“You can say that again,” I mused.
“Holy crap.”
I glared at him.
“It’s completely ruined—total meltdown,” Grant observed.
“That is the understatement of the year,” Stephen added. “The carburetors apparently had an influx of fuel and that is what sparked the electrical fire… the car’s got one… two… three…” he counted for the first time. “Four carburetors?”
He looked up, astonished. “I wasn’t aware that that was an option.” He not only looked impressed, he looked envious. “… Nevertheless, who knows which one malfunctioned—see? Look at all the wiring,” he pointed. “Totally gone.”
“What about the supercharger?” I asked. “Is that gone, too?”
“Apparently not—it’s not even black… although everything else is,” he said, scrutinizing the engine.
“Was she burning up when she passed you?” Grant wondered, looking at Stephen.
“Hmm, curious… I don’t know—I couldn’t tell—it all happened so fast.” Stephen looked up.
“How in the hell could this have happened?” I said out loud, but I didn’t really expect an answer.
“Obviously, it happens. Hey, man, how are your hands?” Stephen looked down at my hands for the first time.
I had forgotten all about them, yet the moment he asked, I could feel the blisters, stinging, and the burning all at once.
“Fried.” I winced. “One really hurts.”
“Let me see.” Stephen took hold of my hands. I couldn’t even look. They hurt so bad, I didn’t think I had the stomach for it.
“We should get you to a hospital. You definitely have third-degree burns on the left hand—it’s not particularly bad in the right. Brandon, give me your handkerchief—we should keep them wrapped, so as to protect them.”
“No way!” I yelled, as Brandon handed it to him. I yanked my hand away. “It’s got snot all over it!”
“Awww, my young man, don’t be a whiner,” Stephen said. He smiled and wrapped the snotty rag around my hand.
By now, Grant was over talking to Runaway, who remained motionless.
“Stephen,” she finally said, breathing out a long sigh. “What was my time?”
“Beg your pardon?” He looked at her strangely.
“What was my time?”
“Truly, this is absurd. Your engine just went up in flames. Topher here just sacrificed his hands for your car, and now you want to know what your time was?”
“That’s right,” she replied, staring at him.
Then, finally looking over at me, she said, “Topher, I’m really sorry.” She looked directly into my eyes and said again, “I am sorry. I would have done it myself, but you got there first, and I just stood and watched.”
She now looked at the ground, and you could tell she didn’t want to admit this part. “Perhaps in a bit of shock. Now,” she looked back at Stephen with her stoic face. “What was my time, please?”
Stephen just looked down at the watch and said, stoically as well, “Mid-thirteens.”
For all of his criticism directed at Runaway, Stephen knew that, in spite of his concern, he still had made sure to mark her time and to check it on the stopwatch. More than likely, the car was burning up as it passed him, yet he, too, was still focused on her run.
“Well, we’re just gonna have to rebuild her faster,” she said. She turned to walk away, but looked over her shoulder, smiled, and winked at me.
“Where you going?” Brandon yelled.
She didn’t even turn around. “To find a phone.”
Chapter Five
Runaway spent the next few months cleaning and rebuilding most of her engine compartment. The engine itself was salvageable, but all the wiring, hoses, and rubber were either scorched or melted.
None of us ever really spoke about that day, but we always kept it in the back of our minds. It wasn’t that we tried to avoid it—we just recognized it for what it was—a learning experience. It taught us what can happen at any given moment. We weren’t scared of racing, but we certainly had a great deal more respect for it that we ever had before.
I had gone to the hospital that day and discovered that Stephen was right. I had third-degree burns on my left hand. It was wrapped up in gauze for a while, which was cool, because I got sympathy from pretty much everyone. It hurt like hell, though, and I knew that Runaway felt bad.
I teased her about it, but when I noticed that it was starting to get to her, I’d ease up. I’ll admit—lifting that hood certainly wasn’t the smartest thing I had ever done, because of the permanent unattractive scar of a hood latch on my left hand. In some ways, though, it wasn’t too bad. Girls commented on it and I received quite a bit of attention, even if it did look disgusting.
While Runaway fixed her car, I tinkered with mine to make it faster any way I could. Stephen sat back and watched all of us, while Brandon and Grant also spent time perfecting their cars. When we asked Stephen why he wasn’t working on his car he replied, “Why mess with perfection?”
Smart aleck,
I thought.
Brandon’s car was easy. He had inherited his dad’s old racer, a ’38 Chevy Deluxe coupe with a 321 Wayne Horning engine. It had a yellow canopy (which is basically the body) with red flames. His car was stout. Brandon’s dad had kept it under lock and key down at a storage shed all these years. In fact, Brandon didn’t even know his dad had it until he came home with it one night and gave it to him. I guess Mr. Thompson figured that, since all of us were getting cars, Brandon needed one too.
The great thing about Brandon’s car was not only how old it was, but that it had belonged to Mr. Thompson when he was a kid, and it had been a racer when the quarter-mile was popular and clubs were the “in thing.”
So really, it was the most original of all of our cars, and Brandon was quite proud of that fact. Although, sadly, I don’t think Brandon fully appreciated what he had—it was a dream car most of us would have given anything to have. Brandon, however, just saw it as a car, and that’s all it ever was to him.
In my personal opinion, though, Grant’s car was the most beautiful and ornery car within our group of friends. He bought a 1940 Willys Coupe with a 392 Hemi. It was a big car with a short, choppy back end and a monster engine, one that would beat anything on the streets.
Chrysler’s MOPAR made Hemi engines. Back in the day, the Hemi was the one to beat and the engine everyone wanted. The car would have even beat Runaway’s ’57 Chevy. Her car became known around town as being the fastest, but she and Grant would never race to actually find out. After her accident, Runaway’s car would run a quarter-mile in the high-eleven to low-twelve seconds, but Grant’s Willys would run the quarter in the mid-tens. Runaway didn’t want to put her car up against Grant’s, and Grant didn’t want to put his driving up against hers, so they called it a draw. They liked to keep the mystery between them—it was the difference between a flawless car and flawless driving.
After two years of fine-tuning not only our driving, but also our cars, we finally entered into our senior year of high school. We were going to be the graduating class of 1986. By this time, most everyone at our school and surrounding schools knew of us and had on one or more occasions raced us. But it was the summer between our junior and senior years that things really started to take on a little more shape.
On a cool evening in July, Runaway and I were sitting inside The Oasis at our regular booth, just relaxing. Grant was at a late football practice, as this particular sport was the second love of his life. Brandon was helping his dad drywall part of the addition they had just built onto their house, and Stephen was actually out on a date. Who would have dated him, or put up with his vocabulary and his attitude, was anybody’s guess. We decided that his date must have been only interested in his car. And so that left Runaway and me as the only two without a better place to be.
We decided to leave the stuffy diner for the fresh air of a summer evening. We had been sitting most of the night with the doors wide open and the jukebox blaring. I had put in enough quarters for every record to play, so we could hear the music from outdoors and it would keep us entertained for hours.
Runaway was the first one out the door. She crossed the parking lot, stood on the bumper of her car and then turned and lay on the hood of her car. She rested her head on the windshield with her hands behind her head and feet crossed, staring at the sky. I climbed up and slid alongside her, taking the same position as we stared up into the sky. It was peaceful. We could hear virtually nothing but the music from the diner. We could smell the citrus from the trees that surrounded us. The breeze was the perfect temperature—this was one of the best things about a cool summer night in So Cal.
The jukebox played its usual selection of songs that echoed an era gone by. Then, as if prompted by the evening, the cool, unusual breeze that blew, and the knowledge of the night, the jukebox switched to a song by the Four Preps called “Lazy Summer Night.” As the song began, I knew that perhaps I would never get another chance to just sit with Runaway like this. We were usually in a crowd of people, but for this one moment, it was just her and me. I reveled in it all I could. It was just us, enjoying the peaceful evening of a cool July night with the stars overhead.
“What are you thinking?” I asked. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that she seemed to be a million miles away.
Runaway reflected—she spoke not a word, she just smiled with sparkling eyes.
“What?” I cocked my head look at her.
“Hmm. Just thinking.” She acted as if she didn’t hear me. She still looked at the stars, her eyes bright and shinning. “Planning.”
“Okay, there’s a surprise,” I chuckled. “So give. What are you planning?”
She smiled again and said, “Next year
…
school… you know… it starts in just a month and a half.”
“I was hoping to forget about that,” I sighed. Starting school was the last thing on my mind—I had been enjoying my summer far too much.
“So what are you cooking up now in that brain of yours?” I asked, with a smile broadening across my face. I knew Runaway was always planning, scheming, and devising plans for our future.
“A club,” she said, almost mysteriously. She continued to stare up into the sky without looking at me once, and began to unfold her plans for our future.
“I think we should start a car club—you know, like the ones that are on the Wall of Fame.” She paused and let the breeze blow across our faces. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I already have a name—The Shakers. You know me… I just want to shake things up a bit,” she said while a shadow of a smile flitted across her lips.
I didn’t respond right away, because I wanted to let it sink in. I let my head fall back into place and stared back up at the sky.
I had known it would come to this—how could it not? All those years of planning and building our cars—somewhere in the back of Runaway’s mind, I knew that this is what she had been planning and waiting for. But not until we could all participate with our own cars would she have broached the topic with us.
We all had longed to have our picture up on that wall, even if we had never voiced it.
I listened to the Four Preps as their voices wafted through the air from the diner to us. I had never heard this song before. It was one of those overtly mushy songs with some seriously weird guitar notes and a crooning teenage boy.
It’s such a lazy summer night…
“How would we do it?” I asked her, releasing myself from the jukebox and its odd tune.
She seemed to be expecting this question, because she answered right away.
“Easy—we just start it. I think we should have jackets, though.”
“Jackets? A little ’50s, isn’t it?” I turned my head and stared at her quizzically.
“Yeah,” she suddenly turned toward me. “Yeah, of course—you know, like the ones on the wall? I saw some the other day, black leather, and I thought we could embroider The Shakers on the back.”
I must have given her an odd facial response because she looked back up at the stars, rolled her eyes and said “I know you’re going to think it’s stupid.”
Again the notes from the Four Preps came through the night air, with their love-inspired music.
I looked at her and laughed.
“Dude,” she said, clearly defending her stance. “I’m not into lettermen’s jackets, like Grant has with all of his sports. I want one for just us… you know… just The Shakers. We’ve already been doing this club for three years, so what’s the difference if we make it official? It’s not like we haven’t always been one.” Her gaze towards me was steadfast.
Only the crickets answered, and so did a cool breeze that blew across the hood of her car. Because I hadn’t answered right away, I’m sure she felt I thought her idea was ludicrous, so she put her head back against the windshield and said, “You’re such a doubting Thomas. It’ll be cool—you’ll see.”
Again, it was incredibly hard to get away from this ancient song, so I was forced to listen to the Four Preps as they crooned away.
“Man, what is this song? Please tell me that you did not consciously play it!” Runaway suddenly exclaimed. “This is the goofiest song I have ever heard!” She had a big bright smile and was beginning to laugh.
I couldn’t help myself either—it was the corniest song I had ever heard.
“No,” I defended myself. “I just put a ton of quarters in and pushed
Play
. How was I supposed to know?” I asked, innocently.
“God,” she said, laughing, “It seriously is pathetic!”
I finally began laughing, too. There were some things that were really cool about the ’50s, granted, but sometimes the songs were as cheesy as they could be. This song, in particular, was ridiculous because all it did was talk about making out in a car at a place called Inspiration Point.
Yet, I knew I would never forget lying on the hood of her car on that July night. We laughed until our stomachs hurt from the nonsense of a song, but that was only the catalyst. Our good humor came from a close friendship that had finally arrived at a point where everything we had ever dreamed about was starting to come true.
I knew then and there my life was changing, not because she said she wanted a jacket, but because she had a vision of us and what she wanted to do with our senior year. This vision had been years in the making.
All her life, I figured, she had been dreaming of forming a club and racing on the quarter-mile. I didn’t have to be Einstein to figure that one out. We were already known in the town and our school for our cars, anyway—this just sort of sealed our fate.
I wanted it to happen, too. I wanted to race—I wanted the rush of the speed, I wanted the glory of winning and I wanted my picture immortalized on The Wall. Runaway wanted it, and I knew in my heart that was what she was headed for.