Telzey lay back on the towel on one of the seats of Jim Kaufmann’s pontoon raft, as Jack, Susan, Chuck and Larissa came out of the house, carrying a couple coolers and some odds and ends.

“There you are,” Jack laughed. “We were beginning to think that we were going to have to leave you here. In fact, we were beginning to think that the two of you wanted to be left alone.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said. “Or else to avoid all the work.”

“Well, you guys said you were going to be right out,” Telzey protested, “So we headed for the raft. We figured you wanted to get in some kissing and, well, uh, more and didn’t want the little kids around.”

“There’s an idea,” Jack grinned as he set a cooler on the raft and climbed aboard, offering a hand to Susan. “But it’ll keep. Besides, if it’s kissing and more we’re pretty sure you two would want to be included.”

“Who, sweet, innocent little us?” Telzey giggled.

“Yeah, innocent little two of you,” Chuck laughed. “I’ll bet I’ve seen you sleeping together a dozen times.”

“On the couch in your living room, during a NASCAR race,” Will protested. “Boy, they’ve had some yawners, haven’t they?”

“Hey!” Larissa grinned. “We agreed, no racing talk today! We don’t want to leave Susan out, after all.”

“I thought it was no local racing talk,” Will protested again. “NASCAR isn’t local.”

“But it’s splitting hairs,” Larissa said. “Besides, if we get to bragging, then we’ll really get Susan bored.”

There was room for bragging. With the racing at Moonshine Valley last weekend, and last night at Mannheim, every one of the five racers had at least won a heat, including Larissa last Sunday at Moonshine Valley. Telzey in the 4 car, and Jack in his Pony Stock had won their features there. Then, last night at Mannheim all but Larissa had won heats, and Telzey won the Hornet feature, exciting her to no end. For a raw novice a few months before, she was beginning to get the hang of it and be near the front of the pack most times when the finish came. She hadn’t won in the larger fields at Bradford yet, but it was clearly just a matter of time. That time might be the race there tonight.

“Well, Susan could brag about me if she’s really desperate,” Jack laughed as he got the 35-hp Evinrude at the back of the raft running. “Will, if you want to get the bow rope, I’ll get the stern.”

In only seconds, Jack was backing the raft clear of the dock. They didn’t really have anywhere to go, but they had some time to get there. The best thing about a pontoon raft was that it had plenty of deck space to loll around in while they were doing nothing in particular but floating up and down the eleven-mile chain of lakes and channels, looking at the sights to be seen along the way. Those were mostly other rafts and boats, along with cottages, and sundry swamps and blue herons in a couple of the channels.

The Kaufmann cottage sat on the shore of Bartholomew Lake, a smallish one on the chain, about a third of the way from the north end. Without asking, Jack headed south for Coldwater Lake, figuring that by the time they got back everyone might well have enough and be ready for some time on land.

He glanced out at the crowd on board. It was nice to have the three girls with them. Telzey and Susan were barely dressed in tiny bikinis, filling them out nicely. His eyes were really more on Susan, but had to admit that for her age the younger girl was nicely stacked. Larissa was wearing a slightly more conservative bikini. Between the three of them there were some real nice seat covers on the raft; even Larissa, who looked pretty good when she tried to look like a girl at all.

What was more, it was good to be out with the whole group. The six of them had become fairly close hanging around race tracks this year, but it would be nice to develop their friendship off the track too, he thought. When the subject had come up at Moonshine Valley the previous weekend, it had only taken a glance at his parents to get their agreement to invite the other five up for a day of fooling around.

The raft was not fast and didn’t have power enough to get up on a plane. That was fine, they weren’t going anywhere. Still, it was only a couple minutes before Jack had to throttle back to run through the first of several channels they had to go through. It was a straight tree-lined passage that ran under two bridges on the way to a small lake that mostly had muddy, swampy shores, although a few cottages were concentrated at one end. Jack ran down the channel barely fast enough to raise a wake as they glanced up at some of the cottages. A few people were out working in the yard, and someone waved. As they passed the boat launch near the second bridge, a group of men and women were in the process of launching sea kayaks.

“That looks like fun to try sometime,” Larissa said as the kayakers waved at them.

“I suppose,” Chuck said. “But where do you hang the motor? What’s the point of being out in a boat if you have to do all the work?”

“There you go, Chuck,” Susan laughed. “Car nut to the core.”

“Darn right, and proud of it,” he said, reaching into the cooler for a cold one. “Want one Larissa? Anyone?”

“Yeah, I’ll take one,” Larissa said. She hadn’t thought that she looked all that good in a bikini, and had given some consideration to wearing a one-piece until she realized that she had a very similar build to the younger Telzey, who looked darn good in hers for as little as it was. The bikini got Chuck’s attention, and that was what really mattered, no matter what anyone else thought. “So, Jeez,” she said after a moment’s silence, “what are we going to talk about if we don’t talk about racing?”

Everyone looked at each other sheepishly for a moment, even Susan, while not a racer was getting hooked on the subject.

“Will,” Chuck suggested, “tell them about your driver’s ed. teacher.”

“Can’t do it without talking about racing, at least a little,” Will grinned. “We sat through that whole long class up at Hawthorne, you know, at Vo-Tech? I’ll admit, I learned a few things there about traffic laws and like that. Then we got on the driving schedule, and we started in last week. The first thing, as soon as we get in the car, the guy says, ‘Will, do you have any experience driving a car?’”

“Yeah, right,” Susan laughed with the rest of them.

“Right,” Will smiled. “Well, the kids in the back seat know me and they just about broke up laughing. He turned around and glared at them, like ‘what’s so darn funny,’ you know? Then he turned back to me and said most guys have a little bootleg experience of some sort. So I looked at him and like went, ‘Yeah, a little.’”

“Yeah, right, a little,” Chuck smiled. “I think you were driving around the track at eight.”

“Yeah, right,” Will grinned. “So he’s like, ‘How much is a little?’ So I told him the truth. ‘I’m second in points for the season in Pony Stocks at Bradford Speedway, and I’ve got heat or feature wins this year at Mannheim, M-50, and Moonshine Valley.”

“Yeah, I’d say that was a little,” Jack laughed. “Hey, I haven’t done that well.”

“Just a simple matter of youth and exuberance over age and decrepitude,” Susan commented. “So then what?”

“So then he said, ‘I don’t mean go-karts, I mean real cars.’”

“Uh-oh,” Susan smiled.

Will continued, “So I said, ‘You mean an ’89 Plymouth Sundance isn’t a real car?’ The guy was just totally clueless.”

“You ought to invite him to a race,” Chuck smiled. “It might open his eyes.”

“I got comp tickets from Dad to give to him,” Will replied. “I hope he makes it tonight. I can’t wait to see what he says on Monday.” He shook his head, and continued, “It really would be easier if I got my driving lessons from Grandpa Mel, but Grandpa said he thought it might be good if I had them from someone else.”

“He told me that, too,” Chuck agreed. “And yeah, you do pick up things a little differently.”

That got a discussion going for a while, on stupid driver’s ed. stories. All of them except Telzey had experience in the subject in the last few days through the last few years, so there were a number of them. Telzey couldn’t add to that part of the discussion but could bring up a few stories about driving around Army bases, and the things that happened when a street car tangled with something like a Bradley.

From there, the discussion drifted on to what kind of cars they’d like if they could come up with their dream car. Not Ferraris or something like that, but normal cars. Well, not so normal – Telzey wanted a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a high-lift kit and big tires, a roll bar, plenty of lights, and that kind of thing. “You know, just a cute little girl’s set of wheels.”

“I want a ’76 or ’77 Chevy Monza with the V-8,” Will said. “Light car, big engine that’s been worked on, maybe a turbo. That was one of the nicest looking cars GM ever built.”

“It was also the hardest car to work on that GM ever built,” Chuck snorted. “You just about had to yank the engine to change the back spark plugs. It had all that engine stuffed up in the nose of that little thing like a head cold.”

“I’m not particularly a Ford guy,” Jack commented. “But I’ll take a ’64 Shelby Cobra. Even a replica would be fine, and I don’t care if it’s the 289 or the side-oiler 427.”

Susan was conventional. She wanted a Corvette convertible, preferably red. Any year would do, although she was partial to the ’70s style.

Chuck was more of a hot rodder. “If I could find a ’37 Ford Coupe like that one that Grandpa had, it would be neat,” he reported. “Especially if it had a pre-computer Chevy 350 in it. Larissa, what about you?”

“You’re going to laugh at me,” she smiled.

“I promise, I won’t,” Chuck grinned. “This has got to be really good.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said. “What I’d really like to have is a medium-sized motor home to tow my race car, and so I could stay over after the racing is done with and not have to drive home when I’m exhausted.”

“That sounds like a real good idea,” Chuck smiled. “But that’s not a car.”

“Well, you can’t have a motor home without a grocery getter car hooked on the back,” Larissa laughed. “Me, I lean toward about a 1960 Lotus Seven with a 1500 cc. Cosworth.”

“And it could double as your car for vintage road races,” Jack smiled. “Makes sense to me.”

They drifted on up the chain of lakes and through the channels, talking cars, and boats, and some of the things they saw along the way. Occasionally the topic brushed against racing, but never really got square on it. When they got down to Coldwater Lake, they ran around the shore of the lake for a ways, just checking things out. After a while, Jack stopped the raft at a sand bar and threw the anchor over the side. The water was only about three feet deep, and it made a good place to go swimming, have some drinks, have some horseplay and lie in the sun doing nothing in particular.

After a while, they pulled up the anchor and got going again, going back the way they came. Near the channel out of the lakes, they found the group of kayakers they’d met earlier out playing. They had a nice technique – they’d hang around near the “no wake” buoys until a water-skiing or wake-boarding boat came out of the channel and cobbed the throttle open. While the boat was still plowing, it would put up a big wake, two feet or more high – then the kayakers would race to surf on it. As they watched, one of the kayakers got dumped by a wave, but they were a little surprised to see him take his paddle and use it to roll back upright like nothing had happened. “Now there’s a way to cool off on a hot day,” Chuck commented.

They ran through some more lakes and channels, and back along the long straight channel to Bartholomew Lake. “I’d say we go up to the other end,” Jack commented, “but we’re starting to get close to the time we’ve got to be heading for the track. Maybe we could do it next weekend.”

“Sounds good to me,” Susan said. “This has been a fun day, just hanging out together and not talking racing,” and they all agreed. “I know you’ve all been nice to me today to not talk racing, since I’m the only one that’s not a driver” she continued, “and I know it’s been hard for you. Maybe next time, we won’t have a rule against racing.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Jack said. “How about if we turn you into a driver?”

“Me?” she frowned. “I never really thought about it.”

“Look, we’re heading over to Moonshine Valley tomorrow,” Jack said. “Maybe what we ought to do is to let you run a few hot laps in my car, just to get the feel of it. If you like it, maybe we could let you run one of the dashes or something.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Telzey agreed. “That way she wouldn’t be so much of an outsider when we talk about these things.”

“I don’t know,” Susan replied. “I’d be afraid I’d hurt your car or something.”

“It’s only a car,” Jack said. “You don’t have to go all out your first crack out of the box. Just take it easy and see what it’s like to drive around the track at speed.”

“I’m not saying I’m going to do it,” she replied, “but I will think about it.”

*   *   *

“That was really nice,” Larissa said as Chuck drove his car toward Bradford. The time was getting a little tight, although not terribly so. Chuck glanced up into the mirror, to discover Will and Telzey snuggled up against each other, either sound asleep or looking like it.

“Yeah,” Chuck agreed. “It really was a nice break from talking racing. Besides, I liked the way you looked in your bikini.”

“You really think I look all right?” she said. “Matt always said he thought I was too heavy for one.”

“Then that just proves that Matt is as big a jerk as you seem to think he is, and that I always thought he was,” Chuck snorted. “No, you’re not six feet tall and skinny as a rail like a magazine model. You look like a woman, a woman with real curves, and a damn good looking woman when you want to be.”

“I’m glad you think so,” she smiled, leaning over toward him, and wishing they were in one of the pickup trucks with the bench seats – it would have been nice to snuggle up close to him, like Will and Telzey were doing in the back. Maybe tomorrow she could do it, when they took a pickup to Moonshine Valley again. It was nice to be appreciated – while she’d been friends with Matt, there had always been some respect lacking from him. Things had been all about him, and little about her. Yes, he had helped her build her car, and she appreciated it, but she couldn’t help but think that it was more about messing with the car than it had been about her. Chuck was just as car crazy, but he seemed to care about her, and that made a lot of difference. Maybe she had put Matt in the past.