haven’t changed into my swimsuit, either. Guess I should have thought of it."

"Well, hell," she replied. "You just change on one side of the car and I’ll change on the other. I mean, it’s not like there’s going to be anyone around watching."

That’s what we wound up doing, just stripping off our clothes and pulling on our swimsuits on opposite sides of the car. There was no one around anywhere, and I suppose we could have just done without the swimsuits at all – after all, I’d been skinny dipping with Arlene that time up in North Dakota or wherever it had been, except that it had been at night. Even so, the temptation was there to steal a glimpse in the rear view mirror, but I was honest and didn’t bother. In a couple minutes we were done, and I went back to the trunk to get a blanket that I kept there, and saw that Arlene was wearing that French bikini that she’d worn back at Ft. Lauderdale. "You look even better with that on now than you did back in February," I told her.

"Well, it was the only swimsuit I had," she shrugged. "I wouldn’t want to wear it around the guys, but I guess I can with you."

We didn’t walk far away from the car to spread the blanket out – there was no reason to, since one place was about as good as the next. But before we got on it, we decided to go get wet. The water was warm and nice, with that special tang of salt. We splashed and played around for a while, just for the fun of it, and then headed back up to the car and spread out on the blanket. This thing had come down so quickly that I hadn’t even thought to throw in any towels and didn’t have any in the car, so we didn’t have a lot of choice but to just sit out in the warm breeze and the sun to dry off.

We hadn’t had any real difficulty keeping a conversation going all the way down to the beach from the track, mostly because we’d been talking about our recent races, and racing in general. But now, we were alone, and I think we both found it hard to say anything. "It’s not the same, is it, Mel?" she asked after a while.

"What?"

"Not the same as it was back at Fort Lauderdale, is it? Maybe it’s just the being with the gang, out on the road, but when we were at Fort Lauderdale a couple months ago I don’t think we were anywhere near as afraid of each other as we’ve seemed to be the last few days."

"Yeah, that’s true, I guess," I told her. "Back then, it was just us, even though there were other people around. Now, even though we might as well be on a desert island somewhere, we know the crew is right there, or at least will be right there in a couple of hours."

"That’s about the size of it, isn’t it?" she said. "I know when we were back at Fort Lauderdale we were holding back from each other, mostly because we both knew that you wouldn’t be there long. I know I hated like hell to see you leave, and wished that you could stay with me."

"I hated to leave," I told her, and explained how I’d almost turned back several times on the way up to Daytona Beach, and how hard it had been to make that drive.

"I wish you had," she sighed. "I almost felt as if we were on the verge of something when you left. As much as I hate to say it, I don’t feel that way now. I wish now I’d spent the winter with you close by, even if it had been up in Livonia."

"Couldn’t agree more," I said. "I thought any number of times that I ought to have just gone ahead and decided to spend the winter around where you were at. I don’t have a Florida teaching certificate but that wouldn’t have mattered for substitute teaching. But at least in Livonia I had the other guys to share expenses with, and I wouldn’t have had that in Florida. But I kicked myself for that decision any number of times."

"I suppose," she sighed. "As far as I was concerned it was a crappy, boring winter, except for the weather and the time you were down there. There were times that your letters were about the only thing that kept me going. I didn’t have much in the way of friends down there, and it got pretty damn lonely. About all I had to keep me going was the thought of getting back together with you and getting out on the road racing again. Now that we’re back together, well, I’m happy to not be there, but there isn’t the magic that I thought there’d be."

"I guess I feel pretty much the same way," I told her. "I think I’m holding back, afraid of doing something that I shouldn’t be doing, mostly to keep the guys on the crew from getting upset. I don’t know why I should feel that way. Hell, we went for a couple years having Hattie with us, and nobody ever resented Chick over it. I don’t think anyone resents Rocky for deciding to stay behind with Ariel. In fact, we’re pretty happy for him. She was something of a wild one, but she seems to have settled down with him."

"Yeah, I think I’m holding back, too," she sighed. "If it weren’t for all the time I spent in the Army in Korea with all those guys around I probably would feel differently. I mean, here we are, out in the middle of nowhere, not wearing much in the way of clothes. I can’t tell you why our hands aren’t all over each other, except that somehow it doesn’t feel right."

"I guess I pretty much agree," I sighed. "Don’t get me wrong, there’s not much more I’d like to do right now but to have my hands and my lips all over you, but it just doesn’t seem like the right thing for us to be doing right now."

"That’s it exactly," she nodded. "I don’t think I’d feel the same way if it was just you and me, not you and me and the MMSA. But right now, I don’t think there’s much else that we can do but do what we’re doing."

"Right," I agreed. "It sure makes the season seem just that much longer."

"Yeah," she sighed.

I leaned back and thought about it for a moment, trying to figure out what both of us were really saying. I guess I had been right to think that we were getting close to something back in Fort Lauderdale. It was clear to me that we weren’t going to get much closer to anything while the season went on, and as much for her reluctance as it was for mine. We were just going to have to pussyfoot around each other until the season was over with, and then maybe this time we’d find a place to winter over where we could be a little closer together. That wasn’t all as appealing as it sounded on the first thought; after all, I’d been getting progressively more uncomfortable with continuing to race when I should be settling down and finding a real job, most likely teaching some place.

At one time I’d considered leaving the crew when we got back to Livonia along in the summer and spending some time looking for a decent job. It was still an option; in fact, if I was planning on finding a regular teaching job for the coming winter I’d about have to do it. But it was clear to me, as well, that if I left the crew and left Arlene behind, it would probably be the end of that. Maybe by midsummer Arlene would be about to the point where she would be willing to leave the crew with me – after all, she would have been with us for a year by then, and maybe that would be enough for her to wash Korea out of her system. Or, it might not be, and who was to know until we got there?

I felt like I ought to put the conundrum to Arlene, and see what she thought about it, but I couldn’t find a way to bring it up in the way that I wanted to. "Maybe we can find some place we can stay together next winter," I suggested as a way to work around to my thoughts.

"Well, at least close to each other," she replied, sending the message to me pretty clearly that she wasn’t talking about living together, or even sharing space. "It doesn’t have to be Fort Lauderdale, either. It wouldn’t break my heart if it was someplace warm."

"Yeah, that flying white stuff gets old after a while," I said as a way of diverting the subject away from something that suggested having sex. "You’re a northern girl, you know what I mean. Every time it snowed up in Livonia last winter I couldn’t help but think of you down there in sunny Florida."

"The radio stations and the newspapers down in Florida like to spend a lot of time talking about how bad the weather is up north," she giggled. "I think they make it worse than it is. To hear them you’d think the glaciers are returning. I kept imagining how you must be freezing up in Michigan. In a way, I kind of missed it. Somehow the year wasn’t complete without the snow."

"I don’t know," I sighed. "I’m not a month past having snow on the ground and it doesn’t feel right to be looking forward to it again." I hunted around on the blanket for my pack of Luckies and my lighter, found it, and offered her a cigarette. She took one, and I lit both of them, then tried again to get around to the subject that was on my mind. "I’ll tell you what, I’ve been a substitute teacher for three winters now, and most of the time it’s been a pure pain in the fanny. I think I can enjoy teaching if I’m actually teaching something, but I’m not looking forward to another winter of babysitting in Livonia. More and more I think that it’s getting to be time for me to be getting a real job."

"Oh, come on," she grinned. "If you had a real job, what would you do when spring came around and it got to be time to go racing?"

"We talked about this before," I reminded her. "About the only thing I can think of is to turn my back on racing, and just get away from it. It might not be all that hard, since I don’t think I get the thrill out of it that I did a while ago. It just gets to seeming more and more like a job, and not a particularly good job at that."

"You’re right, it is a lousy job," she said. "But I’ll tell you this, it beats the hell out of an operating theatre in a tent in Korea, seeing men wounded and damaged for life and sometimes dying in your hands. And after last winter, I have to say that it’s still a lot more fun than being on a boring night shift in some quiet hospital. I may be a well-trained and experienced Registered Nurse, but right at the moment I don’t see if I’ll ever want to go back to nursing, except maybe as a temporary thing like last winter."

Without even getting near the question, that seemed to settle whether she’d be willing to leave the crew in the middle of the summer to stay around me while I looked for teaching work. And, from little things that had been said in the conversation, I also was beginning to wonder if there’d still be the chance to build some magic between us when the season ended. I still had the option of working out the season and then seeing if I could get something going, but whether I’d do it now was open to question.

Almost from the first that I met her it had seemed as if Arlene was a woman that I could love and could enjoy spending a life with, but right now the chances of that happening seemed awful far away.

Ace Wheeler was one of the guys new to us that spring. He was a handsome son of a gun, I’ll tell you that. He wasn’t any world beater as a driver but every now and then the run of the race would be such that he’d be around the front at the end of the race, but he wasn’t nearly as consistent about it as Buckshot, Dewey, Arlene or me. It was after the race where he was a champion – he was an even more serious pussy hound than Chick had been back in the old days, not that there were many of us who remembered Chick at his prime anymore.

Where Ace differed from Chick was that somehow he managed to pick out the best looking available woman in the group around the victory lane after the race, whether he’d won or not, and cut her out of the herd like a really good cow pony. He didn’t score every night, but he managed to leave a trail of broken hearts across the South as we worked our way along that spring.

I know darn well that Ace came onto Arlene a number of times because I was there when he did it. Coming onto women was about as automatic as breathing for him, and he didn’t like to take "no" for an answer. She always turned him down, but that didn’t keep him from trying again the next chance he got.

Not long after we left Corpus Christi, he came on to Arlene again, even harder than before. Once again, she turned him down, and she wasn’t as nice about it as she had been in the past. I knew that Frank and Spud were depending on me to keep peace among the drivers and his bothering Arlene had long since started to bother me, so after they had their little spat I got him off to the side. "Look, Ace," I told him. "When Arlene says ‘no,’ she means it. I know her well enough to know that if she was ever going to say yes she would have done it by now. All you’re accomplishing is to piss her off, piss me off, and piss off some of the others."

"She’s a woman," he sneered. "I don’t see what business it is of yours, anyway."

"I’ll tell you what business of mine it is," I told him. "I’ve been with this outfit for years, and mostly we have a happy crew that pulls together. Your getting people pissed off isn’t making for a happy crew. On top of that, you have to remember one thing – Frank and Spud may be short of drivers, but you are a lot more expendable than she is. You’re getting pretty goddamn close to having to hitchhike your way home. If you have to, don’t go through Mississippi or Georgia. They have chain gangs there."

"I’ll lay off her when I’m damn good and ready," he replied in a snotty tone. "She’ll put out for me sooner or later. They all do, they’re all just bitches."

I really didn’t intend to hit him but my right arm overruled me. I knocked him right flat on his ass with one punch. "Lay off her," I told him as he lay there on the ground. "Or next time I’ll kick the living shit out of you."

"You fucker," he said, picking himself up. "You fucking sucker punched me. There ain’t no man that fucking sucker punches me and walks away."

"You think you’re man enough to try me again, have away at it," I told him.

He got to his feet and scrambled right at me, which is a dumb move for a fighter since he left himself wide open. I guess I’d been paying attention to the Gillette Friday Night Fights up at the bar in Livonia the past couple winters, because I caught him right square on the chin. I can’t say he didn’t touch me but he didn’t hit me hard. He went down again, but came back up again, even more pissed off than he’d been before.

I can’t say it was much of a fight. He was pissed, and now he was a little dazed from being decked twice. He threw a couple more punches at me, which I blocked easily, then I nailed him again. This time he went down and he stayed down. I mean, not just sort of down, he stayed down.

I’d not much more than cold cocked him when I realized that I hadn’t really made the situation better. Oh, yeah, I’d put him in his place, but he was the kind that would have been laying for me every chance he got after that, and the best that could happen was that it would upset things on the crew. Right about then, there was no chance that both of us could remain on the crew. I suppose I could have gone to Frank and bitched about it, but right about then I was pissed off enough to take matters into my own hands.

He was still out cold when I got back with my car. I loaded him into the trunk – it wasn’t a big deal since he wasn’t a big guy, just one of those scrappy little guys that talk big. There was a railroad line not far away that had a siding with a water tank. In the steam days the trains had to stop pretty often to tank up on water since the old steam engines went through it pretty quickly, and as luck would have it there was an eastbound freight train stopped on the siding getting water. I had to drive on an access path alongside the tracks for a ways until I found a boxcar with an open door. It was a little hard to get him up that high, but I managed it in plenty of time to be able to drag him back from the door a ways. I was a little concerned for his safety and didn’t want some hobo to rob him, so I took his wallet for safekeeping, then got back on the ground and into my car just as the train was leaving.

I watched the train go, then drove back to the tourist court where we were staying. I headed right over to Frank and Spud’s trailer. "I hate to tell you this," I told them, "But we need another driver."

"Ace?" Frank grinned. "I heard you two had some words."

"Yeah, he wound up getting a Railway Express job," I smiled.

"Well, good," Frank said. "After that pissing match he and Arlene had tonight he was going to be history anyway."

"Good," I replied. "I wish I’d known that, I wouldn’t have had to pound the shit out of him."

"Just out of curiosity, which way did you send him?" Spud asked.

"East," I said. "Mississippi is out that way somewhere."

"You get his wallet?"

"Of course," I said, feeling just a little bit smug. "That’s how you’re supposed to do a Railway Express job, isn’t it?"

"Good," Spud smiled. "I wonder what the chances are that he’ll find the same yard bull that Dwight found."

"Hard to say," I shook my head. "Sure would be nice though, wouldn’t it?"

"Yeah, it would," Frank grinned. "Better give me his wallet, I’ll put it with his stuff to ship back to his home. Good going, Mel. I’ve sometimes wondered if you might not be a little too easy going for your own good. Now, I guess not."

Not much was said the next morning about Ace not being there, but the word had obviously gotten around. The reaction was a little bit strange, like people didn’t know what to think about what I’d done. Besides Frank and Spud and me, only three other guys on the crew had been around when we’d had our discussions with Dwight two years before, and that got me to thinking about how much had changed in the last couple years. I didn’t know a lot of the new guys the way I’d known the crew back then. We didn’t have anything like the close crew we’d had that summer, and I guess I was missing it a little bit.

We stopped and had breakfast on the road like we often did. As we were heading into the restaurant, Arlene held back a little so she could talk to me. "Thanks, Mel," she said. "He was getting to be a little bit of a pain in the ass, but I think I could have handled it."

"He was getting to be more of a pain in the ass for everybody, not just you," I told her. "I didn’t really want to do it, but it seemed like the best thing to do all around. Life on the road is hard enough as it is without someone trying to make it worse."

"I understand," she said. "That was just the kind of thing we had to watch out for back in the Army, and I guess I should have sat him down long ago and explained how things worked."

"Wouldn’t have done any good," I told her. "He was just a little too full of himself for his own good."

"Yeah, you’re right," she agreed. "I guess it can’t change anything, though."

If anything, it did. You might have thought that she was grateful to me for removing a pain in the ass from her life, and I guess she was, but I didn’t see her showing it. If anything, we were even less friendly than we had been before, and kept our distance. I still hadn’t made up my mind whether to leave the crew when we got back to Livonia to look for work teaching, but I was starting to lean that way more and more. It wasn’t so much that Livonia was a good place to leave the crew, but a good time – it left about the right amount of time to go looking for work some place. If I took off to look for a teaching job and for some reason I didn’t find one, it seemed likely that I could catch up with the crew and go racing again and only lose a few weeks. That might even allow me to salvage something with Arlene if there was anything left to salvage at the end of the season, which seemed less and less likely as time went on.

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