St. Dale

Chapter V

The Volunteer Parkway

After the luggage had been stowed, a process accompanied by prolonged debates about who got carsick and who would sit where, the Number Three Pilgrims, as Harley now thought of them, allowed themselves to be herded into the bus to take their seats.

The buxom ex-beauty-queen type, whose gray hair was silvered blond, stopped in the aisle beside the driver and called out, “Lord, I hope nobody’s taped a Bible verse to our steering wheel!”

“Shut up, Justine!” said her traveling companions in unison.

The minister, who was next to board, looked up at Harley with a puzzled frown. “Bible verse?” he said.

Harley sighed. It was starting already. Unauthorized trivia. He leaned in close and whispered, “I think she’s referring to the fact that at the 2001 Daytona Darrell Waltrip’s wife taped a Bible verse to Earnhardt’s steering wheel. It’s a Christian tradition in NASCAR.”

“Oh, yes,” Bill Knight nodded. “The race in which he died. A Bible verse to his steering wheel.” He considered this fundamentalist tradition for a moment. “I wonder which verse it was.”

Harley shrugged. “Somebody here is bound to know.” He consulted his clipboard, trying to match names and faces. He knew the minister and Matthew, the two newlyweds were joining them at Bristol…He looked up from the list, as one name gave him pause.

“Cayle Warrenby,” he said. “Cayle?”

The baby-faced blonde in black jeans raised her hand. “I get that a lot,” she said. “My mother wanted to name me Gail, but my dad was a big racing fan.”

“Well, I knew you weren’t named after the vegetable,” said Harley.

“No. My dad even called our dog Old Yeller, after that Chevy Laguna Cale was driving when he won Daytona in ’77.”

Harley smiled. “I guess you’re lucky they didn’t name you that, you being a blonde and all.” He sighed. “Cale Yarborough. Used to drive for Junior Johnson at one time. And I’ll bet old Cale was the Winston Cup champion the year you were born, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, but since he won it three years in a row, that gives me a little fudging room on my age.”

“So, where you from and all that?” asked Harley. He had written himself a note to ask that. It didn’t come naturally to him.

Cayle gestured to include her two companions. “Little towns around Charlotte, all of us,” she said. “I’m an environmental engineer, Bekasu here is a judge, and Justine is-well, she-um…this is Justine.”

A hand shot up in the air, and the tinkling of silver charm bracelets punctuated a cry of “Here I am, y’all!”

“Welcome aboard,” said Harley, who knew the type. With very little encouragement Justine would take over the bus and talk nineteen-to-the-dozen from here to Florida. She would bear watching. He glanced down the roll. “Cayle Warrenby, Justine, Rebekah Sue Holifield-”

“Hostage,” said the stern women in the white linen suit, raising her hand.

Harley wasn’t going there, either. He gave her a wary smile and said, “Okay then, who’s next? Reverend William M. Knight-”

“Bill!” said the silver-haired man who looked like he ought to be doing boomer-oriented commercials, for vitamins or mutual funds, maybe.

“And that’s young Matthew with you. Welcome aboard, guys. Mr. and Mrs. Shane McKee…Oh, no, they’re meeting us at the Speedway. I’ll tell you about them in a minute. Mr. Reeve? Mr. Franklin?”

A scowling older man in a black cowboy hat and a dark sport coat raised his hand. “Ray Reeve,” he said. “Norfolk, Nebraska. We’re not traveling together. We’re just sitting together.”

“So what do you do back there in Nebraska?” asked Harley, wishing he’d thought to take out a pen to record the answers he wouldn’t otherwise remember.

“Agro-business.” Mr. Reeve leaned back in his seat, arms folded, to indicate that the interview was over.

“Jesse Franklin,” said his pink-cheeked seatmate with a nervous smile. “Michigan. I guess you’d say I’m a native, but my folks were from down here, so I’m sure I’ll feel right at home.”

“We can provide an interpreter if you need one,” said Harley with a straight face. “And what do you do when Brooklyn, Michigan turns back into a cow pasture?”

“In non-race weeks, you mean? Ah. I guess you’d say I’m a bureaucrat. I’m the county auditor. Caught the racing bug from my uncles, though, when I was a kid. Nice to meet all you folks.”

“Welcome aboard,” said Harley. “Who’s next here…Mrs. Richard Nash?”

Midway toward the back of the bus a slender tanned arm went up, and a woman said, “Here.”

Harley looked up. That’s all she said. “Here.” She was a fine-featured woman who might have been anywhere in age between fifty and seventy, depending on whether that well-preserved handsomeness owed more to good genes or to an expensive plastic surgeon. She wasn’t wearing much jewelry or makeup, and her clothes and hair were simple enough-but Harley knew the instant he saw her that this woman had more money than God. One thing about being on the NASCAR circuit, even if you didn’t make a ton of money yourself, the social aspect of the job certainly put you in the path of people who did and, without even intending to, Harley had developed a radar for spotting power people, and this was one. How odd to find her on a down-market bus tour. He hoped she wouldn’t be the type to demand imported tea bags and linen sheets.

“Terence Palmer?” That had turned out to be the fellow beside Mrs. Nash. Her son, maybe? He looked expensive, too, but not with that patina of power that radiated from his companion. If you could bottle that air of assurance and entitlement, he thought, it would be worth more than four new tires in a five-second pit stop.

“Where are you folks from?”

The two human greyhounds looked at each other and shrugged. Sarah Nash leaned forward in her seat, but Harley was already walking down the aisle to spare her the inconvenience of shouting. “I’m from Wilkesboro, and Terence lives in Manhattan.”

“Wilkesboro!” said Harley, eyes shining. The name conjured up the good old days when NASCAR races were run in the shabby old Speedway there, the days when stock cars really were stock cars with working headlights and tires with tread. When the daddies of Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty drove their cars to the track as well as on it. Harley wished things could have stayed that way. He’d have a better shot if they had.

“Wilkesboro,” he said again. “So do you know him?”

He didn’t have to say who. There was another famous “Junior” in NASCAR now, but in Wilkesboro, the name meant only one person, the man who invented drafting, the “Last American Hero” himself: Junior Johnson.

Sarah Nash smiled. “Yes, of course. He sends his regards.”

Harley wished they could make a detour to Wilkesboro on the tour, but even he could see that ten days to get from Bristol to Daytona and back to Darlington would be a stretch as it was without trying to improvise extra stops along the way. With a sigh of resignation, he turned back to the clipboard, to the next set of names.

“Jim and Arlene Powell?”

A white-haired older man near the back of the bus waved his hand. The woman with him was the one wearing the Earnhardt patterned vest. She did not look up at the sound of her name. Uh-oh, thought Harley. He should have paid more attention to the notes about the passengers. He hadn’t bargained on sick kids and out-of-it seniors, but at least they were race fans, so he reckoned they’d be easier to deal with than a bus full of New York media types.

“Justine…”

In the second row from the front, the platinum-haired woman with the huge dark eyes and her weight in jewelry (definitely real), waved her hand. “He-ey, Harley! Can I tell a story to get us started?”

Harley nodded for the bus driver to pull out, while he tried to think of some reason not to let her. The takeover was beginning already. She was an Earnhardt fan, all right. If you ever saw a woman at the track who looked like she ought to be following Patton into Belgium in a pastel pink tank with a rhinestone-collared poodle on the gun turret, you could bet the rent she’d be an Earnhardt fan.

“Well, let me start you off with a trivia question first,” he said, playing for time. “In fact, ma’am, you brought it up. The reverend here-”

“Bill,” said Bill Knight hastily.

“Bill wants to know if anybody knows which Bible verse it was that Mrs. Stevie Waltrip taped onto Earnhardt’s steering column on that fateful day.”

In the silence that followed, people looked around to see if anyone was going to volunteer the information. Finally, Sarah Nash, the regal older woman sitting next to the preppy said, “It was from Proverbs. Chapter eighteen, verse ten. The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it-”

“And is safe,” said Bill, nodding. “Ah. That one.”

Justine tossed her head. “Well, what kind of idiot would tape a verse like that onto the steering wheel of somebody who was about to run the Daytona 500?” she demanded. “Talking about running into a wall-”

“A tower.”

“Whatever. That’s exactly what he did, though. Ran into something. Just like it said in the verse.” Her voice dropped to a shocked whisper. “Do y’all think she hexed him?”

“Shut up, Justine,” came two voices in unison.

“No, think about it, y’all. Who put the verse on there? Mrs. Waltrip. Okay. And who won the race that day? Mike Waltrip.”

Harley resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. Why hadn’t he thought to bring a hip flask? Or a stun gun. “The driver who won wasn’t her husband, ma’am,” he said in the firm but soothing tone one uses for people who line their hats with tin foil. “The lady is Mrs. Darrell Waltrip, ma’am. The winner of the race, Mike, is her brother-in-law.”

Justine nodded. “Even so. I ask you.” She looked around for affirmation from her fellow passengers.

“Why don’t you tell your story, now?” said Harley. Before word of this gets out and the Waltrips sue us for slander, Harley was thinking. Or tape Bible verses to our steering wheel. He pictured himself pilloried in a medieval stocks on the lawn outside DEI while NASCAR officials and Waltrip fans pelted him with ripe fruit. Stories like that wouldn’t make him any friends on the circuit, that’s for sure, and he was going to need all the friends he could get if he was going to find a way back in.

“Okay, then.” Justine tottered up to the front of the bus, her good humor restored. She waved a wrist full of bracelets at her fellow passengers. “Hey, folks!” she said. “I’m Justine, and those two over there trying to cover up their heads with their jackets are my sister Bekasu and our cousin Cayle. Now, speaking of Bible verses, I’m going to get this party going with a little story about heaven. Can I use the microphone, Harley? How do you work it?”

Wordless with dread, he adjusted the mike for her.

“Okay, here goes,” she crooned into the bus PA system. “It’s about Richard Petty going to heaven. Oh, don’t roll your eyes, Bekasu. It’s a cute story. Besides, it’s clean. Okay, so the story is…this is a long time in the future, of course-I hope!-but Richard Petty finally dies.” She scanned the audience until she spotted young Matthew. “He may have been a little before your time, hon, but you know who Richard Petty is, right?”

Solemnly, the little boy nodded. “The King,” he said. “Like Elvis, only NASCAR.”

“That’s him. He wears a big black cowboy hat like Mr. Reeve back there. Okay, so Mr. Petty dies, and he goes up to heaven. God meets him at the pearly gates and starts showing him around. Finally, after they’ve toured the streets of gold and seen the heavenly choir and all, God takes Richard Petty out to a country road that looks just like the piedmont, North Carolina-you know, red clay and pine trees-and there at the foot of a hill, God points to a little white frame house with a big front porch, and roses on the picket fence, and chickens in the yard. Richard notices a faded number 43 flag on a pole beside the front steps.

“So God says, ‘Richard, this is your house. You’ve earned it, and I know you’ll be happy here. Welcome to heaven.’

“So Mr. Petty, he starts up the steps to the front door, when suddenly off in the distance on a hill overlooking the forest of pine trees, he notices a big old palace. It looks like the Disneyland castle, only it’s made of shining black rock with a black sidewalk, and a big old black-and-white Number 3 banner flying from the tallest tower. Sure enough, there’s a big old ‘D-E-I’ logo painted on the drawbridge.

“Well, all of a sudden Richard’s little white frame house didn’t look so good to him anymore. He walked back down the sidewalk to the gate where God was standing, and he said, ‘Lord, I don’t want to seem ungrateful for your gift house here, but something is troubling me. You know, I was a legend in NASCAR. I won seven championships, too, Lord. And I won the Daytona 500 seven times. He only won it once!’

“‘What do you mean, Richard?’ asked God.

“‘Earnhardt!’ he said, pointing to the shining black castle. ‘I want to know why Dale Earnhardt got a better house up here than I did.’

“So God chuckled and then he said, ‘Shoot, Richard, that’s not Earnhardt’s house. It’s mine.’”

The other passengers laughed the polite chuckles of people already familiar with the punch line, but Reverend Knight called out, “Mr. Petty should have known that.”

“Known what?” said Justine, handing the microphone back to Harley.

“That the big black castle was God’s house. You said it had ‘Dei’ painted on the drawbridge. Domus Dei-House of God. So I knew.”

Justine just looked at him and shook her head sadly.

Cayle leaned across the aisle. “D-E-I stands for Dale Earnhardt, Incorporated,” she whispered.

“Oh.” He pulled out a small leather notebook and made an entry. “Dale Earnhardt Incorporated…DEI. Hmmm…”

“Do people in heaven have houses?” Matthew wanted to know.

“Well…” Bill Knight hesitated, trying to scale his answer to his audience. “I think this particular story was metaphorical, although in the Bible, Jesus does say, ‘In my father’s house there are many mansions…’ So I guess you can take it either way, Matthew.”

The boy had gone back to his Game Boy, so perhaps he was satisfied with the ambiguous answer.

“How’s the game going?” Bill asked him, hoping to change the subject.

Matthew shrugged. “It’s okay. Kinda lame, though. I’d rather have a racing game, but this was all they had. This one is about this knight who has a mechanical horse, and a magic mirror that can tell if people are lying to him, and a ring, of course. There’s always a ring.”

“What does it do?”

“Lets you talk to animals.”

“Well, that could be handy.” Bill smiled. “If I’d owned that ring I wouldn’t have had to buy a new living room rug. So what does the knight do with all this gear?”

Matthew sighed. “Fights monsters. Same as every other game. I’d rather have the racing one.”

“Well, maybe we can find you one.” Bill thought that a game championing fast driving might be marginally more healthy than one encouraging players to violence. He tried to remember what games he had played at that age, in his pre-electronic childhood, the era when a house had only one television, a black-and-white set in the middle of the living room. He could remember sandlot baseball and bike riding with the other guys, every dog in the neighborhood trailing after them like a canine convoy. He remembered his childhood in mirror fragments: sunshine streaming through pine needles; a litter of newborn hamsters, like tiny pink thumbs, nestled in an old chiffon scarf; long night drives to his grandparents’ house, his parents in the front seat singing Hit Parade tunes because the radio wouldn’t pick up any stations; his grandfather’s chair with its comforting smell of old leather, tobacco, and cough drops. What would Matthew remember, he wondered.

They were approaching the Speedway by the time Harley remembered that he had not given all the Number Three Pilgrims a chance to say much about themselves. Now there were too many distractions and not enough time to get to everybody. Better save it for the dinner hour. He glanced at his clipboard, and skipped to the next spiel.

“The Bristol Motor Speedway, folks,” he said into the microphone. “At point-five-three-three miles, it’s one of the smallest tracks in NASCAR, but don’t think it’s easy on account of that. One lap on that track takes fifteen seconds. It’s an oval with 36-degree banked turns. With those steep sides, driving there at 100 miles per hour is like trying to fly an F-14 around a clothes dryer. Anybody ever been to a race here?”

No hands went up.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” said Harley. “Bristol races sell out years in advance. It’s almost easier to get a sponsor than it is to get a seat. And the hotels are probably booked into the next millennium. That’s why we’ll be staying at a bed-and-breakfast tonight. Possum Holler-it’s a real nice place they tell me. Got lots of rooms. And they specialize in racing weekends. I hear there’s a sign in the front hall that says Terry Labonte Fans Welcome. Other Racing Fans Tolerated. We’re heading for the Speedway first, though. Bristol Motor Speedway-one of the hardest tickets to come by in all of sports. Oh, Cayle, your buddy Mr. Yarborough made history here at this track in 1973 by leading in every single lap of a 500-lap race.”

“Did you ever drive here?” asked Matthew.

“Sure did, sport. Last time was in ’95. Terry Labonte was leading the pack and Earnhardt was trying to get past him, so on turn 4 of the final lap-headed right for the finish line-Earnhardt gave Labonte a little tap on his bumper that should have spun him out across the infield, leaving the way clear for Dale to finish first. But it didn’t work like that. Somehow Terry Labonte managed to keep enough control over that car to stay on the track, and he went over the finish line in first place-but backwards. Tail end first.”

“Did it count?” asked Matthew.

“Sure did. First is first.”

“And where did you finish?”

“Well, you could say that I finished before Terry did. My engine went out on lap 34, and put me out of competition in a cloud of black smoke. I got to see the finish from pit road, though. It was almost worth it.”

They were silent for a couple of minutes, in deference to Harley and the loss of his engine. Then Justine brightened and called out, “So tell us about this speedway wedding. I might want one someday.”

Harley was ready for this one. “The folks at Bailey Travel figured you’d want to know about that. How are we fixed for time, Mr. Laine?”

At the steering wheel, Ratty Laine gave a grunt of disgust and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Take all the time you want. This road is a parking lot. Volunteer Parkway traffic’s flowing like molasses in January.”

Harley nodded. “I’ll bet the locals know a shortcut or two. Wish I’d thought to ask about one at the airport.”

“But you’ve driven here,” said Matthew.

“Inside the Speedway, not out here,” said Harley, repressing a shudder. “Took a helicopter right to the Speedway parking lot. Wish we could do that today. Anyhow, as I told you before, our first event of the tour is a wedding to be held smack-dab in the middle of the Bristol Motor Speedway. Now you might not think BMS is a romantic kind of place, but as a matter of fact Mike Waltrip proposed to his wife Buffy in Victory Lane after he won the Busch Grand National event here in 1993, so I guess that sets a precedent.”

“I saw that race,” said Jim Powell. “It was two days after Alan Kulwicki died here-the reigning champion he was-and people were still in shock after the plane crash. So when Mike took the checkered flag in the Busch race, he turned that car around and did a Polish victory lap in honor of Alan. And then in Victory Lane, there was Benny Parsons trying to interview him, and Mike went and popped the question to his young lady right on the air. It was quite a moment. Happy and sad all at once. I swear Arlene must have cried for two days after that. Didn’t you, hon?”

His wife gave him a vacant smile and he patted her hand.

Harley noticed that Justine’s face had clouded over at hearing the name Waltrip again, so he hurried to change the subject. “While we’re crawling through this traffic, we have a little something to pass the time here on the bus.” He held up a cassette tape. “One of the couples getting married today is taking their honeymoon with us on this tour, and, as part of their deal with the company, the bride-to-be agreed to send us a homemade tape, talking about how they came to do this. I’m going to play it for you now, so that when the newlyweds come on board, you’ll feel like you’re already acquainted with them. Here goes…”