The timeline drove a path along every wall of their little cottage house. It went from the kitchen to the living room to the bathroom and both the bedrooms. It started in Penny's bedroom, and her birth and her first steps of walking and her talking and her singing of the old country national anthem were all praised in gold stars at the beginning of the line, and the line went on with many more milestones, and when she ever moved away from home to live a life that she blazed on her own, her parents could continue to mark her life with stars, from college to marriage to the ladder of career success, and so they would, and so they could dream of all the years ahead.

The last vertical on the horizontal line, the end of the sheets on the living room wall, was marked as "PENNY DIES." Penny had to look at that spot every night when she watched TV, and her father felt it was good for her to see those two words together, to help her see her entire life in context and build it strong because it had such an established conclusion as that. They did not know the day and place but they were sure that it would happen, and so would its gold star. Little Penny just looked at the TV show and sometimes she wondered who would put up the star when she got to that day, to the day of those last two words.

Little truck? Big truck?

Can't tell which

Under the dirt road cloud of dust

The days and their sounds, the ripping of tire on track, the guns of the turn, gentle but fast, these are what he heard, but in between came the days of quiet, of refilling the popcorn machine, of checking the track for cracks and potholes and filing it down to smoothness, and the perfect days when the clouds gave way and the whole world was a black border oval, and the whole world turned just like the race track looked.

They called him Walker because he had trouble doing it. It was just a joke and made the grease monkeys chuckle. He could crawl just fine, just like he had in his small grandstand space before his birth, and they put him in the race cars at an early age and he could ride inside there fine, but walking was a bit more of a challenge, and when he'd take some steps he'd take them and fall down on his face. One of the grease monkeys, Harry Houdecherry, said, "That's some walker," when he'd fall down on his face, and the name stuck like a sticky decal advertising STP, or some other brand of motor oil, and that was the name that the pit crews and the fans called out when they saw him crawling by, or sitting in his high chair reading the racing stats and wondering who'd win the next ten laps.

School for him was racing school, and the little training race cars with the peddle wheels for tots came first, but he still got the same expert advice from the grease monkeys and the pit crews, like how to steer on a wet patch, and what to do when the sun on another driver's car brought a moment of blindness that could throw you over and twitch the wheel to tragedy. He was taught that the car may be going fast, but you must keep your movements slow, but you must slow down the world around you with your icy reason and give yourself the time in space to make the right decision, as if you split the second with nuclear fission and explained it all to a layman in the thickest of detail and jargon so they understood it faster than they could bat an eyelash. It was a matter of developing lightning reflexes as slow as water, as slow as the waves that the moon pulls so quietly.

They talked to him with fantastic story legends that you would never believe if the roadway weren't right there at your toes to see it, and they drew him illustrations in the wind and the dust and the stories were larger than life but you had to believe them because the words came so often with nods and foot taps to show you their veracity. Like the legend of Denteena Tavish, a lady racer who used to hold the steering wheel in her mouth, and how her supersensitive teeth could steer a finer line than many a man-finger, and how her hairnet flapped the wind with a sound so still but sometimes, depending on the atmospheric pressure, it was all you could hear in the roar of the race-day. And tales of Butts Bulbay, who was so big they actually had to construct his racecars around his body, and how he'd wear that car until he'd snap its seams with that extra snack one day, and the grease monkeys had to disconnect the rest of the ruined car around him and there he'd be standing in his big pink birthday suit until he was ready for a new roll down the assembly line, and a new car designed and screwed and welded together around his body so he could wear it for a new day, so he could move his bulk around again fast as a potato chip.

You thought it was

Your best friend

But it was your car instead

Junior Ad Copywriter Scouts was a lot of fun for Penny and all the other girls too. They got to come up with jingles and draw little product pictures and take field trips, like to the speedway that day. Bargainhunter was the scoutmaster, and she had many big names to put her name next to, and she made you believe that she was such an important person by all those names beside her name and you had to respect her because she was important, because she had all those names and that meant something very important.

Bargainhunter had been a Junior Ad Copywriter Scout not that long ago herself, and this made her very special to all the younger girls, because she was just a bigger girl, and they would all be as busty as her before the sun went on too long and if they only waited. She had long hair, like a picture in the ads, and she came up with some pretty good campaign slogans herself. Later, when Penny was at the University and working on her degree, she discovered while researching advertising history for an essay that all the great original slogans that Bargainhunter seemed to come up with so easily were in fact advertising slogans from the past – maybe they were ones that Bargainhunter heard when she was a little girl. So she was just faking it but after all maybe that was why she was just a Junior Ad Copywriter Scouts leader and not a principle partner in a gigantic important advertising firm.

Bargainhunter was important because she handed out the merit badges, but she handed them out only if she thought a Junior Ad Copywriter Scout had the merit to earn the badge, and she would sometimes resort to scientific samples to check that out, and take representative polls, or put together a focus group, and if the survey indicated beyond sampling error, then she would award the merit badge in a small but very appropriate ceremony.

Penny got the paper gold stars at home and merit badges at Junior Ad Copywriter's Scouts because she had the example of the timeline at home to teach her and she knew how to draw out a line to get each thing and mark off each step along the way to get ahead in life and camp. She even got the most sought after merit badge, the speedway merit badge, and the badge was as round as her name, as round as a wheel. She also had her memories of how she got that round badge, and the badge itself to remember that day, that magical day at the speedway, because that is where you must get the speedway merit badge. She had a memory of a ride in a small car beside a little boy and the feel of his car around him and the feel of his legs and body beside her and the way the race track moved beneath them as if it were slipping away to the space under their dreams and if she could convert those thoughts and feelings into ad copy she could sell most anything most any day and that was her challenge and her excellent inspiration.

Purple evening

The kids roll by on sandy sounding wheels

A car way off grumbles

Race car ways, race car days, umbrellas in the sun and cheers and oil for everyone. The smell of popcorn and hot dogs and the crisp air of the exhaust pipe and the flags all around the track whipping the air to teach it so. Face after face with dots for eyes with buttons to push with the needle rising in speed and the sounds saying how high to 90 on the Junior race days and the Senior race days and you have to hope that your wheels can spin so fast to give the others your dust and you push forward with your body tugging down and up with your body and your arms turning the steeringwheel as if the wheels of the car were your own wheels on your own body and there's the sound of the road beneath you as if it were the sound of yourself and the very light and track and the handicap of your brain misting over, or the car and you out of rhythm like dancers so slow they move thru jello and some days it's right and some days it's wrong and some days you win and some days you lose and some days you can win the whole race as if you never left your head and some days every movement is a chore for you and your shining race car.

Walker's eyes race back and forth, framed like a movie screen by the eyes of his helmet. He rolls his eyes hard at the racetrack and at the controls of his miniature racer. If he looks hard enough, he can look his way to victory. If he tenses his body like a steel mousetrap he can hold the laps, each one like a seed between his teeth. He can hold it tight and win by faster than the others and win by not wanting but waiting to snap like the trap clack smooth until the finish line, but if he clacks earlier, like on lap five or lap ten or lap eleven, he's as limp as a banana skin for the rest and all the others race past him and he can try to tense his body back, but he can't reset the trap and his concentration and his winning and his far out in the lead.

It was on a racetrack long ago and a miniature speedster made just the size for a child to drive but still capable of excessive speeds and Walker was good with it; he learned to take the curves just right and knew how to balance out the tyranny of risk, and he was very serious about that big balloon of possible disaster that had a way of smoothing the air over your head and he know how to be careful so it wouldn't pop around the bend or the straight uninhibited path. She got in the car with him and took a look at his face before entering and this could be a look because this might be her last three turns or his last few turns because the speedway was always disaster's partner and the big cold faces of the men and women who'd died here over the years did flap above their heads, and it wasn't a light flap it was a hard flap, canvas flags, rubber flags, flags of soot and flags of steel, so you'd hear it and remember.

The risk was great for a little boy in his little racer uniform with its baby decals and his smaller than usual helmet. The risk was great for a little girl in her Junior Ad Copywriter Scout uniform complete with neckerchief and small round merit badge pins. Today she might earn the speedway merit badge. It would be a sign of her ultimate bravery. She might win it if she makes it out alive from the racing and the curves.

There is no competition for him on the speedway today; there are no other drivers. There are the long black stretches that you can raise your speed dial upon, just the curves that you have to take as if you were carefully drawing them on a piece of paper. But Walker has not ever taken on a passenger beside him in his Speedster, even tho he has been driving for years. He learned from other drivers while seated beside them inside such speedsters himself and riding, but this is his first time doing the same to anyone else, giving a ride to a fellow rider.

And they went, vroom around the bend into the dust and asphalt ground of sky and he was precise in his way around the turns and yet he took them with his greatest and most careful speed and Penny could tell that she was with an expert, it was the way he did everything so methodically, step by step, but also as if he had thrown away the piece of paper years ago with the list of procedures. He was an expert, she could tell that, she could tell by the way his body controlled his machine as if body and car were fused and one and how he almost spoke each speedup and slow down step so loud with his body, he did it like he was lecturing her about the reasons and the risks, but he did no talking.

And he could sense her analysis and he was hyperaware of her thoughts studying his body and his movements, as if her thoughts were fingers feeling his every gesture. After all, she would have to write out a detailed report when the day was done.

They both looked straight, forward. That's what you do as if the road in front of you is the greatest entertainment. But he could feel her mind upon his body as if it didn't need to see, as if it could attract all the information by vibration, thru the trembling of the seat and their bodies with the machine's ease and power.

It's like after they set off on the speedway that a million photo albums exploded in her head, random glances, at speeds and years before and yet ahead, scraps of music from tens of background radios in the several chords of the tires sounding accompaniment, all the TV scenes in the black base of the road streaked with tires and atoms from childhood to dusk. She might not have even thought about her future career tho that is what Junior Ad Copywriter Scouts trains you to do, tho that is what the long timeline that her father drew up and that still lined the walls of her parents' cottage home trained her to do, but she saw that an entire life could play like a movie or a radio song and that it could be full like a long day and satisfying like a curve that you get correct in your steering and how all the tire tracks going to the side can pound the breeze to cool your face and how two children can last a long time together if they just hang on, if there's a strap or a kneecap to grab onto and hold for dear life.

And then, just then, the run on the track was over. He pulled back the clutch and shined his feet with a press of the brakes and the car slowed down and they just sat there for a second or two to absorb the blow, as if they could not leave the speedster proximity, as if gravity, as if negligence. And outside of the seats of the Junior Speedster there were just their eyes and they had to say goodbye but they didn't know how so they just looked until they had to look away. And Walker knew now that he could have feelings outside the confines of a race car, that he could know and believe with the whole sky above him, and somewhere across the sky was the place where she was and she now knew what a car could do for her, what speed could say from one person to another, and she could express it with words and the description of pictures and a film crew could make a commercial so anybody watching could feel it too, and believe it too, and want it more than anything else.

Stop sign pole bent

Crouched to the sidewalk

Five tears of broken headlight

In the cottage house in her childhood home so far away there was a timeline across the walls that had her whole life spread out on it and all the gold stars that she had reached so far and all the empty milestones that she had to live and grab to get. Her father blew his toy trumpet and presented her with the gold star to commemorate that she had achieved the highest number of Junior Ad Copywriters Scouts merit badges and she licked the star and tasted the yellow paste. It tasted, it tasted... after all these years of stars and milestones, it still made her mouth pucker a little. But she loved it, she loved that foul flavor of yellow and achievement and recognition. She put the star up and the ceremony was over. Her mother gave her a cookie and she and her father went back to the living room to watch television under the wall around the timeline of Penny's later years.

After the commercial break, Penny walked into the kitchen to see her twenties and thirties. She read the milestones that she would some day reach when she was tall and mature, when she was awarded the degree of real womanhood. The marks were all the things about falling in love with the right man and marrying him and having a family and having success at her job.

She looked and she looked and there was no place on the timeline for the dream of the feeling, or maybe it was everywhere and in the shape of the gold paper stars that glowed all night or had yet to lick their place. She wanted and wished for a turning point, a place in her future about her dream of a feeling and how she reached it and held it like a friend. Somewhere in the kitchen on the timeline, somewhere in her twenties or her thirties she wanted there to be some vertical position about how she conquered the power of the dream of the feeling for the good of world peace, and she wanted to write that line there herself as a goal of her own. She wanted to write it in her own particular handwriting, but all the rest of the timeline, all the milestones written out and the long line itself of her life, all those were set out in her father's block letters, formal like on blueprints, and she could never match that particular stroke and style, and her entry would stand out any time anybody stood to wash dishes or a potato and would look up at it.

Freeway bridges

Heavy as Mars

Lifeless too

The Junior Ad Copywriters Scouts had time for play, and time for lessons and time for bonding and complaints and campfires and commercial message analysis and thinking and riding in vehicles and field trips. Driver met Walker on a Junior Ad Copywriter Scouts field trip to the speedway. The Scouts went there so they could experience and write about speed and escape in their little teenage words; they had to see it and hear and smell it with their play-doh teenage bodies. Penny was all gangly with the other girls, a hive of excitement and ooh's past the track and up into the grandstand. Walker was sponging off some surfaces, he was cleaning with a rag some rails and benches, he was wiping them clean as the group of girls entered the grandstand led by their tall blond leader Bargainhunter. Walker's eyes did a walk past their giggles and glances.

Back then he had a junior Speedster 12, and the grease monkeys called on him to do a little exhibition for the Junior Ad Copywriter Scouts. So he goggled up and gave it the gas and did the early unformed version of his "Fast Speed Maneuver" which would be so effective in a few years later of driving, and a tire speedup and a mudflap toss and he could feel the darling girls clap at the back windshield in back of his ears as he drove past the stands, and in particular one set of eyes and they were round and bright as coins in the sun.

He was shy and she wasn't so shy and she burned badly to feel the speed and the tires just beneath her so she was selected by Bargainhunter to be the one to ride the next lap around with Walker. She got into the small car with her head down low first. He saw the top of her head and how her hair was parted in the great scalp forest as she assumed her spot in the car headfirst. In between the part of her dark hair was the strong white line of her scalp, so different in color from the rest of her tan skin, and when the speedway driving curve came she grabbed out to his near arm and he almost lost his steering at the feel of her rubbery flesh on his but he held fast with his eyes and his other arm, and her sweet smell was with him, he could swallow it even over the fumes of gas and burnt rubber, and her smile that filled his windshield back and that gripped so tight in panic and then only slowly released when the road beat its head into the long straightaway clear to the sun and the tall trees out behind the advertising wall and the clouds that held their place far above them all.

First off

Then switched on, and seeing

The headlights live the car

There it is, her dream of a feeling, for as long as it takes to back up, and the moment to curve into the street and make new traffic. At the time when the sun looks for its way and the branches are tall and empty to the sky she looks for the path with minimal hesitation, she writes her way to the next commercial break. Round as a wheel she can have her own life, her life on the seat, and when she does hesitate at a stop sign she can check thru the pages of notes and specification flyers that sit in the seat beside her. She can look for a glimpse of the next right word, she can seek the technical details that evoke the smoothness, that roll your cares to smoothness, that turn round time into the first touch of a mattress, to hold your body in air as if you and your whole stack of days were weightless.

She hesitates, and then she acts. Pulls out into a lane of her own. Not on a commuting trip to work, but to some place on the last edge of edges. Her thoughts and dreams have driven her here, she turns the steering to drive them back, to look for them in the rear view mirror, to search the wide screen windshield for every detail, every cornstalk or windmill - it has to be here soon. She can go so far till she winds the thread up the side of a mountain, or until she drives the desert as far as the eye can see, and her suspension tells its tales, it holds her smooth enough for writing paper. She has to find the correct expression and you can't always find it when your desk is stationary. She will drive to her drawing, she will drive to her feeling, and then she can write it in words to stir the casual viewer.

The wheels turn

Fast slow fast

Stop sign dance

It was so clear to her in her bunkbed at night - Walker was the man or the boy of her dreams. Walker and the road moving so fast beneath him. At night alone in bed she made pictures of him and his acceleration and they were like bold and repeated flashes of light, like mind lightning when the room and the world all around her were absolute darkness. She never talked about it, but the other girls in Junior Ad Copywriter Scouts noticed something in her face, a new twitch to her smile, and they may not have been sure but they knew there was something in her lips, in the edges of its wound.

Her best friend and bunkmate was Tracia Manghangertobe. Tracia could tell something was up when they watched the races on TV. She noticed how Penny rolled her body in a motion so on the couch as if she were trying to erase the lesson in its upholstery.

"I met a man," Tracia said, and her mind was not on ad copy as much as Penny's could be.

"Tell me about his car, and tell me about him," Penny asked.

"I didn't notice what kind of car he drove, but his name was Livius. He was wonderful, and his name was Livius Manghanger. If I am to marry him someday then I shall be his wife in words and in reality."

As Penny listened, she wondered if she would marry Walker someday, if they would exchange rings on the racetrack with handkerchiefs crying in the grandstands. Maybe they would stay in their cars and do a victory lap side by side. Maybe they wouldn't even say, "I do," but would go vroom vroom vroom and then peel out until death. She thought that there must be special ways to be wed in the speedway world, and she imagined the traditions, and maybe she could even write some ad copy based on the scenes that she suspected in her imagination.

"What is it about Livius that makes him special?" Penny asked Tracia, and tho she asked her friend the question, she really wanted to know so she could imagine those things and more about her own man or boy.

"Oh, I don't know," Tracia said. "I don't know if it's anything specific, or it's just him, all of him. It's the way he looks away from the TV when I enter the room, it's that he likes me more than the beautiful women in the movies; he told me so. He loves me more than the stunning actresses, even if I don't look as good or wear clothes as expensive as that. I think he likes me more than he likes his apartment, and it has a really nice view too, so that is a good indicator. He likes me better than his computer and his table lamp and even his very functional couch and chair. He likes me more than the tasty meal that was very expensive. He told me so when we went out to dinner."

"Does he love you more than he loves his car?"

Tracia felt a sneeze coming, and she was ready to sneeze it out, but she just froze like a single frame because it never came. "I never asked him that, and I've never looked in his eyes while he's driven me thru town. I look at the road and the buildings ahead, and I think that there might be things in there or around to tempt him, but I didn't look at his eyes or ask him."

On TV, the shocking news was interrupted by an update on the speedway race, for the news of Walker coming from behind around the corner, and all that Penny could see of him on the TV screen was his Speedster racer and its decals and its colors, but somehow she saw it everywhere and always, even when they'd cut to a shot of the grandstands or the competing racers or the victory girls and all the roses. This was his face, with the wheels and the radiator. This was his body with the brightly painted signs on the smooth metal finish. This was his passion, the way the car clawed to the track at the corners as if it were gravity itself, and it was her passion too. It was like that speed was their lovemaking, the ripping car sounds their moans of pleasure.

"You should find out more about Livius' car and then tell me," Penny said to her friend and then they went for a walk past the auto showroom to look at the cars and imagined their men inside the new models in such steel and such glass, and did their homework for the next big assignment and merit badge tryouts. They saw their reflections in the window glass but even with that they looked right thru themselves and paid attention to the extras and the features and the smooth shapes of the car bodies inside, and they wondered what it would be like to live and drive each model inside their someday marriages, and maybe they needed a test drive like a date for intuition. But they had to walk past and think and dream for the present, because neither of them had a driver's license yet, but they would and soon as part of their average adolescence.

A lesson in wheels

I told you so

With the speed of my vehicle

Part Four

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