Telzey, Will, Chuck, and Ray stayed late at the track to get started on the trash pickup. There was no way they could finish it that evening, but Ray said they could finish it up after school on Monday so they didn’t have to get it done Sunday morning before loading up for the trip to the dirt track at Moonshine Valley.

The track proved to be something that Telzey had never seen before. She’d been to some big dirt tracks, although not very many, but this was about as small and primitive as she could have imagined. This was racing at its most basic level.

On the way to the track Ray explained about Moonshine Valley a little bit. It was actually a pretty old track, he said. Over thirty years before there had been a guy by the name of Lynn Punnett, who had raced around dirt tracks at various places, including the old Bradford dirt track. Punnett was a farmer who liked to race for fun and relaxation. While he liked the little dirt tracks that he raced around the area it was just a little bit irritating to have to wait for the weekend to run on them, especially if at that time there might be something on the farm that demanded more attention.

He’d happened to be thinking about that one day when he was out rabbit hunting in a part of his farm that was pretty cruddy. It was just about solid clay and wouldn’t grow much of anything but weeds and the odd juniper bush, and to top it off it was just a little bit too hilly to want to try to plow with the farm equipment of that day. There were a couple flattish spots, but they were too small to really be usable fields even back then.

As he wandered back across the boondocks with his shotgun on his shoulder, he came to a little valley that he’d been past a thousand times before without thinking about it. “You know,” he thought as he stood on top of the hill overlooking the valley, “a person might be able to put a track down there if he didn’t let it get too big.”

Forgetting about rabbit hunting, he stood back and looked the place over. It would need some grading, and there was a hill at the east end that sloped off sharply, putting a limit on how big the track could be. He headed on down the hill and walked around the line that he had in mind, trying to envision a little dirt track down there. It could be done, he realized, and it really wouldn’t be that big a deal.

Being a farmer, Lynn had access to some fairly healthy farm machinery, so it was mostly a matter of taking the time and burning the gas – which was then about thirty cents a gallon – to carve out a nice little track back in that fold of the hills. He called it “Moonshine Valley” mostly because of the old association between stock cars and the runners hauling ’shine out of the hills down south. The size of the track came out to about a fifth of a mile, with tight corners and nice straights. At first the track wasn’t a whole lot, just about two cars wide with a hump right at the start finish line, but as time went he widened the track and carved the hump down, using the dirt to build banking through the center of the turn three and four area.

Almost from the beginning Lynn would grab one of his cars when he felt he needed the stress relief, head back to the track and burn off the frustrations in a cloud of dust. It also proved handy as a place to tune up his race cars and get in some practice with them, all of which made him one of the stronger competitors on some of the old dirt short tracks that used to be in the area. Occasionally he would invite some of his racing friends over for a casual afternoon of roasting hot dogs, telling lies, and laid-back racing.

A couple incidents convinced Lynn and his friends that a little better barrier was needed around the track. One of those friends happened to run a junkyard, and had a huge pile of old tires that he had no use for. Since used tires are at best a bother and at worst a fire hazard, he was willing to donate any number for the cause. Lynn made several trips over to the junk yard with his farm wagons, coming back piled as high as he could with truck tires. Along with help from some of his friends, he stacked the tires around the outside of the track, and used his manure loader to fill them with dirt from his grading. Other than Lynn’s practice runs and tension relievers, the track was used only three or four times a year most years, and it was a lot of fun.

Eventually Lynn gave up racing due to ill health, but he still invited his friends over now and then for one of their casual afternoons. When Lynn had died a few years before, it looked like an enjoyable but little-known tradition was going to come to an end.

It would have, except for one of his friends, Ed Corrin. Ed owned and ran a huge auto parts store in South Bend, and had always envied Lynn’s little setup. Ed’s wife, Lorraine, had always wanted a quiet place in the country to spend the weekends, sort of an occasional hobby farm, and it didn’t take a great deal to put two and two together. Ed got together with Lynn’s widow and worked out a deal to split off the forty acres that included the track from the rest of the farm, which was up for sale. It was located well off the road, with only a narrow lane leading back to the track and the nice spot where Ed and Lorraine decided to build a modest but comfortable weekend cottage. Few people except the closest neighbors and some racers even knew the place was there.

Ed had continued the tradition of making improvements to the track. A steel guard rail now was behind the tire wall, and there was no way anything with the weight of a stock car could go fast enough to get through the barrier, which reached all the way around the track except for the entry and exit lane. A catch fence had been built along what passed for the front stretch, and a rough flagman’s tower had been built. There had never been any power back at the track, so there were no lights. There were no bleachers, no grandstands, but a lawn chair on top of the hill was more comfortable than any bleacher plank ever built and had a better view than most grandstands. There was no concession stand, but along the way a nice picnic shelter had been built and there was a gas grill that anyone was welcome to use.

These days, Moonshine Valley ran most Sunday afternoons, except for race weekends at Michigan International Speedway, where Ed and Lorraine liked to go watch the big cars run. There were sometimes as few as half a dozen cars that might show up, sometimes as many as thirty or more. Racers and their families all handled the scoring and flagging and other track duties; a Ford flatbed truck of uncertain vintage had been mounted with a tank scrounged up from somewhere to spray water to keep the dust down, and someone always volunteered to deal with that chore, too. Entry fees were kept minimal, mainly to help with the maintenance; there were no purses, although the last couple years someone had donated trophies for the big end-of-season special event that was becoming an annual tradition.

“This is the way that racing once was,” Ray told Telzey. “And to my mind, it’s the way a lot of it should still be.”

Because everything was so casual, there were few rules, and one of the rules missing was a minimum age, so this was the place Will had started racing three years before. There was a varying number of old six-cylinder rear-wheel-drive cars, mostly beat to near death, that still ran the track, and Ray had come up with an old Pontiac LeMans for Will to run in the years that he could only run there. Ray explained that the old rear-wheel-drive six class was dying, mostly because the cars were getting very hard to find, but the hole was starting to be filled with front-wheel-drive cars, with both four- and six-cylinder engines. “It’s all kind of ‘run what you brung and we’ll fit you in somewhere,’” Ray explained. “Someone might show up with one of those old sixes one week and find themselves running with a bunch of Pony Stocks, and the next week with Street Stocks.”

“This,” Telzey announced, “really sounds like fun.”

“Oh, it is,” Will grinned. “It’s about as different from Bradford as Bradford is from Michigan International. They are fairly tight about safety, but beyond that, it’s a blast.”

“One thing you need to remember,” Ray told her, “is that the way you drive a front-wheel-drive car on dirt is pretty much the way you drive it on pavement. In a rear-wheel-drive car you’ve got the tail hung out to power slide through the corner, but you don’t do that in a front wheel drive. You’re steering through the corner, not sliding through it, so it really won’t be that different for you. Maybe I’ll have to keep an eye open for an old Street Stock or something cheap to bring over here so sometime you can get an idea of how you really drive on dirt.”

“I’d like that,” she smiled.

“It’s way different,” Will added. “It looks scary as all get out but you really do have pretty good control. It’s part of what makes dirt track racing so much fun.”

*   *   *

They were on the early side for things to really be going strong yet, but there were already several cars there. The place was so casual that there was no separation of parking for the pits and the spectators, which were mostly racer families anyway. Ray found a spot fairly close to the track and parked his big crew cab, which had the two Pony Stocks loaded onto a single trailer. Chuck had originally thought about bringing the 15 car, but decided against it since he was just getting the setup about right for running on pavement, and there was no point in lousing it up by running on dirt and having to change back again.

They got the cars unloaded and spent some time talking with Ed, who proved to be a chatty sort, full of stories. Ray explained that this was Telzey’s first experience on dirt, and Ed told him to show her the track and give her a quick rundown. Ray did just that, he walked her around the track, explaining a lot of different things about how to run the car, then he got in Will’s 89 car and led Telzey for several laps around the track at increasing speed, giving her an idea of how to run it. It was quite a bit different than running on pavement, but Telzey picked it up quickly.

When they pulled off the track, they were not surprised to see the Kaufmann family, this time with just a single-car trailer and pickup rather than the big hauler trailer they usually used, this time with just Jack’s familiar 25 car. It turned out that Jack had a sister, Jill, who wasn’t into racing very much but liked to hang around with the family when they came to Moonshine Valley, so it was nice for Telzey to have another girl to talk to.

It turned out that one of Jill’s interests was in getting as much of a tan as she could; even when she climbed down from the pickup Telzey could see the neck strap of her bikini sticking out from under her camisole. It wasn’t long before she’d found a sunny spot out of the wind, which was on the cool side, and began to put the brilliant, blue-sky sunny day to use on one of several chaise lounges they’d brought in the pickup.

“Now, there’s an idea,” Telzey said. “There’s not going to be a lot happening for a while. I just wish I’d brought my bikini. I got a lot of sun wearing it out on the tractor yesterday, but I didn’t think to bring it today.”

“Oh, I have another one, if you’d like,” Jill offered. “I always try to bring a spare. After all, it’s not like they take up a lot of room.”

Telzey took Jill up on that. There was no good place to change so she had to make do with a rather smelly Porta-John. Before long she was spread out on another chaise lounge next to Jill, wearing a bikini that was rather more revealing than the one she’d worn on the tractor the day before. For some reason, both Jack and Will found a good reason to hang out in the shade of a nearby truck.

They were hanging out, talking about the kind of things teenagers talk about, when they saw another pickup pull in with two cars on a double trailer. “That’s Larissa Zoisite’s Pony Car, the 57,” Chuck commented. “So that’s about got to be Matt d’Lamater with her. That 20 car must be the dirt-track car he runs over at Meridian.” He got up to go check it out, while Will and Jack decided to stay right where they were to enjoy the scenery, not to say that Chuck would blame them.

It proved that Chuck was right – it was Matt and Larissa. Chuck helped them get parked, and then stood by to say hello. It turned out that Matt had brought Larissa to give her a taste of running dirt, just like Austins were doing with Telzey, and as long as they were going to go he figured he might as well bring the dirt car along. After all, racing was better than not racing and since this was a break weekend for NASCAR they couldn’t even sit home and watch TV to enjoy that part of it.

Although Matt wasn’t exactly Chuck’s favorite person, the two of them got along all right most of the time, especially considering that they weren’t running in the same class. Chuck thought that Matt was a pretty good racer, although with a tendency to be a loose cannon and take unnecessary chances, and to maybe run a little fast and loose with the rule book. But he really envied him having a girl like Larissa – not bad looking if no great beauty, pleasant, interested in racing to the point of trying it herself. It was a huge difference from the self-absorbed and stuck-up Ashley, to whom racing had been at best a pain in the butt that took him away from more important things like being on her arm. Ashley was in the past now, and although he missed having a girlfriend he was glad he didn’t have that one any longer.

Chuck didn’t know Larissa as well, but at least knew her well enough to say hello to her. They spent a few minutes talking about the race the night before and what it was like to run Meridian; Chuck said it would be fun to have a dirt car but right now he had his hands full with the 15 car. Maybe someday he’d have to think about building a Bomber or something, although it wasn’t likely to be soon. Matt said that as much as he liked running dirt he thought he might concentrate on pavement more in the future, and this was likely to be his last year in Pony Stocks unless something happened.

Before too long, Ed came wandering over. “Chuck, you’re not racing today, right?”

“Probably not,” he said. “I might see if I can borrow Will’s car for one of the dashes, but probably not. I haven’t let him drive my new car yet and he’s touchy about his own.”

“Well, in that case, how’d you like to do the flags in turn one?” Ed asked. “We can switch it around somehow if you do get to drive his car.”

“Sure, fine with me,” Chuck told him. “I’d just as soon be doing something useful.”

“Good,” Ed smiled. “I left the flags you need down by the flagman’s station. We’re going to be getting into hot laps pretty soon, you might want to think about heading down that way.”

“Sure thing,” Chuck replied, then turned to Matt and Larissa. “OK, good luck you two, and have fun.”

*   *   *

Telzey was lying on the chaise lounge in Jill’s bikini, letting the sun warm her well-lotioned skin, and getting to know the girl, talking about school and boyfriends and things like that, when Ray wandered up. He surveyed the scene in front of him, shook his head, and said, “Oh, to be fifteen again.”

“What’s that, Dad?” Will asked from the shade of the pickup not far away.

Ray caught himself and spoke up: “They’re going to be starting hot laps in about fifteen,” he grinned. “Will, you should probably run a few, and Telzey, you need what practice you can get. There’ll probably be two sessions for the Pony Stocks and any other small cars, one in about fifteen minutes, and then the other about an hour after that.”

“Well then, I guess I might as well get saddled up,” Telzey said. “Jill, save me a spot, I’ll be back soon.”

“You’re driving?” Jill asked in some surprise.

“Oh yeah,” Telzey grinned. “Lying in the sun is just one of my hobbies.”

“I guess that means we need to get set up too, Will,” Jack said. “But if I know my sister, she won’t have moved when we come back.”

Since Telzey knew she was only going to be on the track for a few laps, she didn’t bother changing out of the bikini and just pulled her fire suit on over it, pulled on driving shoes, then got in the 24 car and put on her helmet. A few minutes later she was out on the track with Jack, Will, and Larissa, driving about as hard as she had behind Ray a while earlier. From what she could make out of the first session, the guys were both faster than she was, which was to be expected as they had more experience. On the other hand, it seemed like she was quite a bit faster than Larissa, which was also to be expected. However, things could work out differently when they were racing, and she looked forward to trying her hand at it.

After about ten laps the checkered flag waved from the flag stand, and they headed back to park in the pits. Telzey got out of the car, peeled out of her driving outfit down to the bikini, and within minutes was back on the chaise lounge beside Jill. “You ran pretty good out there,” the brown-haired girl said.

“I feel like I’m still figuring it out,” Telzey admitted, then stopped for a moment. “You can’t see the track from here. Did you actually get up to watch it?”

“Oh, yeah, I got up and went over in front of the picnic shelter,” Jill smiled. “I seemed to get some attention when I went over there in just my bikini.”

“Yeah, no doubt,” Telzey grinned. “I wonder if Larissa brought one, too?”

*   *   *

The six-cylinder stocks were out on the track now, and Matt was getting into his Street Stock dirt-track car with Larissa looking on. “I think I’m going to slide down into turn one and see if I can see how you’re setting up your entry,” she commented as he pulled the helmet on.

“Honey, I done told you that you do it different in a front-wheel car,” he said.

“Yeah, but I want to see how you do it,” she protested. “There’s something there that I’m not getting.”

“Don’t get out from behind the catch fence,” he warned. “Them tires is solid there in turn one but I seen people climb up on ’em. Go down by where Chuck is standing with the flags, but don’t go no farther. I don’t think he’d let you do it anyways.”

“That ought to be all right, Matt,” she smiled. “I ought to be able to see what I want to see from there.” As he fired up the car and drove over to the lineup, she ambled over in the direction of the end of the catch fence. She wouldn’t need to go farther anyway, since what she really wanted to do was to talk to Chuck when Matt wasn’t able to overhear her.

The six-cylinder cars were still running their hot laps when she got over to Chuck. Dirt track cars often take a beating and these had been running at this track for many years, so they looked more beat-up than average. There was a kid in a red Camaro who was really pushing it into the corners, hanging the tail way out, and just flying. “Wow,” she said conversationally to Chuck, who was standing just beyond the catch fence with a yellow flag in his hand. “He’s really moving that thing, isn’t he?”

“Darn tootin’,” Chuck laughed, his voice in nearly a yell to carry over the unmuffled roar of the six-bangers. “You have to wonder what kind of a wuss would have bought a new six-cylinder Camaro in the first place, but that kid’s making good use of it. I’ll bet that thing is at least twice as old as he is.”

She didn’t answer, but just stood and watched for a couple laps – the noise was a little bit too much to try to talk over, anyway. She glanced up as the red Camaro came around again, the kid really on it, throwing dirt all over the place. There was no telling how he’d goofed up, but suddenly his controlled power slide became an uncontrolled spin; the car swapped ends, slid up the track, and bounced off the tire barrier. Chuck pulled out the yellow flag and started waving it, and the tower and the flagman on the far corner of the track joined in. The other three cars making fast laps slowed to a crawl, and the noise settled down to where they could almost hear the cuss words coming from behind the window net of the red car. The car sat there quietly for a moment, then the kid got it started again, stomped the throttle, and spun violently around and headed back on the track. The rear end of the Camaro did not seem much the worse for wear, not that it would have been easy to tell as battered as the car was in the first place.

“Boy,” Chuck shook his head, “they sure don’t build them like they used to, do they?”

“I guess not,” Larissa said from a few feet to one side and behind him. She glanced around; there was no one else close by. “Hey, Chuck,” she said, her voice a little lower, “you got a second?”

“Yeah, sure,” the tall, lanky teenager said as he took a step or two back towards her, still lackadaisically waving the yellow flag at the circling cars.

“Didn’t you used to go out with a tall blonde girl that hung around in the pits at Bradford? Long blonde hair, short skirts, a long nose, acts like she’s got money?”

“Yeah, Ashley Hitchcock,” he replied, glancing back over his shoulder for a moment at Larissa. “No more, thank goodness. Not only was she a pain in the butt, she was trouble on two feet.”

“I thought that was her,” Larissa said. “You know she’s still hanging around the pits in Bradford?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen her there the last couple weeks,” he replied. “I don’t see much of her now, and we haven’t said anything to each other. She really wasn’t all that much on racing, so I’ve wondered what she’s doing there.

“Well, me too because she’s been coming on to Matt awful hard.”

“Tell Matt to stay the hell away from her if he knows what’s good for him,” Chuck said flatly. “If she’s coming on to him she wants something from him.”

“You got any idea what she would want?”

“No idea,” Chuck replied slowly. “We broke up right after that Powder Puff race back at the season opener. She tried to spin my little brother’s girlfriend and totaled my old Street Stock in the process, then flew off the handle when I wouldn’t agree that Telzey had laid a bumper on her. There was no way, you can look at the video and see that Telzey never got anywhere near her.”

“Telzey, that’s the girl that’s been driving the 24 car? That dark-haired kid in the blue string bikini that she’s just about busting out of?”

“Yeah, she’s the one. Good kid. She and my little brother have been hanging out a lot, and I can’t blame him one bit.”

Larissa shook her head. “Well, I can see why,” she laughed. “But that doesn’t answer why that Ashley girl would be hitting on Matt every time she sees him.”

“No idea,” Chuck replied as the flagman at the start-finish line waved the yellow and white flags together: one to go. “I never figured her out. I’m just glad I don’t have to try any more. I can tell you that Ashley wants what she wants, and she gets into a real hissy fit if she doesn’t get it right now.”

“I get that impression,” Larissa said. “Especially the way she was nosing around Matt last night. The thing I can’t figure out, and I’m not putting Matt down to say it, but what would a girl like her want with a guy like him? I mean, I like the guy and even I know he’s no real prize.”

“Like I said, I never figured her out,” Chuck admitted as the last of the cars passed and he lowered the yellow flag. “For that matter, I never figured out what she saw in me. I’m no football player, and I was always under the impression that she only got interested in guys she could cheer for. About all I can say is that she wants Matt for something and she’s the only one that knows why, if she even does.”

“What do you mean, ‘if she even does?’”

“If I learned anything from her, I learned that she doesn’t have to make sense.” He turned and smiled at her. “I mean, she’s a woman after all. What guy could ever figure out what a woman wants?”

“That’s pretty cynical,” she laughed. “True, but cynical.” She glanced toward the flag stand, where the flagman was waving the green flag. The noise from the unmuffled engines increased to a roar, and she realized it wasn’t a good time for talking.

The cars rushed past with a rumble that she felt as much as she heard. They weren’t racing, just driving hard, but she noticed that the kid in the red Camaro was pushing his car just about as hard as he had when he’d spun, so whether he’d learned anything was open to question. For that matter, she realized whether or not she’d learned anything was open to question, too.

Chuck really hadn’t been any help with her problem. She had little doubt that this Ashley chick had the hots for her Matt, or at least acted like it. She couldn’t believe that a chick like her would get all hot and bothered with a guy like Matt, so there had to be something else that she wanted, and wanted to use him to get it. That was really the only answer to the question, and she’d been pretty sure of it even before she talked to Chuck. If he’d had some hint of what she wanted, then there might have been something she could do, but there was nothing that she could see.

Without that knowledge, it just didn’t seem like there was much of a way that she could be stopped. She’d get through to Matt sooner or later – the way Ashley had been pushing herself on him just about guaranteed it. And where would that leave her? Out in the cold, that was where. There wasn’t much in the way of defense that she could put up against a hot blonde cheerleader type like Ashley, and she didn’t think Matt would try all that hard to resist her charms.

She was aware that Matt wasn’t all that great a catch, but she did like the guy, although their future seemed limited. He was probably pretty much destined to be a garage mechanic who raced some, and might even get part of the way up the ladder to the big cars and the big bucks, but she just didn’t see him being a Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt, either. It seemed more likely that his future was going to involve a lot of oil changes and brake jobs. She, on the other hand, wanted a future that didn’t involve being on her feet all the time, and most especially not running some machine or even worse, a grill in a fast-food joint. That meant going to college, and even though she’d be the first person in her family if she managed that, she intended to do it. She was still undecided among several careers. She was inclined a little toward nursing, but that seemed to involve a lot of time on her feet, too, so the jury was still out on that. The only way Matt was ever going to get on a college campus was to drive a tow truck there to pick up someone’s dead car. For a long time she’d figured that the two of them could somehow overcome that difference, but it was going to involve a commitment to her, too. If he was going to go chasing off after some blonde slut who liked to give panty shots in a short skirt, it seemed to imply that his willingness to make a commitment was limited. If that was the case, then her willingness was limited, too.

About the only thing she could see to do was to lay down the law about this Ashley Hitchcock bitch, then see what happened. It would be Matt’s decision.

But if things went the way she feared they were going, there was another problem lying out there. In hanging out with Matt as much as she had over the last couple years, she’d come to like racing. She liked the people, and she liked the thrill of the fast driving. True, she hadn’t been doing it very long but she liked what she’d done of it and wasn’t ready to quit yet. But virtually everything she’d done in racing had come with Matt’s assistance. If it blew up between the two of them, wasn’t that going to mean that she was a girl with a race car and no way to run it? True, she had the car, but not the tools, the trailer, the hauler, and, for that matter, the skills and experience it took to even be able to run on a local scale.

On the other hand, she thought, that might not be that big a problem. There were a lot of guys with what she needed who were looking for girls they could share those things with – and not a lot of girls who cared. She glanced up at Chuck and smiled inwardly. In fact, if things went bad with Matt, she had a candidate right now . . .

*   *   *

It was a fun day for Telzey. Not only did she get a lot of time in on her tan, she also got more time in her race car than she’d expected. Unlike Bradford, where they qualified, ran a heat, and then ran a feature, the idea here was to keep things going for the course of the afternoon. With only a handful of cars present, that meant that there were several times that afternoon when she got up off the chaise lounge, pulled the fire suit on over her borrowed bikini, and went out to race a few laps. They didn’t even do formal qualifying sessions, since there was no timing capability, but the four Pony Stocks ran two heats apiece, then a couple of dashes, along with a feature. The six bangers and the Street Stocks did the same. There was even a handful of 270 cc Micro-Sprints on vacation from the local go-kart track that got into the action.

Even with just the four cars there, Telzey didn’t win anything, but she came in second twice, once to Jack in a dash, and once to Will in a heat race that she had seemed to have in the bag until the final corner. Since the starting orders, except for the features were by draw, she could start anywhere and she started in every possible one of the four available spots. Larissa didn’t win anything either, but came in second in a dash behind Jack, who had to battle his way around Will to be able to get at her.

When the racing got under way, she and Jill moved their chaise lounges from the windbreak between the pickup trucks out onto the hill overlooking the track, where they could watch all the racing action while they worked on their tans. As it turned out, they weren’t the only women there who were taking advantage of the warm afternoon to do the same thing.

Eventually the sun got low enough in the sky that the day cooled down so that, when she came off the track after the feature, Telzey headed back to the stinky Porta-John and pulled her jeans and camisole back on. She’d had enough sun to hold her by then, anyway. There was still some racing to go, and the chaise lounges still made for a great viewpoint.

When the racing finally came to an end, things weren’t over with yet. The cars were all loaded back on their trailers and haulers except for a few that were kept permanently at the track, and someone fired up the grill and started roasting hot dogs. Cans of beer appeared from coolers in various trucks, and although Telzey and Will didn’t participate in that they enjoyed the atmosphere anyway. The summer evenings were getting long now, and the sun still wasn’t down when the four of them got aboard Ray’s pickup and began the haul back to Bradford.

“You were right,” she told Will as they snuggled together in the back seat on the way back, all sweaty and dirty from the flying dirt that couldn’t be avoided. “That was a lot of fun. I wouldn’t mind doing that again.”

“Including the bikini?” he asked with a grin. “Watching you may have been the best part of the afternoon.”

“I enjoyed that, too,” she laughed. “It is fun to be the center of attention. Maybe next time I’ll have to bring one that Susan has. It would make Jill’s look like something your grandmother would wear.”

“You know,” Chuck piped up from the front seat, “the part I missed was being able to get out there on the track. It was hard letting you guys have all the fun.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that,” Ray agreed. “It’d be fun to have one of those old six-cylinder beaters to just run there. We could even just leave the car there and not have to mess with hauling it back and forth unless it needed work or something. And it would give Telzey a chance to run dirt the right way.”

“I thought about that, too,” Chuck said. “Maybe it would be worth the trouble to head out to the junk yard some time and see if there are any likely candidates sitting around.”

“Oh, there’s bound to be,” Ray agreed. “The Pontiac that Will used to run was perfect for that kind of thing. I think I’d want to look for something on the lightweight side. There’s been enough of them built over the years that there’s bound to be something even though they’re getting scarce. The only problem is that I just don’t have enough time to deal with another car. If you kids would like to build the car, I’ll put up some front money for it, assuming I get to drive it once in a while.”

“Works for me,” Chuck said. “School is going to be out before long, that’ll free things up some for me.”

“Don’t forget that you’re going to be working for me in the shop this summer,” Ray reminded him.

“It still frees things up for me,” Chuck shrugged. “I won’t have homework or that kind of thing. Will and Telzey are going to have more time on their hands. They could do a lot of the simpler stuff like gutting the car.”

“You know, that’s a good idea,” Ray smiled. “It would give her a little hands-on experience with building a car. There’s lots of things she could learn.”

“Sure,” Telzey said. “Fine with me. I don’t have a lot to do this summer but hang out with Will, and maybe Kayla and Rachel a little. I think it would be fun to drive a real dirt car. I was thinking about that when I was watching the Micro-Sprints. That’d be a neat way to get a feeling for what it must have been like to drive the MMSA cars, but from what I could find out at the hot dog roast, they’re pretty expensive.”

“Count me in,” Will agreed. “I’ve missed being able to run a real dirt car. It’d be fun to do it once in a while. The only thing I can think is if we’re going to buy an old beater like that, maybe we ought to see if we could buy two that are pretty close to alike so we could rob one for spare parts.”

“We could head out to the junkyard after school tomorrow,” Chuck suggested. “I think Mike would be willing to let us poke around out there. We might have to buy two cars, one with a bad body and one with a bad engine, then play mix and match.”

“Don’t forget, you’ve got to finish picking up the track after school tomorrow,” Ray pointed out.

“We can do that after supper, as light as it’s staying,” Chuck replied. “I think Mike closes the junk yard at five, so it would give us an hour or a little longer to see what he’s got.”

“Maybe we should take a truck and a trailer,” Will suggested.

“Yeah, but maybe not,” Chuck said. “There’s no guarantee we’re going to find what we want at Mike’s, and besides, if we show up with a truck and trailer it’ll look like we’re anxious to buy something and he’ll keep the price up on us. And, maybe while we’re at it, we ought to strip the 86 of anything left that could be useful and haul the hulk out there. I don’t know that Mike would give us anything on it, but he might not charge us to get rid of it, and that way we’d have it out from under foot.”

“Another race car,” Ray sighed. “Chuck, Will, sometimes I wonder how your mother puts up with us.”