I focus on chopping the potatoes into equally sized cubes. “I talked to your mom today,” Dad says. The butcher knife in my hand plunks onto the counter as fast as my jaw falls open. I’m lucky my index finger wasn’t under the blade. “She called you?” I ask. I can almost hear the crackling of ice as hell freezes over. Mom hasn’t talked to Dad since that Fourth of July two years ago.
“I called her. Just wanted her to know you were staying with me for a while.”
“What did she say?”
Dad eats another piece of potato, taking longer to chew it as he did last time and I can tell he’s wondering if he should tell me the truth or gloss over it. “She said that was fine. You can stay for the whole summer if you want.”
Somehow, I don’t think that’s what she said. “I would like that,” I say, ignoring the pain in my stomach that’s gnawing at me for obligating them to let me stay. “If that’s okay with you guys,” I add. “I just don’t want to go back there right now.”
“I have an idea,” Molly says, her voice muffled with an ovenmit in her mouth. She slips the mit over her hand and shoves a rack of meat into the oven. I wait for her to say something like maybe I should stay in a hotel instead of their guest bedroom. “Hana can be your replacement at the track. That way she can make friends and won’t have to stay in the house all day.”
Dad considers this a moment. “Can you lift fifty pounds?”
I shrug. “Probably not.”
He laughs. “Shit, Jason’s scrawny arms couldn’t either. You want the job? You could use a little sun.”
And a distraction. The motocross track is so so so terribly boring. But since it looks like I’ll be here all summer, I’d be stupid to say no. If anything, this can take my mind off my mother and give me some money to put gas in my truck so I can attempt to find something to do in this tiny town.
“Yeah,” I say, shoving my chopped potato pile toward Molly. “Totally.”
“Great!” Dad tries to steal another raw potato cube and Molly slaps his hand away from the pile. “You can start tomorrow. I’ll wake you up at five.”
“You’re totally shitting me!” Felicia’s squeal pierces through the air so loudly, I might have heard it even without a phone.
“Not shitting.” I arrange my clothes in the dresser drawers of the unused furniture in what is now my room. They smell like freshly cut wood inside. “I start work tomorrow.”
“Do you know how many insanely hot guys ride motocross?” she asks, but I can barely understand her through all the rabid foam filling up her mouth as she talks about delicious man candy.
“My dad still rides motocross. Are you calling him hot?”
She groans. “Haven’t you ever watched ESPN? Ugh, I would kill to be you right now.”
“Would you kill to wake up at five in the morning? Because that’s when I have to be at the track tomorrow.”
She sighs, all dreamy-like. “You’re going to be swimming in sexiness this summer and here I am stuck working at the Pizza Palace with greasy stoners who won’t stop hitting on me. So not fair.”
Yeah, I think. You’re stuck at home with your nice parents who are in love and still married, living in your happy house with no worries, stuck working a job you chose because you had a crush on those stoners a month ago. Totally not fair.
“Sorry,” I say aloud. “I’ll send you pictures.”
Chapter 3
Molly wakes me up at ten minutes after five in the morning and makes it seem like she did me a favor by letting me sleep in. I’m eager to get out of the house today, even if it is before the sun comes out, so I’m able to curb my usual morning bitchiness just for her.
I throw on the shabbiest outfit in my drawer – paint splattered cut off jean shorts and a Blood Donor T-shirt that’s three sizes too big that I usually use as a sleep shirt. I’m not stupid. I’ve been to the track before, and it’s basically a desert that smells like exhaust fumes in the hot Texas sun. My few good outfits would be ruined with sweaty armpit stains by the end of the day. Crappy clothes it is.
Molly hands me a basket of warm breakfast burritos wrapped in aluminum foil. There’s enough to feed a small army in here.
“Who are all of these for?”
“Your father eats three, Marty eats three, and I made two more for you,” she says, handing me the basket. She fills a large thermos with coffee and puts it in my other hand.
The burritos are the fattest I’ve ever seen. Though they smell delicious, I certainly don’t need two. For a woman who cooks just for men, I guess Molly doesn’t realize what a girl my age actually eats.
“Now that you’re working for Jim, you can take his breakfast to the track and I’ll get to go back to bed.” She squeezes my shoulders and smiles so big I can see her crooked front teeth. She tells me to have a great first day of work and promises to bring lunch to us at noon. Hopefully I survive until then.
The track isn’t far from our backyard but trudging through the thick grass carrying an armful of warm food on an already warm morning is not glamorous. I hate the way the morning dew sticks to my legs and face.
The best part of the walk is going over a white bridge that crosses the large ditch separating our yard from the track. It’s about twenty feet long and has handrails on either side. The water in the ditch is probably deep enough to fish in, if I knew anything about fishing, which I don’t.
Marty waves to me from his bulldozer and I wave back, surprised he hasn’t aged a bit since I last saw him. Marty has been working at the track with my dad since before I was born. Every time I see him he looks exactly the same. Maybe when people reach a certain degree of old, they always look that old. His wife Dorothy is a retired nurse and also works at the track. I’m anxious to see her again.
My dad’s four-wheeler is parked by the score tower, so I go there to find him. The score tower is a two-story white building in front of the finish line of the main track. This tower is newer than the one I remember, but if it’s anything like the old tower it will be dusty, smelly, and hot. All the memories of my childhood come back to me. Mom making me play with dolls in the tower while she went to get her hair and nails done. Me digging holes in the ground by the bleachers and Dad complaining that people would trip in them.
My body longs for cushiony chairs and a cool breeze, not elbow grease and sweaty clothing. I’m seriously starting to question why I agreed to take this job last night.
I climb the stairs to the score tower and kick on the door with my foot. The stairs keep going up to the flat roof which is surrounded by handrails. It must be a new way for spectators to watch the race. I bet the view is amazing.
Dad opens the door. He wears a purple Mixon Motocross Park polo with khaki shorts and Nikes.
I laugh out loud. “I think I need to make a call to the Fashion Police. No bail until you burn that outfit.”
“Your old man is pretty classy, huh?” He takes the basket and thermos from me then spins around slowly showing off his ridiculous outfit. The front of his shirt has JIM embroidered on it and the back says STAFF in huge letters.
“Please tell me I don’t have to wear a shirt like that.” I get this horrible vision that he already has a purple polo with my name on it waiting to ruin the rest of my day.
“No, but at least my shirt isn’t covered in paint,” he says, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He puts the basket on a small dining table – already an improvement from the old tower where as a kid, I ate sitting on the floor. I sit next to Dad and look around the room. This tower has air conditioning and it doesn’t smell like sweat or rotten wood. Sweet.
The wall facing the track is the most important part of the whole building. It has a row of glass windows and a long table with microphones that helps the score-keepers and the announcer see the track. The announcer’s seat is eye level with the top of the finish line jump.
“Aren’t you gonna eat?” Dad’s words are muffled through the large bite of burrito stuffed in his mouth. He takes another
bite and the burrito is more than half gone. Beside him on the table are two crumpled up balls of aluminum foil and the third one will join its fallen comrades shortly. I’m not hungry but take a burrito anyway, figuring the longer I take to eat, the less I’ll have to work. Underestimating the power of a hearty breakfast burrito, I eat the entire thing in just a few moments. When I reach for another one, my dad’s eyes beam with pride.
“So, let’s talk money,” I say. “What do I get paid here?”
Dad chuckles. “Fifty bucks a day, one hundred on race days.”
“When are the races?”
“Sundays. You should know that. You’ve been to enough of them.”
“I was a kid. I don’t even remember those days.” I can’t finish the last bite of my burrito, despite how much I desperately want it in my belly. It is sooo good.
Dad’s face falls. His mouth moves like he’s about to say something, but then Marty comes in and my dad switches back to Bossman Jim.
Eventually, I’m put to work. Dad emphasizes that today is crunch day and all my work needs to be done by five this evening when the campers start to arrive. Tomorrow is a series race and it’s more important than other races, he says. So important, in fact, that riders show up a day early to camp out to be first in line to practice the next morning. A whole area of the grass parking lot is wired with electricity for motor homes.
My first task is to make two hundred copies of the sign-in sheet and six-freaking-hundred copies of a waiver that each racer must sign. I pace the room for thirty minutes waiting for all of the papers to print.
Next on the list: assemble five boxes of plastic dirt bikes, sparkly poles and marble bases into trophies. They come with golden engraved plates with the track’s name on it. It isn’t exceptionally hard, but it isn’t very easy either. Dad comes in to check on me about a thousand times, and each time he tells me this crazy new bit of information: race day is tomorrow. Thanks, because I totally didn’t know that already.
As promised, Molly arrives at noon with another foil-wrapped set of meals for the staff. After we eat, Molly takes me on a ride in her pink golf cart and gives me a tour of the track. There are a lot of things about racing and owning a track that I don’t know, despite spending my childhood here.
Things like how the tall podium at the finish line is where the main flagger stands. All five colored flags mean something different, and the checkered winning flag is the only one I know. The white flag means there is one lap left in the race, and the green flag means the race had just started and is good to go. Yellow and black are the bad flags: yellow means the rider has to slow down because there is a fallen rider up ahead.
There are also flaggers stationed throughout the track who wave a yellow flag anytime someone crashes. Molly says, entirely too casually, that black means get off the track immediately. I can’t think of why they would ever need to use a black flag.
I notice something about Molly as she shows me around the track. It’s the same with my dad too; they both have a glow in their eyes when they talk about motocross, like it’s the single source of all their happiness. Motocross is in their blood. That means there’s a small amount of it in my blood too, and although I’m hot and bored and covered in sweat, I hope I find it.
I’m on my fourth Gatorade and I haven’t had to pee all day. The big thermometer on the outside of the tower reads just over a hundred degrees. Sweat rolls down my forehead and I swipe it away with my hand. The sweat is clear, but, I know that’s where all the Gatorade went. Gross.
I’m hanging a string of triangle banners along the driveway when a truck and a motorhome drive in through the main entrance. Molly goes up to the first truck and hands over her clipboard so they can sign the waiver. She directs them to the left of the parking area where the electrical hook-ups are. Dad had said the gates opened at five, but there’s no way it’s already that late. I still have yards of banners to hang, so it absolutely cannot be five o’clock already. I dig my phone out of my back pocket, wipe away the sweat on its screen and check the time.
Five fifteen. Dad will kill me. I rush to hang the next string of banners, holding it up to the wooden fence with my knee and pressing hard on the staple gun with both of my hands. It slips out of my grasp and slams me in the knee. I think I curse, but I’m in so much pain I can’t hear myself think or scream.
“Slow down, slow down.” Dad relieves me of the staple gun and continues where I left off. “See if Molly needs help with early registration and then you can quit for the day.”
“Thanks Dad,” I say, running to Molly before he can change his mind. Taking money and making people sign a clipboard has to be easier than continuing to fight with that staple gun.
Molly is still smiling when I get to her. Her face hasn’t changed from that brilliant smile in the four days I’ve been in Mixon. Maybe it’s some kind of new plastic surgery? I don’t know, but as weird as it is to see someone perpetually happy, it beats having Mom’s drunken, makeup stained face any day.
By now, the track entrance is lined with trucks and motorhomes, all of them with dirt bikes in the back. The next truck drives forward and Molly hands the clipboard to the driver. It’s a man, his wife and their three sons. He signs all of their names, hands Molly fifty dollars and drives away. Seems simple enough, if you know how to count by tens, a skill which I am lucky enough to have.
“Do you want some help?” I offer. I don’t mind if she wants me to stay, but I need a shower so bad I can almost feel the hot water splashing down my back. Or maybe that’s just the sweat. Ugh.
“No, but you could stay a bit and meet some of our friends. My best friend Maggie is two cars down. We both married motocross men! Can you believe how lucky we are?” She gushes like a teenager and hands the clipboard to the next person in line. They sign it, pay and drive off. The next truck is Maggie, who was almost as happy to meet me as Molly is on a daily basis. Her husband Joe is cute for an older guy. He asks how someone as pretty as me could have come from someone like my dad. I turn a deep shade of red.
A brand new – as in no official Texas license plates yet – Dodge Ram with an RV hooked on it is next in line. It’s black, shiny and about five feet taller than me. Loud rap music blasts from the speakers, the bass sound system shaking so much I can feel it in my feet. Molly waves him through without making him pay or sign.
“Why doesn’t he have to pay?” I ask.
“He’ll pay. He can park first because there’s no way I’d be able to reach into that truck of his.” She rolls her eyes, frowning that sort of frown that looks like a smile.
We sign in a few more trucks and she introduces me to everyone. Most of them already know who I am before she announces me as Jim’s daughter. I’m not sure if it’s flattering or weird or just plain mean to be told how much I look like forty-year-old man.
The sun starts to creep down the horizon, but it’s still as hot as ever. I am soaking in sweat and wisps of my hair stick to my neck despite my ragged ponytail. My muscles have had all they can take today. I’m about to find Dad and ask for a four-wheeler ride back home when I hear footsteps behind us.
He’s tall with shaggy blond hair and muscular arms. He’s holding a twenty-dollar bill. He’s muscular. And he’s holding a twenty-wait, I already said that. My heart speeds up. My eyes go wide and then I try to stop them by squinting, which probably makes me look like I have a nervous twitch.
I manage to step back and choke on my spit in the one millisecond it takes him to look at me from head to toe and then speak to my step-mom. He says something, but I have no idea what because I’m pretty sure I just died. I don’t know what to do with my hands, oh God what should I do with my hands? Shoving them in my pockets, I squint into the distance, as if there is something so amazingly important over there that it requires all of my attention.
“Trust me, I know it,” he says in a voice that was as sexy as his huge strong shoulders and charming blue eyes. Oh, wow. I’ve been watching Lifetime movies to
o much. “It’s just my dad and me today,” he says as he hands her money.
“Where’s Jackie?” Molly asks.
He takes the clipboard. “Visiting my grandparents. She may come up here tomorrow.” He signs it with his left hand. He’s a lefty just like me. Not that I’m paying attention or anything.
“Ryan, this is Hana.” Molly introduces us with a wave of her hand from him to me.
He gives me the look-over again and holds out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet Jim’s daughter.” He grins, showing teeth that are so impossibly white, they must have been bleached in some crazy cosmetic experiment. I mumble something in agreement and shake his hand, all while trying to keep my knees from buckling.
“Ryan’s one of the fastest guys around here,” Molly says.
Ryan rocks back on his heels. “The fastest, actually.”
“Oh? That’s cool…” I say, like some kind of lobotomized freak.
A drop of sweat rolls down my back. I’m standing in front of the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever met, in a pair of old shorts and a paint-stained shirt soaked in a gallon of sweat. Holy crap. I have to get out of here and save any bit of dignity I have left. Wanting to run, I excuse myself as ladylike as possible and then dash through the woods, over the bridge and into the house without looking back.
Dinner is delicious. I haven’t eaten food this good since Thanksgiving dinner with Grandma. And Grandma’s been dead longer than I care to remember. I load up my plate with Molly’s homemade macaroni and cheese, baked chicken and mashed potatoes. Working at the track all day drained all my energy. My stomach grumbles as though I can never eat enough food to satisfy it. But I’ll keep trying.
Motocross Me Page 2
