Once Around the Track

CHAPTER XI

“I’m supposed to do sports card shots of him?” Melanie Sark lowered her camera and peered at the young man in the purple firesuit who had just entered the studio door.

“We don’t call them that in motorsports,” said Tuggle. “Folks say hero cards.”

Hero cards? Sark stared at her. “I would rather swallow my tongue,” she said.

Tuggle shrugged. “Just a figure of speech. ’Course you might want to remember that it is a dangerous sport.”

“Yeah, we could call them idiot cards.”

“How about autograph cards?”

“Fine. Autograph cards.” She glanced again at the young man loitering out of earshot in the doorway, talking on his cell phone. “All right, how do you expect me to do an autograph card for him? He’s the size of a mailbox!”

Tuggle shrugged. You could tell that this girl hadn’t been in motorsports very long. What was she used to? NBA players? Badger wasn’t even unusual for a Cup driver.

“This is NASCAR,” she reminded the new team publicist. “At Speedways, you always want to watch where you step.”

Sark wrinkled her nose. “Dog poo?”

“Jeff Gordon.” Tuggle held out her hand at about shoulder height to illustrate the point. “Now on the autograph cards, we’ll say Badger is five foot seven.”

Sark smirked. “Why don’t you say he’s the Emperor of Japan while you’re at it?”

“Well, they might be about the same height,” Tuggle conceded. “He’s got a beautiful nose, though, Badger does. He ought to write his Welsh ancestors a thank-you note for that perfect bone structure. You should see some of his old autograph cards. He photographs well. And it’s all in the camera angles. You can make him look tall.”

“Yeah, if I stand in a drainage ditch. Okay, thanks for bringing him over. You can have him back in an hour.” She peered doubtfully at the young man in the doorway, who seemed to be waiting for permission to enter. “Will I need an interpreter?”

Tuggle smirked. “Just listen slowly-he’s from Georgia.”

Badger Jenkins turned around and around, surveying the empty building lit with studio lights. “How you doin’?” he said, extending his hand and summoning his brightest smile.

Sark lifted the camera and took a step backward. “Save it, Frodo, I’m not into this sport. I just needed a job, all right? And apparently my job is to make you look good, so that you come across as a combination of Superman and Tom Hanks.” Her tone of voice indicated the magnitude of that task. “Let’s do the photos first, okay? We can work on the interview after that. Five minutes ought to suffice for it. Stand there with your arms folded. That’ll be the car shot.”

With a puzzled frown, Badger looked around at the empty studio. “But there’s no car here,” he said.

Sark rolled her eyes. “Duh. I’ll take the shots of you first, and then digitally I’ll paste in shots of the race car behind you. That way I can fudge a little. Put you in at one hunderd percent, maybe paste the car in at eighty.”

“Why?”

“So you’ll look bigger.” She peered at him through the lens. Assuming the eager-to-please expression of a Westminster show dog, Badger faced the camera with a pasted-on smile. Sark sighed and lowered the camera. “Lose the smile, sunshine,” she said. “You’re supposed to look tough, aren’t you?”

Badger nodded, relaxing his features into a solemn, slightly baffled expression.

“The light in his eyes is the sun shining through the back of his head,” muttered Sark, supplying the caption to the imaginary photo. This would be a perfect episode to include in her notes for the secret article. Height fraud in NASCAR. Or the art of illusion in sports photography. She would jot down a few particulars later, but now she had to get on with a more pressing assignment: making Badger Jenkins look imposing.

“You look about as scary as cottage cheese,” she told him. “Try again.”

As she knelt on the floor a few feet in front of him and lined up his image in the viewfinder, the transformation took place. Badger put on his dark sunglasses, sat down on a stack of tires, and assumed his characteristic pose-leaning forward slightly; legs spread wide apart; tapered, sinewy hands clasped at belt level; with an expression of stern intensity ennobling that chiseled, perfect face. He had the calm of one who knows he is the most dangerous thing around and the stillness of a coiled spring.

Sark blinked. Where the hell did he come from? The diffident and affable Badger Jenkins had vanished, and in his place was a warrior angel, beautiful and terrible to behold. He took your breath away. And he looked a foot taller than Badger really was.

“Da-amn,” she whispered, looking up over the camera, half expecting to see the real Badger standing off to the side of the room, but no, it was him sitting there on the stack of tires, like Hollywood’s idea of a combat general-handsome, strong, and damn near irresistible.

He had enough sense not to move or speak or break the pose. Without a word, Sark clicked the shutter, adjusted the angle, snapped again. Scarcely daring to breathe, she spent the whole roll on that one pose, at slightly varying heights, angles, distances, chasing the play of light across the planes of his face, and trying to imagine an expression in the blank stare behind those shaded eyes. After a few minutes she almost forgot who he was, or that he was an ordinary and pleasant young man who drove cars for a living. She usually spoke to her subjects as she photographed them, offering up encouraging pleasantries to make them hold the pose or to elicit a more confident expression, but this time she was silent. What could you possibly say to him?

At first she had considered telling him to alter the pose, thinking there was something improper in his spread-eagled stance, and resolving that if he insisted on flaunting his “package,” then at any rate she wouldn’t look. She looked.

Boy, it was hot in that room. Must be the studio lights, she thought, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Badger didn’t seem to be affected, though.

He tilted his head back. “Are we about done? They want me to practice a couple of laps.”

The spell was broken, or almost. Badger pulled off the sunglasses, waiting to see what else she wanted, and once again he was an ordinary guy, impatient to get back to work.

“Uh…I need to talk to you to get some material for the press release.” Sark’s voice sounded hoarse even to her. She took a deep breath and set the camera down on the floor. “Just a couple of questions…” But not the questions that had been uppermost in her mind, she thought.

Badger said, “Really? You want to talk to me for the press release?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Well, nobody ever has before. They just tell me to get lost, and then they write whatever they feel like saying.”

Sark frowned. “Well, how would they know what the facts were?”

“Facts?” said Badger. He shrugged. “One of ’em told me once that I was the blank screen that everybody ran their own movie on. It didn’t matter what I was really like. What does that mean?”

Sark thought it over. It wasn’t Badger people believed in. It was the guy she had seen in the camera lens. The one who didn’t exist. “Well,” she said. “I guess there are a lot of people out there who think you’re the guy they see in the photographs. They think you’re tall and wise and wonderful, and that you’d be the best friend in the world. Like a guardian angel, I suppose. If you ever called them, they’d buy a new answering machine tape and save the one with your voice on it forever. Maybe some of them imagine you telling the boss to get off their case, or showing up at their house for a backyard cookout so that the neighbors will fall dead from envy.”

He got the idea, so she didn’t say the rest of it. Women want you to beat up their abusive boyfriends, or take them away from a humdrum life, or just point to them in a hotel lobby and say, “You.” That’s all it would take. And some people would be happy just to shake your hand, and they’d treasure that memory forever.

Badger sighed. “They shouldn’t put me on a pedestal,” he said.

“You could use the extra height,” muttered Sark.

“I wish I was that guy. I wish I had the kind of power they think I have.”

“Maybe you don’t have to be, Badger. Maybe it’s enough that people have something to believe in. Anyhow, let’s do the best we can on this interview, so that we don’t disappoint them.” She motioned for him to sit down in the plastic chair near the work table.

“I’m not too good at quizzes,” said Badger. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, I suppose I can get all the basic stuff from NASCAR.com or by Googling you. Previous racing stats, for example.”

“I wouldn’t know them off the top of my head,” said Badger. “Fans often do. Amazing what they can reel off at the drop of a hat when I can’t even do it myself.”

Sark consulted her notes. “Height. Weight. I can fake-er-look those up, too. Marital status. Says here you’re married to…um…a Miss Georgia…Desiree…”

Badger shook his head. “Not anymore. Dessy was an ambitious girl. She was headed for the big time, and she decided I wasn’t it. She was right about that. She has her heart set on being a spokesmodel, or maybe a letter-turner on one of those daytime quiz shows. Too rich for my blood. So we sold the big house, and she took most of the money and moved to Florida. I wish her the best.” He brightened. “I’m okay, though. I kept my fishin’ shack on the lake. I like it there.”

Sark made a note: Dumped by Gold Digger. She gave him an encouraging smile. “Hobbies. Fishing?”

“Animal rescue,” said Badger. “I don’t have any formal training or nothing, but I just never could stand to see anything suffer. When I was a kid my daddy hit a doe with his truck, and we found the fawn standing there by the side of the road, so I bundled it up in my coat, took it home, and bottle-fed it ’til it was big enough to be turned loose again. I guess that’s what got me started. And I had an owl that had got a wing shot off by some hunter who was either careless, drunk, or mean as hell. Kept him in the house.” He grinned. “Dessy wasn’t any too happy about that. You ever try to get owl shit out of a Persian rug?”

“No,” said Sark. She drew a line through Dumped by Gold Digger and wrote beside it Ideological Differences. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get to the silly stuff. What’s your favorite song?”

“‘Georgia on My Mind’,” said Badger without a second’s hesitation.

“Oh. The Ray Charles version?”

“Who?”

A glimmer of suspicion flickered in Sark’s brain. “‘Georgia on My Mind’.” How do the words go again?”

Badger sighed. “I’m from Georgia, okay? That’s supposed to be my favorite song.”

“Whereas your actual favorite song is?”

He shrugged. “Can I say the National Anthem, then? When they sing it before the race, I swear I tear up every time.”

“Okay, forget music. Favorite food?”

Badger looked uneasy. “What am I supposed to say?”

Sark shuddered, considering the possibilities. God knows, she thought. You’re from the rural South. Aloud, she said, “Grits?”

“Well, not my favorite. But I do like ’em every now and again. One time in New York I ordered them, and they charged me fifteen dollars for them as a side dish. Called it polenta.”

Sark considered writing down “polenta,” but thought better of it. “Don’t you know what your favorite food is?” she asked.

“Yeah, but that’s not the point, is it? That’s one of those gimmick questions that’s supposed to tell fans what kind of guy you are. For your image. Like maybe if you’re from Wisconsin, you say cheese, or if you’re sponsored by a cereal company, you name the cereal. Or maybe if you want people to think you’re macho, you say buffalo in bourbon sauce.”

Sark tapped her pen on the notepad. “Just tell me, okay? What is your favorite food? Say anything. I don’t care!”

Badger sighed. “Bologna on Wonder bread,” he said. “And tomato soup.”

“Fine!” said Sark. She wrote down buffalo in bourbon sauce.

The rest of the interview went along placidly enough, highlighted by Badger’s heartwarming stories of bottle-feeding orphaned fawns and the rescue of his giant turtle. Sark thought she could make quite an appealing press kit out of an expurgated version of Badger’s life story-minus a few DUIs and youthful escapades, that is.

She checked the notes on her clipboard. There was only one more matter to cover. “They asked me to talk to you about our sponsor,” she said, fighting to keep the irritation out of her voice. Why me? she thought. Surely there’s somebody higher up the totem pole who could handle this.

Badger had assumed his earnest retriever expression again. “Oh, yeah. That drug. They said I might have to talk about it in interviews some time.”

“Well, I expect it will come up,” said Sark. “So they want me to give you some pointers in how to deal with it.”

“How about I say I take it regularly and that it works?”

Sark took a deep breath. “You really have no idea what the sponsor is, do you, Badger?”

“Some kinda drug.”

She chose her words carefully and said them slowly to make sure they sank in. “Vagenya is a drug to enhance sexual desire. In women.”

Badger frowned. “I thought that was illegal.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Is that the stuff guys drop in ladies’ drinks to knock ’em out?” He squirmed in his chair. “I sure never needed to do that.”

Suddenly, she had a flash of what a media interview with Badger might be like. She would have to go with him. She would have to devise a signal for shut up. She would make him memorize sound bites. Oh, hell, was it possible simply to hire a Badger impersonator? No, probably not. He was one of a kind, all right. She would have to prepare him for all possible contingencies, and step one was explaining to him just what product his race car would be advertising. Oh, boy.

“No,” she said carefully. “You don’t put Vagenya into a woman’s drink. It’s…um…Do you have Mark Martin’s cell phone number?”

Badger’s eyes widened in bewilderment for an instant, before he realized who had sponsored Mark Martin. “Oh,” he said. “Like Viagra, you mean.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.” He digested this information for a few anxious moments. “And that’s gonna be my sponsor, huh?”

“Right.”

“So people are gonna give me a hard time about it.”

Sark sighed. “Some of them might.” She repressed a shudder, as she pictured the unauthorized tee shirt slogans. The cartoons on Web sites. Leering woman fans holding up signs at the races: BADGER JENKINS GETS ME HOTTER THAN VAGENYA.

“But I don’t have to say that I use it myself?”

“No. Please, no.”

He brightened at once. “Well, that’s good! Then all I have to say is that it’s a good product and I hope it helps people who need it.” He pulled a box of breath mints out of his pocket and held them up as if posing for the camera. “It’s a good product and I hope it helps people who need it,” he said in tones usually used by finalists in the Miss America pageant. Then he resumed his customarily goofy grin. “Was that okay?”

Slowly, Sark nodded. Now that she thought about it, the combination of Badger and Vagenya might actually work. In interviews, Badger would assume his most earnest guide dog expression and repeat his catchphrase with a worried frown of sincerity every time the subject came up, and only the truly heartless would give him grief about it. Of course, there were a lot of truly heartless people in sports media, but even they would get bored and stop baiting him up after the umpteenth repetition of Badger’s earnest sound bite. If you continue to taunt someone who bears your torment with dignity and grace, eventually the tormenter is the one who looks bad.

Something else might happen, too, she thought: a backlash of sympathy. People said that when Mark Martin first acquired Viagra as a sponsor, the teasing was merciless, but he was so calm and serious about the matter that soon people began to respect him for having the guts to drive for such a potentially embarrassing sponsor and for taking all the taunts with such grace under pressure.

Maybe the same thing would happen to Badger with the Vagenya sponsorship. Maybe this new need for gravitas would reveal a whole new dimension to his personality. She glanced over at Badger, trying to picture him as a dignified elder statesman of Cup racing. He had opened the plastic breath mints box, and now he was tossing a mint into the air and trying to catch it in his mouth.

The dignified elder statesman of Cup racing. Yeah, right.