1 The New Car Come on, cowboy. Let''s take a ride." The pair of legs sticking out from beneath the red race car didn''t indicate whether their owner had heard the command from the taller dark-haired man standing next to the vehicle. The slender body they were attached to stayed under there, deliberately finishing up applying torque to a stubborn bolt. Finally, slowly, the heels dug in, and the creeper rolled out. The unnatural brightness from the overhead fluorescent lights fell on the young man''s face, revealing tanned features and longish hair so blond it looked sun-bleached--though sunlight certainly never found its way beneath the race car. "Will, you know I want to finish up with this today," the young man said. His eyes squinted and his white teeth flashed as he grimaced.
Even with the grime and sweat on his face, he was clearly movie-star handsome. And, at the moment, just a tad bit irritated. "I got my eye on a first-place trophy this weekend, even if nobody else on this team seems to." "That old rear end''ll still be here when we get back if one of the other boys doesn''t get to it first," was all the tall dark-haired man offered in reply. "Aw, all right then," the kid answered peevishly, pointedly dropping his wrenches with a clatter on the shop''s cement floor as he climbed to his feet. Technically, he supposed, Will Hughes was his boss, and he was bound to do his bidding. Will could order him to stand on his head and stack bowling balls if he so desired. Will was crew chief on the 06 Ford race car, and Rob Wilder, the tall blond kid, was only its driver.
No denying the pecking order on that rather well defined organizational chart. And if Will Hughes ordered him out from beneath the car and proceeded to drag him off on some time-wasting joyride, Rob figured he had no choice but to obey the man. But if the rear end of the car came ratcheting right out from under him smack-dab in the middle of next Saturday''s race, well, that was no fault of Mr. Rob Wilder. No, sir! Wilder stood, dusted himself off, slipped out of the coveralls, hung them on a nail near the door, and then followed Hughes outside, muttering under his breath the whole while. Will could tell the kid was irritated, but he simply ignored him Once outside the shop, the bright sun and warm temperature surprised Rob. The first few days of October had been unseasonably cool so far, even for the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. It had been downright cold that morning before daylight when he had shown up at the shop.
He had been unable to sleep and eager to get something done, so instead of wearing out a spot spinning idly in his bed, he''d climbed out of the sack, came on to the shop, and gone to work before any of the others had even thought about showing up. The first thing he had done, though, had been to turn up the thermostat on the big electric heaters. But this day had turned out nice, as if Nature was having a last gasp at hanging on to summer, despite the Technicolor leaves and frosty nights that already heralded an early winter. Now, despite his annoyance, Rob couldn''t help but notice what a glorious day it had turned out to be, and he was glad to be out in the midst of it. He admired the golden sunshine and bright blue sky as they eased along in Will''s big pickup down the long gravel drive that led to the highway. An empty trailer on the hitch bounced noisily behind them. The kid even felt a twinge of guilt that he had been wasting one of the last beautiful days of the year underneath a race car in a stuffy, noisy old shop. Lately, more than one important person in his life had been urging him to slow down, enjoy the beautiful things in life, and not to allow his only view of the world to be through the windshield of a bright red Ford race car as it Zoomed around an asphalt oval somewhere.
But he was driven toward a goal, reaching for a prize that was near at hand, and he didn''t want to lose sight of it when it was so tantalizingly close. He cranked down the truck''s window and breathed in the clean, warm mountain air. Beside him, Will Hughes hummed tunelessly. Rob wished the man would turn on the radio and dial around for someone who could actually carry a melody. But he decided not to let that aggravating racket bother him either. Still, he couldn''t figure why, for the life of him, will had insisted that he ride along with him just go pick up some parts. His boss had been vague when he asked him. But now, when Rob glanced over at him and thought about asking again, he decided simply to let it ride.
Will was gazing straight ahead, his eyes half-shut behind his mirrored sunglasses, likely thinking about something seriously technical about the car while he made all that irritating noise. Will''s World--that''s what the rest of the crew called it when the boss would go stone-faced for chunks of time, then suddenly emerge from his trance having solved a particularly knotty problem with the racecar''s setup. Or having worked out a whole new way to do something that had baffled them all so far. It would do no good to ask him what he was thinking about when he drifted off to Will''s World. Will Hughes was a graduate mechanical engineer, and sometimes the language he spoke might just as well have been Swahili to Rob Wilder and the rest of the team. Or he would simply ignore the questioner until he was ready to provide the solution. Even now--his dark hair carefully combed, his golf shirt and khaki slacks unwrinkled, his shoes carefully shined--Will Hughes looked more like a banker on the way to a golf outing or an architect off to survey a project than he did the crew chief of one of the hottest teams on the Busch Grand National stock car racing circuit. He was ten years older than Rob, about the same height, with darker hair and eyes, but considerably stockier than his almost-skinny young driver.
Still, they sometimes seemed more like brothers. Donnie Kline, the crew''s jack man and chief mechanic, had dubbed them Dumb and Dumber, Yin and Yang, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, as well as a long list of other colorful and often profane names that he used interchangeably. Billy Winton, the man who had put the team together in the first place, in keeping with the family theme, simply referred to the two of them as "the sons I never had." But all the kidding didn''t belie the fact that both young men were happily living their dream. Will Hughes was the subject of much speculation in the racing press and the garages around the circuit. Many swore to know for a fact that the North Carolinian would soon announce a jump to this team or that one over in the Winton Cup garage. That he would certainly confirm any day now that he would catapult to the sport''s big league and leave Billy Winton''s relatively new Busch Grand National team behind. The same loose tongues wagged endlessly about Rob Wilder, too.
They had heard from someone in the know that the hot-driving twenty-year-old sensation from down near Huntsville, Alabama (Rocket Rob they had named him), would soon make a move himself, jumping to a new ride and joining the superstars and new young guns over there in Winston Cup racing. That old Billy Winton would just have to go fishing for another hotshot to pilot his bright red Ford. After all, the kid had won the pole position for the Daytona Grand National race in February, the first race of his first full year. And he had own the race in Nashville outright. He might have been driving Grand National for a little over a year, might still be inexperienced and might sometimes show it, but he was already one of the most popular drivers out there. And definitely one of the most promising. Surely he would soon leave Billy and Will and the 06 Ford behind and make that seductive leap for the stars. There was little truth to any of the garage gossip.
Sure, Will had been approached by some of the well-funded multi-car teams. And a couple of teams-in-the-making had pulled Rob Wilder aside and made overtures. But Billy Winton and Will Hughes had built this team from the ground up. They had their hot young driver already, as good a crew as there was in racing, a sponsor that was solidly behind them, and they were more than ready to make their own jump all together in one big red package. And to make the jump directly from their little launching pad tucked among the hills and hollows of far eastern Tennessee. As flattered as Rob was with the offers, he knew he had a good thing going in the Winton garage and that the opportunity to run with the big boys would come when the time was right. The folks he had cast his lot with were the ones he wanted to be in his pits when that time finally came. He knew he owed everything to Billy and will, and he was confident he could best reward them by staying right where he was.
"Where''d you say we were going?" Rob finally asked Will, a puzzled look on his face. They had turned west on the highway, not east toward town. "Get some parts," Will answered cryptically. "Yeah, but where? Next parts store this direction is halfway to Charlotte." "Jodell''s." Okay, that made sense. Chandler Cove was so small it didn''t even make road maps, but its environs were home to two very successful racing teams: Billy Winton''s and that of racing legend Jodell Bob Lee. And Winton''s operation often bought engines and borrowed parts from Jodell''s first cousin and chief engine builder, Joe Banker.
The proximity of the two shops wasn''t mere coincidence. Jodell Lee had grown up there in Chandler Cove, had gotten his start driving when he delivered his granddaddy''s moonshine liquor to thirsty customers up and down that whole end of the state and into far western North Ca.