Trophies (short story)

Lorien strained forward in the crowd at the concession stand. She could hear the engines revving and back-firing as the super-modifieds were started for the A-feature, and she didn't want to miss any of the race.  Squeezing ahead of a man who was still reading the menu on the back wall, she ordered the hot dogs and Cokes for her mother and her friends, then bought a Baby Ruth and a pack of Juicy Fruit with her own money.  She tucked the gum into her purse and hurried toward the grandstand.

Some of the cars were already in line by the time she got back to her seat.  Her mother passed around the food and change while Lorien studied the cars at the starting line.  She was looking for number twenty-six, but L. Ray wasn't on the track yet.

Her mother offered her a drink of Coke and said, "Hal drew the pole."

"Great."  Lorien knew that her mother would watch the whole race only if her step-father jumped into the lead.  When Hal had to come from behind, fighting his way through the pack where the cars were tight and skidded into one another, her mother always sat quietly with her eyes down, fingers crossed on both hands.

Helen, the new mechanic's wife, leaned across Lorien's mother and tapped Lorien on the thigh with a quarter. With the cars warming up, she had to yell to be heard, "Here, Sweetie, thanks. You're a good kid."

"Thanks."  Lorien took the money and slipped it into her pocket.

Helen tapped her again, smiling broadly, and Lorien could see the pink wad of gum that worked from one side to the other of the woman's mouth.  "You're gonna yell for your dad, aren't you? Blood's thicker than water.  L. Ray will just have to settle for second place."  She winked, then leaned her blonde cotton candy hair close to Lorien's mother's head.  "She still ga-ga over the new kid?" 

Lorien didn't hear her mother's reply, and she concentrated on unwrapping the candy bar.  L. Ray was one of the last of the drivers to pull onto the track, driving around most of the others to get to the open slot that was left for him.  She counted him five rows back on the outside.  That wasn't too bad.

Two weeks earlier, Lorien's step-father had asked L. Ray to eat with them after the Tulsa race.  He'd sat across from Lorien, leaning over to dip his french fries into the glob of ketchup on her plate and winking at her. Her step-father hadn't seem to notice and went right on talking about an engine they ought to have a look at.  

On the drive home, she had pretended to sleep so that she could be left alone with her thoughts and the disquieting stirring in her chest and abdomen. She smiled when she heard Hal tell her mother that L. Ray was sharp and would be a top contender someday, once he had more experience and learned to keep his cool.  Her mother said that Hal probably took to L. Ray because he saw himself in the younger driver.  

Hal had become a local favorite during those post-war years when the national appetite for heroes was still keen. But he had seemed rugged to a fault to Lorien's grandmother, who had looked on her first son-in-law as the boy she'd never had, and she had grieved long and bitterly, even after Lorien and her mother had adjusted to life without him.  

Crossing her arms over her chest, Lorien pressed them lightly against her breasts, noting the slight swell at the scooped neck of her blouse.  She wondered if L. Ray knew that she was only five years younger than he was; she'd been told that she looked old for fourteen-and-a-half, especially when she wore eye-shadow and mascara and had her hair done at Coiffures de Lili An. 

The cars began to move up the track, gaps appearing, then closing up as the drivers paced themselves.  Lorien could feel the rumble of the engines in her chest and she listened to the octaves they reached before the drivers changed gears.  She had already finished the Baby Ruth, and she thought about opening the pack of gum, but decided to save it intact until after the race.

The din of the engines drowned out the voice that crackled and repeated the line-up over the P.A.  The cars clustered in the fourth turn, like the body of an inchworm catching up with itself, then snaked out as each machine accelerated coming into the straight-away, roaring toward the flagman who waited, poised, at the edge of the track.  His arm swept down, waving the green flag in tight figure-eights as he danced away from the apron.  

A sheet of dust rose in front of the grandstand and drifted over the spectators.  In the center of the pack, cars bounced into one another as they jostled for position going into the first turn.  L. Ray rode high on the bank, but held his place.  Hal broke free coming out of the second turn, with number eight-six on his tail. 

The field opened up on the back stretch, and L. Ray gunned around two slower cars, then skidded high on turn four and slid straight across the track, his rear-end jarring the car that was in fifth place as he cut it off.

Lorien held her breath as L. Ray's blue and yellow hood nosed under a maroon car that was new to the track. She let her breath out slowly as the four cars opened up in the stretches.  Hal's cut-down coupe eventually pulled away, eighty-six close behind him, leaving the other two to battle for third.  

The cheering and moaning of the crowd crescendoed as favorite drivers challenged the cars ahead of them, or spun out and came to rest on the edge of the track.  The yellow caution came out while a stalled car was pushed clear of turn three, and the noise in the grandstand settled to a drone as fans turned to talk to one another.  

Lorien heard her mother comment about the track being dry and slick, and say that Hal had been prepared for it.  Lorien wondered what tires L. Ray was using and crossed her fingers more tightly, turning back to the cars that were speeding up in response to the green flag. She had lost count and had to start over, figuring there were at least forty laps to go.  

It took two complete circuits around the track for Hal to put two lengths between himself and the others, leaving L. Ray in a tight race for second with eighty-six and the maroon car.  The muscles in her stomach and calves began to ache, and she had to change her position in the seat.  She could feel her body strain forward as L. Ray edged a little ahead of eighty-six in the turns before they straightened out and pulled even again.  

She bore down, her feet braced on either of the rented bleacher seat in front of her, as L. Ray hugged the groove in turns three and four, his tail-end straining toward the wall.  Straightening out, he had gained enough of an edge to pull clear when the driver of the maroon car, who had been crowding from behind swerved, his left front tire jamming into the rear of L. Ray's car, lifting it onto its nose and slamming it into the half-buried tires that marked the inside of the turn. 

Suddenly, L. Ray was in the air, flipping end over end toward the pits, the racing crews at the north end scattering like billiard balls.  She counted one, two, three revolutions before the car fell heavily to the ground, right side up, settling into the cloud of dust that lifted around it.

It wasn't until the dust settled some that she could hear again, see the red light turning on top the the ambulance that waited at the edge of the track, its siren shrieking along with the voices of the fans who were on their feet, straining to see.  A half dozen men had run up to the car and were peering into it, some climbing up on the sides and reaching for L. Ray through the open roof.  He was limp at first, his helmeted head sagging heavily to one side, but as the men braced him on the roof, preparing to hand him down to those men standing next to the car, he lifted one arm in a weak salute to the stands.  

The crowd went wild before settling back down to watch the rest of the cars, which had slowed to a crawl.  The ambulance was let through before the green flag came out once more, and Lorien watched as the ambulance pulled alongside L. Ray, who was carefully lifted between the open doors.

Lorien felt her mother's hand on her arm.  "He was probably more shaken up than anything." Lorien nodded without taking her eyes from the ambulance.  She opened her mouth to steady her breathing, flinching as a woman in the next row shrieked, "Come on, Grady, you got 'em," as the maroon car barreled past eighty-six on the outside and slid down to the groove.  

The next time Hal's car came by, she began counting laps again, still watching the ambulance and the men milling around the doors at the back.  She was up to twenty-two before L. Ray emerged with a patch of white gauze over his right cheek.  He walked over to the pit wall, where he stood watching the cars come down the front straight-away. Then he looked up at the grandstand, and Lorien straightened her back and stared back fiercely, hoping he could see through the glare of the flood lights to make out individual faces, but he turned his head as one of his pit crew tapped him on the shoulder, and they walked back to the truck where his car was being loaded onto the trailer where she lost sight of him.

Most of the spectators were on their feet as the cars took the checkered flag, the announcer calling out the drivers' names.  Hal came around again to pick up the checkered flag and make his victory lap, holding the flag over the top of the car for the fans to see. Lorien wanted to go down to the gate and wait with the crowd that was pressing at the fence, anxious to get into the pits, but she hung back, waiting for her mother to fold up the blanket they sat on and grab her purse. Lorien watched as Helen took a damp cloth from a plastic bag and wiped her face and hands, grimacing at the dirt on the yellow terry cloth.  Lorien's hand went to her own face, and she rubbed at the grit that had blown up from the track.  She looked into the cup that her mother had set between them and saw that there was still some ice in the bottom. She dipped her hand into it, letting the ice melt a little, then ran her wet fingers over her face, repeating the motions several times while she watched Hal and the winner of the B-feature receive their trophies.

Stepping up on the bleacher to get a better view, she could see L. Ray by the flag stand, shaking hands with the track owner as flash bulbs popped.  The announcer called him an up-and-coming young driver, and said that he was the fifth driver to be awarded a roll-over trophy that season.  He asked for a round of applause for the "lucky young man who was able to walk away."

By the time Lorien and her mother had crossed the track, Hal was back in his pit, talking to fans who were gathered around him. He kissed her mother and handed her the first place trophy, then hugged Lorien, the smell of oil and dust thick on his neck and racing jacket.  He handed Lorien his helmet and goggles.  "Here, Punkin, you want to put these in the car for me?"

She hurried over to the open trunk and dropped the things into it, then went around the car and slipped into the front seat, where she looked at herself in the rear-view mirror and combed  her hair.  By the time she had worked her way back into the circle of people milling around her step-father, L. Ray was there, congratulating him.  "Good race.  I thought I might get a shot at you for a while.  Your rig was really movin'."

Hal, who had taken out a handkerchief, blew his nose hard. "It was handling better in the heat, before the track got so slick.  What happened in turn four?"

L. Ray took a bottle of Coors out of his jacket pocket and an opener, and held them out.  Hal took them and popped the cap off the bottle, then clamped his mouth over the top to catch the foam. 

"That son-of-a-bitch," L. Ray said. "My car was running great, too."

Hal handed him back the bottle opener and turned to autograph an eight-by-ten glossy of himself taken at the state fair.

"Jammed the axle good," L. Ray said.  "Hell, the whole frame will have to be worked.  Can't tell about the rest, yet."

Lorien edged into the circle and L. Ray nodded down at her. "Looks like your old man's gonna need some more shelf space.  Me, on the other hand . . . ."  He held out the trophy he'd been cradling in the crook of his arm.  "This how I looked?"

She reached out and grasped the small block of brown plastic on which a brass car balanced on its nose.  It was surprisingly heavy.

"Sort of."  She looked from the trophy up to the bandage on his forehead.  "Does that hurt very much?"

"Only when I lose."  He grinned at her, deepening the lines in his cheeks, and winked.  "You got gum?" She reached into her purse and drew out the Juicy Fruit.

"Thanks, Pal."  He took it from her and opened the pack, nodding at something one of his crew called to him.  Lorien studied the trophy, running her fingers over the contours of the miniature car. When L. Ray handed the opened pack of gum back to her, his fingers brushed against hers.  She was still looking at his hand when he reached around to take a bottle of beer from a woman who had just walked up to the circle. 

"How much longer you gonna be?" she asked him.  "They've got everything loaded."  The woman had slipped her arm through L. Ray's and was leaning against him.  Lorien was struck by the black lines drawn around the woman's eyes, her face unsmiling in its frame of reddish blond curls.

"Tell 'em I'll be along," he told her.

"What are we waiting for?"

L. Ray clamped his hand over the woman's shoulder and turned her around.  "Go on back to the truck.  I'll catch up with you." 

Lorien watched the woman walk away, studying the fullness of her pink shorts as her hips swayed from side to side.  Turning back, she watched L. Ray slap Hal on the back, and say he'd catch him later—that he had some business to take care of.  Then L. Ray tossed his empty beer bottle in a trash can and started across the pits, toward the maroon car.

Climbing up onto the tongue of a nearby trailer, Lorien tried to follow L. Ray's progress through the maze of people and vehicles.  She saw him gesturing toward the fourth turn as he talked to a man in a dark red racing suit.  The man stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head.  

Some of the people milling around stopped and looked at them.  She saw L. Ray lean forward, his finger on the man's chest. Then all at once the other driver went backwards, scattering the people behind him, and L. Ray went down after him. The crowd surged away, then back in, men knocking together in their attempts to separate the two who were fighting. The woman in pink shorts danced from one foot to the other, shouting, a lug wrench clutched in one hand.

Lorien's stomach grew tight.  She had to grip the tail-gate of the truck to keep her balance as she leaned out to get a better look.  Someone behind her yelled "Fight!" and curious fans and drivers streamed by to swell the crowd around L. Ray until even his yellow jacket wasn't visible any longer.

Hal called to Lorien and her mother, telling them to get to the car, and went over to help his crew finish loading up. 

"Lorien, come on down."  Her mother tugged her arm to get her down from the trailer.  "It'll be all right."  Her mother's voice was calm, but Lorien noticed the strain in her face as she busied herself with the blankets and sweaters in the trunk, every few seconds glancing over at Hal, who had stopped working and had moved closer to the fight, where he was talking to some of the other men.  They kidded him about his not joining in.

He grinned and faked a punch at another driver's midsection, patted it instead, then raised his hands in mock surrender.  "Too old for that stuff," he said.

Lorien tossed her purse into the back seat, then leaned against the car door, rubbing her forehead.  It felt clammy and cold.  She tried to catch glimpses of the action between the cars and trucks that were pulling out of the pits, but there was too much movement and confusion.  

She squeezed L. Ray's trophy with both hands and clamped it to her chest, aware of her heart pounding in her throat.  She wanted to run to where his truck was parked and wait there with the trophy, but her legs felt wobbly.  The lump in her throat grew suddenly larger.  She pushed herself away from the door, her hand going to her mouth as she moved around to the front of the car.  

The trophy scraped against the bumper as she braced herself, bending over from the waist.  Tears burned her eyes as she felt the sourness rising.  She turned her head to see if any of the fight was visible from there, but the sourness was moving, rising up through her chest and into her throat until her cheeks ballooned and she opened her mouth to let it out.

"Lori!"  Her mother came up behind her and placed her palm against Lorien's forehead.  "Hal, come over here!"

He strolled up from behind them.  "Looks like they're getting it broken up. Stupid punks.  What's wrong with her?"

"Never mind.  Just get me the box of kleenex out of the glove compartment.  And see if there's any ice left in the cooler and bring us a cup."

Her mother gave Lorien a handful of tissue to wipe her mouth with and helped her into the back seat, where she curled up on her side.  "It's over," her mother said. "I'm sure he's all right." She pressed her cool hand to Lorien's flushed cheek.  "You lie here while I get the trunk closed up."   

Lorien nodded and closed her eyes.  When she opened them again, her mother was gone and the track lights were going out in sections around the oval, giving an eerie cast to everything.  She could hear the remaining cars and trucks heading for the gate.  

She pressed the cool surface of L. Ray's trophy to her cheek, then held it up to the light that was coming through the back window, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, making a halo around the small brass car.

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