And that was when the big one happened. The monster car crash that car owners dread and fans love. A Stiller car driven by Nick Shrin got loose, slid out of its groove, and the car following it made contact and punted Shrin into the wall. Six other cars got caught in the wreck and were instantly turned into twisted, shredded scrap metal. Fortunately, they were all behind Hooker.
When racing resumed and everyone lined up for the restart, the gap would be closed between the red 69 Lube-A-Lot car and Hooker’s Metro car.
“Back her down,” I told Hooker. “You just got lucky.”
“What happened?”
“Shrin got loose and hit the wall, and after that he was hit by everyone except you and the pace car.”
The caution flag was out and the field was frozen until the mess could be cleared. Stiller Racing runs three Cup cars. Hooker drives one. Larry Karna drives another. And Nick Shrin drives the yellow-and-red car sponsored by YumYum Snack Cakes. Nick’s a good driver and a good person, and I was experiencing some anxiety about him right now. Stock cars are entered and exited via the driver’s-side window, and Shrin hadn’t yet climbed out. I had my binocular
s trained on him, but I couldn’t tell much. He was still in his restraint system, still had his helmet on, visor down. The car was surrounded by emergency workers. A bunch of cars were trashed in the crash, but Shrin was the only driver not yet out of his.
“What’s going on?” Hooker wanted to know.
“Shrin’s still in his car.”
Shrin’s spotter was standing next to me. His name is Jefferson Davis Warner, and everyone calls him Gobbles. He’s in his early thirties, his ears stick out, his brown hair sticks up, and he has a nose that got smashed in a bar fight and was left slightly crooked. He’s gangly legged and rail thin, and his hands and feet are too big for his body…sort of a cross between a fluffy-headed crane and a Great Dane puppy. He eats nonstop and never gains an ounce. I’m told he got the name Gobbles when he was in school and was always first in the lunch line. I guess it’s ironically appropriate that he’s now on the YumYum Snack Cake team. He has a good heart, and he’s a good spotter. And like a lot of people in the program, when Gobbles got out of the NASCAR bubble, he wasn’t the sharpest tack on the corkboard. He could calculate pit road speed from a tach reading, but he couldn’t tell a con man from a cow flop. It all smelled the same to Gobbles. Right now his face was white, and he had the rail in a death grip.
“How is he?” I asked Gobbles. “Is he talking to you?”
“No. I heard him hit the wall, and since then there’s been nothing but silence. He’s not saying anything.”
Every spotter was binoculars up on the YumYum car. Conversation on the roof was hushed. No one moved. If a driver was really in trouble, a tarp would be raised, shielding him from view. I had my teeth sunk into my lower lip, and my stomach clenched into a knot, praying not to see the tarp.
Rescue workers were at both side windows. The EMT at the driver’s window backed out. He had Shrin in tow. They strapped Shrin onto a stretcher. I still couldn’t see much. Too many people at the accident scene. NASCAR came on over their own frequency and announced that Shrin was conscious and going for tests. The PA system relayed it. An audible sigh of relief went up from the stands. Spotters backed off, using the break in action to scarf down junk food or smoke or rush to the men’s room.
Gobbles was still attached to the rail, looking like he might keel over at any moment.
“He’s conscious,” I told Gobbles. “They’re taking him for tests. Looks like you’re done for the day.”
Gobbles nodded but held tight to the rail.
“You don’t look good,” I told him. “You should go down and get out of the sun.”
“It’s not the sun,” Gobbles said. “It’s my life. My life sucks.”
“It’ll get better.”
“Not likely,” Gobbles said. “I’m a loser. I don’t do nothin’ right. Even my wife left me. I didn’t do nothin’ right there either. She took off six months ago with the kids and the dog. She said I didn’t know nothin’ about the man in the boat. The man in the boat don’t like to be woke up in the middle of the night. And the man in the boat needs to have the oar in the water longer than thirty seconds. I tell you, there was a list a mile long about the man in the boat. Do this. Don’t do that. Half the time I couldn’t even find the man in the boat. It was just friggin’ confusing. I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t want to do right by the man in the boat, but golly jeez I couldn’t get the hang of it. And if you ask me, the man in the boat is pretty fuckin’ grumpy. I want to go back to the days when it was enough for a guy to take out the garbage. Whatever happened to those days? Those were simpler times. And now I’m making a mess of my job. I got my driver hurt.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my fault. Loser, loser, loser. That’s me. I thought I was doing good, but it turned out bad. It’s the man in the boat all over again.”
“Maybe you should talk to Hooker. He knows a lot about the man in the boat.”
Gobbles focused his binoculars on the infield and sucked in air. “And things aren’t bad enough, the sonsabitches are talking to Ray Huevo. Lordy, what does that mean?”
The infield of a NASCAR track is a self-contained race city. The trucks that haul the cars are lined up across from the garages and serve as mobile command units. Beyond the trucks are the million-dollar-driver motor coaches. And if there’s enough room, in a separate infield area, some lucky fans will get a campground space. I did a sweep, but I didn’t know what I was looking for.
“I don’t know Huevo by sight,” I said to Gobbles. “Where is he?”
“There are three men standing alongside the sixty-nine car hauler. Ray Huevo’s the one in the short-sleeved shirt. I only seen him a couple times. He don’t usually show up at the races. He pretty much stays in Mexico. His brother Oscar is the head of Huevo Motor Sports, and it’s usually him you see at the track. Ray is kind of the runt black sheep of the family. Anyhow, the little bald guy with Ray Huevo is the guy who run down Clay.”
Clay Moogey worked in the engine department at Stiller. Three days ago he walked out of a bar, stepped off the curb to cross the street, and was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
“Are you sure?”