Into each life some rain must fall.

It didn’t actually rain the next day, but it looked threatening when Chuck, Will, and Telzey went out to the junk yard looking for possible cars. Over the course of Sunday evening and a little at school Monday, the two did some research, and had some idea of what they were looking for. Chuck leaned rather firmly toward a Chevy Monza or Pontiac Sunbird – which were essentially the same thing – while Will leaned toward a Dodge Aspen or Plymouth Volare. Once they explained to Mike what they were looking for, Mike said he didn’t have any of those, but he did have several Ford Mavericks sitting out in back. None of them would serve the purpose by themselves, but he thought that there was a body that wasn’t too bad on one and an engine in a wreck that he thought ought to be pretty decent. The kids hopped into the back of Mike’s pickup so he could take them out back to look at them. A little looking them over led Chuck and Will to the opinion that they would do – they weren’t trying to win the NASCAR points championship with this car, just have something that was fun to go out and play around with. Telzey said she’d be willing to go along with what they decided since she didn’t know enough to have an opinion.

By the time the dealing was done it was getting close to quitting time for Mike, so the kids agreed to come back the next day with a trailer to pick up the junkers they’d picked out. The three of them headed home, had a quick supper, and headed out to the track to finish with the trash pickup job they’d started Saturday night.

The next day dawned windy, cloudy, and cold, although still dry. Chuck and Will knew that rain was coming, but they didn’t get that lucky. It was raining heavily when they got out of school, and they got pretty well soaked just getting out to Chuck’s car. “It’s probably not worth the effort to go out there now,” Chuck said. “We’d just sink out of sight with the truck and trailer with two cars, four wheel drive or no four wheel drive.”

“We probably ought to at least call out there to let him know we’re not coming,” Will suggested. “We wouldn’t want him to get all upset with us that we’d made a deal and didn’t show up.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Chuck agreed. “Let’s go home and get some dry clothes, and I’ll give him a call.”

Telzey got even wetter as she crossed the yard to her house, but was just as glad that they weren’t going to get the cars, since it would be a real mess out there. She was just pulling off her soaking wet top when the phone rang. Susan picked up the phone and called out, “Telzey, it’s for you.”

It proved to be Will. “Chuck just called out there,” he said. “Mike went out with his tow truck and hauled both the cars up to the front when he realized it was going to rain. He said we can go out there and pick them up now if we want. Chuck and I are going, do you want to come along?”

“But Will!” she protested. “It’s raining like mad, and I’m already soaked.”

“Shouldn’t matter,” he shrugged. “Since you’re already soaked, you’re not going to get much wetter if we go get them.”

“Oh, I suppose,” she sighed. “I’ll be over in a couple minutes.”

Rather than put the wet top back on, she put on one of her baggy sweatshirts, so at least she’d be a little dry for a few minutes. It kept her dry almost all the way across the yard to the Austin house, but she was still pretty wet when she got in Chuck’s car for the ride out to the track to get Ray’s truck and trailer.

As it turned out Ray was gone somewhere, so they had to get one of the track trucks and the double trailer they’d used to haul the Pony Stocks to Moonshine Valley on Sunday. Any drying they may have done got wiped out in all the switching around. Chuck had the heater going full bore on the run out to the junkyard, but it didn’t gain a lot of ground on their wet clothes. “I don’t know why we’re doing this,” Chuck muttered. “It’s not going to hurt those cars to sit outside for another day or two. They’ve probably sat outside all winter for years.”

“We’re doing it because we’re all anxious to get to work on them,” Will grinned. “It’ll be something we can do inside for the next few days. From what I heard about the weather report, it may be like this all week. We may even get rained out Saturday night.”

“Bound to happen sometime, I guess,” Chuck grunted.

Sure enough, Mike had hauled the two cars up to the more or less paved parking area at the front of the place. In the rain the cars looked even more beat up than they’d seemed yesterday. Of course, neither of them ran and the trailer didn’t have a winch. That didn’t slow the junkyard owner down much – he pulled on a raincoat, fired up a fork lift, and had both the cars loaded on the trailer while the kids were still wondering how to do it. That only kept them slightly dryer since they still had to tie the cars down on the trailer, and anything that had stayed dry until then was totally soaked by the time they finished.

They headed inside, paid Mike the agreed price, and thanked him for hauling the cars up front. He said he wouldn’t send any similar models to the crusher for a while in case they needed other spare parts, and they thanked him for that, too.

Back in the truck Telzey wasn’t any less soaked than the other two. “Good grief, I should have worn a swimsuit, or even gone nude,” she complained.

“You’ve got a point,” Will laughed.

“You would say that,” she snorted. “I saw who was making big eyes at me when I was wearing that bikini Sunday.”

“Yeah, Jack had his tongue hanging out, that’s for sure,” Will laughed. “Of course, I thought you did a pretty good job of filling it out, too. Along with every other guy there, that is.”

After some discussion, they decided to head straight out to the shop so they could park the truck with the trailer and cars inside, then head home to get on dry clothes and have some supper. “We’ll have to come back out tonight and figure out how to get the cars off the trailer so they’re not in the way,” Chuck warned.

“Yeah, I guess we better, or Dad and Grandpa are going to be less than happy with us,” Will agreed. “I don’t know that we can get a lot done tonight, but maybe we can at least figure out what we have to do.”

“Yeah, then maybe we’d better figure out how we can get from home into the car and from the car into the shop without getting soaked,” Telzey said.

“There is that bikini option,” Will laughed. “You could put some dry clothes into a plastic bag or something.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a raincoat or something around your place,” Chuck suggested. “I know we’ve got some ponchos, but driving a car in them is just about as bad as being wet in the first place.”

They were all in better moods a couple hours later, having had supper and wearing dry clothes while the rain beat down outside the shop. Telzey actually gave some thought to the idea of wearing a bikini for the trip but decided she didn’t like the feeling of the cold rain beating down on her. Fortunately, she was able to borrow a raincoat that was several sizes too large for her from her grandfather, but it did the job for the short time it was needed.

Unloading the cars proved to be a little simpler than they’d first thought. Ray made some suggestions about how to use an overhead winch and some dollies that were sitting in the shop, but it still took a while, some jacks, and some occasional bad language to get the more battered car onto the floor. The other car came more easily, since it wasn’t bent up as bad, and one tire still had air in it. With some messing around and liberal use of the air hose they were able to get the other three tires blown up well enough to roll the car off the trailer on its own wheels. Finally, they had one car sitting in the back room and the other one in the stall that they usually used for working on race cars.

“Boy, I sure hope we can get at least one of these engines to run,” Will said. “I suspect it’s going to take some work.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be this one,” Chuck said, once he got the hood up and looked things over. “There’s an obvious hole in the side of the block.”

“Well, maybe there are some usable parts or something,” Will said hopefully.

“Whether we can or not, this engine is going to have to come out of there,” Chuck observed. “What do you say we yank this one out, then the engine out of the other one, and I can get the other one up on a stand and go through it, while you guys gut this one?”

“What do you say we don’t?” Telzey shook her head. “I’d kind of like to see what working on an engine is like. How about if all three of us work together?”

“Might as well,” Chuck conceded. “I was just trying to get things done a little quicker, but from what Dad said about the weather report it’s not like it’s going to be dry enough to run this weekend, so I guess we’ve got the time.”

“We probably couldn’t get done in time to run this weekend anyway,” Will shrugged. “But I’ll go along with getting the mill out of here, it’ll give us some room to work on other stuff. One question: this thing has an automatic, and the other one has a four-speed. Do we want to stay with the slushbox or go with the stick shift?”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Chuck said. “No telling what rear end is in either of these things, so going to the four speed would give us a little better gear choice. It’s not like we’re going to be changing gears anyway. Telzey, have you ever driven a stick?”

“Except for the tractor, no, and I’m not sure that counts.”

“Might as well go with the stick, then,” Chuck smiled. “This’ll give you something to learn on. I suppose the first thing is to get the hood off this thing. Will, why don’t you roll a tool chest over here so we can get started?”

*   *   *

Despite their hopes, the weatherman turned out to be right. There were some breaks every now and then for the next several days, but mostly the low hung right over Michigan and dumped rain for the rest of the week. Ray got up on Saturday morning, saw that the forecast called for rain all day, and started making the calls necessary to cancel the racing for that evening. Chuck, Will, and Telzey took advantage of the rare opportunity to sleep in on a Saturday, but still they were out at the shop by ten in the morning to work on the dirt-track car.

They were coming along on it, maybe not as well as they’d hoped, but were making progress. They didn’t get the engine and transmission out of the car the first night, but they were almost there and with Ray’s help and an engine hoist had it out the first thing the next evening.

With that done, they turned to stripping the car of anything they could remove. All the interior was pulled out and stacked in a pile to go to the dumpster when it was a little dryer. All the glass was removed, including the windshield. The dashboard was taken out completely – it was a lot of weight and none of the wiring behind it would be needed. Many other things came out and went into the dumpster pile. By Thursday night they had the car pretty well gutted, although there was still a lot to do.

On Friday they started to pull the engine out of the other car. It had been wrecked from behind and was a mess in the back end, but they rolled the race car to the other side and hauled the wreck out to the shop bay on a dolly and began the process of taking the engine and transmission out of it. This went a little more quickly, partly because they knew what they were doing, and partly because Chuck was a little more willing to use a cutting torch to get at areas that had to be worked on. After some discussion, they agreed to go ahead and tear down the engine from the wreck while it could be easily worked on. They wanted to get the new engine installed in the race car before they did the final work on the car, mostly because changing the car from an automatic to a stick would be more easily done without a roll cage in the way.

So they spent Saturday tearing the engine down and rebuilding it with new rings, bearings, and gaskets. Fortunately the engine was the common Ford 250-cubic-inch inline six cylinder, which had been made until just recently, so parts were still readily available. Ray helped them with the engine, but he let Telzey do a lot of the work so she’d have some idea of what was going on. “I just hope it’s going to run,” she commented at one point.

“No reason it shouldn’t, at least from this end,” Ray told her. “We’ll do a carburetor rebuild on it and put in new points, plugs, and wires. If it doesn’t run then, it’ll be because of something on the outside that we can get to.” He went on to explain to Telzey that there were a number of things on this engine that just weren’t done any more. It was rare to see a carburetor in a car these days, since most new cars had electronic fuel injection and electronic ignition controlled by a computer, but this one was old enough that it didn’t have any of those things. In some respects the new engines were better and more efficient, but they were a lot harder to work on without the test equipment that the electronic systems demanded.

With the four of them working on it, they were ready to install the engine in the race car by Saturday night. That went slowly, mostly because of the need to change the car over to running with a clutch and manual transmission, but parts from the wreck served in the process. The Winston, NASCAR’s all-star race, was that evening and they had it on TV in the background, but they didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. Jimmy Johnson won, but they barely noticed, because by then, curiosity had the best of them. They rigged up a temporary fuel line and battery to see if the engine would run. It did, a bit raggedly, but a tune-up didn’t have to be done right at that moment.

The process would have taken longer and been more expensive if they hadn’t had both the wreck and the remnants of the 86 car at hand. The 86 still had its roll cage in it, but not for long – on Sunday, Ray taught Telzey a little about how to use a cutting torch to remove the top of the wrecked racer, to be able to get the roll cage out more easily. More work with the cutting torch was needed to cut it into pieces that would go through the open doors of the Maverick, and there also had to be some cutting down to make it fit in the smaller car.

Because there were fresh welds and other bare metal in the car, and it was going to spend most of its time sitting outside under a tarp, they decided to paint the whole interior with primer before getting serious about fitting it out. They did that, and went on to work on other things before knocking off early for the day.

“I’ve got kind of a stupid question,” Telzey said at one point. “But what number are we going to put on this thing?”

“I’d almost suggest 86 again,” Chuck said. “Except I’m convinced that Ashley jinxed the number for me, so I’d be open to suggestions.”

They thought briefly about adding up the numbers of their four pavement cars and thought that might work well until someone made the suggestion that they put the number “4” on it, because of the four of them being involved and trading off on the driving. “That’s Jim’s Sportsman number,” Chuck pointed out. “But I don’t think he’d mind if we used it on a dirt car.”

“Let’s just paint it on, but try to do it neatly,” Ray suggested. “There’s no point in putting out the money for a fancy sign.”

The 86 car contributed quite bit more to the Maverick. Among them were the switches and gauges, the removable steering wheel, the seat, which bolted right up to the holes in the roll cage that had been there in the old car, and the fuel cell and fuel lines, battery box and cables to put it in the trunk. Even the Lexan windshield was taken off of the old Chevy, trimmed a bit, and put on the Maverick. A few other things were removed and saved to possibly be used on another race car or sold to another racer, and by the time they were done there was little left of Chuck’s old car except for a battered hulk and a pile only good as scrap metal.

The rain finally quit early in the week, and they had to devote some time to getting the grass mowed around the track. They knew it would grow furiously in the next few days, as wet as it was, but it had to be done or it would be that much more trouble to mow on Saturday and have looking good. But, they had the Maverick more or less ready to go by Thursday evening. Ray even flipped on the track lights briefly so they could go out and take a few laps with it, to make sure everything was working all right. It laid down some surprisingly good lap times for the first time out. “You know, it’s almost embarrassing,” Chuck commented after ripping off a 19.44 in his first time in the car. “But this thing would almost be competitive as a Street Stock. It doesn’t have the guts coming out of the corner, but it’s enough lighter that it gets through the corner real well.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Ray laughed. “This is supposed to be a dirt car, after all. Besides, you’ve still got your hands full with the 15.”

“I suppose,” Chuck grinned. “I was just thinking about how much it would torque some people off to get blown off by a Ford Maverick when they’ve invested so much money in their Metric Chevys.”

“Yeah, that might be fun,” Ray agreed. “But since it’s way below the weight limit for a Street Stock, if it’s got to be done I’d just as soon we didn’t do it here. I don’t need the controversy. How about if we haul it up to M-50 tomorrow night and you could try it out? This thing would drop right straight into their Pure Stock class except for it being so light, and I’ll bet we could get a one-night waiver on it.”

“Sure, it’d be fun,” Chuck grinned. “And besides, it’d give us the chance to shake the bugs out a little before we haul it over to Moonshine Valley.”

Will had a question: “If we’re going to M-50 tomorrow night, how about if we take the Ponies, too? Telzey and I have wanted to run Friday nights, school is almost out now, we’ve only got tests next week and we’ve got grades high enough that we don’t have to take most of them.”

“And besides,” Telzey added, “it is a three-day weekend.”

“Might as well,” Ray shrugged. “Let’s get loaded tonight, though. We’ll have to yank the 15 car off the big trailer and replace it with this.”

As soon as school was out the next day, Chuck drove Will and Telzey over to the shop, where one of the track trucks was already hooked up to the open trailer with the two Pony Stocks loaded on board. They had loaded most of what they thought they’d need onto the trucks the night before, and it was mostly a case of having to move themselves from his car to the truck before the caravan was on the road.

M-50 Speedway had an active Pony Stock class. Ray had actually lifted his Pony Stock rules directly from them; it encouraged some of the M-50 people to come down to Bradford on Saturday nights rather than hauling to Calhoun County Speedway, which had similar rules. There was little trouble in getting tech approval on the two Pony Stocks, even though they hadn’t raced there this season. Some people who saw the 24 car remembered it from when Dean Sprinkle had it and had been a tough competitor with it there.

The 4 car caused a little head scratching, though. As Ray had said, it was a good twelve hundred pounds lighter than the Pure Stocks that ran there, and despite its smaller engine it could be expected to run like stink. Ray explained that it was actually a dirt car and they just wanted to give it a workout, and they were eventually allowed to race it, as long as they didn’t want any of the points or the purse. “We’ve been kicking around the idea of a six-cylinder front-wheel-drive class,” the tech guy explained. “We think they’d come close to running with the Pure Stocks, but this thing still wouldn’t even be legal.”

With just a little practice, Chuck got the 4 car well down into the eighteen-second bracket for qualifying; in fact, he was the fastest qualifier in the class. M-50 ran their races a little different than Bradford; they only inverted the top six cars, rather than the whole field, and that meant that Chuck started his heat on the outside of the third row. He soon realized that he wasn’t going to be passing anyone coming out of the corners, but if he could get under them they were toast. He won the eight-lap heat easily, and a while later won the feature by half a lap, his first actual wins of the season. “Too darn bad it’d be a super cheater for here,” he commented afterwards.

Will and Telzey didn’t do as well among the Pony Stocks, at least partly because there were several other good cars around, some of which they’d raced against at Bradford. Alan Gustafson was there in his 12 car, Jack Kaufmann in his 25, and Brad Jerabek in his 29, all of which they faced regularly at Bradford.

Jerabek hadn’t been running strong all season, which was a little strange since he’d been a front-line competitor the year before, and no one, especially him, was quite sure why things had gone downhill for him. He’d gone to a different set of tires from last year and thought it might be part of the problem, but when he changed back to last year’s tires it didn’t help – if anything, it was worse. He was starting to get frustrated at not being able to track the problem down. Sometimes things just didn’t have to make sense.

Telzey’s 24 car must have had some kind of affinity for the track, like Jerabek’s didn’t. She qualified fifth, which put her on the front row of her heat, she managed to get out front and stay there for the full eight laps, despite a serious battle with Jack Kaufmann in his 25. All those lessons she’d had from Joe Wolsley about keeping people from passing seemed to pay off, because despite a desperate attempt at the finish line she finished maybe half a length ahead of Jack. It was her first real win of the season, not counting the Powder Puff victory six weeks before, and it got her picture taken in the winner’s circle, a picture she was going to be proud to send to her folks.

Will finished fourth in his heat, the next one that ran. With those kinds of heat finishes they had some hopes to do well in the feature, but all Telzey could manage was fifth, with Jack in second, Alan in third, and Will in sixth, mostly from being shuffled back in a knot of cars rather than the car not running well. He figured it was just bad racing luck. One of the M-50 regulars they didn’t know won the feature.

Ray had some trouble in his Modified heat since the car just wouldn’t handle worth a hill of beans, but when he got back to the pits he found a tire low, for no reason that he could see. He changed the tire, and hoped for the best in the feature. It turned out notably better – he finished second, although the winner ran away from the field early in the race and there was no catching him.

All in all it wasn’t a bad evening, and it was a happy crew who pointed their trucks and trailers south toward Bradford after everything wrapped up.

*   *   *

It had been two weeks since they’d run at Bradford and it seemed longer than that, since so much had happened in the interim.

Even though they’d mowed the grass earlier in the week, with all the rain over the previous few days it was looking shaggy by Saturday morning, so there was no real choice but to get up early after being up late the night before and to start mowing again. The day proposed to be warm, so Telzey decided to put on her bikini under her jeans and T-shirt, and work on her tan once it warmed up a bit. After the time she’d put into it two weeks ago, the rainy weather had caused it to fade a bit, so a lot of the lying out in the sun had been wasted even though she had enjoyed it. By ten in the morning it was warm enough for bare skin, so she took advantage of it. School was almost out and she tanned well, so this summer she planned on getting a really good one.

What with the short night Telzey was exhausted, tan or no tan, by the time she wrapped up her part of mowing the lawn at noon. When Ray came by to invite them all down to the Chicago Inn for lunch, she begged off and had him take her home instead. There she asked Susan to take her back out to the track at four, then went up to her room and collapsed on her bed. A good three hours of quality sleep later, she felt much refreshed and ready to race that evening.

Being a Bradford kid, Susan had been out to the track for races a handful of times over the years; it was a common date for some Bradford kids, who had to go to Hawthorne to see a movie. Even so, it had been several years since Susan had been there, and she had yet to see Telzey race. So this evening, with nothing pressing, she decided to stay at the track when she delivered Telzey there. Telzey was able to get her into the pits cheaply with a family pass, although Susan had to park her car in the overflow area.

It was the first time Susan had ever been in the pits at Bradford. Qualifying was just getting under way; Telzey and Will had to hustle around getting their cars going and there wasn’t much she could do to help, so she just stood back and watched. After they went to get in the lineup to qualify, there was really nothing to do, so she wandered over to the infield concession stand, bought a Coke, and just wandered around the pits, wondering if she’d see anybody she knew besides the Austin family.

After a while, she spotted Ashley Hitchcock in one of the pit stalls, wearing just about enough to be barely legal in a liberal jurisdiction, and fawning over some big, dumb-looking race driver. She’d known Ashley in high school and hadn’t particularly liked her, but being a couple grades ahead of her she had more or less been able to ignore her. She thought about wandering over to say hello, but Ashley’s attention was on the big guy in the fire suit and Susan didn’t want to butt in. Susan thought that guy didn’t seem to be Ashley’s type, but there was no accounting for taste, especially with Ashley. Maybe he played football as well as raced; she had a taste for football players, if Susan recalled correctly.

Lacking anything better to do, she wandered back to the pit area, where Chuck was hanging around. She had known Chuck all her life and been friendly with him, but since he was a couple years younger, too, she really hadn’t had much to do with him but be good neighbors, although he wasn’t a bad guy by any stretch of the imagination. It was just that at that age a couple years counted for a lot. Still, she hadn’t seen much of Chuck in the near month that she’d been back, even though Telzey had been with Will and him a lot.

They stood talking for a while about one thing or another, and Chuck was able to clear up a few questions about racing that she’d had over the years. Eventually he commented that Telzey was starting her qualifying run, so she turned to watch as well as she could from the limited view of the pit stall. For some reason it didn’t seem like Telzey was going all that fast, although when Chuck looked up at the time on the scoreboard he commented, “Wow, that’s really good! She must be on it tonight, after the way she ran last night.”

The numbers meant nothing to Susan, so she had to take Chuck’s word for it. When Telzey pulled into the pits and got out of her car, she was absolutely bubbling. “Wow, Chuck, a 19.27! I was just a hair from getting into the eighteens!”

“That’s terrific,” he replied. “It makes that 19.44 I turned in the 4 car the other night look absolutely pathetic. That could get you fastest qualifier. What kind of go juice did you pour in that thing, anyway?”

“Just regular gas,” she smiled. “I think I’m starting to get the hang of doing a real smooth lap.”

“Looks like it to me,” Chuck laughed. “Or knowing when to fire the rocket booster, or something. Let’s see how Will does.”

The three of them stood and watched Will make his qualifying run in the 89 car. It looked pretty decent from where they stood, but without a stopwatch or a scoreboard there’s no way to tell between ‘pretty decent’ and ‘absolutely fantastic.’ When Will’s time clicked up on the scoreboard, ‘pretty decent’ was the way to describe it: 19.494. “Any other time and that would be dynamite,” Telzey commented.

“Telzey, did you do anything different?” Chuck asked, genuinely curious.

“Not really, other than going home and taking a nap when we were done mowing,” she shrugged.

“I think you’d better plan on doing that again,” Chuck shook his head. “Alan and Matt have already qualified slower than you. I’d say if Jack can’t beat your time you’ve got it.”

“Unless one of those hot shoes from M-50 last night shows up and tries to take my thunder,” she grinned. “I wouldn’t put it past them to show up at the last minute and do it, too.”

A few minutes later, Will was with them as they watched Jack make his qualifying run. It was good, if not exceptional – down around Will’s time. Not long afterward, Jack and Jim came over to the pits to congratulate her for her fantastic time, and asked how she had done it; about all Telzey could think of that she’d done different was the nap.

“You know,” Jim said, “when you stop and think about it, that makes sense. That 24 car always had the reputation of being pretty darn fast back in the days when Dean Sprinkle was driving it. Maybe you’re just learning how to get the speed out of it, and maybe being relaxed and rested is part of it.”

“She was sure sawing them off this afternoon,” Susan grinned. “I’d say she was sleeping about as hard as she was driving.”

Jack looked at her. “I didn’t know Telzey had a sister,” he said.

“I’m not her sister, I’m her aunt,” Susan explained. “Her mother is my oldest sister.”

“I’m sorry,” Telzey piped up. “I didn’t introduce you guys.” She went on to explain about Susan, and tell her that they usually watched the races they weren’t involved in from the top of the Kaufmanns’ hauler.

“Well, you’re invited,” Jim grinned. “We’ve come to think a lot of Telzey. She’s quite level-headed for a kid her age. When she gets some more experience, she’s going to be tough to beat.”

“Susan, why don’t you go along with them right now?” Telzey suggested. “Will and I have got some things we have to do.”

Susan didn’t have to think about it long. She felt like she’d seen what there was to see around Will and Telzey’s pits, and Jack, well, not only was he a nice-looking guy for a race driver, he seemed to be about her age and hadn’t taken his eyes off her since she’d met him.

On top of the hauler, she and Jack got to talking while Jim and Ann watched what remained of qualifying. “I know Telzey told me that you’re home from college,” Jack said, trying to start a conversation. “Where do you go?”

“It was Michigan Tech last year,” Susan replied. “I was a freshman, but I don’t know that I’m going back this year. Too far away from home and way too much snow.”

“Well,” Jack suggested, “you might look into Western Michigan, up in Kalamazoo. That’s where I go, and I’ll be a sophomore next year too.”

“Do you commute?” Susan asked, suddenly quite a bit more interested in this handsome young race driver.

“No, I stay in the dorm,” he replied. “But it’s close enough for me to come home and race when the season is on in the spring and fall.”

“What’s it like?” she asked. Once upon a time she’d rejected Western as being too close to home, but after last year’s experience she wasn’t sure that still mattered.

With that to build on the two of them got talking a little more seriously. It turned out he was an engineering major, and one of the reasons she’d gone to Michigan Tech was the strength of their engineering department. But talking it over, she began to think that Jack had something worth looking into. And, for that matter, Jack was something worth looking into, too . . .

*   *   *

Susan went down to the pit lane with Jack when the Pony Stocks lined up. Will and Telzey had been up on the hauler with them earlier, but they’d disappeared a few minutes before with no explanation. Since this was all pretty strange to her, she didn’t think much about it.

Jack was in the first Pony Stock heat, which was the first of the evening. He got into his car and got buckled in before the opening ceremonies began, with Susan standing beside the car, fascinated with what was going on, and how a little grocery getter like his Plymouth Sundance had been transformed into a race car. She didn’t notice two little open-wheel cars pulling out onto the race track as the announcer said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please rise and remove your hats for the Invocation and the National Anthem.”

A local preacher said a few words over the public address system before the announcer continued, “This weekend is Memorial Day weekend. On special occasions like Memorial Day weekend, as the flag is going up, it’s also being carried around the track by our two good luck charms. Those are the sole remaining Midwest Midget Sportsman Association midget racers, which date back to the early 1950’s. They were once driven on dirt tracks all around the Midwest by our track owners, Mel and Arlene Austin. His grandson Will Austin is driving Mel Austin’s 66 car. Will is a regular driver in our Pony Stock Series. In a special tribute to our brave men and women serving overseas, Arlene Austin’s car, the 2, is being driven by thirteen-year-old Telzey Amberdon. Telzey is another one of our up-and-coming Pony Stock drivers, and both her father and mother are serving with the Army in the Persian Gulf as we speak. Telzey’s mother Sheila is a graduate of Bradford High School, class of 1988. Also, Mel tells me that this is the first time that a woman has driven the 2 car on a parade lap since Arlene had to quit doing it herself. Ladies and Gentlemen, Our National Anthem.”