“Mack? We got a problem in garage six.” She jumped and turned toward where a longtime employee waited. “Small fire, got it put out with the extinguisher, but it burned a hole in the siding. Needs fixing before it rains next.”
Don’t cry.
Tucking her helmet under an arm, she thanked the employee and avoided any conversation by taking the long path around the outside of Haubstadt Speedway. She made her way to the track office, a narrow space tucked into a corner under the bleachers, where she surveyedthe mess and renewed her vow not to cry. She’d filled in for a sick driver, a one-time opportunity to race some laps, but this dingy room was her real life, the bills and work orders and schedules, even the damn plunger leaning against the wall. She used to run in the biggest races, and now she simply ran her family’s small dirt racetrack in little Haubstadt, Indiana.
Her mouth tasted like soil and sorrow.
She gently wiped dirt off her helmet and set it on the shelf above the ancient desktop computer, next to a faded photograph of herself with Laurie, back when she and her sister had still been friends. Two dusty reminders of what she’d lost.
“Good night, huh?”
Her father stood in the doorway, leaning heavily on his cane. The right corner of his mouth drooped slightly, but the lopsided grin only added to his charm. A near-fatal wreck couldn’t take away the Wes Williams charisma, or his reputation in racing. A sizable chunk of their ticket sales came from fans who wanted to meet theGoatof dirt track racing.
“Ticket sales are decent for opening night, lots of close races for the spectators, and concessions were up three hundred dollars last time I checked. Might start our season in the black,” Mack said.
“I meant your race.”
Mack rocked her head from side to side as she pulled off her racing coveralls—borrowed, six sizes too big—and threw on a hoodie, cutoff jean shorts, and work boots. She wasn’t faking humility; she had raced well, pulling herself from the back of the pack to finish a respectable fourth in her heat, but the race tonight left her feeling melancholy and bitter.
“I’m out of shape,” she said as she laced her boots. She needed to get out of the office and check in on everything. It had been calm when she’d ducked out for her heat race, but running a small business meant she was the race director, the accountant, human resources, a bouncer, and more often than she liked, the plumber.
That’s who she was now, not a race car driver.
“Hard to stay race ready when you don’t make any effort to put your butt in a car.”
Mack gave Wes a sharp side-eye as she pulled her long blond ponytail through the back of her worn Hoosiers cap. She knew Wes encouraged his buddies to call her to fill in for a sick or injured driver, but lately those sporadic races felt like punishment, not pleasure. Like lashes from a whip, woven from the threads of the dreams she once had.
“Stop telling your friends to call me,” she said sharply.
Wes managed a smirk, unbothered by her tone. “Stop saying yes when they call.”
They’d barely spent a single day apart in the entire thirty years of her life, and it pissed Mack off that her dad knew she’d say yes to any chance to race. She grabbed her keys off the dusty desk. “I gotta go check in on ticket sales. You shook all the hands and kissed all the babies tonight?”
Ten years ago, her dad had been in the lead in Kentucky when he tangled tires with another driver, flipped end over end, and only stopped flipping when his car struck a light pole. Wes still struggled with the aftermath, a traumatic brain injury and chronic seizures, and he’d slid into the role of ambassador for the track while Mack took over actual operations. Wes liked to pretend he was still in charge even though he mostly schmoozed with spectators and advertisers.
“I can do the load out tonight,” Wes offered. “You leave early and get Shaw into bed at a decent hour.”
“The parking lot is one giant tripping hazard, it’s so soft and wet from all the rain.” She waved him toward the door. “Go shoot the shit with the fans. The young guys love that. Like a blessing from the Pope.”
Wes groaned. Sometimes Mack couldn’t tell if his disappointment was in his own limitations or in her. He lifted his chin toward the photo behind Mack. “Heard from your sister yet? She get moved in okay?”
Mack suppressed a flash of irritation. She was the conduit for communication between her father and sister, both of them too pigheaded to pick up the phone and call the other. “She texted to say that she was in her new apartment. She seems okay.”
It was a total lie; Mack had no idea how her sister felt about anything, or even why she’d left her cushy job in DC to move to Indianapolis, which was still four hours away from Haubstadt. Growing up, she and Laurie had shared confidences but now they only traded bland, transactional text messages:Did Dad’s knee surgery go okay? Do you know how to file for SSDI?
“At least Indy is in driving distance. Maybe she’ll come visit.”
The hope in her father’s voice stoked Mack’s barely banked frustration. Wes and Laurie remained stuck in a toxic match of who-was-the-most-stubborn, and Mack felt like the eternal loser in their game in which Wes wouldn’t call and Laurie wouldn’t visit.
Mack sighed, watching as her breath disturbed the sooty office air. Her whole life was coated in dust.
“Uh, Ms. Williams?” A teenager they’d hired for seasonal work poked her head in the doorway. “Someone came to concessions saying the men’s toilet is plugged and spilling on the floor.”
Mack grabbed the plunger. Make that dustandshit.
Three hours later, the last teams had ambled out of the parking lot, the grandstands were empty and swept, and Mack flipped the master switch to turn off the lights encircling the track. A tension-dehydration-dust-ponytail headache bloomed along her forehead, and Mack rubbed her temples as she tabbed through her mental checklist one more time. Her hands and face were filthy, her feet throbbed, and the persistent smell of popcorn and disinfectant would haunt her forever.
At her side, her daughter turned cartwheels, pausing here and there to inspect the patchy grass for four-leaf clovers. Her clothes were grubby and her tangled blond hair was dotted with grass.
