The Track, by Kristy

[March 5, 1977 - Formula One driver Tom Pryce dies after colliding with a track marshal at the South African Grand Prix in Kyalami.]

When Jerm went to pick Teresa up on the big race night, she looked beautiful. She had agonized (with her mother) over what to wear on a date like this. She shouldn’t have bothered with the agony. A teenage girl in love who has even a teensy portion of good looks can wear anything and look radiant when she’s with that special someone. Teresa ended up wearing her best tight jeans, a nondescript t-shirt with just enough v in the neck to hint at what might be underneath it, and her beloved worn t-strap flats. Her earrings sparkled and led the eye to the sparkle in her eyes. She had curled her blonde hair, which normally took too much effort for her, and put on as much black eyeliner as she dared.

Jerm felt his insides melt into a puddle when he saw her. He tried for a casual smile and offered her his arm. They got into the car Jerm had borrowed from someone he knew at the high school. Actually, he had paid for the privilege of using it for the night, and he just hoped he wouldn’t get pulled over for anything since he was two years under the driving age. But the cops in the area generally turned a blind eye to anything except the suspicion of drunk driving or drug transportation, and Jerm intended to go exactly the speed limit the whole way.

As they drove to the track with their windows rolled all the way down, Teresa shouted over the wind, “Oh, Jerm! This is wonderful!”

She was holding her carefully curled hair in her hand to keep it from whipping around her head, but she looked truly happy. Jerm found himself smiling at her happiness for over a minute straight. Then he thought he must look like a moron and stopped smiling, but the ends of his mouth could not be turned down.

When they walked into the speedway, he noticed the heads of other boys and men turn to follow Teresa. It was something he didn’t ordinarily notice, but this was a heavenly night and he noticed everything. He tightened his arm around her shoulders and tried his best to keep that wide, silly grin down. They had concessions and bumper cars and rides for kids. He splurged on a bumper car go-round with Teresa in which they howled with laughter as they tried to run each other down. Then he splurged on hot dogs and nachos and Pepsis for both of them.

They sat down to watch the races. There was something called hot laps first, which meant the cars were not competing with each other, but they were going pretty much as fast as possible around the track without passing. The couple sitting next to Jerm and Teresa realized in short order that they were newbies, and began to offer all kinds of background information. In a different situation, Jerm might have been annoyed to have other people butting in on their date, but it was a public event, after all, and the couple next to them had been racing fans almost all their lives. They were fascinating. They talked about the ways the circuit had changed in the last few decades, what regulations the racing cars had to conform to (which were ironically less technologically advanced than your average car on the road), and, most interesting of all to Jerm, the tactics drivers used – or, in some cases, should use but weren’t using.

Then there was a drunk guy a few sections over who looked like he might pass out at any moment and fall down over the heads of the people in the rows below him. There were always drunk guys at these races, the couple next to Jerm and Teresa assured them. They rolled their eyes collectively. The two of them were drinking beers, as were a great majority of the crowd, but there was a big difference between drinking alcohol and being taken over by the “demons of the spirits,” as their neighbor put it, guffawing at his own pun. Jerm agreed. From his work as a bar back, he knew the difference very well. He had plenty of experience to tell him that guys who acted like the one over in the nearby section were not to be trusted. Chaotic events happened around these kinds of guys.

Jerm tensed.

The drunk moved down the aisle, swaying enough to make people on either side of him lean into the person next to them in the hope of avoiding contact. He was saying something very loudly, preaching the way people do when they are completely gone and wasted. It was impossible to tell what he meant to be saying. The syllables came out as gibberish. The man approached the fence around the track. The hair on Jerm’s arms and neck actually stood up and he knew this was going to end badly.

“I’ve gotta…” he said to Teresa.

He walked up a few rows to a point where he could more easily cross sections. The drunk man was hanging over the fence. Jerm wondered where track security was. This kind of thing must happen often, so why weren’t they there taking care of it? Jerm quickened his steps, apologizing to everyone along the way whose toes or knees he brushed. There was no plan in his head; he simply knew something bad was going to happen and he couldn’t sit and watch it happen.

The cars zoomed around the track. The drunk man leaned further over the fence. Jerm moved even more quickly, skipping the apologies to get closer.

A car veered off course for a second and skipped back. It skidded again. Jerm kept a corner of one eye on that car and the other on the man who was about to cause trouble. Because he was a Troublemaker with a capital T. It was what he did.

The skidding car moved sharply toward the outside of the track, just in time to avoid oncoming cars in the middle lanes. The crowd gasped. Flames shot up from the engine of the car. Its driver jumped out and ran along the outside of the track toward a place where the fence allowed for an exit. At nearly the same time, the drunk man, whom Jerm could almost touch now, jumped over the fence.

“Yippee ki yay!” he screamed.

He screamed again when his feet hit the track. Jerm hoped the impact would jerk him back into his senses and get him to follow the driver of the fiery race car. But Jerm wasn’t sure there was time for that. The man would have to get around the flaming car to follow the driver, which was probably dangerous. He would be closer to the lanes where cars still streamed past, which was definitely dangerous. Those cars were going much too fast to even think of stopping once they saw this crazy guy out on the track.

And the man was not going to be as resourceful as all that, anyway. He began to laugh shrilly. He yelled a stream of things that must have been words but were unintelligible due to the noise of the racing cars and also to the slurring that was apparently occurring in his brain as well as his tongue.

So Jerm jumped down to the track next to the front end of the car, the part that was burning. He got behind the drunken man and put his arms around the man’s back under his armpits. Jerm was slightly surprised when the man did not resist. The opposite happened; he slumped his weight back against Jerm.

Jerm yelled up at the stands, “Help me!”

He began to try to place the man’s arms near the top railing.

“Hold on!” he yelled at the man as loudly and angrily as he could. The man was not going to pay attention to anything less.

The man grasped at the railing, but his grip slipped immediately. He tried again.

“Help!” Jerm yelled at the stands again.

He pantomimed boosting the guy upward.

“Grab him!” he said when he caught the eyes of a man in the front row. The guy was burly, beared, and no nonsense. He nodded his head at Jerm.

Jerm tried to get the drunkard to place his hands back on the railing. The man grabbed, but his grip was not strong enough to give Jerm or his accomplice any help. Jerm moved to the area just under the man’s buttocks. He put his palms there and tried his best to boost the helpless moron he had decided to help.

If Jerm had been aware of anything other than the task at hand, he would have seen that he and the drunkard were on the big screen. Now everyone in the crowd could see what was at stake in front of the flaming car whose driver had sensibly escaped. Three of the Emergency Medical Technicians employed by the track were sprinting toward Jerm.

Meanwhile, Jerm’s accomplice in the stands did see that they were on the Jumbo Tron and he became quite a bit more heroic in his efforts, grabbed the drunkard’s wrists and pulling his slack arms up over the railing. Jerm was able to get the rest of his body up the fence about halfway, but the rescue probably would not have been successful if the Emergency Medical Technicians had not arrived at that moment to help propel the drunkard’s body over the fence. The drunkard got up almost immediately and waved to the crowd, swaying. He was unhurt and unfazed, with the exception of a scrape down the side of his face.

Next, the emergency personnel helped Jerm climb back up into the stands. Then the three men sprinted back the way they had come. By this time, track officials had slowed all the cars to a manageable pace in preparation for a halt. The emergency technicians made it out of the danger zone just before a part of the stock car’s engine exploded. A small piece of shrapnel flew up into the stands and hit Jerm squarely on the temple. Jerm passed out, thinking, ‘No good deed does go unpunished.’

When he woke up (he was told later that he lay unconscious in the stands for a minute and a half), Teresa was kneeling next to his head. The medical personnel arrived to help him once again shortly after he woke up. That was how he heard it all when Teresa committed the unpardonable sin.

“Jerm, say something!” she said, looking at him with eyes that were wider than he had ever seen them. “Say something, say something!”

“Hi,” Jerm managed after a few seconds of trying.

“Oh thank God,” said Teresa. “He’s talking,” she told the medical technicians. “Is that good? That’s good, isn’t it? Jerm, how many fingers am I holding up?”

“Ma’am,” said one of the technicians with extreme courtesy, “if you could move aside and let us treat him, that would be the best thing for him at this time.”

“Oh, okay,” said Teresa, moving back a foot. “Is he going to be okay? Did you see what he did? Jerm, you’re a hero! You saved that man who jumped onto the track! Are you okay? Please tell me you’re going to be fine.”

It wasn’t the sort of thing Teresa usually said. Even in his discomfort and disorientation, Jerm felt vaguely embarrassed for her.

One of the medical personnel made a movement of his head toward Teresa, and the other one moved to talk to her, at the same time forcing her back a few more feet by crowding her personal space.

“Could you tell me some information about the patient?” he asked. “What’s his name? What is your relation to him?”

“Teresa,” said Teresa more calmly. “I’m his girlfriend. Actually, we’ve been friends for a long time. I know him very well. Oh! You meant his name? His name is Jerm – Jeremiah Samuel Maxwell. He’s fifteen years old. He’s my boyfriend.”

“Do you know how to contact his parents?” the technician asked, still courteously.

“Oh, no!” said Teresa. “I mean, I do know. They’re not around. They never have been. So there’s no way to contact them.”

To Jerm it seemed as if everyone paused for a long silent moment. The color, if he had any left, drained from his face. He felt bitter cold. Later, a second later that felt like a minute to Jerm, Teresa gasped in horror.

“I don’t mean that!” she yelled, too late. Much too late. “It was a joke!”