St. Dale

Chapter XV

Lowes Motor Speedway Concord, NC

Harley Claymore looked at his watch. Eight forty-five. So far, so good, in terms of the timing for the tour. Harley had been worried about the distances and times allotted between destinations. He knew that Bailey Travel had never done this itinerary before and, as a novice in the guiding business, he had no faith in his own ability to keep them on schedule. But by some miracle-he winced at the word, thinking who Justine would thank-they had managed to make all the stops in a reasonable approximation of the appointed times.

Ratty’s take-no-prisoners driving style and his knowledge of the back roads had enabled them to complete the trip from Rockingham to Concord in less than two hours. (He said that he had once been the governor’s chauffeur.) Another hour had gone to getting them settled in the hotel within sight of Interstate 85, and just across from a megaoutlet mall called Concord Mills. This was the heart of racing country. Most of the teams had their headquarters within a few miles of here, and although Harley was stranded without a car, he thought there was an outside chance that a couple of phone calls might bring forth someone to talk business with. Besides the two race venues, this was the place to use his connections, if he still had any. For that reason, Harley had hoped to skip the communal dinner by directing the passengers to the many restaurants within walking distance of their lodgings. But Cayle and Justine, locals who knew the mall by heart, had insisted that they make a pilgrimage to the mall itself to see the life-size bronze statue of the Intimidator in his racing gear which stood on a pedestal near the walkway in silent benediction. The patron saint of local commerce and interstate tourism, Harley figured. He had nearly worn out his smile posing for half an hour with various combinations of the Number Three Pilgrims against the backdrop of that solemn statue.

Laugh, Ironhead, he silently told the bronze effigy. Wait ’til the angels put you to work answering prayers in some celestial version of QVC.

Harley had skipped dinner, but he let it be known that there was a place nearby that served mixed drinks. If anybody wanted to meet up with him there, he planned to show up around nine, he told them. Then he’d gone to his hotel room with a fist full of tattered business cards and numbers scribbled on beer mats, and started making phone calls.

“Hello, who is this? Justin? No kidding! How ya doin’? You sound a lot like your dad. I haven’t seen you since before your feet could touch the accelerator. Hey, this is Harley. Harley. Harley Claymore. I used to drive for-well, it’s been a while. Listen, is your dad there? Oh. Oh, right. Of course he is. Well, I’m headed to Darlington myself, end of the week. No. No message. I’ll catch up to him down the road. Good to talk to you again.”

That conversation multiplied by ten constituted his evening’s worth of free time, an exercise in frustration and futility. He should have tried to set up some meetings before the tour started. Twenty-twenty hindsight, as usual.

Finally, at quarter to nine, he gave up and headed out to the bar where about half the party had taken over a large table in the corner. The Powells weren’t there, which didn’t surprise him. Neither Sarah Nash, nor Terence, nor Ray Reeve were there, but Jesse Franklin was, and the newlyweds had come up for air. The Charlotte Three were in full force, and Bill Knight was present, though Matthew was not. He wondered what Ratty Laine did with his evenings.

“Where’s the rookie?” Harley asked Bill Knight.

“Matthew? He said he was tired, so I told him he could stay in the room. Sarah Nash is looking in on him to make sure he’s all right.”

They had all finished dinner, except Shane, who was still toying with a basket of onion rings. (Shame to let ’em go to waste.) The others had ordered drinks, and they immediately hailed Harley with an offer to stand him a round. He accepted all offers, thinking as far as optimism and cheerfulness went, he was about a quart low.

Jesse Franklin took a sip of his drink and made a face. “This iced tea is sweet,” he said. “I’m sure I ordered unsweetened.”

“Send it back,” said Shane.

He shook his head. “No. It’s no big deal. I’ll just drink it. I hate to make a fuss.”

“We were just saying how much we’re enjoying the tour, Harley,” said Cayle. “You’re doing a great job.”

Harley’s bourbon arrived and he took a fortifying gulp. “I appreciate that,” he said. “Hope you all are having a good time.”

“Well, it has been enlightening,” said Bekasu. “At least now I’ll be able to decipher some of the hats and jackets that people wear into my courtroom. I used to think all those 8 and 24 tattoos were gang symbols.”

Justine gasped. “Somebody has a 24 tattoo-in Charlotte? What were they in court for? Shoplifting at the health food store?”

Harley wasn’t about to step into that one. He focused his attention on his drink while the conversation ebbed and flowed around him. They drifted away from talking racing after a while, because all these people had other lives, other interests. Cayle talked about her garden ornament craft projects, and Justine passed around pictures of her two dogs, which, surprisingly enough, were not yappy lap pooches, but a couple of sad-eyed blue tick hounds who looked like they ought to be living under a sagging porch instead of in a big stone-and-glass house in a toney Charlotte neighborhood. Their names were Holly and Edelbrock, a reference that had to be explained to Bill Knight, the only one who did not smile when he heard it. Even Shane managed to almost get off the subject of racing. He talked about his job back home, working as a mechanic, and getting to put in some time on an ARCA car. Harley tried to think of something to say that didn’t involve a steering wheel, but nothing came to mind.

“So you’re working on a race car?” he said to Shane.

Shane nodded. “Not a Cup car, though. Maybe someday.”

Harley nodded over his drink. He knew about somedays.

“How did you break into the big time?” asked Shane.

“That was a different era.” Harley didn’t believe in telling long stories in roadhouses. “That was before rookie drivers had engineering degrees from Purdue. If you’re looking to get the family together and build a race car in your garage in Dawsonville, Georgia, or Stuart, Virginia, you are tough out of luck, son, because those days will not come again.”

“I know that. I just don’t know how to break in.”

“Told you. Engineering degree.”

Shane shook his head. “That’s not happening.”

“Grades?”

“Money.”

Karen, who had been listening to this conversation, leaned across and touched Shane’s arm. “Tell him about that program you started, Shane. Driving for Dale.”

“Oh, he doesn’t want to hear about that.”

Which was true, but Karen told him anyway, and even pulled a well-creased newspaper clipping out of her purse and insisted that Harley hang on to it until he had time to read the whole thing.

Back in his hotel room, Matthew was glad of a little time to himself away from the grown-ups. He was often more tired than he let on-or at least, he would gallop through the day, fueled by the novelty and excitement of the excursion, and then after dinner, when the excitement wore off, he would tumble into bed with hardly any interval between lights off and sleep. Now he could make an early night of it, perhaps write a few postcards to some of his friends back in Canterbury. He had flipped through the channels on the television. He would have loved to see Fast and Furious on a hotel movie channel, but it wasn’t offered. Child services children were only allowed to see movies rated “G” or “PG,” so all of them longed to see forbidden films, especially car chases and horror films.

Since there weren’t any interesting movies offered on the hotel television, Matthew searched for some version of Star Trek to watch. He had briefly considered watching the SPEED Channel instead, but they weren’t showing Cup racing just now, so he decided to hang out with old friends instead: that is, the characters on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Maybe if they were still filming Star Trek: The Next Generation, he’d have considered asking to visit there for his trip, but probably not, because the crew of the Enterprise were only acting, but Dale Earnhardt was real.

To boldly go where no one has gone before. Those actors hadn’t done that. But Dale had.

“Why you wanna go on an Earnhardt tour, man?” asked Nick, who was one of his roommates, twelve going on forty. “Earnhardt is dead, dude. You’re not gonna meet him.”

But that was just it.

Maybe he was.

Matthew didn’t talk about it, because mentioning death upset grown-ups. Nobody had come right out and said that he was going to die, but being a kid without parents taught you to pay close attention to the adults who had control of your life: whether or not they smiled or looked you in the eye; what they didn’t say, and whether they were suddenly nice to you for no reason. So, he knew. Back in the winter he had been feeling tired and weak, falling asleep in school and going to bed before lights out, and finally somebody noticed and took him to the clinic for tests. Nobody told him what he had, but the staff member who took him to the doctor had insisted on stopping for ice cream on the way back to the Children’s Home. That was a bad sign, he thought. He didn’t ask any questions, though. The thing about being a kid is that you have no control over anything, anyhow. If the grown-ups say you’re going to die, that’s the way it is. He watched the word about his condition spread through the staff of the home: one by one the counselors and the office workers started acting funny around him, giving him pitying smiles and extra helpings at dinner. He contrived not to notice, because he didn’t want to talk about it, but he had started thinking about it. Dying.

He didn’t think it was going to hurt. Hospitals nowadays had all sorts of medicines to keep you from feeling anything, so the only thing to worry about was what came after. He thought that if dying just meant going to sleep and never waking up, then there was nothing to worry about. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but at least he wouldn’t have to deal with it.

If there was an afterlife, though, he didn’t want to walk into it by himself. He’d barely known his grandmother, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he could count on his dad even making it to heaven. His mom was sleeping on life support back in a white room in New Hampshire. But Dale Earnhardt was in heaven. Everybody said so. Just after the wreck, Mike Waltrip himself had said that in the twinkling of an eye Dale went into the presence of the Lord.

Matthew thought that if he stayed faithful to Dale as a fan, then Dale would stick up for him in heaven. One of his fantasies was of stepping out onto a cloud in front of the pearly gates, where the bearded old angel sat at a desk with a roll book. And there in front of the gates stood Dale Earnhardt in his dark shades and his white Goodwrench firesuit, holding up a cardboard sign that said “Matthew Hinshaw.” Then he’d be safe.

At the Concord restaurant the evening wore on, but no one left. Harley’s sense of self-preservation kicked in and he switched from bourbon to beer.

Bill Knight looked thoughtfully at his shotglass full of Jack Daniels. “I’m a scotch drinker, myself,” he remarked to no one in particular. “Still, I suppose that except for the change of grain from corn to barley, the recipe is basically the same as Glenfiddich. Hmm…I wonder if they make bourbon in Scotland? Surely they have corn over there. I wonder what you would call a Scottish bourbon?”

“Glen Campbell,” said Bekasu.

“What’s your room number, Cayle?” asked Justine. “I need to get my nail polish remover back from you tonight.”

Cayle looked nervously around the bar, and then she leaned forward and said in conspiratorial tones, “Rusty Wallace and Mike Waltrip.”

“Must be crowded in there,” said the waitress, who was removing the empty glasses. She smiled to show that she was teasing, and then she pointed to the full-length Dale Earnhardt poster on the far wall.

“It’s a code,” Justine said, mouthing the words so that no one could overhear.

The waitress nodded, unsurprised. “Yeah, I figured,” she said. “Room two-fifteen. Y’all might want to come up with a more obscure code to use around these parts. Driver numbers are no secret here. Darrell Waltrip swears he used to open his prayers by saying, ‘Hello, God, this is number 17.’”

“She’s right,” said Karen. “That’s how I taught the numbers to the little boy I babysat: with die-cast race cars. One, Rusty, Dale, Robby Gordon, T. Labonte, Mark Martin, Rusty’s Little Brother, Little E, Awesome Bill, Ten.”

“If you want to change codes, you might try using Bible verses,” said Bill Knight. “Oh, wait, they’d probably catch on to that here in Concord, too.”

“Bible verses?” said Harley.

He laughed. “Yes. I used to use that code to leave messages for people back in college. We had hall phones in those days, and you couldn’t be sure that whoever answered the communal phone would pass along a message, so the trick was to make it a memorable one.”

“Like what?”

“Well, the one I used most often was Job 13, verse 22.” He waited with an expectant smile for someone to shout out the verse, but after a few moments of respectful silence, he gave it to them. “‘Call thou, and I will answer.’ It worked every time.”

Justine giggled. “I think Terence would enjoy hearing about the NASCAR number code,” she said. “Bet you anything that nobody in Manhattan would get it.”

“Some of them would,” said Harley. “There used to be a NASCAR speedway in Trenton, and I hear they’re looking to build another one somewhere closer to New York City.”

“The Hoboken 500,” said Bekasu with inebriated solemnity.

Bill Knight said, “I wonder if they use that code up where I live.”

“Don’t you know?” asked Justine.

“It would have gone right over my head,” said Bill.

“Gotta trivia question for you,” said Harley, downing the last of his most recent beer. “In 1986, when Geoff Bodine won the Daytona 500, what driver sold souvenirs in the nearby K-Mart parking lot that afternoon after the race?”

“Umm…” Justine considered it. “Must have been one of the young drivers who was a kid back then…not Jeff Gordon, surely. He was probably in Indiana by then. Maybe Jimmie Johnson? Kurt Busch?”

“Or maybe one of the second generation drivers, who was there in Daytona because his dad or his older brother was racing that year?” said Karen. “How old is Dale Jarrett? Or the younger Wallaces?”

“How about Sterling Marlin?” said Shane.

“Not Dale Junior?” said Cayle.

The other drinkers nodded, exuding beer fumes and solidarity. “Could be him.”

Harley shook his head sadly. “Naw,” he said, blowing his nose on a cocktail napkin. “None of them. The answer is…Geoff Bodine. ”

Everybody froze as the name sank in. Then Bill Knight said, “Harley, that can’t be right. You just said he won the race that day.”

“S’true, though,” said Harley. “He did win. That was the year Earnhardt ran out of gas nearing the finish line and Bodine won it. But in the eighties the 500 wasn’t the big old hype monster it is these days. No flying off in your private jet to the Letterman show. Back then you just did your victory lap, talked to a few sports writers, and went on home. So Geoff Bodine’s parents…s’parents…were selling souvenirs from a little old stand in the Kmart parking lot down the street and he went over…” his voice broke. “And he helped them.” He dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve.

There was a shocked silence in the bar, and then Cayle began to sniffle too. “Pore old Bodine,” she said.

There were rumbles of agreement.

“Well, that’s not fair,” said Shane. “Everybody these days gets a gazillion dollars and their picture on magazine covers, and on the day of his greatest victory Geoff Bodine has to sell keychains! That’s not right.”

“And now he can’t even keep a sponsor,” said Jesse Franklin, thumping the table. “Even that old Indian casino in Florida has dumped him…”

“Poor old Bodine,” whispered Harley, wiping away a tear. “Sometimes I think I must have been a Bodine brother that got stolen away by the gypsies or something, because I sure do have the family curse-you work hard enough for two people, and you’ve got the talent to make it big, but you never, never get a break. And now no ride.”

But nobody was listening to Harley’s lament.

Bill Knight shook his head sadly. “The race is not always to the swift…”

“What number is that?” asked Bekasu.

“I forget. Ecclesiastes somewhere.”

“Well, what are we gonna do about it?” Justine demanded. She opened her purse and fished out a twenty. “Let’s pass the hat! Gimme that cap, Jesse!” She snatched off his Winged Three hat and waved it over her head. “Let’s see some greenbacks, y’all. Come on. Toss ’em in there. You can spare it. Anybody got an address for Geoff Bodine?”

“I’m not usually expected to add to the collection plate,” said Bill Knight, smiling as he tossed in a five-dollar bill.

“You’re going to send him cash through the mail?” said Karen. “That’s not safe.”

“We could write him a check,” said Cayle.

“Not anonymous enough,” said Justine. “We don’t want to hurt his feelings. This isn’t charity. It’s restitution.”

“I doubt if a few dollars will be much consolation to him,” murmured Bekasu.

Justine sniffed. “Okay, Miss High-and-Mighty. You call Letterman and Larry King and get Bodine on their shows, but until that great day, I say we make the gesture. Shaking our fists at the fates and all.”

“Maybe you could buy a money order at a gas station,” said Jesse Franklin, adding a pocketful of crumpled, tobacco-flecked dollar bills to the pot.

Harley looked at the hat full of fives and ones nestled alongside Justine’s twenty-dollar bill. He was picturing Geoff Bodine’s dismay if he should ever find out about this. Better try to set them straight before the disaster went any further.

“Okay, maybe he didn’t get all the laurels that he deserved,” said Harley, backpedaling for all he was worth. “But Old Geoff is not down and out. He was rookie of the year in ’82. He’s on the list of the 50 greatest drivers ever.” And he will kill me if he finds out I had anything to do with this, he finished silently. “And-and-let’s see-Okay, did you know that Geoff Bodine invented the bobsled used by the U.S. Olympic team? The Bo-Dyn bobsled. Famous for it. The man’s a genius. And he’s been racing a long time. Heck, just this year, old as he is, he was right up there with Ward Burton at the finish of the Daytona 500.”

“With Ward Burton?” said Shane. “Well, what difference does that make?”

Harley blinked. He was about to point out that since Ward Burton had actually won the Daytona 500, it made quite a bit of difference, but before he could voice this thought, Karen tapped Shane on the arm to ask him a question, and Justine, who had been canvassing other tables, appeared at Harley’s elbow with the hat full of money.

“I know he’s rich,” she said. “Or at least not missing any meals. I just felt like we ought to make the gesture, that’s all. I hate it when people don’t get a fair deal in life.”

“That must keep you awful busy,” said Harley.

She gave him a playful tap on the arm. “Oh, you know what I mean! I just naturally root for the underdog, that’s all. I just never know what to do about it. Most of the time I just write a check and hope it helps.”

Harley remembered a cartoon he’d seen once in one of his dad’s Saturday Evening Posts. It showed a fellow in the water, obviously drowning, and a man in an overcoat on the dock was saying, “I can’t swim. Would twenty dollars help?”

“Now, Harley, do you reckon we can get this hat full of cash turned into a money order or something?”

He groaned. “If you are hell-bent on doing this, I think there’s an all-night gas station down the road. They’ll probably sell money orders. But where are you going to send it?”

“Don’t you know? I thought all you race drivers were buddies.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t have my Christmas card list on me.” He’d be damned if he was going to tell her about the pile of business cards on the nightstand back in his room. In fact, if Bodine found out about it, he would definitely be damned.

“Oh, come off it. You know where to find him.”

Harley sighed, thinking that Justine Holifield must go through life the way Dale Earnhardt went around a race track. “He lives in Cornelius,” he said at last. “And Cornelius is about the size of that pool table, so I reckon that if you just wrote ‘Geoffrey Bodine, Cornelius, NC’ on the envelope, it would find him sooner or later.” He hoped she didn’t know where Cornelius was; that is, only about seven miles west of where they were sitting. Harley was gearing up to explain to her that during racing season home is the one place you could be sure that a driver would not be, but Justine didn’t press it further.

With her sweetest smile she said, “Cornelius. Thank you, Harley.”

“Just don’t mention my name anywhere on that letter.” Another thought occurred to him. “You’re not about to go walking up the road in the dark, are you?”

“Harley, it’s Concord, not Beirut. Besides, Dale wouldn’t let anything happen to me in his own backyard, so to speak.”

Harley tilted his chair so far back that he nearly toppled over, which is when he caught sight of the Earnhardt poster tacked to the wall behind him, staring a hole through his back. With a sigh of resignation, he straightened up in the chair. “Naw, I guess Ol’ Dale wouldn’t let anything happen to you around here,” he said. “In fact, he just told me to walk you to the damn gas station.”

The next morning, Harley retrieved the wreath for Lowe’s Motor Speedway before helping Ratty stow the luggage back in the bus. “Short trip this morning,” he remarked to the driver.

“Enjoy it while you can,” said Ratty. “It’s a long way to Talladega.”

Unfortunately the Number Three Pilgrims had overheard this remark, and apparently some of them were old enough to know World War I songs, because on the drive to the Speedway, they improvised a spontaneous version of “It’s a long way to Talladega.” When they got to the last line and, in a burst of exuberance, Bill Knight sang out, “But Earnhardt’s still there!” They all fell silent for a moment, and then everybody began to talk at once.

Harley’s head hurt too much for him to bother with his note cards, but if there was one speedway where he didn’t need them, this was it. Home turf. He’d have to use the microphone, though, and even the sound of his own voice was grating on his nerves, but at least if he talked, they wouldn’t sing anymore.

“Lowe’s Motor Speedway,” he began. “Short trip, folks. We’re getting off the Interstate at exit 49, so don’t try to get in a nap on the way, because we’ll be there before you know it.”

Cayle waved her hand. “Okay, Harley, but how come we’re not going to Atlanta after this? It’s right on the way.”

From the driver’s seat, Ratty spoke up. “We’re staying on the outskirts tonight, but we have to go by there again to get down to Daytona, and the Atlanta Speedway is south of the city in Hampton, so it makes more sense to hit Alabama first.”

“We’ll get there,” Harley said. “But we have one more stop in Carolina before we head south, and we’ll be there real soon. Lowe’s Motor Speedway. The house that Humpy Wheeler built. The place is about forty years old now, but like a lot of beautiful forty-year-olds, it’s had a lot of work done to stay looking good.”

“Don’t look at me when you say that,” said Justine.

Harley refused to be drawn. “This is a one-and-a-half-mile track,” he said. “Used to be called the Charlotte Motor Speedway until 1999. Note that while it is big, it is technically not a super speedway. These days only Daytona and Talladega are considered super speedways-they’re both high-banked, at least two and a half miles long, and requiring restrictor plates. This place looks big after Martinsville, though, doesn’t it?”

A few of them nodded and went back to taking pictures.

“This was the first speedway to feature night racing, and-I’ll take their word for this-they claim to be the first sports facility ever to sell full-time residences.”

“Residences?” said Bekasu. “Residences?”

“They built condominiums above turn one,” said Jim Powell. “I hear they’re real nice.”

“And you can stop looking like you were weaned on a pickle, Bekasu,” said Justine. “Because before you make some sneering remark, I would remind you that the baseball stadium in Toronto has a hotel built in it, too, and there’s picture windows overlooking the playing field.”

Jesse Franklin called out, “I hear this was the first track to sell its name for corporate money.”

Ray Reeve’s customary scowl deepened. “Kind of makes you wonder why they interrupt a televised race with commercials, doesn’t it? Seems redundant to me. Advertising on the cars, advertising around the track walls, logos on the drivers’ helmets…The whole damn race is a commercial. Wasn’t like that in the old days.” No one pointed out that he was wearing a University of Nebraska sweatshirt today.

“The Speedway seats 167,000 spectators,” said Harley, raising his voice to regain control. “And you could get another third as many folks in the infield area, where they allow campers.”

“You know, you probably don’t need to give us all those statistics,” said Bill Knight. “Most of your passengers know an approximation of them already, and the rest of us won’t remember.”

“I know that,” said Harley. “But my corporate masters want me to be thorough, so bear with me. Now there’s a lot of reasons for drivers to like this Charlotte track. Anybody know of one?”

Terence Palmer looked up from his hotel copy of USA Today. “Since the banking in the straightaways is only five degrees or so, drivers can get up a good speed here, and they can pass, so I suppose it’s not as frustrating as some of the other tracks.”

“True enough,” said Harley.

“Besides,” said Justine, “it’s within commuting distance of Lake Norman. Could Dale have slept at home when the race was being held here?”

“Him and half of his competitors,” said Harley. “Lake Norman is the Beverly Hills of NASCAR. And before you ask: no. I did not live there.”

“Dale did,” said Shane. “Before he bought his farm.”

“Most of the racing shops are close by, too,” said Harley. “The Hendricks drivers could walk to the track from their garages. Of course, you know-most of you know-that all the Winston All-Star events except one have been held here, and that the Memorial Day race now gives the Indianapolis 500 a run for its money.”

“Speaking of money,” said Ratty. “What are those humongous buildings over on the right?”

“Condominiums,” said Sarah Nash. “They have a country club here, too.”

“Don’t get me started,” said Harley.

“If this tour is going to be a true tribute to Dale, I guess we ought to tell some of the good stories,” said Justine. “And this being Charlotte, you all know what that story is. Except you, Reverend. I know this is all news to you, but that’s good, because there’s nothing more fun than telling a great story to a brand-new listener.”

Sarah Nash frowned and edged closer to Terence. “Here it comes,” she murmured. “The pass in the grass. I suppose it was too much to ask that we get through this week without somebody telling that story.”

“I remember thinking that it was wonderful,” said Terence. “I was in eighth grade when it happened, but we talked about it on my hall for days. Why do you-Oh. That’s right. You’re partial to Bill Elliott.”

“Let me tell the story, Harley!” said Justine, waving frantically. “I was here that day.”

“You mean May 17, 1987?” asked Harley, who didn’t even have to glance at his note cards. He had been there, too. Not driving. It was an all-star event. Harley had been just watching, openmouthed, like everybody else. Justine was nodding eagerly at the mention of the date. He sighed. If he didn’t let her tell it, she’d be chiming in every five seconds anyhow. “Go ahead, then,” he said. “If you think you can manage to put in some facts and figures instead of just gushing.”

Justine nodded, assuming the serious look of the sportscaster historian. “It was the Winston All-Star competition that Humpy Wheeler set up in mid-season, like an all-star game,” she said, pausing for breath. This first bit was directed at Bill Knight, who had no idea what they were talking about. “It’s a special three-segment race. They call it the shoot-out. And that was the third year they’d held it. Hey…threes. Do you think that means anything?”

“It means you’re digressing,” said Harley. “Get on with it.” He waved his note cards as a warning.

“Okay, Bill Elliott won the first two, so he thought he was a shoo-in. But the last of the three races was only ten laps, and the prize-” She glanced doubtfully at Harley. “I don’t remember, but a lot-”

“Two hundred thousand dollars,” said Harley. “And remember that the rules said the whole ten laps had to be run under the green flag. Caution laps didn’t count as part of the ten.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know that. Okay-so Bill Elliott was the man to beat. He had won the first two segments, which was no surprise. Remember, back in the late eighties, Awesome Bill was qualifying at over 200 miles an hour. And he was on the pole for that last race.”

“What was he driving?” asked Matthew.

Sarah Nash spoke up. “A red-and-white Ford Thunderbird, sponsored by Coors.”

“Next came your buddy, Justine, the one-and-only Geoff Bodine, who was yellow number 5, the Levi Garrett car,” said Harley. “And then Kyle Petty. Before you ask-Earnhardt was in fourth position. He wasn’t the Man in Black yet. He was still the blue boy, sponsored by Wrangler in those days, so-” The look of exasperation on Justine’s face silenced him.

“Are you done?” she demanded.

“Go on, then. You remember the whole race, do you? Who was where? Who drove what? Blow by blow?”

“Blow by blow is right,” she said. “They were driving like it was bumper cars in the amusement park. On the very first turn-bam! Elliott hits Bodine. Or maybe the other way around. Anyhow, the two of them collided and spun out, and Earnhardt, who was right on their tails, went low to get around them. He had the lead.”

“Earnhardt caused that wreck,” said Sarah Nash. “He was behind them at the start of the race. I always thought he tapped them with his bumper.”

“Oh, he did not!” said Justine. “But Bill Elliott must have thought so, too, because instead of being furious with Bodine, he went gunning for Dale.”

“How did he do that?” asked Matthew, whose expression suggested that he had taken the term too literally; 1987 was, after all, the Olden Days, as far as he was concerned.

Justine smiled. “Elliot wanted to get even for the bump, so he caught up with Earnhardt on the backstretch and bumped him right back.”

“Right back!” echoed Sarah Nash.

“Well, he thought it was payback,” Justine corrected herself. “Anyhow, when they were coming off the fourth turn on the track, Elliott ran Earnhardt off the track altogether. Dale’s car ended up in the stretch of grass that separates the track from pit road.”

“He did this on purpose?” Bill Knight was aghast.

Justine shrugged. “Rubbing is racing,” she said. “I never heard that Earnhardt complained about it. Anyhow, it didn’t have the intended effect, because Dale just kept on driving.”

“At 150 miles an hour,” muttered Harley. It sounded easy enough to say, but Harley knew different. Two miles a minute. Reaction time: a blink. And grass was the worst surface to drive on, especially on racing tires which had no tread at all. They didn’t call them “racing slicks” for nothing. Not one person in a million would have done what Earnhardt did that day. You’ve left the track, going at a blinding speed, and your impulse would be to brake, at least to let up on the accelerator, or to put the car into a slide, maybe end up against the wall, just to have some control over where you ended up. But he did none of that.

“It was the most amazing thing you have ever seen!” said Justine. “I was jumping up and down in my seat and screaming for Dale like a banshee. There he was on the grass, where he ought to be slip-sliding all over the place and crashing into Lord-knows-what, and instead he just kept right on going full throttle in a straight line like it was nothing out of the ordinary, and a few seconds later-zoom! He comes out back on the asphalt-and he’s still ahead of Awesome Bill. ’Course, now Earnhardt is pissed, because he was run off the track by Bill Elliott. There’s no getting around that.” She paused to see if Sarah Nash had any rebuttal, but not even an Elliott fan could deny the facts.

“So never mind the rest of the field,” Justine went on. “Earnhardt has got a score to settle with Elliott. They’re racing side by side on the backstretch, and Earnhardt just starts easing over to the right and forcing Elliott close to the wall. Bumped him, too. I know he did it that time. He was getting even. Anyhow, Elliott ended up with a cut tire and finished fourteenth, and Earnhardt won the race. And that was the Pass in the Grass, the greatest move in the history of motor sports bar none-and I saw it happen!”

“Your father has the poster they made of the drivers who competed in that race,” Sarah Nash told Terence. “They look like such kids to me now. Earnhardt was kneeling in the center of the photo in his royal blue Wrangler suit, almost smiling, and right beside him is a baby-faced Terry Labonte, looking like Potsy on Happy Days, and then next to him Neil Bonnett with his Siamese cat blue eyes. On the other side of Dale is Bill Elliott, in his red Coors firesuit, kneeling alongside Richard Petty, who could still cast a shadow in those days, though he was still pretty thin.”

“I love that picture,” said Jim Powell. “Bill Elliott looked like the country boy he was. You’d think he’d take half an hour to ask you to pass the salt-and then you think of him going 212 miles an hour without batting an eye. Imagine!”

“Speaking of Mr. Elliott,” said Harley. “Anybody remember what happened after the race?”

Justine nodded. “You’d better tell that, though,” she said with a glance at Sarah Nash. “I don’t want to make anybody mad.”

The Elliott fan dismissed this concern with a wave. “Go right ahead and tell it,” she said. “I said Bill was an extraordinary driver. Didn’t claim he was a plaster saint.”

“Well,” said Harley, by way of apology for the man who once gave him a ride in his helicopter, “remember that it takes a special killer instinct to make a fearless driver. If these guys took losing philosophically, they wouldn’t be champions. Okay, that said, Earnhardt’s worthy opponents were more than a little perturbed about how the race had played out, and the fact that the checkered flag had ended the race did not mean that they had turned off their tempers. The drivers were taking the post-race cool-down lap, and Bill Elliott went after Earnhardt. Coming out of the first turn, he rammed the number 3 car in the rear. They kept on going and then, in the backstretch, Awesome Bill cut toward Earnhardt, so that he’d have to slam on his brakes. I saw smoke coming off those tires, he braked so hard. Bodine went after him, too. It looked to me like they were going to use the Intimidator’s car as a punching bag with him in it. Elliott was playing cat and mouse with Earnhardt: he cut him off when he tried to enter pit road, and then at the entrance to the garage area, he cut him off again. That was about it, though. Nobody got hurt. The season went on after that, and Earnhardt ended up winning his third championship.”

“That three again!” Justine called out.

Harley rolled his eyes. “I wish we could get Bill Elliott out here to go after you,” he said. “Try telling him that Earnhardt’s a saint now.”

“Well, he’s getting a wreath, anyhow,” said Justine. “I don’t think Bill would begrudge him that. Whose turn is it?”

Jim Powell spoke up. “Do you folks mind if Arlene does it? She set a store by Ol’ Dale, and this was our home track, so to speak. Before we moved to Ohio.”

Jim Powell and Jesse Franklin had trotted back to the bus to retrieve the wreath, leaving Arlene standing next to Harley, smiling her tremulous smile. He hoped it was one of her good days. Harley smiled back at her. “Well, Arlene,” he said, “do you know where you want to put this wreath?”

She shook her head. “You choose.”

“We’ll find a place for it,” he said.

“And I’ll take your picture with it and send you a copy,” said Justine.

When Jim Powell and Jesse Franklin came back with the wreath, they were escorted by the two Earnhardt mourners from Bristol-Cannon, the racing-scrap dealer and his friend the weasel.

“Told you we might catch up with you again!” said the smaller man. “Old Cannon was mighty touched by this whole idea. Wanted to see it again.”

Jesse Franklin edged up close enough to Harley to whisper. “They were waiting by the bus,” he said. “And when they asked us if they could come along, I just didn’t know how to turn them away.”

“It’s all right,” said Harley. “They won’t hurt anything. That wouldn’t be respectful to Dale.”

Cannon and his associate had come dressed for a solemn occasion, having traded their customary black leather and denim for shiny dark suits, royal blue shirts, and skinny ties. They stood next to the Number Three Pilgrims in respectful silence while Jim Powell stepped forward with the wreath.

“In memory of Dale Earnhardt, the Intimidator,” he said. “Arlene?”

Arlene nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I remember Dale. People thought he was mean, but he wasn’t. He was always nice to people off the track. I think he was doing what he wanted to do, and he’d have done it whether anybody else cared or not. Maybe he was surprised that people did care so much. But he was an ordinary feller from Carolina, like my Jim.” She smiled up at her husband. “But there wasn’t nothing he couldn’t do. And he never got above his raising about it, either.” She began to smile, as if she’d forgotten they were there.

They waited a few moments, but Arlene’s tribute was finished.

As they started to walk back, the weasel caught up with Terence. “Say, my buddy Cannon’s got some pieces of Dale’s wrecked car out there in the van. Made ’em into key chains. Y’all want to buy some?”

Terence stopped walking and stared at the little man. “Nobody has pieces of that car,” he said.

“Yeah, we do,” said the weasel, turning to speak to the others as they walked past. “Pieces of Dale’s car for sale!”

Shane McKee stepped up beside Terence. “You carry a cell phone, don’t you, man? I’ve got a brochure here with DEI’s phone number on it. I think they should hear about this. You call them while I get the license number off their van.”

He began to run after the hastily retreating hucksters. But by the time they reached the parking lot Cannon and the weasel were gone.

“Good move,” said Terence to Shane. “Those guys were scum.”

“Wish I’d a caught ’em,” said Shane.

They exchanged satisfied smiles.