Part 6

"Just trying to throw a scare into me," he said to himself. "Front-wheel blowout! Bet they don't get one of them in a million races." Nonetheless, he went around and inspected the tread on his front tires. It looked good. The left-hand one was a little more worn than the right. But not very much.

"Both tiptop tires," he said to himself. But he wished the left-hand tire didn't show as much wear as it did. Probably the front end was a little out of line. That would account for it. He tried to think of something else.

When Rocky and Steve came back, Woody was looking very solemn.

"You feeling all right?" Rocky asked.

"Sure," said Woody, "raring to go." But actually he felt just like Tom Wisdom did before a race. He wished he was somewhere else.

11

Woody didn't feel any better when he was down on the starting grid with a school of cars snorting roaring around him. In fact he felt a lot worse, though he would scarcely have believed it was possible to feel worse. Only Steve seemed to notice, however, for both Rocky and Tom who came down to the area with him, were chatting away quite gaily. Woody thought their attitude positively brutal.

"Don't you worry, pal," Steve said. "You'll do all right. Take my word for it. Have you done up your safety belt?" Woody discovered that he hadn't. When he got it buckled, the firm clasp around his waist made him feel better. But it didn't stop the trembling in his knees over which he seemed to have no control at all. He hoped Rocky couldn't see the trembling, but she was busy with Tom and not paying him much attention anyway.

Woody looked around and licked his lips, which were uncomfortably dry. There wasn't much moisture in his mouth, either. He had drawn a place well back in the pack. In fact, out of a field of twenty-one, there were only four cars farther back than his. He got some comfort out of this. There would be some excuse, perhaps, if he didn't show up too well. After all, a guy driving his first real race couldn't be expected to pass seventeen other drivers. He figured that if he passed one or two of them, he'd be doing well.

"Where's that guy Pete Worth?" he asked Steve.

"Oh, he's way up in front. About third or fourth," Steve replied. Well, that was something. He wouldn't have to worry about Pete Worth passing him and maybe rubbing it in afterward.

"Wish I knew the track a little better," he said.

"Listen, pal," said Steve. "All you have to do is watch the guys ahead. Watch how they corner. When you see them jam on the brakes, slow down yourself. When they give her the gun, do the same thing. And if you see a chance to pass, why take it. And remember, pal, we're all pulling for you."

Woody was conscious that Rocky was looking at him. He was also conscious that the corner of his lip was trembling. He could feel the twitch in it, but he hoped it was not visible. To make sure, he put his hand casually up to his mouth.

"Good luck, Woody," Rocky said. "Got to leave you now. Put your foot in it whenever you can. She goes like a bomb."

"See you in about half an hour," said Tom.

Half an hour, Woody thought. This is one half hour I could do without. The three left, and he was now alone with all the other cars around him. An almost lazy silence, disturbed only by the deep beating of the cars around, settled over the starting area. Woody pushed in his clutch and put the gearshift in low. His foot kept trembling on the accelerator so that the note of his engine rose and sank. The driver in the car on his right hand side looked over at him briefly and winked. He knows how I feel anyway, Woody said to himself. All eyes were now on the plump rubber-ball figure of the starter. As usual, he had his back to the drivers. He bent down, seeming to pick up something from the track. Then, almost before Woody realized it, he had leaped into the air and brought down the starting flag.

Woody let out the clutch as if it were burning his foot and jammed down on the accelerator. There was a haze of blue smoke before his windshield, and the whole pack of cars, with him in the middle, shot forward. Two passed by him and cut in front into a space barely big enough to hold them.

"Cripes," said Woody, "that makes me third from last." He changed into second, into third, and into high, and before he knew it, there was a knot of cars braking ahead of him to get around the first bend. How he made it himself he could not recall. He got around in a screech of tires with glimpses out of the tail of his eye of other cars, inches from him, swaying and screeching around with their drivers crouched over their steering wheels.

When he was around the turn, he glanced, by instinct, into his rear-vision mirror. It showed the clear view of the track behind him. There was not a car in sight. He'd dropped to last place in the first three hundred yards.

The thought angered him. It angered him as much as the fact that his legs were still trembling, his mouth as dry as blotting paper, and his hands unsteady on the wheel.

He jammed his foot down on the accelerator and watched the needle of the speedometer creep up to sixty-five, then to seventy, hover there a fraction of a second, and then move on past. He grinned as he saw he was steadily overhauling two cars ahead. The stop light on one of them flashed red. Ahead were a series of S-bends. Woody remembered them from his trial runs around the track. He glanced at his speedometer. Seventy-two.

"O.K., brother," he said, "you're going too fast. But you just might make it." He entered the first S-bend abreast of the Singer that had been ahead of him. He left him behind as if the Singer were standing still. But when he brought the steering wheel over to the right for the next turn, the MG seemed to lie down on two wheels and started skittering toward a pile of hay bales. There wasn't time to change to a lower gear. Woody took his foot completely off the accelerator, and it seemed for a second as if the car were going to turn over. He was thrown hard against the side and stabbed his foot on the accelerator again. For a second the car teetered. Then the MG recovered and flashed off so close to the bales that he felt a slight thud as his nearside fender tipped the edge of one of them.

Ahead now lay two more cars. And another bend. This time Woody changed down. He revved the engine to a roar in neutral and let the clutch out hard as he slipped the gear lever over into third. The MG jerked forward, and Woody headed for a gap between the two cars in front of him. If the gap remained he could get through. But if it closed he would be flung against one car or the other. He jammed the accelerator down and crept into the gap. His front wheels were level with the driver's seat of the first car and six feet from the rear wheels of the second car.

"Come on, baby," he said and urged the MG to more speed. Slowly he crept abreast of the first MG and was now fully in the gap. The car beside him started to slip behind. Woody felt a tinge of pleasure and triumph. He was now ahead of the first MG but not enough to swing over and pass the second. Suddenly he saw the brake light on the car ahead flash red for a second. He was braking for a bend. Woody made a split-second decision. If he braked now, he'd lose the ground he had made. If he speeded up, it would be to go into a corner again faster than he should. He hit the accelerator.

To the spectators it looked as if he were a bolt shot from a crossbow. His car leaped forward swiftly to pass the one ahead right on the curve. There was a cry of "Ooh," which Woody heard clearly above the roar of the engines.

He had to take a chance now. He was going much too fast. He had to step on the brakes and risk being hit by the car behind. It was either that or spin out on the corner. He hit the brakes hard--so hard he could hear his tires scream and feel the back of his car slew around. Then he stepped on the accelerator again and pulled the steering wheel over to the right. For a second it looked as if he was going to spin around completely on the track. Woody did indeed spin around at a right angle. But this served to help him around the corner and when he hit the gas again, he was safely on the straightaway and had passed three of the cars that had passed him in the early seconds of the race.

He hardly saw Rocky, Tom, and Steve as he flashed by the start-finish line. If he stopped for a second to think of what he was doing and the risks he was taking, the trembling and anxiety would return. Instead, he concentrated on urging the MG to even greater efforts.

On the next three laps he passed three more cars. A fourth dropped out for a pit stop, and that put Woody seventh from the end. Since he had started out fourth from last he was doing well. He began to feel much more confident of the MG's ability to stay on the track when other cars would have skidded off into the hay bales, and began also to enjoy himself.

The crisis of the race came at the beginning of the hairpin in the sixth lap. In the five times he had passed it previously he had noticed that there was a tendency for the cars to bunch up there. Everyone slowed down and concentrated more upon getting around the bend than in passing each other on it. There was a straightaway of about a quarter of a mile leading to the hairpin, and Woody tearing down this caught up with a huddle of five cars that had changed down to get around the hairpin. They were all hugging the inside to give themselves a chance to skid wide over to the far side of the track when they got around the hairpin.

Woody decided to reverse this process. He would start into the hairpin from the uncrowded far side of the track and try to cut the MG hard over to the inside when he was around. There would be great risk of a collision in doing this. But there was also the chance of passing two or three cars on the one bend if the maneuver came off.

He approached the hairpin then on the outside and picked a place on the inside as his target, toward which a red Porsche was speeding. If things went well the Porsche would be out of the way when he wanted to get in there. He changed down from fourth to third and third to second, and, with his engine roaring, cut hard over.

Then everything happened at once. There was a scream from behind, and a Singer squeaked by right under his front wheels. It went by as a black blur, and in so doing, trapped the driver of the Porsche so he had to step on his brakes to avoid a collision. The gap that Woody had expected to appear just wasn't there. The Porsche still half filled it. Woody glanced in his rear-vision mirror. There were two cars on his tail, the Porsche dead ahead, the Singer, and another car blocking him on the left.

His only chance was to cut off the track onto the dirt shoulder and make room for himself there. He headed the MG for the shoulder, picked up a skid, slewed sideways, straightened, caught a glimpse of a telephone pole, pulled his steering wheel hard over to the left, hit the gas, and then, to his astonishment, found himself around the hairpin with only the Porsche ahead.

Woody swallowed hard. He must have passed two or three cars on the hairpin. But he had nearly broken his neck doing it. The old nervousness, now forgotten, returned in a flood. His legs began to tremble. The Porsche fled before him down the straightaway. Woody changed up instinctively. But when he came to the next bend, he slowed down well in advance of it, and took the corner cautiously. He was scared, badly scared.

He retained his place but didn't pass anybody on the next three laps. There were only two more to go. But he could not bring himself to take any more risks. The memory of the skid, of being locked in a whirl of cars doing sixty miles an hour around a hairpin, and of the telephone pole hurtling toward him was too fresh in his mind. He made an attempt at passing the Porsche on the S-bends. But whereas previously he would have taken a risk and gone hurtling by, trusting that the MG would stay under control, he now braked and changed down, and the Porsche kept ahead of him without much trouble.

"You've got to snap out of this," he told himself. "You've got to take a couple more chances. Otherwise you'll lose your nerve."

He steeled himself for another try at the hairpin. He forced himself to delay changing down and shot the corner from a wide angle. But just as he thought he was going to get through and felt a tingle of self-confidence returning, a blue MG ahead spun out. One second it was holding the track doggedly before him. The next it gave a sort of lurch or jump and turned broadside on to him. Woody flung his steering wheel over with a cry almost of anguish. His bumper just missed the front wheel of the car, which had turned completely around on the track. In pulling out, he nearly sideswiped another car on his right, and though he stepped on the gas and pulled ahead out of the mess, he was in a panic when he got clear of it.

"I've got to get hold of myself," he kept repeating. "I've got to get over this." But when the race concluded, he had passed no more cars and taken no more chances.

When he pulled up to the pit, Rocky was almost dancing with excitement. "You drove like a wizard," he said. "I went up to the hairpin to watch you. It was terrific. You knocked off three cars on that corner and must have finished about eighth. If you'd had any kind of a position at the start, you'd have won."

Tom and Steve were full of congratulations, too. But their words were empty for Woody. If they knew how he felt, he told himself, they wouldn't be saying what they were. They wouldn't want to have anything to do with him.

For Woody knew that he could have passed at least one or two more cars except for one thing: he was afraid. It wasn't just nerves or anxiety. It was plain cold fear. He'd driven his first race and come out of it a coward.

12

Woody made up his mind that the only way he could get over the fear and dread that he now had of racing was to race some more. In fact, he determined to do as much road racing as he could. In this decision he had a willing helper in Rocky, and in the two months after the Hansen Dam race he drove in five events. He was no longer considered a junior driver and had got over some of the thrill of seeing his name in the list of contestants at road-race events. He had even drawn mention in one of the Los Angeles sports columns as an up-and-coming driver with a lot of dash and courage.

When Woody read that paragraph, eagerly pointed out to him by Steve, he wondered how much the man who wrote it knew of his real reason for racing. Far from having a lot of dash and courage, he was always filled with caution and plain fear on the track. He only placed at all in the events in which he entered because he had a natural driving gift--an instinctive combination of judgment and timing that took him through tight spots. But he knew he could do better, a great deal better, if he could get rid of the black fear that settled on him whenever he came to a bend with half a dozen other cars roaring around him.

He wished there was someone with whom he could talk over this problem. He wished he could discuss the way his palms sweated, his limbs trembled, and his mouth went dry even as he sat down behind the driving wheel at the start of a race. He wished he could explain how those symptoms never left him all through the event; how he was filled with dread from start to finish and heartily wished he had never taken up racing.

Once he thought of mentioning it to Steve and went so far as to say he always got the shakes just before the start of a race.

"Shucks, pal, everybody has the same thing," Steve said. "But you get over it, don't you?"

Woody didn't have the courage to say no, he didn't get over it. Other drivers did and took chances and won races. But he, although he seemed to be taking chances, was actually avoiding them and getting through on sheer driving talent. He didn't drive a race with any courage at all. He drove it with nothing else but fear in his mind. If he could find some courage, he might win a couple of times. But fear held him back constantly--fear of being wrapped around a telephone pole or being mangled under the wheels of cars behind or turning over and being pounded to death in his own car.

About the nearest he got to talking to anybody about his problem was one evening when Randy and Rocky had come up to Hermosa Beach and asked him out to dinner. When dinner was over, Randy, who by now was getting along without crutches though he had a slight limp, started talking about racing. He discussed the subject as if it were a philosophy, a mode of living calling out the very best in the character of those who followed it.

Woody had never known him to be so serious before. He wasn't sure whether the conversation was being held for his own benefit or for Rocky's.

"Road racing condenses into a few minutes or hours all the problems, the fears, and the triumphs of life," Randy said, smoothing his fair hair with a thin sensitive hand. "It demands the one thing that no man can get through life without successfully. Self-reliance. There are millions of people quite talented and able who go through life being unsure of themselves. They haven't enough self-confidence to take a risk--to change their jobs, their localities, and so on. They live rather miserably without ever having fulfilled themselves.

"But in racing, such people are soon ruled out. The driver who has no basic confidence in himself will keep coming in last. Either that or he will develop self-confidence. If he remains unsure of himself, he will quit racing. Just as in life, if he remains unsure of himself, he will quit trying and seek some job that offers security rather than opportunity."

"You don't think it is possible to get by on just driving skill alone?" asked Woody. "I mean, suppose there was a man who was just naturally a good driver. But he really didn't trust himself. Wouldn't he still show up pretty well on the track?"

"He would for a while," said Randy, "but after, say, half a dozen races, he'd be fighting himself. He might think he was racing the car ahead. But he'd really be racing the guy within him. One part would be telling him to go ahead and take a few chances and rely on his skill in getting through. The other part would be telling him to save his skin and not take any risks.

"That's where the real testing comes in, of course. But I've seen some good men crack up, fighting themselves like that. They'd have been a lot better off if they never went in for racing in the first place. Unless they win a victory over themselves and achieve self-confidence, they remain miserable for the rest of their lives. They drop out of racing. But they can never be happy."

"What about fear?" said Woody. "I mean you've been in a couple of accidents. Didn't that make you real scared the next time you drove?"

"It certainly did and does," replied Randy. "But self-confidence doesn't mean that a man is without fear. You've got to be afraid, to get any self-confidence that comes from overcoming fear. But some people never make it. They spend the rest of their lives doubting their own abilities.

"The time I cracked up and had my foot amputated, I broke out in a cold sweat whenever I thought of racing again. All my friends advised me to give up the game. On the surface, it would have been the sensible thing to do. But they did not realize that if I quit, it would have been a victory for fear, and I would have to live with it for the rest of my life."

Up to this point Woody had been on the verge of confessing his own fears to Randy. But now he found he could not do so. This seemed to be a battle he had to fight alone. It was one with which none of his friends could help him. He realized dimly that men always fight their battles alone--not just in racing cars but in their daily living. They alone can make the critical decisions, and nobody can help with them.

"How do you feel about the Black Tiger now?" Woody asked instead of mentioning his own fears.

"To be honest with you, I'm scared stiff," said Randy with a laugh. "If I wasn't scared, I might put off racing her for a little while. But if I postponed it now, though other people might say I had good reasons, I'd know that the real reason was fear. And then I might never race again." Woody did say that he was always scared himself when he got behind the steering wheel of the MG. But he didn't say that he remained scared all through the race and deliberately neglected chances to pass other cars because he was afraid to take them. He felt that both Randy and Rocky would be contemptuous of him if he did. And he wanted them both to have a good opinion of him.

A month remained before the Santa Barbara race. It was a pretty miserable month for Woody. He got nervous and a little irritable, which was unusual for him. Both his father and mother noticed the change in him, and one evening his father put down his paper, took off his glasses with a swift decision, and nodded to Woody's mother, who left the room. When she had gone, Mr. Hartford said, "Woody, your mother and I are both worried about you. You're not eating much, and you seem nervous all the time. Is there anything the matter?"

"No," said Woody shortly. Mr. Hartford groaned silently. He could recall a similar occasion in his own youth when his father had tried to talk to him man to man, and he had withheld his confidence. He was hurt that his son should do the same to him now.

"Son," said Mr. Hartford, "I never pry into your affairs. I look upon you as a sensible young man of whom I am proud. But I've lived a lot longer than you. That's a mathematical fact. I don't say I'm smarter than you. But I've just had more experience. Now if you've got some sort of a problem that's bothering you that I, with my experience, can help with, I wish you'd let me know about it."

"It's nothing, Dad," said Woody.

"Is it money?" Mr. Hartford persisted. Woody shook his head.

"Is it Mary Jane? I notice you haven't been seeing much of her lately." Woody hesitated. He missed Mary Jane a great deal. At one time he might have been able to talk his problem over with her. But she was so dead set against racing that all she would tell him would be to give it up. She wouldn't understand that there was more than racing involved in the problem.

"No, Dad," Woody said, "It isn't Mary Jane. It's really nothing at all. I just don't feel well. I think I'll go for a walk." He left the room rather hurriedly, for he wanted to avoid further questioning. When he had gone, Mrs. Hartford came in.

"Did you find out anything?" she asked.

"No," replied her husband. "There's something the matter, but only time will bring it out. The boy has some problem, and feels he ought to keep it to himself."

"But we're his parents," said Mrs. Hartford. "Surely he should be able to tell us."

Mr. Hartford smiled. "Mother," he said, "when a boy decides not to discuss his troubles with his parents, it doesn't mean that he doesn't love them any more. It means that he's becoming a man. I'm pretty proud of Woody. I'd have been just a little disappointed if he'd broken down and told me what was the matter with him."

For two weeks before the Santa Barbara race, Woody spent most of his time working on the Black Tiger. Randy made the deal with Worm, agreeing to pay Woody's wages. Randy and Rocky rented an apartment in Hermosa Beach so they could be near the car, and the Black Tiger was given a thorough overhaul from rear axle to fan belt. In those two weeks Woody became more and more fond of Randy. The man had a buoyancy of spirit and a quick humor that was completely captivating. It was hard to believe that he had any fears at all about the forthcoming race. He spoke of it with enthusiasm and excitement, as if it were something he was looking forward to eagerly.