"No shit?" Smoke was instantly alert. "Well, just get your ass over there and take that lesson, and why isn't Possum there instead of you?"

"He working on something in his room," Cat said.

"I'm going to kick his ass," Smoke groggily said as he rolled over and went back to sleep.

Cat casually strutted toward the helicopter Macovich was refueling with a big hose attached to an Exxon truck with JET-A in large letters on it. Cat buttoned up his NASCAR windbreaker and pulled a NASCAR cap low over his eyes, grateful he had gone to every race at the Richmond International Raceway and had already been well supplied with NASCAR memorabilia-such as clothing, cigarette lighters, posters, mugs, pens, and air fresheners for the rearview mirror-long before he knew these items might be important to his work.

Macovich watched the NASCAR man walking toward him and got excited. What he wouldn't give to be part of a NASCAR pit crew! This guy looked like the right stuff: swaggering, rough, strong but small enough to fit inside a stock car. He was smoking a Winston and wearing dark glasses and probably had a beautiful sexy blonde waiting for him at home.

"I'm here on orders of my driver, whose name you still can't know," Cat said, flipping open a colorful lighter with Winston Cup and Jeff Burton's signature on it. "Let's get started."

"Get started doin' what?" Macovich eyed the lighter with envy and wondered if the white driver with dreadlocks he met last night might be Jeff Burton in disguise.

"Teaching me to fly." Cat fondled the lighter and took his time firing it up, a cigarette tucked behind his ear.

Macovich looked around to see if anyone was watching. Cat slipped a hundred-dollar bill out of a zippered pocket on the windbreaker's sleeve. Macovich stared at the bill and tried to remember the last time he had seen one.

"I tell you what," he said to Cat. "Let me drop off this fresh seafood first. Meet me back here in an hour or two."

"Wait a fucking minute," Cat said, alarmed. "I ain't taking no lesson in the dark!"

"You crazy, man?" Macovich talked rough with him. "You think a big helicopter like this cares if it's dark? This baby's instrument rated, got autopilot, a traffic scope plus a storm scope, and all kinds of landing lights, and even a DVD player in the back so the First Family can watch movies while I haul them around."

Cat understood the DVD part but nothing else. He was beginning to think he had taken on far more than he could handle, but he wasn't about to let this big mother cop think that.

"Oh yeah?" Cat said. "Well, I seen bigger, better helicopters than this one. What'chu think all them drivers land in at the racetrack?"

"Mostly Jet Rangers and maybe a 407," replied Macovich, who knew firsthand what landed at the racetrack because the First Family was quite fond of stock cars that thunder around and around in circles all night long. "Now I gotta deliver this seafood before it's dead," Macovich said. "I'll be right back and let you get by with paying me only a hundred dollars for your first lesson, as sort of a courtesy. But it gonna cost you more after that. This is a 'spensive machine."

"How much it worth on the street?" Cat eagerly asked.

" 'Bout six mil," Macovich said as he locked the helicopter's doors and baggage compartment.

Possum wasn't allowed to have a lock on his bedroom door, but he could surely use one, he thought, as he worried that Smoke was going to be pissed off when he found out that Possum had wormed his way out of the helicopter lesson. Possum nervously ate a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich in his dark bedroom as he continued to sketch out ideas for a pirate flag while he watched Bonanza and petted Popeye.

"Wish I could do that," he muttered to Popeye as Hoss, who was out by the barn, bent horseshoes with his bare hands.

Little Joe was whipping Hoss in shape to wrestle the infamous Bear Cat Sampson at the Tweedy Circus that had just come to town. All Hoss had to do was pin the undefeated circus wrestler in five minutes, and Hoss and Little Joe would win a hundred dollars. That was probably a lot of money back then, Possum thought. These days, a hundred dollars would barely buy a decent pair of basketball shoes.

Possum sketched a bent horseshoe in his theme book and scratched through it. Then he tried drawing Hoss lifting a wagon full of heavy feed sacks. Next, Little Joe was slamming a board into Hoss's big belly, and Hoss couldn't even feel it. None of these themes worked on paper, either. So Possum tried his hand at the Ponderosa map burning up, and he felt he was at least on the right track.

His door flew open and Smoke was standing there glaring at him. Possum squinted in the sudden light seeping into his room.

"What the fuck you doing?" Smoke said angrily, as if he might just snatch Possum and Popeye off the bed and hurt both of them.

"Nothing."

"Why didn't you go to the hangar? I get a call from Cat while your lazy ass is back here watching TV! You were supposed to take the lesson, not Cat!"

"Cat be better at flying than me," Possum meekly replied. "You was asleep, Smoke, so we didn't want to bother you 'bout it."

"Well, get your ugly ass up. We're going to Wal-Mart to get some NASCAR clothes. From now on, that's our colors and don't let me catch you wearing no more Michael Jordan shit. We're going to the race," Smoke went on. "There's one in town Saturday night, the Winston Series."

"But we ain't got tickets!" Possum exclaimed. "How we get in this late with no tickets? And there won't be no place to park the car."

"We don't need tickets or a place to park," Smoke said, walking out of the bedroom and slamming the door shut.

Hoss entered the ring and was sucker-punched a few times before he locked Bear Cat in a bear hug and broke the wrestler's ribs.

"Let go of him, let go of him!" Possum whispered, even though he had seen this rerun so many times he knew that Hoss wouldn't let go of Bear Cat before time was up, and Hoss and Little Joe would lose the hundred dollars and end up traveling with the circus until Bear Cat healed up enough to wrestle again. "Let him go, Hoss!"

Ben Cartwright and Little Joe cheered from the stands, and Possum started sketching again. NASCAR had given him an idea. Like pirates, NASCAR used all kinds of flags for different warnings and penalties. Possum drew a checkered flag and turned it into a Jolly Roger, coloring the skull and crossbones red.

"Shit," he muttered. "That don't work neither, Pop-eye."

He turned a checkered flag into a game of tic-tac-toe and still wasn't satisfied, so he drew a black flag that meant it was time to pull into the pits, and he felt a chill creep up to the roots of his hair. He was getting somewhere. Possum erased areas of the black, forming white eyes and a grinning mouth that gave the morbid impression of a smiley-face skull. He crossed the skull with two possum tails instead of bones, and clamped a lit cigarette between the teeth, smoke rising in swirls. A smoking skull, he thought, getting increasingly excited as the Tweedy Circus ran out of money and had to pay Hoss and Little Joe with an elephant that they closed up inside the Ponderosa barn. Ben Cartwright wasn't happy when he opened the barn door and discovered his new livestock.

Possum sadly thought of the late Dale Earnhardt's number 3 black GM Goodwrench Services Chevy, and decided to honor the dead racing hero. Jolly Goodwrench, Possum wrote in block letters beneath the smoking skull flag.

"Hey look!" he exclaimed as he ran inside Smoke's bedroom and held up his themebook.

"You come in here one more time without asking and I'll blow your tiny dick off!" Smoke yelled as he sat up in bed and lit a cigarette.

"We got us a pirate flag, Smoke," Possum explained. "I can make one that look just like this and we can fly it at the race and make people think it's our NASCAR flag. We can take Popeye, too, and make sure them two cops show up, right? They never suspect no pit crew might be carrying pieces and are gonna blow their asses away. Then Cat can show up with the helicopter and fly us outta there and nobody can catch us. Then maybe we can 'scape to Tangerine Island, since everybody there's already in trouble and we could hide out with them 'til things chill, you know?"