Post #416620 by Cammo on Fri, Oct 31, 2008 5:01 PM

Race Day
Part 5

“DREW! How could you!”
“Hey, it was better than anything else they had,” he sniffed.
“This isn’t tunes, mon.” Andy held the tape like it was a rancid fish.
“Do you want to listen to Nana Mouskouri? That’s all they had, that and some AC/DC tape.”
“THEY HAD AC/DC!” Andy almost got mad there, it was the closest I’ve ever seen him to loosing his cool.

Luckily, something happened.

Over the hill in front of us burst a caravan of 6 cars, all going at rocket launcher speeds right at us. We just had a fraction of a second to see them up close as they flew by, going to the lighthouse.

“Barry! Alex! Bruce! Um… who’s… Vickie! Jordan! Wow, lookit ‘em go!” Andy called out. They were bunched up, all staying together in a pack, maybe they didn’t realize until now that people were ahead of them.

“I have to go to the bathroom.” DREW said.
“Alright,” Andy mumbled, fiddling with the tape’s wrapper, “Don’t get all sulky, we’ll play your tape. What the heck. AD/DC, jeeez, mon.”
“Really. I have to go to the bathroom.” DREW said again.
“Do we have to go to a real bathroom? I mean, is it, y’know, number one or two?”
“I’d rather not discuss the details.” Really sniffy now.
“Okay, the General Store is right up here. We should get a map.”
“Maybe they have real tunes.” Andy put in.
“Yeah, I wanna get a drink. Maybe an orange juice. We have to do this fast, though. Like we got 1 minute for this stop. Take care of everything and back in the car at a count of sixty. I’m not kidding.”
DREW didn’t saw anything.
We screamed into Huysman’s, throwing gravel everywhere, shut off the engine and dashed into the store.
‘Where’s the bathroom?” DREW asked politely.
The man behind the counter didn’t even look up, he just gestured to the left and said “Outside.”

Andy and I raided the place for maps (a badly printed tourist map was available, but it was free) drinks and a box of Bugles. Then we ran outside. DREW wasn’t in the car, so we ran to the bathroom at the back and banged on the door –

This was taking way too long, but I heard a FLUSH and yelled

“DREW! C’MON! GET THE LEAD OUT!”
“Or whatever.” Andy said.
No noise from inside.
“Hey, I was thinking,” Andy said, “what will those other cars do when there’s only two envelopes at the restaurant?”
“Oh. Don’t know. Look around?”
“Would you look around? The other guys got envelopes, but not you. Wouldn’t you be mad? Maybe try to read the other guys’ ones? Maybe start a fight?
I grinned. “That would be great.”
“DREW! You in there?” Andy yelled this time.
We heard a faint “Leave me alone.” It was DREW all right.
“GET GOING!”
Another flush.
“He’s been in there a LONG TIME, mon.” Andy said, “what did he eat for lunch, a whole turkey?”
We waited, then I yelled again “DREW, we’re leaving in like ten seconds!”
“Ten!”
“Nine!”
I paused, and said to Andy, “You think this is working?”
“Nah, but …, um, EIGHT, MON!”
“Yeah, SEVEN!”
Another flush.
“Six!”
“Five!”
"Four!”

Then the door open, the smell hit us like a two-by-four to the head, and DREW dashed out, we ran with him to the Silver Bullet, revved it up and spat gravel again swerving to the asphalt, twenty, time to really lay down some miles, thirty forty fifty, push it to seventy, eighty, Any is going over the map and yelling

“We can follow this all the way over! Past the ten turnoff and then up on that road that follows the fishing docks in Wellington, we’ll bypass town that way, mon! This map is great!” And that’s what we did, ninety ninety five, the early summer grass blurring past, rolling lime green hills like a giant roller coaster that had been pulled by eternity into long low hills, up and down postcard views of a dream Ireland, one-o-five, watch that next hill, down too one hundred, level out, keep an eye on the side roads,

“Richard is gonna beat us. He’s at least ten minutes ahead.” DREW said.

I thought about it, but didn’t slow down.
“We’re second, right? I hope we are. Then we got a chance. Even if they’re way ahead of us, if we were third we’d be losing. But we aren’t. And here’s the thing with Tommy’s car – it’s built at home. They’re gonna throw a rod, or break a fuel line, or forget to screw down the brake liner doohickey thing and kapow, they’re out.”
DREW didn’t say anything.
“I hope not,” said Andy.
“What ya mean?”
“Hope they don’t kill themselves. Maybe they’ll just get a flat tire.” Andy smiled.
I didn’t want to set Andy straight on what happens to a car going a hundred miles an hour when it blows a commercial tire.

“We got trouble!” DREW yelled out.
Now what? Was there a…
“There’s a car behind us!”
I looked in the mirror. Nobody.
“What do ya mean? There’s nothing back there.”
“It’s way back, but its going fast.” DREW said, looking outy the back window.
“It’s too far back,” I said hopefully, “and it can’t catch us. What kind of car is it?”
DREW looked for a long time, then said, “Blue.”
“No, I mean…”
“He means…” Andy was looking back now too. Then something clicked, and Andy said

“It’s Bruce Cronk.”

No.

“You sure?”
“Yeah, he drives a blue Nova. He passed us going trhe other way when we left the lighthouse, remember?”
That was bad. Bruce was regarded as the driver’s driver in the County. Leave it to Bruce to be the only one not fooled by our fakery bakery envelopes, and had somehow gotten a real one and was after us in his retooled hotter than hell Blue Nova, known all over as the ‘Sonic Broom’ because it swept aside all other cars.

Up to a hundred and five, Andy said the final turn to the north was coming up in a few miles, Sonic Broom behind maybe two miles now, flat country road, no potholes, the Bullet tops out at one-o-seven, can’t go faster, level off, gear down fast, take the turn, onto the access road, back up the seventy, turn again and we’re finall heading north, Cronk has cut the lead down to less than a mile, man he must have taken those corners fast, that guy is dangerous, don’t let him push you into making mistakes, flat road again, the needle goes up, the ferry is maybe ten miles away, that’s seven minutes, faster, the Sonic Broom is in the rearview now, driving way too fast, now it’s a real race, still back there, boith Andy and DREW looking out the back, I’m the only one watching the road, the ferry is down below us now, there it is, Cronk looks like he wants to pass, don’t do it on this road, if he tries to I’ll slow down and let him…

WHAM! The blue Nova turns in the air, an explosion of gravel all around it, clouds of brown smoke, can’t see the car anymore, DREW yelling something

“STOP THE CAR!”

Gotta slow down, don’t brake hard, keep off the shoulder, the car stops.

“What’s going…” I start to say, but
DREW yells, “Turn around! They went off the road!” So I spin it around, go back to the Nova and there it is on its side, crumpled in the ditch, clouds of dirt still swirling, and people are screaming inside. DREW pushes out of our car, runs to the Nova and tries to climb up the side to open the door, Andy and I are trying to help now too but the door won’t move, it’s all smashed in, the handles have been sheared off but the back window is open, I pull myself up and look in and there’s a girl down there in the dark, she’s lying on her back up against the front seat and she’s screaming

“The GLASS! THE GLASS! EAAAaaaah!”

and wiping her arms, all covered in blood. I look around, DREW is beside me now looking in, and the whole back seat is covered in shattered glass and big thick pools of blood, deep red splattered all over the seats, everywhere glass, the girls seems to be blinded, she can’t open her eyes, and every time she moves the crushed glass seems to cut into her more. I get a wave of nausea, but lifeguard training kicks in and I drop to the ground and tell Andy

“Call this in. See that house over there? Tell ’em to send an ambulance.”

Andy nods, then suddenly runs to the house. I turn back to the car, just in time to see DREW’s body dropping into the back of the car through the open window. Pull myself up again, and peer down through the window and DREW is pushing the door from the inside, trying to open it, putting everything he’s got into pushing that door. There’s a smell of gas, and the girl is still screaming, and I yell at DREW

“Watch out for the glass!” while trying to pull on the door from my side.
DREW takes a breath, looks right up into my face and says

“Cam, there’s no glass.”

He looks right at me, and something in his calm voice snaps in my head, and I look down at where he’s standing and the glass starts vanishing.

The whole inside of the car is covered in big shards of sharp blue auto glass, but as I looked at each shard, it just fades away like a really cheap movie effect. And then the blood on the inside starts to move. It looks exactly like it’s going down a drain, or like it was filmed in reverse, instead of flooding the car it was drying up, not leaving a mark or a stain where it had been, totally clean, just like it had never been there. One part of my brain was analyzing what was happening, saying that the panic had hypnotized you and shown you exactly what you expected to see, but the other part of my brain was busy watching the edges of the blood move over the fabric of the chair, I can still see it happening after all these years, and being horrified at what I was watching, but DREW had given up on the doors and was holding onto the inside handles, BAM, and was trying to kick, BAM, the back window out, BAM a crack started, BAM and the smell of gas was stronger now, was I imaging that too? BAM the window was cracked, and I watched as DREW actually kicked his shoe right through the back window, BAM, a big hole now, and I took my jacket off, glass was really all over the ground now, and tried to pull the auto safety glass away from the window from the outside, my hand wrapped in my jacket but DREW was yelling at me to back off as he kicked it again, and again, and now there were just shards around the edges and he was handing out the girl,

it was Christine. She was in my chemistry class,

and helped her out, the jacket laid across the glass edge, DREW inside going for the other people, I told Christine to lie down with her feet up, she’s white, in shock and needs to get some blood back in her head, and another head appears at the back window, a girl I don’t recognize, pull her out, where‘s Andy? And there’s a pause and somebody’s talking in the car, up to the window, it’s Bruce in the front seat and the smell off gas is really strong now, it’s unhealthy, where is that ambulance? DREW is talking to Bruce and he’s yelling at him to get up, Bruce is a bug guy and he looks locked into the front seat,
“Lean the seat back!” I yell, and DREW works on that, Bruce seems to be whimpering, maybe he’s got something broken, I know how that feels, you can’t breath in the car anymore the gas is almost blue in the air, but the seat leans down, Bruce doesn’t scream so no broken bones, and DREW says that if Bruce doesn’t go now he’s a dead man.

I try to distract him and say “Hi Bruce!” and gesture to him. C’mon out the back. DREW tells him to grab his arm, and pulls him to his feet, good so far, then tells him to put his knee on the stick shift and crawl up. He does it, and when Bruce reaches the back window, is it big enough? Bruce is a big guy, he puts his head out and breathes fresh air and then he’s outside, I hear an ambulance, but DREW is having a hard time getting out. I reach down and grab DREW’s arm and he’s shaking in muscle spasms, it’s happening to his whole body, and DREW’s face is mottled white and a weird purple, he’s having trouble talking and I sort of ease him out, onto the ground and tell everybody to crawl away, away from the car, then there’s an ambulance right beside us and somebody is yelling, Andy is beside us yelling too,

And I stand up and it’s Jerry Henderson driving a paramedic van.

Jerry is the the town do-it-all, he had three jobs but the main one I guess was being a paramedic, we had a few run-ins the summer before in a sailing regatta race when Jerry’s crew had actually quit at different times in the race, he had quite a few anger problems and the crew had actually just jumped over board, swum for shore and hitchhiked home, a first in a just for fun opening day regatta race. Here was Jerry now, yelling at Andy, and it seemed he thought that we had caused an accident, or had forced them off the road or something.

“We didn’t cause the accident,” I jumped in, yelling at Jerry, “ we were ahead of them and they hit the shoulder, we came back to HELP THEM!”
Jerry was one of those guys who likes to yell. “You’re in this the whole way, MacMillan, you were out joyriding, I seen you and your friends, and you just about killed these kids!”
“We saved their lives! Didn’t you see us, we were pulling them out of the car! You got worms in your brains or something!”
“Yeah, and where’s the foam, mon!” Andy looked annoyed.
“I’m calling this in a 616, that’s a head on collision caused by drunk driving! And you can’t move anybody away from a crash scene, if they have broken ribs they’ll hemorrhage!”
“We aren’t drunk! It’s for o’clock in the afternoon! And they aren’t hemorrhaging!”
“Yeah, and where’s the foam, mon!”

“What’s the foam?!” I yelled at Andy.

“The foam, you shoot it all over the engine so it doesn’t go up, you know, that white foamy fire retardant stuff,” And Andy looks at Jerry, “Where’s the foam?”
Jerry looked sheepish for a second “We don’t have any.” He said.
“You got a fire extinguisher? What about these three, they’re all in shock…”
“What you know about shock, kid?”
“Fuck man, I’ve taken five years of Red Cross Lifesaving and I know shock when I see it! You’re welcome! DREW says you’re welcome! He’s the one who pulled them out!

“Oh.” Jerry looked at DREW, who was still sitting on the ground beside us. “So,” Jerry said,

“DREW saved everybody.” His voice was arrogant, dripping with disbelief that DREW could do anything for anybody. And he looked right at me, his eyes saying, DREW is a fag. Everybody knows he's a fag.

And it caught me for a second. Maybe he was right. Maybe we shouldn’t have pulled those guys out. Maybe we were stupid, maybe we didn’t have the slightest idea what we were doing. Maybe DREW was the wrong guy to…

Then the car went up.