Chuck Palahniuk - Stranger Than Fiction (True Stories)

Pointing out the pulleys and belts that link the engine and the front axle, Hardung says, "You have to protect your drive system so somebody can't get in there. If I tear off a belt I'm done."

Some combines have hydrostatic drives, no gearshifts, he says. The harder you push the lever, the faster the rig goes. Other combines have manual transmissions. Those drivers swear by a clutch and gearshift. Some swear by not drinking before the event. Everyone has a different strategy.

"I go out there," Hardung says. "I scope it out. Attack the bad guys. Leave the littler guys alone-unless they attack me first."

He says, "You see tires pop out there. We hit so hard we tear the headers off the front of combines or the rear ends off. A couple years ago we tipped one over on its side."

To repair the damage between heats, Hardung and his pit crew for Mean Gang-Green have brought along extra parts and supplies. Combine rear ends. Axles. Tires. Wheels. Welders. Cranes. Grinders. And beer.

"If farming gets any worse," Hardung says, "I'm going to bring my new combines over."

When asked whom he's most worried about, Hardung points to a huge combine, painted blue with a dorsal fin rising out of the top. It has large white teeth and a stuffed dummy that's half eaten and hanging out of the mouth of the header. Painted on the front in big black letters is "Josh."

"I'll be watching out for Jaws," Hardung says. "He's big because he's a hillside combine, and he's got this extra iron inside. And cast wheels. He's tough."

Josh Knodel is a rookie driver, eighteen years old. Since he was fourteen he and his friend Matt Miller have been bringing and repairing Jaws, a John Deere 6602 combine, and their fathers have driven it for them. Their first and second years, they took home the top prize. Last year they stopped dead with a blown front tire and only three combines left to beat.

"There's not much you can do to protect the tire itself," Knodel says. "The main thing I need to be careful of is not to get pinned, not to get where a combine locks me in from behind so somebody can then just hammer at my tires. I've got to try to stay out and move or else I'll get held up."

He says, "First, I'm going to try to get everybody in the dirt. I'll hit them in the back tires, try to knock their wheels out. You get down in the dirt like that and you're not nearly as fast or agile. You lose a lot of control. You lose a tire altogether and your whole rear end is just pushing in the dirt. Sometimes your rims even get ripped off and your whole ass end will be dragging in the dirt.

"I'm mainly excited," Knodel says. "I've been wanting to do this forever. Today's the day. But I've got butterflies. Last night it was tough to go to sleep." He says, "I can't remember missing a derby. It's derby time around our house. We've always come to town for the rodeo and the combine derby. This is a dream come true, definitely, being able to drive tonight. There's $300 if you win your heat. If you get second place in your heat, $200. Third place, you get $100. But if you win the whole derby, it's $1,000. There's definitely some prize money.

"There's no insurance," Knodel adds. "We don't sign anything, which is amazing. You'd think the Lions Club would have us sign something saying that if somebody gets hurt they're not liable, but I didn't sign anything. All of us out here, we're here to have fun. We realize we're at our own risk."

The grandstands are filling up. A long string of cars and trucks is pulling into the gravel parking lot. A water truck is wetting down the dirt in the rodeo arena.

At the beginning of the derby, the combines enter the arena and park in two long rows. As they wait, the crowd stands. The Lind rodeo queen for the third year running, Bethany Thompson, wearing red-white-and-blue sequins and holding an American flag, gallops on her horse faster and faster around the assembled combines. As Thompson gains speed, her flag snapping in the wind, the combine drivers stand with their right hands over their hearts, and the three thousand onlookers recite the Pledge of Allegiance. People visiting here from the city get slapped or punched in the back and yelled at for not taking off their hats.

The derby consists of four heats: the first is for drivers who have competed here before, the second is for rookies, the third is another for experienced drivers, and the fourth begins with a consolation round for all the losing combines that can still run. After the fight, the winners from the first three heats enter the arena, and everyone still moving-winners and losers-fights to the death.

After the pledge, a judge reads a tribute written by driver Casey Neilson and the crew of combine number 9, a 1972 McCormick International 503 with an ambulance light bar spinning red and blue lights on top. Neilson's good-luck charm is the Afro wig he always wears while driving. People call him Afro Man. He calls his combine Rambulance.

Over the loudspeaker you hear: "The crew of Odessa Trading Company would like to take a moment to thank the men and women of EMS and local volunteer fire departments for all their hard work and dedication. If it weren't for you, some of us would not be here."

All but seven combines leave the arena, and the first heat begins.

Over the loudspeaker, a judge says, "Lord, help us have a good show and a safe show tonight."

Right off the bat, Mark Schoesler, in the Turtle, loses a rear tire. Mean Gang-Green and J&M Fabrication butt headers. The BC Machine, the Silver Bullet, and Beaver Patrol throw dirt in the air, chasing one another in a circle. The engines roar, and you breathe in the exhaust. Mean Gang-Green's rear tire gets popped. J&M Fabrication's rear tire gets popped, and the driver, Justin Miller, looks to be in trouble, stuck in one place and ducking down, disappearing into the engine compartment of his combine. The Silver Bullet is stopped dead and declared out by a judge, and driver Mike Longmeier drops his red flag. Beaver Patrol has a rear wheel completely torn off, then its rear axle, but it keeps going, dragging itself through the dirt with just its front wheels. Then Red Lightnin' crushes Beaver Patrol's rear end. The engine housing pops open on Mean Gang-Green and smoke pours out. Red Lightnin's engine catches fire. J&M Fabrication comes back to life, Miller reappearing in the driver's seat. Beaver Patrol drags along in the dirt. J&M rips the rear end off the Turtle. The beer keg falls off Mean Gang-Green. The rear axle rips off the Turtle. And Miller is stopped dead again. The judges wave the Turtle out, and Schoesler drops his red flag. J&M Fabrication is out, Beaver Patrol is out, and Mean Gang-Green is the winner.

In the pit the crew swarms J&M Fabrication, hammering and grinding metal. Welding sparks fly. Flat tires get changed. J&M's Miller, headed to the consolation round, says, "I don't care who wins as long as we can hit as hard as we can for as long as we can."

Describing the best way to hit, he says, "I use the brakes. On these combines there's a brake for each side, so if you lock one of them up, you can spin around and get that one end of the header going. It'll be going five, six times as fast as the combine, and when you hit somebody right on the corner, it does a lot of damage to their machine."

You swing your header, he says, like a windmill punch.

"It will blow that tire. It will break that wheel right off. That header can be traveling twenty, twenty-five miles an hour. It makes a boom. It'll lift the ass end of the combine right off the ground. The ass end, it'll be one, two feet off the ground."

Between heats a forklift and a tow truck enter the arena and clear away the dead-the busted angle iron and crushed headers. Rodeo queen Thompson throws T-shirts into the audience. The beer flows.

Back in the pit area, rookie drivers like Davis and Knodel, all of them college age except Garry Bittick, driving the Tank, line up for their heat.

Within the first minute, Jeff Yerbich and his Devastating Deere are dead, the result of two popped rear tires. Little Green Men rams the Tank, tilting the combine so high it almost topples over backward. Jaws loses a rear wheel. Mickie Mouse has its header crushed and wadded up like tinfoil. The Tank stops dead and drops its red flag. Jaws chases Mickie Mouse in a circle. Knodel drives his header into the Mouse's front tires, popping them. With the Mouse stopped, Jaws keeps ramming it until the judges make the dead combine drop its flag. Jaws loses a rear tire but drags itself along. The Viking is dead. The Tank has its header ripped off. Time runs out, leaving Jaws and Little Green Men tied as the winners.

In the pit area Bittick is recovering from nearly toppling under the five tons of number 5, the Tank. At forty-seven years old, he's getting into the rookie game a little late. His son Cody was supposed to be home from the army to drive but had run out of leave time. Instead, Cody sent the flags-an Army 82nd Airborne flag, an MIA flag, and a U.S. Army flag-that fly on the International Harvester combine, the one painted with desert camouflage and cartoons of camel-riding Arabs being chased by cruise missiles.

"It was just a lot of hard hits, everybody hitting at one time, head-on," Bittick says. "Of course, the tail end of my machine came up and tipped my header off, and we broke down. We could have flipped over." He says, "It gets your heart pumping. Without a seat belt it'll kick you right out of there."

For first-timers Davis and Knodel, it was a carnival fun ride. "It was great! It was funner than hell," says Davis, holding a beer can in one hand while his crew preps Mickie Mouse for the consolation round. "I got to go out there and beat the shit out of people for fun."

For Knodel and Jaws, tying for first was a little more work. "It was way more than I expected," Knodel says. "I didn't think I was going to have to concentrate as hard as I did. I was sweating very hard up there."

One of the few drivers not drinking beer or vodka, Knodel describes how it feels to be high up in the middle of the dust and the cheering: "Actually, you don't hear anything. I couldn't hear the crowd. The only thing I could hear was my engine. My engine actually powered out on me. I was going, and I couldn't hear that my engine had stopped. With the adrenaline pumping, I was still looking for somebody to come get me. The only way I knew I had the engine fired back up was that I could look over and see the fan blades, and finally I saw them spinning again. Then I was ready to go."

In the third heat the combines start out parked with their rear ends together, facing outward like the spokes in a wheel. Among another set of experienced drivers, Rambulance slices a rear tire of Good Ol' Boys. Porker Express rips the rear end off BC Machine. Good Ol' Boys crushes the rear end of American Spirit, shattering its rear axle. Porker Express loses its rear axle tie rods and steering. American Spirit digs itself too deep into the dirt and drops its flag, dead. Porker Express locks its header under the rear end of Rambulance. BC Machine is stopped, with its engine cover open and smoking; a moment later Chet Bauermeister gets it going again. Porker Express gets crushed between Good Ol' Boys and BC Machine. Good Ol' Boys loses both rear tires but keeps going on the rims. BC Machine is dead again. Good Ol' Boys rams Porker Express from behind, driving its pink rear end into the dirt. Good Ol' Boys gets to work, ramming BC Machine. Porker Express is dead. Rambulance is dead. Good Ol' Boys shoves BC Machine in circles until Bauermeister drops his flag. Good Ol' Boys driver Kyle Cordill is the winner.

In the pit area, winning and losing teams repair their combines for the final heat. The welding rods, cutting torches, and grinders shower sparks into the dry grass, and people chase the little wildfires, putting them out with cans of beer. Barbecues grill hot dogs and hamburgers. Kids and dogs roam around combines tilted and balanced on jacks.

Near number 17, Little Green Men, a group of girls drink beer and eye driver Kevin Cochrane.

Twenty years old, Cochrane says, "Yeah, there are combine-demolition groupies. I don't think there are groupies from Lind, but they're from other towns. They kind of follow the little circuit, I think. There are only two derbies, so that's a little circuit."

Cochrane looks at the girls as one of them leaves her friends and heads over. "What are the groupies like? First of all," he says, "she's kind of a hick. Cowboy boots and shit like that. Kind of just the country way, but not like her." He nods as the girl walks up. Her name is Megan Wills. When asked why there are no women drivers, she says, "Because it's fucked! Josh got his ass kicked!"

"There used to be women drivers," Cochrane says.

"One! A long time ago!" shouts Wills, whose brother is on the pit crew for number 14, Beaver Patrol. "There's no women driving because that shit's fucked-up! I'm not going to take my ass in there. Fuck that! I'd rather get drunk and service all the hotties than fuckin' drive that shit! Hell, no!"

Cochrane tilts back his beer, then says, "I think if you don't drink any, you get too nervous. You get in there and you're all nerved up and shit. You got to get a little laid-back."

Before the consolation round, the judges walk through the pit area, telling people their thirty minutes of repair time is more than up. Only Mickie Mouse and J&M Fabrication are ready and waiting in the arena. The sun is below the horizon, and it's getting dark fast. Over the loudspeaker the judges announce: "We need nine combines in the ring. We only have two. We got seven to go."

Frank Bren, the driver of American Spirit, runs up, his T-shirt and hands soaked dark with motor oil, sweat, and crusted blood. "We're not going to make it," he tells the judges. "We can't get a hydraulic line changed out."

A judge reads the names of the combines still expected in the arena. "You're pushing the time limit," he says. "And you're pushing the judges."

Rambulance enters the ring, dragging a flat rear tire. Red Lightnin' makes it in. The Silver Bullet limps in. As the round starts, Red Lightnin' rams Rambulance, and sparks fly from the hit. The Silver Bullet digs its header into the front tires of J&M Fabrication. Rambulance loses its rear axle. Mickie Mouse loses a rear wheel. J&M Fabrication rams head-on into Red Lightnin'. Then Rambulance butts headers with J&M so hard that the rear ends of both combines bounce three feet into the air. Mickie Mouse snags Red Lightnin' hard enough to rip both rear wheels off, then pops a front tire. The hit rips the header off Mickie Mouse, and Davis drops his flag. He sits, sprawled in the driver's seat, his arms spread and his face tipped up at the dark sky. Rambulance drags itself around a field littered with bolts and scraps of metal. The Silver Bullet and J&M Fabrication slam Red Lightnin' so hard that the hit kills the Silver Bullet. Then J&M drops its flag.

While we wait for the wreckers to clean up and the winners to enter for the final showdown, Thompson throws more T-shirts into the stands. A huge orange moon comes up and seems to stop, balanced on the horizon.

The winners from the first three heats and any surviving combines enter the arena. It's full dark, and the red flags next to each driver look black, outlined against the smoke and dust. The radiator is failing on BC Machine, and the little Massey 510 combine is lost in a cloud of white steam. The engines of all nine combines roar together, and the final heat begins.