The Pinewood Derby in Our Hayloft

At the top of the ramp Dad built a starting gate. It was a hinged board with two pegs that stuck up and held the cars in place, and a pin you pulled to drop the pegs.

Both cars go at the same instant.

At the bottom, where the ramp met the concrete, he laid another ten feet of flat track across the barn floor, shimmed level with cedar shingles, which made forty feet in all.

At the very end he built a catch box out of an old feed bin lined with a folded moving blanket, so the cars would not smash.

He did not have an electronic timer. Those cost more than he was willing to spend on a barn race.

So he painted a finish line across both lanes in white, and he said two people would kneel at the end and call it, and that would be good enough.

“That’s how we did it before the computers,” he said. “Two honest people with good eyes.”

On Tuesday, my brother Kevin called from a truck stop near Grand Island. Somebody from the pack had already texted him.

He was quiet on the phone for a while, which is not like Kevin.

“Mel,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she was going to do that.”

“I know you didn’t,” I said. “It isn’t your fault.”

“Is Carter okay?”

“He’s in the barn with Dad,” I said. “He’s sanding a racetrack. He’s better than okay.”

Kevin laughed, a short tired laugh. He said he would be home Friday night. He did not say anything bad about Jen, and I did not ask him to.

That is between the two of them, and I have always tried to stay out of a marriage I am not in.

On Wednesday night, I made one phone call. Just one. I called my friend Shelly Halvorson, who I went to school with, whose boy Tyler is in the Wolf den with Carter and Cody.

“Dad built a track in the barn,” I told her. “We’re going to have a little race Saturday afternoon at one. Anybody’s welcome. Bring a car if you’ve got one. That’s all it is.”

“Melissa,” Shelly said. “I was in that gym. Half the parents were sick about it.”

“I’m not trying to start anything,” I said. “I don’t want anybody taking sides. It’s just a race in a barn. Kids can bring whatever car they want, any car at all. Even a kit car.”

I meant that last part. I said it on purpose, and I said it again so she would be sure to pass it along.

Shelly told two people. One of them told the Lutheran pastor’s wife, who put it in the church bulletin under announcements, between the quilting circle and the blood drive.

Somebody else put it on the town Facebook page. By Thursday, people were stopping me at the front desk at school.

The lunch lady asked if her granddaughter could come, even though she is in 4-H and not Scouts.

A kindergarten teacher asked if her son could race the car his older brother made three years ago. A bus driver asked if he could bring his grandkids from Vermillion.

I said yes to every single one of them. I did not know how many were coming.

I told Dad maybe ten or fifteen, and he said that was fine, the track did not care how many.