God comes to the Western Speedway

Anna rocked back and forth, her hands clenched white in her lap, turning her head from side to side so fast her black hair danced, just trying to take it in, feeling the evening air get cool on her skin, listening to the cars testing their motors, sharp roars and bangs.
“Can’t you tell it’s the night?” She’s grabbing me while she talks, pulling at the sleeve of my jean jacket, grabbing on with her nails. “Look at the place, will you.”
Anna is half-right. In fact you could repeat that about her randomly every five minutes or so and be accurate 95 per cent of the time.
I look at it again. “I see a pretty nice smalltown race track, big turns, some cars parked a little too close to the corner there maybe. The infield’s a mess though, all dust and oil and the cars and their crews and. . . “ She stopped me there.
“Yeah, yeah, but look at the sky. Look at the goddamn - shit, no swearing - look at the sky.”
The sun was going down behind turn two, sliding into the ocean we couldn’t see and sending its last rays up instead of down on us, lighting up the bottoms of the clouds all red and pink and the sky around that last shining blue. “It’s a Jesus sky,” said Anna. “It’s a perfect Jesus sky.”
“Could you be just a bit quieter.” I wasn’t worried about her swearing - the people around us had no problem with that, even the 12-year-old ploughing through the French Fries and Rothmans in front of us. But I knew where this was going, and I’d watched Anna drink a tall plastic glass of vodka and cranberry juice while we watched TV in the trailer, waiting for it to be time for the races, and that meant it would be going there too loud, especially because we had also smoked up a little.
“And now we’re here, and God’s going to speak to us, and we’ll know how to make him happy, which one is his true faith.”
The lady one row down, sitting on a sofa cushion on the cracking wood benches, holding a thermos of what is probably rye and coffee and an attitude that is probably bad, looks around, at Anna. But she’s staring at the cars and doesn’t notice the lady - and wouldn’t care anyway, but then the PA announcer calls out in a bad radio guy voice, “Just a reminder that next Saturday afternoon, right here at Western Speedway, Happy the Clown will get his head shaved for cancer.” And I start laughing. “His real hair, or his clown hair,” Anna says, and I laugh more.
“His name is Happy,” she says, hand on my shoulder. “Happy.”
We saw the clown on the way in, a tall, skinny guy, standing against a wall and blowing balloon sculptures - he seemed to work in abstracts, though maybe not on purpose, He was so tall that his clown suit legs stopped about four inches above his big white shoes, and you could see a pair of black dress pants sticking out under the green plaid. “Good evening, how you doing,” he said to us in a deep voice, not like a clown at all. It was disappointing, I’ll admit, but right now I’m glad Anna can still laugh.
“Smell that,” I say to her, trying to keep her in the real world. “Gasoline and exhaust and rubber and cigarettes and fries and the evening breeze. We should have come here before.”
“I didn’t know you before,” she said. “We needed our fire.”
It sounded romantic, like our song, but it had been my fire, my stuff going up when the trailer heater exploded, a blue ball of flame rolling across the kitchenette and hitting some plastic curtains and me out the door running hard and then throwing myself in the mud puddle where the road through the trailer park is sunk down, rolling around in case I was on fire. That’s where Anna met me, her standing over me while I thrashed around in the mud, until I realized I probably never had been on fire and looked up to see a fat man in a red bathrobe running towards the flames with a fire extinguisher.
Anna put me up that night and I slept in a dusty sleeping bag on the small couch she had in the living room section of the fifth wheel she was renting. She didn’t say much, just asked me where I was from and how I got here. I didn’t have much to say. I didn’t think I had anything left to lose, really. But there is always something, that you feel bad when you lose it or it burns up inside a giant beer can that you call home.
But then I lay on that sofa, on a scratchy blue pillow that smelled of cigarettes and cat, and was almost asleep when Anna came out and looked toward me. I couldn’t really see her, but I could feel her, you know? And I didn’t move. And then she opened the door of the refrigerator, and I could see her in that light, see the way her neck looked when she stretched her head back. The light went out, and I closed my eyes and I felt good, you know.
And I’ve been there since. No sex, or anything. Don’t get me wrong, I’m interested in that - I’m only 38 and Anna is beautiful, even the way she dresses in jeans and big old sweaters and boots. But that’s not the deal. She does her work and I do mine, and we eat together and try to figure things out. And sometimes she makes me laugh, and when her cat, a big old guy named Crusoe, got run over by the kid down the lane, we both cried. I was the one, though, who went out that night and set fire to the crap in the back of his truck.

The announcer comes back on. “Last chance to buy 50-50 tickets. The money this week is going to Kent Williams, folks. You all know Crazy Kent, and I’m sure you all want to help him and the family out after the accident here, which I know many of you saw, though Lord it’s something we all wish. . . “ The announcer stopped. “Sorry about that folks, I got a bit involved. Don’t forget, Happy-shaving next Saturday. And now, a little different race for you. . . the Denomination Derby.” He drew the last two words out like he was announcing a Vegas prize fight or something.
Anna leaned against me, stuck her arm through mine, and just then the lights came on around the track, and the PA started playing that space age music - that theme from 2001, you know, and they drove out, eight of them, all ministers from different churches around town.
“Now we’ll know,” Anna said.
It took a long time to introduce them all, but we had most faiths covered. There was a Church of the Pentecost minister, a guy who seemed to have gotten the thing together and who raced all the time. He had on a white jumpsuit with a big glittery gold cross on the back, and his car was the white too, except it had his sponsors - Dirt Lake Groceteria, Capital Tire and Retreads and Church of the Pentecost - painted on each side, and across the hood it said “Pastor of Disaster.” For tonight, it had a big roof number, a placard that stood straight up like a rooster’s comb, and the name of the church printed above the number.
The Catholic guy, a youth minister from some church, looked like he knew his way around cars, but he and the rest of the guys were driving borrowed claimers and his was a black Firebird that sounded pretty rough. And there was an Asian guy with a big helmet - he turned out to be a Buddhist from the university, or so they said - who had on his own racesuit, so he looked like a good bet.
“The others don’t look too eager to be out there,” I said. “Looks like they shouldn’t have watched the heats.” The Anglican was a tall guy, who got out of his car slowly, cracking the window frame with his helmet and almost falling down. The United Church sent a woman, short and powerful, who bounced around on the track and shook her fist at the other drivers, pretending to be angry, I think. There was a Baptist and a guy from the synagogue, but no way was he a rabbi. And a guy with shiny hair from the Foursquare Gospel Fellowship, which made it seem like the fundamentalists were stacking the deck a bit.
Anna shushed me, concentrating on watching the drivers.
“What about all the churches that aren’t even there,” I asked. “Sikhs or Wiccans or Lutherans?”
Anna looked at me. “You think God can’t set the race up right?”
The only thing, almost, I hate is when she stares at me like that and some question hangs over my head like a huge weight balanced on some little spike, and if I say just the wrong thing “wham” and it’s down and the spike is driven through my head.
“Do you, you think God doesn’t know hot to set up a race?”
“Maybe it’s just a race, Anna.” I say her soft, because then she speaks quieter and listens more.
“It’s not just a fucking race, I told you that, you said you got it, what is the matter with you?”
She kept staring at me, then she had to look away at the track, where they were all getting in their cars, almost ready.
“You know this is God’s way of telling us what the real faith is, you know that. How else are we supposed to do it? Huh?”
Just then there was this kind of bang-whoomp, like a firecracker, a big loud one, and then a kind of low rumble and black smoke and a few flames are coming out of the United Church woman’s car and she and more smoke are coming out the window, on account of the doors are welded shut. And she was out of the race before it started. We went to a United Church when I was a kid for a while, dressed in scratchy clothes.
“Maybe you’re right,” I tell Anna.
They do one warm-up lap, the seven that are left, and head down in front of us lined up two abreast, with the Pastor of Disaster by himself at the back.
“Who do you want to win,” I ask her as they cross the line, but she just pushes me with her arm.
They were supposed to be taking it easy - that’s what the man said on the PA - but I think maybe some of them were looking at it like Anna, and the Pastor, he knew in a four-lap race he had to move quickly or he’d be boxed in all the way round. I’m still trying to figure our who I want to win - I like the idea of a Buddhist true faith - when I see his white car trying to slide under the Jewish guy and the Anglican as they enter the first turn, everybody’s tires squealing and one car letting out some ferocious bangs as it backfires when he backs off the accelerator. They might have made it, but the Catholic in front, he gets edgy and hits his brakes and then everybody’s banging and the Pastor of Disaster is over the berm on the outside of the turn and upside down on the parking lot.
That leaves six, and they all slow down like they’re waiting for something, then they figure it out and take off again, but there’s something wrong with the Anglican guy’s car and he’s going a lot slower, so it’s really only five and they’re going a lot more slowly after they saw the wreck, single file around the end of the oval and hardly speeding up down the straightaway, no squealing tires into the curve, just follow the leader.
“Oh shit, it’s the Catholics,” I say out loud, but it’s OK because everybody is cheering, though it seems a little stupid because these guys clearly aren’t interested in racing as they follow the Catholic leader around, the Jewish guy edging out a bit on the back straightaway but then dropping back into line.
But then they come past the crowd, finishing the second lap, and I think they hear us, because the gospel fellowship guy, in a car with a crappy rebel flag painted on it suddenly stomps the accelerator and the car roars, sort of hangs up then pulls out and around the two cars in front of him, banging into the front of the Buddhist guys car as he pulls back in line, and the Buddhist car - Dharma Centre it says on the sign, but it’s the Buddhist car for us in the stands - does this long skid, the back end leaning out and the rear tires smoking, bumps off the wall and keeps going down the outside and he’s beside the Foursquare Gospel entry and they’re second and third behind the priest - who already looks a little smug behind the wheel - and they just keep going into the corner, neither of them slowing and they’ve almost caught the Catholic when they both start to turn buit just keep gpoing, plowing through the dead grass and sending up clouds of dust and then banging to a stop against a big pile of dirt they had ringing the corner, the dust catching up with them and floating around the cars like mist.
They really should have stopped the race then, because the cars were piling up in bad places, but I think they figured the guys would slow down now. The Anglican guy has - his car has just stopped running, and he’s still sitting inside, afraid to get out.
But the three that are left - Catholic, Baptist and Jew - they’re slamming past us down the straightaway, one lap to go, side by side by side. I’m cheering for the Baptist now that the Buddha is out of it, not because I’m big on the faith, though they have good music, but because his car is so beat up he’s got to be working like a fool to keep it going. I’m screaming ‘go John’ - that’s his name, and what it says on top of his care, John the Baptist - and I look at Anna and it’s like she’s at church, her knees drawn up, her elbows resting on them and her fingers together like she’s praying, and she looks like Joan of Arc, except her eyes are a bit blurry. But it’s like the rapture or something.
The kid in front of us has started cheering for the Jew, surprising me because he struck me for a junior Aryan Nation type.
Then we went quiet, and you could hear just how loud those cars were, and three people with no real idea what they were doing headed together into the turn. And the Catholic - the Flying Father, the crowd had been calling him, he’d got squeezed to the outside, and he just couldn't hold it, spun the Firebird around once quickly and half-way round again, and stalled, his car facing the wrong way.
“Thank God,” Anna said, the first words I heard since the race started. She’d been to Catholic boarding school, she told me, a place where the Sisters walked through her dreams like dark avenging angels.
Back straight, one sweeping turn, and a dash to the finish line and it’s over, Baptist in a green Camaro, Jew in a grey Pontiac 6000 with rough flames down the side, the crowd screaming - expect Anna, when I look over, who is squeezing her hands together so tight her fingers are white, her eyes open wide - and the Baptist pulls up on the outside so they’re touching, banging, and then they both start spinning, no chance at the corner at all, and while we watch I see Anna looking ahead of the cars and there’s the Buddhist and the Foursquare Gospel guy, out of their stalled cars in that corner, walking back to the infield, laughing, and the Baptist bounces sideways off the track and his car catches them full on with its passenger side and you can see their heads bounce forward and then they're flying, kind of graceful really, and the Buddhist still has that big helmet on but not the Gospel guy, whose arms are out, he’s kind of twirling. I forget his name.
We left then, people quiet in the stands. But not like a church or anything. A few people were pretty shook up, a guy was crying in the little space under the stands, but more people were standing up trying to see what was going on, while people ran and the St. John Ambulance guys almost ran over a kid on their way around the track and everyone went “OHHH,” like someone had missed an easy goal in hockey.
Anna wouldn’t speak at all on the way back to her trailer, just leaned her head against the truck window. And stared up at the stars and trees. And turned on that psychic lady on the radio.
We sat on the front steps of the trailer, me with a coffee and Anna with a beer, listening to the highway noise at the bottom of the hill.
“Sorry you didn’t learn about the true religion,” I said, and I meant it.
“Shit,” she said. “I thought I might learn something, you know.” She looked up at the Christmas lights she’d strung along the faded canvas awning over the steps. “I like those lights. And I like this place. And I like you. Maybe that’s it.”
I didn’t have anything to say.
“Anyway, I know one thing for sure,” she said, leaning her back against me and pulling her sweater tight. “The truth faith sure as hell isn’t Buddhism or Foursquare Gospel Fellowship, whatever that is. When God gets you run down with a car in front of a thousand people, he’s sending a message, right?”
“I suppose I should have phoned the paper,” I said, considerably too late. “But I am on sick leave.”
Anna took my head, pulled my arm around her, and leaned her head back against the side of my head, and I thought I could feel her thinking through her skin, thinking and thinking.
“Let’s got to sleep,” she said.