St. Dale

Chapter IX

The Wedding at Bristol Motor Speedway

After the obligatory posing for photos of hat waving and three peace salutes against the backdrop of the giant Earnhardt face, the Number Three Pilgrims threaded their way toward the Speedway entrance through a solid mass of race day crowd: spectators, ticket hawkers, photographers, and souvenir vendors. As they walked, Harley pointed out a catwalk bridge shielded with red nylon strips of privacy covering. The elevated walkway snaked its way up from an enclosed area of the parking lot and led down to a private entrance to the building. “Anybody know what that is?” Harley asked, pointing up at it. “You don’t have to raise your hand, Matthew. Lord knows this isn’t school. Okay, then, what?”

Matthew’s eyes grew round with awe as he contemplated the walkway above them. “That’s where they walk,” he whispered. “It leads to the drivers’ entrance.”

“That’s right,” said Harley, remembering the feeling of having several hundred people look up to you even if you’re only five feet eight. You get used to that feeling. He had walked up there once. Up there with Elliott and Earnhardt and everybody. He was glad that there was nobody up there now to see him down here. “Well, come on, folks,” he said to the group. “They’re not here yet. Nothing to see here.”

After a long climb up the stairs, Bekasu led the pack from the interior hallway and out into the sunlight in the Richard Petty section of the grandstand overlooking the center of the oval track. In design and construction, the building resembled a football stadium except that there was no grass on the field of play below. There had been years ago, when football had been played here, but now concrete lined the entire floor of the arena and the brightly painted tractor trailers that transported the race cars to the track were lined up in serried rows within the oval.

“I still say that it’s a wedding no matter where they hold it, and we’re not properly dressed, and-They’re going to race around that?” Bekasu, pausing for breath, looked straight down for the first time. Haloed in sunshine on the top step of the grandstand, she squinted down into the half-mile oval track, dwarfed on all sides by canyons of concrete bleachers. It was like looking the wrong way through a megaphone.

Harley Claymore came up beside her and smiled down at the familiar scene. “Yeah, I told you it was confining. You should see what it’s like when you look up from down there.”

“It looks like the inside of a cement mixer,” murmured Bekasu. “Do they really go 200 miles per hour in that?”

“Nah! ’Course not!-Ninety miles an hour is about average speed. There’s more than forty cars competing, remember, so things get crowded out there, too. Slows things down.”

“On that track?” Bekasu pointed a shaking finger at the narrow strip of concrete. “Impossible. You couldn’t get more than three cars abreast on the width of that track.”

“They don’t race on the flat part of the track,” said Justine. “Don’t you ever listen when I explain things to you? The racing is done up there.” She waved her hand, indicating the concrete embankment that encircled the track as a steep sloping wall.

“But it’s nearly vertical. How could anybody drive on that?”

“Centrifugal force,” said Terence Palmer softly. “I expect it feels like being in a blender.”

Bekasu turned to stare at him. He hadn’t said much so far on the tour, and she had wondered if he were a racing fan at all.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, he said, “I learned that in physics class, not on the SPEED Channel.”

“Well, I can attest to the truth of it,” said Harley. “The race is run there on the embankment, but no matter how crowded it gets, there’s plenty of room for errors.”

Harley, who had been checking their seat numbers, was pleased to find that they had been situated high up in the grandstands, which was good. Unlike most other sports, the high seats in the grandstands are better than the lower ones for stock car racing, because to really see the race, spectators need an overview of the entire course. So did the drivers themselves. Their vista was limited to the short stretch of road in front of them, which is why each team had a spotter, positioned sniper-like on the very top of the structure, relaying information to the crew and driver about the position of other cars and possible trouble on the track ahead. There were times when a driver’s windshield was so clouded with dust or smoke that his visibility was zero, and the only way for him to keep going, even to get off the track, was to drive blind and rely on the spotter’s directions.

“It’s remarkably like the Coliseum,” said Bill Knight, peering over Bekasu’s shoulder. “That oval appears to be about the length of the Circus Maximus, which is where the Romans actually held their chariot race, though of course their track was flat. Ninety miles an hour, did you say? The Essedarii couldn’t get up that much speed in chariots. Surely they can’t drive cars up on those steep embankments?”

“Centrifugal force,” said Harley, trying to look as if he had not just overheard the explanation.

“Just you wait,” said Justine. “It’s quite a sight.”

“But surely it would be suicide!”

“No. Bristol’s pretty safe,” said Harley. “Those are thirty-six-degree angles on the turns, sixteen degrees on the straightaway. Makes it interesting. It’s low speeds, like I said.” He wished the tourists would stay together so that he wouldn’t have to keep answering the same questions over and over.

“Low speeds?”

“Well, relatively speaking. They go about 180 at Daytona. And they have crash helmets and safety harnesses and all. It’s exciting to watch, though. The short tracks call for more driving skills than the long flatter speedways. But it does get hot in there. Sometime back in the seventies, twenty-five out of the thirty racers had to let relief drivers take over for them on account of the heat. That’s probably why they schedule the summer race for the evening these days, but of course we’ll be out in the brunt of the heat for this wedding. Everybody got sunblock?”

Justine smiled. “Already in my moisturizer,” she said. “Anyhow I wouldn’t need it for the race where I’ll be sitting.” She tugged at her sister’s arm. “Right now, we’ve got to get down there and see the wedding.” She beckoned for Bill Knight to follow. “A judge and a preacher-you two can compare notes about the ceremony!”

“Oh!” said Cayle, waving her digital camera. “Look! The Cale Yarborough section is right below us. My dad will be thrilled. Can somebody get my picture next to the sign as we go down?”

“What did she mean, she won’t need sunblock where she’s going?” asked Bill Knight nodding toward Justine.

Harley shrugged. “Maybe she’s driving.”

Although the race would not begin until evening, the Speedway was already a hive of activity. Spectators trickled into the grandstands or wandered about the infield. Pit crews busied themselves in preparation for the pre-race inspection and then the race itself and television crews set up for the late afternoon event. On the Speedway infield, a plain wooden podium had been placed before a white lattice garden trellis decked with summer flowers: the site of the morning nuptials. Some of the reporters had decided to cover the NASCAR weddings as a sidebar to the Bristol race story. Wearing summer-weight brown suits and smarmy smiles, they roamed among the odd assortment of brides and grooms, microphone in hand, with a photographer or video-cam operator in tow, seeking out the most stereotypical-looking couples to feature.

As the Number Three Pilgrims reached the bottom of the grandstand, they could make out brides and grooms in every stage of sartorial splendor, milling around or posing for snapshots against the Speedway backdrop.

“Oh, aren’t they cute?” said Justine as they reached track level. “There must be a dozen cloned Dales out there waiting to get hitched. Look at that one!” She pointed to a slender youth in black jeans, black tee shirt, and cowboy boots. “Or the one over there in the white Goodwrench firesuit and sunglasses.”

“Striking resemblance,” said Cayle. “I just wish it wasn’t the bride.”

“Dale Earnhardt got married in that outfit?” asked Bill Knight, peering over her shoulder.

“I seriously doubt it,” said Justine, “though it’s hard to be sure, ’cause he tied the knot three different times, which gives you a lot of options. But I can think of at least one Mrs. Earnhardt who wouldn’t have let him get away with it. These guys today aren’t worried about what Dale actually got married in, though. They’re just dressing up in what they think of as the typical Dale outfit.”

“And the brides let them dress like that for the wedding?”

“Well, I figure that any guy who can get his woman to marry him in the middle of a motor speedway on race day could probably get away with just about anything. Some of them went for a more formal look, though. See that guy over there in the tux?”

“There’s certainly a range of styles here.”

“Yeah, from Dale Earnhardt to Dale Evans.”

“I don’t know when I last saw a pastel tuxedo,” said Cayle.

Bekasu spotted a television crew ambushing a young couple. “Vultures!” she muttered. “The thing is, those smug reporters down there are going to assume that none of these people know how silly they’re going to look to a TV audience, but most of them do know.”

“Really?” said Terence Palmer with raised eyebrows. “You detect postmodern irony?”

“Betcher ass we do,” said Justine. She pointed to the wedding participants. “Now I’ll bet this is a second or third marriage for some of those older couples, and they’ve done the whole white-gown-and-church bit before. So now they’re going to do it their way and they don’t give a damn what anybody thinks.”

“She knows whereof she speaks,” sighed Bekasu. “I was there for all three of Justine’s nuptials. The first time was white satin in the Grace Episcopal Church, with a groom who had children our age. Then there was the time she married her boss in the medieval ceremony with velvet cloaks and lute players in the Charlotte Renaissance Festival Village, when the groom wore a kilt.”

“Oh, so that’s when she didn’t care what anybody thought-”

Justine laughed. “No, that would be the third time, when Sonny Watts and I tied the knot at sea and insisted that the captain marry us.”

“Ah. Was that a Caribbean cruise?”

“The Ocracoke ferry,” said Bekasu. “Which was just as well, all things considered, since it wasn’t legally binding.”

“Oh, just you wait,” said Justine. “Old Sonny will clean up his act one of these days. This Speedway wedding looks like fun, though. I just wish they were having it at Darlington instead of here. Remember Toby Jankin? My escort for cotillion?”

Bekasu shuddered. “The one who wore Converse hi-tops and white socks with his tux?”

“I knew you’d remember! Well, Toby’s a doctor in Florence, South Carolina, now, which is only about ten miles from Darlington. I’m hoping to get to see him when we get there. I’ll bet he’d just love to get married at the track.”

“I wonder what he’d wear,” muttered Bekasu.

The brides presented the greatest range of costumes in the crowd. In defiance of the sweltering heat, some determined women wore traditional satin wedding dresses, complete with long sleeves, high lace collars, and trailing net bridal veils. Their bouquets of daisies and Sharpie marker pens (courtesy of the management) were already wilting in the relentless August sun. Others were making Dolly-Parton-is-my-bridesmaid statements in full-skirted square dance outfits and stiletto heels, or sporting the faux-western attire of fringe and turquoise once popularized by Dale Evans and now employed by country singers who want people to think that Alabama borders New Mexico. The smallest group of brides, in complete denial of their surroundings, wore rosebud corsages and pastel business suits appropriate for a ceremony at the registrar’s office. The youngest and most slender brides had joined in the spirit of the raceway festivities, dressing in sync with their intended husbands: NASCAR firesuits; motorcycle chic; or black jeans, black tee shirts, and silver-studded cowboy boots. Sometimes it was hard to tell man from wife.

“I wonder if you could predict the length of the marriage from the wedding clothes?” mused Bekasu.

“I never could,” said Bill Knight. He sighed, thinking perhaps of twenty-thousand-dollar church-and-country-club spectacles that came to naught. At least these couples would have a race to remember some day, even if they’d rather forget the ceremony that preceded it.

Near the wedding trellis, one of the black-garbed grooms was stamping his cowboy boot on the asphalt and refusing to listen to reason.

“But, Shane,” Karen Soon-to-be-McKee’s eyes welled up. If Shane kept carrying on, she thought, her tears would spill over her mascara and make her cheeks look like a car that had been passed on the last lap by Dale Earnhardt-black streaks all the way down the sides.

“He was supposed to be here. Everybody said so. I was counting on it.”

“I know, but this will be just as nice, won’t it? I mean, it’s not like it would be really him.”

“In the pictures it would be. In the pictures.” Shane looked dangerously close to tears himself. “Who remembers their wedding? It’s the pictures that are real.”

For the twentieth time, Karen scanned the crowd, hoping to catch sight of a man in sunglasses, white Goodwrench coveralls, and a black-and-red cap. Or even for somebody who had the right height and body type who could be persuaded to don a hat and dark glasses for the occasion. She was hoping for a miracle, and wondering what would constitute one. Kerry Earnhardt, maybe. Everybody said he was the spitting image of his dad, but he wasn’t driving in the Winston Cup series this year.

She put her hand on her bridegroom’s arm and tried for a compromise. “Shane, wouldn’t it be better to have a real, live NASCAR driver act as best man, instead of some guy in a costume? Look, there’s Jerry Nadeau right over there. He seems really nice and all. Said he’d be best man or whatever if anybody wanted him to. And then you could have a real NASCAR driver in the wedding pictures.”

Shane sneered. “Dude’s from Connecticut.”

“Yeah, but he lives in Mooresville now. Just like Dale did.”

“He ain’t Dale.”

“Well, no. But he’s really himself. And he doesn’t he look nice in his racing gear? Are you sure you don’t want him?”

“Huh. As often as Nadeau wrecks, it’d probably be bad luck to have him stand up for people getting married.”

Karen sighed. “You’re just making excuses, Shane. He seems like a great guy. I can go ask him. That is, if you promise to be nice to him.”

“Whaddaya mean, be nice to him?”

“Well, you know. In the ’99 race here at Bristol, when they gave Jerry Nadeau that two-lap penalty for spinning out Dale Jarrett when he didn’t even mean to, and then on the last lap of the same race Dale spun out poor Terry Labonte and won the race, and NASCAR acted like nothing had happened. And you said that Earnhardt ought to be able to do anything he wanted just because he was Earnhardt. You just better not throw that up in poor Mr. Nadeau’s face and make him feel bad, that’s all, Shane.”

Shane weakened for a moment, glancing over at Jerry Nadeau who was smiling and chatting with an assortment of bridal couples, then his mulish frown returned, and he said, “No. I don’t want anybody, then. Just an empty space. Dale can be beside me in spirit.”

Karen nodded. “Yeah, hon. I’m sure he will be.”

She scanned the crowd again, this time hoping for a glimpse of people she actually knew, but no one had turned up yet. She had left her mother and the Wiccan Friends of the Goddess contingent sleeping late in their tents back at the campground. They hadn’t been able to find other accommodations, because on race weekend every motel for fifty miles around is booked solid months in advance, so they had spent an uncomfortable night in close quarters with sleeping bags, Mrs. Tickle’s homemade wine, and multi-generational girl talk, to which Karen had contributed very little. Somehow, there didn’t seem to be much you could say to a bunch of women who averaged 2.2 husbands apiece when you hadn’t even managed to bag one yet officially, and she certainly didn’t want to hear any advice from them on the subject of marriage. There was something deeply depressing about being lectured on grounds for divorce and alimony strategies the night before you were going to stand up and vow “ ’til death do you part.”

She wondered what they were going to wear to the wedding. Quite ordinary clothes, probably. Most of the Friends had nice jobs as librarians or professors or realtors, and they tended to clean up pretty well when they wanted to, so she doubted whether the rayon robes with sequin-and-glitter constellations would figure into their wardrobes for the ceremony. Of course, if they did wear them, she didn’t suppose it would matter, what with all the square-dance outfits and racing gear in evidence. As long as they didn’t come sky-clad. Please, Lord…Please, Dale…don’t let them come sky-clad, she thought.

Karen thought she herself looked within hailing distance of normal, anyhow. She had steadfastly refused Shane’s urging to wear the feminine version of the Dale man-in-black outfit, and instead had opted for a more traditional look, although not the white satin gown she’d yearned for. Even she had to admit that the Barbie bridal dress would be ludicrous in the center of a racetrack when the other half of the wedding party was dressed in boots and jeans. In the spirit of compromise that she felt should accompany any venture into marriage, she’d accepted the help of the Friends of the Goddess seamstresses, who had found a bolt of white washable silk at JoAnn Fabrics and fashioned her a Greek tunic with handkerchief hems and a silver cord belt. Lace-up Roman sandals completed the outfit that she felt was cool in both senses of the word. She resolved to purge from her memory Mrs. Tickle’s laughing assessment of the couple: “Xena the Warrior Princess Marries Tim McGraw.”

“Are you nervous?” One of the cowgirl brides asked her. “I sure am.” Sweat poured down the woman’s cheeks from damp red hair squashed under an aqua cowboy hat.

Karen nodded. “I just hope it goes okay. After all, you only do this once.”

A passing square-dance bride overheard this remark and giggled. “Don’t count on that, sugar!”

Karen tightened her grip on the Sharpie bouquet with the handkerchief and the little tube of sunblock tucked into its depths. “My intended is over there sulking because he wanted Dale Earnhardt to be his best man.”

The cowgirl raised her carefully tweezed eyebrows. “Dale Senior? He’s a little late for that, isn’t he?”

“Well, not the real Dale Earnhardt. And not even Junior. But Shane was such a huge fan of the Intimidator that he wanted some reference to him in the wedding.”

“I hear you,” said the cowgirl. “My intended cries every time he watches a race these days, he’s still so tore up about Dale.”

“Shane hasn’t even watched a race since Dale died at Daytona. This will be the first one he’s seen since then. He says it hurts too much. In fact, this year I-well, never mind. But Shane heard there’s an impersonator on the circuit who’s the spitting image of Earnhardt, and he was hoping the fellow would show up today and stand in for Dale.”

The woman laughed. “Well, that impersonator probably has to be careful about when and where he shows up, because if the folks at DEI catch him at it, I reckon they might arrange for him to actually meet Dale.”

“Here’s our girl!”

Karen stiffened at the sound of a bugling drawl from ten yards away. Moments later she was engulfed by a horde of Friends of the Goddess, redolent with perfume and sunblock and all talking at once while Miss Welchett circled the group snapping off shots with her digital camera. To Karen’s immense relief none of the Friends had come sky-clad. They didn’t even look like a unified group. Mrs. Tickle and Karen’s mother wore straw hats and chintz-patterned summer dresses, while several of the other ladies had chosen pantsuits topped by gauzy chiffon big shirts or the sort of outfits they wore to class, and the rest were in muumuus that made them look like a succession of upturned ice cream cones.

“Have you got the four things, Karen?” asked her mother.

“Umm…four-” Karen’s startled mind refused to come up with any list other than the Wiccan standby: earth, water, wind, and fire.

“You know!” prompted Miss Welchett, still clicking the shutter. “Something old, something new…”

“Oh.” Karen shrugged. At least they were staying mainstream with their pagan superstitions. “Well, the dress is new, the underwear’s old, and I borrowed Mom’s earrings. I can’t think of anything blue, though.”

“Your aura,” said her mother. “Your aura is blue today. So you’ll be fine, dear. At least, I hope so.”

“ ’Course I will.” Karen gave her mother a quick hug, and hurried away before she was made to listen to the usual speech about the uncertainty of human relationships and the unreliability of men and the Never Give Up Your Day Job maxim.

The rest of the morning went by for Karen like a slide show on fast forward, forever to be remembered as a series of still images following in rapid succession accompanied by the aroma of gasoline, drooping flowers, and by canned wedding music and hugs from well-wishers and strangers. Shane’s dad hadn’t bothered to show up, but he moved around a lot so they weren’t even sure he’d received his invitation, but Shane’s mother was there in a pink linen dress that would have made her look young enough to be a bride herself if she didn’t look so tired and nervous. Shane’s grandmother had come wearing her best navy blue church dress and a Dale Earnhardt hat to get into the spirit of the occasion.

Also present were their fellow travelers from the Earnhardt bus tour, who mostly looked too presentable to be mixed up in all this, and the dozen other wedding couples who somehow made Karen feel more alone than she would have walking down a church aisle by herself. And finally there was Shane, with that firing squad look of a man facing the unknown, stepping up to the podium all alone-except in his own mind, that is-and saying his “I do” in a clear steady voice in response to her own faltering vows. Then he looked up, past her to the nearly empty Junior Johnson grandstand, and broke into a beaming smile.

Suddenly Jerry Nadeau was shaking her hand and wishing her well. “Um, you, too,” she said. “You know-for the race. May the best man win.” She was proud of that little play on words. She’d been saving it up to say to him when she shook his hand, but before Jerry Nadeau could even kiss the bride, Shane had taken her by the arm and pulled her aside. “Karen, I saw him!” he hissed in her ear.

She turned back to look at the rows of still vacant seats. “Who?”

“Dale! He was right there! In his firesuit and his sunglasses, with his arms folded the way he always stood, and when I looked up at him, he nodded at me. I think he might’a smiled.”

“Well, that’s great, Shane…” Jerry Nadeau was gone now, swallowed up by the crowd of laughing newlyweds, hugging and shaking hands and posing for snapshots. “I’m real glad you saw the Impersonator after all.”

Shane shook his head impatiently. “Look up at those stands, Karen. Do you see anybody there? No. ’Cause he’s gone. And nobody could disappear that fast from the middle of the bleachers. That wasn’t the Impersonator, Karen. That was the Intimidator.”

The rest of the bus tour turned up for the combination tour lunch and wedding reception, and when the introductions, hugs, and picture-taking subsided, the newlyweds, the Number Three Pilgrims, and the Friends of the Goddess trooped off together to find some shade in which to eat the picnic lunch courtesy of Bailey Travel augmented with a selection of salads and vegetarian dishes brought along by the Friends. The two-tiered wedding cake, a little dented from its trip to the Speedway, featured red-and-black rosettes and garlands on white icing, a replica of Earnhardt’s signature in black icing on the side, and a little die-cast number 3 Monte Carlo next to the traditional plastic bride and groom on the top of the cake.

“Well, I think the whole ceremony was sweet,” Justine insisted.

Bill Knight sighed. “I just wish some of them had kissed each other before they kissed the start/finish line.”

Shane’s mother, a colorless waif of a woman who looked like she hadn’t had enough sleep in fifteen years, hovered uncertainly on the fringes of the crowd beside Shane’s grandmother, until Justine discovered them and managed to get them involved in a discussion of wedding fashions and unusual ceremonies (beginning with her own), so that Mrs. McKee finally forgot her nervousness. By the time Shane’s grandmother had begun to swap herbal remedies with the Wiccans, Justine had fetched Mrs. McKee a second glass of champagne, and introduced her to Jim and Arlene. The three of them started on a comparison of NASCAR craft items and Shane’s mother had begun to feel that she was being amusing and clever after all. She even summoned up a grin for the family wedding picture.

The reception hummed along despite the heat of midday, while Shane, Harley, and Terence stood off to one side and talked about the strategy of the pit stop in racing, with particular emphasis on the genius of the Wood Brothers. Karen chewed her roast beef sandwich in thoughtful silence, summoning up a smile every time somebody congratulated her, which was about every third bite. Finally, after she and Shane had cut the cake and everyone else was lined up to receive a slice, and while Justine and the Friends of the Goddess were leading a lively discussion on the feng shui of the Speedway, Karen walked up to Mrs. Tickle and asked, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Tickle. “Certainly not.”

It was typical of the Friends of the Goddess that Mrs. Tickle did not ask why Karen would ask such a question. This was exactly the sort of thing they thought everybody wondered about all the time, but Karen had expected a less conventional answer. “Oh, okay,” she said.

“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Tickle waving her fork. “I believe in the lingering spiritual presence of departed souls.”

“Well, do you think the departed soul of…um…Dale Earnhardt could come back to the NASCAR circuit?”

“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Tickle.

“Oh. Good. Well-”

“Because he never left,” said Mrs. Tickle.