Art of Racing in the Rain, The

by Garth Stein

  On one occasion, when I was young, the crows spotted Eve bringing home the groceries and they crowded nearby, clustering in a tree just on the edge of the property, so many of them. They were silent, not wanting to draw attention to themselves, but I knew they were there. Eve had parked in the alley, and she made several trips with bags from the car to the porch, then from the porch into the house. The crows watched. And they noticed that Eve had left a bag behind.

  Well. They are smart, I have to give them credit, for they didn’t move in right away. They watched and waited until Eve went upstairs and undressed and got into the bathtub, as she sometimes did in the afternoon when she had a day off from her work. They watched and were sure that the glass-paned kitchen door was closed and locked so thieves and rapists couldn’t get in, and so I couldn’t get out. Then they made their move.

  They swooped in, several of them, and picked up the bag with their beaks. One of them goaded me by walking up to the glass and trying to get me to bark. Normally, I would have resisted the urge, just to spite them, but knowing what I knew, I barked a few times, enough to make it convincing. They didn’t go far. They wanted to taunt me with it. They wanted me to watch them enjoy the treats in the bag, so they stopped inside the yard, on the grass, the whole group of them. They danced around in circles and made faces at me and flapped their wings and called for their friends. They tore open the plastic and they dove in with all of their beaks to eat the wonderful food and delicious items that were hidden inside, and they ate. They gulped, those stupid birds; they ate from the bag and they swallowed with glee. And they choked on giant mouthfuls of my shit.

  My shit!

  Oh, the looks on their faces! The stunned silence. The indignation! The shaking of heads, and then they flew off en masse to the neighbor up the street with the dribbling fountain so they could wash their beaks.

  They came back, then. Clean and mad. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. They stood on the back porch and on the back lawn, so thick with crows it was like a massive, undulating layer of tar and feathers, all of their beady eyes trained on me, staring at me, as if to say, Come out, little doggie, and we’ll peck your eyeballs out!

  I didn’t go out. And they soon left. But when Denny got home from work that day, he looked in the back. Eve was cooking dinner, and Zoë was still little, in a high chair. Denny looked outside and said, “Why is there so much bird crap on the deck?” I knew. Given a Stephen Hawking computer, I could have made a good joke of it.

  He went out and turned on the hose and washed the deck. And he collected the torn poop bags with puzzlement but no inquiry. The trees and telephone wires and electrical wires were heavy with those birds, all of them watching. I didn’t go out with him. And when he wanted to go throw the ball, I pretended I was sick and climbed onto my bed and slept.

  It was a good laugh, watching those dumb birds who think they’re so smart with their beaks full of dog shit. But, as with all things, there were repercussions: since that time, my nightmares have always contained angry crows.

  A murder of them.

  14

  The clues were all there, I simply hadn’t read them correctly. Over the winter, he had played a video racing game obsessively, which wasn’t like him. He had never gotten into racing games. But that winter, he played the game every night after Eve went to bed. And he raced on American circuits only. St. Petersburg and Laguna Seca. Road Atlanta and Mid-Ohio. I should have known just from seeing the tracks he was racing. He wasn’t playing a video game, he was studying the circuits. He was learning turn-in points and braking points. I’d heard him talk about how accurate the backgrounds are on these video games, how drivers have found the games can be quite helpful for getting acquainted with new circuits. But I never thought—

  And his diet: no alcohol, no sugar, no fried foods. His exercise regimen: running several days a week, swimming at the Medgar Evers Pool, lifting weights in the garage of the big guy down the street who started lifting when he was in prison. Denny had been preparing himself. He was lean and strong and ready to do battle in a race car. And I had missed all the signs. But then, I believe I had been duped. Because when he came downstairs with his track bag packed that day in March and his suitcase on wheels and his special helmet-and-HANS-device bag, Eve and Zoë seemed to know all about his leaving. He had told them. He hadn’t told me.

  The parting was strange. Zoë was both excited and nervous, Eve was somber, and I was utterly confused. Where was he going? I raised my eyebrows, lifted my ears, and cocked my head; I used every facial gesture at my disposal in an attempt to glean information.

  “Sebring,” he said to me, reading my mind the way he does sometimes. “I took the seat in the touring car, didn’t I tell you?”

  The touring car? But that was something he said he could never do! We agreed on that!

  I was at once elated and devastated. A race weekend is at least three nights away, sometimes four when the event is on the opposite coast, and there are eleven races over an eight-month period. He would be away so much of the time! I was worried about the emotional well-being of those of us left behind.

  But I am a racer at heart, and a racer will never let something that has already happened affect what is happening now. The news that he had taken the touring car seat and was flying to Sebring to race on ESPN 2 was extremely good. He was finally doing what he should be doing when he was supposed to do it. He wasn’t waiting or worrying about everyone else. He was looking out for himself. A race car driver must be very selfish. It is a cold truth: even his family must come second to the race.

  I wagged my tail enthusiastically, and he smiled at me with a twinkle in his eye. He knew that I understood everything he said.

  “Be good, now,” he chided me playfully. “Watch over the girls.”

  He hugged little Zoë and kissed Eve gently, but as he turned away from her she launched herself into his chest and grabbed him tight. She buried herself in his shoulder, her face red with congested tears.

  “Please come back,” she said, her words muffled by his mass.

  “Of course I will.”

  “Please come back,” she repeated.

  He soothed her.

  “I promise I’ll come back in one piece,” he said.

  She shook her head, which was still pressed against his body.

  “I don’t care how many pieces,” she said. “Just promise you’ll come back.”

  He quickly glanced at me, as if I could clarify what she was really asking. Did she mean come back alive? Or come back and not leave her? Or something else entirely? He didn’t know.

  I, however, knew exactly what she meant. Eve wasn’t worried about Denny not returning, she was worried about herself. She knew that something was wrong with her, though she didn’t know what, and she was afraid it would return in some terrible way when Denny was not with us. I was concerned as well, the memory of the zebra still in my head. I couldn’t explain this to Denny, but I could resolve to remain steadfast in his absence.

  “I promise,” he said, hopefully.

  After he had gone, Eve closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, she looked at me, and I could see that she had resolved something for herself as well.

  “I insisted he do it,” she said to me. “I think it will be good for me; it will make me stronger.”

  That was the first race of the series, and the race didn’t go well for Denny, though it went fine for Eve, Zoë, and me. We watched it on TV, and Denny qualified in the top third of the field. But shortly into the race, he had to pit because of a cut tire; a crew member had trouble mounting the new wheel, and by the time Denny returned to the race, he was a lap down and never recovered. Twenty-fourth place.

  The second race came only a few weeks after the first, and, again, Eve, Zoë, and I managed fine. For Denny, the results of the race were very much the same as the first: spilled fuel that resulted in a stop-and-go penalty, costing Denny a lap. Thirtieth place.

  Denny
was extremely frustrated.

  “I like the guys,” he told us at dinner when he was home for a stretch. “They’re good people, but they’re not a good pit crew. They’re making mistakes, killing our season. If they would just give me a chance to finish, I’d finish well.”

  “Can’t you get a new crew?” Eve asked.

  I was in the kitchen, next to the dining room. I never stayed in the dining room when they ate, out of respect. No one likes a dog under the table looking for crumbs when they’re eating. So I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. Denny picking up the wooden salad bowl and serving himself more salad. Zoë pushing her chicken nuggets around on the plate.

  “Eat them, honey,” Eve said. “Don’t play with them.”

  “It’s not the quality of the man,” Denny tried to explain. “It’s the quality of the team.”

  “How do you fix it?” Eve asked. “You’re spending so much time away, it seems like a waste. What’s the point of racing if you can’t finish? Zoë, you’ve only had two bites. Eat.”

  The crunching of romaine. Zoë drinking from her sippy cup.

  “Practice,” Denny said. “Practice, practice, practice.”

  “When will you practice?”

  “They want me to go down to Infineon next week, work with the Apex Porsche people. Work hard with the pit crew so there are no more mistakes. The sponsors are getting frustrated.”

  Eve fell silent.

  “Next week is your week off,” she said finally.

  “I won’t be gone long. Three or four days. Good salad. Did you make the dressing yourself?”

  I couldn’t read their body language because I couldn’t see them, but there are some things a dog can sense. Tension. Fear. Anxiety. These states of being are the result of a chemical release inside the human body. They are totally physiological, in other words. Involuntary. People like to think they have evolved beyond instinct, but in fact, they still have fight-or-flight responses to stimuli. And when their bodies respond, I can smell the chemical release from their pituitary glands. For instance, adrenaline has a very specific odor, which is not so much smelled but tasted. I know a person can’t understand that concept, but that’s the best way to describe it: the taste of an alkaline on the back of my tongue. From my position on the kitchen floor, I could taste Eve’s adrenaline. Clearly, she had steeled herself for Denny’s racing absences; she was not prepared for his impromptu practices in Sonoma, and she was angry and afraid.

  I heard chair legs scrape as a chair was pushed back. I heard plates being stacked, flatware nervously gathered.

  “Eat your nuggets,” Eve said again, this time sternly.

  “I’m full,” Zoë declared.

  “You haven’t eaten anything. How can you be full?”

  “I don’t like nuggets.”

  “You’re not leaving the table until you eat your nuggets.”

  “I DON’T LIKE NUGGETS!” Zoë shrieked, and suddenly the world was a very dark place.

  Anxiety. Anticipation. Excitement. Antipathy. All these emotions have a distinctive smell, many of which were exuding from the dining room at that moment.

  After a long silence, Denny said, “I’ll make you a hot dog.”

  “No,” Eve said. “She’ll eat the nuggets. She likes nuggets, she’s just being difficult. Eat!”

  Another pause, and then the sound of a child gagging.

  Denny almost laughed. “I’ll make her a hot dog,” he said again.

  “She’s going to eat the goddamn nuggets!” Eve shouted.

  “She doesn’t like the nuggets. I’ll make her a hot dog,” Denny replied firmly.

  “No, you won’t! She likes the nuggets, she’s just doing this because you’re here. I’m not making a new dinner every time she decides she doesn’t like something. She asked for the fucking nuggets, now she’ll eat the fucking nuggets!”

  Fury has a very distinctive smell, too.

  Zoë started to cry. I went to the door and looked in. Eve was standing at the head of the table, her face red and pinched. Zoë was sobbing into her nuggets. Denny stood to make himself seem bigger. It’s important for the alpha to be bigger. Often just posturing can get a member of the pack to back down.

  “You’re overreacting,” he said. “Why don’t you go lie down and let me finish up here.”

  “You always take her side!” Eve barked.

  “I just want her to have a dinner she’ll eat.”

  “Fine,” Eve hissed. “I’ll make her a hot dog, then.”

  Eve whirled from the table and almost crushed me when she burst into the kitchen. She threw open the freezer door and snatched a package of hot dogs, turned on the faucet and held the package under the running water. She grabbed a knife from the block and stabbed into the package, and that’s when the evening turned from one filled with forgettable arguments to one marked by undeniable and permanent evidence. As if the knife had a will of its own and wanted to get involved in the fracas, the blade leapt from the wet, frozen package and sliced deep and clean into the fleshy webbing of Eve’s left palm, between her thumb and fingers.

  The knife clattered in the sink, and Eve grabbed her hand with a wail. Watery drops of blood speckled the backsplash. Denny was there in a moment with a dishcloth.

  “Let me see it,” he said, peeling the blood-soaked cloth from her hand, which she held by the wrist as if it were no longer a part of her body but some alien creature that had attacked her.

  “We should take you to the hospital,” he said.

  “No!” she bellowed. “No hospital!”

  “You need stitches,” he said, examining the gushing wound.

  She didn’t answer immediately, but her eyes were filled with tears. Not from pain, but from fear. She was so afraid of doctors and hospitals. She was afraid that she might go in and they would never let her out.

  “Please,” she whispered to Denny. “Please. No hospital.”

  He groaned and shook his head.

  “I’ll see if I can close it,” he said.

  Zoë stood next to me, silent, eyes wide, holding a chicken nugget, watching. Neither of us knew what to do.

  “Zoë, baby,” Denny said. “Can you find the butterfly closures for me in the hall closet? We’ll get Mommy all patched up, okay?”

  Zoë didn’t move. How could she? She knew she was the cause of Mommy’s pain. It was her blood that Eve was bleeding.

  “Zoë, please,” Denny said, lifting Eve to her feet. “Blue and white box, red letters. Look for the ‘B’ word. Butterfly.”

  Zoë headed off to find the box. Denny guided Eve to the bathroom and closed the door. I heard Eve cry out in pain.

  When Zoë returned with the box of bandages, she didn’t know where her parents had gone, so I walked her to the bathroom door and barked. Denny opened the door a crack and took the bandages.

  “Thanks, Zoë. I’ll take care of Mommy, now. You can go play or watch TV.”

  He closed the door.

  Zoë looked at me for a moment with concern in her eyes, and I wanted to help her. I walked toward the living room and looked back. She still hesitated, so I went to get her. I nudged her and tried again; this time she followed me. I sat before the television and waited for her to turn it on, which she did. And we watched Kids Next Door. And then Denny and Eve appeared.

  They saw us watching TV together, and they seemed somehow relieved. They sat next to Zoë and watched along with us, not saying a word. When the show was over, Eve pressed the mute button on the remote.

  “The cut isn’t very bad,” she said to Zoë. “If you’re still hungry, I can make you a hot dog….”

  Zoë shook her head.

  And then Eve started sobbing. Sitting on the couch, exposed to the world, she collapsed into herself; I could see her energy implode.

  “I’m so sorry,” she cried.

  Denny put his arm around her shoulder and held her.

  “I don’t want to be like this,” she sobbed. “It’s not me. I’m s
o sorry. I don’t want to be mean. It’s not who I am.”

  Beware, I thought. The zebra hides everywhere.

  Zoë grabbed her mother and held tight, which unleashed a flood of tears from both of them, and they were joined by Denny, who hovered over them like a firefighting helicopter, dumping his bucket of tears on the fire.

  I left. Not because I felt they wanted their privacy, believe me. I left because I felt that they had resolved their issues and all was good in the world.

  And, also, I was hungry.

  I wandered into the dining room and scanned the floor for droppings. There wasn’t much. But in the kitchen I found something good. A nugget.

  Zoë must have dropped it after Eve cut herself. It looked like a fair snack to me, something to tide me over until they got over their cuddly moment and remembered to feed me. I sniffed the nugget, and I recoiled in disgust. It was bad! I sniffed again. Rancid. Foul. Disease laden! The nuggets had been in the freezer too long, or out of the freezer too long. Or both, I concluded, having witnessed what little regard people pay to their grocery sacks. This nugget—and probably all the others on the plate—had definitely turned.

  I felt bad for Zoë: all she’d had to do was say that the nuggets didn’t taste right, and this incident would have been avoided. But Eve would have found a way to hurt herself anyway, I suppose. They needed this. This moment. It was important to them as a family, and I understood that.

  In racing, they say that your car goes where your eyes go. The driver who cannot tear his eyes away from the wall as he spins out of control will meet that wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle.

  Your car goes where your eyes go. Simply another way of saying that which you manifest is before you.

  I know it’s true; racing doesn’t lie.

  15