It took a lot of swearing and fiddling to even get the 25 car up onto the trailer so Jack could take it home. Jim and Ann hadn’t come today, having something else to do, but when they got home they found the trailer with the wrecked car sitting on it. Jack and Susan were nowhere to be found; it turned out that Jack had taken her home.

He arrived back around dusk, to find his father had already given the car a good looking over. “It’s hard to say,” Jim summarized. “If it was a tube frame car like a Late Model, it wouldn’t be a big deal, you’d just have to get the skin off, maybe straighten a few tubes, and then re-skin it. But that’s a different problem when you’ve got a factory frame.”

“I pretty much reached the same conclusion,” Jack told him. “I figure I’ll take it to a body shop in the morning and see what they can do.”

“I’d skip the body shop,” Jim advised. “Go right to Danny’s Frame and Axle. If anyone can straighten up a frame, he can. It may not look the best but it’ll probably be all right.”

“That’s not going to be cheap,” Jack said glumly.

“No, it’s not,” Jim agreed. “But that’s racing, you know that. Tell Danny that if he can fix it and cut you a deal, you’ll put him on the car as a sponsor. He’s kind of a race fan, he might do it at cost or something.”

“Well, nuts,” Jack said. “I figured racing Pony Stocks would be cheaper than going to Sportsmen.”

“It still is,” Jim said. “Look, I’ll help you out on this, I know you’re a college student. And I’ll call Danny and tell him you’re in a tight points race, and that you need it for Friday.”

“The next race isn’t till Saturday,” Jack pointed out.

“Right,” Jim said. “But they have a test-and-tune session at Calhoun County on Friday nights. It’s pretty close to the same configuration as Bradford, and sure as little brown horse apples, you’re going to have to work on the handling setup to get it running right again. That’ll buy you some time to do it.”

*   *   *

Although Susan hadn’t been around at the time, she’d heard a lot about the story of when Ashley had wrecked Chuck’s old 86 car earlier in the season – how she’d not only blamed everyone but herself for the crash, but then had turned her back on Chuck in the process. Even if she didn’t like Jack – and she liked him a lot – that was no way to treat someone who had done her a favor. There really wasn’t much that she could do to help with fixing the car; in fact, there wasn’t much Jack could do, either – but she at least wanted him to know that she cared about him and supported him. That meant that she was with him a lot, doing what she could for him; it did something about the guilt that she felt.

The rest of the gang – Chuck, Larissa, Will, and Telzey – felt bad about it too; they’d been the ones who had teased Susan into driving the car. Even though they agreed with Jack, that it was a freak accident and wouldn’t have mattered who was driving the car, they realized that Susan felt guilty about it and that they’d pushed her into that position.

Since Susan was Telzey’s aunt and lived with her, Telzey got more of a dose of Susan’s depression than the rest of them. Jack had been running well, and if he lost his position in the season points race, then she felt like it had been at least partly her fault.

When she and Will were riding the ATV back from a session at Kayla’s pool on Thursday, she decided she had to say something. She motioned Will to go over to the little track out in back where they’d raced the ATV and go-kart back in the spring; the track had grown up some now, since they hadn’t been using it much.

Will pulled the ATV to a stop and shut off the engine. “We had some fun here, didn’t we?” he grinned.

“Yeah, we did,” Telzey said quietly.

She let out a long breath and said, “Will, I have to ask you something.”

“What?” he replied, recognizing that something was heavy on her mind.

“OK, look,” she said. “You’re leading the points now, since d’Lamater has had three DNFs in a row, and Jack is second, right?”

“Yeah, and he’s not very far back.”

“Well, I think it sucks that he may not be able to race this weekend,” she said. “Will, would it be all right with you if I were to offer to let Jack run my car if his isn’t ready to go?”

“Well, I think it sucks, too,” he said, turning the proposition over in his mind. “And I was as responsible as anyone else for teasing Susan into driving his car. But maybe it won’t matter. From what Dad said, this body guy that Jack took the car to is pretty good. Maybe he’ll have it back running again tomorrow night, and everything will be just fine.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Susan is going up to Calhoun County to be with him tomorrow night. I’d just as soon not go racing tomorrow night and see if I can ride along.”

“I’d like to go, too,” he said. “I’m not all that interested in racing if it’s just going to be me. I know Larissa is working and wouldn’t be able to race anyway, so Chuck might like to go. Maybe we could all ride up together.”

Thus it was that they took off with Chuck the middle of the afternoon after Will and Telzey had finished with the mowing. It seemed strange to not be heading to a race on a Friday evening, but at least they were heading to a race track, and somehow this seemed more important than another relatively meaningless trip to Mannheim or M-50. They drove up to Jack’s place to find that Susan was already there, and Jack was getting set to go.

The three of them got out of Chuck’s car and looked over the repairs to Jack’s racer. It still looked pretty bad. “Not exactly as clean as it was a week ago, is it?” Chuck commented lightly.

“No,” Jack shook his head. “In fact, it looks like crap. Danny said that really that’s about the best he could do to it, and I’m not sure it’s going to be good enough.”

“Looks about as bad as d’Lamater’s car last week,” Will said helpfully. “And he ran just fine till he had that engine trouble.”

“Yeah, but that was more cosmetic,” Jack said. “The frame is definitely bent on this. Danny said there’s only so much he could do. I just hope it’s good enough.”

“We might as well go see,” Chuck shrugged. “We’ll tag along behind you two.”

Susan and Jack got into his truck, and Will, Telzey and Chuck got into the car. “Boy,” Will said as soon as he got the car door closed, “that does not look good.”

“I don’t think so, either,” Chuck agreed. “I’ll bet that thing is going to handle like a hog on ice skates.”

*   *   *

It wasn’t long before they realized that Chuck had hit it right on the nose. They’d unloaded the car, and Jack had taken it out on the track. He ran a couple laps at moderate speed, then opened it up as Chuck kept a stopwatch on him. After only three hot laps, Jack backed it off and headed for the pits.

“How was it?” Chuck asked as Jack shut off the engine.

“Freaking terrible,” Jack said. “Tight, tight, tight until you get it cornering good, then it snaps right over to so loose I can barely hang onto it. What were my times like?”

“The best one I had you at was a 21.4,” Chuck told him.

“Crap, that’s a full two seconds off what I ran here last spring,” Jack shook his head.

Maurice, the Calhoun County tech inspector happened to be nearby at that moment. “Looks like you messed it up a little, Jack,” he commented.

“Yeah, it got rolled,” Jack said, careful not to involve Susan; she felt bad enough as it was and looked like she was near tears again at the news. “The handling is all loused up. I mean, bad. I don’t have the slightest idea of where to even start to make this thing handle right.”

The two of them talked back and forth for a couple minutes, examining what Jack had encountered. After a bit, Jack got out of the car; Maurice got in and took it out to the track. He made a couple laps at moderate speed, and came back to the pits. Once he got out of the car, he said, “To tell the truth, I don’t know what to do to it, either, other than maybe that old saw about jacking up the radiator cap and running a new car underneath it.”

“Well,” Jack said, “we might as well get this thing on the trailer and get back home. There’s no way I’m going to be racing it tomorrow.”

“Oh, Jack,” Susan said, the tears rolling now. “I’m sorry. Now I’ve loused up your season.”

Telzey decided it was time to act. “Jack,” she said, “if you want to stay in the points hunt Saturday, you’re welcome to drive my car.”

“Telzey?” he said.

“Drive my car,” she repeated. “It’s going to kill you in the points to sit out a race. Even if you beat Will and he runs second, he won’t lose that much.”

“Thanks, Telzey,” he said. “But don’t forget, you’re fourth in points and in a battle of your own.”

“Big deal,” she said. “What happens if my parents show up? They could show up anytime and I’m done racing, and that takes me out of the points battle anyway. Besides, you’re running for first, I’m running for fourth.”

“Thanks, Telzey,” he said. “I don’t want to do it, but it’s nice of you to offer. It still doesn’t fix the problem, which is that this car has seen its last race.”

They all looked at each other without much to say. It was a low, miserable moment; the tears were running down Susan’s cheeks, although she was silent. “Well,” Chuck shrugged. “There is Maurice’s solution to the problem.”

“What’s that? Jack up the radiator cap and run a new car under it?” Jack snorted.

“Pretty close,” Chuck said. “You remember the other day when we were teasing you that you were going to have to build Susan a Pony Stock?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, his head cocked at Chuck to follow his idea.

“I was out at the junk yard this morning. That Shadow is still sitting there. The body is pretty good, but I know the engine is junk.”

“That’s a heck of a lot of work to do in less than twenty-four hours,” Jack said. “We’d just about have to strip this thing completely and move everything over to the Shadow.”

“So it can be done,” Chuck said. “We did it to the Maverick earlier in the year, and we were working around being in school. There’s five of us, and Dad might pitch in, maybe some of the other guys around the shop. I’ll bet we could have you running by tomorrow night, especially if we do it down at the shop where we’ve got everything we need in reach.”

“And if not,” Telzey added, “There’s still the 24 car you could drive.”

“How early in the morning does your guy at the junk yard open?” Jack asked, warming to the idea.

“I think he’s there at 7:30 most mornings,” Chuck said. “But the car is parked out where I could get at it with a trailer. I’ll bet if we called him up right now I could still get it tonight.”

“OK,” Jack said, making up his mind. He dug out his cell phone and handed it to Chuck. “Give him a call while I roll this thing up on the trailer. Then I’ll call my dad and have him meet us at your shop in a couple hours. Let’s roll, people.”

“We might as well see if we can get some sleep on the way back,” Will said to Telzey, “because I don’t think we’re going to get much after we’re there.”

*   *   *

When a determined, experienced, skilled group of people get together with a common goal, a great deal can be done in a hurry. Building a race car from scratch, even something as simple as a Pony Stock, in well under a day was still going to be a challenge, even with the running start they had with the remains of the 25 car.

As it turned out, the “new” car was already waiting at the Austin Auto Service shop by the time the five of them got back to Bradford – Ray had taken a trailer out to the junk yard and picked it up while they were on their way. Jim was already there, and they’d already gotten the glass out of the car and were starting on the interior when Jack backed the “old” car off the trailer and ran it into the shop. Well before midnight the “new” car was gutted right down to the motor, transmission having been removed, and they were just about ready to start moving over the same components from the old car. A cutting torch was used to take the roof right off the old car to get the roll cage out, although it had to be cut into pieces to be put in the new car, where it was welded back together. About that time Larissa showed up, having driven down to help where she could, bringing a couple of pizzas along to contribute to the cause with a late-night snack.

Around midnight, Ray called a halt for the evening. “It’s getting late and we’re all tired,” he said. “We’re not going to get much done if we’re just dinking around here half asleep. Let’s bag it for tonight, and then get rolling again first thing in the morning.”

“How first a thing?” Jack asked.

“How does rolling out around six sound?” Ray said. “You guys can come down to the house to crash, that way you don’t have to waste the time to drive home and back again. We can grab a quick breakfast at the Chicago and get rolling on it about seven.”

They did a little better than that. At 6:45 the next morning the lights were on in the shop and the coffee pot was heating, while several sets of experienced hands were busy taking the engine out of the “old” car.

To make a long story short, things went very well, although not as well as they might have hoped. By the middle of the afternoon, Jack had the new 25 car out on the track, still wearing its rusty factory paint and masking tape numbers on the side. “It’s not bad,” he reported. “It’s not as good as the old car used to be, but it’s a darn sight better than the old car was last night.”

“I was following you with the stopwatch,” Jim said. “Your times were nothing to write home about.”

“I think it’s a simple matter of tuning and adjustment,” Jack said. “If we had another four hours we probably could hack a second or more off the lap times.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have much more time for bootleg testing,” Ray said. “We’ve got to be opening up for hot laps within an hour.”

“Let’s do what we can,” Jack said. “I may not win anything with it tonight but I should at least be able to make a start.”

“Jack,” Telzey said, “my offer to drive the 24 is still open. We know that’d be competitive. In fact, I’d sort of like to see how well it goes with someone else driving it. This is the perfect chance.”

“You’re saying you’ll drive this?” Jack asked. “It’s not flaky like the old one was last night but I don’t think it’s as fast as the 24, and it won’t be till we can tune on it a bit.”

“Like I said last night, big deal,” Telzey said.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Larissa spoke up. “Telzey, you said it. I’d like to see how well my car does with someone else driving it. I know it probably needs some serious work on the tuning and like that. This is the perfect chance. I’ll drive this one tonight. If I do lousy in the points, it won’t matter.”

“You know,” Jack smiled, “when you put it that way, it makes sense.”

Ray looked at them for a minute, a smile on his face. “You know, that’s the kind of sportsmanship I’d like to see more often. Just make sure the scorers know who’s driving what tonight or the point standings are going to get really screwed up.”