Change of Plan

by KEN PURDY

PIETRO LONETTI sat in his car, a little man, very erect, well back from the wheel. He looked confident and happy, and so he was. In about one hour and a half he intended to kill himself. The decision had calmed him; it had put an end to the torments of the five years that lay leaden behind him; it had restored the lilting serenity, the certainty that all was for the happy, happy best, that he had, as a younger man, worn like a feather in his hair. Pietro Lonetti felt very well indeed.

He looked around. Most of these people were new to him. Lots of them had still been driving sports cars when the war started. He knew Pierre Marten, in the Ferrari, an old competitor. He knew Lyon, of course, with his bull neck and wrestlers’ arms, and Ignace Manelli. Manelli had one of the new Alfa-Romeos. But so many of the others were young and new. The boy next to Lonetti, for instance, in the blue Talbot. Maurice Lascelle, called “Popo.” He had been a great hero in the French Resistance.

He drove very hard, but with no style. The Englishman, Danton, in an old E.R.A. That pink skin, Lonetti thought, that bland blue eye. A thin old man of about twenty-nine summers. He looks a bit like Dick Seaman, but Seaman is a dozen years dead, burned in a Mercedes-Benz at Spa. Varzi, too, dead in a skid in the rain. Rosemeyer long dead, Christian Kautz dead, Ted Horn dead, Hepburn dead, Lonetti dead . . . the dour little man grinned to himself. Not yet, he said, not quite yet. Lonetti will die when he wants to. And not in bed, no matter what the damned doctors say. And after he has won this one. And in no accident.

The sixty-second gun boomed out and one engine fired, coughed, and settled down to an undulating roar as the driver gunned it up and down; another started, then two, three, another, two more, until the hot July air was pulsing with the sound of thirty open exhausts.

Lonetti hunched his shoulders a bit and stared at the fat man who was the starter. The fat man held the bright flag over his head as he counted off the seconds on his stop watch. He will be late, Lonetti thought. He loves himself and what he is doing and he will do it for as long as he can. In thirty years of watching starters, Lonetti had learned to read their little minds, he was sure of that. This one would hold the flag for a bit too long, and before he dropped it, he would lift it a bit, to get a wider, more spectacular swing. Lonetti would go on the lift and make a fifth of a second for himself.

He ran the engine up. The fat starter’s shoulders bulged, the flag imperceptibly lifted and started down. Lonetti let in the clutch, bore down on the gas, and got away in a rush. He was a clear half a length ahead of the blue Talbot. It was enough. He grabbed the Maserati’s crooked gearshift, banged it into second and wound the engine up tight, snatched third and ran it up to 7000, slid through the first corner with the ease of a boy pulling a toy around the floor on a string and settled down into the first straight, three miles long. He stood on the throttle and locked his knee. There was 175 m.p.h. in the car under him and Lonetti wanted all of it.

It was a good French road, string-straight and lined with poplars that had watched two wars. The trees slid past in a smooth and solid wall and the road rushed hysterically under the bellowing Maserati like something in a nightmare. Lonetti knew every pebble in the road. He had carted plenty of silverware, plenty of francs, away from this circuit before the war. They had called the race something else, in those days. Now it was the “Grand Prix Robert Benoist.” Benoist, another hero of the Resistance, like Lascelle. He had driven in Bugattis before the war. The Germans killed him. Lonetti remembered him well, a big, pleasant man. He would win Benoist’s race now, and a few of them would mutter about it: “Why did it have to be Lonetti?” Lonetti shrugged. He would not be around to hear them. He shot a quick look into the left-hand mirror. The Talbot was fifty yards behind him, the Alfa hard on its tail. Lonetti grinned. “Driving Lessons Given Here, he said to himself. A right-angle turn, one of the nasty ones, loomed ahead. Lonetti braked at the last possible tenth of a second, yards past the normal point. The engine screamed as he kicked it into third. He put the right wheel six inches from the grass and kept it there, to a hair, as the car cornered in an insanely fast four-wheel slide. He flicked it straight and roared at the hill ahead. He had doubled his lead on Lascelle and he screamed with laughter and pounded on the side of the car. They’ll write about that one all right, he thought.

“... at the second corner, Lonetti clearly demonstrated that his fifty-first winter had taken nothing from his legendary skill. He laid the elderly Maserati into the bend at an incredible rate of knots, causing grief to the novice Lascelle, who foolishly imitated him and lost vast yardage in the subsequent skid. Il Maestro slid the corner in his patented position and was obviously looking at 8000 r.p.m. as he urged his ancient mount up the hill, steering with one hand and beating happily on red tin with the other . . .”

The red car left the ground at the top of the hill and sailed like a bird for fifty feet. It came down square and straight and Lonetti grabbed fourth gear and rocketed away. He felt wild exhilaration and he screamed again.

“. . . at the 20th lap, Lonetti had increased his lead to 22 seconds, but the little man was obviously in distress. He was seen to be coughing continuously, and blood began to show on his sleeve as he drew it across his mouth. He held the comparatively slow Maserati in front by dint of black wizardry and a refusal to entertain any regard whatsoever for the welfare of the machinery. Manelli and Lascelle, in faster vehicles, were able only to stay in sight and pray earnestly that the Maserati would disintegrate under the punishment . . .”

The brass-bright July sun was hot enough, but the shadeless grass beside the road looked cool to Pietro Lonetti, because the car was a moving furnace. There never was a cool one, Lonetti thought, they all roast you to death. Or gas you. The noxious smell of burning gasoline and half-burnt oil was sweet to him; it opened the door of his memory on all the good and happy things that had ever come his way; it meant more than the remembrance of violets in the hair of one’s first girl, or the longedfor smoke of boyhood’s chimney, or the crystal scent of rain in autumn. The smell was the warp and woof of his life, but the stuff itself was killing him. He coughed, and felt the bleeding, and he leaned out to gulp clean air, but it was no use and he knew it. Still, he had lasted the first hour and he would last the rest of it.

The faster cars had lapped the others now, and there were only signals from the pits to tell position. Lonetti didn’t need signals. Until somebody passed him, he was first. He waved as he went by for the thirtieth time, and came up fast on the car ahead. He thought of passing him in the corner, but it was Danton, the Englishman, and Lonetti backed off and let him go through the corner alone. He could take him at will on the long straight, and he would humiliate him there if he could, but he would not take a chance on crowding him in the corner. Lonetti was not notorious for his sportsmanship, and in the old days he would crowd any man in a corner if he felt like it, but he did not feel like it now. They said he hated Englishmen, and so he did, maybe, but he was not going to kill one on the road. He blasted past Danton in the straight, staring at him.

He flew on. He knew he would win. He was happy. He sat up straight, so proud of what he knew was being said of him that he could almost hear them talking. For twenty years Lonetti had been the standard by which other drivers were judged. There were many serious men who said that he had been born great, that he was the only authentic genius motor-racing had ever produced, that his skill could not be explained in rational terms. Lonetti believed them. He knew that he could tell, for example, exactly how many pounds of a car’s total weight rested on any single wheel at any time, cornering or straight, braking or accelerating. He believed that he could drive at 150 miles an hour through a slot an inch wider than the car. He had done it, so he believed it. Other men had to practice in cars, get used to them, feel out their peculiarities. Not Lonetti, Il Maestro. They were all one to him, so long as they had four wheels, something to steer with, and a loud pedal that could be held flat on the floor.

He put it down hard now, to try to pass the two cars looming up ahead. One was Marten, a notorious road hog, the other was old Lyon. They were having a private race for the corner, and when Marten saw Lonetti coming up behind he moved over imperceptibly, blocked him off and let Lyon get around first. The three cars went around nose to tail in a hellish howling racket and slid into the straight like triplets. The others drew away there. Lonetti put the whole weight of his body on the throttle and shook the wheel in rage, but the revolution-counter needle would not go up where he wanted it: past the red danger line. He moved to the right-hand side of the road. The pits were only a couple of miles ahead.

He stopped the car where they waited for him and old Giorgio threw up the bonnet, the question in his eyes. “Plug,” Lonetti croaked.

Giorgio savagely swiveled out the plugs. Nobody could do it faster, but he couldn’t do it in twenty seconds, and Lascelle and Manelli roared past him. They were out of sight when the bonnet banged down and he was pushed off.

Lonetti had never been beloved by other drivers; he gave them good cause now to hate him. He drove as if he were alone on the road. He passed them in bunches as they braked for the corners, slamming through them flat out to stand viciously on the brake for a second and then drift through the corner in his own weird slide. He went into every corner with the nose of the car pointed dead wrong for the entrance but right for the exit, stealing yards and seconds from the lesser men who had to do it by the book.

He went into one corner behind Marten, caught him in it and slid around him, staring arrogantly out at the six inches that lay between the two cars and instant death. He was coughing constantly now; the blood ran unheeded down his chin and he grinned wickedly at Marten as he left him. He had terrified the man, he knew it, and he ran away from him roaring with mirth and pounding the side of his car like a maniac blacksmith. Manelli he passed at pits, his Alfette blowing out a fog of blue smoke, and he could see the Talbot ahead. He had two laps in which to take it, and as he passed the stands he pointed ferociously ahead, his big white teeth stripped. Let no one miss this, he thought. We will see now how much resistance is in this hero, he thought. We will separate the men from the boys here. We will motor a little bit now.

Lascelle saw him coming and he tried everything he knew. On the straights he took every ounce of power the car had, and held his own, but it was either slow up for the corners or crash, and the insane Italian behind him crept closer with every bend in the road. Lascelle wanted to win. It was the first big race in which he had had any luck; it would make his reputation. Too, he had served under Robert Renoist, and the very idea of an Italian taking the cup away made him want to kill again. But every time he looked into the mirror Lonetti was a little closer to doing it.

At the beginning of the last lap, on the long straight in front of the stands, it finally happened. Foot by foot, the red Maserati pulled up beside him. Lonetti held the red car dead alongside, and when Lascelle looked over the little man grinned wolfishly at him. There was blood all over his shirt. As they went past the stands, locked together, Lonetti bowed graciously to the people, and suddenly then, in horror, Lascelle knew why he had not pulled on past: he intended to amuse them with the spectacle of two cars running suicidally together into a corner that was, at that speed, but one car wide. He was going to make the kid quit, brake, and pull over. Lascelle knew, and everyone knew, that Lonetti had done this a hundred times in the past, and that in the end, and always, it had been the other man who had felt terror slam his foot down on the brake. Lascelle decided, suddenly, that he would be the one who did not quit. Live mouse, dead lion, he thought. He kept his foot down. After all, he just might live through it.

Pietro Lonetti was surprised, fifty yards from the corner, to find the Frenchman still with him, but he drove the bend the way he had intended to, coming out of it slightly faster to clear the road, since he knew that otherwise nothing in the world could keep Lascelle from sliding into him. As it was, he felt the cars tick, nose to tail, when the blue Talbot moved behind him. It seemed to him that he heard the scream of the rubber, in two great howls, as the Talbot spun; and when he topped the hill he heard the crash and saw in his mirror the first orange burst of flame as the car exploded against the great trees beside the road.

He had it won, now. It was all over, they would give him the flag as he swept past, the crowds would scream his name, the journalists would pound their typewriters, he would take his victor’s lap and at the end of it, as he had so long planned, he would fold his arms, proudly lift his head, and smash himself to death against the wall in the exit road, where everyone could see that it was no accident, and no one could come to harm by it. That had been his plan. That was why he was in the race. But suddenly now it didn’t seem so much of a plan. It was empty. It was nothing.

Pietro Lonetti lifted his foot and let the red Maserati run along the side of the road at a bare 50 miles an hour. He felt as if he could get out and walk. He could see the separate blades of grass, each petal of the flowers along the ditch. He coughed and was surprised to taste the blood. His arms trembled and for the first time he felt the blisters on his palms. Everyone went past him. They roared by like a long freight train. He coasted into the pits. None of the din was for him. The photographers were elsewhere.

“Jesus and Mary!" Giorgio screamed at him. “What happened? What broke? What let go?”

“Nothing let go,” Lonetti said. “The car is fine. This is good iron. I took my foot off, that’s all.”

“Man, man, you threw it all away!” Giorgio said. “For what? For that kid, that dumb Frog? For what, for Christ’s sake!”

Lonetti looked up at him. “Take off the steering wheel, Giorgio,” he said. “Take it off, and lift me out of here. I want to go home.”