Green Barret

Seven up the mountain

Nola Senn used to receive the last cable car at North Spur with a hand tally counter borrowed from the station souvenir kiosk. One Thursday she clicked seven times, which was the number she expected, but could see only six coats. A young attendant had ridden twice to retrieve a wool hat. An actual seventh passenger was still upstairs talking to the man who sold soup. Nobody was in danger. There was a cold supper and a very annoyed station manager, who let Nola walk the platform with him until she could say why a click had felt sufficient. By the next snowfall her handover sheet had a space for names. She asks for them even on days when she knows every person on duty.

Her brother Tomas says it made her unbearable at a picnic. He answers the dispatcher's questions anyway. He used to leave their father's old surplus jacket on the hall radiator every night to dry. The stamped words GREEN BARRET were still visible on the sleeve when Nola used it to cushion the Shelby 1968 GT500's door against a Hill Shed work stand. By registration day somebody had copied the misspelling onto the entry. Tomas wanted to fix it. Nola liked that he would have to live with it.

Petition at the shed

When she first tried the Shelby on a closed course, she carried a plank back up from the finish because she had assumed the people resetting practice had a second one. The others were adults with their own jobs to do, and they cheerfully told her to put it down. She heard the cheer and missed the instruction. By the end of practice she had carried everything that could be carried. Everyone else had driven twice. Tomas asked what she'd learned about the car. Nola could describe three people who could have stored their gloves more sensibly.

Now she uses a higher hook for the Shelby's fob and keeps it out where the keys going back on it feel like a decision. Tessa from Alpine Assault helped free a stretch of storage panel for practice gear at the Hill Shed, and Nola claimed a small patch as close to the door as she could get.

Cassidy's objection

Clutch Cassidy once looked at Nola's instructions before a test and asked whose answers they were. She thought the question was rude. She thought about it for three hours. There were boxes to mark off for equipment, the course and the car, and there was nowhere to put the queer hop she had felt just as the Shelby's weight came off the crest. She wrote it in the margin, and on the next sheet she left one square blank. Both of them have borrowed something from these disagreements. You have to let Cassidy look away first if you're going to mention it.

Nola still likes a plan with an exit she can explain. She turns in patiently and waits for the front to settle where a driver with more nerve might take the crest at once. If you want to see how annoyed she can get at herself, watch her hands on the wheel in a practice run where she has left the clean line unused.

After the count

She wants a second practice block for novices, with a short walk to the return gate so nobody has to give up a run to fetch their crew. She's put her own name on the draft schedule twice and erased it once. Tomas plans to come watch from the fence for the first time in months. She's promised that if he arrives after the start she will leave his name off the list and drive anyway. The gate attendant knows him by sight.