Blue Balls

***"Fifteen minutes to grid, Tino!" Scott shouted as he came alongside the two Eddleton wood hounds. He fished inside the passenger side window and found the cable that connected to the onboard processor right where he left it. He unraveled it from the roll cage side bars, hooked it into the laptop, and downloaded his figures. Oscar and Joney watched intently, arms over eachother's short shoulders like a couple of bar flys stumbling back to their hay stacks. They loved this part. A few short moments passed and the deep throated V8 gave a cry like a lion in heat with nothing but vaginas as far as the eye could see. The twin turbochargers spooled like a pair of dive bombers to full compression then evened out to a thin whine that promised instant death to anyone foolish enough to venture into the driver's line of sight. The entire car seemed to tremble with the will to devour everything in its path or die trying.***






Eddleton, Georgia was known for three things: mosquitoes of all shapes and sizes, humidity that could kill a man though he stands knee deep in marsh water, and racing. Oscar Florentine was an Eddleton man from the core of his bones out to his clean shaven upper lip and enormously incongruous beard that probably served double duty as the Hilton hotel of birds nests while he slept. It was a wiry affair that spoke of serious German blood, but he swore Francophonic seafarer lineage with the kind of color and saliva that only a good old Eddleton man could produce at the drop of a dead cat. Food was food in the outer parts of Eddleton. And part of what made Oscar one of the most widely respected and revered crew bosses at the Eddleton Cotton Rat Free was his hard scrabble, waste not - want not, style of doing everything. He pursued everything with a certain "I'm going to eat and live for another day because I want it more than you can possibly comprehend the human drive to survive at all costs" mentality that had a habit of rubbing off on those around him or rubbing them off.


"You smell that? You taste that, Scott?" Oscar's hard hands came to rest on either of Scotts dainty bare shoulders and gave them a squeeze that forced a tiny quail out of Scott's mouth.
"I smell it Tino." He piped up, adjusting his goggles. His glasses broke when Oscar smacked them off his face at the Wide Open two years ago and bought him a pair of sports glasses to replace them. "Smell's like a big bag of pussy," he had to almost shout as the Blue Cup Special came to life a few yards away with a roar that could rattle the bones right out of your ears. He typed in some more figures into the simulation program he created on the motor oil stained laptop he had balancing on a blue rimmed racing tire. He licked his lips at the new figures for pit stops and theoretical top speeds. "Tastes like a big bag of pussy too," he shifted on the milk crate beneath his denim overalled rump.


"That's exactly what I was thinking," Oscar glanced over Scott's shoulder at the figures, "on both counts. Bring it over to the car. No mistakes, got it Scotty?" Oscar popped him on the back of his head, further mussing his grease stained blondish hair.


"You know it, Tino," he fixed his goggles again and hunched closer, double checking the figures. The air was indeed thick with the sweet, metallic, almost electric tang of the new brutally high octane fuels a lot of the new, well financed, teams were employing. Oscar refused to be phased. They came in to Eddleton with glittering sponsorship body work, amazing armature and suspension geometries, and enough exotic building materials to make NASA piss the bench but the Wide Open set the tone for the entire nine month season of Cup Special racing, and Oscar and his crew never failed to let the field know that the roots of Cup Special were still planted deep in the blood and mud of Eddleton Georgia, though the pay days now came from the corporate sponsorship stratosphere.


"Blue!" Oscar's voice boomed through the 12 foot by 12 foot concrete bunker that was the heart of team Two Shot's staging pit (the team was named after the only reasonable habit Oscar's father passed on to him before he died of "natural causes"). Outside the bunker Scott cringed as Oscar's voice drowned out the v8's hungry rumbling, but quickly resettled himself after tugging with frustration at his sweat soaked white tank top. "Where the hell is Blueford? Joney?" Oscar paced around the Blue Cup Special, humming purposefully at the center of the bunker. His hand fell gingerly on the swooping lines of the aluminum body work, hammered out, re-trimmed, and painted a brilliant gulf coast blue by Joney himself. "Joney!"


Joney was a small guy and an Eddleton man, like Oscar, but only half as angry and half as stout. So he was, more often than not, ready to put an airhose down a man's throat and open the tank valve, instead of decking him in the nose bleed seats outright. "Under your got damn feet Tino!" Oscar glanced down between his denim clad legs. Joney slid out from underneath the engine bay of the Blue Cup, his small plaid topped, denim bottomed, work booted frame zipping right between Oscar's legs on a small dolly. Directly into a 50 pound tool cabinet. In a flurry of rattling metal, "fuggers", and "bitchz" Joney popped to his feet and prevented the big red tool chest from capsizing into another. "The fuck do you want Tino? Can you see me busy or something?"
Oscar, used to Joney's horrible entrances and exits as an unfortunate fact of his life as a crew boss, simply crossed his arms and shook his head.


"Blueford. You seen that boy anywhere?" Joney swiped a work gloved hand through his greasy black mop of hair before answering.


"Ain't seen him Tino. But I got your got damn compressor fixt. The fugger just needed some good wrenching," he popped the mean looking silver wrench in his right hand against the palm of his left a few times for emphasis. "If you ask me, Blue could use a good wrenching too. He's got some fugging screws loose." Joney slipped the wrench into his back pocket and replaced it with a buffing cloth. He walked, in the short stepping choppy way Eddletoners tended to, to the place where Oscar rested his hand and buffed frantically for a few seconds before blowing a kiss at his reflection. "Tell me Tino, do I or do I not know my way around a drowning pool?"


"Well if you ever step in it you know what I'd do don't you?"


"Loot your house, steal your wife, and kill your dog to bait something nice!" They both chortled the beginning to an old drinking song from their boyhood days. Scott shook his head, happy to be outside the circle of local ego stroking, but it was true; Joney was one of the best in the business bar none when it came to repairing the intricate creases and swoops of the nose on a Cup Special Wide Open car.


"Fifteen minutes to grid, Tino!" Scott shouted as he came alongside the two Eddleton wood hounds. He fished inside the passenger side window and found the cable that connected to the onboard processor right where he left it. He unraveled it from the roll cage side bars, hooked it into the laptop, and downloaded his figures. Oscar and Joney watched intently, arms over eachother's short shoulders like a couple of bar flys stumbling back to their hay stacks. They loved this part. A few short moments passed and the deep throated V8 gave a cry like a lion in heat with nothing but vaginas as far as the eye could see. The twin turbochargers spooled like a pair of dive bombers to full compression then evened out to a thin whine that promised instant death to anyone foolish enough to venture into the driver's line of sight. The entire car seemed to tremble with the will to devour everything in its path or die trying.


"Fuel her Pauly!" Oscar shouted with momentary glee and Paulina, Oscar's only child and possibly the leanest, meanest, "might kill you if you cheat on me" hottest hunting knife to cut through Eddleton's back waters since Betsy Ryedel back in '68, came with the fuel tower. It connected to the left fender with a hard snap and the air immediately filled with the intoxicating, wine like, aroma of the old stuff. The gator juice. The fuel blend Eddleton was born on. It was hard to handle, difficult to make (it was derived from kerosene, but required a year of processing, often in stills and micro crackers that had to be built and monitored in one's own backyard), and nearly impossible to aquire the knack and knowledge of how to get the most out of it unless you were born into it. But if you could do it, if your family grew up on racing, if you were born and bred Eddelton Georgia, you might be able to pull it off almost as well as Oscar Florentine could.


"Cutting it close, pop?" Paulina asked curtly, brown flecked green eyes rolling with familiar exasperation. She was short like Oscar and had a little bit of his, now hidden, strong jaw line, but the rest of her was soft as the fuzz on a butterfly's back with lips that could spit Eddelton filth like it was angel shit. With a quick shrug of black leather jacket clad shoulders she popped the tower loose with a short burst of mist and let it rest on the floor. Several yards away the candy paint of the other teams cars began the slow, sporadic, procession to the grid.


"I wouldn't have to cut it close if you knew where that muck eyed, ball gurgling, wretch of a bitch skink's son was." Oscar was beginning to look really mad. His voice was beginning to take on the darker shades he acquired so early on in the back woods of Eddelton. The shot was about to hit the cat.


"Blueferd? Blueferd Red is right outside, pop. Want me to get him or something?" she offered, as she strolled out of the pit, dragging the empty fuel tower and placing a cigarette between her lips. Oscar's face twisted into a frown that would have withered anyone who hadn't grown up beneath his now blazing eyes. Joney, Oscar, and Scott stared their best daggers at her. "Okay, got damn. Keep track of your own fuggin driver next time," she smiled. "Hey cock face," she shouted to someone who must have been sitting outside the pit bay against the thick cinder block walls on the sunny side of the bunker. With a smoothness and sureness that made the boys smirk she pitched her glimmering aluminum lighter at the unseen target hard enough to sound off a sharp ping as it struck home. "Time to race kiddo!"


Blueford Red was just a kid by Oscar's standards. In Cup Special cars 16 was young and 20 was manhood, but Blueford came up on the circuits outside Eddelton and Oscar didn't get a chance to see him race up close and in person until the tender age of 21. Paulina was 22, but to Oscar they both might as well have been clueless as a sailor on his first shore leave without a condom. Blueford Red had it all though, as far as Oscar could see, but missed the big name teams radar for the simple fact that they considered him too old to unlearn all the midget and late model dirt track racing he grew up on and too old to learn the intricacies of the Cup Special circuit. Oscar politely disagreed with logic and signed him on in the off season. His tightly curled copper hair and carribean islander nose teamed up with his drowsy brown eyes and equally brown skin to give him a look so exotic in Eddelton as to put people off outright, but Oscar was never easily put off. The kid had "it". He just had yet to show "it," let alone get into the car for the race start!


Blueford crawled around the doorway. "What the hell Pauly!" he was already suited, but his voice reeked of sleep and grogginess.


"Blue," Oscar pitched the helmet square at Blueford's face. He palmed it mid-air with an ease and instantaneous alertness that made Oscar smile despite himself as he got to his feet and dusted off the butt of his brilliantly blue racing suit, "get your tree fuggin flanks in this car yesterday!" The words hadn't fully left Oscars mouth before Blueford's tall (by Eddelton standards) broad shouldered frame was slipping feet first through the drivers side window. Scott handed him the steering wheel. It snapped into place like a dog on a dog.


"Well, I don't know what you're waiting for Oscar!" Blue shouted with equal parts "just-bustin-your-ass" and "I-woke-up-for-this?", gunning the motor twice. Oscar threw the half hearted punch a dad throws at an adopted son who somehow gets to him better than some of his kin some of the time, but missed short. Pauly and Scott were already pushing the taught, sponsor free, bright blue body of the number 2 car out into glaring, razor sharp, September afternoon sun. The sun caught the twin, nuclear flash white, shot glasses emblazoned on the hood and it almost brought a tear to Oscar Florentine's eye.


With a teeny bit of wheel spin Blueford Red hurtled away like a rocket propelled aerodynamic wet dream carved from the heart of a pure sapphire. He had just enough time, as he blasted away from the pit lane, to notch up a tire warming lap before the grid closed for the race start if he kept his speed up. The larger, better financed crews were all walking to the pit lane walls and their banks of monitoring equipment and relays. Scott plucked a simple two way from another of his mysterious jean pockets. "Blue, how's she pounding?"


"She's pissing harder than your mom after last call!" Which meant team Two Shot was poised to raise hell like hell hadn't been raised in Eddelton for too many season; that is, if the kid could keep it together and keep her under him.


"The mouth on that kid," Joney shook his head. "He's just a kid, you know." He glanced in Oscar's direction. The man was a model of calm that was almost frightening to Scott, but Pauly and Joney had been with his crew for almost a decade now and knew what he was thinking. There was one other driver who stirred Oscar up like Blue did the first time he saw him. Richard Poot Wiley. When Oscar couldn't drive the Cup Special himself, he spent two years looking for someone with promise. Richard Poot Wiley was "that guy." He came up on the Eddelton circuit and the Cup Special farm system. He was a sure thing, till he crashed and killed himself at qualifiers for the season starting Wide Open. The no limit Cup Special circuit ate him alive faster than a goat eats a tin can and set Oscar, Pauly, and Scott back by years, not to mention the engineer quitting and going unreplaced till Scott wandered in. Richard Poot Wiley was the best Oscar had seen since his own driving days and he went up in flames. But Blueford Red.


"Blue's different," Oscar began to smile has he stroked his enormous bird's nest of a beard and strolled out into the sunlight. The crew followed as he walked away from the now empty pit bunkers all the way up to the chain link fence bordering the track, all the while breathing the electric air. The stadium was like an enormous lens. 30000 fans poured every ounce of their energy into willing every car to go a little faster and a little harder and it all flew skyward and came down in torrents like the down burst in a thunderstorm, right over the starting grid. Scott turned his face sunward and slipped off his goggles, leaving a pair of pale skin rimmed blue eyes on an otherwise nearly black soot smeared face. The mottled clouds in the massive, limitless, dome of the sky looked like stadium seats for the heavenly bodies who undoubtedly would not miss a chance to see the Eddelton Cotton Rat Free. The whole place felt like it was on a pedestal higher than whatever mountain top jesus built his bachelor pad on. "Blue's got it," Oscar continued. Pauly and Joney listened intently.


"I had it for a while," he leaned a shoulder on the fence, his voice taking a wistful tone, "its the ability to be on the ball at all times. Not just on the ball, but to know where the ball is going to go, where it would like to go, where its been," he peered out at the grid intently as the blue diamond came to rest at the empty pole position. Blueford Red logged the fastest time in Eddelton Cotton Rat track history on his first qualifying run the day before, demolishing the record formerly held by Oscar himself for nearly 40 years. "The kid has got it. Blue balls with more intuition, flat out skill, and horse cock balls in his little finger than Poot had in his whole body," in a symphony thunderous enough to rupture the guts of weaker souls the grid lit up and held the power down and all at once the green flag flew and fluttered like a moth suddenly realizing it is way too close to what has turned out to be a raging bonfire. Scott, Pauly, Joney and Oscar along with 30 other pit crews rattled the chain link fence with everything they had and in that raging symphony of raw man and machine power, that typhoon of hoops and haws and "race your got damn nuts off Blue!", the bright blue Cup Special tore away like a demon with a spear of molten rock up its ass and a hymn in its heart.


"He's just a kid Oscar!" Joney shouted, smiling ear to ear.


"God damn it, Joney!" Oscar laughed, "I know!"