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| Alfetta 159. (Ericd/Wiki/English) |
Zach Neal
The FB-5 was an
impressive car. It was also a couple of years out of date when compared to the
best European machines. There was no substitute for cubic inches, but you could
only do so much with an aging chassis. While he knew his chances of winning races
were not too good, he had to try and make the best of the opportunities that
presented themselves. It was a strong chassis, which offered its own kind of
confidence. The motor was more power than he’d ever had before, especially in
terms of pure torque, which took some mastering.
It was a chorus
of banshees.
He fell in love
the moment he heard it, all those long years ago, standing at the gate of their
county fair with his Uncle Phil, long since departed now.
The howl of a
high-compression engine at top revs pushing through a set of finely-tuned
headers and out of a free-flow exhaust system was a reward in itself, and one
of the reasons why he was here.
The sounds of
the crowd, the jostling of strangers, it all faded into nothing and he was
alone with the sound, even as Phil dragged the bewitched youngster by the
shoulder to see his first race, a dirt-track affair that was as eventful as any
before or since. With cars spinning, crashing, flying through the air and
coming to rest upside down against the guardrail, the announcer shouting and
men running in a haze of smoke and steam, orange tongues of flame licking up from exposed
car-guts, young Danny as he was called then would never forget it. The fact
that they couldn’t even get near the winner’s circle, where a fellow called
Manny Oravic was basking in the adulation and being sun-tanned by photo-flash
added to the overall impression, which was a lasting one. Boys look for heroes
and these guys were automotive gladiators—it said so right on the front page of
the Otumwa Gazette come first thing Monday morning.
“His eyes were
as wide as sausages.” Phil was always saying things like that.
When he let off
on the throttle, the engine burbled and sputtered, with the high-octane gas and
the spark fairly well advanced. He’d had thirty thousandths milled off the head
and he had hand-ground the ports, intake and exhaust, and made numerous other
modifications which all had one proviso, in that it took only labour, and not a
lot of expensive parts or special tools. The car was running all right, and
that really meant something when Dan Thornton said it.
They called him
the Master of Darkness, or ‘Dunkelheit-Meister’ in the German-language papers,
not exactly his favourite moniker, and it was raining now. They said the next
couple of seasons would show whether he would become a driver worthy of
contending for the World Championship, where races were few and the number of
seats limited. That was, if he didn’t kill himself first. Some said he was a
talented amateur, and that almost any driver could win races in a superior
machine. They said it was a fluke of luck on his part to get a semi-permanent
ride last year, with a team that was very much an also-ran, and yet somehow
Barrett’s development program over the winter had wrought a miracle.
If Barrett was a
joke at first, his drivers were the ultimate non-persons. That was nothing new
to Dan. He just let it slide right off of him, and ignored that slight burning
sensation in the guts.
American
circle-track racing wasn’t that impressive to the European automotive
journalists, and they didn’t take much interest in such crudity. If, in the
beginning, they had seriously underrated him, it was hard to say if it had any
effect on getting rides. At first, he bought the seats using his life savings,
or rather the money his grandmother had left him. He was her only heir, and the
farm worth a lot of money. After the depths of the depression, things back home
were looking up. Even then, the price had been maybe a bit low, but luckily the
place was a going concern with no big debts. Twenty thousand dollars was a lot
of money in anyone’s book, but he had been shocked at just how easy it was to
spend it, too.
His first season
was a mess, and he really only started learning his way around the major
circuits in his second season. This season, his third, was different so far.
They knew his name now.
Builder Fred
Barrett showed up for his first season with a supercharged Fuller V-8 in the
FB-5 chassis, and when Harry Oliver got sick, the first driver who came calling
was Thornton. He could speak English and several other languages, he had some
experience, and he seemed to understand the machine. Fred was looking to
replace second driver Tony Work as he was unhappy and wanted to go back to the
States and see what he could pick up there. Harry Oliver decided to go back
home to recuperate, and that’s when Thornton signed on. Barrett dropped plans
for a second car when the cost of running over here came home to him.
Yes, Barrett
knew his name, but then old Fred never forgot a name. Thornton had seen him
around, but at the time he was just another racer. They had no great reputation
at the time, and they didn’t have much going for them now.
The unknown from
Otumwa, quite a mouthful in English, let alone French or Italian, had become
something of a sensation by winning his first race, a small, misbegotten little
racing club’s hill-climb in the Ardennes, the first season, and then placing in
the top three in the next couple of attempts. These were all small hill-climbs
and sports car races for the one and a half litre voiturettes. He bought the
rides, but Barrett and a few others must have been impressed. Maybe they were
reading more into it than was really there, but it was welcome at the time. The
prize-money was nothing, but the experience was precious, or so Barrett said.
They were pretty
forgettable races in some ways. The Ardennes Classic was typical. The circuit
was unsuitable for the big Grand Prix cars, as it was short, bumpy and full of
tight turns, and there was no appearance money or major sponsors, so even the
big-name privateers stayed away.
The
accommodation was abysmal, the people rude and uncaring, out to root for the
local boys and see the tall Yanks and their surprisingly numerous Brit
counterparts pay the price of their folly. For the winner, there was some
grudging respect, and at least they got out of the place intact. There were no
poor-loser quibbles about payment, or taking the trophy with them or anything.
As far as they knew, the hotel-bill had been paid by Barrett’s tire sponsor and
that was all they cared about.
It made him a
little cautious about how he defined himself, after reading what other people
thought of him. He had learned that much. He was, at least temporarily, a bare
eighth in the European hill-climbing points race, and consequently disliked by
the fans of more than one nation.
It was too early
in the season and all of that could change. As he drove, he changed gears
carefully and kept both hands on the wheel as much as practicable. Dan always
wore the belts, but knew a few so-called professional drivers who didn’t, not
on the track or on a public highway. It was easy to get lost in your thoughts
and sort of lose sight of the road.
That was where
the pressure came from. Success brought its own set of unique challenges. He
was still an outsider, although he had picked up many acquaintances and even a
few friends over the last three years. His innate ability to pick up a
smattering of the languages, in a fairly short time, had something to do with
that. It was something he had never expected. He had surprised himself with his
ability. The racing community was cosmopolitan to begin with, and there were
quite a few other Americans around of course.
It was very dark
once he was away from cities and towns, in the hinterland where the cold and
the night ruled. The warm light in the occasional farmhouse windows were
pleasant reminders of home, and food, and comfort. Home is where the heart is.
He shook his head with a rueful grin. Glancing at the mirror, shifting his head
slightly for a moment, there was the bare suggestion of an intelligent brow and
a pair of sardonic brown eyes, with crinkles of humour at the corners reflected
back at him.
That’s me, all
right. At least he wasn’t repulsively ugly. It was just his way of thinking
sometimes. The fellow in the mirror seemed awfully calm, and that was a good
thing. He looked like a confident man, even to himself and when he really ought
to have known better.
Dan Thornton was
shifting at about 4,500 revs, and not stomping the throttle or the brake or
anything like that too much, but the car was competent and in this weather
there were few other drivers out there. Dan’s left-hand drive MG, high on the
miles and bought for a hundred and fifty dollars from a Swiss bus company
owner, ready to retire from business and tiring of sponsoring the sport, was
old but serviceable. It was better than one or two cars he had driven. It was
after midnight, and outside of village or town limits, as a general rule folks
in this part of the world went to bed pretty early. Mutt, a slightly-overweight
English Bull Terrier, slept soundly on the floorboards to his right, oblivious
to the thud of the tires over the railroad crossings and the squeal of the back
ones when they warmed up from wheel-spin, a persistent problem he had learned
to deal with on wet surfaces. There was a time for caution, as the car didn’t
have a whole lot of ground clearance on the back end, and he tried to hit
railway tracks and things in a reasonable manner. The way things were going,
sooner or later he would have to get rid of the dog, but he knew he would hate
himself too much, and so he was putting it off. There were times when it felt
like the dog was his only real friend in the world. There was a world of
difference between the FB-5 and the MG.
None of that
mattered right then. What mattered was the way the road dropped over a rise,
with a pale outline of a barn on the left and a lot of trees on the right.
There was some suggestion, however tenuous and peripheral, that the road went
left. What mattered was that he had a date with Teddy, and he was running short
of funds.
The hiss of the
tires was a reminder of mortality. Life was such a fleeting thing, and Dan
Thornton had never wasted a moment of it.
It was coming up
fast, with the low stone wall on his right stark in his headlamps, and then the
speck of a reflective marker tended to confirm his intuitive analysis as he let
off the gas, touched the brakes, and dropping her down a gear, crunching them
just a bit, he let out the clutch again at low revs to bring her out and around
on the slick surface. He thought he saw the white form of a goat, leaping up
and going nowhere in his peripheral vision and then there were definitely forms
moving in the farmyard. So far the night was unseasonably warm, even at this
altitude, and there was no sign of snow.
People said he
was good, but he wondered sometimes. They knew something he didn’t, maybe, but
then he also knew the fear that comes in the night, not so much when he was
driving as when he wasn’t. This was his element.
His windshield
wipers whispered back and forth, and there was a faint, intermittent creak from
the cranks up under the bulkhead. A vehicle coming the other way overwhelmed
him with spray for a moment. The only thing to do was to back off and wait to
regain visibility again.
The rain
glistened under a dim illumination up ahead, and the car steadied up after a
sinuous but perfectly balanced skid. He was making good time, and there was no need
to take unnecessary risks when he wasn’t being paid to do so. A weekend in
Monte would do him some good, and while he wasn’t much of a gambler himself—he
always told people that he preferred to rely on skill—the fact was that he
enjoyed the company of those who did very much indeed. The next race wasn’t for
a couple of weeks. It was good to get away from Barrett and the boys from time
to time as well.
Another
crossroads went past under the bonnet, and he noted the name. Not much longer
now and the road would widen out a bit and get better. This really was the
boondocks, with the oasis of light and colour that was Monte just over the next
set of hills. It was actually easier to get there from Italy.
It was the
sybaritic indulgence of every whim, in the most trivial of pursuits. It was the
ruthless pursuit of pleasure, a world where there were no winners, only
big-time losers who just shrugged and ordered more champagne. It was what he
needed to take him away from the competitive and pressured world he had once
hoped to dominate, not all that long ago. Now he knew it would take a little
more time. He also knew that if it didn’t happen this year or the next, it
would probably never happen. His most secret fear was that he was going blind,
although several doctors had so far denied it. It was like somehow he knew
better than they did.
He backed off on
the throttle and leveled her out at seventy miles per hour on a straight
stretch with the lights of what looked like a small village just around a curve
of the looming hillside up on the right. He didn’t think she would go much
faster anyhow. Dan knew something they didn’t, which was that there were times
in the night when he wondered why he couldn’t see better, for he seemed to
remember it otherwise just a couple of short years ago, and he wondered if
maybe luck had sort of played him foul, in the sense that he had gotten into
the game rather late in life. He would have done it sooner if he could, but
cars run on money, and racing cars run on bags and bags of it. Most races were
short, and ran in the daytime, but the endurance races had more challenge, more
glamour, and more recognition, or he might have simply ignored them. They also
ran into the night, or at Le Mans, all night.
He wondered if
someone somewhere was whispering that he drove like an old man. There were
times when he wished they could make the headlights a little brighter, or even
the windshield a little cleaner, or that maybe his glasses, which he wore when
he was all alone and no one was looking, a little stronger.
He had never
discussed these fears or even valid concerns with anybody, not even Barrett,
and had no plans to do so anytime soon. He squeezed the throttle a little
harder underfoot, a natural reaction to his mood. The biological
clock would always be ticking in the background. It was something he just had
to accept. He would talk about it when he was ready.
It wasn’t like he had a
long-term contract or anything.
END of Excerpt.
