by Chris Fabry
“I’m on a run right now, but I can be back that way in about 20 minutes,” she said.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll just meet you at the parts store at closing.”
Chapter 32
Confrontation
TIM WAS HIDING in the bushes when Jamie returned to the auto parts store. She asked him what he was doing back there, but he didn’t answer. He just hopped in Maxie and closed the door. She clocked out and drove home with Tim remaining quiet.
“So, did you find out what you were hoping to find out?” she said.
He glanced at her. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of your dad. You know where he is?”
She shook her head. “He’s either at the garage or at home. You didn’t have to work today?”
Tim was already dialing the garage. He hit the right front fender of his phone. “Nobody there.”
“What’s up with you?” Jamie said. “You’re acting funny.”
Tim looked back at a car following close behind them. “Take a right here. See if that car’s following you.”
Jamie pulled to the side of the road, and a newer Mustang passed. “Tim, stop acting so weird and tell me what’s going on.”
“I just need to get home so I can talk with your parents,” Tim said. “Please.” He said it with an urgency she’d never seen or heard from him.
“Okay, okay, sure.”
They pulled into the driveway, and Tim was out before the car even stopped. She rolled her eyes. “Boys.”
Her mom was in the kitchen listening to Tim. Jamie went upstairs to change and heard her mom call her dad from the front porch.
“What’s up?” Kellen said, coming out of his room.
“Something to do with Tim,” Jamie said. “And I don’t think it’s good.”
Kellen ran downstairs so fast it sounded like pistons firing in an engine.
Jamie followed as soon as she heard a car pull up in the driveway, scattering gravel all over the lawn. Two doors opened and closed and there was shouting.
Jamie rushed through the front door and saw Chad Devalon pointing a finger at Tim and yelling, “Give it back!”
“Tell him to hand it over, Maxwell,” Butch Devalon said. “This has gone far enough.”
Chad rushed at Tim and it looked like he was going to hit him, but her dad stepped in front of him and cut him off.
“Tell him to give back my recorder,” Chad said, his face twisted. He looked like was going to cry.
Tim stood there with his hands in his back pockets, edging away from the confrontation.
Butch Devalon came up behind his son and tried to move around Jamie’s dad.
“Tim, go inside the house until we can sort this out,” her dad said. He turned and whispered something to him.
Tim ran up the stairs and into the house, passing Jamie without a word or a look.
Jamie moved down a step and stood beside her mom. “What in the world is going on?” she whispered.
“Chad says Tim stole a microrecorder from him. Tim says it’s his.”
“Now let’s settle down and figure out what this is about,” her dad said.
“That kid got into Chad’s car and stole his recorder,” Butch Devalon said. “The little pyromaniac is a thief too. I can’t believe a Christian man like you would tolerate such behavior.”
“Well, we haven’t figured out what kind of behavior he’s having,” her dad said. “Chad, how long have you had this recorder?”
“I don’t know. A couple of weeks, maybe.”
“Where did you buy it?”
“At . . . an electronics store. Best Buy or Circuit City. I can’t remember which.”
“You keep the receipt?” her dad said.
“Of course not. Why would I want to keep the receipt?”
“Tim says he bought that recorder with his own money. He’s in getting the receipt right now.”
“That is such a crock!” Chad yelled. “I don’t care what he has in there. It’s mine. Dad, he’s going to hide it. I told you this would happen!”
“Are you sure you’re not just upset about what’s on the recorder?” her dad said.
“No, I just want it back,” Chad said, but his face showed something more.
“Maxwell, if you don’t bring that recorder out here right now, I’m going to go in and get it myself.”
Her dad straightened. “No, you’re not going in my house.” He looked at Jamie. “Go get Tim.”
She walked inside and ran down the stairs, only to find Tim’s room empty. She found him in the kitchen, uploading the contents of the recorder onto the computer. “Is that really yours?”
“Yeah, I got it with my birthday money.”
“Dad wants you outside.”
“Yeah, almost done.” He kept looking at the screen, then ejected the recorder. He clicked the Play button on the computer, and Jamie heard Chad’s voice. “You had the perfect motive for starting that fire. You watched the DVD of your dad getting smashed, and—”
Tim stopped the recording and hurried outside, pulling out his wallet and holding out the receipt to her mom.
“This is legit, Butch,” her mom said. “This is his machine. He bought it with—”
“It’s mine!” Chad shouted, pushing past his dad and running toward Tim like some kindergartner who’d had his favorite blanket stolen.
Jamie moved in front of Tim.
Chad stopped, his mouth twitching. “Move out of the way, Jamie. I don’t want to hurt you, but I swear . . .”
“Give it to him, Tim,” her dad said.
“Dad!” Jamie said.
“Dad!” Kellen said.
“Dale!” her mom said.
Tim just stood there.
“Go ahead,” her dad said. “Toss it to him.”
“Dad, I heard what he said to Tim,” Jamie said. “He was cruel. Something about him—”
“Jamie,” her dad said, and she knew he meant for her to be quiet.
Tim looked at her dad like he was about to cut Tim’s heart out, like he was saying, Don’t you believe me?
“Toss it to him, Tim,” her dad said.
Tim tossed the recorder and Chad caught it in one hand. He looked at the display, then hit a button and it beeped. Chad’s face showed relief. He tossed the recorder back to Tim, turned, and walked to the car.
Butch Devalon looked like he had just found out he was in the wrong line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. He stared at Chad walking away, then at Tim, then at her dad.
“There’s something you should know, Mr. Devalon,” Tim said. “It’s about the fire at your garage.”
“Dad, come on!” Chad hollered from the car.
“I know who started the fire,” Tim said.
Devalon narrowed his eyes at Tim. “You ready to confess?”
Jamie’s dad went over and put a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Tim didn’t do it. It was somebody a lot closer to home.” Her dad nodded at the car as it fired up and Chad honked the horn.
“You don’t have any proof of that,” Devalon said.
“I had it on this recorder,” Tim said. “That was why he was so upset about it.”
It looked like the wheels in Butch Devalon’s mind were turning. He opened his mouth, but the horn honked again. He looked at Tim. “Stay away from my boy—you hear me?” He walked across the lawn and drove away.
Chapter 33
Running in Circles
TIM LET THE MAXWELLS HEAR the recording.
Dale’s face was pained, as if listening was the hardest thing he’d ever done. When it was over, he turned to Tim. “What DVD was Chad talking about?”
Tim told them, then retrieved it from his room and played it for them. Mrs. Maxwell couldn’t watch—she went into the kitchen. Jamie turned away when the accident happened. Dale and Kellen watched the whole thing.
When the video went into slow motion, Dale let out a grunt and ran a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you tell us about this?”
; “I didn’t know who it was from,” Tim said. “And I didn’t know what I was going to do about it.”
“How’d you fit the pieces together?” Mrs. Maxwell said.
“The hat had a lot to do with it. I wasn’t 100 percent sure when I decided to go after Chad, but I thought I could get him to give it up if he was guilty.”
“That part about Rosa,” Jamie said. “Did you really talk to her?”
“No. But when I went back over the call, I thought something in the woman’s voice sounded familiar. If Chad had called her when we were talking in the parking lot, he probably wouldn’t have spilled the beans.”
Dale shook his head. “I know you were just trying to get information, but lying to Chad was not the answer. You know that, right?”
Tim put his head down. “Yes, sir.”
There were more questions, but Tim finally went to his room.
A few minutes later Dale and Mrs. Maxwell came in.
“I’m really sorry this happened,” Dale said. “Part of the reason to bring you up here was to protect you from stuff like this.”
“What about Chad?” Tim said. “Should we talk to the police?”
Dale folded his arms. “I can talk with the officer who was here. We’ve become pretty good friends. My guess is that Butch wouldn’t press charges against his own son.”
“Why wouldn’t he listen?” Tim said. “Why wouldn’t he want to know the truth? He has to know his son lies.”
Mrs. Maxwell was sitting on the floor and she leaned forward. “Tim, it’s part of our nature not to want to know the truth. We like to hide. From ourselves. From God. We fool ourselves into thinking things that aren’t true. Butch has always believed that if he’s successful on the track and wins a lot of races and makes money, he’ll be happy. And his family too. But Chad has been crying out for a real father since he was little.”
“My hope is that all of this will help them both,” Dale said. “It could be a wake-up call for Butch to change his input into Chad’s life. But it probably won’t.”
Tim thought about what the two were saying. They probably thought he was the same as Butch, running from God, not wanting to think about the truth. He’d actually read a few of the devotionals, and it was the one about the spotter that got to him. The spotter in a race sees all the cars and the whole racetrack while the driver can see only a little way in front, to the sides, and behind. His vision is limited.
The book said that God is like that spotter. He knows everything, sees everything, and knows the beginning from the end. He knows what’s coming up ahead, what’s gone on behind, and the very best route to take.
At the end of the devotional, the writer gave a couple of verses from the Bible. Proverbs 3:5-6. Tim didn’t know what that said or even where Proverbs was, but he opened to the front and found what page Proverbs 3 was located on and flipped through until he found it.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take.
Tim had read the verses again. His problem wasn’t believing that God was there. Tim knew deep down that he was. His problem was that he didn’t trust him. After what happened with his dad, he couldn’t imagine putting his life in the hands of someone who was so mean as to let his own father be taken.
“So you think we should let all of this go?” Tim said. “Just forget about it?”
Dale pursed his lips. “I’m going to ask God for wisdom. I don’t know the exact thing to do, but maybe God can even use something like this to bring somebody to him. I don’t think it’s right just to look the other way, but all of us need grace.”
“What do you mean?”
“Forgiveness when we don’t deserve it. It’s what God offers us.”
Mrs. Maxwell turned to him. “But one of the conditions God puts on it is our recognizing we need that forgiveness. We have to confess the wrong we’ve done, own up to it.”
“True,” Dale said. “Until Chad and Butch come to that point, they’re just running in circles.”
After they left, Tim held the DVD of his father’s accident in his hands and sat back on his bed. He finally knew the truth about who had given it to him. He also knew the truth about who had caused the accident. But what about himself? He’d done a lot of bad things in his life. Some of them he’d made right—like the money he stole from that old woman Mrs. Rubiquoy in Florida. He’d taken it back to her, and she told him something he’d never heard before. That God had something special for him. That he wanted to work through someone like Tim.
“I’m not sure I even believe in God,” Tim had said.
“Well, that’s okay,” Mrs. Rubiquoy had said. “He believes in you.”
The woman had told him not to forget that she was waiting to hear that he’d found the Lord. Tim smiled at the memory of her wrinkled face and picked up his Bible. He stared at it a long time, then put it on his nightstand, turned off the light, and went to sleep.
Chapter 34
On the Radio
IT WAS WEIRD for Jamie to be in Texas with her dad having a shot at the championship. Usually when they were here he was playing the part of the spoiler, trying to race ahead of the big boys and steal a win while they were battling it out for the championship. Now he was on the other side of things, looking at the rest of the field from the front rather than the back.
However, the last three races were going to be long and nothing was going to be easy. That became evident when her dad had trouble with the car before the race and had to qualify the backup without much practice time.
There were so many requests by the media for interviews that Chloe Snowe was running frantically and burning up her cell phone. She put a list of interviews in front of Jamie’s dad—everything from the major NASCAR magazines to a Christian radio station in town that wanted him to come to the studio for their morning program.
“I’ll definitely do that one,” her dad said, pointing to the Christian station.
“But there are a lot bigger stations—”
“I want to do that one,” he said. “I talk about racing all the time, but I hardly ever get to talk about my faith with any kind of depth. I want to do that one, and if any of the magazines want to come along, we’d be glad to have them.”
/////
Jamie’s concept of a Christian radio station was an old building with dusty, fake plants in the corner and old equipment other stations threw out. She was surprised when she and her dad walked into a new office building and were ushered to an elevator and to the top of the building with a view of the Metroplex that was second to none.
They had listened to the station on the way, and Jamie tried to imagine the people behind the voices. They were nothing like she pictured them. She figured the main host, a guy with a voice deeper than the Grand Canyon, would be big and burly like a bear. Instead, he was shorter than her and skinnier than Tim. There were traffic and news reporters, both women, who were pretty and welcomed them. Jamie thought they’d all have bloodshot eyes and bed hair, but they didn’t.
Jamie sat in the control room and watched her dad through the huge window. He autographed a couple of shirts for listeners and had a few pictures taken while music played.
When it was over, the host pulled the silver microphone to him and put on his headphones. “Dale, anybody who knows NASCAR knows about your stand for God, your integrity, the way you handle yourself out there. And I think God has really honored you by putting you in this position of racing for the cup.”
“Well, I don’t look at it as God honoring me as much as it is him working out his plan in my life,” her dad said. “I don’t see myself any more in his plan now than I did earlier this year when I was in trouble with a sponsor who thought I might not be a good investment. God takes us through the ups and downs and teaches us through the hard times. I’d much rather be in first than 43rd place, of course, but I’ll admit
he’s taught me a lot through the spinouts and crashes.”
The traffic reporter leaned forward. “Your daughter is with you this morning, and I know she has a promising career ahead of her. What’s it like for a dad to watch his daughter do something so dangerous?”
“Well, you mentioned a couple of accidents in your last report. It’s dangerous just driving to work. I’ve always wanted my kids to follow Jesus, and whatever he gives them to do is okay with me. I want my daughter to have a chance to do what she wants, and if that’s racing, then I’m fine with it.”
“Does your wife feel the same way?” the news reporter said with a chuckle.
“She’s had her moments,” her dad said. “But you have to remember, because of my schedule, she’s the one who’s been driving Jamie to most of her races in the past few years.”
The engineer in the room started a music bed underneath them, and the host took control. “One more question, Dale. If you don’t win the championship, will this season still be a success?”
“I guess that depends on how you define success. If winning is the only measure of that, then there are a lot of drivers and teams that will be disappointed. But if your definition is doing what God has called you to, doing your best and touching as many people with God’s love as possible, then that changes everything.”
“You still want to win though, right?” the host said.
Her dad laughed. “I didn’t come down here to lose.”
Chapter 35
The Call
TIM WALKED past the garage to the pits, rubbing his hands together, hoping he wouldn’t run into any of the Devalons, and checking the leader board. Dale had started a dismal 35th, and the car was terribly loose until the first pit stop. Tim knew it was a continual adjustment process to bring a backup car up to speed. The only question was whether they had enough race to get him to the front.
It was a 500-mile race, but it wasn’t until lap 295 that Dale made his way to the front and was able to stay out of a pit stop and actually lead a lap, giving him those extra points. When the leaders came out, Dale was pushed back to 16th place with a car that desperately needed fuel and new tires.