14. Kevin’s Drive

Anyone who gets to know Kevin Dell has no choice but to acknowledge his love of sports.

And of course, his knowledge of the history of sports.

For example, he could tell you that in 1983, John Elway, a senior football player at Stanford University, was the number one player taken in the NFL draft—and not only that!

Elway was the highest rated prospect in the history of the National Football League, the perfect specimen to play arguably professional sports' most difficult-to-play position.

Six-foot-three and 215 pounds.

Fast. Agile. Smart.

Right arm with bazooka power and laser accuracy and yet, when necessary, the deft touch of a pool shark threading the ball to a precise location.

Elway would go on to play quarterback for the Denver Broncos for 16 years, raising those unprecedented physical skills to an even higher level by proving to have a special brilliance for clutch performances.

Though he would finish a Hall of Fame career with two Super Bowl trophies, MVP awards and countless accolades, ask a serious sports guy like Kevin about John Elway and two simple words suffice: The Drive.

Elway’s late-game heroics are now legendary, but the 1986 AFC championship game was a masterpiece.

The Broncos were on the road, at Cleveland—The Dog Pound.

Pinned back on their own goal line as time waned and trailing by a touchdown, straight into the fangs of a frothing-at-the-mouth defense spurred on by an enraged home crowd, Elway drove the Broncos the length of the field—98 yards—to tie the game and sent it into overtime, where Denver won.

Today, that memorable march—The Drive—radiates across all sports as the prototypical clutch performance, a moment etched in time where the hero confronts the greatest of challenges and rises to the occasion.

Though he would never claim such a thing for himself, what Kevin Dell pulled off on Wednesday, the afternoon of May 11, 2005, would also qualify as, The Drive.

Kevin’s Drive.

Because after looking at his wristwatch and all the numbers and variables cycled there was only one conclusion.

The bus would deliver June to their home on the other side of town in no less than five minutes from this moment.

So.

—call June? (Her phone would be off.)

—call 911?

—call a trusted neighbor?

—call Brillo directly?

All of those options or any other option for that matter, required using a phone, waiting for someone to answer another phone, and then describing the situation SO THEN someone could get to the house before the bus carrying June did.

Numbers and variables that didn’t guarantee the proper conclusion.

No-siree-bob.

That’s when Kevin said, “Not enough time,” and raced out Luci’s door.

Saving June was up to him and the Goat parked outside.

When the Broncos marched down the field it took 15 plays and required Elway to run, fire bullet passes, loft gentle screens and improvise.

The Drive took 5:02 and finished with a touchdown.

Kevin’s Drive took about the same time and required navigating the width of Worthboro.

Westside to Eastside.

But at stake wasn’t a football game.

Or a championship.

At stake was the life of his June-bug, the leader of his pack.

***

It just so happened that as Henry popped the latch to the Dell’s modified bulkhead door, the cops were watching confusedly as Kevin galloped back across Foster Street to the innocuous black car parked on the opposite curb.

Nobody—nobody!—would have easily recognized Kevin’s long, lanky frame.

He was, after all, famously klutzy.

With fluid grace, nevertheless, the door swung and Kevin wound himself into the seat, engine spinning into action before his ass was even settled.

Like a ricochet the Goat burst off the curb and hurtled out of Foster Street, tires screeching, blue smoke billowing, first gear to redline and into second, barreling down the artery of West Main as though shot from a cannon.

The rules were race-track simple.

No stopping.

No accidents.

Maximum speed.

The back tires clapped hard over the railroad tracks as Kevin shifted to third, focused on the heavily trafficked intersection 200 hundred yards ahead.

The railroad tracks were the line of demarcation between the westside and the rest of Worthboro.

The intersection ahead was Main Street crossing Laverty Avenue, which parallels the tracks pointing north to Boston.

Main Street points east like an arrow to where the Dell’s live, but at this time of day?

Traffic. Lots of it.

Rocketing to redline in third the Goat metamorphosed; became primeval; roaring a sound somewhere between scream and rolling thunder, the engine now alive with power that once unleashed was nearly impossible to control.

Laverty had the green light.

Kevin’s side of Main separated into three lanes: left-most for Laverty northbound, center to continue straight on Main or right, curving southbound onto Laverty.

Cars occupied the left and center lanes.

Kevin needed to go left.

Slammed the brakes and the tires screamed.

Downshifted to second and hurled the Goat right, maneuvering onto Laverty southbound and—a fortuitous break in traffic—pressed the clutch pedal and spun the wheel left, whipping the Goat into a screeching, 180-degree spin; Kevin, easing the stick into first and gunning the gas while releasing the clutch so the Goat rocketed back through the intersection as the light changed, cars hitting the brakes, honking in protest at the black bullet accelerating northward.

Laverty Avenue wove a relatively straight path through residential neighborhoods.

Double yellow line and strictly no passing.

The Goat growled and gobbled distance between motorists, Kevin downshifting to hurtle around each vehicle.

Clancy Lane, aimed due east, came up quickly.

Clancy stretched parallel to Main and crossed Fulton Ave; thus, carried its share of downtown traffic.

The next chance to turn east was Bissett Road, adding an additional half mile to the journey.

But, no traffic.

Kevin shot past the turn to Clancy closing on 100 mph and still, rapidly accelerating.

A long straight-away.

No cars.

Sides of the street became a paint-brush swipe of blurred shapes and colors.

The Goat, sounding nothing like its namesake, but as one might imagine an apex predator that moved like a two-ton missile.

A thousand feet passed in five seconds and Kevin let off the gas.

Bissett Road, recently completed to serve the new, northside developments of ever-expanding Worthboro, was named after legendary baseball coach Joseph Bissett, famously known around town as Napoleon Joe.

Bissett Road was freshly paved.

Rarely traversed.

Two miles of curves that Kevin had properly investigated in the wee hours of the morning.

Made a screeching right onto Bissett and the slalom began.

The Goat wasn’t made to be graceful.

Oh no, Kevin would say.

This is not a sleek, million dollar sports car for the showroom.

Not for making people ogle or for putting on a stunt show.

This automobile was engineered for the singular purpose of getting you from point A to point B as quickly as possible (provided there’s a paved road between point A and B, of course).

Kevin enjoyed studying the layouts of famous race tracks.

Analyzing every corner, each of the four parts: brake point, turn point, apex, exit point.

Loved to explain, in detail (to the rare person who would listen), how a geometric line with a maximum arc is the fastest way through any corner.

But of course, the real world presents problems of mass and acceleration and different types of friction and most importantly, what immediately follows a particular corner.

Another corner?

A straightaway?

The basics remain the same though, while cornering, take advantage of every inch to maximize the arc.

And most important?—exit every corner accelerating as hard as possible.

Kevin leaned his head first one way then the other to see past the tree line.

Snapped off the sharper turns by downshifting and using the Goat’s ferocious acceleration to pull out of tactical slides.

Raced around sickle shaped arcs and became a surgeon, slicing across S-turns; expertly playing the Goat’s mighty engine against the chassis’ steel-bound center of gravity and tires that screamed in protest, but held every line.

***

It just so happened that as Kevin was carving apart Bissett Road and Henry was circling the first floor of the Dell’s home on Locust Street, Nan Murphy was turning the key to the old boat.

The old boat was the Impala that Nan bought brand-spankin new in 1972.

Tickled Nan’s funny bone, how her mechanic kept reminding her that she owned an antique.

After 25 years a car becomes an antique, he explained (every darn time she took it there for her six-month tune-up!).

Nan’s monstrous chevy had that beat by nine years now.

And monstrous it was, with a front seat like your living room sofa and the wheelbase of a modern, oversized SUV.

Martha Stewart could serve a dozen Thanksgiving dinners on the front hood of that car.

But nobody looked funny at little, 91-year-old Nan in her big ol’ chevy without getting an earful: “I drive just as good as I did in 1937, when my father taught me in a Lincoln Zephyr, a car a lot harder to drive than this one!”

Nan took the Impala to the First Congregational Church on Sunday.

And each day of the week after lunch, she took the boat to Mario’s to pick up a copy of the Chronicle (and usually a goodie).

And on Wednesday, that being today, Nan drove to her friend Mary Tripp’s house.

Nan and Mary have hosted the Worthboro book club since retiring together almost three decades ago.

Members came and went, but Nan and Mary kept the club running, meeting with friends and acquaintances the second Wednesday of the month, alternating between Nan’s place and Mary’s.

Today was Mary’s turn to host and Nan’s thoughts turned to Gertrude Shubarker.

Ugh.

Gerty, as everyone called her, was just a spring chicken (recently turned 70) and joined the reading group last year.

Quiet at first, with a nervous, twittery laugh.

Unfortunately, that twittery laugh was a harbinger of bad things to come.

Comfortable with the group now, Gerty often dominated the conversation, driving Nan batty the way she spewed her movie crapola.

Someone would get talking about a good part in the book and that damn twitter would erupt followed by, “Now what a good scene in a movie this would be!”

And if anyone agreed (and of course one of those new, unsuspecting ones always did!) Gerty would get blabbering about the actor who should play the character and who could be the director and blah blah blah.

Just once, Nan wanted to holler at the top of her lungs, “This is a book club, deary! Enough of the tinsel town nonsense!”

Nobody else seemed to mind quite so much and Nan held her tongue.

One of these days though, Nan was going to let Gerty Shubarker have it.

Nan came to a stop at the wide and multi-branch intersection of Second Street and Locust Street and Old County Road, as always, looking in all the directions.

Put the right blinker on and started forward, never seeing the black car hurtling straight toward her until it was too late to do anything about it.

***

The last half mile of Bissett Road before the merge onto Second Street was a long and gentle curve.

Zero camber.

Kevin stayed in fifth, engine kissing redline with a resonating roar; from a distance, the GTO a black blur on the end of an invisible string swinging through a long arc with a tree-lined background.

Bissett Road ended at Second Street, a merge just short of where the north to south route cut across Old County Road and Locust Street.

Kevin let off the gas coming out of the corner.

The Goat rumbled.

Tapped the brake and downshifted to fourth and the Goat growled.

Tapped the brake and downshifted to third and the Goat growled deeply.

Leaned into the center of the car to see ahead as far as possible.

About a hundred yards after the merge onto Second would be a hairpin turn onto Locust Street; the turn onto Locust was kiddie-corner to the start of Old County; a spread out, loosely joined intersection of roads that occurs in New England where modern is always butting up against the past.

Intent on hugging the left side of the road as much as possible, Kevin ripped past a stop sign and came barreling onto Second Street at a terrifying speed just as Nan Murphy’s Impala poked its nose past the tree line of Old County, the right blinker blinking.

Of all the crazy maneuvering The Drive required, this would be Kevin’s pinnacle moment, where all of his considerable skill and discipline was called upon.

Movements must be millimeter and millisecond precise.

Error meant unspeakable consequences.

Foot off the gas and a sharp move of the wheel put the Goat into the proper lane.

But now, the consequences of that maneuver.

Gravity and friction, always a foe, but sometimes a friend, became both.

As fast as the Goat was moving, Kevin’s mind was faster and he knew the backend would float before it physically happened;.

Slight adjustment to the wheel to take pressure off the right front tire.

Right foot taps the brake and immediately heads to the gas while the left foot presses the clutch pedal.

Minute adjustments to the steering plays the wheels against the inevitable pull of inertia and it’s a delicate balance, but the Goat is solid and sturdy in its footing and dutifully straightens its ass end without going into a more dangerous spin.

Another quick tap to the brake and a final straightening of the wheel and the two cars pass parallel, as though the entire event was choreographed.

And it was a perfect moment.

Fractionally short yes, but nevertheless, a zen kind of moment, where each driver had an opportunity to quickly glance at the other.

Kevin didn’t dare look (he knew whose car that was!). The pull of June’s impending danger was a hookset tethered to nothing less than the spin of planet Earth itself; nevertheless, somewhere, in the back of his mind the voice he called the mad tinkerer would never shut up.

Damn, but that is one big automobile.

And that color!

Oasis green.

Phew.

That’d be the color of the stuff that runs out of the kids’ noses during flu season.

But it was the 70s, so … today no car company on earth uses that color; kinda says it all.

Good engine though.

Built like a tank. For real.

No wonder a sensible ol’ gal like Nan Murphy’s still driving it.

Later, was when Kevin would worry about the aftershocks of the drive.

But that was the one moment that stood out amidst a high-speed film fused with adrenaline and bone-jarring fear.

Slipping safely past Nan Murphy’s Impala.

Hopefully, one day, he would get the chance to apologize for driving like such a maniac.

Kevin downshifted and released the clutch and hit the gas and rolled the wheel hard right, throwing the Goat into a smoking, 240-degree spin.

Straightened the tires and hammered the gas and rocketed down Locust Street.

East.

Another mile.

***

There was not even a slight tremor to Nan’s arc-worthy, oasis-green behemoth as she continued unscathed along Second Street.

The screeching, streaking blur of the other automobile was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

And well!

Nan was proud of herself, holding her composure like that.

Oh yeah, 91-years-old and you still got it girl.

And by golly, today was gonna be the day!

Had to be one of those karma things, seeing that she was just thinking about it.

Because today, for sure, Gerty Shubarker was gonna get a piece of Nan Murphy.

Gonna tell Miss I love hollywood so much Nan Murphy’s story for the day!

Because Nan, in that brief and zen-like moment, did glance over to see the crazy person driving that other automobile.

And it was Clint Eastwood!

Nan was gonna love telling Gerty Shubarker (not to mention all the other gals!) that Mr. Hollywood big-shot was right here in Worthboro today and almost ran me off the damn road!

Probably practicing for some crazy movie.

All those gosh-darn car chases they have nowadays.

But Nan had to admit that Clint looked pretty good for a man his age.

Must be all that money and California hocus pocus.

No damn excuse though, scaring her like that.

Get the chance and Nan was gonna tell mister hollywood big-shot Clint Eastwood a thing or two about proper driving etiquette.

Yes-siree-bob!

***

Brian Hennessy had been driving a school bus for 24 years and thought he’d seen it all, but there was something new that Wednesday afternoon when he came to a halt on Locust Street in front of the Dell household.

Mr. Hen, as the kids called him, flipped the switches for all the outside lights and signs that declared: THIS SCHOOL BUS HAS STOPPED!

Looked up at the oversized, rear-view mirror for smiling June Dell to get out of her seat and come trooping down the center aisle before opening the door.

Brought his gaze down from the mirror and saw, in amazement, that a black car had come out of nowhere and pulled into his lane—he just ignored all my lights!—gliding up to the front of the bus, nose to nose, just as June started down the steps.

June strode carefully off the last, extra-high step and planted both feet firmly on the ground and looked left and said, “Why is daddy’s goat in front of my school bus?”

There was a momentary rise of anger, June believing that Mom and Dad didn’t trust her and she wasn’t going to get big girl time until the sixth grade, but … no.

This was different.

Yup, even her mind-reading power said this was something way different. (Surely something weird though, seeing it was her Dad.)

The driver’s side door of the GTO popped out and June watched her father rise from the car, eyes fierce in a way she had never seen and pointed not at June or the bus, but at their house, cell phone jammed to his ear.

In the distance, June heard the wail of police sirens.

Kevin stepped around the car door and came toward the bus, still holding the phone to his head and then his eyes did go to June and he spoke in a tone that only Sara would recognize, “June, come to me now.”

Went to one knee as though to propose, held out his non-cell hand and June ran to her father.

***

Henry, sensing the commotion outside, couldn’t resist and peaked out the door-frame window, just in time to watch the young girl go to the kneeling newspaper guy; the timeless image of a child, with complete trust, running to the arms of a loving parent.

The school bus was now idling nose to nose with a plain-looking, black car.

What the hell?

And something utterly unexpected happened.

For the first time ever, Henry was unable to act.

Could not move.

Did not even blink.

Could only watch.

Somewhere, in a place deep inside, ironclad walls crumbled.

He placed a hand against the wall and leaned heavily, watching the girl and her father, wondering, now who am I?

There was the sound of approaching police sirens.

Henry watched for several more heartbeats and then gathered himself, for there was no turning off the indomitable will that had forged him.

The newspaper guy, while holding the child, stared at the house with a cellphone pressed to his ear, as though looking directly back at him.

Henry muttered, “Luci. Damn! You are good guy. Right on my ass till the end.”

Shrugging aside the paralysis that had changed him—impossible for Henry to have realized at the moment—permanently, he crept through the house and down into the cellar and out through the broken door of the bulkhead makeover.

Slunk along the carefully maintained line of bushes and through the trees and found his safe car.

Drove from Worthboro, never to return.

Hours later, after crossing the New York border, Henry pulled off the highway.

Gassing up, he took out one of his cells that had been beeping.

Read the message and knew it was from Dell, the newspaper guy. Must have also gotten his number from Luci. Henry smiled. Girl was far too good for this world. He hoped the money would help her follow her dreams.

Tapped in a response to the newspaper guy’s text and sent it.

Dropped the phone to the pavement and ground it under his heel.

Put the destroyed phone remnants into the rubbish and got back into his safe car and headed south, the sun setting off his right shoulder.

Not quite the Jack Sparrow sunset he was bargaining for, just the end of another day.