The Last Open Road Read online

  After entirely too many rounds at the trophy party, some of the local MG types helped us find a garage where we could stash Cal's blown-up TC, and then a whole bunch of us went out to eat dinner at some Chinese restaurant on the other side of the river. But, what with the party at the starting line and dragging Cal's TC over to that garage and getting lost once or twice and having to organize and reorganize our meandering MG parade every ten blocks or so to pick up stragglers and listen to the local MG guys argue over whether we were heading in the right direction, the Chinese place was closed by the time we got there. So we all got drunk as hooty owls instead. The local MG types helped with that, too, since Cal and me were underage (although Cal had some first-rate fake I.D.s) so they'd sort of sneak us into places in the middle of a whole stampeding herd of them. I wore my nifty new aviator sunglasses (which meant I was bumping into a lot of things, seeing as how it was nighttime and none of the places we went were particularly well lit) and somebody handed me a weatherbeaten old wool fedora to put over my head so I would maybe look a little older. It was the kind of hat Old Man Finzio might wear to church (if, in fact, he ever went to church) and the MG people kept telling me to keep it down low over my forehead so nobody could tell how old I was. I figured I looked like one of those hot New York jazz musicians, you know? Maybe a saxophone player (albeit with strangely raw knuckles for a musician). Truth is, I don't remember if we ever actually ate a meal that night (or, in fact, much of anything else) but I do recollect the following morning in vivid and hideous detail.

  I shuddered awake to the shriek of tiny, high-revving racing engines wailing past at full throttle, and discovered myself folded into the back of somebody's light blue DeSoto four-door with Cal's stolen comforter halfheartedly wrapped around my shoulders and a Sears Craftsman toolbox for a pillow. It was not what you could call a particularly comfortable place to sleep (or even pass out) and I had absolutely no idea where I was, how I got there, or why I was wearing a shoe with no sock on one foot and a sock but no shoe on the other. Not that I really much cared, since my body ached like I'd been worked over by the Gambino family and nothing in all of recorded human history hurt so much as my head. In fact, I remember reaching up with my fingertips to see if there was an actual crack in it someplace. Why, if I could've just laid my hands on that missing shoe, I'd have thrown it hard as I could at those damn race cars screaming past less than twenty yards away. With superhuman effort I hoisted myself upright, swung the door open, and gracefully fell out on the ground. "I declare," Cal snickered, looking down at me over the tips of his shoes, "it lives!"

  "Real funny," I groaned, not the least bit amused. Oh, I'd had a few minor-league hangovers in my time, but never anything so wicked as this. Not hardly. One of the MG people offered me a couple aspirin and another fixed me up with a mug of hot coffee, but I was still feeling pretty rocky as I hunted for my new aviator sunglasses to cut down on the glare. "Say," I asked nobody in particular, "where the hell are we, anyway?"

  "Why, Brynfan Tyddyn, of course."

  "Brynfan Tyddyn?" I puzzled, turning the words over in my head. Just saying it was like trying to talk with your mouth full. Turns out Brynfan Tyddyn meant "Big Farm by the Hill" or "Big Hill by the Barn" or "Big Barn by the Farm" or something in this strange language used by the people who ran around England in animal skins before vowels were discovered, and it was the name of this enormous, woodsy country estate that belonged to an actual Pennsylvania state senator. The guy was incredibly rich (the kind you can only get by being born into it) and, like a lot of other wealthy, upper-crust individuals with plenty of free time to fill, he loved playing around with expensive European sports cars. And his estate at Brynfan Tyddyn was a swell place to do it, seeing as how it was big as a damn state park and had all these winding blacktop driveways and access roads snaking through groves of fruit trees and rolling across meadows full of dandelions and wild-flowers and fat, industrious honeybees. It was pretty as all getout, and I suppose I should've felt privileged just to be there (I mean, garage mechanics don't generally get invited to many social functions involving country estates or state senators) but my head was pounding and my stomach was doing one of those ocean-swell corkscrew rolls, and all I really wanted was to be back in the apartment over my aunt's garage, gobbling handfuls of aspirin with Bromo-Seltzer chasers and not straying too far from the commode. Naturally, my buddy Cal suggested maybe a little "hair of the dog" might help, and assured me that all his old-money friends took themselves a little nip in the morning after a rough night out. For medicinal purposes only, you understand. "Helps jumpstart the old batteries," he said. And Cal just happened to have a half-empty pint of bourbon handy. Seeing as how there was no way I could feel any worse, I held my nose, clenched my teeth, and took a slug. And then another. And then one more. And, believe it or not, I started to feel a little better. Although it started occurring to me that hanging around with this fashionable imported sports car crowd was turning me into a fine old specimen of a street-corner rum-pot.

  I stuck around the MG bivouac for the next couple hours, drinking coffee laced with an occasional shot of bourbon and trying to get my eyes to focus again. But even with the edges all fuzzy, Brynfan Tyddyn was one of the most beautiful, elegant places I'd ever been, what with the forests and meadows and this huge, ivy-covered brick mansion right in the middle. It was also a swell place to hold a car race, even though it looked a bit dangerous with the pavement barely a lane and a half wide and trees growing right up to the edge in several key spots. A driver sure couldn't make many mistakes at Brynfan Tyddyn. Not unless he wanted to collect himself a brick driveway pillar or a stout tree trunk. Which is why the S.C.M.A. wouldn't allow big cars like Jags or Allards to race there. It was actually kind of nice, since the smallbore guys always raced in the shadows of the big iron and never got their fair share of the glory. Not to mention that my head wasn't at all ready for the blare of Jaguar sixes or the ground-throbbing rumble of Allard V-8s that particular ayem. Not hardly.

  We had a tasty picnic lunch courtesy of the MG guys (which went down ok but didn't sit too well later on), and afterward Cal and me went wandering around to admire the estate and watch the races. As you can imagine, Cal was pacing up and down like a caged leopard the whole afternoon, muttering under his breath about what a damn shame it was that the car blew up and how he could drive goddam rings around the rest of those guys. It just wasn't fair, you know? Not being able to race was eating Cal up pretty bad, no two ways about it. But we had a good time anyway, and not being stuck under a car gave me a chance to learn a little something about the S.C.M.A. racing classes. First off we saw a heat for the little modifieds—Cal called them "tiddlers"—in which this strange, pygmy-sized Italian device called a Bandini (which looked like a kid's pedal toy and probably weighed about the same) streaked off to a commanding lead, only to drop out a few laps from the checker when the battery cable fell off. The Bandini's retirement left things to a much prettier Italian roadster called a Siata, which looked like a miniature edition of Creighton Pendleton's 4.1 Ferrari but sounded more like a sewing machine in heat.

  Next up was a race for these little cigar-shaped English open-wheelers powered by 500cc Norton and J. A. Prestwich motorcycle engines and built to such ridiculously tiny proportions that they made the tiddlers from the first race look enormous by comparison. I guess those things were all the rage in England and a few American enthusiasts had brought them back to race here in the States. They looked like big tin water bugs, and you couldn't use them on the street since they didn't have lights or fenders or, in fact, much of anything except an engine, a gas tank, and a hole in the middle for the driver. Personally, I didn't see the attraction. I mean, they had no stature to them. Not like a Jag XK or a Ferrari. Plus the damn things popped and banged like firecrackers in a tin can and smelled something awful from the doped-up, alcohol-base fuel they were running. But I had to admit they were quick—especially around a tight, narrow, twisty little circuit like Brynfan
Tyddyn—and one of them actually cut the fastest lap anybody ran all day. The problem was you couldn't see the speed. But you could tell the owners thought those little British single-seaters were pretty damn special. In fact, they were even kind of smug about it, waltzing around the paddock using uptown words like "monoposto" and "Gran Pree" all the time. But there were only four of the little boogers on hand (a Kieft and three Coopers, not that you could really tell them apart) and some guy named Dick Irish pretty much ran away and hid from the other three, so it really wasn't too exciting.

  The last race more than made up for the other two, since we had ourselves a real wheel-to-wheel barn burner between this transplanted Englishman named John Gordon Benett in a stripped-down, Nordec-supercharged MG TD (which Cal told me was about the quickest damn MG in the country, bar none) and a very special Porsche roadster in the hands of some guy named Phil Walters. I'd never heard of either one, but Cal said they were both top-notch drivers and proved it by keeping his mouth shut through the entire race. And what a race! Those two charged around like they were tied together—lap after lap!—the Porsche skating around with its ass end hung out to dry and the front wheels ruddering into the skid, and the MG wailing along barely inches behind, sniffing and pawing for a way to get by. But the Porsche just had a little too much for the MG, and Walters took a squeaker of a win with John Gordon Benett's supercharged TD right up his tailpipe all the way to the checker.

  "Boy," I said afterward, "those guys really know how to drive!"

  "They should," Cal explained. "They're professionals."

  That kind of surprised me, since I knew the S.C.M.A. was pretty damn vocal about being strictly amateur and not allowing prize money or sponsor names on the sides of the cars like you saw at the Indianapolis 500. I sort of assumed that hired-gun professional drivers fell into the same category, you know? But some guys just have to win (even if all they're winning is a tin cup) and there was nothing in the books to prevent a car owner from putting a "quick friend" behind the wheel.

  I mean, it was all just for fun, right?

  Still, it's always a thrill to see great cars in the hands of great drivers, and especially when two of them wind up head-to-head in equal machinery and you're lucky enough to be perched on the fences. Only trouble is, it makes all the duffers, wannabes, and pretenders out there look pretty damn lame by comparison.

  After the races, Cal and me wandered over to congratulate the drivers. They were standing around between the two cars, wrapped in the scent of brake linings and hot oil vapor, laughing and shooting the breeze with this short, solid little guy with sad eyes, a granite jaw, and black hair swirling up off his forehead like flames off a campfire. Naturally, Cal waltzed right up like we were old school chums and grabbed Phil Walters's hand. "Hey, that was one hell of a race," Cal said, working Phil's arm up and down like a pump handle.

  "Thanks. Old John sure tried to make it tough on me though, didn't he?"

  "I'll say."

  "Made me run her right to the limit."

  "We saw."

  "Why, every time I looked in the mirror, it was full of this damn MG. I just couldn't get rid of the bastard."

  "Oh, we did our best to keep it interesting," the English MG driver grinned, "but I'm afraid the Porsche was just a mite too quick for us today."

  "Yeah, Mr. Walters," I tossed in, "that Porsche of yours is fast!"

  "Oh, thanks," he said, "but it's not my car."

  "It's not?" He shook his head. "Then who does it belong to?"

  "Actually," the little guy with the sad eyes said, almost like he was apologizing, "it's mine."

  "Well then, congratulations to you, too. That was one hell of a race.

  "Oh, don't congratulate me," he said in the softest, politest voice you ever heard. "I'm afraid John Gordon would have whipped us pretty soundly if I'd been at the wheel."

  "Buddy," Cal said grandly, "meet Briggs Cunningham."

  The name rang a little bit of a bell, but I couldn't really place it at the time. "Well," I said, shaking his hand, "that's an awful nice Porsche you got there anyways, Mr. Cunningham."

  "Oh, this is just a toy we play around with. I have a couple big cars, too."

  "Big cars?"

  He nodded. "You'll see them sooner or later if you keep coming to the races. We bring them out here in the States every once in a while. Will you be at Elkhart Lake?"

  "Elkhart Lake?" Heck, I'd never even heard of Elkhart Lake, and I was sort of embarrassed when I had to ask him where it was.

  "It's up in Wisconsin," Briggs Cunningham explained. "About an hour north of Milwaukee. Great place. You shouldn't miss it. Wonderful spot. Absolutely wonderful."

  "It's the week after Grand Island," Cal tossed in.

  "Grand Island?" I said.

  "Up by Niagara Falls," Cal nodded. "The last weekend in August. You guys planning to make that one?"

  "No, we'll still be over in Europe," Briggs Cunningham said like it was nothing at all, "racing in France."

  And slowly it began to dawn on me that there were people in this sport who could take off whenever they felt like it and go traipsing all over the whole damn country—all over the whole damn world, even!—just to go race their fancy sports cars. It made you wonder just what the hell they did for a living (if anything!), and why the heck I couldn't have been a member of the Lucky Sperm Club like them. It just didn't seem fair. On the other hand, simply getting to hang around all their snazzy cars and swell parties was a hell of a lot better than anything I had going back home. I wanted more out of life than wrenching on rusted-out Plymouths at the Old Man's Sinclair and listening to my dad lecture me about the wonderful union benefits of his chemical plant job in Newark. Maybe I even wanted something more than getting into Julie Finzio's pants.

  Anyhow, we chewed the fat back and forth about racing and the relative merits of Porsches versus supercharged MGs until the sun was easing down behind the senator's mansion, and my silver-tongued friend Cal Carrington managed to work himself a deal to have his derelict TC hauled all the way back to Jersey in Briggs Cunningham's trailer. That was one hell of a nice gesture on Briggs's part, since it meant somebody from his crew (of which there were at least a half dozen) had to drive that stripped-down Porsche back to New York.

  Naturally Cal stayed behind to help out with the TC, so I hitched a ride back to Passaic with Carson Flegley in his black TD. As you can imagine, it was nice having all the rudimentary amenities like a top and a windshield and a few inches of actual upholstery under my butt (which was incidentally on the correct American side in Carson's car), not to mention a heater under the dash for that trip through the mountains. But it still wasn't a particularly pleasant trip, on account of all the pick-me-up bourbon and beer had long since worn off and I generally felt like I'd eaten a dead rat, fallen down a fire escape, and been left in a damp alley to die. Plus it took us absolutely forever to get home with Carson Flegley at the wheel. Now don't get me wrong, I was plenty happy that he didn't try to carve through the mountains in world-record time like my friend Cal, but he was so worried about getting a damn stone chip or a mud splash on his new TD that he'd pull over to the side anytime another car or truck got anywhere close to us. Plus he'd picked up this notion that you had to vary your speed and never exceed 50 miles per hour when breaking in a new MG. I tried to explain the difference between engine speed and road speed to him, and also how those flat-out runs up Giant's Despair made nonsense out of any normal break-in schedule. But Carson couldn't see it on account of he didn't understand gearing and never topped 40 going up the hill. He was determined to stick to the break-in procedure Barry Spline had carefully outlined for him when he took delivery of his car. Even if it made no sense at all. I mean, who was he going to believe? Some punk gas station mechanic or a guy who came from an actual MG dealership and wore a classy blue shop coat and moreover spoke with a genuine, 100 percent-authentic British accent?

  And who could blame him?

  So it was one long,
looong ride back to the apartment over my Aunt Rosamarina's garage, and it seemed even longer on account of Carson wasn't all that much of a conversationalist. Then again, I didn't encourage him. After all, who wants to hear an undertaker talk shop?

  9: THE GLAMOROUS LIFE OF A RACING WRENCH

  BELIEVE IT or not, I managed to get myself relieved of duty at the Sinclair come Monday morning. It started when I rolled in about two hours late, still bleary from the all-night ride back from Pennsylvania. As soon as I stumbled through the door, I found myself on the receiving end of a rasping, hacking, nose-to-nose lecture from Old Man Finzio about the difference between A Goddam Garage Business and A Goddam Nursery School. "We ain't a bunch of nose-in-the-air rich assholes 'round here," he snarled, shaking a bony finger under my nose. "Not like them high-hats you been runnin' around with. Nossir. 'Round here folks gotta work t'earn a goddam livin'. An' they sure as hell can't work if they don't bother t' goddam show up in the mornin', can they?" The Old Man was pretty worked up, and it sounded a lot like one of my dad's famous post-ball game speeches. Only nastier. And no question Old Man Finzio's breath smelled worse. Especially at close range.