John D. MacDonald
Elimination Race
In September he knew he would be all right for another chance at the big one in May. The arm was coming back, even though the doctors had said it wouldn’t. So, without letting Sally know, he had got in touch with Rikert, and Rikert had said yes, he was entering two cars, but he had the drivers all lined up and he couldn’t change. And Wade Ralson, remembering the tone of Rikert’s voice, the cool politeness, knew that the word had gone out, knew that the owners considered that Wade Ralson, after twelve tries at Indianapolis, was bad news. Experience couldn’t cancel out bad luck. A third and a fourth in twelve years. And finishing only four times, and then that thing last year.
So one October night, after scrubbing the garage grease off his hands, and after the kids had left the kitchen table, and Sally was at the sink, her back to him, he said, as casually as he could, “I’ve been trying to get a car for next year.” It didn’t sound casual. It sounded too flat and too final.
She stood very still and didn’t move for a long time. Then she held another dish under the tap and said, without turning, “Why, Wade?”
“It’s been the luck. I’ve got the skill and the judgment for one more try. Twelve tries and—”
“You want to try it the thirteenth time,” she said, so softly that he barely heard her.
She dropped the dish in the sink and he heard it smash. She turned slowly and said, “It isn’t for you to decide. I saw you roll and burn, Wade. I saw it happen and I knew you were dead, because nobody could live through that, and I was sure you were dead. And I sat by your bed all those weeks while they were doing the grafts and giving you the plasma. So you can’t say I ever backed out before. All the stinking tracks and the clunker heaps you drove, and that smash at Cleveland and over the rail at Miami...” She took a deep breath. “You and Ginger own the garage, and he’s fool enough not to care if you take advantage of him by running off for just one more time. But I won’t go through it again.”
He had felt his face redden. “You won’t go through it again?”
“No, Wade.”
“Exactly how the hell do you expect to stop me?” he asked.
“You’ll do it. I won’t stop you. I know that. But I won’t be there. I won’t even let myself think about it. And if you come back, maybe we can make some kind of a life, but it won’t ever be the same again. Ever, ever, ever.”
And she had run from the kitchen, leaving him alone there with his righteous anger. One more time. One more chance, and show them all. If a man never tried again after a really bad one, they said your nerve was gone, and he knew his nerve was fine, and he knew he had a good race left before his thirty-seven-year-old reflexes were too far shot to adjust to running like a bomb by the grandstand, knocking two hundred, with the sleek skin of the other wagons just inches away.
And it was all different between Sally and him while he was trying to get a car. He didn’t bring it up again and neither did she, and once he woke up in the night to hear her weeping softly beside him, and he pretended he was still asleep.
She’d always been a good race driver’s wife, with a grandstand smile, but now all that was shot to hell just when he could take the big one, take that sixty thousand dollars lying around loose and waiting for him.
After a while there were no car owners left but Banderson, down on his Florida place, and Banderson said, “I can’t promise anything, but come on down if you can, and we’ll talk it over.”
It was a bad thing dealing with Banderson, because there was something strange about him. He’d put the money into the big cars, and money into the drivers, and it never seemed to mean much to him except the power-sense, the indirect way of killing a man. He got good drivers and they would work with him once and never again.
So Wade drew the money and took Ginger’s good-luck handshake, and Sally’s mechanical parting kiss, with nothing at all in her eyes, and he rode a coach down to Florida, down to Bander-son’s town. He got a room and washed up and took a nap. He checked out and took a cab out to Banderson’s big place on the key, a big, showy, white place overlooking the Gulf. The cab swung up into the circular shell drive and let him out. As it drove away, he stood for a time, aware of how he looked — a little rumpled, a little strained; a big man with hard, oversized hands and a face made of hard bones.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the Cuban servant told Wade he was expected, that there was a room ready for him, but that Mr. Banderson was resting and could not be disturbed until later. When he woke up, he would be told that Mr. Ralson had arrived. If Mr. Ralson cared to go out onto the beach, there were swimming trunks available, sir.
Wade didn’t want to swim, but he did wander out onto the beach, past the patio and swimming pool and barbecue area.
One of the Cuban servants found him on the beach and told him that Mr. Banderson would like to see him by the pool. Wade went back up the sea-wall steps, across the patio, and to the pool. Mr. Oliver Banderson sat at a metal table under the shade of a gaudy umbrella. He gave Wade a brisk smile as Wade came up to him.
“Sit down, Ralson. Nice to see you again. Drink?”
“Thanks. What have you got there?”
“Rum sour. The boy is good at them.”
Wade nodded, and the boy smiled and hurried away. Wade said, “Mr. Banderson, I guess it’s no secret that after last year it’s hard for me to—”
“Let’s not start it that way,” Banderson said. He was a crisp little elderly man with a mocking smile and a faint and disconcerting slant of one eye, so that it was difficult to look directly at him and make any guess at what he might be thinking. “Let’s start it the other way around. You can’t get a car anywhere else, so you’ve come to me.”
“That’s right, Mr. Banderson.”
“And you expect me to risk fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of automobile on you. Plus, of course, the incidental expenses.”
“I think I can win it.”
“So will every other driver next May, Ralson.”
“Check my national rating over the past twelve years, Mr. Banderson.”
“I have.”
“It averages out.”
“And Indianapolis was never up to the average, was it?”
“All the more reason why this might be the year. Last year I did a qualifying lap of one thirty-seven point seven.”
“And on the hundred and fourteenth lap of the big one, you gave the crowd just what they came there to see.”
The boy brought the drink, and Wade picked it up, turning the small glass in his big fingers. He felt dull anger. “And what you were there to see too, Mr. Banderson?”
“I saw a fifteen-thousand-dollar investment going up in smoke.”
“Do I drive for you or don’t I?”
“I have to make up my mind about you, Ralson. I’m entering one car. It has been designed, and it’s being built. I get delivery in March. It will be faster than the track.”
“They’re all faster than the track. That place was designed for eighty-five-mile speeds.”
“I have a driver for my entry. Johnny Harvester.”
Wade stared at him. “Then what’s the gag? What am I doing here?”
“You’ve raced against Harvester. What do you think of him?”
“He hasn’t been scared bad enough yet. If the car is fast enough, and if it doesn’t break down, and if he can get out of every jam he drives into, he can win for you. In two years, if he lives, he’ll be hard to beat.”
“How would you beat him in May, assuming you had the same speed?”
“Get on his tail and keep crowding him until he makes his mistake.”
Banderson took out his billfold, counted out four fifty-dollar bills, and said, “This will cover your expenses of coming down here, Ralson.”