The Art of Racing in the Rain

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.

9

A couple of years after we moved into the new house, something very frightening happened.

Denny got a seat for a race at Watkins Glen. It was another enduro, but it was with a well-established team, and he didn’t have to find all the sponsorship money for his seat. Earlier that spring he had gone to France for a Formula Renault testing program. It was an expensive program he couldn’t afford; he told Mike his parents paid for it as a gift, but I had my doubts. His parents lived very far away in a small town, and they had never visited in all the time I had been there. Not for the wedding, Zoë’s birth, or anything. No matter. Wherever the funding came from, Denny had attended this program, and he had kicked ass because it was in France in the spring when it rains. When he told Eve about it, he said that one of the scouts who attend these things approached him in the paddock after a session and said, “Can you drive as fast in the dry as you can in the wet?” And Denny looked him straight in the eyes and replied, simply, “Try me.”

That which you manifest is before you.

The scout offered Denny a tryout, and Denny went away for two weeks. Testing and tuning and practicing. It was a big deal. He did so well, they offered him a seat in the enduro race at Watkins Glen.

When he first left for New York, we all grinned at each other because we couldn’t wait to watch the race on Speed Channel.

“It’s so exciting.” Eve would giggle. “Daddy’s a professional race car driver!”

And Zoë, whom I love very much and would not hesitate to sacrifice my own life to protect, would cheer and hop into her little race car they kept in the living room and drive around in circles until we were all dizzy and then throw her hands into the air and proclaim, “I am the champion!”

I got so caught up in the excitement, I was doing idiotic dog things like digging up the lawn. Balling myself up and then stretching out long and thin on the floor with my legs straight and my back arched and letting them scratch my belly. And chasing things. I chased!

It was the best of times. Really.

And then it was the worst of times.

Race day came, and Eve woke up with a darkness upon her. A pain so insufferable she stood in the kitchen in the early hours, before Zoë was awake, and vomited with great intensity into the sink. She vomited as if she were turning herself inside out.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Enzo,” she said. And she rarely spoke to me candidly like that. Like how Denny talks to me, as if I’m his true friend, his soul mate. The last time she had talked to me like that was when Zoë was born.

But this time she did talk to me like I was her soul mate. She asked, “What’s wrong with me?”

She knew I couldn’t answer. Her question was totally rhetorical. That’s what I found so frustrating about it: I had an answer.

I knew what was wrong, but I had no way to tell her, so I pushed at her thigh with my muzzle. I nosed in and buried my face between her legs. And I waited there, afraid.

“I feel like someone’s crushing my skull,” she said.

I couldn’t respond. I had no words. There was nothing I could do.

“Someone’s crushing my skull,” she repeated.

And quickly she gathered some things while I watched. She shoved Zoë’s clothes in a bag and some of her own and toothbrushes. All so fast. And she roused Zoë and stuffed her little kid-feet into her little-kid sneakers and—bang—the door slammed shut and—snick, snick—the deadbolt was thrown and they were gone.

And I wasn’t gone. I was there. I was still there.

10

Ideally, a driver is a master of all that is around him, Denny says. Ideally, a driver controls the car so completely that he corrects a spin before it happens, he anticipates all possibilities. But we don’t live in an ideal world. In our world, surprises sometimes happen, mistakes happen, incidents with other drivers happen, and a driver must react.

When a driver reacts, Denny says, it’s important to remember that a car is only as good as its tires. If the tires lose traction, nothing else matters. Horsepower, torque, braking. All is moot when a skid is initiated. Until speed is scrubbed by good, old-fashioned friction and the tires regain traction, the driver is at the mercy of momentum. And momentum is a powerful force of nature.

It is important for the driver to understand this idea and override his natural inclinations. When the rear of a car “steps out,” the driver may panic and lift his foot off the accelerator. If he does, he will throw the weight of the car toward the front wheels, the rear end will snap around, and the car will spin.

A good driver will try to catch the spin by turning wheels in the direction the car is moving; he may succeed. However, at a critical point, the skid has completed its mission, which was to scrub speed from a car going too fast. Suddenly the tires find grip, and the driver has traction—unfortunately for him, with his front wheels turned sharply in the wrong direction. This induces a counterspin, as there is no balance to the car whatsoever. Thus, the spin in one direction, when overcorrected, becomes a spin in the other direction, and the secondary spin is much faster and more dangerous.

If, however, at the very first moment his tires began to break free, our driver had been experienced enough to resist his instinctive reaction to lift, he might have been able to apply his knowledge of vehicle behavior and, instead, increase the pressure on the accelerator, and at the same time ease out on the steering wheel ever so slightly. The increase in acceleration would have pushed his rear tires onto the track and settled his car. Relaxing the steering would have lessened the lateral g-forces at work. The spin would therefore have been corrected, but our driver would then have to deal with the secondary problem his correction has created: by increasing the radius of the turn, he has put himself at risk of running off the track.

Alas! Our driver is not where he had hoped to be! Yet he is still in control of his car. He is still able to act in a positive manner. He still can create an ending to his story in which he completes the race without incident. And, perhaps, if his manifesting is good, he will win.

11

When I was locked in the house suddenly and firmly, I did not panic. I did not overcorrect or freeze. I quickly and carefully took stock of the situation and understood these things: Eve was ill, and the illness was possibly affecting her judgment, and she likely would not return for me; Denny would be home on the third day, after two nights.

I am a dog, and I know how to fast. It’s a part of the genetic background for which I have such contempt. When God gave men big brains, he took away the pads on their feet and made them susceptible to salmonella. When he denied dogs the use of thumbs, he gave them the ability to survive without food for extended periods. While a thumb—one thumb!—would have been very helpful at that time, allowing me to turn a stupid doorknob and escape, the second best tool, and the one at my disposal, was my ability to go without nourishment.

For three days I took care to ration the toilet water. I wandered around the house sniffing at the crack beneath the pantry door and fantasizing about a big bowl of my kibble, scooping up the occasional errant dust-covered Cheerio Zoë had dropped in a corner somewhere. And I urinated and defecated on the mat by the back door, next to the laundry machines. I did not panic.

During the second night, approximately forty hours into my solitude, I think I began to hallucinate. Licking at the legs of Zoë’s high chair where I had discovered some remnants of yogurt spilled long ago, I inadvertently sparked my stomach’s digestive juices to life with an unpleasant groan, and I heard a sound coming from her bedroom. When I investigated, I saw something terrible and frightening. One of her stuffed animal toys was moving about on its own.

It was the zebra. The stuffed zebra that had been sent to her by her paternal grandparents, who may have been stuffed animals themselves for all that we saw them in Seattle. I never cared for that zebra, as it was something of my rival for Zoë’s affection. Frankly, I was surprised to see it in the house, since it was one of Zoë’s favorites and she carted it around at length and even slept with it, wearing little grooves in its coat just below the animal’s velveteen head. I found it hard to believe Eve hadn’t grabbed it when she threw together their bag, but I guess she was so freaked out or in such pain that she overlooked the zebra.

The now-living zebra said nothing to me at all, but when it saw me it began a dance, a twisting, jerky ballet, which culminated with the zebra repeatedly thrusting its gelded groin into the face of an innocent Barbie doll. That made me quite angry, and I growled at the molester zebra, but it simply smiled and continued its assault, this time picking on a stuffed frog, which it mounted from behind and rode bareback, its hoof in the air like a bronco rider, yelling out, “Yee-haw! Yee-haw!”

I stalked the bastard as it abused and humiliated each of Zoë’s toys with great malice. Finally, I could take no more and I moved in, teeth bared for attack, to end the brutal burlesque once and for all. But before I could get the demented zebra in my fangs, it stopped dancing and stood on its hind legs before me. Then it reached down with its forelegs and tore at the seam that ran down its belly. Its own seam! It ripped the seam open until it was able to reach in and tear out its own stuffing. It continued dismantling itself, seam by seam, handful by handful, until it expelled whatever demon’s blood had brought it to life and was nothing more than a pile of fabric and stuffing that undulated on the floor, beating like a heart ripped from a chest, slowly, slower, and then nothing.

Traumatized, I left Zoë’s room, hoping that what I had seen was in my mind, a vision driven by the lack of glucose in my blood, but knowing, somehow, that it wasn’t a vision; it was true. Something terrible had happened.

The following afternoon, Denny returned. I heard the taxi pull up, and I watched him unload his bags and walk them up to the back door. I didn’t want to seem too excited to see him, and yet at the same time I was concerned about what I had done to the doormat, so I gave a couple of small barks to alert him. Through the window, I could see the look of surprise on his face. He took out his keys and opened the door, and I tried to block him, but he came in too quickly and the mat made a squishy sound. He looked down and gingerly hopped into the room.

“What the hell? What are you doing here?”

He glanced around the kitchen. Nothing was out of place, nothing was amiss, except me.

“Eve?” he called out.

But Eve wasn’t there. I didn’t know where she was, but she wasn’t with me.

“Are they home?” he asked me.

I didn’t answer. He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Are Eve and Zoë still at your house?” he asked without saying hello. “Can I speak to Eve?”

After a moment, he said, “Enzo is here.”

He said, “I’m trying to wrap my head around it myself. You left him here?”

He said, “This is insane. How could you not remember that your dog is in the house?”

He said, “He’s been here the whole time?”

He said very angrily, “Shit!”

And then he hung up the phone and shouted in frustration, a big long shout that was very loud. He looked at me after that and said, “I am so pissed off.”

He walked through the house quickly. I didn’t follow him; I waited by the back door. A minute later he returned.

“This is the only place you used?” he asked, pointing at the mat. “Good boy, Enzo. Good work.”

He got a garbage bag out of the pantry and scooped the sopping mat into it, tied it closed, and put it on the back porch. He mopped up the area near the door.

“You must be starving.”

He filled my water bowl and gave me some kibble, which I ate too quickly and didn’t enjoy, but at least it filled the empty space in my stomach. In silence, fuming, he watched me eat. And very soon, Eve and Zoë arrived on the back porch.

Denny threw open the door.

“Unbelievable,” he said bitterly. “You are unbelievable.”

“I was sick,” Eve said, stepping into the house with Zoë hiding behind her. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“He could have died.”

“He didn’t die.”

“He could have died,” Denny said. “I’ve never heard of anything so stupid. Careless. Totally unaware.”

“I was sick!” Eve snapped at him. “I wasn’t thinking!”

“You don’t think, people die. Dogs die.”

“I can’t do this anymore,” she cried, standing there shaking like a thin tree on a windy day. Zoë scurried around her and disappeared into the house. “You always go away, and I have to take care of Zoë and Enzo all by myself, and I can’t do it! It’s too much! I can barely take care of myself!”

“You should have called Mike or taken him to a kennel or something! Don’t try to kill him.”

“I didn’t try to kill him,” she whispered.

I heard weeping and looked over. Zoë stood in the door to the hallway, crying. Eve pushed past Denny and went to Zoë, kneeling before her.

“Oh, baby, we’re sorry we’re fighting. We’ll stop. Please don’t cry.”

“My animals,” Zoë whimpered.

“What happened to your animals?”

Eve led Zoë by the hand down the hall. Denny followed them. I stayed where I was. I wasn’t going near that room where the dancing sex-freak zebra had been. I didn’t want to see it.

Suddenly, I heard thundering footsteps. I cowered by the back door as Denny hurtled through the kitchen toward me. He was puffed up and angry and his eyes locked on me and his jaw clenched tight.

“You stupid dog,” he growled, and he grabbed the back of my neck, taking a huge fistful of my fur and jerking. I went limp, afraid. He’d never treated me like this before. He dragged me through the kitchen and down the hall, into Zoë’s room where she sat, stunned, on the floor in the middle of a huge mess. Her dolls, her animals, all torn to shreds, eviscerated, a complete disaster. Total carnage. I could only assume that the evil demon zebra had reassembled itself and destroyed the other animals after I had left. I should have eliminated the zebra when I had my chance. I should have eaten it, even if it had killed me.

Denny was so angry that his anger filled up the entire room, the entire house. Nothing was as large as Denny’s anger. He reared up and roared, and with his great hand, he struck me on the side of the head. I toppled over with a yelp, hunkering as close to the ground as possible. “Bad dog!” he bellowed and he raised his hand to hit me again.

“Denny, no!” Eve cried. She rushed to me and covered me with her own body. She protected me.