Once Around the Track

CHAPTER III

Grace Buell Hoskins Tuggle hoped that the job interview wasn’t going to include lunch, not that she minded a free meal, but from the looks of the ladies on the interview committee, every one of ’em about two ribs short of a shadow, she figured their idea of a noonday meal would be a lettuce leaf and an Ex-Lax pill. They were skinny enough to be drivers’ wives for sure, but they looked a little too steely-eyed and Old Money for that.

Now back in the old days, when Daddy had been racing, the wives were whoever the racers had happened to marry back when they started out working in the factory or wherever, and their lined faces and plump bodies testified to a lifetime of hard work, starchy food, and infinite patience with race-crazed husbands. Grace, who was pleased that her initials also stood for Grievous Bodily Harm, but who preferred simply to be known as Tuggle, did not hold with fad diets and plastic surgery. In her opinion, if being a willowy size two got you a race car driver for a husband, then they ought to put warning labels on Slim-Fast.

Wheel men! Lawn jockeys with 800-horsepower egos. Fortunately, she was past the age to confuse foolhardy with sexy, which was just as well, because no driver worth his salt would listen to a pretty girl giving him orders over the head set anyhow. They’d listen to her, though. If they had any sense they would.

Her daddy had been a force to be reckoned with on the racing circuit, back in the days when North Carolina was the hub of the world-Hickory, Asheville, Wilkesboro, Winston-Salem. She often said that her blood type was Hi-Test. And then there were her two husbands-the driving one from her wild younger days, who had put her heart so far into the wall that she thought she’d never get over him. Well, she hadn’t really, that was the truth of it. But at least she had learned from that experience that restrictor plates were not a bad thing for the human heart. Her second husband, Doyle, was a mechanic, and she claimed that she’d married him “for entertainment.” He didn’t take your breath away like the first one did, but he didn’t make you want to put a hose to the exhaust pipe, either, so she reckoned it evened out-less joy, less sorrow. That’s what getting older mostly meant anyhow.

Drivers. Like tigers. A lot of fun to look at, maybe even okay for a brief, wary encounter, but try to hold on to one and he will rip you to shreds. Well, maybe times had changed with all these West Coast pretty boys coming into the sport, but Tuggle didn’t think so, and she rejoiced in the fact that she was too old to care.

She wondered if she ought to offer the benefit of her wisdom to this charmed circle of designer-clad ladies, but she decided against it. They were too old to care, too, whether they knew it or not. And maybe they were into the sport for philosophical reasons. An all-woman team. Well, whatever kept the sponsors happy.

She assumed an expression of polite interest, which on her bulldog features looked like a double-dog-dare, as she waited for the questioning to commence.

The regal one they called Christine began by saying, “Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about yourself, Grace.”

Tuggle winced at the sound of her given name, sounding like a sermon title in the precise diction of this high-maintenance woman. “It’s Tuggle, if it’s all the same to you,” she corrected her. “As for my qualifications, my daddy ran dirt track and Late Model Stocks around the region-wherever he could afford to go and still keep his day job. Back then family was about the only pit crew you could afford, so he trained me and my brothers early on.” As if in answer to an unspoken question, she added, “They’re dead now.” She kept her voice steady-well, mostly steady-willing herself not to think about little Gary, dead in a rice paddy in Vietnam, and Cole, the daredevil, hitting the wall at Hickory in those days before fuel cells, when the word fire stuck in your throat.

“And I believe you raced yourself at one time.”

She nodded. “They used to have Powderpuff Derbies, as they called ’em. Good for attracting a crowd to the track on off nights. Daddy said I was almost as good as Cole, but, of course, I quit that foolishness once I grew up. Keeping a marriage going is a dern sight harder than winning an old stock car race.”

“Times have changed since those days,” said one of the younger women in a not-from-around-here accent. “NASCAR is rocket science now. What makes you think you could manage a team in a sport dominated by engineers?”

“Well, I reckon you will have engineers,” said Tuggle. “Strategy hasn’t changed. Maybe the cars are better now, and NASCAR keeps adding rules as fast as folks can think up ways around ’em, but it’s still the same old sport it used to be.”

“Now, we realize that our aim of having an all-women team is a bit unusual.”

Tuggle shrugged. “Well, it’s not traditional, of course. Back in my day, the old-time drivers had a saying: No tits in the pits. But times do change, don’t they?” She flashed a wolfish smile at the circle of frozen faces.

“Times do indeed change,” murmured Christine. “We consulted various experts, you know-fitness instructors, physicians, engineers-and they seem to think that there’s no reason a female pit crew couldn’t do the job, providing that they were carefully chosen and properly trained.”

“Likely as not,” Tuggle agreed. Women came in all shapes and sizes, especially in these exercise-crazed days. She’d known a few gals who could bench-press tractors. Find some of them and there wouldn’t be a problem.

“Of course, we will need someone to oversee the operation. I understand that is a customary to have a team manager and a crew chief, but we see no reason why a competent person couldn’t do both those things as one job. What do you think?”

Tuggle thought she’d have to have had more than one Bloody Mary for breakfast to tell this group of wine and cheese ladies what she thought about anything. She needed the job, and if that meant agreeing to use St. Christopher’s medals for hubcaps, she’d go along with it to keep the team owners happy.

“And we are already in negotiations with a driver. This one.” With a proprietary smirk, Christine Berenson slid an eight-by-ten photo out of a folder and passed it across the desk.

Tuggle contemplated the picture of Badger Jenkins, who was looking smolderingly at the camera, his legs spread far enough apart for a prostate exam. She snorted, unimpressed.

“Yeah, I know Badger,” she said. “He’s all right. Good seat-of-the-pants driver.”

Two of the investors glanced at each other, lips twitching. “We noticed that,” one of them said.

Tuggle scowled. She didn’t hold with people who treated drivers like cat toys. Or with drivers treating fans like that, for that matter. “Seat of the pants means a driver who can react quickly and handle things by instinct, whatever happens out there. A natural.” She glanced again at the photo. “I can see how you might misinterpret that phrase, though, with this to go by. That boy keeps sitting like that, he’s gonna get himself arrested.”

“For indecent exposure?”

“For false advertising.”

The investors glanced at one another, and then wisely decided not to pursue this line of questioning. “So, would you be comfortable working with Badger Jenkins?”

She considered it, knowing that the bosses wanted only a yes/no answer from her. What they really wanted was a yes answer as quickly as possible, but it wasn’t that simple. Like any Cup driver, Badger had his good points and his bad points. The question was whether he was good enough to make putting up with the rest worthwhile, and more importantly, whether the team could get anybody better who was likely to be less trouble. On the whole, she thought that they couldn’t.

Would she be comfortable working with Badger? Well, he was a sweet boy, no meanness in him, as far as she could see. He could be stubborn and he could show temper, but he wouldn’t be a race car driver if that weren’t the case. She did know Badger, and she believed in the adage “Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.” At least she knew where the trouble was. He might be a pussycat at sponsor events, but it practically took a cattle prod to get him to one. Sometimes he was so handsome it would take your breath away, but he might forget to shave for a day or two, and usually he schlepped around in old clothes that Goodwill wouldn’t have taken off your hands. But skinny boys in firesuits looked like warrior angels. Badger gift-wrapped would sell some tee shirts, all right.

He could be slipperier than a weasel in getting out of things he didn’t want to do, and he’d roll in to the track around midday on Thursday, unless you twisted his arm to show up earlier. You had to watch him every minute, or else he’d slope off to do his own thing-trout fishing, flying model airplanes, or Lord knows what. He thought that anything that wasn’t spelled out in his contract was a personal favor on his part, necessary or not. And nobody could make him understand that publicity and interviews were important. She understood exactly why his previous team had let him go. She knew she’d have to have a come-to-Jesus talk with him at least once a week to keep him in line.

On the other hand, he wasn’t a bad bargain as drivers went. He’d be sober when he needed to be. He didn’t treat women like party favors. And he was a loyal friend who kept his word once he gave it. You could trust him-if you shouted at him enough.

She saw no reason to share his faults with the team owners. Badger would be her problem.

“Yeah,” she said, “I reckon I can work with old Badger.”

She heard several sighs of relief, and then one of the older women said, “And do you think Badger Jenkins will be able to deal with an all-female pit crew?”

Tuggle had thought about that. “Sort of like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Only in this case, it’ll be seven Snow Whites and one dwarf.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Tuggle…did you say dwarf?”

She waved away the question. “Figure of speech is all. He ain’t that little-for a driver, that is. Mark Martin could have about driven a die-cast. I reckon Badger and I would stand nose to nose. ’Course I outweigh him,” she finished cheerfully, ignoring the shudders of the scrawnier investors. She imagined them later pushing away untouched plates of salad. “But you were asking about temperament, weren’t you?”

Several of the women nodded, perhaps not trusting themselves to speak.

“Well, it will mostly depend on how well they do their jobs, doncha know. A driver would be happy with a tribe of chimpanzees if they could get him out of the pit on four new tires in twelve seconds. You take much over thirteen, though, and a band of angels wouldn’t satisfy him. So get me good people and don’t worry about whether their booties were pink or blue.”

There was another awkward silence while the investors exchanged more significant looks. Must be telepaths, thought Tuggle. Finally, Christine said, “Find you good people? But surely that is your task, not ours?”

“Well, you’re the bosses,” said Tuggle amiably. “Like you said before, most teams nowadays have a crew manager and a crew chief. It’s the manager who hires the personnel, and the crew chief who makes sure they function smoothly as a team.” Noting the dismay on the women’s faces, Tuggle added kindly, “Of course, there’s no law that says you have to have a team manager. They never bothered with such things back in the day. Why, Bill Elliott’s crew was mostly his family, and he certainly did all right for himself, so I guess if you want me to handle both jobs, I can do it about as well as anybody. Hire the crew. Hmmm.”

Handling both jobs would be more work, but it also meant more independence-one less person to answer to. Grace Tuggle prized independence above rubies, and she was even willing to work harder to maintain her autonomy.

“You’ll need to pay me some more money to do both jobs,” she said.

No point in being a damn fool about it, she reasoned. “I’ll do both jobs for $950,000.” That way she didn’t have frighten them with the word “million,” but crew chiefs didn’t come cheap. To sweeten the deal, she added, “I can save us some money on the pit crew by hiring people who can do double duty.”

“I thought we had to have seven over-the-wall crewmen.”

Tuggle nodded. “Yes, but that’s for race day. What’s the point of hiring people who only work a day or two a week? If we get enough applicants for the jobs, we can hire the ones who also have another skill we can use. Say, a mechanic or a computer person, or someone who can also drive the hauler. That way we’ll have fewer workers on the payroll and a more efficient team. We also need a tire specialist-well, we can probably train a likely candidate, within reason.”

“What’s a tire specialist?”

Tuggle swallowed a sign of exasperation. “That’s the person who inflates the tires. Well, first we let the air out of the tire and refill it with nitrogen.”

They stared at her in puzzled fascination. “With nitrogen? Why on earth-?”

“I don’t know, but everybody does it. It’s not illegal. Trust me, okay? And when you hire an engineer, ask him-her-why NASCAR teams prefer to run on nitrogen-inflated tires. And as for tire-soaking-”

“What’s that?” asked Christine.

That was illegal. Most everybody did that, too, but she probably ought not to discuss it with people new to the sport. Tuggle took a long, fortifying breath; then she said, “Well, you want to wash the tires before the race to make sure they haven’t picked up any bits of debris that could cause a blowout.” It seemed plausible enough, as lies went, and no one questioned her explanation.

“So, you’re saying that we can streamline the team and save money on salaries by hiring people who can do two jobs. But wouldn’t such experts cost more?”

“Well, you have to have them anyhow. Shop jobs may take skill and experience, but anyone reasonably spry and willing can be taught to serve on the pit crew. We’ll just hire the people who are willing to do both jobs at a salary we can afford to pay. That suit you?”

They nodded, looking relieved that she was looking out for the team’s budget. It had been quite a shock to most of them to learn how expensive Cup racing was. A million dollars for a crew chief? More than twenty-five thousand dollars per race for tires? No wonder sponsorships were so expensive.

“What about equipment?” said Tuggle. “I take it we’re not building the cars from scratch?”

“I got some advice about that,” Christine Berenson said. “We’re going to buy the chassis from…Oh, what is his name? I have it written down somewhere…”

“Never mind,” said Tuggle. Four guesses would have told her what the name was, but it really didn’t matter at this point. “And you’re getting the engines from Hendrick?”

“However did you know? I believe that was the name.”

Tuggle nodded. It had been an educated guess. Hendrick was a five-car race team with about 500 shop dogs at their disposal. If anybody could spare adequate engines for a price, it would be them.

“All right,” said Tuggle, “so we buy the components and get our people to overhaul them. That ought to work.” It won’t win you a championship, she was thinking, but with reasonable skill on the engineers’ part and a halfway decent wheel man, it ought to keep you in the game.

“And you’ve had your application cleared by NASCAR? Got assigned a number and all?”

They nodded. “Apparently you can’t pick your own number,” one of them remarked.

“Well, no. Teams are assigned numbers. Some of them not in use are still already taken,” Tuggle explained.

“We wanted number 7.”

“Taken,” said Tuggle. “Both 7 and 07; both. Why did you want it in particular?”

They glanced at each other uneasily. “Well, there’s a feminine product, Monistat 7 for yeast infections, and we thought-”

Tuggle’s eyes glazed over as she tried to picture Badger Jenkins as the spokesperson for a yeast infection product. He’d have to carry pepper spray to the drivers’ meetings. Thank God that number was taken by Robby Gordon, who already had a sponsor. She’d have paid money to see Robby Gordon’s face if the yeast infection people had approached him about sponsoring his car.

“Twenty-eight would have been a good number, too!” said Diane Hodges, the former Miss Texas. “I think that pharmaceutical company with the birth control pill would have come on board if we could have got that number.”

“That was Davey Allison’s number,” said Tuggle. “And Ernie Irvan’s.” Both Daytona 500 winners: one of them dead and the other so badly injured he’d never race again. No, you wouldn’t see the number 28 back on a NASCAR track anytime soon, and she was glad of it. She wouldn’t want to see anything disrespectful done with that number. She didn’t want to jinx Badger, either. Repressing a shudder, she said, “So what’s our number?”

Christine Berenson said, “NASCAR assigned us the number 86.”

Tuggle tried not to wince. Not an auspicious number in Cup racing. It had been used fewer than a dozen times in the past thirty years, and never with any notable success.

“Isn’t 86 a slang term for terminating something?” asked one of the women.

“Maybe they want to eighty-six a woman’s team,” another one said.

“It’s just a number,” said Christine, with the weary patience of one who has had this discussion often. “Randomly assigned, I expect.”

“It’s okay,” said Tuggle. “It’s as good a number as any. Better than some. At least it’s not a number whose past would overshadow you, like…oh…22.” 22. Now that was a number to conjure with. The legendary Fireball Roberts, who had died after a fiery wreck at Charlotte in the sixties; country singer Marty Robbins, who used to try to come in second because he didn’t need the prize money; the respected and popular modern drivers Ricky Rudd and Bobby Labonte; and Daytona 500 winners Bobby Allison and Ward Burton. They all had driven the 22. She’d hate to have to compete with that reputation in her first season. At least it wouldn’t take much to eighty-six the previous reputation of number 86. She said, “So if you’ve got enough money to buy engines and chassis, you must have a primary sponsor lined up.”

“We do. A pharmaceutical company has developed a pill for women-you know, like Viagra. It’s supposed to-”

“I know what Viagra does,” said Tuggle, hoping to forestall the lecture. “For women, huh? What’s this one called?”

“Vagenya.”

“Virginia?”

Christine smiled. “Yes, it does sound like the way Southerners pronounce the name of the state, doesn’t it? Actually, I think the makers may have been playing with the words ‘virginity’ and ‘vagina,’ but who knows where they come up with these peculiar names for drugs nowadays? Anyhow, since it is a women’s team, the company decided that we would be a good place to advertise their product. So our sponsor is Vagenya, and our colors are royal purple and white.”

“Um…purple,” said Tuggle, trying to think of something to say other than what she was thinking, which was that if they decked Badger out in a purple firesuit with a Vagenya logo on it, he was probably going to have to beat people up in the drivers’ meeting to stop the catcalls. “There’s a brand of synthetic oil called Royal Purple. You might see if they’re interested in being a secondary sponsor.”

“Thank you,” said Christine, making a note of the name. “That’s exactly the sort of thing we need to know. As inexperienced as we are, I think we were very fortunate to get the makers of Vagenya to sponsor the car.”

“Of course, it helps that Eugenia’s father is the CEO of the company,” said Diane Hodges with a wink and a grin.

Tuggle stared at the circle of satisfied smiles. They were pleased. They were smug. They had managed to snag a twenty-million-dollar sponsor for their new Cup team. Weren’t they clever? Tuggle was thinking, Oh…my…God… She pictured drivers meetings. Fan sites on the Internet. Press interviews. But most of all she pictured having to be the one who tried to explain to Badger Jenkins what Vagenya was.

“And we can get free samples if you want some,” said one of the investors happily.

Tuggle summoned a queasy smile. Great, she thought, maybe I can swap it to Bobby Labonte for some of his Wellbutrin.

Later that afternoon, Tuggle sat on the polyester bedspread in her room in the Mooresville Best Western and tried to figure out what had just happened. She had taken the job. She had just accepted responsibility for a multimillion dollar operation and a temperamental race car driver, all funded by a sponsor that she still couldn’t mention with a straight face. There must be easier ways to make a living. Nothing she’d rather do that would pay a tenth of the salary, though, come to think of it.

Now she’d have to see about finding a place to live nearer to Mooresville, and then she’d have to begin the process of building a team she could work with. Well, she wasn’t in the market for a Lake Norman McMansion, that was for sure. Lake Norman was the Beverly Hills of NASCAR: a community of upscale homes on a man-made lake north of Charlotte. Oh, they paid some drivers well enough-though merchandising and commercial ventures counted for more of their income than winnings-but compared to the lords of the wheel, crew chiefs as a rule didn’t get obscenely rich in this sport. But if they didn’t try to outspend the drivers, they earned enough to be set for life.

Crew chiefs who were really fortunate stayed around for a decade or more, ultimately prospering enough to promote themselves to owners and start teams of their own. It would take considerable luck and consummate skill for such a thing to happen to her. She wasn’t counting on it. Just get through these first days of building the team and see how it went from there, she told herself.

Or, as everybody in racing said: One lap at a time.

She was now the very first female crew chief in NASCAR Cup racing, which meant that pretty soon word would get out-it might be on Engine Noise already-and then reporters from all over kingdom come would be tracking her down for an interview. They’d be asking her all sorts of silly questions, more than likely. Not the questions they’d ask a male crew chief, like what’s your strategy and which tracks do you think you’ll have the best chance of winning on? No, she’d get all the smarmy questions: Would the team wear designer-made uniforms from Vera Wang? Would they put Perrier in Badger’s water bottle? Did she have any NASCAR-themed recipes to share with the public? And now, God help her, did she use Vagenya?

Crap. The onslaught hadn’t even started yet and already she had a chip on her shoulder. Tuggle didn’t suffer fools gladly. She understood why Tony Stewart had to be restrained from assaulting reporters who harassed him with stupid questions. She might be tempted to deck one herself before the initial media frenzy was over.

Everybody was going to think this team was a gimmick. A joke. A bunch of know-nothing female amateurs teamed with a pretty boy from Georgia. They weren’t supposed to win. They were the sideshow, and who would care, because, after all, the money in NASCAR doesn’t come from winning races, but from sponsor support and souvenir sales. Success in those areas was a given, thanks to sexy little Badger, so the team’s absence from Victory Lane would hardly matter.

It mattered to her, though. And she thought it might very well matter to Badger Jenkins, too. He might be a pretty boy, but he was first and foremost a competitor. She had watched him that last year he raced, on the team that fired him after a mediocre season. It had been an underfunded two-car team, and the driver of the team’s other car was the owner’s pet. The team’s big sponsor was an RV manufacturer, and the nice young kid from Chicago who drove the RV-sponsored car happened to be the son of the owner of the biggest dealership for that brand of recreational vehicles. Naturally, that kid was first in line for everything, and Badger was the also-ran, getting the second-rate cars, the second-string crew, and a smaller share of the racing budget. Naturally, he did not do as well in competition as his teammate, because money buys speed, but instead of admitting what the real problem was, the owners chose to blame Badger. It was easier to replace the driver than to find another ten million dollars to upgrade the operation.

Watching Badger’s struggles last season reminded Tuggle of an exercise pony in horse racing. An exercise pony is the horse used to train the promising young thoroughbred by running practice laps with him and always losing. Even if the practice pony has a good day and is actually going to beat the golden boy, his rider pulls him up short to allow the other horse to win. Constant winning builds up the confidence of the promising thoroughbred, but its effect on the other horse is not so good. Eventually, the unbroken chain of defeats crushes the spirit of the practice pony. Maybe he forgets how to win. Or he just stops trying.

Tuggle had thought Badger might be in some danger of becoming like that. In some of the later races last season, when he was well out of the chase and not even within hailing distance of twentieth place, he seemed to be coasting through races on autopilot. In racing parlance, he wouldn’t stand on it. It hadn’t been his fault, either. She had made careful note of the outcome of Badger’s team in his last year’s races, where they had finished and why. It was a litany of misfortune-thirty-six races, and in twenty-four of them he’d never had a chance.

Daytona 500-penalized due to not securing lug nuts

Las Vegas 1-team changed motor, forcing him to start at the back

Bristol-hole in radiator caused overheating

Richmond 1-was in top 15 until lug nut left off, lost 2 laps

Daytona 2-backup car, started in back; by lap 18 was in top 20 until rear tire went flat and went 58 laps down

New Hampshire-brake problems

Michigan-alternator failed

Kansas-brake problems after 50 laps, lost 12 laps

Tuggle thought that another season with no chance of winning would probably finish Badger’s career; no team would want him, and he might lose heart for competition anyhow. It was hard to go out there and sweat through the danger and the discomfort of a race when you knew it was an exercise in futility.

She figured it was up to her to see it didn’t happen that way. Owners never cared overmuch about the drivers they employed to race for them. Cup drivers were like shuttle flights to Charlotte, you could always catch the next one. There was nobody except her who knew enough and would care enough to save him.

The expendability of race car drivers-43 slots in Cup racing and 40,000 guys who’d kill for the chance to be there. She thought that might be why Cup champion Tony Stewart had adopted fifty ex-racing greyhounds. Sure he loved animals-he had a tiger, for heaven’s sake!-but Tuggle also thought that he might have looked at those gallant canine racers in their cages, euthanized when their usefulness was over, and in the anxious brown eyes of his canine counterparts he would see himself and his fellow competitors. And so “Smoke” had saved the greyhounds, fifty of them-one for every single Cup driver and seven extra for the part-time field fillers. Oh, yes. Professional courtesy.

Well, she would save Badger. If those designer-clad checkbooks tried to treat him like a disposable greyhound, then she would make it her business to see that he did well, so that he could stay around as long as he wanted to. She hoped his future after racing would be one of peaceful retirement on his beloved lake or else perhaps a career in Hollywood or broadcasting, but whatever happened, she intended to look out for him. She didn’t hold with putting down champions just because they’d outlived their usefulness.

Of course, she thought, pursuing the metaphor, racehorses weren’t put down upon retirement. They were…put out to stud.

Grace Tuggle started to laugh. Poor Badger! From what she had seen of the pit lizards who stalked Cup drivers, she’d bet that Badger would rather live in a cage at Tony Stewart’s place.

Vagenya, indeed. They ought to be working on a cure for testosterone poisoning.