Nik Bristow

​​Helped level that peak, me and Leroy did. On the nitroglycerin crew, shooting rock for Precession Mining Company. What Gail Patena always called “mountaintop removal.” But Gail took everything personal. She was a little off balance, too. No joke, she claimed to worship the nature goddess Gaia. So whenever I felt like teasing her I called her ‘Nature Goddess Gail.’ 

 

When it came to the progress of man, Gail only ever saw the downside. What me and Leroy saw on the mountain was opportunity. Not only through our occupation, which amounted to making fireballs deep in the darkness. But also afterward, when the coal was stripped and the holler fill was spread back over, when them mountain peaks was flat and empty as supper tables. Leroy and me agreed they was the perfect places to pour smooth black asphalt. Plenty of room for two lanes running side-by-side for almost half a mile. 

 

Sure enough, some fellas with big money to invest come along and done just that. The dragstrip they built on Mt. Cosmos seemed like a dream come true. A track meant just for us. Our two-lane blacktop patch in the sky. 

 

We needed Gail up there too, of course. She was the only audience who mattered. 

 

When we’s kiddos, me and Leroy told Gail we both wanted to be circle track drivers. First time we heard “pole position” we knew that was the position for us: on top of the world, with everybody following and Gail watching. 

 

But the stars never quite aligned for either of us driving professional stock cars. Turned out, I was better at staying put, better with a wrench in my hand than a steering wheel. Leroy was the real driver. He was serious about being somebody in the racing world, too. Though he wadn’t much better around a circle track than me. Made for straight line speed, Leroy Phar was. 

 

He had this Starlight Blue 1974 Chevy Vega. By the time they started building the track on the mountain, he’d already raced and beaten most of the local competition with that car. Those were unofficial wins, though. Bridge runs. Bridges being the only straightaways out here long enough for a drag race. 

 

I helped with the car, of course. Built the motor up for him in my garage: a Big-Block hydrogen bomb of an engine. And my TIG welder fused the frame and mounts to hold it. After we tuned her up, the Vega was clocking 12-and-a-half-second passes running high-test pump gas. And still street-legal. Barely. But also a death machine, no doubt about it. 

 

When the track finally opened, Leroy was on the mountain every Friday night of the season. I’d follow him up there with Gail, who by then was Leroy’s wife, sitting across from me on the bench seat of my Dodge Polara, account of Leroy’s Vega having no passenger bucket. 

 

Gail had always been nice to look at. But on race nights she looked extra good. She may have been a hippie, but she was first and foremost a West Virginia gal, and she knew how to dress sexy. Always showed lots of skin. Got her blonde hair done up big. She’d also bring along her blue-green cooler, the round one with the white lid molded into cup holders, iced top and bottom and full of goodies, perched on the seat between us. 

 

We’d have a fine night, the three of us. Leroy’d run his Vega against all comers, defending his position as local racing’s rising star. I’d serve from the sidelines, holding steady as Leroy’s chief mechanic. And Gail? Well, Gail'd twirl around, get tipsy in the bleachers with the other girlfriends and wives with their kiddos in orbit, and not fuss too much about all the noise and pollution. She’d been around our kind since the beginning. Made of similar stuff. She liked getting drunk and riding around mountains in cars, but mostly for the views. She was into the natural world more than the world of machines. Like I said, a hippie. She even had a hippie way of understanding drag racing. Said she always felt that, in a cosmic way, the showing off by Leroy and his Vega was supposed to be for her, and that all the explosions and motion were not only a natural part of his charm, who he was, who she’d married, but natural to the laws of the Universe. 

 

Now I’m not dense. Pretty bright, actually, considering I dropped out of high school. I figured Gail suffered from a problem like my own. She was happy enough with her current life, but she also wished things could’ve turned out different. Maybe wished she hadn’t fixed herself to a redneck gearhead like Leroy, or anyway, wished she hadn’t married him so young. Or maybe she wished they could’ve found some way to make a baby, given her more purpose, something to do besides worry about the planet and watch Leroy try to be a star. 

 

After all, what was so special about Leroy? Gail asked that question on the drive home from the track one night, her eyelids droopy with bourbon. Leroy was in the Vega, out in front of us, with a new trophy wobbling on his dashboard. Gail kept saying Leroy ain’t so bright. Ain’t so hot, neither. Bunch of hot air, maybe. Big ball of gas. Then she laughed. That’s all her husband was, she said. Just gas and balls. Like every other man on the mountain. 

 

I’d learned long before, back when we’s all kiddos, that whenever Gail Patena got moody, if I flirted with her, just a little bit, gave her a wink, she’d start feeling better. Gail was the type who needed to be the center of attention. No, that don’t quite say it. She needed adoration. Daily, if she could get it. And nightly for sure.

 

One of those Friday nights, middle of the summer, me and Gail were riding up the mountain together, following behind Leroy’s Vega, back seat of my Polara loaded with tools and tires. Gail was tracking the sunset on the Kentucky side moving from the windshield, along the side windows and around back, as the road curved. She kept saying how pretty the fireball was, sliding down between the mountains. When the sun finally disappeared her mood turned south. She said when Leroy and I were setting off those charges underground, using nitro-glycereen, we made tiny, temporary suns inside the mountains. She said it wadn’t right to put stars inside mountains. It was unnatural. She said that stars stayed in the sky and mountains stayed on the ground and bad things happened when the two were mixed. I mumbled something about how strip mining was safer than deep mining but she cut me off. Said she knew it was safer for the miners—said she didn’t want nobody hurt, or out of a job, that it was nice for Leroy to bring home those Precession Mining Co. checks—but she felt sad for the mountains that lost their tops, said she felt their pain, like her own body was being scooped out, from the top of her head all the way down to her shoulders. 

 

Gail was always dramatic like that. A hippie, like I’ve mentioned. A nature lover. When she was done with her hippie rant I laughed, and asked her: Exactly how many mountains did a West Virginia Nature Goddess need to be happy? 

 

She stared through the passenger window at the darkening horizon. She said someday there wouldn't be no more mountains, because of what Precession Mining Co. was doing. She said someday, when everything inside of every mountain got blasted and dug out, the mountains would crumble to rubble and dust, and the whole countryside would be flat, and every place would look the same, and stars would be our only guides. She told me the planet was like this mountain road. Sometimes we faced the sun, our home star, and sometimes we turned our backs. Said the same thing happened with all the stars. Said she’d read in her astrology magazine even the North Star wadn’t always the North Star. She went on and on, telling me about the cycle between Polaris, in the constellation Ursa Minor, and Vega, in the constellation Lyra, how it lasted 26,000 years; and that while Vega was the North Star long ago, the planet had changed her mind, and for a while now she’d been pointing to Polaris.

 

I said 26,000 years was a pretty long lap time.

 

She said men ain’t got no appreciation for time, that mountains been around millions of years, and in the span of just a couple centuries men had figured out how to destroy them. Told me for the umpteenth time how the Earth’s real name was “Gaia.” That Gaia was a goddess. And that when men were foolish enough to challenge goddesses there were consequences. She said how would you like it if somebody blew you up? Or blew up your best parts? 

 

I said I wouldn’t mind somebody blowing me up with nitro-glyceereen, long as my best part stayed intact. Then I flashed her my most winning smile and winked. 

She laughed, and swatted me good, and said I was a rascal, like an ornery little bear cub. But then Gail done something she never done before. She moved the cooler to the floorboards, unbuckled her seat belt, and scooted over my way. 

 

If there’s one place Leroy Phar was meant to be, it was up on Mt. Cosmos, on that race track, living his dreams and trying to be a star. So when his light was snuffed out, on the last Friday night of the season, it was fitting that it happened up there.  

 

I was spyglassing Leroy’s final competitor of the evening, this Canary Yellow Mercury Comet, driven by some old boy come over the state line from Halleysburg. Gail says comets are frozen balls of dirty ice. But this Comet was hot. Had a shiny Roots blower and eight upturned exhaust headers poking through the hood vents, shooting flames like anti-aircraft guns, the open exhaust popping like quarter sticks of TNT. Fella drove a long way just to race on Mt. Cosmos. So I figured he planned to dominate heaven and earth, to steal Leroy’s star. Did a pretty good job of it, too. 

Leroy was acting like he wadn’t bothered by the boosted Comet, as it blew the doors off everything else. When it came time for the finals, he was sitting in the window of his cool blue Vega’s welded door with his back turned, waiting for me to give him my spyglass report and wish him luck on this, his last run of the night. 

 

We never talked much, him and me, except about work, or about racing. Gail said I was better at conversation than Leroy. Shined a little brighter, was how she put it. But I doubt most folks could tell a difference between us. Maybe with the lights off. 

 

I was about to have my talk with Leroy, give him my observations on the Comet, when I spotted Gail rise up from behind the concrete safety barrier. That night, like most nights, she was the prettiest thing around: her little green shorts, blue tube top, skin all browned like a nature goddess’s should be, and her hair frosted blonde-white. But looking good or not, as she made her way around the safety barrier I could tell she was spiraling for trouble—on a collision course with Leroy. 

Stumbling toward the Vega, Gail shot me a glance. I gave her my best wink back, a reference point, to get her bearings. But she ignored the wink, didn’t give me a second look, and kept hurtling right on toward impact. 

 

I was close enough. Maybe I could’ve stopped her. But that ain’t what I done. Objects were already in motion. Forces already at work. Even with the distance between us, and even in competition with a manifold of flammable vapors and the odors of sweaty mountain men, I could still smell how much bourbon Gail’d found herself in the bleachers to drink — I’m talking an unEarthly amount. Like if anybody had struck a match too close, she might’ve spontaneously combusted. 

 

The PA system buzzed to be heard, and from a speaker mounted high above the track, the announcer’s voice sputtered in and out. Over my shoulder, the Comet’s driver made his engine roar, cut with the sky-high whistle of his spooling supercharger and the gunshot-cracks of backfire from those exhaust headers. 

​

All that noise kept me from catching what Gail said over the Vega’s roof to Leroy. But I knew Leroy could hear it fine. I watched him sitting there in the window, the metal-flake blue paint of his helmet sparkling under the track lights as he shook his head, like he couldn’t believe what he was being told, like he was not Leroy Phar, local drag racing legend, but some astronaut getting last-minute commands about the space capsule’s self-destruct mechanism or the cyanide capsule.

Gail and Leroy’s duel only lasted ten-and-a-half, maybe eleven seconds. Then Gail spun off, quick as she’d come, drunkenly tumbling through space, twirling blue–green on her unsteady axis, giving every indication she might never look at Leroy Phar or his Vega again. 

 

Leroy sat in the window: half-man, half-machine—half-giant, half-dwarf—then he slipped off the window lip and into the racing seat, a lonely figure dropping into a deep, black hole—like an old-time coal miner, or a space monkey, doomed. He revved the Vega to redline and back. Then revved it again.

 

Wadn’t time to let him cool off. And no point delaying what fate and physical law had planned for us. Behind me, the Comet driver from Halleysburg revved his boosted engine, the exhaust pop-pop-popping on the overrun like a firing squad. I stood at Leroy’s window. When he didn’t acknowledge me, I shouted: “Hear that? When the blower spools? Comet might’ve cracked a header flange on his last pass.”

 

Leroy kept his eyes down the track. Didn’t nod his head or make like he’d heard me. I was about to repeat myself when he shouted: “You and Gail can fuck-off to outer space, Paul. Get the hell away from my car.” 

 

So then I knew for sure. Leroy’s wife had delivered the news—news that his best friend had wanted to spare him. That Paul Harris, that’s me, was Gail Patena’s new number-one midnight man—her new guiding light. That I’d turned his wife’s head, and there was no turning it back to the driver of the Starlight Blue Vega. 

 

I made for the bleachers to find Gail, making sure, as I walked behind the Vega, to toggle the switch I’d hidden by the tail lights. 

 

The PA speakers buzzed and blared with the announcer’s voice: “Lane One... a man who needs no introduction... Leroy Phar in the ‘74 Big Block Chevy Vega.” 

 

The crowd cheered and whistled. Leroy spun his racing slicks to get them hot and sticky. I stood behind the concrete safety barrier to watch him go. I couldn’t see Gail anywhere. Turns out, she wadn’t even watching. She was passing out in the front seat of the Polara. Too clouded over with bourbon. I was thankful for that, after what happened. 

 

When the tree lit green Leroy punched it. The Vega roared, twisted, squealed and launched, flying down that blacktop lane like never before, winging its way to a record-setting run.

 

Meanwhile, the blown Comet in Lane Two was leaned-out and backfiring, like I’d predicted, and eating Leroy’s dust. What can I say? Paul Harris knows his internal combustion. 

 

When Leroy passed the trap, the board lit up: 11.90 seconds. 

 

Cheers rose from folks in the bleachers. But those cheers turned to cries a second-and-a-half later.

 

Because Leroy wadn’t stopping. 

 

Another whole second passed before the announcer was hollering: “Kill it, Buddy! Kill it!” But from where I was standing, it looked like Leroy never even triggered the brake lights. Doubt he even tried. Leroy knew you can’t stop a runaway like that, even if the brakes do work. 

 

What rubble was left from all that rock we shot, working for Precession Mining Co., got left in this great big pile, north end of the ridge. Race track owners used it for a sort of last-chance-safety-stop, a berm at the edge of the world. 

 

The Vega’s front end was already lifting when Leroy hit that pile, fast as a fighter jet on take-off. The crowd gasped and screamed when they saw, in the lights at the edge of the strip almost a half mile away, sparkling blue paint flashing into the night sky, a shooting star in reverse, rising instead of falling, the sound of the Vega’s redline roar like a nuclear rocket launch.  

 

But it wadn’t no shooting star. Wadn’t no jet. Certainly wadn’t no Polaris nuclear missile. It was a twinkling, Starlight Blue Chevy Vega with Leroy Phar at the wheel, ramping off those rocks and rising into the night sky, mocking gravity, with nothing but twenty-five hundred feet of clear mountain air between him and the bottom of the holler. And so down he came — down, down, down, like a falling eagle — shredded steel and high octane remains flaming along a half-mile of Stranger Creek.

 

Ain’t done much harm to the creek. Still sulfuric from the mine tailings. But Leroy’s death disoriented the whole community, left everybody sick. A fallen star. Victim of a tragic accident. 

​

But it wadn’t no accident. Gail and me both knew the truth, in our separate ways. Betrayed by his childhood sweetheart and replaced by yours truly, his best friend in the Universe, Leroy Phar had nothing left to live for, and so he’d made a suicide run. Gail was sure of that. She was real twisted up for a while, too, her mind spinning and spinning. 

 

But me? Well, I was never more clear-eyed about things. 

 

See, Leroy Phar turned Gail Patena’s head when she was a fourteen-year-old girl, and him and me was even younger. We had this car we put together, a Ford Galaxie 500, that we sometimes drove down back roads, neither of us old enough for a license. One night, Leroy’s out driving that one-eyed jalopy by himself when none other than Gail Patena flags him down, standing in the road with his dust rising around her in his one headlight. The way Leroy told it, Gail climbed in, said ‘Leroy Phar, I wish somebody would take me far away,’ and even though he only drove her across the state line and back, that was that. She hadn’t had eyes for nobody else since. Nobody except me, that is.

 

Least I don’t think so. 

 

You understand, now, how I couldn’t never tell Gail the truth about Leroy. How I’d rigged that hidden switch, kept the throttle plate stuck wide open, turned Leroy’s Vega into a shooting star, and made a wish. 

 

Nope, not even after me and Gail got married. Not for a thousand years. Thirteen thousand. A million. Maybe longer. You can’t never trust a woman like Gail not to change her mind again.