Chapter Eighteen
- Use Extreme Caution - Congested Traffic. . .
Under no circumstances, would I recommend that anyone with a leg in a cast try to climb into a stock car. Of course in my case it was made even more difficult, because I also had one hand in a cast, but that's neither here nor there. Since the door of a stock car is welded solid, you have to slip in through the window and it makes sense that your feet go in first. I tried by myself, but since my mobility was severely limited by my casts, my friends grabbed me bodily, lifted me up, then fed me into the car. Talk about a somewhat humbling experience, that one had to take the cake because I felt so darn helpless.
It didn't help that Carissa suddenly turned into a mother hen either. For some strange reason she became all worried about the idea of my getting out if I rolled the car. I actually had to show her that it was far easier to get out of the car than it was to get into it. Of course that meant the guys had to help me back in once more and it certainly served to try my patience a bit.
Of course once I was in the seat of the car, I had to adjust the seat slightly, then adjust and fasten the five point safety harness. After that I put on an old motorcycle helmet, then Carissa insisted that I checked that I could reach the fire extinguisher, just in case I needed it. Since everything was done under Tom and Carissa's instructions, shouted through the window, I was getting the impression that they didn't trust me to use my head or worry about safety. Finally though, they both shut up and Tom gave me a thumbs up sign.
It was a relief when I was finally able to start the car. I'll be honest, my first impression was that the engine and exhaust noise were far louder than I'd ever expected. Of course since all the soft materials that might have absorbed any sound had been stripped from the car, which shouldn't really have been a surprise. Because I wanted to be able to hear if anything went wrong, I decided I'd just have to put up with the noise. Instead, I tried to ignore the noise level as I kept my eyes on the heat and oil pressure gauges while the engine warmed. Tom leaned in through the window at that point, his face contorted into a huge grin.
"Look okay?" He shouted.
"It seems like it." I shouted back, nodding my head firmly.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" He laughed and yanked his head out of the window, giving the roof of the car a hard swat with his hand as he backed away.
Seeing that everyone was clear of the car and well back out of the way, I waved my hand to let them know I was going to move out. Then I tapped my foot down on the accelerator a couple of times to be sure that the carburettor was responding correctly and pressed the clutch to the floor before I shifted into low gear.
As soon as I released the clutch and gave the engine some gas, it dawned on me that I'd never driven a car with this sort of power to weight ratio. The instant power hit the rear wheels of that buggy, they began to spin. The first fifty feet or so that I travelled I was fighting a wild fishtail action that took me almost completely by surprise. Of course by the end of that fifty feet, I'd eased off the gas and jammed the clutch to the floor, killing all the power to the rear wheels.
An instant later I was laughing uproariously and shifting the transmission into second gear, not low. I noticed Tom heading toward me at a run, but waved my left hand out the window to warn him away, then I tried to start out again. Talk about a thrill, this time the wheels didn't spin, but that car took off like a jackrabbit running from a prairie fire. I estimated later that I was doing more than forty miles an hour when I herded a six-foot wide car through a ten-foot wide gate going from the farmyard out into the field. At forty miles an hour, the two feet on each side of my front fenders looked like an inch.
I was just glad that the gate was open and that I'd been pointed in the right direction because I was fighting hard to even steer that damn car straight. You see it hadn't really sunk into my brain that the whole car was set up to run on a relatively short, oval, dirt track with a slight bank to the left. The tires were mismatched, the suspension was altered, even the frame was slightly bent, all in the way of making it easier to drive in a counter clockwise direction. What that meant was that even with the steering wheel set to go straight ahead, the nose of that beast wanted to go hard left.
Now I wouldn't want you to fall prey to the assumption that the motorized monstrosity I was trying to herd into the field only had the minor quirks of excess power and a tendency to wander to the left of center. Oh no, did I mention anything about the suspension yet? Well, let me fill you in a bit more. You see the springing on the left side had to be soft in order that when the brute leaned away from a left-hand turn because of centrifugal force, the wheels would stay in contact with the track as long as possible. And the right side of the chassis? That had to be stiff to keep from leaning away from the turn as much as possible.
So how did that effect my pleasant little Sunday afternoon drive? Well, I was trying out the car in a stubble field, one that had a few million small, evenly spaced ridges left over from the previous years cultivation and seeding. Oh and I should also mention a few thousand minor ruts left from last years swathing and combining operations. The soil had been just damp enough when we'd harvested the field in the fall to leave a perfect impression of each wheel track. Of course the clay gumbo soil on the farm had done an excellent job of preserving each rut over the winter. That car seemed perfectly designed to find each and every one of those small, sharp bumps and to turn each one into the same sensation as driving over a small log.
The soft suspension on the left side of the chassis was hammering down to the lower limit each and every time I hit a ridge. At the same time, the right side was slamming up and down, amplifying any rise or any dip in the ground as I drove over it. Even with the engine at an idle, second gear worked out to be about thirty or forty miles an hour. The ride in that car felt worse than sliding down a long wooden staircase on your bare butt.
Inside of a very short distance I'd shoved the clutch to the floor and let the motor die to a low idle. I wasn't worried about being shaken up a little bit, but I was worried that the constant hammering would crack welds and shake loose bolts all over the car. As Tom and the crew came driving up in his car, I could see them bouncing as well and knew that they all realized what the problem was. I'd shut off the engine and was climbing out of the car as they got there, only to be met by grins and shaking heads.
"I guess my idea wasn't so great, huh?" Wil said as he climbed out of Tom's back seat.
"Not as rough as this field is." I snorted. "I think I just lost five pounds in the last fifty feet, just from vibration."
"Couldn't you just follow straight along the ruts?" Corinna asked.
"Unh uh!" George surprised everyone by answering. "The car's been redesigned to turn left, so Chris has to fight to keep it going straight. The first time he hit a bump hard enough to bounce, the wheels would probably turn one way or the other while they were in the air. When it landed the car could flip right over because the wheels would dig in and throw the whole rig around."
"That would be scary." Carissa nodded at him, then looked at me. "I was wondering, is there anywhere that's level and even, where you could try it out, like one of the pastures or something?"
"How about using Beth's riding ring?" Corinna suggested.
"Un uh, Dad would shoot me for ripping up the grass in one of the pastures and Beth's riding ring is too darn small and confined. I'd probably run into the fence or something."
"Well, I have an idea." Wil said quietly. "Why don't you go drive slowly around an oval area in the stubble to lay out a track you can follow? I'll go get the tractor with the cultivator and the harrows behind it. I'll be able to follow the wheel marks the car leaves in the stubble and I'll set the cultivator to just skim an inch or so deep. It'll knock off the high points and the harrows will drag the loose soil into the hollows. After a dozen or so passes at least it'll be relatively flat, even if it's a bit loose on top."
"Hey that would work." Tom crowed. "I could go home and bring over our tractor along with our harrows and packers to follow you. That would pack the loose dirt into the hollows enough that the base would be relatively stable."
So the three guys took off in Tom's car to get tractors and equipment while I and the two girls laid out a rough track. The girls each stood about a hundred paces apart and I drove around them, trying to stay about seventy-five feet away from each one at each end of the oval. This time I was smarter. I started the car in second gear, but dropped it into low and drove the loop at barely more than an idle. That way, the thumping that the beast and I took wasn't quite as drastic. By the time I'd made three slow circuits, Wil was back. He'd only made a lap or so when Tom and George showed up with the other tractor and Tom's car.
In a little over an hour we had a temporary track laid out. Admittedly it wasn't banked, but the darn thing was relatively level, at least I wouldn't be trying to drive on a washboard.
Once I was all strapped in again, I fired up the engine and eased out onto the loop. This time it felt different, it felt right, as if the old machine knew that this was the place it belonged. Even on the first slow lap steering was easier, corners slipped by naturally and the lean of the whole unit felt perfect. I sped up slightly on the second lap, searching for the car's natural speed in second gear. I was hunting for that elusive point in any machine's acceleration curve where everything seems to work effortlessly. I still didn't seem to find it, so on the third lap I eased the accelerator down a bit more.
Then suddenly, the engine simply died. I shoved home the clutch pedal and tried to the starter, but to no avail. The monster was dead.
By the time that I'd drifted to a stop, Tom was hot footing it toward me, his face twisted into a deep frown. Before he'd run all the way across the oval, I was out of the car and working to get the hood open. We'd hardly gotten the hood up and our noses poked into the engine department when Wil drove up in Tom's car with everyone else along. Suddenly we had six bodies vying for a view of the innards of that bloody beast and guessing what could have happened.
"Probably shook something loose before and it just fell off when you got going faster." George said, trying to sound like he was as good a mechanic as Tom. "Did it backfire or anything, Chris?"
"Nope, no coughs, snorts, or backfires. No strange noises of any kind. It just died." I snapped.
"George, get behind the wheel and try the starter. Make damn sure it's out of gear." Tom ordered, popping open the trunk of his car and grabbing a couple of wrenches out of his toolbox. "And don't hit the gas pedal, I'll handle that from up here. I just want to be sure we've still got both gas and spark."
With Tom, Wil and me working together under the hood, we found the problem in minutes. The fuel filter was completely plugged with gunk. There had probably been a lot of debris in the bottom of the fuel tank and the thumping and banging as I drove across the rough ground had shaken it all free, then put it into suspension in the gas. With all that crap floating around in the tank, as soon as I'd shoved down on the gas pedal to speed up, it had put an increased draw on the fuel line. That had plugged the fuel filter with a solid mass of dirt, rust and other junk in a second.
"Shit!" Tom grouched in exasperation. "That means we need to pull the fuel tank and get it steam cleaned."
"Hey, better to find it now than when we get out on the track." George tried to sooth him down.
"Well at least the tank is in the trunk and not underneath like a regular car's tank." I sighed. "What I want to know is how you get rust and crap inside a custom made, stainless steel tank."
"Whoever was filling it had rocks in their head, that's how." Tom growled. "The guy that had this car before must have had dorks for his pit crew. They had to have used crappy gas that was contaminated and never filtered it, either that or someone sabotaged their gas supply. This is the sort of shit that drives a mechanic nuts. Not only do we need to steam out the tank and blow out the fuel lines, but now I should pull the fuel pump and carburettor as well. The whole system has to be checked and cleaned or this will just happen again."
That ended our trial for the day. It also made Tom and me extremely suspicious of all of the maintenance that had gone into the car previously. We towed the car back to the shed and whipped the gas tank out, draining it into an open topped bucket. We could see the gunge suspended in the gas and Tom swore like a trooper.
"Who's going to town next?" I asked quietly.
"Corinna and I have to go home tomorrow afternoon." Carissa volunteered. "Why?"
"Well, someone will have to take the gas tank to town. I think Frank Dolens would be willing to have his guys steam out the tank for us, then we'd at least know it was clean."
"We could do that." She agreed instantly. "I have to come here to pick up Corinna anyway. I could throw it in the back of the jeep then and drop it off at Uncle Frank's on the way home."
"Umm, I may not be going home with you tomorrow." Corinna broke in. "Wil and I think he should give me a ride back to town later. We want to talk to Mom and Dad, but only after his folks get home, that way we'd get a chance to talk to them as well."
Carissa just stared at her for several seconds as if Corinna had suddenly grown a second head. Then she grabbed Corinna by the arm and they walked off a few yards to talk. I could see Will looking at them and I jabbed him lightly.
"I think they want privacy, at least Carissa does." I spoke as quietly as I could.
"Yes, but this concerns me too." He frowned.
"I know and it concerns me, but in their case it's different." I managed a weak smile. "Both you and I have to remember that they're twins; for years, they've been as close as it's possible for two people to be. As long as I've known them, they were like two sides of one coin. Now they're drawing apart because they aren't sharing all the same experiences. We need to give them some room at times, just to make their lives easier."
His frown deepened and I thought he was going to argue, then he sighed. "I suppose if they want us, they only have to call."
"Yep." I nodded.
So, while the twins discussed whatever was bothering Carissa, the guys carried on working around the stock car. Tom asked a lot of questions about my impressions of the car and I tried my best to fill him in on what I'd noticed.
One of the things Tom asked about was the seat. He wasn't happy that the seat was adjustable and I really wasn't too thrilled with that either. I didn't want something to let go while I was driving and have the seat slide out from under me. I climbed into the car again and we fiddled for a few moments until I was truly happy with where the seat sat. Tom nodded, telling me that he'd make sure it was solid at that point, then he asked about the special plate he'd put on the cutch pedal. I had to admit that I really disliked it. It sat at the wrong angle for my foot and was awkward to use. Over and above that it was too big and got in the way of my other foot when I used the brake pedal. I told him not to waste much time on it though, after all I wasn't going to be in the cast forever, at least that drew a chuckle.
About that time, the twins wandered back toward us and Carissa dropped the hint that she'd like to leave. That surprised me in one way, yet after a second's thought I decided that it was probably something I should have expected. I realised that she was adjusting to the idea that she and Corinna were no longer living perfectly parallel lives. I thought she probably needed some time to wrap her head around the fact that the two of them might no longer agree on everything.
Only few minutes later we left, but I ended up tossing the gas tank from the stock car in the back of the jeep. She was silent as we drove, so I kept quiet as well. When we came to the road that ran off toward Grampa Bender's, I expected her to turn, but instead she carried on driving back toward town.
"Hey, what's up?" I asked in surprise.
"Well, Corinna and I talked." She sighed softly. "She and Wil are really close and she loves living on the farm. She wants to stay there with him for a while, so she's going to ask your folks if it's okay with them and then tell Mom and Dad what she wants to do."
"I see, but that doesn't explain why we're driving back to town."
She looked at me and smiled wryly. "Actually it does, if you think about it."
"It does?"
"Unh huh." She chortled. "I think I like being with you about as much as she likes being with Wil. Besides, I have another reason to stick around with you. Since you're still in casts, you need a helper."
I stared at her in surprise, up until then I'd been under the impression that she liked me, but I hadn't realised how much. I'd been able to see that Corinna and Wil were head over heels in love with each other, but I hadn't realised that Carissa might feel the same way about me. Suddenly I woke to the possibility that Carissa was emotionally dependent on me despite her protestations that our relationship might be temporary. The only problem was that I wasn't sure I felt the same way about her. I knew that I liked her a lot, but I wasn't sure if my feelings would ever become any deeper than that.
"Umm, just what are you saying?" I finally managed to mumble.
She frowned, then quickly pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. After that she paused for a second and took a deep breath before she turned toward me.
"That's a question I can't answer right now, because I'm still puzzling it out myself. Corinna just floored me. For the first time in my whole life I don't understand her completely. I can understand part of what she said, but some of it leaves me completely out in the cold. It's as if she's become a stranger in some way."
"That much I realized." I nodded. "In a way I can understand, until now the two of you lived almost duplicate lives. Now you each have different things happening, so you're developing opinions that differ as well."
"That's not really what I mean. I can understand that part of what's going on and I welcome it in a way. This is totally different though." She frowned again and shook her head, then paused.
After a second she sighed. "I can't explain it, other than to say that we used to always be able to almost talk without speaking out loud. Now that's disappearing. It's as if both of us have developed another language in our heads. I can still feel her there, especially when we're close together, but I can't reach out and . . . well, sort of, think along with her like I used to do."
Another deep sigh gusted from her mouth.
"I just can't put it in words." She growled in exasperation.
I could only nod and reach out a hand to touch her. That seemed to be what she needed because her frown eased into a calm gaze as she looked me in the eyes.
"That's why I need to be with you." She gestured at my hand with a nod of her head. "It's unbelievable, but you seem to know what I need, even more than Corinna does right now."
"I'm just doing what seems right." I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't really know what it's like to have someone so close that I know what they're thinking. I was reaching out to touch you just to let you know you had a friend."
"That's the damn point." She snapped vehemently. "It's as if you have a way of reaching out when I need someone. I need that right now. So, that's why we're going to town."
"Umm, you've lost me again."
"Okay, I'll explain. First we're getting rid of that smelly gas tank at Uncle Franks. Then, if he's around, I'm going to ask him if I can keep the jeep for while so we can use it up at the ranch. After that we're going to go to my house and I'm going to grab some more of my clothes and things. While we're there, I'm going leave a note for my folks, explaining that I need to be away for a while and that I'll be with you. After that, we're going back to Grampa Bender's. Once we've made sure the place is still all there and had something to eat, I'd like to sit and talk for a while, but for now I need to think about things."
With that she reached out and restarted the jeep. Although I tried to initiate a conversation again to settle my thoughts about our emotional entanglement, she ignored me. In fact, she never spoke until we were pulling into Frank Dolens' car lot and saw that he was in his office.
"Good, he's here." She said loudly as she climbed out of the jeep. "Could you wait here for a minute or two? I want to talk to him by myself first."
"Oh. Sure." I shrugged my shoulders, but my curiosity about her need to talk to him alone kicked into high gear.
I watched from my seat in the jeep as she went inside, then I could see her walk into his office. Her hands were gesturing wildly at first and I could see him wave her to a seat, then grin as he glanced out the window toward me and waved a hand. All I could do was wonder what was going on for several moments as they talked. Finally they came back outside and walked over to the jeep.
"Hello, Mr. Dolens." I greeted him and started to get out of the jeep.
"It's Frank, darn it, and you might as well stay sitting there." He grinned at me. "I've got a proposition I want you to think about, but it may take a minute to explain and you might as well stay sitting down."
"Another one?" I grinned, thinking of our previous car deals.
"Yes." He laughed. "Carissa has been telling me about some of the problems you've been faced with during the last while. She's come up with an idea that might relieve some of the pressure you're under."
"Am I under pressure?" I looked at Carissa and raised an eyebrow.
She nodded and smiled.
"She seems to think you are." He snorted. "Now, since she likes you and I like her, we've come up with a way that might ease things a bit."
"I'm listening, but you know the deal, I may have to talk to my family and my friends before I give you an answer." I grinned at him.
"That's understood." He nodded. "By the way, how do you like the jeep?"
"Huh?" I wondered why he was changing the subject, but shrugged my shoulders and answered anyway. "Right now it's great. Since Carissa's been using it to visit me up at the ranch it's come in handy a time or two for getting around. But, why are you asking?"
"Well, Carissa seems to feel that I've saddled you with a white elephant when I gave you that stock car. From the sounds of things that she told me happened today, I'd have to agree with her. So, I'd like to propose a deal." He smiled. "I'd like to take back ownership of the stock car in trade for the jeep, but there are a few provisions along with that. I'll supply the parts and transport for the stock car, but you and your buddies are responsible for rebuilding it and driving it in the races at Pine Lake. Of course, I get to paint the car and put my advertisements on it. As well, I get to have your two buddies come in and help out around here for a few hours each week. You get to repay me for my investment by driving it in the races."
"But, you already told me you'd give us tires and haul the car to the races. What's different about this deal?"
"Well, to start with this deal includes other parts as well. For instance I'd like to suggest we pull the engine out of the car and rebuild it. Then we need to go over that car from end to end and make sure it's in top shape. As I said, if I own the car I'll pay for all the parts, but you and your friends will still supply most of the labour. Since I'd want to make sure that everything was perfect, my mechanic would work with you most of the time. That way I'd be sure it was done right, but the in order to do that, the work needs to be done here in the shop."
"You mean you'd haul the car back here and the guys would have to come in here to work on it?" When he nodded, I shook my head slightly. "I'd have to talk that over with them and their parents first. After all, they're still needed around the farm."
"I took that into account." He nodded. "Carissa has the jeep for the week and you can drive it as much as you want to try it out. That should make getting around on old Toby's ranch a lot easier for you. Meanwhile you can discuss the deal with Tom and George during the week, then get back to me."
"It sounds like completely lopsided deal to me." I shook my head. "I mean we all get a lot out of it and you get diddley squat that you didn't have before."
"Oh no." He laughed quietly. "I get good advertisement and I get a pair of young men working for me in the garage for a few hours each week, guys that I'm growing to have great faith in by the way. On top of that I get the best damn driver around to drive the car as well as making my favourite niece happy."
"Well, I'll think about it and I'll talk to the guys." I said in a noncommital tone, then pointed to the back of the jeep."Now we were wondering if we could get the gas tank from the stock car steamed out?"
"No problem, just back the jeep up to one of the big doors and I'll get one of the boys to do that for you as soon as they're free."
Ten minutes later we were driving away, but to my surprise we didn't drive directly toward the Coulter house. Instead Carissa drove out of town and pulled onto the street that lead to the fairgrounds. She pulled to a stop on the top of the little hill that overlooked the area and pointed to one side, toward the horse racing track.
"Do you see that fence?" She asked, pointing to the fence that separated the fair ground from the track.
"Yeah." I nodded.
"Well, our family used to own the track and when we turned it over to the town, we agreed to look after it. But, we made a deal that we could use the track any time the town didn't have something scheduled. That's because Daddy and Uncle Frank used to own race horses."
"Yeah." I frowned, then it dawned on me that she was thinking about the stock car and I had to grin. "So you're saying that if we go along with Frank's deal, we could try the car out there?"
"That's right." She nodded.
"Sorry, but it's not wide enough and it's just like the track we laid out in the field, it's too flat."
"I don't understand."
I sighed deeply. "Okay, the stock car doesn't go through a corner the way an ordinary car does. Have you ever driven a car in snow?"
"Well, of course I have." She looked at me strangely as if I was dumb. "I've had my license for more than two years and I've driven in the winter."
"Okay, then you know how a car can suddenly go into a slide on a corner with the rear end swinging wide?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Well, a stock car running on a dirt track does that on every corner. In fact as a driver, you intentionally make it do that. That's why race car tracks are banked, so you can go faster and still stay on the track." I gestured at the track below us. "That's a horse racing track, it's flat and if I raced that stock car around it with the rear end throwing dirt outward, I'd screw it up something terrible. Of course if I caught a tire on the turf edge as it came to the outside of the track I might roll the car, probably right through the fence."
"Oh. Here I thought it was a great idea."
"Sorry, Carissa. It was a good idea in a way, but it could be extremely dangerous."
"Well, you guys were making a flat track on the farm, I thought this would be the same thing."
"The track we were laying out was a lot wider, the corners were longer and there was no turf ridge on the outside edge to catch a sliding tire." I shook my head. "Thanks for trying though."
"Now I know why Uncle frank looked at me strangely when I suggested it to him." She laughed weakly. "Let's go by my house and then head back to the hills, huh?"
I certainly wasn't about to argue with that idea. I felt the need to be somewhere that I could think about everything because I had more different factors going on in my life than I really knew how to handle at the moment. I wanted to try to get them all straight in my head. Grampa Bender's place was perfect for that because it was always so peaceful. I was sure that the sooner we got back there, the better I'd feel.