The Torrey Pines Road Race shaped up even better than Woody had expected. He and Steve had proposed to pay their own admission, which would not have allowed them to mix with the cars and their drivers in the pits where the cars were serviced and given emergency repairs. But on the Wednesday before the event, there was an unexpected development.
Woody was busy installing a new set of points on a V-8 on one side of the garage when he heard the deep throbbing note of a car pulling into the garage. It was not an engine he had heard before, and he looked up quickly from his work. There was the Black Tiger and Randy stepping out of the seat without going through the formality of opening the door.
Woody dropped his work on the V-8 and went right over.
"Hello," said Randy genuinely pleased to see him. "Busy?"
"Just putting some new points on that job," said Woody.
"I didn't realize you were a mechanic," said Randy. "Been working at it long?"
"I've worked with Worm nearly two years. But I studied automotive engineering for three years at night school."
"Hmmm," said Randy. "Say, is Worm around? I've got a problem for him."
Worm had by now come out of his office, where he was totaling up the day's business with a stub of a pencil in a notebook whose pages were gray with greasy thumb marks. It was an invariable practice of his.
"What's the trouble?" he asked.
"Got a job for you," said Randy. "I didn't want to bring it anywhere else because I think you're the only mechanic in this area who can tackle it. I've tried a couple of other places, but the Tiger is so new I'm not quite satisfied that they can do the work. It takes the kind of special training that you have."
"I'll do what I can," said Worm. "What's the problem?"
"Basically it's a matter of tuning," said Randy. "She's not tuned right. We've been working on her all week, and she's sluggish at around fifty-eight hundred rpm. That's just where I need to get real power. What do you think?"
"I can do it," said Worm for false modesty was not one of his vices. "But it'll take all day. I'll have tae shut doon on all me other work tomorrow if the job's tae be done right."
"You couldn't work on it tonight, could you?" asked Randy. "I'd like to get her tuned really fine and then try her out sometime tomorrow to make sure everything's super. The race is the day after."
"Aye," said Worm. "We can work taenight for old time's sake. I'll close the shop tomorrow, anyway. Woody, can ye stay and help a bit, laddie?"
Woody said he could with such enthusiasm that Randy smiled. They closed the garage doors after driving the Black Tiger into the building, and in the overhead electric light the car gleamed sleek, powerful, exciting, and yet oddly menacing. The thought occurred to Woody that here was a car it would take a real driver to master. It seemed to have almost the spirit of a pedigreed stallion. With the right, sure touch at the controls, it would perform obediently. But any unsureness, any hesitation, and the car would master the driver.
Randy lifted the engine cowling in the back, and they set to work. Woody could follow most of what the two were doing easily enough. They checked the distributor, coil, points, spark-plug gaps, and timing. All were in tiptop shape. Tappets, tiny as toys, were checked also and proved to be correctly adjusted.
Then Worm did something that Woody had never seen before. He went to his own tool kit, which he always kept locked, and brought it over. He opened it up, and inside lay his tools, each contained in a velvet covering and glittering like the operating instruments of a surgeon. He took out the two top trays and laid them carefully on a cloth on the workbench. From the bottom of the toolbox he extracted a stethoscope such as doctors use for chest examinations. Woody nearly laughed. Worm with the stethoscope around his neck, dressed in his soiled coveralls, looked like a caricature of a mad doctor.
"Fire her oop," said Worm. "She's no breathing right."
Randy turned on the ignition and pressed the starter button, and the Black Tiger purred contentedly to herself.
"Rev her oop tae five thousand," said Worm. The Black Tiger snarled in anger and impatience as Randy pressed the accelerator down. Worm put the stethoscope to his ears and the listening apparatus to the carburetor intake pipe. How he could hear anything above the deep roar of the engine Woody could not understand. But Worm was listening as intently as any doctor to the chest of a tuberculous patient. He raised a long finger in the air, and Randy depressed the accelerator further. The Black Tiger's roar was now such that it seemed it must bring down the building. Worm nodded and took off the stethoscope as the roar of the engine died to a quiet purr again.
"It's as I thought," he said. "She's no breathing right around five thousand eight hundred. The air's no ramming through as it should. It's a delicate matter, and I hae me doots whether we can fix it."
"Have to change the contour of the intake and exhaust ports, huh?" asked Randy.
"Aye," said Worm. He saw the mystified look on Woody's face and explained. "It's a matter of using air pulsations tae shoot air through the intake port and suck it oot of the exhaust. I've not got the time tae explain it further. Ye'd find it in Davie if ye ever looked. But it's controlled by the size and contour o' the intake and exhaust ports. It's like using the air as a supercharger for itself."
Woody now began to understand what Worm had meant when he talked about the difference between butchery and surgery in servicing automobiles.
"I'm thinking," Worm said to Randy, "that if the intake ports were polished a bit it might do the trick."
Worm bent over to look. "Somebody installed the wrong gaskets," he said, straightening up. "Yon gaskets are too thick. A sixteenth of an inch will make a difference."
He took the intake manifold off and found two gaskets had been used on them in place of one. Then he took off the exhaust headers and found the same. When they fired up the Black Tiger once more, and Worm listened to her breathing with his stethoscope, he smiled his approval.
"She'll do all right noo," he said.
That, however, was not the end of the evening's, or rather the night's, work. Worm went over every detail of the engine, working slowly but expertly, and Woody's job was mostly to listen and supply cups of hot coffee. He had called up his mother to explain he would be home late, but it was nearly one in the morning before Worm pronounced himself satisfied.
"Ye can try her out tomorrow," Worm said to Randy, "and if there's any further trouble, bring her in and we'll tickle her again tomorrow night."
"Look," said Randy to Worm, "I don't know whether I can swing this, but I've got a vacancy on my pit crew. One of my men is sick. In any case I'd sooner you worked in the pit than he. Do you think you can do it for me—as a favor for old time's sake?"
To Woody's surprise, Worm hesitated. He himself would have jumped at the opportunity of being one of the crew of mechanics who would service the Black Tiger during the racing. But Worm seemed loath to take the job. Then Randy said something that surprised Woody.
"You've got to get over that, Worm," he said. "It was a long time ago. You've got to turn round and face it, and you might as well do it with your friends."
Worm didn't reply immediately. Woody sensed that there was a great deal of tension in the moment, and that Worm was being asked to make some critical decision in his life. Worm fished into the breast pocket of his coveralls for a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and lit it, his hands trembling slightly.
Randy was looking at him steadily—a look between sympathy and challenge.
"I made oop me mind fifteen years ago to hae nae more tae doo with it," Worm said.
"That was the wrong decision," said Randy calmly, "and you know it. The only way you can get it straightened out is to get back into the game again. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life with this thing in the background." Both seemed to have forgotten Woody's presence.
"I won't think any less of you if you refuse," Randy said slowly. "I could never think any less of you, Worm. You've done too many splendid things. But let me put it this way. If you accept, then you're an even bigger man than I thought you were."
Worm took a long drag on his cigarette and looked at Woody for the first time during the conversation. There was a softness in his eyes, and quite suddenly Woody felt a great warmth for both Worm and Randy.
"All right," said Worm still looking at Woody. "I'll do it."
Randy didn't say anything. He just grinned and gave Worm a firm little punch in the chest, and Worm looked a little foolish.
Woody, Mary Jane, Steve, and Worm went down to San Diego in the Dodge, starting early on Friday morning. In San Diego they met Randy and all had dinner together. Mary Jane said afterward that Randy was the most fascinating man she had ever met. Certainly he was an excellent talker, full of wit and optimism. Perhaps in deference to Mary Jane, he didn't limit the conversation to racing and racing cars but spoke as readily of the different countries of Europe, with an anecdote to adorn each of them, as a man would speak of his own home town.
He talked of sailing on Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, and of the mistrals, or sudden winds, coming out of the mountains, which made the sport dangerous; of the Casino at Monaco and the Tivoli gardens in Copenhagen. All in all he enchanted everybody, so that Mary Jane wanted to know all about him and both Steve and Woody made him number one on their hero list.
Woody noticed when dinner was over that Randy was a little awkward in getting out of his chair. He thought nothing of it at the time, but the detail had not escaped Mary Jane.
When they returned to their motel and Randy had left them, Mary Jane turned to Worm and asked, "Has Randy got something the matter with his legs?"
"Ye're a noticing young body," said Worm. "His legs are all right, but he's only got five toes."
"Five toes?" said Mary Jane, horrified now that she'd said anything at all.
"Aye," said Worm. "He lost his right foot about fifteen years ago. But it doesn't trouble his driving, and he walks without a limp. I've no doot it took him a lot of practice. There was some talk of barring him from racing, but he proved he's as good a driver as men wi' two feet of their own. He has a cupboard full of trophies won all over Europe. But this is the first time he's racing in America."
"You mean he's racing an unknown car on a course he's never seen before and with only one foot?" cried Woody.
"Hoot, mon," said Worm, "I mind the time he climbed the Matterhorn in the avalanche season wi' the same one foot. It comes to me that yon Randy wouldna enjoyed himself half as much if he had both his feet. He's a mon that likes a challenge.”