BY KIY
At a density of 6-7 people per square meter, a crowd can flow like water.
Extended parking for the Bristol Motor Speedway is a grass basin a quarter-mile from the nearest shuttle. Sean and I find a spot and join the procession of NASCAR fans as it takes shape. Families spill from their vans wearing assorted Dale Earnhardt Jr. worship; fraternity brothers stumble with Miller Lites in both hands; and portly veterans haul cushions, snack bags, and tote coolers. Together, we hike to the road and clump en masse around a single canopy tent that serves as the bus stop. The Appalachian Mountains push up in all directions around us. In the distance, toward the stadium, I see that the side of one hill has been stripped down to dirt so an impossibly large Food City banner can stretch across it. It may as well be our Kaaba.
This phenomenon is demonstrated in simulations. Thousands of particles swarm into a model arena, bottlenecking at the gates, streaming through the concourses, down the aisles, and into the open spaces. They fill out all corners of the stadium, jostling amongst each other like grains of TV static. But the moment their population reaches that critical density, the chaos stills. At 6-7 people per square meter, the crowd becomes so tightly packed that individuals can no longer move voluntarily. They might attempt to disperse, diffuse, but the overwhelming pressure from the bodies surrounding keeps them bound. Instead, as people try and fail to leave the crowd, their collective pushing generates a fluid-like movement across the group, forming into waves that roll and dissipate without collision.
Sean and I sit on the bus beside two men wearing complementing-but-for-sure-not-matching Hawaiian shirts and khakis. The man in the aisle seat looks at us as we settle in, but he focuses hard on Sean in particular, whose appearance exists in complete contrast to his. He’s wearing all black—jeans, Dale Jr. shirt, cowboy hat— and he even shaved his beard into mutton chops just for the race. After taking in the image, the man grins to himself and laughs.
“I like your facial hair, dude.”
“Thanks,” Sean says offhandedly, staring out the bus's front window. We jolt forward and start down the road.
The man keeps his eyes on Sean, expecting more conversation from him, but then he notices the styrofoam cooler resting on his lap and speaks up again, “They won’t let you bring that in.”
“Really?” I ask. It’s holding our beer.
“Yeah. It’s some shit. You need a clear, soft container. Nothing that can be thrown.”
“Fuck that,” says Sean.
“Bullshit,” I say.
“For real. First, they come for the coolers. Next, it’s the beer itself. And, I mean, what comes after that?” the man asks, sitting upright and puffing his chest with mock bravado. “I will never call them The Chicks.”
His friend leans in over his shoulder, “Lady A?”
Sean continues talking to them, but I drift off to the window. Our bus joins a dozen others, and we caravan on a road through the valley to a side entrance. Past the gates, the stadium comes into full view, and it is massive—a hulking steel frame equal in height and width to the hills around it. Below, I see half a hundred tents sprawled in its shadow. Sponsor logos everywhere.
“Wait, holy shit, is your name spelled S-E-A-N?” I hear the man ask.
I turn. Sean nods.
“There’s no fucking way.”
Within a minute, they find out their middle names are both Michael too.
But what about behavior? Pressure is pressure to comply, and the emergent norm doesn’t require shared beliefs or intentions. I’m talking about that manic feeling you only get out in the roaring public masses. You know, when anonymity and fever make every reckless impulse feel decided—screaming obscenities into empty air, the cries for blood across Fan Zones, the water bottles trebucheted across a mosh pit. What turns frenzy cruel?
The buses open. We push out and into the tailgate. Corporate booths snake around the lot in the shape of an infinity symbol, and they’re all playing different Morgan Wallen songs at competing volumes. There’s one for Bass Pro Shops, one for Chevrolet, Ford, Zyn nicotine pouches, Anheuser-Busch, Food City, Food City—above us the whole time like an eye staring down. Bubbly exhibitors call out to us from their booths waving stickers and pamphlets. We ignore them initially, but the farther in we go, the more they use games and prizes to entice us. The Marines hold a pull-up competition. Unscrew the lug nuts on a tire in less than sixty seconds and win an Ambetter Health t-shirt, free koozies and earplugs to compliment. I notice that most people with backpacks don’t have water bottles in their side pockets; they have hot sauce. “Where are they getting the hot sauce?” I ask out loud to no one in particular. A woman points to my right. A throng of racegoers shove toward a booth while employees underhand bottles into the mess of reaching hands. Everywhere I look, turn, move, the sirens of free swag wail at me.
We stop at a booth for RE race scanners, a type of headset that lets you tune into the driver’s radios, and ask if they can help with our cooler dilemma. They give us a clear trash bag. I dump the beer and ice in. Sean breaks the styrofoam over his knee. Pitches it.
At security, I place a dripping mess onto the table. The ice had melted in line, and when the guard lifts the trash bag up to inspect it, the beer cans float in the water, bobbing like dead goldfish. She hands it back to me.
“Go ahead.”
You agitate the water you disturb the sediment.
We find our seats in time for a 3 Doors Down concert in the infield. People shout “Kryptonite” like it's “Freebird,” and then they yell “Freebird” too. The lead singer hears their calls, saying, This last song is dedicated to those we call Superman—the men and women that serve this country. God bless America. We applaud. The grounds clear, and the owners of Food City wheel onto the track in the basket of a 40-foot-tall shopping cart. We cheer. We cheer for Bass Pro Shop’s 50th anniversary, for the troops again, for the Nashville little league team that won 4th in nationals, for a group of high schoolers pre-enlisting in the military. Air Force soldiers repel from the jumbotron, unfurling an American flag while “God Bless the USA” blares. A children’s choir sings the National Anthem. A Lockheed C-130 Hercules does a flyby. Fireworks.
I mean to tell you the exact moment it turned, the moment I was swept up in it.
The racers appear from smoke and pyrotechnics and it’s all kinetic and going Kevin Harvick the announcer booms “The Old Man Down the Road” at 120 decibels the line of stock cars brilliant and preening under Chase Briscoe the lights the roar from the stands the stomping of 100,000 feet it’s going Austin Dillon electric and rowdy and driving the number 18 Toyota, Kyle Bu—the crowd erupts into a unanimous, earth-shattering boo.
Kyle Busch is a great NASCAR driver. That deserves to be said. He was racing in the Cup Series before he could drink and ranks 9th all-time in wins. But his problem is he’s too true to the sport.
See, Kyle embodies the NASCAR spirit of old. He isn’t afraid to drive aggressively, to scratch paint, and he isn’t afraid to dump somebody into the wall if they piss him off enough. For example, there was the time he crashed into Kevin Harvick for driving three cars wide with his teammate, or when he wrecked his older brother, Kurt Busch, in 2007, pulling the same move. While this type of combative racing was expected (and, honestly, a large part of the draw) when the sport was made up of ex-bootleggers driving on dirt tracks, it’s seen as bad taste today. Over the last 20 years, NASCAR has shifted its emphasis from rivalries to safety and professionalism. The advertising dollar rules, and though feuds on the track make for a great story, sponsors simply can’t have their spokesmen ramming into each other at 200 mph. But it’s a little more complex for fans. Accidents without injury are exciting, the lifeblood of any race, but no one wants to see their heroes hurt, so the Car of Tomorrow and strict penalties are also considered good measures. The conflict of interest here often settles itself in the court of public opinion. Crash a driver with a negative reputation—Denny Hamlin, Bubba Wallace, Joey Logano—and your motives are justified no matter what they were. But touch someone even modestly liked? It doesn’t matter if you were retaliating; you’re getting death threats. The M.O. is to drive hard but respect the hierarchy.
So Kyle really damned himself at the 2008 Dan Lowry 400 in Richmond. Bit of backstory here. After Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in a tragic crash at the 2001 Daytona 500, his son was elevated to the status of Jesus Christ. Not only was Dale Jr. the namesake of the greatest driver that ever lived, but he was a decent one himself with a folksy, down-to-earth approach that, in light of the accident, made him a permanent underdog in the eyes of fans (and a magnet for sponsors). Fast forward to 2008, and NASCAR fans' love for Dale Jr. had grown to become synonymous with loving the sport itself. And 2008 was a particularly hyped year. Dale Jr. had left his father’s racing company, DEI, for one with deeper pockets, citing a desire to win a championship over any care for memory. Richmond looked to be a step toward fulfilling this, and all of NASCAR’s, wish.
Dale Jr. took the lead late in the race, but Kyle kept a close second behind him, practically touching his bumper on the straightaways. With three laps remaining, Kyle cut inside and forced Dale Jr. up the track, gaining a couple of feet and bringing the front of his car parallel with Dale’s back tire. But when they cut in for turn three, Kyle’s car got loose and turned into the back of Dale’s, sending him spinning across the track.
“Oh no. Oh no,” an announcer said, his voice breaking from its usual stoicism into a genuine panic.
Dale Jr.’s car hit the wall, and smoke began to pour from it in jets.
The camera cut away to spectators clasping their hands over their heads with mouths agape.
“Boys, I’ll just tell you something that ain't going to go over too good right there.”
It didn’t. Dale Jr. was fine, but that night, fans mobbed Kyle’s helipad anyway, chanting, practically foaming at the mouth, “Fuck Kyle Busch! Fuck Kyle Busch!”
and they’ve been yelling it just as passionately for the last 15 years.
Of course, I didn’t know any of this background going in. But I didn’t need to.
The racecars parade around the track, revving their engines and swerving from left to right. Kyle Busch’s car is distinguishable even among his kandy-kolored peers: bright yellow with decals of the M&M characters posing on its side. Whenever he drives by our corner, we holler and throw up our middle fingers. A college kid a few rows down takes a pack of M&Ms from his pocket and ceremoniously tears it above his head. As the candies rain on him, he lets out a scream so carnal you’d believe he’d just wrung his enemy’s heart. But whatever noise we’re kicking up is nothing compared to what comes from the stock cars as they finish their last pace lap, the green flag drops, and their engines start to roar.
Words fail to describe just how loud the race is. Bristol’s track is short, crowning itself as “The World’s Fastest Half-Mile” in taglines painted around the stadium, so the thunder of the 36 900 horsepower engines on it has little distance to die out over. Even with my Ambetter Health earplugs in, the cars sound like fighter jets doing low passes around a gymnasium. I take the earplugs out, roll the ends between my fingers, and cram them back in, but all this does is heighten the physical sensation of the noise. The cars are so loud that everything vibrates at a low-resonant hum—my feet, the metal bench, my vision, the end of every one of my nerves—so when they round the corner of the track farthest from me, the perceivable change in volume is felt as a slight easing of pressure, not heard. And when they drive near, the hum amplifies and begins to pulsate, pounding against me like blood, surging up my throat and out in a yell.
The first stage is terrifying, a grinding battle of steel and nerves. These machines weigh a ton and a half, drive at speeds double, triple, that of the highway limit, and pull 180-degree turns every eight seconds. I counted. They start tail to nose in two lanes, the inside and the outside, but there’s none of the separation implied by these distinctions. On the turns, the outside lane cuts in for a better angle and hugs the inside. From Sean and I’s view in the nosebleeds, all the cars look like they’re touching, moving as one serpentine mass.
The leaders break away after a dozen laps, but just as they gain some distance from the front of the group, they begin to lap the cars at the end of it. They pass on the outside, eating inches around the turns before pushing ahead on the straightaway. The front of the pack catches up to the rear, and soon after, the field thins into one solid lane of traffic. Winning and losing play out again and again in small, frenzied bursts. I lose track of who is in what place. All I see is an unbroken blur of color in motion, circling, feeding into itself. It’s an ouroboros.
Yet the chaos doesn’t keep up for long; there seems to be some repeating malfunction. At lap 40, the number 15 and 21 cars blow their right front tires simultaneously. Forty laps later, so do the number 2 and the Menards-sponsored one. The latter incident causes Menards to miss a turn and drive into the wall. It makes hard contact, but with the sheer speed the thing is going, it just bounces off and settles into the outside lane. But the 10 car, coming up behind, panics and spins out trying to avoid it, hitting the wall much harder. All screens in the arena display an animation of a yellow flag waving with the word CAUTION! flashing over it in bold.
A pace car motors onto the track with its deck of emergency lights going mad. The drivers slow down behind it, the roar of their engines diminishing into a boom. I hear the crowd around me rise to fill the space in volume, and everything is coming out as grievance.
“Figure out your set-ups!”
“Buncha pussies!”
“Fuuuuuuuck. Fuuuuuuuck Kyle Busch,” a man to our right yells, cupping his hands over his mouth. He props his elbows on his stomach, covered by a shirt that says “As Big As Texas” with an elongated graphic of the state bolstering its claim. But the thing is… he’s not shouting down Kyle Busch. Kyle is riding out the caution laps in the back third of the field. This man is looking at the Menards car at its pit stop. Uniformed men dive around the sides of the vehicle, changing the tires in twos and diving back. Within seconds, the car tears smoking from the box, but the pit crew waves their arms frantically after it. Menards hits its brakes. The left rear wheel wobbles loose and comes off, rolling past the hood and on down pit road.
“Fuuuuck. Fuuuuuck youuuuuu,” he says.
I sit back, confused, until my vision softens, and the scene falls into a drunken unfocus. Oh, the Menards car is yellow.
“NEW TWO FOR FIVE AT SONIC CHOOSE TWO FRITOS CHILI CHEESE WRAP SMALL JUMBO POPCORN CHICKEN QUARTER POUND DOUBLE CHEESE FOR FIVE TWO FOR FIVE ONLY AT SONIC”
Quite possibly the loudest ad I’ve ever heard plays over the speakers, drowning our brief auditory respite.
“NASCAR FANS, HAVE YOU TRIED BUSH’S NEW BAKED BEANS?”
The jumbotron shows visions of heaven. We swim in amber pools of Budweiser and have endless sex with togaed goddesses.
Even after the end of the commercials, the announcers commentate in one unending string of talk that walks a tightrope between genuine information and ad copy.
“Steve, I would think that would force you onto pit road. Like, if you are Ford's sharing information, I don’t know how you can keep running. Dave.”
“Toyota on the top of the screen. Denny Hamlin running fine. Moved his way back up toward the front. After that first stop, they’ll make another one here. Four more Goodyear tires. Dillon.”
“——hell,” Sean says in my ear. I only catch the last word over the competition.
“What?” I ask.
“——” I see his mouth moving but hear no words.
“What?”
He pulls out his phone, types, and hands it to me with the notes app pulled up.
What the hell?
This is, I start to write back, but Sean interrupts, shouting,
“Want——?”
That’s all I hear. The race starts up again. The announcers make their last audible calls:
“The field is approaching the Geico Restart Zone. Tyler Reddick on the inside. Brad Keselowski on the outside.”
“Here comes Christopher Bell on the 20, and he’ll take second away!”
“That Kyle Busch, man. Three-wide in the middle of one and two, he is picking up a ton of spots right here!”
“——”
“What?” I yell at Sean, I think. I feel my throat strain and my jaw pulse, but the sound doesn’t reach my ears.
He holds up the trash bag full of empty beer cans and shakes it.
I nod.
It was a $9 Miller High Life, but it brought back the spirit. Stage two!
Stage two is not analogous to the second quarter of other sports. There, you’d expect more or less the repeated effort of the first: the skill differential is further defined, maybe a little showing of tiredness from the athletes, a few errors, but a big push before the half, an ongoing. That’s not the case here. Stock car racing is as much an iterative process as a competition. Manufacturers are always tinkering with weight and drag in their attempt to get a car that wins every time, and in their testing, the race, parts fail often. Stage two is when these underlying mechanical issues come to light. 125 laps have done their wear, and now it’s not only a race against other drivers but one against blown tires, power steering issues, against breakdown. Fix what can be fixed, and ride out whatever can’t. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It happened like this.
The cars round turn four. The green flag waves in the air. An announcer tells us an old racing adage in a drawl that’s low and tough like the drone starting a crescendo.
“If you finish every race, you aren’t likely to win one.”
Not 15 laps in, the 21 car spins out. Coming off turn four, it begins to drift counterclockwise in a slow arc that goes the length of the homestretch. When it’s perpendicular to the other drivers, its tires begin burning, pouring smoke out its left side. The car makes it almost 180 degrees around before its right front tire pops—another caution flag.
“Remember folks, this is the playoffs, the final in the Round of 16. Only 12 drivers here move on to Echo Park in Forth Worth. An accident tonight might mean the end of a season,” an announcer says. “There’s a theme here of right front tires, and NASCAR’s proud sponsor is Goodyear. Goodyear Tires: ‘One Revolution Ahead’…”
Sean passes me his phone.
Looks like we have a Kyle Busch fan next to us.
I glance to our left and see a boy about fourteen or fifteen years old sitting next to his father. They’re wearing 2022 Bristol shirts they evidently just purchased, and over their ears, they have the RE race scanners you can rent for $65 a pop. Where others boo or flip off Kyle when he drives past us, the boy claps softly in defiance.
Fuck this kid, I type back. Though, as much as I hate to admit it, Kyle has been racing well tonight. He started toward the back in placement, and while it’s a complete guess where he’s exactly at now, he has been passing cars on the outside all night long. The caution ends, and I see him take on the number 5 car, Kyle Larson. Busch works the high groove, Larson inside. They drive parallel to each other, weaving together on the straightaway but separating at the curve. Larson gains on him from having the tighter turn, but coming off, Busch angles down the steep bank of the track, using the slope to propel him ahead of the lesser Kyle.
How tf could he like him? Sean writes.
Loves that he’s good. Loves that everyone hates him, I type. Real asshole in the making.
Anyways, Bubba Wallace goes down in smoke (the driver with that controversy). Around lap 175, his car begins to trail fumes that grow into a steady outpouring. His front right tire bursts, and the vehicle’s body shakes in a progressive breakdown, barely making his pit stop. A crew member runs over, changes the tire like a normal flat, and rolls it off to another man, but the tire catcher just stares at it; it’s soaked in oil. Even from the stands, I can see the fluid gloss the matte rubber and drip into puddles on the ground. The man bends over and sniffs it, nods when it confirms whatever his suspicions were. The crew pushes Bubba Wallace behind the wall bordering pit road for more extensive repairs.
Muted reaction from the crowd. The commotion had brought a few people to their feet, but now they look pensively under a hand visor or cross their arms. If they’re excited or heartbroken, they choose not to show it.
The announcers bring on a Goodyear spokesman to save face.
“We’ve seen some issues on the track regarding tires. What can you tell me about the unique tire setup at Bristol?”
“Well, we make sure we got a construction that’s durable. We work with the teams to make sure their setups are right, they got enough air pressure, aren’t too aggressive on their suspension settings…”
Texas to our right adjusts his protest, “Fuuuuck Goodyear. Fuuuuck Goodyear.”
And the accidents keep coming. I’d expected them to occur as infrequently as fights do in hockey—once or twice then a lot of sitting on your ass waiting for the next wonder—but it’s the same blistering event again and again.
Another right front pops on the 21. It moves up to the wall to let the others pass but inadvertently cuts off the 42 in doing so. The 42 swerves to the inside lane, cutting off the Air Force-sponsored car. The latter tries to evade, banking right, but with no open path, it oversteers and spins out. It whips around, turning fully backward before thin metal flaps on the car’s roof and hood deploy to slow its turn. They catch in the wind and fan out, making the vehicle look like a threatened reptile puffing its face in a gular display. The cars behind scatter through the infield, avoiding.
Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch’s teammate and driver of the titular Bass Pro Shop car, blows his power steering. He’s out of the race.
FedEx’s rear bumper drops, sparking.
Menards and Monster Energy, they go down too.
Again and again, we lose our minds during the caution periods, hollering senseless contortions of words that are more excitement than response. Sean howls like a dog and crushes an empty beer can under his foot. I yell toward the sky.
An announcer catches up to Martin Truex Jr. for an interview. It’s broadcast over the PA.
“You said in stage one your car was locking up intermittently, and it finally locked up big. Is it done?”
“Yeah, it blew the seal and pushed fluid out on the right tire. It’s unbelievable. What did Harvick say? Crappy parts?”
“If you’re your teammate Kyle Busch, how worried would you be right now?”
“Well, he’s not gonna worry. He’s just going to drive it until it stops working.”
The jumbotron follows that stoic note with a blaring ad for Toyota. A supercut of race finishes flashes at us. Kyle Busch stands on the roof of his car and pumps his fist into the air, a champion. I’ve had too much to drink. If I focus on the real cars going my head starts to spin. I don’t notice the end of stage two. I’m dizzy with thrill.
I snap back to when the arena screens blast a QR code. They instruct us to follow the link and download an app for the fan light show, but my service is shitty, so by the time I get the thing set up, the spectacle is already underway. I hold up my phone, and the flashlight on the back begins to go off while “God Bless the USA” plays again. It’s supposed to synch to the music, I’m pretty sure, but no one is currently in time. Across the stadium, we light up at different intervals, endlessly strobing.
“Stage three and the second half of the Bass Pro Shop Night Race is almost underway. You see the light show from the fans to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. But let’s take a look at where the drivers stand, Steve,” an announcer says.
“Fourteen stage points for Kyle Busch so far tonight. Could be massive in his hope to advance to round two.”
They play audio from Busch’s crew chief Ben Beshore.
“As we run, we are five points above the cut line.”
“So they came in below the cut line with a lot of nerves here,” an announcer explains, “Ben Beshore hoping the power steering holds out, but right now, Kyle Busch would advance where he is.”
Our phones flash wildly like synapses firing. 50 years of Bass Pro Shops, and they’re giving away a free boat. Footage rolls of a storefront lit by the sunset. In the parking lot, a stock car does donuts within a circle of upper management. And I’m proud to be an American.
The cars, they’re off. They’re hurling bodies of steel and sheet metal. They’re Day-Glo comets born into orbit,
bending around the curves and around each other with an impossible deftness
for ten laps, just two minutes
And then there’s smoke. There’s smoke coming from Kyle Busch’s car.
“Problems with the 18! There’s smoke coming out of Kyle Busch’s engine!” an announcer yells.
Sean grabs me with one hand, points to the smoke with the other, and lets out a high-pitched EEEEEEEEeeeeeee into the exploding air.
Kyle’s car fails around turn four, making contact with the wall and scraping against it at odd intervals. His speed tanks, and the rest of the drivers pass him on the inside; all the places he had gained gone, vanished, in eight seconds. Smoke comes out hard now in jets out of both headers. He veers down the bank onto pit road, streaking fluid, but instead of driving to his pit box to attempt a repair, he just goes ahead and pulls behind the wall. None of his crew is nearby, nobody is, so he unfastens himself, climbs out the window, and stomps off on his own. No photos. No interviews. A closed trailer door.
We’re screaming, screaming full-throated and raw and with such frenzy that I know he can hear us in his trailer, the exultation of 100,000 at his expense beating against the thin metal. Strangers hug. Couples kiss. A teenager makes masturbatory gestures, and he’s aiming for anyone dressed in yellow. Kyle Busch is out of the race.
“Out of the race car, out of the race, and more than likely, he’s gonna be out of the playoffs,” one of the announcers says. “An eight-time champion here at Bristol, Kyle Busch has never been eliminated from this round in his career.”
We somehow get louder. I’m a banshee for Kyle’s dreams of the Bill France Cup. I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had at a sporting event. Nothing can top this moment.
But behind me, I hear the celebration turn sour, into an oncoming wave of jeers. I turn my head and see some asshole come bumbling down the aisle in a full-replica Kyle Busch uniform—helmet, yellow M&M jersey and pants, everything. The fans are letting him have it.
“Look at you now motherfucker!”
“Boooooooooo,” drones Texas.
“Fuck Kyle Busch! Fuck Kyle Busch!”
“Yeah, yeah! Get out of here!”
Someone throws a beer can, and it glances off his shoulder, but he doesn’t budge, walking with his head down, keeping the same temperament as his idol. He passes us. I stand and take a picture once he can’t see me do so. Sean yells drunk curses. I look down at my hands, my empty cup of beer. What if—
I lob it at him.
The cup goes right and long,
bouncing once then rolling down the steps.
He stops,
and all he does is look at me.
Over his right shoulder. Not breaking away. At me. He has a helmet on and I can’t see his face but I don’t need to because he turned and he’s looking at me and his shoulder says it all:
He crashed at 130 mph., and I cheered, and I threw this cup at him, and now his helmet visor is like an obsidian mirror and I see my reflection distorted and wild in the crowd and the crowd is me.
Fuck. I’m the asshole.
The replica walks off, turning the other cheek, taking the fever with him. I sit down and try to get back into the race, but without a Kyle Busch to rail against, I lose the plot. The cars lock into their perpetual left turn, and it’s still impossible to keep track of placement. Their engine noise becomes grating, not energizing. I feel a headache coming on. And if I’m honest, I don’t care much about who wins anyway. I pass Sean my notes app, asking if he wants to leave. He does.
And yeah, it's guilt too. I reel through the concourse under the stands; all the beer in my stomach washes against me. Some thrill, some big pile up, sends the fans to their feet, and they pound above like a roll of thunder. I look up and imagine the twisted heap of metal and smoke at the other end, feeling sorry for myself. This is danger. This is injury. Why did I cheer? The answer comes almost as soon as I dream the question—I am sheep.
Sean and I end up on the shuttle with other early departers—families with young children, mostly. I walk down the aisle, and each innocent scene I pass lifts me a bit from the Slough of Despond I’d been easing into. I see three boys go at a package of Oreos like vultures on carrion; a brother and his younger sister sleep leaning against each other, but most, most, are beaming at the washes of light coming from their iPads. Compared to the race, the mood here is easy and pleasant, and I welcome the contrast. We sit behind a mother rocking a baby.
The shuttle drives off, taking a different route back to service other parking lots. Where we came in on a direct road through the valley, we now turn right at the entrance and ramble over the hills next to the arena. The view from each hilltop gives us glimpses of Bristol as it’s reapportioned to the landscape: first as a monolith we can’t see around, then equal with the other hills again, and finally dwarfed by the rolling landscape. It’s a spotlight on its expanse, beating back against its greater dark, mute now in the distance.
But we still have a good view when the race ends. A winner unknown to us sees the checkered flag, does celebratory donuts, and is mobbed by his pit crew on Victory Lane. And we know it’s all over because there’s fireworks.
A flicker out the right window. I look and see a chain of short, white flares going off along the rim of the arena, followed by another sequence but in red. The tease grabs the children’s attention, and I hear their lock screens click in a patter like rain. We watch the first firework ascend in a trail of light and burst. Blue. The kids let off small gasps or elongated woahs that stretch to awe. Yellow. Those on our side of the bus press their faces up to the glass and jockey with their siblings for a better view. Those on the left side are already standing in the aisle, hovering our shoulders. I scan the seats and notice the parents aren’t watching the show; they’re smiling at each other or at the back of their kid’s heads, smug at having delivered them to this surprise. Silver. The mother sitting in front of us picks up her boy by his armpits and holds him to the window. He blinks himself awake and tries to wiggle loose from her awkward grip. When she doesn’t set him down, he crunches his face as if he’s about to start wailing, but just before he can sound off, a blast of red light flashes over him. He opens his eyes. Green. Purple. Each comes at spasmodic intervals, heightening the anticipation and its reward. He unclenches his fists, and his whole face stretches in astonishment. Orange. White. Ones that crackle. Gold lace. They’re going, and he’s in ecstasy, dribbling spit over his chin and squealing in fits of wonder. And in the moments between, when the interior of the bus falls back into darkness, I hear his mother coo to him almost under her breath, asking,
“Did you see it?... Did you see it?... Did you see it?”