Читать книгу The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein - Страница 15

8

One summer Saturday afternoon, after we had spent the morning at the beach at Alki swimming and eating fish and chips from Spud’s, we returned to the house red and tired from the sun. Eve put Zoë down for a nap; Denny and I sat in front of the TV to study.

He put on a tape of an enduro he had been asked to co-drive in Portland a few weeks earlier. It was an exciting race, eight hours long, in which Denny and his two co-drivers took turns behind the wheel in two-hour shifts, ultimately finishing first in class after Denny’s eleventh-hour heroics, which included recovering from a near spin to overtake two class competitors.

Watching a race entirely from in-car video is a tremendous experience. It creates a wonderful sense of perspective that is often lost in a television broadcast with its many cameras and cars to follow. Seeing a race from the cockpit of a single car gives a true feeling of what it’s like to be a driver: the grip on the steering wheel, the dash, the track, and the glimpse through the rearview mirror of other cars overtaking or being overtaken, the sense of isolation, the focus and determination that are necessary to win.

Denny started the tape at the beginning of his final stint, with the track wet and the sky heavy with dark clouds that threatened more rain. We watched several laps in silence. Denny drove smoothly and almost alone, as his team had fallen behind after making the crucial decision to pull into the pits and switch to rain tires; other racing teams had predicted the rain would pass and dry track conditions would return, and so had gained more than two laps on Denny’s team. Yet the rain began again, which gave Denny a tremendous advantage.

Denny quickly and easily passed cars from other classes: underpowered Miatas that darted through the turns with their excellent balance; big-engine Vipers with their atrocious handling. Denny, in his quick and muscular Porsche Cup Car, slicing through the rain.

“How come you go through the turns so much faster than the other cars?” Eve asked.

I looked up. She stood in the doorway, watching with us.

“Most of them aren’t running rain tires,” Denny said.

Eve took a seat on the sofa next to Denny.

“But some of them are.”

“Yes, some,” he said.

We watched. Denny got up behind a yellow Camaro at the end of the back straight, and though it looked as if he could have taken the other car in turn 12, he held back. Eve noticed.

“Why didn’t you pass him?” she asked.

“I know him. He’s got too much power and would just pass me back on the straight. I think I take him in the next series of turns.”

Yes. At the next turn-in, Denny was inches from the Camaro’s rear bumper. He rode tight through the double-apex right-hand turn and then popped out at the exit to take the inside line for the next turn, a quick left, and he zipped right by.

“This part of the track is really slick in the rain,” he said. “He has to back way off. By the time he gets his grip back, I’m out of his reach.”

On the back straight again, the headlights illuminating the turn markers against a sky that was still not completely dark, the Camaro could be seen in Denny’s panoramic racing rearview mirror, fading into the background.

“Did he have rain tires?” Eve asked.

“I think so. But his car wasn’t set up right.”

“Still. You’re driving like the track isn’t wet, and everyone else is driving like it is.”

Turn 12 and blasting down the straight, we could see brake lights of the competition flicker ahead; Denny’s next victims.

“That which you manifest is before you,” Denny said softly.

“What?” Eve asked.

“When I was nineteen,” Denny said after a moment, “at my first driving school down at Sears Point, it was raining and they were trying to teach us how to drive in the rain. After the instructors were finished explaining all their secrets, all the students were totally confused. We had no idea what they were talking about. I looked over at the guy next to me—I remember him, he was from France and he was very fast. Gabriel Flouret. He smiled and he said: ‘That which you manifest is before you.’”

Eve stuck out her lower lip and squinted at Denny.

“And then everything made sense,” she said jokingly.

“That’s right,” Denny said seriously.

On the TV, the rain didn’t stop; it kept coming. Denny’s team had made the right choice; other teams were pulling off into the hot pits to change to rain tires.

“Drivers are afraid of the rain,” Denny told us. “Rain amplifies your mistakes, and water on the track can make your car handle unpredictably. When something unpredictable happens you have to react to it; if you’re reacting at speed, you’re reacting too late. And so you should be afraid.”

“I’m afraid just watching it,” Eve said.

“If I intentionally make the car do something, then I can predict what it’s going to do. In other words, it’s only unpredictable if I’m not … possessing … it.”

“So you spin the car before the car spins itself?” she asked.

“That’s it! If I initiate the action—if I get the car a little loose—then I know it’s going to happen before it happens. Then I can react to it before even the car knows it’s happening.”

“And you can do that?”

Dashing past other cars on the TV screen, his rear end suddenly stepped out, his car got sideways but his hands were already turning to correct, and instead of his car snapping around into a full spin, he was off again, leaving the others behind. Eve sighed in relief, held her hand to her forehead.

“Sometimes,” Denny said. “But all drivers spin. It comes from pushing the limits. But I’m working on it. Always working on it. And I had a good day.”

She sat with us another minute, and then she smiled at Denny almost reluctantly and stood up.

“I love you,” she said. “I love all of you, even your racing. And I know on some level that you are completely right about all this. I just don’t think I could ever do it myself.”

She went off into the kitchen; Denny and I continued watching the cars on the video as they drove around and around the circuit drenched in darkness.

I will never tire of watching tapes with Denny. He knows so much, and I have learned so much from him. He said nothing more to me; he continued watching his tapes. But my thoughts turned to what he had just taught me. Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

I considered how that idea applied to my relationship with Eve. It was true that I carried some resentment toward her for her involvement in our lives, and I know that she sensed that fact and protected herself by remaining aloof. And even though our relationship had changed greatly since Zoë’s arrival, there was still a distance between us.

I left Denny at the TV and walked into the kitchen. Eve was preparing dinner, and she looked at me when I entered.

“Bored with the race?” she asked casually.

I wasn’t bored. I could have watched the race all that day and all the next. I was manifesting something. I lay down near the refrigerator, in a favorite spot of mine, and rested.

I could tell she felt self-conscious with me there. Usually, if Denny was in the house, I spent my time by his side; that I had chosen to be with her now seemed to confuse her. She didn’t understand my intentions. But then she got rolling with dinner, and she forgot about me.

First she started some hamburger frying, which smelled good. Then she washed some lettuce and spun it dry. She sliced apples. She added onions and garlic to a pot and then a can of tomatoes. And the kitchen was rich with the smell of food. The smell of it and the heat of the day made me feel quite drowsy, so I must have nodded off until I felt her hands on me, until I felt her stroking my side, then scratching my belly, and I rolled over on my back to acknowledge her dominance; my reward was more of her comforting scratches.

“Sweet dog,” she said to me. “Sweet dog.”

She returned to her preparations, pausing only occasionally to rub my neck with her bare foot as she passed, which wasn’t all that much, but meant a lot to me nonetheless.

I had always wanted to love Eve as Denny loved her, but I never had because I was afraid. She was my rain. She was my unpredictable element. She was my fear. But a racer should not be afraid of rain; a racer should embrace the rain. I, alone, could manifest a change in that which was around me. By changing my mood, my energy, I allowed Eve to regard me differently. And while I cannot say that I am a master of my own destiny, I can say that I have experienced a glimpse of mastery, and I know what I have to work toward.