Second Best

Ray Dalton had finished second eleven times that season, and the whole county knew it.

They knew it at the gas station, where the kid behind the counter called him "Silver" and thought he was being clever. They knew it at the diner, where the waitress set his coffee down and said, "Maybe this week, hon," the same way she said it every Friday. They knew it at Mass on Sunday, where Father Mike shook his hand after the final hymn and told him second place was still a gift, and Ray smiled and said thank you and did not believe a word of it.

Second place at the Clay County Speedway paid four hundred dollars. First place paid twelve hundred and a trophy shaped like a checkered flag that nobody would ever dust. Ray did not care about the trophy. He cared about the four hundred dollars, because it almost covered tires, and he cared about the eight hundred he kept not getting, because that was the difference between racing next year and selling the car.

The car was a 1979 Monte Carlo with a 350 under the hood. Ray had built every inch of it in his own garage, at night, after ten-hour days fixing other people's trucks. It was black with a white number 7 on the doors. His daughter Jenna had painted the number when she was fourteen. She was twenty-two now and lived three states away, and she still called every Saturday night after the feature to ask how he did.

Eleven times he had told her, "Second."

Eleven times she had said, "Dad, that's still really good."

The man in first place, every single one of those eleven times, was Cody Pruitt. Cody was twenty-six, had a sponsor from a car dealership in the city, and drove a car that somebody else built for him. Cody waved to the crowd like he was running for office. Cody had never once changed his own oil. Ray had nothing against him personally. He just wanted to beat him one time before the season ended.

There was one race left.

The night before the final, Ray could not sleep. He went out to the garage at two in the morning and sat on an overturned bucket in front of the Monte Carlo. He did not turn on the big lights, just the one bulb over the workbench. The car looked tired. So did he.

On the shelf above the bench, behind a coffee can full of bolts, was an old shoebox. He had not opened it in twenty years. He did not know why he reached for it that night. Maybe because he was looking for something, and he had run out of places to look.

Inside were cassette tapes, a few photos, and a spiral notebook with the cover torn halfway off. In 1991, Ray had played guitar in a band called Rust Belt. They had played four bar shows and one high school dance before the drummer joined the Army and the whole thing fell apart. Ray had written most of the songs. They were not good songs. He knew that even then.

He flipped through the notebook under the single bulb. Bad rhymes. Worse ones. A song about a girl named Tina he could not remember at all. And then, halfway down a page, in handwriting that was neater than his handwriting had been in decades, one line was underlined twice:

I didn't fight this hard or come this far to be second best.

He read it three times.

He remembered writing it. He was nineteen, working at a lube shop for minimum wage, and his father had just told him that music was a hobby and he needed to get serious. Ray had gone home angry and written that line in about thirty seconds. It was supposed to be the chorus of a song that would make the band famous. The rest of the song never came. The line just sat there for thirty-one years, waiting.

Ray laughed out loud in the empty garage. Then he stopped laughing, because the line was not funny anymore. It was true.

He had fought hard. He had built a car with his own two hands on nights when he could barely lift them. He had raised a daughter mostly by himself after her mother left. He had come back to church after fifteen years away, when he finally figured out that being angry at God was just another way of talking to Him. He had come far.

He tore the page out of the notebook, folded it twice, and put it in his shirt pocket.

Saturday night the stands were full. It was the last feature of the season, and the points title was already locked up for Cody, so the only thing left to race for was pride and twelve hundred dollars. Ray climbed into the Monte Carlo and pulled the folded page out of his pocket. He tucked it inside his helmet, against the padding by his left ear. It was silly. He did it anyway.

The green flag dropped.

Cody jumped out to the lead like he always did. Ray tucked in behind him in second like he always did. The clay was heavy and wet on the first ten laps, and the cars were throwing mud up into the stands. Ray stayed patient. He had always been patient. That was the problem. Patient got you second.

By lap twenty, the track had dried out and the groove was moving up toward the wall. Cody kept running the bottom, because that was where his crew chief told him to run. Ray watched the cars ahead. He watched the dust. He felt the Monte Carlo through the steering wheel the way you feel a song through a guitar neck.

I didn't fight this hard.

He moved up a lane.

The car slid toward the wall, and for one second he thought he had made the biggest mistake of his life. Then the tires bit. The Monte Carlo pulled forward like something had been holding it back all season and finally let go.

Or come this far.

He pulled even with Cody down the back stretch. He could see Cody look over, surprised, the way a man looks when the old guy at the gym suddenly lifts more than he does. They went into turn three side by side. Mud hit Ray's windshield. He did not lift.

To be second best.

He came off turn four a full car length ahead.

The last three laps were the longest of his life. He did not look in the mirror. He did not breathe much. He just drove the way he had built the car: one honest piece at a time.

The checkered flag waved, and the number 7 his daughter had painted at fourteen went under it first.

Ray did not do a burnout. He did not climb up on the roof. He just coasted around the track one more time with his window net down, and the crowd stood up for him. People who had called him Silver all year were on their feet. The waitress from the diner was there, screaming like she had money on it. In victory lane, Cody walked over and shook his hand and said, "Where was that all season?" Ray told him the truth. "In a shoebox."

They handed him the trophy shaped like a checkered flag. He held it up for the photo and thought about how he would never dust it, and how he did not care.

At 10:40 that night, his phone rang. It was Jenna.

"Well?" she said.

Ray sat down on the tailgate of his truck. He pulled the folded page out of his helmet and smoothed it on his knee under the parking lot lights.

"First," he said.

She screamed so loud he had to hold the phone away from his ear.

When she calmed down, he told her about the notebook. He told her about Rust Belt and the song that never got finished and the line he wrote when he was nineteen and angry at the world. He read it to her.

She was quiet for a second. Then she said, "Dad, that's a good line. You should finish the song."

Ray looked at the page. Then at the trophy. Then at the Monte Carlo, caked in mud, still ticking as it cooled.

"I think I just did," he said.

The next morning he went to Mass. Father Mike shook his hand after the final hymn and asked how the race went. Ray told him. Father Mike grinned and said, "So second place wasn't the gift after all."

"No, Father," Ray said. "Second place was the practice."

He kept the page in his wallet after that. He still has it. The fold lines are almost worn through now, and the ink is fading, but he does not need to read it anymore.

He knows how it goes.