Marrow Creek · Meet the driver

Faux Duke

At the wheel: Evan Serrat

Dodge 1969 Charger 500

The poster comes down

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Evan 'Duke' Serrat spent a lot of evenings learning how to hold his shoulders in a doorway. The Dodge gets around a closed track better when he leaves the pose at home.

Last year's nail holes

Evan can spot which nail holes in a fair sign belonged to the earlier lettering. He stretches cloth across his garage wall to draw the letters on, then stands back exactly five steps, where his neighbors will see the result if they come down the tractor path. For his own practice he kept a poster with a Dodge like his in a half turned pose and a guy in jeans taking up more of the print than the car. One bent nail in the corner was the only thing Evan hadn't changed around since the picture went up.

He got his fair job from a woman named Edie who could write a forty-foot banner with a cheap brush. She made him repaint an entire door when he let a gap in the boards take the middle of a letter. He remembers the repainting more clearly than the mistake. Edie stood outside waving her lunch when a tractor went by, and he thought at first she was trying to get its driver to look at the work.

The run with an audience

Evan brought the 1969 Charger 500 to a test lane near the fairground on an afternoon Edie had agreed to come out with her nephew. He spent half the available time wondering whether the car looked stiff from where they stood. He made two early corrections that pushed it away from the line each time. A little lift when it was already pointed elsewhere gave him a final turn with very little track left. Edie asked whether he was supposed to go back to the beginning after that. He made a joke about his next big appearance and found to his embarrassment that she had asked an ordinary question.

His friend Clint Westglass stopped by while Evan was trying to rehang the poster a little straighter. Clint had found a noisy screw by letting someone else drive the Gran Torino slowly past the bench. He offered to stand where Evan could see the very worst of the practice turn. No photograph and no commentary. Evan took the poster down just long enough to use its clean side for a drawing.

“I spent all that time figuring out how it ought to look and forgot to ask how it ought to turn.”

Evan Serrat · To Clint while taking the poster down.

The run with the poster backward

The Dodge felt long at the beginning of the bend and far less cumbersome if Evan chose one smooth movement across it. He could get through in less space than he had thought. The trouble was doing that a second time when the same people were watching from a different place. He asked Mina from Cherry Bomb to hold her paper sweet bags up in a row. By the time she got halfway done he remembered he was meant to be looking at the end of the turn.

The best part of that attempt was a long exit Evan could describe to Clint without using the word dramatic. He still jokes when somebody's eyes are on him. As he sat out by the closed gate afterward, Edie asked what he would paint if the board were for him. He didn't have a joke ready for that.

A little bare wall

Evan wants to mark out a longer practice that leads from one broad bend straight into another. He has agreed to let Edie make a small picture of what each turn looks like from her side. He is coming as himself this time, he told Clint, and Clint asked whether Duke had a problem with the afternoon booking.

The poster has gone up backward in Evan's garage. It has a fresh little sweep of ink across the paper where he tested the tip of a new brush and then kept going. There are plenty of nail holes where he could put another one.

“I'll paint the board once I know what the second bend looks like.”

Evan Serrat · Considering Edie's offer to help with a longer practice.

Mic at the pits

The clean side

Mack Who's on the poster?

Evan Serrat Used to be the fellow I wanted to look like. Now it's the second corner. That one still gives me trouble.

Mack Better likeness already.

Meet the voice behind the microphone