St. Dale

Chapter XVI

Talladega Super Speedway

“You know what they say about Talladega, don’t you?” asked Harley. He was swaying a little, trying to stand up as the bus roared down I-20 through the green sweep of eastern Alabama. He thought they must be about half an hour out of Talladega, and now, having taken a surreptitious peek at his notes, he quizzed the passengers with the expectant look of a teacher addressing a class. He pointed to Matthew. The boy had slept most of the way out of Atlanta, but a few miles west of the Alabama state line he’d perked up again, and now his hand was waving in the air. “Okay, sport,” said Harley. “Stop with the imaginary checkered flag. Lay it on us.”

“This is where Dale Earnhardt won his last race,” said Matthew solemnly.

Harley nodded, trying to look as if he’d remembered that. Might be in his notes somewhere. “Okay, Matthew. Good call. That was in-”

“October, 2000,” said Cayle. “The fall race at Talladega.”

Harley waited a couple of seconds to see if anybody was going to dispute her, but several heads nodded, so she must be correct. He smiled. “Right again. Anything else?”

“I’d almost call it a miracle, that race,” said Jim Powell. “Remember it? I saw it on television. Dale was running in eighteenth place that day. It didn’t look like he had a cat’s chance of winning. Then all of a sudden toward the end of the race, he moved from eighteenth place all the way up to first in only five laps. Then he went on to win it. Most incredible thing you ever saw.”

Arlene spoke up. It was one of her good days. “You didn’t see it, Jim,” she said. “You went to the bathroom, thinking Earnhardt was out of the running, and when you came back, I was jumping up and down screaming for Dale just as he took the lead.”

Jim looked pleased to be corrected. “Why, that’s right, hon,” he said, patting her hand. “I guess it’s never wise to give up on somebody, is it?”

Bill Knight, who had been looking out his window, admiring the green hills in the distance, said wonderingly, “You never think of Alabama having mountains. It looks like New Hampshire out there.”

Sarah Nash leaned forward and touched his arm. “They’re the same mountains,” she said. “The Appalachian chain begins here in north Alabama and ends up in New Brunswick, Canada. So the Bodines from upstate New York and the Allisons from north Alabama may have more in common than one might think.”

Harley laughed. “Well,” he said, “that’s one thing I sure never heard anybody say in connection with Talladega. Anything else?”

“That track cost $4 million to build back in ’69,” said Jesse Franklin. “Some of the speedways they built in the late nineties cost around 200 million to construct. Being an auditor, I keep up with monetary things like that.”

“Okay, that’s more than I knew, folks,” said Harley, making a silent vow to dig his guidebooks back out of his suitcase tonight. “I was waiting for somebody to say that it’s a super speedway, and one of the restrictor plate tracks. The reason for restrictor plates, some folks say.”

Justine heaved a sigh of exasperation. “Harley, everybody knows that,” she said. “But what everybody really says about Talladega is that it’s haunted.”

“Justine!” Bekasu turned back from the window and tried to shush her sister.

Justine shrugged. “Well, somebody had to say it,” she said. “I bet you were all thinking it. Well, maybe not Reverend Knight, ’cause he doesn’t know Neil Bonnett from Robin Hood, but the rest of y’all know what I’m talking about. And it’s not just the fact that Davey died here, either.”

“I’ve never heard anything about this,” said Terence, glancing at Sarah Nash. “Haunted?”

She gave a little shrug and then nodded. “So they say.”

Harley knew exactly what Justine was referring to, but it wasn’t the kind of thing drivers talk about, not even when they’re paid to be tour guides. He glanced down at Ratty to see if he had any reaction to Justine’s announcement, but Ratty was keeping his eyes on his lane of I-20, seemingly oblivious to the chatter behind him.

“You might as well tell them now, Justine,” said Cayle. “You’ll end up telling everybody one at a time at the next rest stop anyhow.”

Harley nodded. “You opened this can of worms,” he said. “You might as well spill it.”

“Okay,” said Justine. “Microphone?” She swayed up the aisle to stand next to Harley. “This used to be Cherokee land, you know. These hills. Now, Talladega-which means ‘border town’ in Cherokee-some people say that the place was built on an old Indian burial ground, or something, and that there’s a curse on it because of that.” She was solemn now, and round-eyed with the enormity of the tale.

Bill Knight frowned at this unexpected lurch in subject matter. He glanced down at Matthew, but the boy didn’t even seem surprised, much less disturbed, by this announcement. He supposed that between the zombie video games and the slasher movies, it would take more than a ghost story told in broad daylight to frighten a modern child.

“What kind of curse?” Terence called out. He had glanced around to see if anybody was laughing, but they weren’t.

“Okay, here’s the story,” said Justine, leaning into the microphone and assuming the hushed tone of the campfire storyteller. “Remember Bobby Isaac? He was the Winston Cup champion in-well, when I was a kid-”

Jim Powell spoke up. “Nineteen and seventy,” he said. “Year Arlene and I moved into our house in Shelby.”

“Right,” said Justine. “I knew it was B.D. Before Dale. Anyhow, Bobby Isaac was a successful, dedicated driver, okay? He was well paid and well known. So, in 1973 Bobby Isaac was racing in the Talladega 500-”

“As a matter of fact he was in the lead at the time,” said Ray Reeve, who knew where this story was headed.

“Wow. I’d forgotten that,” said Justine. “Okay, so he’s on the front stretch when all of a sudden he pulled into the pit without any caution flag, and without being told to by his crew chief. Just ups and parks the car. The crew all came running up to him. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘What’s wrong with the car?’ ‘Are you sick?’ And you know what he said?” She looked to Harley for confirmation.

He sighed. “Go on,” he said. “Tell them.”

“Okay, when they asked Bobby Isaac why he pulled out of the race, he said that something told him to get out of the car and walk away.” And he did. Cross my heart, it’s the truth. He didn’t finish that race-we’re talking about thousands of dollars at stake here, y’all. And he may have raced a time or two after that, but basically he was done right then and there. Now can you imagine somebody in his salary range-a surgeon or a trial lawyer, maybe-just walking away from his chosen profession just because a supernatural voice ordered him to?” She looked back at Terence. “Would you?”

Terence coughed and looked embarrassed. “I don’t know,” he stammered. “Maybe. If I’d really heard the voice.”

“Wasn’t there more to the story?” asked Shane. “I thought I heard that they checked over Bobby Isaac’s car after he parked it, and they found some problem with it that would have put him into the wall if he hadn’t got out.”

They all looked up at Harley for confirmation. “I don’t know,” he said. “It was before my time, and it’s not the kind of thing drivers want to talk about. How about if we gripe about restrictor plates instead?”

“Well, that’s just another wreck story,” Ray Reeve pointed out. “I mean, if you’re talking about why they implemented them in the first place. Bobby Allison.”

“Restrictor plates!” said Shane, in the tone people usually reserve for words like “maggots.”

“I know,” said Justine. “But if you don’t want Bobby Allison in your lap, you’d better put up with them.”

“Or Bill Elliott,” said Sarah Nash. “Bill Elliott is the one who did 212 miles per hour at Daytona. Not that I’d mind having him in my-” Her voice trailed off and she snatched up her magazine, holding it a bit too close to her face to actually be reading it.

Bill waved his hand to attract Harley’s attention. “What’s this about having Bobby Allison in your lap?”

Harley smiled with relief at the prospect of getting the tour discussion back on track. This he knew. “Now that’s the story you ought to tell, coming into Talladega,” he said. “The 1987 Winston 500. Dodging the bullet. Everybody knew it was going to be a fast race that year. Talladega is a super speedway-a long straightaway to build up speed on. Bill Elliott took the pole in qualifying with a speed of 212.8 miles an hour. That’s more than three miles a minute, folks. I can’t even tell you what that feels like. That was before restrictor plates-in other words, back when there was no limit on speed except the capabilities of the engine and the driver.”

“What was Bobby Allison’s qualifying speed?” asked Matthew.

“His Buick topped out at 211, putting him second to Elliott. And, before you ask, Earnhardt was fourth. So that race was shaping up to be a whirlwind, and they got 22 laps into it-what’s that, about seven minutes?-when Bobby Allison’s Buick ran over some debris that wasn’t supposed to be on the track, and cut his tire. The car went airborne.”

He paused for effect, hoping his listeners were picturing a Buick lifting off like a Star Trek shuttlecraft and launching itself missile-like at a grandstand packed with people.

“The good news is that Allison was going so fast when he took off that he managed to clear the five-foot concrete wall between the track and the spectators. Maybe it’s even better news that although the car was airborne, it did not manage to clear the wire fence on the top of that concrete wall. The car ripped up a 150-foot section of fence, sent stuff flying everywhere. Then the car wobbled for an instant and rolled back onto the track. It put me in mind of a basketball hovering on the rim of the basket and then falling away again.”

There was a little silence while most of the bus waited to see if it would be Bill or Bekasu who asked, “How badly was he injured?”

Bekasu got the question out first, and everybody was laughing before she finished it.

“Not a scratch on him,” said Harley cheerfully. “Those drivers’ safety harnesses do work most of the time. It scared the hell out of Davey Allison, though, seeing his dad go into the wall like that. He must have said a prayer or two just then.”

“He recovered well,” said Ray Reeve. “Davey won that race, as I recall.”

“And none of the spectators were hurt?”

“Maybe a cut or a bruise. Nothing major that I ever heard about,” said Harley.

Shane McKee was scowling. “Yeah, the only casualty that day was the sport itself.”

Harley nodded and tried to look sympathetic. He wasn’t sure he agreed, having been a driver himself, but he could see how fans would feel resentful about the hobbling of their sport. “NASCAR saw that wreck as a red light on their dashboard,” he said. “The officials knew that at those speeds on super speedways, sooner or later there would have been a tragedy. If Allison’s car had cleared the wire fence, there’s no telling how many people he could have killed. So they came up with a new piece of equipment designed to prevent that.”

“Restrictor plates.” Shane spat out the word.

Harley sighed. If you ever wanted to stop a bar fight, just say the words “restrictor plates,” and you’ll see instant unification take place. Everybody hated them. Maybe it would have been different if the tragedy had been allowed to happen, but it hadn’t. Earnhardt used to get wistful about how much he missed barreling around Talladega and Daytona at 200-plus miles an hour, but common sense told him and everybody else in the sport that the thrill wasn’t worth risking the lives of innocent bystanders. That was what people forgot: the restrictor plate wasn’t put on to protect the driver; it was there to protect the fans.

“It’s a device attached to the carburetor to limit the speed of the car to less than 200 miles an hour,” said Harley, in case anyone was still confused. He figured that women could be race fans without necessarily knowing the mechanical aspects of the sport, but if he had to guess among this particular group of passengers, he’d bet that Terence Palmer and Bill Knight were the ones who didn’t know. Well, Arlene, maybe. Whatever she had known was falling away, but she didn’t seem to mind. Just looked out the window or at Jim with a vague smile, like a stranger at a birthday party.

Ray Reeve laughed. “Does anybody remember what Earnhardt used to call the restrictor plate decision?”

Jesse Franklin clapped his hands with a whoop of joy. “I had forgotten that! The Waltrip Rule! He claimed the high speeds made ol’ Darrell nervous.”

“They were always saying stuff like that about one another,” said Harley, unable to resist the urge to defend his boyhood hero. “The real reason that Earnhardt objected to restrictor plates is because restrictor plates did more than slow down the cars. They also softened the throttle response. Knowing how to use that throttle had been a skill that separated the Earnhardts and the Elliotts from the run-of-the-mill drivers. Now, with restrictor plates, the cars mellowed out on the corners. That’s what Dale called it: mellowing out. He meant that there was no longer a surge of power in reserve when you took the corners. Earnhardt said that he and Elliott and Bodine had the skills to run their cars wide open on the corners while lesser drivers would get loose trying to make the turn, so they’d get left behind. When restrictor plates became mandatory on the super speedways, that no longer happened, and the big dogs lost their advantage. Now everybody could keep up with them, which meant more bunching up in the race. And sometimes more wrecks.”

“I always thought there was another factor, too,” said Ray Reeve.

Mr. Reeve hadn’t said much on the tour except for an occasional grumble, but Harley thought a chance to spout off might improve his mood, so he held out the microphone and motioned for the old man to come forward. Ray Reeve had to grasp the backs of the seats to keep from falling, but finally he made his way up to the front, looking a bit disconcerted to be facing rows of listeners.

“Well,” he said, blinking at his fellow passengers, “all I was going to say was that there’s another reason Dale didn’t like restrictor plates. At least I think so. When nobody had the advantage of extra bursts of speed, the field was evened out so much that the only way to win a race like Daytona was to get a drafting buddy. And, you know, Dale would rather work alone, which I can certainly relate to. If I can’t do it alone, I won’t do it at all.” He looked doubtfully at Harley. “Do I have to explain drafting?”

Ratty Laine spoke up from the driver’s seat. “Anybody wants a demonstration of drafting, just look out the window into the other lane!”

Harley smiled. In the left hand lane an 18-wheeler was in the process of passing their bus, and scooting along behind the big rig was a white Ford Taurus, pulled along in the wake of the truck.

“Does anybody know who came up with the concept of drafting in stock car racing?”

Sarah Nash spoke up. “Junior Johnson.”

“Right. Well, Mr. Reeve, why don’t I go ahead and explain drafting.” Harley looked at the bewildered faces of Bill Knight and Bekasu. He would have to explain drafting, preferably in words of one syllable. He took back the microphone and waited while the old man threaded his way back to his seat.

“Okay, folks: drafting. Ratty was right about that Taurus in the other lane traveling in the wake of the truck. The Taurus is getting pulled along, but if it tried to pass that truck, it might swerve a little because the air displaced by the body of the truck would hit the passing car, catching the Taurus in its turbulence. With me so far?”

“I have passed a truck on an Interstate, yes,” said Bekasu without noticeable enthusiasm.

“Okay, well, on a race track this principle can be an important factor. You’re whizzing along on one of the big tracks, and you ease up behind another car and stay on his bumper so that he’s cutting through the air for both of you. You’ll both go faster that way. Okay, Matthew, I see your hand, so let me say right now: don’t anybody ask me why you’ll both go faster one-behind-the-other, you just do. Ryan Newman has the engineering degree. Take it up with him. But I can tell you from experience that if a car gets out of the line of cars in single file, he’s in trouble, because he can’t go as fast alone as the rest of them can by teaming up. The ideal strategy is to save your gas by drafting behind somebody right up until the end of the race, and then as you approach the finish line, you slingshot around the leader in the last few seconds to win. Of course, when the driver veers to the inside to make that move, he needs a drafting buddy to give him the power to pull it off.”

Jim Powell spoke up. “Darrell Waltrip said one time that trying to pass at Daytona without a drafting partner was like running into a brick wall.”

“He’s right,” said Harley. “Sometimes teammates will help you out, or your old buddies. I’ve seen drivers help an old running buddy make that move just because they didn’t like the kid who was otherwise going to win the race.”

“Earnhardt could see the air,” said Shane. “That’s why he was so good on super speedways. He could see the air flow.”

“Well, everybody says that,” said Harley, “but nobody’s ever been able to explain to me how he managed it.”

“One other thing you ought to make clear,” Ray Reeve called out from the back. “Restrictor plates aren’t used on the short tracks, like Bristol and Martinsville, and so on. Just on the super speedways where there’s enough of a straightaway to build up the higher speeds.”

“Never mind all that technical stuff,” said Justine. “I still say this place is haunted. I mean, look where Bobby Allison’s wreck happened. Talladega, which is Bobby Allison’s home turf-he’s from Hueytown, just on the other side of Birmingham. And who won the race that day? Bobby’s son. And nobody got hurt. It’s like the spirits were protecting him, but they were also giving a warning. Kind of a cosmic slap on the wrist. Just like the one Bobby Isaac got back in ’73. I’m telling you, this place is haunted.”

A few silent minutes later, Bill Knight glanced back at the newlyweds. Sure enough, Shane McKee met his look with an unsmiling gaze and a slight nod, as if to say See? I told you so. Miracles. First numbers and now voices on a racetrack telling Bobby Isaac to park it. Bill managed a reassuring smile in return, but he hoped that Shane wouldn’t want to continue their earlier discussion of miracles in motor sports. He didn’t want to destroy the young man’s faith-even if it wasn’t a faith he personally subscribed to-but he could not in good conscience encourage such unorthodox beliefs. He sighed. He used to worry what to tell High Church-inclined believers about Lourdes and Joan of Arc, and now-this! Angels in the driver’s seat. He hoped he wouldn’t be called upon to voice any opinions in the matter.

“Speedway exit coming up!” Ratty sang out from the driver’s seat.

Bill Knight looked out the window expecting to see a suburban sprawl of hotels and fast food joints but the intersection of state road and Interstate was much less cluttered than he expected. It was odd that so many racetracks were set out among green fields in unspoiled countryside. Oh, the place would be a zoo on race day, he was sure of that. Eighty thousand cars and twice that many people would turn this bucolic country road into a nightmare of ozone and noise, but since the next big race was weeks away-at the end of September, the great empty Speedway and its pastoral surroundings lay as empty and silent as Pompeii.

It was a beautiful setting. The Speedway, encircled by low wooded hills in the distance, was painted bright red and blue like a child’s toy, and its sheer size invoked awe in the beholder. The longest grandstand in the world, Harley had told them earlier, reading from a printed card. Bill had forgotten all the specifications-how many spectators the place would hold, how long the track was-somewhere around two miles long, he knew-and all the other bits of numerical trivia. Staring at it in the distance he was reminded of a twentieth-century Stonehenge or Machu Picchu, some monument to human ingenuity, obscure of purpose, but magnificent in scale and ambition. A great steel temple that had been built in the wilderness and then left to the elements. It was an automotive cathedral, and while he did not entirely endorse the purpose for its existence, he did acknowledge that it was an impressive architectural achievement.

The broad entryway that led into the Speedway was lined with lampposts, topped by lights in a swirling metalwork design that seemed quite artistic for so prosaic a place as a racetrack, he thought. The place was built in 1969-Jesse Franklin had mentioned that-but it seemed to be well maintained and state-of-the-art. Well, they could afford it, of course. A hundred thousand people or so, times at least a hundred dollars a ticket, that ought to pay for as many gallons of paint as you’d need to keep the structure looking new.

Were they going to get out and walk the track, Knight wondered. On an afternoon in late August, the Alabama sun would be too intense for old Mrs. Powell, and perhaps too much for Matthew as well, though the boy was game for anything. He would probably enjoy himself immensely.

Harley thought it was a shame that such a nice kid was so ill. After so many days of sitting still, cooped up in the bus, over hundreds of miles of Interstate, it would be good for all of them to spend an hour or so stretching their legs.

Harley reached for the microphone. “Those who want to walk around the track for a bit and take some pictures are welcome to do it. That building over there houses the gift shop and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.” He looked at his watch. “Couple of hours do you, and then lunch at one-thirty?”

“Shall I get out the wreath?” asked Ratty.

Harley looked at the great canyon of a Speedway, empty and silent in its cradle of hills. “No,” he said. “If it’s all right with everybody, I’d like to make a small change of plans here, and put the wreath in a somewhat more intimate place a few miles down the road. More fitting, I think.”

The Talladega Texaco Walk of Fame and the Davey Allison Memorial was a small park set one street back from the main street of the small town of Talladega, maybe ten miles south of the Speedway itself. It was a pretty little Southern town, with a red brick courthouse, and an old-fashioned main street lined with storefronts that could have been a movie set for a heartwarming film. Bill Knight, who had been admiring the scenery, hadn’t noticed any signs directing visitors to the park, but perhaps the people who would come here knew where to find it: turn left on the little street beside Braswell’s Furniture Store. The memorial park was on the street between Talladega’s main drag and the hill on which the police station sat. Facing the side street stood a fieldstone marker, inset with a granite tablet, inscribed with three lines of tombstone lettering:

Talladega Texaco Walk of Fame

Davey Allison Memorial

Talladega, Alabama

Harley noted that the Number Three Pilgrims had turned solemn at the prospect of visiting this shrine. Even Justine was more subdued that usual, and he was pleased that they were approaching the memorial in the proper spirit. Sure, he was skeptical about the veneration of the Intimidator, but the idea of a memorial park for fallen heroes of motor sports appealed to him. He had pretty much given up the idea of being there himself one day, but he was glad to see the great ones remembered: Fireball Roberts, Neil Bonnett, Tim Flock.

“You know why it’s here, don’t you?” he said softly into the microphone. He didn’t need his notes for this part of the tour. This was his era in racing, and he knew it like a family story. Most of the passengers did know why the park was in Talladega, but for form’s sake he had to tell them anyway, because he was the guide, and guides never assumed that everybody knew anything. “Well, for one thing he was from around here. Davey was one of the Hueytown gang, like his father and uncle-The Allisons. Hueytown is a little place over there west of Birmingham. So Davey was a native son, and one of the best drivers ever.

“But the reason for this park. The reason it’s here. It’s because he died at Talladega. Oh, not on the track. It was a freak accident. I never heard anybody explain exactly how it happened so that it made sense. But what happened was, they were having practice runs that day on the track, and Davey decided to fly his new helicopter over to watch the action, and also to check up on Neil Bonnett, another one of the Alabama Gang. Neil had sustained a head injury at a race the week before, and Davey wanted to check on him, make sure he was feeling okay to race.”

“I thought he was going to see David Bonnett,” said Ray Reeve. “Neil’s son.”

“Well,” said Harley, “I wasn’t there, so I can’t dispute that with any certainty, sir. But we agree that he was flying over to watch a friend doing practice runs, all right? Anyhow, Davey Allison and another driver in the Alabama Gang, Red Farmer, flew over to the track in Davey’s new helicopter, and they were just about to touch down-a foot from the ground, people say. Close enough to step out, except, of course, you wouldn’t. You’d wait for the touchdown, for the engine to be turned off…” Harley’s voice trailed off then. He was replaying an image that had come to him many times over the years: a smiling, dark-haired young man, jumps out of the hovering helicopter and sprints away. But he hadn’t. Of course, he hadn’t. The thing must have cost most of a hundred thousand dollars, serious money even if you’re Davey Allison. He would have landed it properly. Apparently the voices at Talladega weren’t warning people that day.

Bekasu didn’t know this story, but she saw the somber faces of the others and Harley’s stricken look as he remembered. “What happened?” she asked.

“I can tell you what. But not why. The helicopter shot up into the air-thirty feet or so, I heard. And then it just slammed back down to earth on its side, with Davey and his passenger inside. Like someone spiking a football. And Neil Bonnett-the driver he had flown over to check on-Neil was the one who pulled him out.”

“He didn’t make it, did he?”

Justine touched her sister’s arm. “No,” she said. “They got him to the hospital, but he died a few days later.”

“The race the next week was at Pocono,” said Jim Powell softly. “And Dale Earnhardt won it. So when it was time to take his victory lap after the race, Earnhardt drove to the start-finish line on the track and it looked like he and his pit crew were saying a prayer. Then somebody handed him a Number 28 flag-that was Davey’s number-and Earnhardt drove a Polish victory lap-backwards, the way Alan Kulwicki used to do it-and a-waving that 28 flag out the window, to honor the both of them. Alan had died back in April and Davey only a week before.”

“It’s no wonder that Talladega is haunted,” said Bekasu. “The wonder is that all the tracks aren’t.”

The memorial to Davey Allison was a circular park of green lawn and young hardwood trees bisected by a brick path, and encircled by a walkway. Two white marble walls flanking the brick walkway on the circular path displayed information about Davey Allison and his racing career. In front of the wall, a slanted checkerboard platform symbolized a winner’s circle, and in its center was the Texaco star, acknowledging the oil company that had sponsored Davey Allison and now honored his memory with this park. It was so green and peaceful that to Bill Knight it seemed at first to be the very antithesis of a speedway, but then he considered the shape of the park, and realized that its configuration was indeed that of a racetrack. Perhaps it was an Elysian field of a track, someone’s idea of racing with the angels.

At intervals around the encircling paved walkway, set on poles at reading height for visitors, were rectangular bronze plaques, each bearing the bas-relief bronze likeness of a legend of motor sports, and a few sentences describing the man’s achievements. The first plaque to the left of the entrance to the circle bore the name of Donnie Allison, the uncle of the young driver to whom the park was dedicated. According to the plaque, Donnie Allison was the first NASCAR driver to complete a lap around the Talladega track. Bill Knight read that plaque, and the one after it-Dale Earnhardt. As he moved away to the next one, several of his fellow travelers were grouped around the Earnhardt plaque posing for a group photo.

Fireball Roberts…Dale Jarrett…Ned Jarrett…To Bill, the exercise of reading these commemorative plaques felt a bit like reading someone else’s hometown newspaper: the facts were still there, but devoid of any emotional content for the casual stranger.

Many of the other names were unfamiliar to him, so he contented himself with a glance at each bronze plaque and stopped trying to take in all the new information. This was, after all, a memorial, not a trivia contest. He admired the beauty and the restraint of the landscaping. Here there were no angel statues or topiary race cars, only a cozy little park of well-tended lawn, dotted with young oak trees, and bisected by a simple rose-colored brick path cutting across the middle. Slender trees with branches like upraised arms lined the path, an arboreal honor guard. A few feet back from the entrance a flagpole had been set in a wrought iron semicircle in the walkway; from it a new American flag rippled in the slight breeze.

Bill noted that Matthew was posing for a group photo with Harley and the McKees. Shane was holding Matthew up so that he could read the bronze plaque, and Ratty, camera in hand, was waving directions for them to pose. Pleased to have a few moments of solitude, Bill walked alone, keeping to the outer path, glad of the sunshine and the chance to stretch his legs. He decided that when he reached the midpoint of the outer walkway, he would enter the brick walk on the back side of the park and follow it to the beginning. A quarter of the way along the path, he sat down on the Valley Electric Co-op bench, nestled in the shade of a large tree. He settled in to study the scene, while the other passengers continued to make their way around the park, reading the plaques and taking turns photographing the scene and posing for more snapshots. As he watched, a bobtailed ginger tom cat emerged from the shrubbery and jumped on the bench beside him. The cat bumped his arm with its head, intent on having its ears scratched by anyone who would sit still long enough. Obligingly, Bill scratched its head, and was rewarded with a rasping purr.

Justine motioned for him to come and join in the photo session, but he smiled and waved her way, pointing to the cat, and mouthing “Later.” Perhaps, though, he ought to ask one of the others to take a photograph of the park for him. It would make an interesting slide to accompany his lectures about pilgrimages, for surely this was a modern-day shrine to the faithful. He was pleased to see that there were no souvenir stands, no hawkers of postcards or commemorative badges-quite unlike some of the European shrines he had visited, in fact. For some reason, he found himself thinking of a little shrine in Cornwall that he’d visited on a walking tour during his student days. The place was a holy well, consecrated to a saint, of course, but really a remnant of the old Celtic beliefs that had been in place before the Romans arrived. After all these years, he had forgotten when he’d visited it and exactly where it was, but the image of the path to the well was still clear in his mind. It was a narrow winding track that led from a roadside field through a dense thicket of trees and shrubs into the woods to the clearing where the well was. Impossible to miss the path, though, for at shoulder height, the branches bloomed with a rainbow of colored rags and ribbons, tied among the leaves by pilgrims on their way to the sacred water. Some of the bits of cloth were tattered and faded from the winter rains and the glare of long summer days, others were as bright and crisp as if they had just been left that morning. Did people bring these scraps of red and blue and yellow with them when they came, or did they, seeing the profusion of ribbons lining the path, tear a strip off a sleeve or a scarf to add to the offerings. Those bright bits of cloth-were they tangible prayers, left behind by hopeful believers or were they simply a custom like saying “bless you” when someone sneezes, a shadow of an old belief, shriveled now to a hollow ritual, its significance long forgotten.

Two ideas slotted together in his mind. There was another ritual associated with holy wells. The “pattern.” You had to say prayers the requisite number of times-usually a multiple of three, of course-and you had to walk in a circle around the site of the holy well, also for a designated number of times. Sun-wise. You had to walk your laps in the sun-wise direction, because if you went around the other way, it would negate your prayers, even bring down bad luck upon you.

What was it Jim Powell had been saying about Alan Kulwicki going the wrong way around the track? The Polish victory lap, he’d called it. And then Earnhardt had duplicated the maneuver in memory of Kulwicki at the race following Kulwicki’s fatal plane crash. Two drivers going the wrong way around in the ritual-both died violent deaths.

Bill Knight sighed. He must not voice that ridiculous thought to anyone on this tour. Surely there were many other drivers who had driven the Polish victory lap over the years without fatal consequences. He was being fanciful.

There were no tokens of faith in this memorial park-no ribbons on shrubs or beads draped over statues. There were the inscribed bricks, of course. He had noticed that the center walkway was studded with personalized bricks inscribed with messages from people who still mourned Davey Allison or from those who wanted to express love or luck to someone else. Tangible prayers.

Bill smiled. In some ways people changed very little over the centuries. In Roman times in Britain, they had thrown small objects into pools as offerings to the gods, small incentives that prayers should be granted, and the impulse to reach out to the hereafter had not gone away. It had only taken a new form. What prayer would he write on a sacred brick, he asked himself. Asking for material goods-a new car, perhaps-seemed at best childish to him, and those beauty pageant wishes, like “world peace,” seemed to reduce complexity to a platitude and he would have felt foolish expressing such a wish. Perhaps the greatest gift one could hope for was the ability to believe that there was someone out there who cared that you wished for anything at all.

The ginger tom interrupted his reverie with a butt of its head against his arm. Obligingly he stroked the cat’s head, as it arched its back in contentment. It seemed well fed, so it wasn’t a stray, but why would it hang around a public park dedicated to motor sports. “So, Cat, who are you the reincarnation of?” he mused, glancing up to see whose plaque was stationed opposite the bench.

Cayle, who had been walking by at that moment, smiled at the pair of them on the bench, and she stooped to scratch the ginger tom’s ears. “I didn’t think Episcopalians believed in reincarnation,” she said.

“No. No, they don’t. I was just being whimsical. He seems so proprietary of this place, as if he belongs here. Probably lives across the street.”

She nodded. “I suppose he does. Somehow I can’t imagine any of the people on these plaques being reincarnated as a house cat. A cheetah, maybe-for speed.”

Bill detached the cat gently from his lap, and stood up to walk with Cayle. He gave it a final stroking along its arched back. “Well, he isn’t the Exxon tiger. That checkered wall over there was donated by Texaco.”

“It’s peaceful here,” said Cayle.

“Yes. Something beautiful that came about because of a tragedy. There may be a sermon in that, but I’ve resolved to be off duty for this trip. I would like a photo of the brick walkway, though, for my pilgrimage lecture.”

“Consider it done,” said Cayle.

He scanned the park again for Matthew, who had scampered off the bus ahead of him. The boy was standing beside Justine near the flagpole on the brick walkway, and the two of them seemed to be studying a piece of paper, perhaps a map.

“The children are all right,” said Cayle, following his gaze. “At least if they get into mischief, they’re together.”

“She’s very good with him,” said Bill. “Does she have any children of her own?”

Cayle nodded. “One son from her first marriage. He’s grown and gone, though, so we don’t hear much about him. He’s a professor somewhere, and I gather he doesn’t approve of her.”

“Why not?”

Cayle shrugged. “Well, she’s impulsive and funny, but she’s not anybody’s idea of a sedate parental authority. I think Scott took after his father. Or maybe he would have preferred to be the flamboyant one, and for that he’d need a calm center, but Justine would never be that. I think she’s meant to be a comet, not a sun.”

“There are some children who’d find fault with their parents no matter who they were,” said Bill.

“That’s Scott. If he had Mr. Rogers and Mother Teresa, he’d complain that they weren’t Clint Eastwood and Madonna-and vice-versa. It’s mostly that, I think. Or else he’s still mad about a divorce that happened twenty-something years ago. She doesn’t talk about him much.”

“She’s a law unto herself obviously, but she seems like a very easy person to get along with.”

“Yes,” said Cayle. “But maybe not an easy person to compete with.”

They reached the midpoint along the outer path and started up the brick walkway that led through the center of the park and joined the encircling path on the other side. Matthew was kneeling on the bricks, tracing the inscriptions with his finger.

“Look,” he said, pointing to the path. “Some of these bricks have messages written on them.”

“Yes, Matthew, I see that. Interesting, isn’t it?”

The boy wandered up the path to examine more of the bricks. Bill knelt down to read some of the tributes that fans and well-wishers had left. Many of the messages were in honor of Davey Allison himself-“True #28 Fans, Bernie and Denise”-but some of the bricks bore inscriptions addressed to Earnhardt as well. “In Memory of Dale Earnhardt,” one said. A couple named Pat and Mike wished good luck to Dale Junior on their brick. Others commemorated fans’ wedding dates or honored the memory of a friend or family member.

“I’m glad to see some bricks in honor of Earnhardt as well as Davey,” said Cayle. “It’s good for people to have a place to say good-bye.”

“It’s odd that so many people seem to see Earnhardt as a saint,” mused Bill.

Cayle stared. “As a saint? The Intimidator? Surely not.”

“Well, the outward trappings of beatification, anyhow.” Bill smiled. “I’m being technical here. The winged threes on cars. Threes in Christmas lights on the roofs of houses. Tee shirts with slogans like ‘God Needed a Driver.’ Bekasu and I were saying that it reminded us of the way people reacted when Thomas Becket was martyred. A sudden recognition of the loss of an extraordinary presence.”

“That connection would never occur to his fans,” said Cayle.

“No. I think it’s instinctive. The object changes over the years, but human responses stay the same. Perhaps we have a fundamental need for reverence.”

“How strange.”

“It is strange. For instance, Shane-”

Before he could finish telling her, Matthew came running up waving a brochure. “Did you know you can buy a brick for the walkway here? And they’ll write whatever you want on it, and put it right here on the path.”

Bill Knight glanced down at the litany of tributes. “I gathered as much,” he said.

“The brochure says it costs sixty bucks for three lines of a message, and Justine said she’d buy me a brick and send in the form for me-is that okay?”

“It’s very kind of her,” said Bill.

“I just told him he has to promise to come back some day and visit his brick,” said Justine.

“So we’re gonna sit down over there and work on what we want it to say,” said Matthew. “You have to count every letter.”

Bill Knight had thought of asking Cayle to elaborate on her experience of seeing the late Dale Earnhardt, but she had walked away. He didn’t believe her, of course. He wondered if he would have believed someone who had claimed to see Thomas Becket in Canterbury in, say, 1171.

It had been a long time since he’d had the kind of faith that kindles saints. He had to think all the way back to childhood to find that reserve of belief. Of sitting beside his mother in church-so small that his feet didn’t even touch the floor yet-and while all the congregation had their heads bowed in prayer, Bill would try to peek out of the slits of his eyelids, hoping-but also dreading-to catch a glimpse of an angel on the sill under the big stained glass window of Jesus in Gethsemane. He had really believed that the angel hovered there during services, but he knew that the sight would be a terrible one. No sappy Valentine cherubs for him. Bill’s dad had been a minister, too, so he knew his theology, even as a kid. Angels were soldiers. They had kicked the devil’s butt out of heaven, so they were not to be trifled with. As a kid, you didn’t know what might be true and what wasn’t. There were rules for everything. Would stepping on a crack break your mother’s back? What if you sneezed and nobody said bless you? What if you died without saying your prayers? There was a belief that was more terror than faith, and he was glad to have outgrown it. How much of the belief in the hereafter was just the fear of letting go or the fear of nothingness?

Before he could consider the implications of selective faith, he saw that Harley was coming toward him, carrying the wreath box. “I thought this would be the best place to leave the Talladega wreath,” he said. “And maybe since this is a memorial park, you ought to be the one to say a few words over it.”

“Of course.” Bill Knight had been dreading this moment, wondering what he could say that would satisfy his traveling companions without trespassing on their beliefs. He took a deep breath and tried to compose his thoughts while the others gathered on the outer path around the bronze plaque dedicated to Dale Earnhardt. What did I say to that congregation of weeping women when Princess Diana died? he wondered.

The wreath this time was a hubcap-sized circle of white silk lilies and eucalyptus. By this time, thought Bill, the florist must have been getting giddy from doing a succession of tribute wreaths to Dale Earnhardt. A black ribbon stretched diagonally across the lilies said in white letters, “#3: Forever In Our Hearts.”

Bill looked out at the peaceful expanse of green lawn with its red brick walkway bright in the afternoon sun. “We’d like to think heaven is like this,” he began, letting the place speak to him. “A familiar place filled with the colors and shapes with which we feel most comfortable. Blue sky. Grass. Trees. A companionable cat.” He smiled a little as he nodded toward the ginger tom, still sprawled on the bench in hopes of more attention from the visitors. “Every now and then somebody will even write a hymn about a heaven for country singers or movie stars. There may be a song like that about NASCAR, for all I know.”

“Tracks of Gold,” murmured several voices in unison.

Bill sighed. It figured. “I don’t know what heaven will be like,” he went on. “The Bible offers a number of images, which, since we are human, may be beyond our comprehension. I do know that the idea of having an eternal place for heroes is a very old tradition throughout human civilization. The Greeks thought that ordinary people crossed the river Lethe and forgot about their earthly existence, but that heroes went on to the Elysian fields with their earthly personalities intact. The Norsemen envisioned the Valkyries swooping down to the battlefield to take fallen heroes back to Valhalla for an eternity of mead and feasting with their comrades. I’m not sure what kind of afterlife I can envision for race car drivers. To me it seems a contradictory proposition at best: trying to accommodate many different people’s dreams of heaven when some of those ideas conflict with others. I think of all the fans who yearn to shake Dale Earnhardt’s hand when they get to heaven, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be much of a heaven to Earnhardt himself if he had to stand around all the time glad-handing strangers. I suppose that if God has set aside a part of His kingdom for heroes, it will be a wonderful place. What that place would be like-well, I’ll leave that to God, because He’s wiser than we are, and I’m sure He’ll manage to sort out all the contradictions. The one thing I am sure of is that if there is a place up there reserved for heroes, Dale Earnhardt is bound to be in it. Let us thank God for the gift of him, and rejoice in his translation to…” What was the phrase they’d used? “…to Tracks of Gold.”

After the visit to the memorial garden in Talladega, Ratty backtracked the ten miles or so to the Interstate, and deposited the pilgrims in a hotel at the Oxford exit on I-20 just east of the Speedway turnoff. In the waning hours of daylight about half the group had gathered at the hotel’s tiny outdoor pool, although only Shane and Matthew were swimming.

Terence Palmer sat at a white metal table some distance from the rest of the group, talking into his cell phone. “No, Mother, I’m fine, really. Lovely weather. A bit warm, but that’s only to be expected this far south. You sent me a package? No, it didn’t reach me before I left New York. What was it? Oh, a book about an Irish princess. Ah, your book group loved it. Well, I don’t have much time for reading this week anyhow. No, Mother, no one in the group chews tobacco or wears overalls. By the way, have you ever heard of Nash Furniture? Really? On a waiting list for a china cabinet? Really? Oh, no reason. Well, I have to go, Mother. Love to Merrill. Bye.”

He closed the cell phone with a sigh.