eBookFirst Edition (First Edition)
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
It's a sizzling summer Saturday, and Headwaters Speedway has suddenly become the place to be. Thanks to rainouts across the state, this small-town dirt track is drawing both big-time stock cars and local drivers. There's Trace Bonham, whose Street Stock Chevy is acting up in a big way. And Beau Kim, whose "stone soup" Modified has been patched together from whatever parts he could scrape up. And no one could forget Amber Jenkins, a strawberry blonde who has what it takes to run rings around them all. Keeping everyone on track is Melody Walters, who knows that the impending rain might be exactly what they need to keep her father's speedway afloat—or sink it for good.
In Will Weaver's high-revving novel, the first in the Motor series, a cast of car-obsessed teens and adults are all out to prove themselves, both on and off the quarter-mile track, as they move through their day on a collision course to meet on Saturday night dirt.
Saturday Night Dirt is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429934466 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 04/14/2009 |
| Series: | Motor Novels , #1 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 310 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Author of Red Earth, White Earth and A Gravestone Made of Wheat, Will Weaver grew up in northern Minnesota on a dairy farm. The sometimes harsh and beautiful landscape of farm and small town life figures strongly in his writing. Sweet Land, an independent feature film adaptation of his story “Gravestone Made of Wheat”, and starring Ned Beatty, premiered in October of 2006.
Weaver is also known for his young adult fiction. His character Billy Baggs, a teenage farm boy baseball phenom, earned his way into the hearts of teen readers in the series Striking Out, Farm Team, and Hard Ball. Each novel has won numerous awards, including being named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Memory Boy, a post-apocalyptic novel based on environmental collapse, is used across the curriculum in many junior and senior high schools.
Claws, a novel set in northeastern Minnesota (Duluth and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness) features outdoor survival with a strong family back story. Weaver’s Full Service won starred reviews (Kirkus Reviews and The Horn Book) for its focus on a young man struggling with matters of religious faith and doubt, all complicated by his first “real” summer job, at a gas station, where he “meets the public” in all its variety. Defect, a novel about a teenager born with a miraculous birth abnormality, highlights what one reviewer from The St. Paul Pioneer Press called “the humanity and decency that runs through all of Weaver’s work.”.
As an author, Mr. Weaver is particularly concerned with youth literacy and keeping kids reading. His new MOTOR series addresses a group of underserved young adult readers: kids who love cars. His new novel Saturday Night Dirt and its sequel, Super Stock Rookie, focus on dirt track stock car racing. The series starts with a close focus on a small town speedway and the cast of colorful characters who come there to race on Saturday nights. One of the characters, sixteen-year-old Trace Bonham, is a natural driver with dreams of racing professionally. The MOTOR series follows Trace’s on his path toward getting a “ride” (a sponsored race car) and competing at the highest level he can. While these auto racing novels will certainly appeal to boys, Weaver’s novels always contain a diverse cast of characters. Auto racing is one of the few sports that gives no gender advantage, and the MOTOR series also includes a positive and realistic portrayal of young women involved in racing.
Along with the MOTOR series of novels, Weaver has formed a stock car racing team with a teenaged driver. His black No. 16 Modified race car, co-sponsored by Farrar, Straus&Giroux publishers, is driven by Skyler Smith of Bemidji. Team Weaver races in the WISSOTA circuit in the upper Midwest.
An avid outdoorsman, Will Weaver lives with his wife on the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota.
Read an Excerpt
Saturday Night Dirt
By Will Weaver
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux
Copyright © 2008 Will WeaverAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-3446-6
CHAPTER 1
Saturday NOON
TRACE
"Torque wrench."
Trace Bonham, seventeen, short and stocky with unsmiling brown eyes, turned to the big toolbox on wheels. He yanked open drawer 5 — all screwdrivers — then drawer 4 — all sockets.
"Come on, kid. Bottom drawer, left side," Larry Rawlins barked. He was the unofficial crew chief on the Bonham Farms yellow No. 32 Street Stock, a 1986 Monte Carlo. Street Stock, as a class, meant a full-framed American car with only minor modifications. It was one of the last car classes before racing — engines especially — got really expensive. Larry was bent over the engine compartment. Freshened cylinder heads for the 350-cubic-inch Chevrolet block were finally in place. Tonight, maybe the Chevy would run right.
Trace kept looking. "More like middle drawer, right side," he finally said. He turned and slapped the heavy dial-gauge wrench onto Larry's grimy palm.
"If you had to thrash this car yourself, you'd know where everything was," Larry said, handing Trace the speed wrench in return. "It might even make you a better driver."
"I'd be a better driver if I had some top-end horsepower," Trace muttered.
Larry, a thick-necked guy wearing a stained seed cap, didn't answer. He didn't hear well — too many years around high-rpm equipment. Most of the week he drove farm equipment or grain trucks for Trace's dad — deeper in the hangar-size shed were Don Bonham's combines and tractors — but Saturdays he worked on the Bonham stock car. Saturday night was dirt-track racing.
"Take me, I had to work my way up," Larry began.
"Listen!" Trace shot back, loudly this time. "I can't help it if my old man likes racing and wants me to drive. That's just the way it is, all right?"
"Hey, kid, don't get your shorts in a wad!" Larry said, straightening up. "Save that for tonight."
At that moment the shop door banged open, and Trace's dad hustled in. Don Bonham, stocky and strong like Trace, had salt-and-pepper hair cropped short and a very tanned face. He never made quiet entrances. As he stalked across the shop, his cowboy boots went pock-pock-pock on the concrete floor.
"Hey, boss," Larry said, with chew-speckled teeth; he was always cheerful when Trace's dad came around.
Nodding briefly to his son and Larry, Don bent over the engine compartment. He stared. "Looks like you got a ways to go."
"No problem," Larry said. "I should have it running by three o'clock or so."
"I hope," Don said. "We got racing tonight."
"If it don't rain," Larry said, not moving any faster. "Sixty percent chance, they say"
Don pursed his lips. "I heard forty to fifty percent."
"No matter, we'll be ready," Larry added cheerfully He was the kind of guy who knew just how far to push things, a trait about him that drove Trace crazy.
Don jerked his chin toward his son. "Trace been any help so far?"
"Couldn't do without him," Larry said with an exaggerated drawl — and a sly glance to Don.
Don did not smile; he was not a smiling kind of guy. "Well, kick his butt if he doesn't," Don said. He winked at Trace.
Larry glanced at Trace. "He probably thinks I couldn't."
Trace was silent. Bring it on.
"None of that, boys," Don said. "We're a team here — we all got to get along."
"Just trying to teach him everything I know, boss," Larry said as he leaned into his torque wrench.
"I learned that in the first five minutes," Trace murmured.
His father shot Trace a frown. "Anyway, let's keep doin' it, Larry," Don said loudly. "The clock is ticking." As Larry fit the socket onto the next head bolt and made an exaggerated wrenching motion with his stubby, muscular arms, Don looked at Trace and nodded toward the door.
Outside, Trace squinted in the bright sunshine glinting off metal sheds and galvanized grain bins. The cloudless sky was a big blue oven holding in the July heat and humidity — or maybe it was his red-flushed face that gave off the sweaty warmth.
"Everything going all right in there?" his father asked, closing the door behind them. He put on his wraparound sunglasses. Trace's dad was a farmer who never wore a seed cap, and always carried a BlackBerry. He used it to keep track of his farm business plus all the latest racing news.
"Larry," Trace said with a shrug. "You know him. Likes to make himself indispensable. Create emergencies where there shouldn't be any Those heads should have been on yesterday — so we can figure out where we're losing horsepower."
His father paused. "Larry says the motor runs fine."
"It doesn't run fine," Trace said. "I keep telling you that."
"Well, he'll get it figured out. Bear with him," Don said. "Larry's a useful employee."
Trace rolled his eyes.
"I'm serious, Son," his dad replied. "There's a place for guys like him — men to do the heavy lifting, the grunt work of life. Some people are born on the long end of the wrench, others on the short end, if you know what I mean —"
"Yeah, yeah," Trace said, cutting him off. "I'm just saying, when it comes to engine and setup work, I can do everything he can in half the time. And I like working on the car."
"You're a driver, Trace, not a mechanic."
Trace glanced away.
"Unless you don't want to drive," his father added.
"I want to drive," Trace said sharply.
"There are plenty of kids out there looking for a ride."
"I said I want to drive."
"But do you want to win?"
"Yes, I want to win! If you don't think so, drive the car yourself," Trace shot back.
His father smiled for the first time. "That's the spirit. I want you to get mad out there tonight — bump some people, run some people off the road."
Trace kicked at the gravel and did not reply.
"Anyway, I'm too old to drive," his father said. "Climbing through a stock car window is a young man's game. Hurts my back just watching you."
Trace shrugged. His father had a way of doing that to him. Jerking him around. Playing him like a puppet on short strings.
"Plus I just happen to like watching my son go flat out on Saturday night dirt," his father added.
Trace allowed his father to give him a brief, one-armed hug.
"I wonder if that orange No. 27 from Grand Rapids will show up tonight," his father said, glancing at his BlackBerry. "The guy who beat you down low in turn 3 on that last feature?"
It wasn't like Trace needed this jab from his father to relive that humiliation: He'd been running fourth with the pedal down, straining for just a few more rpm. Orange No. 27 was looming larger and larger in the roaring dust off his right side — then, in turn 3, no more orange. Trace knew better than to look back but swiveled his head over his right shoulder. Gone! No orange anywhere. He must have spun out. That meant fourth place and at least some points for yellow No. 32. That, and maybe a break from his old man. Suddenly orange No. 27 sharked in low and tight on Trace's left side. A screech of tin on tin as he and Trace locked up. For a long second the two cars were welded together. Trace pressed the pedal so hard his leg started to cramp — he tried to pinch the orange car and take away his line — but there was no more horsepower. Orange No. 27 shrugged loose from Trace and steadily pulled away. Trace faded to sixth place.
"Really?" Trace said sarcastically. "I'd totally forgotten." He could feel the heat, the anger, in his face.
His dad stepped back to take full measure of his son, then nodded approval. "I think we're gonna have a good night of racing. Now head back in there and help Larry get that beast running."
"Running is one thing, running right's another," Trace said, but his father was already walking away. Trace stared after him, then headed back to the shop. On the way, he squinted again at the sky: a few wispy clouds in the west, but no real weather in sight. Sixty percent chance of rain — yeah, right, Larry At the shop door, he paused to take a breath, and to remind himself of one fact: tonight, win, lose, or break, at least he'd get to see Mel Walters.
CHAPTER 2MELODY
Melody (Mel) Walters, seventeen, kicked dirt. She wore dusty running shoes and had tanned legs and arms; a blond ponytail poked through the back of her World of Outlaws cap. She and her father, Johnny Walters, were inspecting turn 1 at Headwaters Speedway. George, their dirt man, had graded the quarter-mile dirt oval the evening before, but there was still a soft spot. Soft spots turned into ruts. Ruts broke axles and tie-rods. "The last thing we need is for some car to throw a wheel into the stands and hurt somebody," she said.
"I'll get him to pack it some more," her father said from behind her. As usual, he remained on his ATV.
"It needs water, too," Mel said, glancing over her shoulder at him. His forearms were massive from rolling his wheelchair, and he swung a tanned hand down to gather some dirt. Mel knelt down and scraped up her own handful — during the summer racing season she stopped worrying about her fingernails. The dull-brown clay mix did not gum up between her fingers. It should have squeezed into a ball, like kindergarten Play-Doh. This dirt was more like cornflake dust at the bottom of the box. "George should have watered the track last night, not five hours before hot laps," Mel said. Across in the pit area, George was only now filling the tanker truck.
"He thought it would rain last night," her father said, letting the dusty mix sift through his fingers.
"Don't say that word," Mel replied. Another rained-out Saturday night or two and none of this would matter. Headwaters Speedway would be in serious trouble at the bank. That was her main goal this summer: to keep the speedway afloat. Her dad had no idea how bad things were.
At the sudden chirp and whistle, she glanced up at the ospreys. Every summer the same stupid pair of birds raised their chicks atop the middle light pole in the speedway infield.
"Dinner is served," her dad said, looking up through his mirrored sunglasses. His salt-and-pepper ponytail swung as he turned.
"Fish again?" Mel asked sarcastically. An incoming osprey clutched a skinny northern pike torpedo-style under its belly. The chicks cheeped insanely and pushed their furry heads upward from the nest. The wagon wheel of halogen bulbs on the light pole was almost buried under a thick donut of sticks and reedy trash. "Someday that nest is going to catch on fire," Mel said, vaulting onto the back of the four-wheeler. "Then we'll have to pay for new lights, a new pole, and a cherry-picker truck to put it up."
Johnny watched the birds. "Honey, you worry too much," he answered. "If it happens, it happens. Besides, race fans like the birds. What other speedway has its own osprey nest?"
"Yeah, yeah," Mel muttered, hooking her arms loosely around her dad's waist — then poking his ribs to get him going. "Somebody's got to worry about things around here."
"Which is why I had you, baby!" her dad tossed over his shoulder, and then he accelerated the mud-spattered Bombardier.
Mel clenched both arms around her dad's waist but thought of her mother, who lived in Ohio. Only a woman could "have" a kid, but she didn't call her father on that tiny little fact. She hated her mother too much. Her mother had left her father hardly a year after his sprint car accident — when Melody was eight years old and still called Melody. "I just can't deal with a husband in a wheelchair," she announced one day.
Well,good for you — what can you deal with? On bad days, like this one was shaping up to be, Mel had silent conversations with her mother — dialogues that always ended in screaming matches.
As her father drove the banked clay into turn 2, she held on tighter. She wished she could have seen him race more often. As a kid, she took his racing for granted. Loud cars, each with a shiny rooftop wing, were part of her life, and she expected they always would be. So she didn't pay attention. Didn't watch the way she should have. Mainly, she remembered the accident: The slow-motion flipping, his No. 14a sprint car's rooftop spoiler tearing loose, then flying like a kite above the tangle of cars, her father's ride suspended upside down, his arms loose out the cockpit, flapping as if he was trying to fly the car, trying to land it upright. She wasn't there at Knoxville, Iowa, when it happened; a professional photographer caught the crash. His photos made the cover of Open Wheel magazine. There was an amateur videotape version of it in one of those horrible "Worst of — — —" video collections of fatal racing crashes — as if she would ever watch that. The still photos were bad enough. All she knew about the accident was that a young driver from Pennsylvania was killed, and two other drivers, including her father, badly injured. That was enough.
The shrieks of the ospreys broke through her thoughts. The arriving male — slightly bigger — circled the nest to show off his catch. The female hopped onto the rim of the nest, where she flapped her wings and whistled again and again. As the male touched down, his mate launched for some sky time, some hunting time of her own. It was a dumb location for a nest, but they made a great team.
Mel's father stopped in turn 2 to watch the birds. "One thousand one, one thousand two," he began. On "three," the departing bird let loose a long white strand of poop.
"Plus they're dirty!" Mel said into her father's ear. "It's not like we need more you-know-what to deal with around here."
"Hey, everybody in the infield knows better than to park beneath the osprey nest," Johnny said.
CHAPTER 3JOHNNY
Johnny Walters, forty-five, former sprint car driver, worried about Melody Melody and the weather, in that order. There was a chance of rain tonight, and that he couldn't control. His daughter was his daily worry She worked too hard — took too much responsibility for speedway operations. Making her "track manager" last summer on her sixteenth birthday, presenting her with an engraved name tag, was a mostly a joke. An honorary title. No way he could afford a real track manager.
In northern Minnesota, Headwaters Speedway was a dusty dirt circle track with wooden bleachers and three and a half employees (he was the half-man). Melody did anything and everything — from nailing a loose board in the grandstand to advertising and payroll. George Huff took care of the actual track, the infield, and the pit area. A bunch of volunteers filled in the rest of the slots. Art Lempola did the announcing. His wife and two other ladies worked the booth with him, keeping track of cars along with Maurice Battier, the flagman. Four volunteer "spotters" talked to Maurice, the pit steward, and Melody through their radio headsets. The spotters helped the steward confirm car order on restarts. Modern tracks used radio-controlled transponders, one for each car, and a digital leaderboard for the fans. Headwaters was old-school and then some. Two white-haired ladies worked the main gate ticket booth. Without the volunteers — bless them, every one — Headwaters Speedway could not have survived.
"Two looks good, let's check turn 3," Mel said, swinging herself onto the rear. Johnny nodded and accelerated down the straightaway.
Situated between Duluth and Grand Forks, and four hours north of Minneapolis, Headwaters Speedway sat on the fringe of racing country Dirt-track racing was more popular in southern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa — even North Dakota. Good dirt racing was coming, drafting in the widening reach of NASCAR, but it wasn't here yet. Headwaters was not set up for sprint cars, plus it did not draw the big-name Super Stocks, Modifieds, and Late Models — the touring teams that would pull in bigger crowds. On some nights, Headwaters drew only a half dozen Late Models, which was barely enough to make a race. Johnny was thinking of dropping Late Models and focusing more on local Hobby Stocks and amateur racers — perhaps adding demolition derbies — but Melody was against it. She had always taken the racetrack seriously, maybe more seriously than he did. The speedway was her life; she would sleep nights in the announcer's booth if he allowed it. It wasn't healthy.
"Are any of your friends from town coming out to the races tonight?" he asked over his shoulder.
"I doubt it," she said. "Anyway, it's not like I have time for them on race night."
"Maybe if you gave them some comp tickets —"
"Like we can afford comp tickets?" she interrupted.
Johnny slowed at turn 3. Then he said, "How about that Hafner boy, that kid in your grade who used to call you? Does he ever come to the races?"
"He's not that into cars," Melody said sarcastically.
"I'd be into cars — if I knew you were."
"Stop it, Dad," Melody said. "You have to like me — you're my father."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Saturday Night Dirt by Will Weaver. Copyright © 2008 Will Weaver. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,SPECIAL THANKS,
Saturday NOON,
TRACE,
MELODY,
JOHNNY,
GEORGE,
PATRICK,
MAURICE,
BEAU,
AMBER,
SONNY,
TUDY,
THE WEATHER,
Saturday - 3:00 P.M.,
TRACE,
MEL,
MAURICE,
BEAU,
PATRICK,
AMBER,
TUDY,
SONNY,
THE WEATHER,
Saturday - 6:00 P.M.,
MEL,
JOHNNY,
BEAU,
AMBER,
TRACE,
PATRICK,
TUDY,
THE WEATHER,
Saturday - 8:00 P.M.,
MAURICE,
GEORGE,
PATRICK,
TRACE,
BEAU,
AMBER,
JOHNNY,
TUDY,
SONNY,
MEL,
THE MOTOR NOVELS,
Copyright Page,