Chapter 7: Test Run

Roddy cut the first tube at six on Monday morning, and he didn't stop talking until Thursday night.

By Tuesday the frame sat on the jig.

By Wednesday it had a cage, a seat and four corners.

I stayed. Myra ran the track office from her phone and called me every two hours to swear at me.

"The pack's saying things," she said on Tuesday.

"Let them."

"Your uncle's saying most of them."

"Let him."

At night it was just Torrey and the engine.

He builds them on a stand in the back corner of the shop under one hanging lamp, with an old radio playing the Bakersfield country station.

On Wednesday night I was elbow-deep in the valve train beside him.

"You're torquing that wrong," he said.

"I've been torquing heads since I was eleven."

"Wrong since you were eleven, then."

I put the torque wrench in his hand, handle first.

"Show me, Ossler."

He did, and he was right, and I hated it.

"My father did it my way," I said.

"Your father won four championships with engines that blew up twice a season."

I laughed so hard I had to sit down on an oil drum.

He looked at me laughing and his hands went still on the wrench.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing. I haven't heard that before."

"You've known me a week."

"I've known you two years."

Neither of us said anything for a while.

I wiped my hands on a rag and made myself ask.

"Why didn't you come?"

"After the river. After the funeral. If it wasn't you, why didn't you come down and tell me?"

He set the wrench on the bench. He took a breath.

"I wrote you once. A week after."

"I never got any letter."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Then I wrote you once, and nobody read it," he said. "And then I chose the hunt."

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