St. Dale

Chapter XIX

Darlington Raceway

“Are we there yet?”

Nobody said “Shut up, Justine,” for a change, because they had all been thinking more or less the same thing for many a mile. Harley supposed that putting together a ten-day bus tour that would encompass two NASCAR races was quite a feat, and that you could not in good conscience skip Daytona on a tour devoted to Dale Earnhardt, or on any NASCAR tour for that matter, but the distances involved were still brutal. It was one thing to drive 500 miles around an oval track in an afternoon at 180 miles per hour, and quite another to dodder along I-95 at considerably lower speeds for the nearly 400 miles between Daytona Beach, Florida, and Darlington, South Carolina. Rest stops. Food stops. Stretch-your-legs breaks. Four hundred-plus miles from the Atlanta Speedway to Daytona, and then turn right around and go almost that far again to get to Darlington.

At least they’d had two days for the last leg of the journey. They visited Daytona on Friday, and they’d had until Sunday to reach Darlington. So they’d stayed Friday night in Daytona, and taken their time on Saturday heading north again to Darlington. Harley thought that he would have been less tired if he could have made the trip in a Monte Carlo alone, nonstop, but coddling a group of strangers over more than a thousand miles in a week made him feel like he’d walked the whole distance in wet boots.

He thought about all the fools who considered racing monotonous. Had they ever driven I-95?

The bus was quiet now, not only because four of the Number Three Pilgrims had gone their own way in Florida. Harley didn’t take it personally. It had been a long trip, and the itinerary could use a little work. The remaining passengers were feeling the effects of the long haul, which meant there was much less banter than usual. Everyone read or slept, just wishing for the traveling to be over. They were subdued by the visit to Daytona, too, of course. Someday maybe-a few races down the road-the Speedway would again be just another place to race, but right now it was still haunted by the image of the Intimidator’s last race, and it had saddened them all to be there. Despite the punishing distance of this last leg of the journey, Harley was glad that the tour had not ended in the sadness of Daytona, but with the pageantry and excitement of a race day in Darlington. Of course, they might someday look back on that race with regret and nostalgia if the fools in charge of NASCAR ever made good on the threat to take the Labor Day race away from Darlington, but for now it was an exciting time in a happier place, and for all their sakes he was glad.

“The Darlington Motor Speedway is called the Lady in Black. Everybody knows that.” Harley began his spiel by stating the obvious, but then he noticed Bill Knight’s smile of disbelief. “Okay, maybe not everybody knows it, but certainly anybody who follows motor sports. Would one of you like to tell the reverend how Darlington got its nickname?”

“It was the first track to be paved,” said Jim Powell.

“The Lady in Black,” said Arlene with her vacant smile. She rested her head on Jim’s shoulder, and he smiled back and patted her hand.

“Are you going to spout all those numbers at us now?” asked Justine wearily.

“Nope,” said Harley. “You’re going to be sitting through a race there, so I guess you can work it out for yourselves. The information will be in the program, I expect. But I have driven here, so I might have some useful points to make.”

“Fire away, Harley,” said Matthew, who was sporting a new Earnhardt windbreaker bought for him at the Daytona gift shop by Bekasu.

“They also call Darlington ‘the track too tough to tame,’ which means that a lot of drivers can’t handle it. Earnhardt himself said something to the effect that every so often the Lady in Black slaps you down if you get too fresh with her. Anybody know the top three drivers having the most wins of the Southern 500? Wanna guess, Cayle?”

“Is that a hint?” She smiled. “One of them must be my namesake.”

“That’s right. Cale Yarborough has five wins. David Pearson has the most, and then Earnhardt. By the way, the last Winston Cup race Pearson ever won was on this track-the 1980 Rebel 500. Darlington can be tricky, because it’s lopsided on account of the ponds.”

“Ponds? It has ponds?” said Bekasu.

“Well, no. Not like Lake Lloyd at Daytona. People don’t wear life jackets to race here.”

“Do they at Daytona?” asked Bill.

Harley smiled. “Well, Tom Pistone used to. He worried about going in the water. What I mean about ponds here is that when Harold Brasington was trying to build this track back in 1950, the farmer who owned the adjoining land wouldn’t sell him the portion that his pond was on, so Mr. Brasington had to work around that obstacle to build his speedway, and he ended up with a track shaped like an egg. Wider on one side than the other. Because of that, it has tighter, steeper turns on one end. Keeps you on your toes. If you’re not mindful of which turn you’re going into, you end up going into the wall. Ever heard of the Darlington Stripe?”

“Paint mark along the side of your car that you get from scraping against the wall as you race,” said Jim Powell. “Badge of honor.”

“Are we going to the Stock Car Hall of Fame?” asked Justine. “It’s right there in front of the Speedway.”

“No,” said Harley. “Not with the crowds we’d have to fight to get in there on race day.”

“Speaking of the race,” said Jesse Franklin, “are we going to bet on the winner again? Dibs on Mark Martin, and five bucks says he wins. Unless one of the rest of you folks want him.”

Cayle waved away Mark Martin. “Bill Elliott,” she said. “I promised Sarah Nash I’d cheer him on.”

“Well, I’ll take Dale Junior,” said Justine. “He’s better on the super speedways, and he’s never even made the top ten here, but it just wouldn’t feel right to root for anybody except an Earnhardt. Here’s my five bucks.”

“What about you, Harley?” asked Jim Powell, who had taken off his hat to collect the wager money. “I was thinking of taking Rusty Wallace, just because I want him to break that losing streak, but if you were going to pick him, I’ll plump for Dale Jarrett. This track calls for old-style racing, and he’s good at that.”

“Jeff Gordon,” said Harley. “I’ll stick with Jeff Gordon-masochist’s choice.”

“Didn’t he just win on Sunday at Bristol?” said Bekasu.

“Yeah,” said Harley. “Well, with my luck he’ll win every race I ever attend for the rest of my life just to depress me.”

“Harley’s being a gentleman,” Cayle told them. “He’s picking the least likely driver to win. Gordon’s been on a thirty-one-race losing streak before Bristol. Take Matt Kenseth, Bekasu. You have sweaters older than he is, but he’s got real promise. And he’s from Wisconsin, just like Alan Kulwicki.”

“Whatever,” said Bekasu, going back to her book.

In the back of the bus, Ray Reeve cleared his throat. “I’d like to get into the pool,” he said.

The others turned and stared at him.

“Well, sure, Ray,” said Jesse Franklin. “Anybody you like, but I thought you stopped caring who won after Dale passed away.”

“I know, and I’ve been agonizing about it. I thought about what Earnhardt did after Neil Bonnett died. He went back to the track and practiced an hour after Neil crashed. So I thought he’d think I was soft if I didn’t move on. Well, last night in the hotel room, I took that Gideon Bible out of the nightstand, and I Bible-cracked.”

“But you’re from Nebraska,” said Justine. “I thought Bible-cracking was a Southern thing.”

“I expect they do some form of it everywhere,” said Bill Knight.

“So you opened the Bible and pointed at random to a verse, and now you want to get into the betting pool?” said Bekasu in cross-examining mode.

Ray Reeve reddened. “Well, the thing is I got Matthew seventeen, verse five. Knew exactly what it meant. Justine already picked him, but I’d like to go half with her.”

“Glad to have you!” said Justine. “I hope we split the pot!”

Jim Powell smiled. “Okay, then. Ray is backing Little E. in the Southern 500.”

“You know, Ray, Dale Junior isn’t all that good on short tracks,” said Harley. “He’s a restrictor-plate racer.”

“Don’t care if he wins or not,” said Junior’s new supporter. “I just decided to root for him. I can cheer him on. He’s Dale’s boy.”

The Darlington traffic was just as bad as it had been in Bristol-both races took place in small towns overwhelmed by an extra fifty thousand people for the weekend. Harley thought it was just his luck that the tour finale occurred at a track that wasn’t out in the middle of nowhere. Because it had been built in the early days before NASCAR became a major attraction, the Darlington Motor Speedway wasn’t a rural Pompeii, set amidst acres of empty fields that turned into parking lots a few days a year. This track filled a Wal-Mart-sized hole on a commercial road, with rows of small stores and houses all up and down the road around it. It wasn’t even a four-lane thoroughfare. No wonder people keep spreading rumors that NASCAR was going to move the Labor Day race to California, Harley thought. Now that racing was a billion-dollar enterprise, this track, with no fancy skyboxes or modern amenities, must look pretty poky to the corporate moguls, but he for one hoped the relocation wouldn’t happen. Darlington was a tradition that went all the way back to the days when Petty and Earnhardt meant Lee and Ralph, not Richard and Dale. He’d hate to lose that just for glitz.

His greatest concern at the moment was not the traffic but the weather. A misting rain fell out of a sky the color of pewter. That could spoil everything. You could play football in the rain, but motor sports was different. Driving out there was dangerous enough without factoring in a slick track from a mix of oil and rainwater. If it started raining, they’d stop the race. Sometimes drivers sat for hours waiting for the go-ahead to resume. Harley filled a few more miles with chatter by explaining that if more than half the designated laps of a race were completed during the afternoon, the winner would be whoever was ahead when the weather finally forced them to cancel it.

“Okay, the race is at one o’clock,” he said into the microphone. “So we don’t have time to go somewhere for lunch. Actually, Columbia would be favorite, because anyplace closer than that is going to be wall-to-wall people. We’re going straight to the track, and those of you who are young enough or brave enough can try the Darlington culinary specialty: hamburger steak smothered with onions. Take each other’s pictures in front of the palm tree there at the entrance.”

“It’s raining,” Cayle pointed out.

“I know,” said Harley. “I hope it quits, because if it doesn’t, there won’t be a race.”

By a stroke of luck, which despite Justine’s insistence, Harley refused to chalk up as a miracle to St. Dale, the rain stopped, the track was dried off, and the 53rd Mountain Dew Southern 500 roared to life.

“There are still so many terms I don’t understand,” said Bekasu plaintively. “What is a Biffle?”

Justine groaned. “In your case, Bekasu, it is a cross between baffled and bewildered.”

The green flag went down, and Bill Elliott’s number 9 Dodge took the early lead. When he still had it forty-three laps later, Harley was thinking that Sarah Nash would be sorry she missed this one, but after that Sterling Marlin led the pack, and Harley began to feel like a kid at a window watching a party he hadn’t been invited to. He had fully intended to worm his way onto pit road again before this race, still trying to make connections, but then he’d made the mistake of talking about Neil Bonnett at Daytona, and the memories wouldn’t leave him alone. Now common sense, a rare but unwelcome visitor, had dropped by to urge him to reconsider.

Darlington was the track that gave you fair warning to call it quits, but nobody ever listened. In 1997, Earnhardt had passed out here in the first lap of the race, and he had ended up in the hospital with a million people scared to death over his condition, but within days he was back in the driver’s seat as if nothing had ever happened. A few years earlier the Black Lady was also the scene of Neil Bonnett’s first serious crash-the one that left him with amnesia for many months. He had gone headfirst into the wall-a warning from Fate perhaps, but if so it had gone unheeded. Like Neil, Harley was forty-something and out of the sport after a wreck that any sane person would take as a divine message to call it quits. But also like Neil, he couldn’t walk away. What else was there in life that compared to this? He didn’t want to be a car dealer or a sportscaster while the show roared on without him. His thoughts seemed to go around in laps, too, always ending up back where they began: got to get back out there.

Nobody tried to talk to him during the race, or if they did he was oblivious to the interruption. He stared at the track with the glazed look of someone who was filtering this race through a dozen past ones. Halfway through the afternoon, a tap on his arm broke his reverie. It was Jim Powell, whose anguished expression said that he wasn’t thinking about the race.

“I think Arlene is sick.”

Harley hated hospitals. He’d been in too many emergency rooms after one wreck or another, and even worse was having to go there as a visitor, when some other driver had pushed his luck too far. He sat alone in the hallway now, staring at a pamphlet on heart disease, reading the same line over and over without absorbing a word of it, and cursing the sadists who had outlawed smoking in here.

It was a good thing that the race was still going on, so that traffic had not become a nightmare, because the ambulance had to go from Darlington to Florence.

“Aren’t you going to Wilson on Cashua Ferry Road?” Harley had asked the ambulance guy. He’d remembered the place from his racing days.

“No ER, buddy. Have to take her to McLeod in Florence. You gonna come in your car?”

Harley nodded. Most of the Number Three Pilgrims had insisted on leaving the race to accompany the Powells. Reverend Knight was going to ride in the ambulance with Jim and Arlene, while Harley, whose car was parked at Darlington in preparation for the end of the tour, had agreed to bring Matthew, Jesse Franklin, Justine, Cayle, and Bekasu. It was all the car would hold, but the one remaining passenger, Ray Reeve, hadn’t really wanted to go anyhow. He hated hospitals as much as Harley did, and besides, he didn’t want to leave in case Little E. won the race. He took Cayle’s cell phone so that they could call him from the hospital and tell him how Arlene was doing and how to find them. Meanwhile, he would stay by himself and finish watching the race. When it was over, he’d go back to the bus, find Ratty, and direct him to the hospital.

The ambulance attendant had looked doubtful at Harley’s proposal to follow them. “Well,” he said, “you can try, but we’ll be burning rubber-lights, siren and all. Doubt you could keep up.”

Harley Claymore smiled and smiled.

“Oh, good. You’re still here.” Bill Knight had come around the corner, looking tired but composed. He was in professional mode now, Harley supposed.

“Of course I’m still here,” said Harley. “How is she?”

“Well, she’s in and out of consciousness. We don’t really know anything yet. Except that it was a heart attack, of course.”

“Knew that before we got here.”

“Yes. At her age, it can go either way. At least we got her to a hospital in good time.”

“Where’s everybody else?”

“Well, Jim wanted Bekasu and me to stay with him, and with Arlene when we’re allowed to see her. We’ve sent Matthew off with Justine.”

Harley nodded. “That’s good. Get the children out of the way.”

“Er-something like that. Cayle has gone to call the Powells’ daughter in Seattle, and then she’s calling the airline about their flight tomorrow, and so on. And Jesse Franklin is wrangling over Medicare forms or some such red tape with a hospital administrator.”

“Jesse? I thought he wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

“Well, when it counts, he can assert with the best of them. He said he asked himself ‘What would Dale do?’ and there’s been no stopping him since then. You should have heard him giving orders to the doctors. There is one more thing that needs to be done, though. Harley, the thing is…Arlene is asking for Dale.”

“She what?”

Bill Knight sighed. “I think she’s forgotten that he’s dead. She’s a bit agitated. I don’t know. Anyhow, she keeps saying she wants to see Dale Earnhardt. And we thought-that is, Jim suggested that if we were to bring in that fellow who impersonates Earnhardt, she wouldn’t know any different, and it might calm her.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, good. We’d really appreciate it.”

“What do you-you mean you want me to go find him? Go back to Darlington now?”

“Jim said that maybe the race isn’t over yet, and the Impersonator might be around. He usually shows up near the end of the race, doesn’t he?”

Harley stared. “So you want me to drive back to the Speedway-do you have any idea what post-race traffic is like?”

“Well, yes,” said Bill. “Bristol was only last Saturday. Seems longer, doesn’t it?”

“And you expect me to find that-that imposter, and bring him back here? You think I can do that? What if he didn’t show up at this race?”

Bill Knight smiled. “Oh, I think he will. By now I’m beginning to believe that Dale will help us out with a miracle.”

He hauled himself to his feet. “Don’t you start.”

“And Harley, get this done quickly, if you can. Drive quickly.”

Harley sighed as he got to his feet. “Oh, I can drive quickly,” he said. “I can do that.”

Justine held Matthew’s hand as they walked down the corridor of the hospital. “I thought about taking you to the cafeteria,” she said. “I’ll bet the food is pretty good. I had a boyfriend one time who was so cheap he used to take me to dinner there.”

“Was he a doctor?”

“No. That’s just it. He was an electrician, but he’d found that hospital food is the cheapest meal around, and it’s always pretty good food, so he’d just go there and eat. Nobody ever asked him why he was there.”

“So what happened to him?” asked Matthew.

“I don’t know,” said Justine. “I dumped him. Maybe he found some girl who admired his thriftiness. Or else a nurse.”

“Where are we going then?”

Justine stopped at a nurse’s station. “Good evening,” she said to the woman behind the counter. “Could you please page Dr. Toby Jankin for me? Tell him it’s Justine. He’s expecting me, but he didn’t know I’d have a patient for him. Matthew, honey, if you’ll sit over there on that bench for a minute while I talk to old Toby, I promise we’ll hit the cafeteria before we’re done.”

When the Impersonator turned up near the end of the race, Ray Reeve was glad of the distraction. By this time Jeff Gordon had begun to dominate the race, and Ray had a feeling of dread that told him Wonderboy was going to win. Two races in a row? He wondered if Gordon was having extraordinarily good luck or if Harley was cursed. He wished this could have been Junior’s day, a sign perhaps that he was right to transfer his allegiance from father to son. He stopped watching the blur of cars whipping around the mile-and-a-third track and rested his gaze on the man in the white firesuit at the base of the Colvin Grandstand, accepting hugs and solemnly posing for photos with Earnhardt fans. Funny how the sight of the red-outlined number three or even the Goodwrench logo whizzing past on Kevin Harvick’s car could bring a lump to the throat. He could understand why people didn’t want to let go. He was tempted to go down there himself and shake the man’s hand, just for the hell of it. A gesture of goodwill, perhaps.

Every so often the Impersonator would surreptitiously glance around, on the lookout for track security or maybe DEI people-whoever was after him. Ray wondered whether the problem was copyright infringement or trespassing or what. He didn’t think the guy was any worse than an Elvis impersonator. Or all the people on Halloween who dress up as ex-presidents. But he could see how it might upset Little E. to think that people would rather watch an imitation of his dad than see him out there trying to win an actual race. We can’t forget him, he said silently to Junior, no more than you can, but we’ll all move forward, because he’d expect us to. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw men in suits striding toward the Impersonator, and with a few more handshakes, the man in the white firesuit had eased through the crowd, picking up speed as he went, heading for an exit.

Ray Reeve turned his attention back to the race, but much to his chagrin the rainbow-colored 24 car was still out in front.

Cayle found Bill Knight and Bekasu in plastic chairs in the waiting room, leafing through old copies of health magazines. “Any word yet?” she asked.

Bill shook his head. “Not that we’ve heard. Did you get in touch with the Powells’ daughter in Seattle?”

“Yeah. Jean. She’s very concerned about her mother, of course. Wants her dad to call as soon as he can leave the bedside. She wants to apologize, she said.” Cayle smiled, remembering the conversation. “Apparently she gave her dad a hard time about going on a NASCAR tour. You know the type.” She studiously avoided looking at Bekasu as she said this. “Well, it turns out that she mentioned it as a joke to some of her snooty wine-and-cheese friends and got told in no uncertain terms that Greg Biffle was the pride of Washington State. He was last year’s Busch Series Rookie of the Year, Bekasu-before you ask. He’s from Vancouver, Washington, and apparently he has a bit of a following out there. Now I think Jean is hoping to sweet-talk her dad into getting her a tote bag from Darlington so she can impress her architect.”

Bill Knight nodded. “I’m not surprised. I had a similar experience in New Hampshire with a lawyer of my acquaintance, I’m ashamed to say. Cultural stereotyping was never kind. These days it is also most unwise.”

“You didn’t see Justine while you were wandering around, did you?” asked Bekasu.

“No. She’s still with Matthew, isn’t she? I expect he’ll keep her out of trouble.”

“It would take a straitjacket to do that.”

Ratty Laine had tired quickly of the noise and fumes of the racetrack, and especially of the humid heat of South Carolina, which might be all right at the beach, but in street clothes he much preferred the cool sanctuary of his air conditioned bus. Races lasted about three and a half hours, Harley had told him, and then he had to get his charges back to their hotel for the last night of the tour, before tomorrow’s drive to Charlotte. He was studying the map, just to make sure he knew where they were going. The tour was more interesting than he’d thought it would be, although he doubted he’d remember much of it after a couple of weeks. There was a Civil War battlefield tour coming up, and then Lee would again mean “Robert E.” rather than “Richard Petty’s dad.” Maybe he ought to make some notes in case Bailey Travel decided to offer this tour again, though. He just wished that bus drivers got as much respect and pay as stock car drivers.

A sudden tapping on the glass pane in the door made him look up, and the bundle of maps slid to the floor as Ratty found himself looking into the face of Dale Earnhardt.

Dr. Toby Jankin’s initial delight at seeing an old girlfriend had given way to the Justine-shaped headache that he now remembered as an integral part of the relationship. He tried again. “Justine, you are not this boy’s guardian. I cannot run medical tests on a minor without permission from his parents. Well, not his parents,” he hastened to add, forestalling her objections. “You said he’s a ward of the state. His social worker, then. Somebody has been appointed his legal custodian, and I can’t treat him without their permission.”

Justine’s mulish expression did not change. “I’m not asking you to do brain surgery, Toby. I just want you to take a look at him. You can do that, can’t you? I can pay you whatever it costs.”

He sighed. Trust her to act as if money were the problem and blithely ignore national laws about the treatment of minors. Justine never asked for much. Just her own way 24/7. People usually found that it saved time just to give in at once. But there was a limit to the number of rules he could break without exchanging his medical practice for a ferret farm. He was on her side, really. She meant well, and for all he knew she might even be right, but there were laws that had to be observed-or at least nodded at.

He tried again. “Look, Justine. Let’s go talk to the boy. He probably has his social worker’s card with him in case of emergency. If you call her and get her to fax an authorization, I’ll run some tests. But it’s Sunday, so I doubt you’ll be able to locate her.”

It had been a silly thing to say, really, he thought as she swept from the room calling for Matthew. Of course Justine could locate a social worker on Sunday afternoon. It would only mean that she might have to inconvenience a few more people on the path to getting her own way; that would be only a minor obstacle, an hour’s delay at most. He might as well find a treatment room and get the instruments ready. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed was back in his life.

Eight miles back to Darlington, racing the race itself, because if Harley didn’t get back to the parking lot before the checkered flag, he would find himself in a two-lane blacktop parking lot that stretched for miles. Why was he even doing it? Any sane person would drive around Florence for an hour, maybe get a burger, and then report back that he had been unable to locate the elusive Impersonator. Maybe it was because Bill Knight was a minister, and Harley’s Bible-belt upbringing had left a residual fear of lying to clergymen. He felt that such treachery might jinx his already tenuous chances of getting a miracle of his own-that is, a ride. Besides, he might as well tell Ratty where the medical center was, in case Ray Reeve had forgotten the name of the place.

Harley glanced at his watch. He had maybe half an hour before the Black Lady would declare a new champion in the Southern 500. At least he was heading in the opposite direction from the departing cars, so there wasn’t much traffic to hinder his reaching the track. Nobody in Darlington ventured out grocery shopping or Sunday sight-seeing on race day. Now if he could just get in and out before the stampede started.

The bus was parked across the road from the Speedway, directly opposite the Stock Car Museum with its portraits of Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty painted near the entrance. Harley pulled in next to the bus, as close as he could get to the parking lot exit. He didn’t want to end up trapped here. He saw that the bus motor was idling. Ratty and his air conditioning. He’d better tell the driver what had happened before he began the exercise in futility.

Harley tapped on the window, waited while Ratty cranked open the door, and then bounded up the steps so as not to let out all the cool air. The radio was on, and Ratty was listening to the broadcast of the race, probably as a warning of departure rather than because he cared who would win.

“Hey, Ratty,” he said. “We got a situation.”

“You’re telling me,” grunted the driver.

“Oh, you know? Ray told you about Arlene? Where is Ray?”

Ratty shrugged. “Still watching the race. I haven’t seen him. What do you mean ‘where’s Ray?’ What about the rest of the flock?”

Harley explained about Arlene’s heart attack and how everyone but Ray had gone along to the medical center to be there with Jim. “McLeod Medical Center,” he said. “It’s in Florence. I wrote down the directions for you.”

Ratty glanced at the hastily scribbled notes on a paper bag. “You drove all the way back here to give me that?”

“No. The reverend sent me on a damn fool errand. Poor Arlene’s mind is AWOL again, and she’s asking to see Dale, so they got the bright idea to send me back here to try to find the Impersonator, and take him to the hospital to ease her mind. In this crowd. And him dodging security left and right. It would take a damn miracle to find him!”

Ratty nodded. “I guess it would at that,” he said. “A miracle. Fortunately, Dale seems to be ready to oblige you with one.” He nodded toward the back of the bus.

In the very back row, a scruffy little man with a ragged moustache and black sunglasses waggled his fingers at Harley.

Up close the spell was broken. The resemblance was good enough, thanks to the moustache and the shades, but the little man lacked the presence of the Intimidator. About forty million dollars short on confidence, Harley thought. That was how the fellow had ended up on the bus in the first place. In a voice that sounded more like Georgia than Kannapolis, the Impersonator told Harley how he had just managed to get out of the Speedway with the security people hustling through the crowd in hot pursuit. He’d hidden behind a car and seen the posse heading off toward the area where his own Chevy was parked. Not wanting to risk going that way and getting caught, he had set off in the opposite direction where he’d run straight into a bus with the words “#3 Pilgrimage” emblazoned on the side. He figured if anybody would help him, it would be these folks, so he’d knocked and, sure enough, the driver let him in.

He had been planning to hide out in the back of the bus until the coast was clear, but then Harley had showed up in need of a good deed for a gravely ill Earnhardt fan, and the Impersonator thought it was his duty to obey the summons.

He wouldn’t tell Harley his real name. You couldn’t be too careful, not with DEI after your hide and lawyered to the gills. He told Harley to call him R.D.-for Ralph Dale, Earnhardt’s given name.

All this was explained on the drive back to Florence. The race was in its last ten laps when Harley had discovered him, so they wasted no time getting back into Harley’s car and peeling out of the parking lot, with Ratty wishing them Godspeed and promising to follow as soon as Ray Reeve turned up. When they were well clear of the Speedway, Harley turned on the radio in time to hear Jeff Gordon proclaimed the winner of the 2002 Southern 500. He didn’t feel much like talking after that.

“Where have you been?”

Justine faced the circle of anxious faces with her usual cheerful obliviousness. “Hey!” she said. “Matthew and I had some business to take care of. How’s Arlene?”

After an awkward silence, Bill Knight said, “We’ve all been praying. But, as poor Jim said, it’s hard to know what to pray for. Arlene has Alzheimer’s, you know, and it might be merciful if she were allowed to go now in peace.”

“We’re still waiting,” said Bekasu. “It’s getting dark. I guess the race is over, and Ratty will turn up eventually and take us on to the hotel.”

“Well, I would ask Toby to give us a ride, but he’s on duty tonight, and besides I’ve already imposed on him enough.”

Bekasu looked up at her sister. “Toby Jankin? You’ve been bothering doctors, Justine?”

She nodded. “Good thing I did. I got him to examine Matthew here, ’cause I figured medical care for orphans must be pretty dismal. Anyhow, guess what?”

“Wait,” said Bill Knight. “Aren’t there regulations about treating minors?”

Justine waved away his objections. “Taken care of. Called New Hampshire. Told her I was you, Bekasu. It’s amazing what judges can get people to do.” She smiled at her stricken audience. “Well? Don’t y’all want to know what he found?”

Still bereft of speech, they nodded.

“Well, Matthew’s sick all right. Guess what he’s got, though? Mononucleosis. A little time, a few pills, and he’ll be good as new. Toby says it’s not unusual at all for doctors to misdiagnose mono as leukemia in kids. Similar symptoms, I guess. Or maybe it’s all those three-day shifts they make the residents pull. Scrambles their brains, I think. It’s a wonder anybody ever gets out of one of these places alive-”

“Shut up, Justine.”

She subsided. “Well,” she said, sitting down and helping herself from an open bag of Skittles. “That’s half of Matthew’s problem solved. Wish I could do something about his mom, but that’s not happening. So Matthew is going back to Canterbury with you, Bill, and if he doesn’t find a family he likes in six months, he’s going to call me and I’ll spring him from the Children’s Home. Right, Matthew? ’Cause in the human race, buddy, I’m your drafting partner.”

Matthew, who had been sitting next to the muted television playing with his Game Boy, looked up at Justine and nodded wordlessly. If Terence Palmer had been present, he would have recognized the hunted look of a young man cowed by the Mother Goddess.

Harley Claymore hated hospitals. He’d had about all he could take of this one. He had managed to make it back with the Impersonator by dusk and escorted the fellow upstairs to where the Number Three Pilgrims had taken over the waiting room. But after a few cups of coffee that tasted like battery acid, he had come out to the parking lot to smoke cigarettes and commune with the darkness. The building and the cars were just shapes against the night sky. He could be anywhere.

He supposed the bus would be along whenever Ratty managed to fight his way through the traffic. He was glad to be out of that waiting room with its smell of disinfectant and stale donuts. And the pervasive air of grief. They didn’t think Arlene was going to make it. He was sorry about that, but at least she’d get to see her hero before she went. Maybe it was a blessing to be so addled that you could have illusions at the end of life. Harley had a feeling that he would go out someday, cold sober and knowing just how alone he was.

He studied the red glow of the cigarette in the darkness, glad to be alone again, relieved at the prospect of turning the Number Three Pilgrims loose tomorrow. He had nowhere to go, but at least after tomorrow he didn’t have to worry about anybody but himself.

“Evenin,’ Harley,” said a soft voice in the darkness.

He jumped at the sound of his name. A man in a white Goodwrench firesuit and opaque sunglasses stood a few feet away from him, leaning against the hood of a car. In the darkness he was little more than a shadow, except for that white suit.

“Hello,” said Harley. “That was a great thing you did in there, man.”

A shrug. “Well, I owed a kid a miracle.”

“Huh? Oh, they must have told you about young Matthew. That’s about the only good news, though. ‘Owed a kid a miracle.’” Harley smiled. “Good one. Dale’s lucky penny, cemented to the dashboard of his car.”

“S’right.”

“But bringing some comfort to poor Arlene was a good deed, man.”

“Well, one of the ladies up there said it best, I think. Believing is seeing. But, hey, blessed are they who don’t believe and yet still see.”

Harley was too tired to work out that one. Bad coffee and too many cigarettes were making his head hurt. “You want me to take you back to the Speedway for your car?”

“Somebody’s picking me up.”

Something in the quiet voice caught Harley’s attention. He didn’t hear the Georgia accent anymore. He heard pure Iredell County, soft vowels over stainless steel. “Are you the Impersonator?” he blurted out before he could feel foolish for asking.

In the darkness, a chuckle. “Oh, son, I always was. I dropped out of school in the ninth grade, and a million people were wearing my face on tee shirts. I always felt like he was somebody I played in public. I did the driving. He did the handshakes and the autographs. The driving was the best part, though. The rest just happened along the way.”

“And then one day you’re a legend, and people are putting wreaths on speedways to commemorate you.”

“Well, to commemorate something. They didn’t know me from Adam.”

Harley smiled. “They’re leaving wreaths for Adam, too, man.”

“I don’t know what they wanted. I just wanted to drive.”

“Yeah,” said Harley. “Me, too. You know I wrecked a while back. But I want to get back in the show.”

There was a pause so long that Harley decided he didn’t want to hear the answer, but then there was a sigh, and the man in the blackness said, “Sooner or later, you gotta move on.”

“You’re one to talk,” said Harley.

“Just don’t be writing checks that your body can’t cash.”

Harley nodded. Giving that advice was easier than taking it. “Listen,” he said. “About Mrs. Powell. Is the old lady going to make it out alive?”

The man shook his head. “None of us makes it out alive, son. The trick is knowing when to die.” He raised a hand in farewell. “Well, I gotta go. My ride’s here.”

Harley turned to see an old beat-up car waiting near the entrance to the parking lot. He didn’t know why he’d expected to see a black Monte Carlo, Goodwrench logo and all, but the old clunker idling under the light was an early nineties Lumina, two tone. Yellow and some darker color that he couldn’t quite make out in the dim light.

“That’s your car?”

The reply was a grunt. And then: “I own it. I don’t drive it. You take it easy, Harley. See you down the road.”

The man turned and walked toward the idling car. He climbed in the passenger seat, and the Chevy took off with a roar and a squeal of tires. They were out of sight in seconds, and it was only then that Harley realized what the second color of that old ’94 Lumina must have been.

Butt-ugly, lemonade pink.