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The best part of the walk is going over a white bridge that crosses the large ditch separating our yard from the track. It’s about twenty feet long and has handrails on either side. The water in the ditch is probably deep enough to fish in, if I knew anything about fishing, which I don’t.
Marty waves to me from his bulldozer and I wave back, surprised he hasn’t aged a bit since I last saw him. Marty has been working at the track with my dad since before I was born. Every time I see him he looks exactly the same. Maybe when people reach a certain degree of old, they always look that old. His wife Dorothy is a retired nurse and also works at the track. I’m anxious to see her again.
My dad’s four-wheeler is parked by the score tower, so I go there to find him. The score tower is a two-story white building in front of the finish line of the main track. This tower is newer than the one I remember, but if it’s anything like the old tower it will be dusty, smelly, and hot. All the memories of my childhood come back to me. Mom making me play with dolls in the tower while she went to get her hair and nails done. Me digging holes in the ground by the bleachers and Dad complaining that people would trip in them.
My body longs for cushiony chairs and a cool breeze, not elbow grease and sweaty clothing. I’m seriously starting to question why I agreed to take this job last night.
I climb the stairs to the score tower and kick on the door with my foot. The stairs keep going up to the flat roof which is surrounded by handrails. It must be a new way for spectators to watch the race. I bet the view is amazing.
Dad opens the door. He wears a purple Mixon Motocross Park polo with khaki shorts and Nikes.
I laugh out loud. “I think I need to make a call to the Fashion Police. No bail until you burn that outfit.”
“Your old man is pretty classy, huh?” He takes the basket and thermos from me then spins around slowly showing off his ridiculous outfit. The front of his shirt has JIM embroidered on it and the back says STAFF in huge letters.
“Please tell me I don’t have to wear a shirt like that.” I get this horrible vision that he already has a purple polo with my name on it waiting to ruin the rest of my day.
“No, but at least my shirt isn’t covered in paint,” he says, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He puts the basket on a small dining table – already an improvement from the old tower where as a kid, I ate sitting on the floor. I sit next to Dad and look around the room. This tower has air conditioning and it doesn’t smell like sweat or rotten wood. Sweet.
The wall facing the track is the most important part of the whole building. It has a row of glass windows and a long table with microphones that helps the score-keepers and the announcer see the track. The announcer’s seat is eye level with the top of the finish line jump.
“Aren’t you gonna eat?” Dad’s words are muffled through the large bite of burrito stuffed in his mouth. He takes another
bite and the burrito is more than half gone. Beside him on the table are two crumpled up balls of aluminum foil and the third one will join its fallen comrades shortly. I’m not hungry but take a burrito anyway, figuring the longer I take to eat, the less I’ll have to work. Underestimating the power of a hearty breakfast burrito, I eat the entire thing in just a few moments. When I reach for another one, my dad’s eyes beam with pride.
“So, let’s talk money,” I say. “What do I get paid here?”
Dad chuckles. “Fifty bucks a day, one hundred on race days.”
“When are the races?”
“Sundays. You should know that. You’ve been to enough of them.”
“I was a kid. I don’t even remember those days.” I can’t finish the last bite of my burrito, despite how much I desperately want it in my belly. It is sooo good.
Dad’s face falls. His mouth moves like he’s about to say something, but then Marty comes in and my dad switches back to Bossman Jim.
Eventually, I’m put to work. Dad emphasizes that today is crunch day and all my work needs to be done by five this evening when the campers start to arrive. Tomorrow is a series race and it’s more important than other races, he says. So important, in fact, that riders show up a day early to camp out to be first in line to practice the next morning. A whole area of the grass parking lot is wired with electricity for motor homes.
My first task is to make two hundred copies of the sign-in sheet and six-freaking-hundred copies of a waiver that each racer must sign. I pace the room for thirty minutes waiting for all of the papers to print.
Next on the list: assemble five boxes of plastic dirt bikes, sparkly poles and marble bases into trophies. They come with golden engraved plates with the track’s name on it. It isn’t exceptionally hard, but it isn’t very easy either. Dad comes in to check on me about a thousand times, and each time he tells me this crazy new bit of information: race day is tomorrow. Thanks, because I totally didn’t know that already.
As promised, Molly arrives at noon with another foil-wrapped set of meals for the staff. After we eat, Molly takes me on a ride in her pink golf cart and gives me a tour of the track. There are a lot of things about racing and owning a track that I don’t know, despite spending my childhood here.
Things like how the tall podium at the finish line is where the main flagger stands. All five colored flags mean something different, and the checkered winning flag is the only one I know. The white flag means there is one lap left in the race, and the green flag means the race had just started and is good to go. Yellow and black are the bad flags: yellow means the rider has to slow down because there is a fallen rider up ahead.
There are also flaggers stationed throughout the track who wave a yellow flag anytime someone crashes. Molly says, entirely too casually, that black means get off the track immediately. I can’t think of why they would ever need to use a black flag.
I notice something about Molly as she shows me around the track. It’s the same with my dad too; they both have a glow in their eyes when they talk about motocross, like it’s the single source of all their happiness. Motocross is in their blood. That means there’s a small amount of it in my blood too, and although I’m hot and bored and covered in sweat, I hope I find it.
I’m on my fourth Gatorade and I haven’t had to pee all day. The big thermometer on the outside of the tower reads just over a hundred degrees. Sweat rolls down my forehead and I swipe it away with my hand. The sweat is clear, but, I know that’s where all the Gatorade went. Gross.
I’m hanging a string of triangle banners along the driveway when a truck and a motorhome drive in through the main entrance. Molly goes up to the first truck and hands over her clipboard so they can sign the waiver. She directs them to the left of the parking area where the electrical hook-ups are. Dad had said the gates opened at five, but there’s no way it’s already that late. I still have yards of banners to hang, so it absolutely cannot be five o’clock already. I dig my phone out of my back pocket, wipe away the sweat on its screen and check the time.
Five fifteen. Dad will kill me. I rush to hang the next string of banners, holding it up to the wooden fence with my knee and pressing hard on the staple gun with both of my hands. It slips out of my grasp and slams me in the knee. I think I curse, but I’m in so much pain I can’t hear myself think or scream.
“Slow down, slow down.” Dad relieves me of the staple gun and continues where I left off. “See if Molly needs help with early registration and then you can quit for the day.”
