Chapter 16: The Pit Lot

I didn't take the photo down.

I left it on the wall with the silver nail through my face, and I took a picture of it with my phone.

Then I padlocked the door with my own key.

"You're leaving it?" Roddy said.

"If he comes back, I want him to think nobody's found it."

Torrey looked at me sideways. That was his trick with the pocketknife in the den, and he knew I'd stolen it.

At eight that morning I walked into the clubhouse office.

The nail by the safe was empty.

The cabin key had hung on it for twenty years, on a ring with a brass fishing lure.

Only five people have a key to that office.

I'm one. Myra's one. My uncle Lon is another.

The space on the wall behind the bar where my photo had hung was a clean square of paint.

Nobody in the pack had said a word about it.

All week the four of us ran the track.

Myra and I rebuilt the pit schedule. Roddy tuned the #03 in my barn and talked to it like a horse.

Torrey slept in a chair on my porch every night with a rifle across his knees.

I asked him in twice.

"He's got your picture," he said. "Somebody has to watch the trail."

"Then come in and watch it from my bed."

"If I come in, I won't be watching anything."

He was right, and I hated that too.

By Saturday the shoulder had healed to a pink star.

The Sept 27 feature sold out by noon.

I was strapped in on the grid when the wind came down the canyon and across the grandstand.

Under the popcorn and the fuel and three thousand humans, I smelled it.

It was rot, wet fur and silver.

My hands locked on the wheel.

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