Sharyn McCrumb - Once Around the Track

As they plunged into breakneck speed (she hoped that adjective wasn’t too appropriate), she tried to focus on the details of the experience that were not as she had expected. She had envisioned her experience of speed to be similar to the sensation of traveling in a fast car, say, on the autobahn, only more so. Perhaps the landscape would be more blurry. But she discovered that moving forward at nearly three miles per minute on a circular track proved to be nothing like zooming along an interstate. She had very little time to worry about her visual impressions, because the rest of her body was experiencing peculiar effects that she had not even considered.

Some force seemed to be pinning her back against the seat, making it difficult for her to move. The phrase swimming in molasses flashed through her mind. She tried to concentrate on the proper technical term for such a phenomenon. Gravity? No. Inertia? No. Paralysis? Incontinence? Hubris? Stephanotis? No, that last one was a flower. She realized that her brain was just throwing out long words now, too overloaded to manage anything resembling critical discernment. She struggled to zero in on another impression. There was something strange about the scenery. What would you call it? Immediate. That was it.

She discovered that if you looked straight ahead through the windshield, the view was not blurry at all. It was as clear as a photograph. Except for the peculiar paralysis she was experiencing, she might not even realize- oh, wait …if you turned your head just enough to look through the window netting on the side…suddenly it looked as if someone had put the world into a blender.

Perhaps if he slowed down just a teensy bit. She tried to raise her hand to tap him on the arm, and then she decided that at 180 mph this might not be such a good idea, even if she could have managed it, which seemed not to be the case.

Katharine found that her thoughts were not quite keeping pace with the speed of the car, and also that each observation that ran through her brain was now punctuated with an expletive, as in: Oh shit, I’m pinned back against the seat and can’t move… Oh, shit, the landscape isn’t a blur straight ahead, it’s perfectly clear so that I can see exactly which wall we’re about to slam into… Oo-oooh, shit, here comes a curve and I’m leaning into it and I can’t straighten up… oh shit…leaning to the right more and more…and the wall is awfully…and my head is…oh shit oh shit oh shit…

Given the fact that NASCAR fined people $10,000 for saying swear words on-air, that thought expressed aloud could have constituted a most expensive conversation, except, of course, that no one would hear it. Not even Badger, as it happened, because her throat did not seem to be working. She kept opening and closing her mouth like a fish, while Badger, as intent upon the track as an automaton, seemed to have forgotten that she was there.

He certainly seemed calm enough, as if orbiting a track at 180 mph was like a morning commute to him, which it probably was.

The waiting passengers stood well back from the track as they watched the car whip past them in a blur. At Turn One they let out a collective gasp. The blur hurtled down the straightaway, faster and louder than they had anticipated. Oh, they had been told the speed and they had been issued earplugs, but somehow the mere recital of facts and figures did not translate into this rush and roar before them. It was loud. It was blindingly fast.

As the car dove into Turn Two, one of the women tapped Tuggle on the arm indicating that she was trying to speak. It shouldn’t be possible to shout meekly , but the worried woman managed it. Round-eyed with fright, she pointed and mouthed, “Isn’t he going awfully close to the wall?”

Tuggle’s reply was drowned out as the car sped past them again, but they all caught the phrase “hitting his marks,” whatever that meant. The car surged on, leaping for the wall at every curve.

Bugs to a windshield, thought Sark, and wished she hadn’t.

“But Katharine’s head is poking out the window, through the netting!” shouted one of them, jiggling Tuggle’s arm.

“And she’s next to the wall!” shouted another one. As she mouthed the words, she inclined her head and used her open hand to pantomime the proximity of the wall to the passenger side of the car.

Tuggle held up a circled thumb and forefinger to signal “okay,” but she couldn’t quite manage the reassuring facial expression to go with it.

Moments later, someone thrust a note into the crew chief’s hand. It said, “Tell her to sit up straight.”

Tuggle nodded solemnly, keeping her eyes on the car. Pointless to attempt conversation over the engine noise. Later she would explain to the ladies about g-forces; that is, that Katharine could not sit up straight without breaking several laws of physics. And those same laws of physics meant that her head was going to poke out of that window whether she wanted it to or not, which, odds are, she didn’t.

She was going to have to give him hell for this temperamental display, of course, scaring the money people like that, but she had to admit to a sneaking admiration for the boy’s skill. Badger was one hell of a driver, all right. He could put that car close enough to the wall for his passenger to strike a match against it, but she wasn’t really in any danger of being smashed into the concrete. Well, unless he blew the right front tire, of course. Then all bets were off. But that shouldn’t happen in so few laps. Probably.

After what probably seemed like an eternity to the passenger, the race car screeched to a halt. Ride over. Half a dozen people had rushed to the passenger side to extricate a whimpering, semi-conscious Katharine through the window, so Tuggle sidled over to the driver’s side and leaned down for a word with Badger.

“Smart aleck,” she said, mouthing the words and trying not to grin.

Badger lifted his visor, and yelled, “Who’s next?”

As it turned out, nobody was.

Tuggle was outside the garage, smoking her second allotted cigarette of the day when Deanna from the office turned up at her elbow, looking worried.

“The oddest thing just happened,” she said. “It may be none of my business, but I just thought I ought to tell somebody.”

Tuggle nodded, wondering why Deanna had bothered to walk over to the garage instead of calling her cell phone. The day was cold and windy, and the secretary had come out without her coat, so she kept shivering and hugging herself to keep warm. Tuggle hoped that Badger hadn’t made a pass at her or something. Surely not. That wasn’t his style. She figured he was the type to act sweet and clueless until desperate women attacked him. Considering the Badger shrine that surrounded Deanna’s desk, any sexual harassment between those two would definitely be going in the other direction. “Something wrong?” Tuggle asked through a plume of smoke.

“I don’t know,” said Deanna. “The racing business is so crazy, it’s hard to know when anything is wrong, because we still haven’t come within a mile of normal .”

“Point taken. What’s going on?”

“A little while ago, this woman walked into the office, plumped her laptop down on the conference table, sat down, and started talking on her cell phone. And then she told me to get her some coffee! I said we were fresh out and that I’d go and get some, and I came right out here to tell you about it. Maybe you’re not even the right person to tell, but you are the team manager, as well as the crew chief, so…”