Mr. Leo Peeper's Denver 500, Patrick Sean Lee [best young adult book series .TXT] 📗

chassis, while everyone else must have scoured the pages of Car and Driver to come up with the jet-like fuselages their dads had put together for them.
On the side of the crate, either Jimmy or Mickey—I suspected Mickey, because it was spelled correctly—had painted the name “Rocket Flyer” in black letters, and like the first launches down at Cape Canaveral, the Flyer was unfortunately doomed to die.
The sponsor of the race, Peepers’ Hardware Store, located over on the eastside where tons of those rich families lived, had erected a grandstand and stuck up a banner on the temporary fence strung out along the street. Mr. Leo Peepers was a well-known personality in the city. Having made some kind of fortune selling rakes and shovels and lawnmowers, he must have tired of that small accomplishment because he’d talked his way into the TV business. This guy named Dick Clark was having a phenomenal success with his program out of Philadelphia called American Bandstand, and ever the one to seize on an opportunity when it presented itself, Mr. Peepers started up his own version of the program on a local TV station soon after American Bandstand hit. The Denver Bandstand became the ugly little sister of her counterpart back east, but for a couple of laughable years it captured the eyes and ears and not-so-good dancing abilities of many local teens. After each song ended on his program, the dark-haired, black-suited, balding man with horn-rimmed glasses never failed to grab his mike, dance into the crowd of nervous-looking kids on the set, and say, “That was a real humdinger, wasn’t it?” No, I’d always thought after hearing him say it, it was not

a “humdinger”, real or otherwise. I think his absolute lack of coolness and that idiotic phrase were the two reasons his dream child got buried after two incredibly rotten seasons. Anyway, he still had the hardware store and tons of money, so he sponsored events like the derby to do his part to help keep us kids out of trouble—and of course to acquire more fame and fortune in the process.
Mr. Leo Peepers himself was the official who pompously raised the white flag and slung it downward to send each pair of racers off, down the long incline toward the finish line. The blazing morning sunlight hitting the back of his bald head sent showers of multicolored beams ricocheting in every direction. Were it not for the cat’s-eye sunglasses worn by almost every high-fallutin’ woman standing in the bleachers, dressed to the nineteens

, cheering on their sons and booing the rest, they each and every one would've suffered corneal damage for sure because of Mr. Peeper’s head.
Jimmy was entry number Sixteen. Four feet away sat number Seventeen; some kid in a coupe de-ville looking machine, smirking and mouthing something at my friend. Jimmy’s hand left the wheel for an instant, exposing a raised middle finger in response. Twenty or thirty outraged mothers saw it and let out a chorus of their own mild cuss words, demanding that the shithead from the westside be thrown out of the race. The kid’s father, a swarthy, arrogant looking man wearing a white suit, Panama hat, and expensive shoes, lit out of the bleachers like the shell from a Howitzer, fuming and blustering till Hell wouldn’t have it. He bounded over the fence, program waving in front of his head as if he were swatting a swarm of flies. Mr. Peepers had been entertaining the rest of the officials on the opposite side of the street when Jimmy flipped the kid off, and hadn’t seen a thing. I guess none of them had.
“Did you see what that little s.o.b. did! Did any of you see that?” the guy yelled. And so on, and so on.
When he turned around, Mr. Peepers’ beady little pupils dilated—I could see them burst forward against the coke bottle lenses of his horn rim glasses like exploding black bubbles. The kid’s father continued on, demanding something or other. Well, something. He definitely wanted Jimmy and his “blankedy-blank, whatever you call it…” to be “blankety-blankety blankety out!” And I thought my mom knew how to cuss. She would have blushed in the face of that man’s language. He must've been a drill sergeant once upon a time. That or else a Catholic.
Mr. Peepers got all flustered by the time the tirade ended, and he waltzed over to Jimmy, past the still smirking little asshole in his formula racer. He said some things to Jimmy, who shook his head yes, and no, and no intermittently during the course of it, and then Peepers turned and questioned the now angelic-faced kid next door. Whatever answers the other boy gave seemed to stymie Peepers to no end, because he threw up his hands and walked away, leaving Rocket Flyer poised and at the ready behind the wheel chocks.
I just knew our chug was going to more than do justice to its name. I just knew it. To be safe, I searched the lengthy list of patron saints in my head to say a quick prayer to, but the nearest I could come to anyone worth a damn was Saint Christopher. He’d have to work.
“Dear Saint Christopher, patron of all those…” Mr. Peepers’ flag went down. “Help him! Amen!”
I don’t think Saint Christopher appreciated the necessary brevity of my prayer, or maybe he just didn’t quite understand it.
Number Seventeen took off slowly at first. That seemed good. But then it gained speed, as though…as though that damn Saint Chris had gotten behind it and pushed it himself. He got the wrong chug! I scratched him off my list.
Rocket Flyer sat like a rock on a flat plain. My heart fell to my feet. Several seats away I saw Mickey raise his hands and cover his eyes. Finally, when number Seventeen was a dozen yards away from the finish line, one of the officials loped up to the rear of Jimmy’s chug and gave it a good push. The run went well after that for thirty feet or so, until the rear wheels began to shudder. I knew what was coming next. They folded outward like those of a newborn fawn that hasn't found his legs yet, then left the axle altogether. The back end of the chug hit the pavement and then stopped on a dime. I gawked in horror as the now-free wheels went sailing past a stricken Jimmy. The wheels crossed the finish line not very far behind the coupe de ville, then roared on down the street on their own merry journey. Everyone roared except Mickey and me, and of course, Jimmy.
Mr. Peepers took his cue and grabbed hold of the pineapple-sized microphone from the judges’ table. Parading around like a carnival barker, he announced over and over again to the delight of the crowd, “That was a real humdinger, wasn’t it?”
A few of the men in the bleachers, those who rightly suspected Jimmy’s middle finger statement might have been an answer to something said by his opponent, and not simply a Westside hoodlum’s goading, exited their seats with the intention to help him remove the chug from the racetrack. Mickey joined them, but I, being persona non grata, stayed where I was for the time being.
The removal of the downed Rocket Flyer reminded me of Grandma Cowden’s funeral procession a few years back—four men in the lead, with a hand on each corner of the casket-chug, solemnly carting it away. Mickey escorting a downcast Jimmy a couple of steps behind. Despite the fact Jimmy had constructed the thing with stolen wheels, and probably stolen everything else, I felt immense pain for him. It’s one thing to be beaten in a fair competition, and I’m not saying the race was particularly unfair, even though most of the boys had very little to do with the engineering and building of their entries. It’s something else again, though, to be utterly humiliated, and then looked down on like an abandoned dog on the streets. That’s how my best friend looked in that moment. I swallowed my pride and ran down to offer my support in that, his hour of need.
The four men laid Rocket Flyer down at the far end of the bleachers, well out of earshot of the crowd who were by that time unconcerned with the spectacle that had occurred only moments earlier. Three of the men left immediately after patting Jimmy on the back. I stood at a distance and observed the remaining adult, a kindly looking guy with graying hair, dressed impeccably in a dark suit. He lingered momentarily, as Mickey consoled Jimmy, and then approached them, placing a hand gently on Jimmy’s shoulder.
“Bad luck, young man. Bad luck. But don’t be too disheartened. Things like that happen to the best men in the world. You’ll survive. We all do. Do better next time. Try again.”
Jimmy glanced up at him with tears in his eyes, his unkempt shag of hair poking out in all directions. I thought I saw him force a tiny smile, a flicker of thanks, before dropping his head down again. That was probably the first time a grown male, someone responsible and even remotely sympathetic, had ever offered Jimmy a word of encouragement after a defeat. The man turned, walked with an unpretentious air of civility past me, and returned to the races. I cautiously joined Mickey at Jimmy’s side, half expecting to be told to shove off.
“You just get here?” Mickey asked. His tone of voice held no rancor, and that eased my mind. Jimmy sat on the rear end of the Flyer and didn’t look up.
“Nah, I saw the whole thing. I’m sorry. Don’t know if it would have made any difference had I helped you guys build the chug, though. I mean…I probably would have made it even worse. I’m sorry,” I answered.
Jimmy finally looked up, his eyes a little red and swollen. “What coulda’ been worse? That kid told me before the race that I was a fuckin’ loser, an’ my racer was uglier than me. He told me I’d get my ass kicked by him an’ his fancy racer, an’ he was right.”
“Nah, he wasn’t. You heard that guy who just left. You lost, but you’re not a loser. Next year we’ll build another one and come back. Maybe you’ll get to have a shot at him again. It’ll be different then. We’ll make it better; better than any chug in the universe. I’ll help.”
Another tear began to form in his eye, but he quickly wiped it away. He stood up and hit me on the shoulder with his fist, and the old smile grew slowly back onto his face. The time had come to shake the dust of defeat off, gather up the remains of Rocket Flyer, and head back across town to our lowly homes. Next year