Mr. Third Place

MR. THIRD PLACE

DAVID BOND

HE HAD MADE THE DECISION. He had turned in his sleep for three nights, but he made the damn decision and he was going to stick by it. Vince felt better now, pushing his bike to the long, lime starting line. Familiar motions eased the tightness, and as he cinched up his helmet, he looked down the line for Braxton and Chambers.

Chambers was already perched on his 250cc Italian scrambler. Vince smiled to see the little guy flexing the clutch, twisting the throttle, grinning, fidgeting on the seat, burning the energy that seemed to drive him until he could relax only while his machine churned through rock and sand. Maybe, Vince wondered, that’s the only way he can speed up the world to match his inner motion.

“Hey Vince,’’ yelled the busy bee, “Gonna get you by the third lap, Vince. Gonna give you a shower of sand and shale. Vince. You look kind of grubby.”

“Chambers, all you're going to see of me is tire tracks and long-settled dust.”

"Hey, Vince, don't get lost this time. I want to beat you fair and square,” Chambers added.

Vince accepted the general laughter at this weary joke. He had never missed a marker since they began competing in these Hare Scrambles; but was known for caution, and for preferring to lose time making sure of the course, rather than take a chance on going the wrong way. The tightness came back in his throat. He was tired of old jokes, and tired of finishing third on the best bike in the area. Not today, he thought. Vince doesn't lose time or get lost today. He braced himself with anger to carry out the plan.

Vince squatted beside his big single, checking chain slack, the carb adjustment, the clutch cable, the thousand things he had checked a thousand times since the warm-up. A voice broke into his preoccupation.

Braxton, five bikes down, was teasing, "Listen to all that squabble over who’s going to finish second or third. You'd think those boys would be just a little interested in beating the champ.”

Vince continued inspecting his machine. Five hundred cc’s of English racing perfection, modified to exacting desert needs. He had money to spend, and had spent it on this blue and beautiful beast. He had paid until the engine matched the output of the big twins, but he hadn't gone so far that it lost the low rpm pulling power of a single. Vince had left the suspension alone; it was conceded to be among the best. But he'd helped its handling by cutting the overall weight and by adding wide, reinforced bars. Year in. year out, he had the bike to do it, but Braxton was right.

Braxton was last year’s champion, and had won the title twice in the five years they had dominated the Arizona Hare Scrambles open class. But Chambers had won the other three titles, leaving Vince only one second and four third places at season’s end. Mr. Third Place. That was Vince. Mr. Third Place each year, and odds-on bet for third in each of the five races that made the season.

Vince was tired of it. The fun had gone out of racing since the days the three had torn up the novice class. Then he had won more than his share on his bigger, more powerful bikes. But with experience, Chambers found that on two wheels he could make the world turn as fast as the wheels in his head; Braxton developed enough skill to keep his superconfidence from turning into suicide; and Vince found himself with a pocketful of bronze third-place medals. Occasionally, Braxton slid out, passing someone in an impossible curve. Sometimes, Chambers, buzzing along in his private world of motion and streaking color, pushed too hard in a gravel wash, or broke a hot oil line. Then Vince came home with a second place trophy, but he kept them in the attic with other presents for which he had no use. And at the season’s end he finished third, maybe a closer third, but still third.

Vince looked at the eleven o'clock sun. Hot already, and it was going to get hotter. Heat shimmered from the craggy hills, the sand burning his boot soles. He was wet inside the rough clothes necessary for protection from thorny trees and cacti, still sweating from the three miles he had ridden to warm the bike. He thought of the miles he must ride in that sun. Feeling suddenly old. he looked around and noticed that most of the riders were younger, while he was 32, and a has-been who never really was.

Down the line a boy on a big tvn stared him full in the face, his eyes insolent. So you want to be the new Mr. Third Place, Vince thought. He had become the good club fighter a new contender had to beat to get a shot at the champions. Not today, sonny. Vince has a plan for today. He's going to win the race. Club fighter Vince looked down the trail to keep his mind from asking how he planned to win it.

Fach race was run on a new course laid out in secret. They were laid in a rough oval marked by small splotches of lime. They usually started on well-worn dirt trails, then got rougher through dry washes and climbs in loose-rocked foothills down to tight curves in sandy, rutted cactus country, then a straightaway past the starting point and another twenty-mile loop. A couple of checkpoints were spaced along the way. A brief stop to get a lap-indicating crayon mark on a strip of tape on your helmet was the only pause anyone took. Four hours, five laps, and someone rode in first — covered with dust, spitting mud, trying to grin through face muscles too tense to move.

For Vince it always ran the same. He always jumped into the lead. His single handled well on the trails, and he didn't worry about pacing himself. He gained on the pack in the trails; powering into curves, riding high on the ridges, using them like banks to hold acceleration. Through the loose shale and rock, Vince held it open. With his big bike busting through debris that bounced the smaller ones around, he still gained. Riding in the stretches of sand w'ashes, the power that Vince paid for. paid off. He kept it turned on, and the stroker pulled the others here too.

But in the long stretches of tight, twisting turns in unpredictable, broken country, the lighter bikes would catch him. Always Braxton and Chambers, sometimes some of the others, so that Vince had to outgun them down the straight to gain back the ground he had won earlier. He would catch them — sometimes down the straight, sometimes at the starting point, then pull away once more on the trails, But by the fifth lap. the other two had forgotten the rest of the world, twisting through the rough like jackrabbits. Then they would pass Vince, tiring from hauling his beast in such country, in the middle of the rough. Too far out to catch again, they left him only dust and a few new challengers to out-power for third place.

Over and over it had happened, until Vince was no longer considered a serious threat. Early promise forgotten, his modest success was accounted for by his machine. “Average rider, good bike,” was how they pegged him. until he believed it himself. Today will tell, he thought. Do or die. He had had enough dust.

Now', the sounds of cranking engines startled him from his thoughts. He started up. The deep, meaty thump growled among the sharp crack of the smaller singles and the controlled harmony of the twins. He wound it up, blaring a w'arning to any who might challenge on his part of the track. He meant it — he really meant it today.

He must pull them more than usual this time; be clear out of sight, and with his dust settled at a special point only five miles out.

The flag. Vince dumped his clutch, and fought to keep the back wheel behind him. He let off a second, regained control, then eased it out till he had full power without spinning. The mistake settled him; now all he had to do was ride. The action steeled him to the immediate job. He would go ahead with the plan. He didn't have to think about it now.

And he ran. He ripped and roared, skidded and slid on the dusty trails, and commanded the power of his beast as he had never done. He hauled it into the curves too fast, then turned it on, praying for the power to pull him out. He ran without thought of markers or the 99 miles yet to go. He was a crazy man, running a private race with himself, and he was out of sight of the last sane rider by the third mile.

Once, feeling the back tire break too wide, he begged the bike to do him good. "Come on, baby. Hang on this once. Only a little while like this.” And he pulled out of it, not knowing exactly why. He imagined that this must be how Braxton and Chambers rode in the rough; but they knew what they were doing, and he was just hanging on to a handful of throttle. By now he would have pulled himself riding a normal race by 30 seconds, but he knew he couldn’t keep it up.

Vince was getting away with it. Breaking off the trail and up the first climb into the foothills, he grabbed a quick back glance. No one. No one was in sight. Hell, he thought, maybe all I needed was a little confidence. But the confidence weighed heavily as he noticed how he slammed through the rock, almost forgetting to look for the lime markers. It was here he usually slowed to be sure. A missed marker meant valuable minutes bumping over needless rocks and gulleys. But today he didn't slow. Now’, riding off the slopes to valley soil slit with gullies, he was within half a mile of his jumping off spot, and far enough ahead to make it work.

The place, and a marker to the left, back into the slopes. Vince ignored it, and going straight, found a terrace where little flat stones paved the ground. Riding these for a hundred yards to lose his tracks, he suddenly turned into a small gully that ran straight down the hill. He rode in this until it intersected the wash which paralleled the hills. This wash drained the foothills; all the small gullies ran into it. It was narrow here, but Vince knew that after it left the hills it cut deep, then broadened and meandered across the valley floor. Had he stayed on the course he would have crossed the wash two miles into the rough, a mile before the first checkpoint.

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cont.

He was doing it. He hadn't known if he could. Now to ride it out. He thought of the lead he would have, suddenly appearing in the rough with four or five minutes saved, plus what he had gained earlier. They would wonder at the checkpoint. They would wonder at the start. He would have all his marks. Let them wonder. With those extra minutes he would be so far ahead that when Braxton and Chambers caught him in the last lap. he could still out-run them down the straight. He had only been Mr. Third Place by two or three minutes.

“First place!” he yelled at a passing saguaro. First place after so many years. First place, and with Braxton and Chambers forced to catch him in the standings, they would be more likely to make mistakes in later races. First place . . . not for the season, surely, but maybe he could hold on for second, then quit with some of the old glory intact. God, he thought. I hope they stay up. I want to beat them both riding. This time old Vince isn’t going to finish third.

Riding the narrow wash, he was hidden from any riders now on the slopes; but he kept his right foot back, toe over the end of the exhaust to keep down the noise. No reason to hurry here. Now he cruised in second, remembering how he got there. The day he was to pick up his bike after its pre-race tune-up, he had started into Moose Daniels’ office. He stopped when he heard Daniels talking to the association man about laying out, the course. Ice had formed in his blood when he heard them agree on Thursday morning in Area One. But the ice was in his bones when Thursday’s sun found Vince lying on a hilltop, covered with a brown poncho.

He had only wanted to learn the course, but Daniels accidentally showed him this shortcut. Riding a 90cc trail bike with a big cheater, the 250-pound Daniels had happened down this same wash. Vince saw him enter, disappear even from his view on the peak, then reappear in the rough. Daniels had rejoined the others; then talking, pointing, and shaking their heads, they had decided against using the wash. Vince figured it cut off too much mileage and rough ground.

While he had watched them throw the lime, select the checkpoints, and lay out the rest of the course, he figured his chances of using the wash. Could he get to the cutoff in time? Could he hide his tracks? Could he re-enter the course ahead of the check? Could he be seen? He had been so excited, so calculating, that he wanted to laugh now, riding along easily in the sand. But the laugh wouldn’t come. He would be glad when the race was over.

Off the slope now, he was where the wash first cut into valley soil, where rushing water found soft dirt and had embedded itself in it. The wash got deeper, the sides steep, and it snaked as if the water had turned upon itself in its power. Vince was in second, riding the sand, sometimes maneuvering to miss loose rounded rocks. He went over a little fall, and in a flatter place followed Daniels’ tracks through gravel and drifts of small stones that had not been washed. On and around a turn, Vince grabbed low gear, and braking, broadslid to a stop.

He was on the edge of a hole. Beyond the hole, a ridge of quartz crossed the wash. The water, coursing down the stream and churning here, where it could not cut the quartz so easily, had carved a basin at the ridge’s edge. In the rainy season. he thought, water must stand here four feet deep. He could ride into the hole, but then he couldn’t get up the face of the small cliff the ridge made.

He shut down and got off. It wasn’t much ... a basin four feet deep at the foot of a misplaced remnant of mountain. He would have risked a jump, had it been a fall. But for this heavy, powerful bike, it might as well have been a white block

wall as high as the steep banks of the

wash. Climbing the ridge, he saw Daniel’s trail go on down the wash. He smiled, thinking of the Moose manhandling his

toy here; easing into the hole, then hoisting the bike over the ridge, sweating and cussing, as he worked hidden from the poncho’s peering eyes at the top of the hill.

Vince sat on the ridge, dangling his

feet into the hole, patting himself for a cigarette that wasn’t there. He looked at the machine waiting in the sand. It had taken him many miles, won him a batch of bronze disks, and today treated him well when he had ridden like a champion must ride. He couldn’t expect the bike to do it all the time; much more of that and he would bust them both up.

He thought of long, easy trail rides, with a girl on the back, and of opening that machine up on the freeway. Listening, he heard all around him the busy buzzings of other machines. He imagined he heard Braxton burst through the wash down in the rough, with Chambers flying along 20 yards behind. A minute behind them, a new Mr. Third Place battled the sand. Maybe the kid with the angry eyes. Lots of luck, kid. Enjoy your new title. It’s all yours, now.

He patted himself again, again found no cigarettes, so got up. He looked once down the wash. It would have been nice. Or would it? He climbed down to the bike. Nowhere to go but back. Then cross country to the starting point. He could hear it now, “What happened, Vince?”

“I got lost.”

“You? You got lost? Come on, Vince.”

He would have some explaining to do, but what could they do but believe him. Besides, what they think is their own business now. Especially now. Old Vince does not care anymore.

He started the machine. “Well, I said I wasn’t going to finish in any third place,” he said aloud. And the laugh came this time, full and easy in his throat.

Then he rode back up the wash toward the foothills. ■