The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

After everyone had left and we had all completed our cleaning assignments, Denny had a surprise birthday present for Zoë. He showed her a photograph that she looked at with little interest. But then he showed the same photograph to Eve, and it made Eve cry. And then it made her laugh and she hugged him and looked at the photo again and cried some more. Denny picked up the photograph and showed it to me, and it was a photo of a house Denny had bought.

  “Look at this, Enzo,” he said. “This is your new yard. Aren’t you excited?”

  I guess I was excited. Actually, I was kind of confused. I didn’t understand the implications. And then everyone started shoving things into boxes and scrambling around, and the next thing I knew, my bed was somewhere else entirely.

  The house was nice. It was a stylish little bungalow like I’d seen on This Old House, with two bedrooms and only one bathroom but with plenty of living space. It was situated very close to its neighbors on a hillside in the Central District.

  Eve and Denny were in love with the place. They spent almost the entire first night there strolling around in every room except Zoë’s. When Denny came home from work, he would first say hello to the girls, then he would take me outside to the yard and throw the ball, which I happily retrieved. And then Zoë got big enough that she would run around and squeal while I pretended to chase her. And Eve would admonish her: “Don’t run like that; Enzo will bite you.”

  She did that frequently in the early years, doubt me like that. But one time, Denny turned on her quickly and said, “Enzo would never hurt her—ever!” And he was right. I knew I was different from other dogs. I had a certain willpower that was strong enough to overcome my instincts. What Eve said was not out of line. Most dogs cannot help themselves; if they see an animal running, they go after it. But that sort of thing doesn’t apply to me.

  Still, Eve didn’t know that, and I had no way of explaining it to her, so I never played rough with Zoë. I didn’t want Eve to start worrying. Because I had already smelled it. When Denny was away and Eve fed me and she leaned down to give me my bowl of food and my nose was near her head, I had detected a bad odor, like rotting wood, mushrooms, decay. Wet, soggy decay. It came from her ears and her sinuses. There was something inside Eve’s head that didn’t belong.

  Given a speaking tongue, I could have told them. I could have alerted them to her condition long before they discovered it with their machines, the computers and supervision scopes that they use to see inside the human head. They may think those machines are sophisticated, but in fact they are clunky and clumsy. My nose—yes, my little black nose that is leathery and cute—could smell the disease in Eve’s brain long before even she knew it was there.

  But I couldn’t talk. So all I could do was watch and feel empty inside; Eve had assigned me to protect Zoë no matter what, but no one had been assigned to protect Eve. And there was nothing I could do to help her.

  Chapter Eight

  One summer Saturday afternoon, we spent the morning at the beach at Alki swimming and eating fish and chips from Spud’s. When we returned to the house, red and tired from the sun, Eve put Zoë down for a nap; Denny and I sat in front of the TV to study.

  He put on a tape of a long-distance race he had driven in Portland a few weeks earlier. It was an exciting race, eight hours long, in which Denny and his two co-drivers took turns behind the wheel in two-hour shifts. They came in first after Denny’s last-minute heroics, which included recovering from a near spin to overtake two competitors.

  Denny started the tape at the beginning of his final stint. The track was wet and the sky heavy with dark clouds that threatened more rain. We watched several laps in silence. Denny drove smoothly and almost alone. His team had fallen behind after making the crucial decision to pull into the pits and switch to rain tires; other racing teams had predicted the rain would pass and so had gained more than two laps on Denny’s team. Yet the rain began again, which gave Denny a great advantage.

  Denny quickly and easily passed cars from other classes. There were underpowered Miatas that darted through the turns with their excellent balance; big-engine Vipers with their lousy handling. Denny, in his quick and muscular Porsche, slicing through the rain.

  “How come you go through the turns so much faster than the other cars?” Eve asked.

  I looked up. She stood in the doorway, watching with us. “Most of them aren’t running rain tires,” Denny said.

  Eve took a seat on the sofa next to Denny. “But some of them are.”

  “Yes, some,” he said. We watched. Denny drove up behind a yellow Camaro at the end of the back straight. And though it looked as if he could have taken the other car in turn 12, he held back. Eve noticed.

  “Why didn’t you pass him?” she asked.

  “I know him. He’s got too much power and would just pass me back on the straight. I think I take him in the next series of turns.” Yes. At the next turn, Denny was inches from the Camaro’s rear bumper. He rode tight through the double turn and then took the inside line for the next turn and he zipped right by.

  “This part of the track is really slick in the rain,” he said. “He has to back way off. By the time he gets his grip back, I’m out of his reach.”

  On the back straight again, the Camaro could be seen in Denny’s rearview mirror, fading into the background.

  “Did he have rain tires?” Eve asked.

  “I think so. But his car wasn’t set up right.”

  “Still. You’re driving like the track isn’t wet, and everyone else is driving like it is.”

  Turn 12 and blasting down the straight, we could see brake lights of the competition flicker ahead; Denny’s next victims.

  “We are the creators of our own destiny,” Denny said softly.

  “What?” Eve asked.

  “When I was nineteen,” Denny said after a moment, “at my first driving school down at Sears Point, it was raining and they were trying to teach us how to drive in the rain. After the instructors were finished explaining all their secrets, all the students were totally confused. We had no idea what they were talking about. I looked over at the guy next to me—I remember him, he was from France and he was very fast. He smiled and he said, ‘We are the creators of our own destiny.’”

  Eve stuck out her lower lip and squinted at Denny. “And then everything made sense,” she said jokingly.

  “That’s right,” Denny said seriously.

  On the TV, the rain didn’t stop; it kept coming. Denny’s team had made the right choice; other teams were pulling off into the hot pits to change to rain tires.

  “Drivers are afraid of the rain,” Denny told us. “Rain makes your mistakes even worse, and water on the track can make your car handle unpredictably. When something unpredictable happens, you have to react to it; if you’re reacting at speed, you’re reacting too late. And so you should be afraid.”

  “I’m afraid just watching it,” Eve said.

  “If I intentionally make the car do something, then I can predict what it’s going to do. In other words, it’s only unpredictable if I’m not . . . possessing . . . it.”

  “So you spin the car before the car spins itself?” she asked.

  “That’s it! If I deliberately do something, then I know it’s going to happen before it happens. Then I can react to it before even the car knows it’s happening.”

  “And you can do that?”

  On the TV screen, Denny could be seen dashing past other cars. His rear end suddenly slipped out and his car got sideways. But his hands were already turning to correct, and he was off again, leaving the others behind. Eve sighed in relief, held her hand to her forehead.

  “I love you,” she said. “I love all of you, even your racing. And I know on some level that you are completely right about all this. I just don’t think I could ever do it myself.”

  She went off into the kitchen; Denny and I continued watching the cars on the video as they drove around and around the circuit drenched in darkness.

  I wi
ll never tire of watching tapes with Denny. He knows so much, and I have learned so much from him. He said nothing more to me; he continued watching his tapes. But my thoughts turned to what he had just taught me. Such a simple concept, yet so true: we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

  I left Denny at the TV and walked into the kitchen. Eve was preparing dinner, and she looked at me when I entered.

  “Bored with the race?” she asked casually.

  I wasn’t bored. I could have watched the race all that day and all the next. I was creating my own destiny. I lay down near the refrigerator, in a favorite spot of mine, and rested.

  I could tell she felt self-conscious with me there. Usually, if Denny was in the house, I spent my time by his side; that I had chosen to be with her now seemed to confuse her. She didn’t understand my intentions. But then she got rolling with dinner, and she forgot about me.

  First she started some hamburger frying, which smelled good. Then she washed some lettuce and spun it dry. She sliced apples. She added onions and garlic to a pot and then a can of tomatoes. And the kitchen was rich with the smell of food. The smell of it and the heat of the day made me feel quite drowsy, so I must have nodded off. Then I felt her hands on me, stroking my side, then scratching my belly, and I rolled over on my back to acknowledge her; my reward was more of her comforting scratches.

  “Sweet dog,” she said to me. “Sweet dog.”

  She returned to her preparations, pausing only occasionally to rub my neck with her bare foot as she passed, which wasn’t all that much, but meant a lot to me anyway. I reached out to Eve, and she responded—a connection was made. Denny was right: We are the creators of our own destiny.

  Chapter Nine

  A couple of years after we moved into the new house, something very frightening happened.

  Earlier that spring Denny had gone to France for a Formula Renault testing program. He did exceptionally well in this program because it was in France in the spring, when it rains. When he told Eve about it, he said that one of the scouts who attend these things approached after the session and said, “Can you drive as fast on dry tracks as you can on wet ones?” And Denny looked him straight in the eyes and replied, simply, “Try me.”

  The scout offered Denny a tryout, and Denny went away for two weeks. Testing and tuning and practicing. It was a big deal. He did so well, they offered him a seat in the endurance race at Watkins Glen.

  When he first left for New York, we all grinned at each other because we couldn’t wait to watch the race on Speed Channel. “It’s so exciting.” Eve would giggle. “Daddy’s a professional race car driver!”

  And Zoë, whom I love very much and would not hesitate to sacrifice my own life to protect, would cheer and hop into her little race car they kept in the living room. Then she would drive around in circles until we were all dizzy and then throw her hands into the air and proclaim, “I am the champion!”

  I got so caught up in the excitement, I was doing idiotic dog things like digging up the lawn. Balling myself up and then stretching out on the floor with my legs straight and my back arched and letting them scratch my belly. And chasing things. I chased!

  It was the best of times. Really.

  And then it was the worst of times.

  Race day came, and Eve woke up very early feeling awful. She had a pain so terrible that she stood in the kitchen and vomited violently into the sink. She vomited as if she were turning herself inside out.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Enzo,” she said. And she rarely spoke to me candidly like that. Like how Denny talks to me, as if I’m his true friend, his soul mate. The last time she had talked to me like that was when Zoë was born.

  But this time she did talk to me like I was her soul mate. She asked, “What’s wrong with me?”

  She knew I couldn’t answer. And I felt totally frustrated because I had an answer.

  I knew what was wrong, but I had no way to tell her. So I pushed at her thigh with my muzzle. I nosed in and buried my face between her legs. And I waited there, afraid.

  “I feel like someone’s crushing my skull,” she said. I couldn’t respond. I had no words. There was nothing I could do. “Someone’s crushing my skull,” she repeated.

  And quickly she gathered some things while I watched. She shoved Zoë’s clothes in a bag and some of her own and toothbrushes. All so fast. And she roused Zoë and stuffed her little-kid feet into her little-kid sneakers and—bang—the door slammed shut. And then—snick, snick—the dead bolt was thrown and they were gone.

  And I wasn’t gone. I was there. I was still there.

  Chapter Ten

  Ideally, a driver is a master of all that is around him, Denny says. Ideally, a driver controls the car so completely that he corrects a spin before it happens. He anticipates all possibilities. But we don’t live in an ideal world. In our world, surprises sometimes happen, mistakes happen. Incidents with other drivers happen, and a driver must react.

  When a driver reacts, Denny says, it’s important to remember that a car is only as good as its tires. If the tires lose their grip, nothing else matters. Not engine power, speed, or braking. Nothing else counts when a skid starts. Until the tires regain their grip, the driver is unable to control the car. And that’s a bad situation.

  It is important for the driver to override his natural fear. When a car begins to spin, the driver may panic and lift his foot off the gas. If he does, he will throw the weight of the car toward the front wheels. Then the rear end will snap around, and the car will spin.

  A good driver will try to stop the spin by turning his wheels in the direction the car is moving. He may succeed. However, at a critical point, the skidding stops, and suddenly the tires grip the road but his front wheels are now turned in the wrong direction. This causes a counterspin in the other direction. This secondary spin is much faster and more dangerous.

  If, however, when his tires begin to break free, our driver increases the pressure on the accelerator, and at the same time eases out on the steering wheel ever so slightly, this will lessen the lateral g-forces at work. The spin will therefore be corrected.

  So, our driver is still in control of his car. He is still able to act in a positive manner. He still can create an ending to his story in which he completes the race without incident. And, perhaps, if his creating is good, he will win.

  Chapter Eleven

  When I was locked in the house suddenly and firmly, I did not panic. I quickly and carefully took stock of the situation and understood these things: Eve was ill, and the illness was possibly affecting her judgment. Also she likely would not return for me; I knew that Denny would be home on the third day, after two nights.

  I am a dog, and I know how to go without food. For three days I took care to ration the toilet water. I wandered around the house sniffing at the crack beneath the pantry door and fantasizing about a big bowl of my kibble. I was able to scoop up the occasional dust-covered Cheerio Zoë had dropped in a corner somewhere. And I did my business on the mat by the back door, next to the laundry machines. I did not panic.

  During the second night, approximately forty hours into my solitude, I think I began to see things that weren’t there. I heard a sound coming from Zoë’s bedroom. When I investigated, I saw something terrible and frightening. One of her stuffed animal toys was moving about on its own.

  It was the zebra. The now-living zebra said nothing to me at all, but when it saw me it began a dance, a twisting, jerky ballet. It began to tease and taunt a Barbie doll. That made me quite angry, and I growled at the evil zebra, but it simply smiled and continued, this time picking on a stuffed frog, which it rode like a horse, its hoof in the air like a bronco rider, yelling out, “Yee-haw! Yee-haw!”

  I stalked the zebra as it abused and humiliated each of Zoë’s toys. Finally, I could take no more and I moved in, teeth bared for attack, to en
d the brutality once and for all. But before I could get the crazed zebra in my fangs, it stopped dancing and stood on its hind legs before me. Then it tore at the seam that ran down its belly. Its own seam! It ripped the seam open until it was able to reach in and tear out its own stuffing. It continued to take itself apart, handful by handful, until it was nothing more than a pile of fabric and stuffing.

  Shocked by what had happened, I left Zoë’s room, hoping that what I had seen was only in my mind. A vision driven by the lack of food. But I knew that it wasn’t a vision; it was true. Something terrible had happened.

  The following afternoon, Denny returned. I heard the taxi pull up, and I watched him unload his bags and walk them up to the back door. I didn’t want to seem too excited to see him. Yet at the same time I was concerned about what I had done to the doormat, so I gave a couple of small barks to alert him. Through the window, I could see the look of surprise on his face. He took out his keys and opened the door, and I tried to block him, but he came in too quickly and the mat made a squishy sound. He looked down and carefully hopped into the room.

  “What the heck? What are you doing here?”

  He glanced around the kitchen. Nothing was out of place, nothing was amiss, except me.

  “Eve?” he called out.

  But Eve wasn’t there. I didn’t know where she was, but she wasn’t with me.

  “Are they home?” he asked me.

  I didn’t answer. He picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Are Eve and Zoë still at your house?” he asked without saying hello. “Can I speak to Eve?”

  After a moment, he said, “Enzo is here.”

  He said, “I’m trying to understand it myself. You left him here?”

  I couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but I could imagine.

  Denny said, “This is insane. How could you not remember that your dog is in the house?”

  He said, “He’s been here the whole time?”