Blind Spot (10 page)

NEAR THE END OF THE
race, Tim wandered toward the track, but security was still tight. There was no slipping through some hole in the fence here. The roar of the crowd signaled the end of the race. For once, he didn’t care who won.

He sat by an underpass as the exodus began. Getting 165,000 people out of the stands, into their cars, and back on the road would take a while, but Daytona was known as one of the better cup races to exit.

He knew what was going on inside—the packing and loading and cleanup. Crashed cars were getting cut up to fit in the hauler. The winner’s car was being taken apart piece by piece and inspected. He didn’t envy the crews inside, but it was one of those mindless jobs he was always good at.
He could kick into high gear and pack with the best of them.

When darkness fell and most of the cars were gone from the parking area, he walked to the back entrance, where he could see the trucks getting ready to pull out. A security officer had his eye on him, so Tim stayed back, waiting.

When he saw the trademark hat of Charlie Hale, he started waving and jumping like crazy. The light was fading, so he sprinted up the access road and got in the headlights. The truck honked, like he was just some fan who wanted attention, but Tim didn’t give up. He ran beside the road on the gravel, waving his hat.

“Get out of the way, kid!” Charlie yelled in his familiar strangled voice.

“Charlie, it’s me! Tim Carhardt!”

At that, Charlie’s beagle, Chester, barked, and the truck pulled to the side of the road.

Tim dodged a passing truck and ran around to the passenger side.

The door was open and Charlie waved. “What’re you waiting for? Climb in!”

The truck still had that old dog smell. Charlie moved a bunch of stuff to the back in order for Tim to get in, and soon they were on the road.

“You see the race?” Charlie said.

“No, there was a mix-up. It’s a long story. Who won?”

Charlie told him. It wasn’t a surprise. Tim asked how his new employer had done and how he liked driving for him. Charlie said he was glad to have a ride.

The radio was tuned to a country station, and the CB crackled with the voices of big rig drivers. “You picking up hitchhikers now, Charlie?” one of them said on the radio.

“I got Timmy Carhardt in the cab with me,” Charlie said, clicking the mic.

The radio was dead for a minute.

“Tell Tim we said hello,” the driver replied. About half a dozen of them echoed his words or double clicked their mics.

“How’d you get down here?” Charlie said.

“I not only lost my tickets, but I lost my ride back to Tallahassee. I assume you guys are headed straight back to Charlotte.”

“That’s right. I’d love to take you over there, but I got a deadline.”

“I understand. Do you think you could just let me off near Jacksonville? I could call my cousin from there.”

Charlie thought awhile, which meant there were a few minutes of just the country music and the crackle
of the CB. Finally, looking straight at the road, he said, “We miss your dad out here. It’s not the same without him.”

“Yeah. Same here.”

“You getting along all right?”

“I’m in school now, making lots of friends.” He didn’t know why he lied. Maybe he wanted Charlie to think everything was okay with him. “And the people I’m staying with are good to me.”

“That’s good. I always wondered where you went. Must have been a tough last few months.”

The sound of the road and the squawk of the CB and the radio brought everything back. It was like coming home again.

“Charlie, what do you think the chances would be of me coming back and riding with a team again? I’d pull my weight. Help with anything.”

“I thought you said you had it good in this new situation.”

“Yeah, I do, but . . .”

“You miss Chester, don’t you?”

They both laughed, and Tim scratched the dog’s head. “Yeah, there’s nobody like old Chester. It’s a pretty far-fetched idea, I know. Maybe after I finish school, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Finish school and see if you still want to get back out here.”

When they neared Jacksonville, Charlie put out a call on his CB to a family he knew that was headed west from there. The father turned out to be a man Charlie had worked with years before in Andalusia, Alabama.

“We have an extra seat, no problem,” the man said when they met at a gas station. “Hope you don’t mind riding with some snoring kids in the back.”

“Don’t mind at all,” Tim said.

Tim thanked Charlie and gave Chester a good-bye pat on the head. Charlie tried to say something, but he finally just lightly punched Tim on the shoulder and ambled off to his truck.

They were a few miles down the road when the dad looked in the rearview mirror and asked Tim where he lived and how he’d liked the race. Most of the others in the car were asleep.

In Tallahassee, Tim asked the man to drop him at a nearby convenience store. He offered to pay the man for his trouble, but he wouldn’t take anything.

“See you, Tim,” the mother said from the front, shifting in her seat for a better position.

The man stepped out of the car. “I know all about what happened to you. Last year at Talladega, right?”

“Yeah, that was my dad.”

The man put a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “I want
you to know how sorry we are. Afterward I read a story in the paper that mentioned you. Our family has been praying for you ever since.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” Tim said. “I wish I’d have met you folks before I headed to Daytona.”

The man handed him a business card with his phone number on it. “Anything you need, call me.” He bit his lip. “Do you know the Lord, son?”

Tim nodded. “Oh yeah.” He said it because he knew that’s what the man wanted to hear. But the truth was, Tim wanted to finish his sentence with
and I don’t want anything to do with him.

“You’ll be okay from here?” the man said.

“Yeah, my place is just back there. I thank you for your kindness.”

Tim walked the rest of the way home, past a few barking dogs. A raccoon was in a garbage can, its tail twitching. It looked right at Tim, then went back to the half-eaten bag of microwave popcorn.

The front door was locked, and Tim didn’t have a key. He jimmied his window open and crawled through, landing on his bed. He lay there a few minutes, listening for anyone stirring in the rest of the trailer. Fully clothed, his backpack still slung around his arm, Tim fell asleep and didn’t wake up until he was late for school the next day.

JAMIE TRIED TO SLEEP,
stretched out in the middle seat of the family’s Suburban, but she couldn’t get the sight of her dad’s wrecked car out of her head. Or the sight of Butch Devalon standing by his car at the end of the race, pumping his fists, his crew whooping around him and shaking champagne bottles all over. The Devalons were probably already home. Like a lot of teams, they had flown their jet to Daytona.

She’d seen the replay of the wreck a few times in the camper and cringed when one of the announcers asked Devalon to explain what happened. “Well, that was unfortunate. I got a little excited in the middle of the pack and kind of bumped Dale. I was lucky to get out of there without damage to the car, and we had us a good one today. Took us all the way to the finish line.”

“What’s it feel like to be leader in points after the first race of the season?” the announcer said.

“Feels real good to get a win. A win is good anytime of the year but especially to start the season. I’m happy as a clam. Of course, it’s a long season, so we’ll just have to see what happens.”

Burrowing around Jamie’s brain was the conversation she’d had with Butch Devalon. Was he setting her up, or did the Devalon team really want to sign her? She couldn’t talk with her dad about it and wouldn’t, unless Kellen opened his big mouth.

“Hey, Dad,” Jamie whispered. He turned down MRN on the radio, and Jamie looked at her mother, fast asleep beside him, her face illuminated by the dashboard lights. “Did Scotty tell you what he ate that made him so sick?”

Scotty had been taken to a nearby hospital and had to stay overnight. The doctors said he needed fluids, and they wanted to watch him.

Her dad chuckled. “You know Scotty. He’ll eat almost anything that isn’t on the move. He made the rounds of the different haulers. It’s hard to tell what it was, but I can tell you this: as sick as he got, he’ll stick with our food from now on.”

Jamie’s mind swirled with everything from Chad to her dad’s interview after the race.

Her dad’s familiar voice came on the radio, an
swering a question from a reporter. “Well, it’s just one of those things that happens. The car was running well, and I felt like we had a good chance, but you have to take the good with the bad. Everything happens for a reason, and we’ve got a long season ahead.”

She looked at her dad and could tell from his face, even if no one else could, that he was mad.

“How’d you feel up there with the spotters?” her dad whispered.

“Good, I guess. I hate that I couldn’t get you out of that mess.”

“You did great,” he said. “I was real comfortable with you watching my back. Maybe you were the one who gave Scotty the bad food.”

Jamie laughed.

“Any more thoughts about selling your cars?”

“Yeah. This is something I really want to do, Dad. I know you’re against it. . . .”

He stretched and put his arm on the seat back and patted her arm. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I want to give you the go-ahead. I want to work with you so you can reach your dream. I just have this gut feeling that it’s not the right time. And if I was to give in on this when I feel so strongly, it wouldn’t be right.” She leaned back, and he looked in the rearview mirror. “Let’s keep talking. Gonna be a hairy few days, trying to get the car in shape for California, but we
can hash this out. There’s nobody who’s more on your team than me.”

Jamie closed her eyes. Butch Devalon’s face flashed through her mind. She leaned forward and touched his shoulder. “Thanks for trusting me with the spotter’s job. Maybe you can return the favor someday.”

“You got it, kid.”

Jamie looked at her mom. Did she sleep with a smile, or was that there because she’d heard every word?

TIM WALKED TO
Community Church, a sprawling building with a parking lot as big as a shopping mall’s. There were flags around one building with windows that ran from the ground all the way to the roof. He spotted the red SUV toward the front of the lot. He glanced at the building to make sure no one was watching. The place looked deserted.

He pulled out his pocketknife and went to work, shoving the blade into the sidewalls. He thought about smashing the windshield, but that felt a little like overkill.

The tires were flat within a couple of minutes, and he walked away slowly, like he’d just been out for a stroll. Headlights shone in the distance, and two vans pulled in. He froze, a deer in the headlights. More like a deer holding
a sharp knife in the headlights. He quickly closed the knife and shoved it in his pocket.

The van stopped near him, but he kept walking. A door opened on the other side, closed, and the van sped away. He kept his head down, his hat pulled low.

“Tim?” someone shouted. A girl’s voice.

He turned to see Kimberly heading toward him.

“Did you just get here? We’ve been over at the soup kitchen. We do that once a month. You want to come in? We have a short meeting inside before the night’s over.”

“I gotta get home.”

“Oh, how’d Daytona go? I heard it was a good race.”

“Yeah, exciting.”

“Everything work out with Jeff?”

“Sort of. He here tonight?”

“No, he only shows up when there’s food or bowling. Actually, I felt kind of bad suggesting him because he’s not one of our strongest guys, if you know what I mean. I don’t even know that he’s a believer, but I do know he’s a big race fan.”

“Wait,” Tim said, his heart racing. “He’s not here tonight? Isn’t that his car?”

“I don’t think so. He drives a ratty old thing that’s falling apart. I can get you his phone number, if you’d like.”

/////

Two days later a police officer showed up at the trailer park and asked to talk to Tim. Tyson wasn’t home from work, and Vera was more than a little agitated to see a badge at their door. What would the neighbors think? Tim was sure that was going through her mind.

“Were you over at the Community Church a couple of nights ago?” the officer said. He was a stern-faced guy with a military haircut.

Tim knew Kimberly had seen him, so he couldn’t lie. “Yeah, I was there. Just cutting through the parking lot.”

“Where were you going?”

“On my way home.”

“You know anything about four slashed tires?”

Tim hesitated.

“Why don’t you come with me.”

Tyson pulled in as they were driving away. Tim thought about waving at him from the back of the squad car, but he didn’t.

Instead of taking him to the police station and throwing him in jail, which is what Tim thought would happen, the cop drove to the church and escorted Tim to the front desk, where a woman dialed a number. She hung up and told them they could go in. They walked
upstairs to an office area. The cop seemed to know where he was going.

“They keep a surveillance camera going 24-7,” the officer said. “They caught you in the act, but we didn’t know who you were until we found the girl you were talking to.”

Great,
Tim thought.
Ratted out by Miss Christian Teen America
.

The pastor met them at his office door and shook hands with the officer. He stood in a long room with lots of books on mahogany shelves.

Tim couldn’t help but notice the old coins in a glass case. He’d seen ones from the 1800s, but these looked even older.

“Thanks for helping with this,” the pastor said to the officer, then turned to Tim. “He’s a member of our congregation here. He agreed to help us work this out.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” the officer said.

“Have a seat, Tim.” The pastor offered him one of the overstuffed chairs by his desk, then sat facing him. “You want to tell me why, of all the cars in the parking lot, you chose mine? Have I done something to upset you?”

“I’m sorry about your car,” Tim said. “It was a mistake.”

The man’s brow was furrowed, and Tim imagined
it was the way he looked when he preached about hell. But there was something about his eyes that made Tim want to tell him the truth. So he did. The whole story of meeting Jeff and getting stiffed on the way to Daytona just spilled out.

The man listened, his hands together, index fingers resting on his lower lip. “Sounds like a bad experience,” he said when Tim finished. “Why didn’t you smash the windshield?”

“I thought about it.”

The man smiled. “So what do you think I ought to do?”

Tim thought a moment. “If I paid you back for the tires, would you call it square?”

He nodded. “I think that would work. Do you have a job?”

“Not yet.” He reached in his pocket. “But I got $100. That’s a good start—don’t you think?”

The man dipped his head in thought. “Tell you what. Keep that until I find out exactly how much it’s going to cost. You seem like a responsible young man. Maybe you just had a lapse in judgment. You don’t have a police record.” He grabbed a piece of paper from his desk. “We have a janitorial position that hasn’t been filled. It’s three nights and weekends. You’d clean up after the kids’ meetings and
church services. Not very glamorous but it pays. You interested?”

After what had happened with Jeff, Tim didn’t want anything to do with any church on the face of the planet. But this guy seemed evenhanded, and Tim needed the money to pay him back for his tires. “How much?”

The pastor told him the hourly rate. It sounded more than fair. Probably more than Tyson made an hour.

“Okay, I’ll do it. Just until I get your tires paid off.”