“You a mechanic?”
“Uh, no.”
“You a tire specialist?”
“No.”
“You understand fuel map data?”
Mack’s body rebelled, nausea and sweat and soreness all mixing together. She grasped his point, but she still resisted. “No.”
“But I bet you’ve played around with setups—understeer, oversteer, more or less camber ... right?”
“We have played around with setup! I’m still going so slow I might as well be driving down Sixteenth Street.Ineed to get back in the car and—”
Jimmy cut her off. “You ever heard of Willy T. Ribbs?”
Mack startled at the change in subject. “The first Black man to qualify for the 500?”
Jimmy’s smile lit up his lined face and he patted the wall where they sat. “That’s him. I was right here in this spot when he made the field in ’91. I remember looking up at the scoring pylon and seeing his number pop up there. It wasn’t digital back then, you had to wait for the light bulbs to change. I don’t think there was a person of color without tears in their eyes that day. Hell, every decent person was on their feet cheering and hollering at what that man overcame that day.” Jimmy’s grin faded when he turned to face her. “You know how he got there?”
“Hard work?”
“No one worked harder than Willy but even he couldn’t do it on his own. His team never stopped, even when engine after engine blew. They went through five damn engines to make the race. And Willy, he was willing to listen to anyone he trusted.” Jimmy gave her a pointed look and she understood that not everyone had a Black man’s interest at heart, then or now. “He made the field because he workedwithhis team. He let other people in. He didn’t let his ego get in the way of the goal. And let me tell you, that man has ego. But he wanted to make the race more than he wanted to say he did it all by himself.”
Mack chewed her lip. Shewoulddo anything fair and legal to make the race. She couldn’t live with herself if she left Indy knowing she’d given anything less than everything. Being here was a gift, a slice of fortune dropped into her lap, and she hadn’t known until she arrived how much she’d needed the overhaul. Her life in Haubstadt was safe and secure, but also heavy and stale. She was holding on to this last chance with an iron grip; if she could make this work, make it good, then maybe she could go home and finally be okay with the way her life turned out.
Because if she didn’t qualify, if she lost her one shot at Indy, she was terrified she’d let out all the hurt and resentment and devastation that filled up her insides, and that her eruption would smother Shaw. She didn’t regret Shaw, but by god, she mourned racing. Driving at Indianapolis made her realize how deep her sorrows had tunneled in and become a bitter core.
Better to make this last chance work and hope it was enough to live on for the rest of her life.
“You aren’t the first person to have a hard time here,” Jimmy said. “You think it was easy for Janet? Lyn St. James? Willy? People sent them death threats. I’ve been here a long, long time and they ain’t never made it easy on an outsider. But you don’t have to make it harder on yourself by pushing away people who want to help you.”
Something low and buried in Mack’s chest ached.People who want to help you.The last ten years had been a slog of unending work and emotional upheaval. Many nights she’d laid in bed and cried into the silence for help, then gotten up in the morning and did what she had to do. She’d been making it work on her own for so long that she didn’t even know how to accept help when it stared her in the face.
Her mind flashed to Leo, at how she’d screamed at him on pit lane the first day of practice. She’d asked him to keep their relationship professional, and he’d done exactly that, and she’d thrown his help back in his face.
She shouted to be heard over the cars that streaked down pit lane mere feet from them. “So what do you want me to do?”
Jimmy stood and hooked his thumb in the direction of the team trailer. “We’re going to sit down with the data folks and the tire folks, and you’re going to talk them through exactly what you’re feeling, and exactly when you feel it. Every bump, every blip. We’re going to use that information to set up the car from scratch, because what we have sure as shit ain’t working. You’ll answer every question, and you’ll reallylistento what these folks tell you. Most of these people have been doing thiswork longer than you’ve been alive. They want to win as much as you do. Workwiththem and maybe we’ll all make the big show.”
Mack watched the remaining cars on track whiz by in blurs of bright colors. If she had to set aside her pride, if she had to trust crew members she hardly knew, she’d do it to make the race. She’d do anything.
She looked at Jimmy’s weathered face and saw nothing but open assessment, as if he already knew what she’d say. She nodded.
“You know how I knew I picked one messed-up sport?” Jimmy asked as he slapped his knees and rose from the concrete wall. “When I saw that they drink milk to celebrate. Goddamnmilk.”
He said it like a curse but Mack saw the twinkle in his eyes as he walked toward Gasoline Alley.
Chapter 17
10 days until the Indianapolis 500
Mack spent most of her pregnancy angry. Furious at herself, enraged at Kelley for not caring, angry at Laurie for being angry with her, and pissed at Wes for being so kind to her. She’d kept that rage close, the fury keeping her from falling completely apart as her world crumbled. First, she’d had to stop racing. Then, she’d lost the respect of her peers, and most of her friends, and finally her whole career. Some days, the anger was the only thing that got her out of bed.
Then Shaw was born and the crying started.
Shaw cried at five in the morning, and at midnight, and all the hours in between. Nothing Mack did calmed her, not the drops on her tongue or calming lotions after baths or oils on her feet or the fancy motorized swing Mack bought on credit. The doctor diagnosed colic and said there was nothing she could do, but what she did not explain was how to survive the endless auditory assault without losing her sanity.
