Number Nine

Chapter Twenty Six

  "I mean I knew Bowman was a dirtbag. I always got heat for not getting along with him but here we are." Chase scoffed. "I guess it really ought to surprise me to find out that my teammate is conspiring with another team but honestly it doesn't. Not really. It doesn't even surprise me all that much that he chased you for overhearing his conversation when he was dumb enough to have one where anyone could stumble along. 

  As we walked along he kicked little clods of dusty dirt into the air, watching the particles settle to the ground over the toe of his grimy sneaker. 

  "I see that now, obviously. But at Daytona he was a totally different guy, acted like I was just this incredible vision that had come to him."

   "Scary isn't it?" Chase asked. "He's good at that. Always has been. Alex is probably the most two faced person that I've ever come across and you can't trust a word that comes out of his mouth either."

  "Is there something wrong with him?"

   Chase snorted, "Well obviously there is or he wouldn't act like he does."

   "No you know what I mean-"

  "Do I though?" He interrupted again, shooting me a cockeyed grin.

  I laughed and shoved against him. 

  "Let me finish! You know what I mean though. Is there something genuinely wrong with the guy. Like, has he been diagnosed as anything?"

  Chase shook his head, shoved his hands in his pockets and meandered along beside me. A certain ease that I hadn't seen in him before loosened his shoulders and a there was a constant little quirk at the edge of his mouth. If he'd done this around me in the short time I'd known him, I'd never noticed before. It sure hadn't been obvious if it was there at all. I liked this Chase a whole lot better than all the Chase's I'd seen before. Somewhere in the back of my mind I came to the conclusion that I would do my best to make sure this version of him stuck around. 

  "Not that I know of. When I was hired at least they didn't make you submit anything on mental health, which was sort of surprising to me, honestly. I think you'd want to know if a guy you had just signed on to put in a racecar going two hundred miles an hour wanted to kill himself. That'd sure be an easy way to do it. Once you're in car just take off a safety restraint, accidentally get loose and there you go."

  That took me by surprise. Not that the league didn't require a mental health assessment to be signed on like they did a physical assessment. The way Chase, who I knew was in a little bit of a bad spot at the moment so casually mentioned that his job was an easy way to kill yourself. Like this was just a well known fact that came to each and every NASCAR fan and driver's mind. Maybe the statement alone, of him saying that a suicidal man could easily use his job in NASCAR to finish the job wouldn't have really sent up an alarm. We were talking about mental health after all. The fact that he seemed to have a plan on how a man would do said thing was what scared me. 

  "Were you listening?" Chase had stopped in his tracks and stood staring at me.

  Not paying a bit of attention to him, I'd kept on walking ahead of him, his words though brought me back to earth.

  "I'm sorry, I wasn't," I hesitated a bit. Should I tell him what I thought of him having a plan for how a driver could kill themselves? Did I really know him well enough to be sticking my nose into the issue?

   "I was just asking how you knew what to do." It was his turn to hesitate. "That's happened before, more uh, recently anyways, as I've gotten older." Chase bit his lip but nodded that we keep walking.