His Uncle's Obsession: After I Seduced Him novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: His Father's Engine

Nobody said anything for a long time.

I was looking at the far corner of the barn.

Something sat there under a canvas sheet, square and heavy, on an engine stand.

"What's under that?"

Sutton didn't turn around.

"Leave it."

I walked over and pulled the sheet off.

Dust went up in the work lights.

Under it sat a big black V8 with the old Tillery script cast in the valve covers.

Somebody had written a date on the block in white paint pen, and a little 4 beside it.

"That's the last engine my daddy ever raced," Sutton said behind me. "He wouldn't sell it. Said it was the best one he ever had."

"Then let's not sell it."

"It's older than you are."

"So's my daddy, and he still runs."

The welding cap laughed so hard he had to sit down on a tire.

Sutton came and stood beside me.

He put his hand flat on the block, the one with the burn scar.

"You really think it'll make power?"

"I think it's sat here waiting for somebody to ask."

He looked at me a long time.

Then he went and got the engine hoist.

That was Saturday.

We didn't sleep much after it.

Daddy drove over Sunday morning with a truck full of parts and his own toolbox, which he never lent to anybody.

He shook Sutton's hand and held on a second too long.

"Burcham," he said.

"Sir."

"I saw you win Bristol when you were twenty-five. You drove that thing like you were mad at it."

"I was."

"Good." Daddy let go. "Don't be mad at her."

Then he turned around and found two of the old men he used to race against at Hickory, and they started lying to each other about 1989.

We ran three nights straight.

Reba cooked on a hot plate in the barn office: chili, cornbread, a pound cake she swore she'd found and absolutely had not baked at two in the morning.

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