Once Around the Track

CHAPTER XVI

ENGINE NOISE

Your Online Source for NASCAR News & Views

VAGENYA SLIM?-Well, what do you think the 86 team’s chances are to make the Daytona 500? Engine Noise is betting that by race time Sunday they’ll all be back in Mooresville watching the show on television. The legendary Jay Bird Thomas is acting as the team’s godfather, but we think they’d be better off with a fairy godmother. With a magic wand. Boogity! Boogity! Boo!-Still, the team is in Daytona this week, getting ready to qualify for the Great American Race. Since they are a start-up team without a previous top 35 standing or champion’s points, they’ll have to make it in by having one of the fastest times of all the wannabees. So they’d better hope that Badger doesn’t-dare we say it?-run like a girl!

Hey, Ed, Sark here. I finally made it to Daytona with Team Vagenya, and I’m taking notes like crazy. I’m beginning to think I need to write a book instead of just an article. If people don’t know racing it would be hard to cram all this information into a couple of thousand words.

Yo, Sark! You’re in Daytona already? I thought the race wasn’t until next Sunday?

It is next Sunday, but you wouldn’t believe how much we have to go through before the race. It’s not even guaranteed that we will race. First there’s qualifying, which I thought I understood. You know, cars go around the track a couple of times and whoever has the fastest lap gets the pole, and second fastest is next, and so on. Well, for the Daytona 500, they don’t qualify like that.

So, enlighten me. Basketball is my sport. What do your car boys do at Daytona? Poll the audience? Call a friend? Convene the College of Cardinals?

Nothing so simple. They do the normal two-lap time trial on the first day, but that only determines who gets the inside and outside pole positions. Everybody else is still in limbo.

Limbo, Huh? Then they call the College of Cardinals?

No, then they hold two 125-mile qualifying races on the Thursday before the race on Sunday.

Two races? How do they decide which contenders race in which race?

Do you really want to know, Ed? Try reading an IRS tax form, and if you find that riveting, then I’ll explain all the fine points of qualifying to you. Anyhow, suffice it to say that Badger is in the first qualifying race, and if he finishes in the top fourteen, he will take his place in the lineup behind the pole sitter.

That sounds dull, but coherent, anyhow.

It gets worse. There are also champion’s points, provisional entries, and God only knows what else, but anyhow, we’re not eligible for any papal dispensations or whatever you have to have to get into the race free. We have to get Badger in with a fast car, which, please God, he does not wreck during the qualifying race.

So now you’re praying for Badger? I’m touched.

Listen, a lot of talented and dedicated women have worked pretty damned hard to get him out there, and if he gets this team in the race I’d be willing to put a statue of him on my dashboard.

Sounds like he’s made a convert. And is Badger being a saint down there in NASCAR land?

He’s working his ass off. We all are. What he does on his own time, I don’t know.

Shouldn’t you be finding out? For the article, of course.

I’ll try. He has an autographing Thursday morning. Maybe I can ask him then. I’m supposed to be his minder for the afternoon, because the Dominatrix is busy (I told you about her). Maybe she has to have dialysis to change the antifreeze in her veins. Gotta go. Wish us luck.

If anyone had told Taran Stiles that she would someday spend a whole week inside the Daytona International Speedway, and that not once would she even bother to log on to the Badger’s Din, much less boast about her adventures, well, she wouldn’t have believed it. Here she was, living the dream, and she wasn’t going to tell the people who would envy her most. In fact, the week had been so hectic that she couldn’t even be bothered to read what they were saying about the forthcoming race.

Anyone who thought that stock car racing was not a team sport had better not say it to her face this week. People on Badger’s Din used to talk about racing as if it was all up to Badger, but now Taran knew for a fact that it wasn’t. Before he could go out there and qualify in one of Daytona’s preliminary races, an army of support people had to do their jobs, and he couldn’t succeed unless they were very good at their jobs, too. It was an intricate web of trust and dependency. The pit crew had to hope that the engineers and mechanics had set up the car so that it would perform well, and the engineers and mechanics had to hope that all their hard work would not go down the drain if the pit crew screwed up their part of the operation. And assuming that all of them did everything right both in the shop and in the pit, it all depended on Badger driving well and being lucky enough not to get wrecked by somebody else’s mistake on the track.

The first practice at Daytona was a nerve-wracking experience for Taran. There were a fair number of people in the stands, and enough people were milling around the infield to populate a county fair. Taran thought it was hard enough to do her newly learned job without all these strangers watching her. It unnerved her that the garages provided for the Cup teams had one glass wall, so that anyone walking by could stand there and watch what was going on. She knew that the observers were probably just interested well-meaning fans, but the idea of being observed by strangers still made her uneasy. She felt that she was too much of a klutz in general to want an audience.

She was still standing there in a daze when Kathy Erwin, the team’s front tire changer, shook her by the shoulder, and said, “Stiles, quick-before it’s Badger’s turn to practice. We forgot to bring one of the parts we might need this afternoon. We need you to go over to one of the Childress teams and see if you can borrow one. You need to hurry.”

“What part is it?” asked Taran.

The tire changer told her.

Moments later, Taran was standing at the tool wagon of the 31 car, trying to explain her errand to a harassed-looking man in orange coveralls. “We just want to borrow it, if you have an extra one.”

The wiry man leaned in closer and cupped his ear so she wouldn’t have to shout. “What was it you wanted again?”

Taran had it down pat. “A left-handed smoke shifter,” she said triumphantly. “If you can spare it.”

The guy in the orange coveralls sighed and shook his head. “We only brought the one,” he said. “But I tell you what, why don’t you go see if the 21 car has one to spare? I believe the Wood Brothers actually invented that tool. They’re bound to have an extra one, don’t you think, boys?”

Those of his fellow crew members within earshot nodded solemnly. The Wood Brothers. The 21 car. They all agreed that it was Taran’s best bet, and off she went.

She threaded her way through the crowd of crew members getting ready for their car’s turn at practice, trying to ignore the roar of engines and the people watching from the stands, all of whom were, she felt, looking directly at her. At the Wood Brothers’ garage she restated her mission to another busy man in coveralls.

“Can’t help you,” he said, and turned away.

Desperation made her bold. “But I thought you people invented the left-handed smoke shifter!” said Taran, clutching at his arm.

The crewman sighed and looked down into the face of an earnest little idiot who was on the verge of tears. Sure she was a new fish, but he figured that race week would be enough of a hassle for her as it was. And Badger was a good guy. They went way back. Old Badger had enough to contend with, what with that embarrassing sponsor of his. He didn’t need any hysterical teammates to boot. “Look, kid,” the crewman said, “there’s no such thing.”

“What?” Taran strained to hear him over the waves of sound from crowds, engines, and loudspeakers.

“I said there’s no such thing as a left-handed smoke shifter. It’s an old joke. Crews pick the most gullible new team member and send them out to borrow nonexistent tools. They’re back there laughing at you. Go back and get ready for the practice.”

It took a moment for the sense of this speech to sink in to Taran’s already panic-stricken and distracted brain, but finally the phrase they’re laughing at you hit home, and without a word, she turned away and began to trudge back to the Team Vagenya garage stall. Practical jokes were not her idea of the best way to build camaraderie within the team, but she realized that NASCAR was still a man’s world, which meant that the rules were different-and not necessarily harsher, either. The society of women had its own form of hazing, but usually they did it behind your back, and they never let you in on the joke.

Maybe the team thought she was the joke, Taran thought. Everybody knew how she felt about Badger. Oh, not the real Badger, but that ethereal creature in the firesuit that he sometimes became. Maybe that was why they had singled her out for torment.

She went back to the space allotted to the 86 car. Fortunately, everybody was busy, so they missed her arrival. She had been dreading the pointing and snickering. Then she saw why no one was paying any attention to her. A rookie’s car had got loose in Turn Four and hit the back of another car. It wasn’t Badger-always her first thought-but everyone’s attention was now focused on the track where the two cars had stopped.

Suddenly, Tuggle was at her side. “Damn rookies,” she said, nodding toward the track. “Look, go ask the guys if they brought the shrinker-stretcher from the shop. We may need it.”

Taran blinked. “Wh-what?”

“The shrinker-stretcher. It’s a tool,” said Tuggle.

“Oh, I’ll just bet it is!” said Taran. “Well, for your information, I have already fallen for that stupid trick once today. I’m not going to go on any more wild goose chases for nonexistent parts just to amuse this team. It’s mean!” She put her hand over her mouth to stifle the sobs and ran off in the direction of the restroom.

Tuggle stared after her open-mouthed. “What the hell?-Hey, Erwin, got a minute? Go ask Tony if we brought the shrinker-stretcher.”

It’s a small part used to get the dents out of sheet metal, in case the car gets banged up out on the track. Kathy Erwin, who knew that, ran to the garage to check.

The team spent most of Speed Week in a frenzy of activity, getting the car ready; making sure they knew what they were supposed to do; and tripping over reporters, who wanted fluffy feature stories about the “girls’ team.” They had all been warned to be as bland and noncommittal as possible-and to make no personal comments about Badger.

One afternoon when they were in the garage area of the Daytona infield, during a rare moment of inactivity, Tony Lafon appeared, carrying a digital camera, and said, “Can somebody do me a favor?”

“I take pretty good pictures,” said Taran. “What do you need?”

He handed her the camera. “Great. Hold this. I’ll be right back!”

“Nice guy,” said Cindy. “He’s spotting for Badger Sunday, isn’t he?”

Taran nodded. “He drives on some of the local tracks around Charlotte, so he knows what to say during races.”

“He drives? Is he any good?”

“I think so,” said Taran. “But I don’t think he can afford good enough equipment to prove it.”

Tony reappeared just then wearing a white firesuit with blue sleeves, emblazoned with a Sunoco logo and lettering advertising a local furniture store. On the belt at his waist was the name “Tony Lafon” embroidered in blue. The outfit was not on par with the elegant custom-made firesuit that Badger wore, but it still had the magical effect of making Tony look taller, handsomer, and extremely important.

“I wanted to get some pictures of myself for my portfolio,” he said. “And maybe to do an autograph card for local events.”

“Sure,” said Taran. “Where do you want to go?”

“Well, since there aren’t too many people around this afternoon, I was thinking Victory Lane.” He said it warily, as if he expected the statement to be met with peals of laughter, but everybody just nodded, seeing the logic of the suggestion.

“Come on,” said Taran. “If we take twenty or thirty shots, there’s bound to be one you can use.”

Victory Lane at Daytona is a large barred enclosure with a small set of bleachers facing a stage, whose white backdrop features the words “Daytona International Speedway” under a smaller design of multicolored flags. They walked from the garage area to the building that adjoined the Victory Lane enclosure, and a cleaning man obligingly let them in and pointed them to a door that opened into Victory Lane.

“How do I look?” asked Tony, as Taran positioned him on the stage under the word “Daytona.”

“Important,” said Taran. “Why don’t you stand over there beside the reflective glass wall of the building? If I angle the shot correctly, I can get the reflection of the track itself in the glass behind you.”

“That would be great,” said Tony.

About five minutes later, Taran was on the fifteenth variation of Tony in the reflection shot, when the tourist trolley arrived.

The Daytona International Speedway is a tourist attraction every day of the year. People come from all over the world to see the mother church of American racing, and part of the experience is getting to circle the track in a coupled caravan of open trolleys while a guide recites a running narrative of speedway history and information. One highlight of the tour is when the carriages go up on the steep banking between Turns Three and Four for perhaps fifty yards, enabling the tourists to experience the thrill of actually riding on the same part of the track where the race is run. After that the tour takes a five-minute break in Victory Lane-major photo opportunity.

This time when the guide unlocked the gate to Victory Lane, the crowd of tourists surged into the enclosure, whereupon sixty people simultaneously spotted the miraculous vision within: a NASCAR driver in a firesuit. As one, the horde of squealing spectators, which included a group of local schoolchildren, sprinted toward the exalted being posing for publicity pictures. Taking this as a signal that photos were indeed permitted, they encircled the driver and began clicking away. Others hung back, digging into pockets and purses for pens and scraps of paper on which to capture the celebrity’s autograph.

Tony bore up under this wave of adulation with remarkable grace and poise. He posed for pictures with anyone who wanted, and he motioned for all the fourth graders to encircle him so that he towered about them like an amiable Godzilla, smiling for a phalanx of amateur photographers. He shook hands and accepted hugs from admiring strangers, while Taran stood by wonderingly, and so totally ignored by Tony’s newfound admirers that she might have been invisible. He signed hats and hands and pieces of notebook paper. And posed for still more pictures.

And no one ever asked who he was.

After five minutes, the guide herded his charges back to the trolley to continue the tour, and waving their last farewells, the happy tourists climbed back on board and sped away up the track.

“Wow,” said Taran. “That was amazing. They treated you like you were Jeff Gordon.”

“It’s the firesuit,” said Tony. “It’s magic.”

“Yeah, I believe it. So…do you want to go over to Lake Lloyd? I could get some shots of you walking on water.”

When they got back to the 86 garage area, they were still laughing.

By Thursday, Tuggle had grudgingly pronounced them as ready as they were going to get. They hadn’t seen much of Badger. He had been whisked here and there, filming a NASCAR commercial with a couple of other drivers, giving interviews for the sports media, and renewing his acquaintance with all his old friends from his former days in Cup racing. He was due to turn up again late Thursday morning for the first autographing session promoting the Team Vagenya merchandise.

“I still don’t see why we agreed to this autographing,” said Sark with a worried frown. “Badger has the qualifying race this afternoon, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” said Tuggle. “That’s a couple of hours later.”

“But shouldn’t he be focusing on that? He can’t even get into the Daytona 500 unless he does well in this race. Why distract him?”

Tuggle shrugged. “Because these days, being popular is just about as important as winning. It impresses the sponsor, and it’s easier to achieve than a first-place finish.”

“But shouldn’t he concentrate on his actual job? He has to go around that track at two hundred miles per hour.”

“He’ll be fine,” said Tuggle. No point in telling the publicist that to the bosses it didn’t much matter whether he was fine or not. They could always get another wheel man.

Sark shrugged. Hers not to reason why. Because it was Badger’s first autographing as the Team Vagenya driver, they wanted her to photograph the event and to do a write-up for the team Web site, and so she would. Logistics were someone else’s problem. Sometimes Badger reminded her of Boxer the horse in Animal Farm: a hardworking simpleton exploited by the pigs of management. That observation might make an interesting sidebar for her exposé.

The lot where the souvenir trailers were parked-row on row of brightly painted vans, emblazoned with drivers pictures and team colors-reminded Sark of a state fairground. Here were the same kitschy souvenirs-the tee shirts, hats, and teddy bears-that you saw at the fairgrounds, and the same milling crowds of sartorially challenged sightseers. Only here, instead of the tattooed lady and the sword-swallower, people waited in line to meet a Cup driver. The difference, thought Sark, was that tattooed ladies and sword-swallowers made a living by letting people gawk at them, while presumably Cup drivers had better things to do. She resolved to make a note of that analogy for her future Vanity Fair article on the racing world. Ed Blair had called her on her cell phone that morning to ask how it was going.

“It’s not as outrageous as I expected,” she’d told him. “I’ve told you most of it in my e-mails. I know they haven’t been very detailed, but I’ve been too busy to write much. Everybody is pretty nice, though.”

“Keep digging,” he’d said. “You can make anybody look stupid if you put your mind to it.”

She eased her way through the crowd to the little wooden table where Badger sat ready to meet his public. He was wearing a purple Team Vagenya cap and tee shirt and a pair of faded Levis. She had expected to see him in his firesuit, but considering what a hot day it was, she supposed that his present outfit was a sensible choice, and the advertising logos meant that he was still promoting the brand.

A legion of race fans, predominantly female, stood in a disorderly line, cameras at the ready, waiting for the signal to surge forward. The signing had been an open invitation. Some drivers-possibly even Badger himself, for all she knew-were so popular that you had to get a ticket hours in advance just to be able to stand in their autograph line, but the team representative who had set up the event had not realized that Badger’s star shone quite so brightly, so all comers were welcome. It promised to be a free-for-all, because he could only stay for half an hour, and there seemed to be no way to accommodate the crowd in that length of time.

“Hello,” said Sark, bending down close to his ear. “I’m here to cover the event for the team Web site, and to provide moral support for you.”

“Thank ya so much,” drawled Badger, wiping his forehead with the back of a sweaty hand. He sounded both heartfelt and shy-and he had the sunglasses on, which at first glance transformed him into that fierce and sexy creature she had seen through the camera lens. Even Sark, who knew better, felt her pulse quicken for an instant, before she remembered that it was only Badger.

No wonder his line is mostly female, thought Sark. Aloud, she said, “I see you’ve got your water bottle and a bunch of Sharpies. Anything else you need?”

He shook his head, but his smile seemed to waver, and he glanced warily at the throng of giggling women. Sark remembered a Discovery Channel program about ancient Greece that featured the maenads: crazed packs of women who ran through the Hellenic forests tearing to pieces anyone they encountered. She wondered if this event might be a modern version of that ritual.

“Maybe you ought to stay close,” Badger said softly. “It can get a little rocky sometimes. You never know.”

She stared at him, wondering what sort of moral support he might require of her. Bodyguard? Bouncer? Significant Other Impersonator? “What do you expect me to do?” she whispered.

“I dunno,” said Badger. “People get carried away sometimes. Whatever needs doing, I guess. You’ll know.” He waved a Sharpie at her and winked. “I reckon I’m ready.”

Sark watched the signing ritual with all the fascination of an anthropologist observing an arcane tribal worship ceremony. Badger seemed to be both deity and sacrificial lamb. She found it interesting that the age and body type of the driver did not often correlate with that of his followers. She wondered if anybody had ever done a study on it.

One slab-faced older woman near the front of the line was wearing tight red shorts over ham-sized thighs and what must have been an extra-extra large Badger Jenkins tee shirt. She was so enormous that she could have carried Badger as a purse, thought Sark.

There ought to be a rule, Sark decided, that if you outweigh your driver by a factor of two, then you ought not to be allowed to wear his apparel. (This rule, she reflected, would cost the delicate and diminutive Kasey Kahne whole legions of his fans.)

She watched with interest to see what Badger’s reaction would be-the ex-husband of a former Miss Georgia, contemplating (ha!) his biggest fan.

The massive woman set an autograph card on the table in front of him. Her earnest expression was almost menacing. Without cracking a smile, she said, “You’re doing good work, Badger. In Pennsylvania we think the world of you.”

“I appreciate it,” said Badger solemnly, signing the card with his customary scrawl. “I reckon I need all the help I can get.”

He handed back the card with a reassuring smile of thanks, and the woman took it, visibly relaxing at the reassurance of his smile. She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Badger, I know you’re busy, but can I get my picture taken with you?”

He nodded. “Come around,” he said, motioning her forward, and almost before the words were out, the woman had handed the camera to her friend and stumped around behind the table. Badger did not get up, which was just as well, Sark thought, considering the size differential. He’d look like the Dalmatian standing beside one of the Budweiser Clydesdales. Oblivious to the effect of their posing in tandem, the woman leaned forward and grinned, while Badger smiled “professionally” at the camera. Then-just as the friend snapped the shutter-Badger’s biggest fan swooped down and enveloped him in a predatory hug that made Sark think of a praying mantis eating her partner after mating. Click!

The woman giggled. “Now I can go home and tell my friends that I hugged Badger Jenkins!” she said.

Before Sark could say or do anything, the woman and her friend hurried away, chattering happily about this escapade, hoping aloud that the picture would turn out. Better hope Badger will be visible at all, thought Sark, wondering if there was anything she could or should have done. Obviously she needed to be more vigilant than she had realized. Badger didn’t seem perturbed, though, which rather surprised her. She didn’t for a moment suppose he enjoyed it.

After that incident, she watched Badger with interest, waiting to see some trace of a grimace cloud that handsome little face, some smirk of derision perhaps that such a rough beast would have the audacity to embrace him-but his expression did not change. He simply smiled at the next person in line as if nothing had happened, and Sark felt herself sigh with relief. She hadn’t wanted Badger to be the kind of man who would ridicule a woman for not being pretty. With a rueful sigh she remembered her own initial reaction to the bearlike woman, and she wondered if in his place she would have been as gracious as Badger was. She told herself that his poise came from years of practice, but she didn’t altogether believe it. She considered the unlikely possibility that the handsome jock really was a nice guy. Nah. There had to be some other explanation. Media training, maybe.

Still, sincerely or not, he had done a kind thing. That poor woman probably would go home and boast for years about her triumph: She had hugged Badger Jenkins. And, look, she had a picture to prove it, and he was just as nice as could be about it. Not stuck-up at all. Perhaps in the months to come she would come back to the track and stand again in his autograph line, this time with that treasured photo for him to sign: further proof that she had hugged him. She had really hugged him.

Sark marveled at the magic of a meaningless gesture. She had lost count of the times Badger had hugged her, or Tuggle, or Julie Carmichael, and no one paid any attention to it. Badger was a hugger; he did it with all the abandon of a child, if he knew you. He was much more reserved around strangers, of course, and around fans, who were simply strangers who didn’t know that they were, but he seemed to think of the team as his family, and if you were in his path when he was happy or sad or coming or going, or whatever, then he hugged you. No big deal.

But it was a big deal to these people, waiting in line with their photos and their official Badger Jenkins souvenirs. Sark thought that it seemed discourteous somehow to be unimpressed by gestures that other people would consider a rare privilege. How disconcerting to meet people who thought that Badger Jenkins was a great and wonderful man, and who would have saved forever a Styrofoam cup he had drunk from. And yet she had his cell phone number on speed dial. People have been killed for less, she supposed.

She wondered how Badger could stay afloat in this tide of adulation. Did celebrities begin to believe that their garbage was valuable, that their lightest word should be embroidered on samplers, that they were better than anybody else? To his credit, Badger didn’t seem to think so. Well, Tuggle would never have let him get away with it for one thing. Perhaps the best favor that one can do for a celebrity friend is to periodically tell them to get over themselves. That, and to resolve to still be just as much of a friend when the luster of celebrity fades and the spotlight shines somewhere else. She saw now why that would be such a hard thing to bear-to go back to being nobody, after this. And Badger was just…well, Badger. In the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t all that famous, and still he had worshippers. What if he were really, most sincerely famous? The thought of being a member of the posse of Dale, Jr. or Jeff Gordon made her shudder.

The signing went on relatively calmly after the large woman went away. As the minutes passed, Sark found herself classifying the different types of admirers who stood in Badger’s autograph line. Most of the people were just nice (if misguidedly starstruck) folks who were thrilled to be in the actual presence of a NASCAR driver. They wanted to shake his hand, to wish him well, to get his name affixed to a piece of paper-so that they could go home and brag to their neighbors that they had met the Badger Jenkins, and that he was just as nice as could be, no airs about him atall.

The line wasn’t just a procession of the faithful, though; it was liberally sprinkled with “dealers.” People who made a living getting minor celebrities to sign photos and other memorabilia that they would then resell in shops or online for a tidy profit. The more unscrupulous ones simply faked the signature-a necessary ruse, perhaps, if the customer wanted, say, Johnny Depp, but hardly necessary in the world of NASCAR. Drivers were nice guys. Most of them would oblige anyone who asked politely for a signature, provided that time was not a factor. In order to get their money’s worth, sponsors saw to it that their drivers made many public appearances, which meant that obtaining their autographs was mostly a matter of perseverance and scheduling.

Dealer types were generally male, brisk, and unimpressed by the experience. Badger’s signature on a photo might mean ten bucks to them, if they were lucky and if a true fan from faraway participated in the online auction. The dealers would attend the race and stand in every possible driver’s autograph line, hoping to get enough signatures to make their speedway visit profitable. Getting an autographed photo from the likes of Badger was all well and good, but the dealers’ greatest wish was to have the good fortune to run into Little E. or Jeff Gordon, the rock stars of Cup racing. A signature from either of them would cover the entire cost of the weekend. But you couldn’t count on the availability of the superstars, so to pass the time the dealers staked out the small fry. They treated Badger with the curt efficiency of a remora preparing to clean the teeth of a very small shark: a necessary process for both parties, but only barely worth the effort.

If the dealers were blasé about the experience of meeting him, the true fans more than made up for it with their unbridled-occasionally semihysterical-enthusiasm. Fandemonium. Sark handed out tissues to more than one woman who burst into tears simply because Badger had touched her hand when he returned the autograph card. She began to wish she’d brought a supply of paper bags along so that she could hand them out to the overwrought and say, “Breathe into this!” (And occasionally when a fan became too saccharine and sloppy in her adoration of Badger, Sark felt like using a paper bag herself, for quite another purpose.)

There ought to be a happy medium, she thought, between the businesslike dealers and the gushing maenads. She thought Badger deserved more respect from the former and a good deal less adulation from the latter.

Who the heck was Badger Jenkins, anyhow? Rock star? Hero? Dream lover? Meal ticket? Favorite son? Star athlete? Big brother? There seemed to be as many answers to that question as there were people in line.

Occasionally, a giggling woman would thrust a cell phone under his nose and order him to say hello to her friend back home. “Donna’s your biggest fan. Just say hello to her. She’ll die, Badger. I swear she will.”

Badger always managed to say a cordial sentence or two into the phone, and the response was a sometimes audible shriek. He usually concluded the conversation with, “Yes, ma’am, I’m really him. Thanks for being a loyal fan.” He called them all ma’am, which Sark thought might be more an estimate of age than a term of respect. There were more requests for a hug, but he managed to evade them.

Sark began to feel sorry for the driver. Being loved can be more of a burden than a blessing. People have built you a soul, and if you run afoul of their expectations, they will turn on you with the ferocity of wild dogs. Dealing with one’s public was harder than it looked, she concluded. Being handsome helped, because it meant you didn’t have to say much to win them over, but a calm temperament and a seeming openness with strangers would prove invaluable also. She began to regard Badger with increasing admiration. There was more to being a race car driver than skill behind the wheel. Badger was damned good. He sent everyone away happy.

The line wound on, one gushing fan after another.

Often besotted maidens wanted to give him things-a photo of their cat whose name was Badger, or perhaps an amateur portrait of him they’d done themselves, which generally looked more like Bela Lugosi than like Badger himself. Other admirers embroidered pillows with his number and team colors; they brought him hand-tied fishing flies “for the lake” and homemade soap. They presented him with pots of raspberry jam, which they’d personally prepared in little jars affixed with handwritten labels, often including the telephone number of the giver. Some hope, thought Sark. Others wrote worshipful, badly rhymed poems about him, which they bestowed on him on parchment with carefully lettered calligraphy and a Dollar Store frame.

Badger accepted all these earnest offerings with solemn thanks, and with a few words of admiration for anyone so talented as to be able to produce such a thing, because he sure as heck couldn’t do anything as original as that…thank you so much… and the givers went away happy. After a while Sark began to detect a particular tone of voice in his expressions of gratitude. When he said “Thank ya so-ooo mu-ucch” in a particular drawling way, she decided that it meant he was being given something he didn’t want. That was useful to know. She filed the information away to see when she would hear it next. Mostly, though, he was kind and polite to people who meant well, and they felt that they had made a real connection with their hero with their gifts of soap and poems and homemade jam. Sark wondered what became of those things afterward, and she resolved never to try to find out.

And then there were the kids. Badger loved kids. He’d peer down at a bright-eyed eight-year-old clutching anything from a napkin to a lug nut, and he’d strike up an animated conversation with the child while he scribbled his name on the proffered item.

“How you doin’, buddy? You a big race fan?” Man to man, as if they were both the same age, which in some ways, thought Sark, they were.

Sometimes the child was too shy even to mumble a response, but Badger never seemed to mind. He went on being friendly and charming until the child stopped looking terrified.

Then near the end of the line a little tow-headed kid in a Dupont tee shirt set down a Jeff Gordon hat in front of Badger and waited for him to sign it.

Sark held her breath. As far as she could tell, Cup drivers wholeheartedly agreed with the Supreme Being that the number one commandment was Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods before Me. She’d heard discouraging tales of drivers refusing to sign even their own team-themed merchandise if it was an unlicensed product-because drivers received no royalties from homemade fan items. And here was a kid expecting Badger to sign a product honoring another driver? She pictured an ensuing tantrum, and wondered if she ought to snatch the Gordon hat off the table and hustle the kid away before he precipitated a public relations nightmare.

Before she could decide what to do, Badger picked up the Gordon hat and scribbled across the brim with his black Sharpie. “There you go, buddy,” he said with a smile, handing the item back to its delighted owner.

When the child had walked away, Sark leaned in close again to Badger’s ear. “Wow,” she said softly. “You signed a Jeff Gordon hat. I cannot believe it.”

“Well, he’s a kid. I couldn’t disappoint him,” said Badger. “I can’t sign any Earnhardt stuff, though.”

“Why? You don’t like the Earnhardts?” asked Sark.

“Naw, that’s not it,” said Badger sadly. “I just can’t spell it.”

The little boy had put on his signed cap and was waving good-bye from a few feet away. Sark peered closely at the hat, and sure enough, scribbled on the brim were the words “Jeff Gordon” in Badger’s unmistakable rounded scrawl.

Sark could never decide if Badger was a complete innocent or the shrewdest person she knew.

She glanced at her watch. Time was nearly up, and the last two fans in line looked like trouble. They were young enough and skinny enough not to look completely ridiculous in their skimpy halter tops and barely-there shorts, but dyed-blond hair and ferret faces heavy with mascara and glitter blush weren’t Sark’s idea of sexy. She doubted if it was Badger’s, either, but since he had done all right on his own today, she decided to wait and see how he handled the confrontation-Sark was sure there was going to be one.

Sure enough, the one wearing the most eyeliner sashayed up to the desk and leaned over it, giving him the full effect of her cleavage.

Sark wrinkled her nose in distaste. Pit lizards. The term, which she herself had only learned this week, had probably been coined before these two little newts had even been born, but they were quite representative of the species: slithery and predatory. Like the rest of their kind, they lurked around drivers’ habitats in hopes of ensnaring one. Wives loathed them, and the crew either pitied or ridiculed them, according to the nature of the crew member and perhaps to the attractiveness of the individual lizard. It was universally acknowledged, though, that their appreciation of motorsports was similar to lions’ fondness for the watering holes of zebras: voyeurism disguising darker motives. Today this pair of lizards had apparently decided to prey on Badger.

Repelled more than fascinated, Sark backed away toward the Porta-John, hoping that when she’d finished, the two creatures would be gone. She heard more giggles as the girls took out cameras and whispered in each other’s ear. What were they offering him, anyway: a choice or a twofer?

And it happens to him all the time, she thought. How many times a day? A dozen? A hundred? How could such avid attention not go to his head? How could he not think himself God’s gift to mattresses? How could he sustain a relationship with anybody in the face of such temptation?

She hurried toward the Porta-John, out of earshot of the arch conversation taking place at the signing table, acutely aware of her own embarrassment. Somebody, she thought, ought to be ashamed at what was taking place; odd that she, the innocent bystander, should be the one who felt it. The other thing she felt was a bizarre, almost maternal protectiveness toward Badger. She wanted to yell, “Leave him alone! He’s not a piece of meat.” But surely that was a feminine impulse. Surely it was the essence of the male gender not to mind such an arrangement, even to revel in it. A free roll in the hay offered by a reasonably pretty girl who wanted nothing more? Why else would you want to be famous if not for perks like this? Did he feel like that, she wondered, or did the endless propositions make him feel slimed by the fetid desires of so many strangers? She wished she could think of a polite way to ask him.

Sark lingered in the toilet until the smell inside it was fractionally more distasteful to her than the sight of two attacking pit lizards in heat; then she stumbled out again into the sunshine, thinking that perhaps Badger would be expecting her to run interference for him, to get him out of an awkward situation with no hard feelings on the part of the lizards, assuming, of course, that they were capable of such niceties. Oh please let him not be succumbing to their attentions, she thought, and that notion almost sent her reeling back to the toilet.

Well, at least Badger wasn’t married anymore, she told herself. Not that it would have mattered to his stalkers if he had been.

As she approached the table again, she noticed that Badger had his head tilted back and appeared to be listening attentively to one of the girls. Now he was nodding, with a mournful look in his dark eyes.

Uh-oh, thought Sark, hurrying back to her post.

“And she won’t get her prescription filled,” said the blonde. “She says it costs too much, and that taking it doesn’t change the way she feels one bit. She says blood pressure is just a number. But she has to work standing up for hours at a time on her shift at the mill. I tell her that can’t be good for her, but she won’t listen.”

Badger was nodding sympathetically. “My granddad was stubborn like that,” he said. “We lost him a year ago last spring.”

“Really? Because he wouldn’t take his medicine?” Tears were streaming down the young woman’s face in little black rivulets of dissolved mascara. She dug in her tiny denim purse and fished out a creased snapshot. “This is my nana with her race cap on. See, it’s one of yours, from your old team. I gave it to her for her birthday the year you won Darlington, and she just loved it.”

Solemnly, Badger examined the grainy snapshot of a grinning old lady in a racing hat. “She needs to take her medicine, though,” he said. “What’s her name?”

The girl sniffled. “Dreama. D-R-E-A-M-A.”

Badger took one of the autograph cards and wrote across the top: Dreama, Please Take Your Pills. Badger Jenkins. “There,” he said, handing it back to the tearful pit lizard. “Maybe that will help. You tell her I can’t afford to lose any fans.” He shook hands with the girl and her friend, who now seemed much younger and less worldly than they had seemed before. “I have to go now,” he said, nodding toward Sark. “They need me to do a radio interview or something.”

The two women thanked him with moist smiles and as soon as they turned away, Badger got up from the table and hurried toward the motor home before anyone else could waylay him.

“That was pretty amazing,” said Sark. “You were great.”

Badger shrugged. “You get used to it,” he said.

“No, you were great with everybody. You were kind and sweet. But what impressed me the most was that you made those two pit lizards forget all about hitting on you. How did you do that?”

He shrugged. “I treated them like people,” he said. He ambled off, muttering something about Gatorade in the fridge.

Sark stared after him, wondering for the hundredth time whether Badger Jenkins was an old soul possessing great wisdom or a simpleton who was too dumb to be let out alone.