St. Dale

Chapter XX

Harley’s umpteenth cigarette had burned low. He was enjoying the warm solitude of the parking lot. He just wished the clouds would roll on by so that he could see the stars. He probably ought to go back to the stuffy little waiting room, but there were hardly enough chairs to go around, and now that Ratty and Ray Reeve had joined the throng, there would be even less room than before. He’d exchanged a few words with Ratty there in the parking lot, and he’d remembered to get him to unlock the luggage compartment so that Harley could transfer his gear to the trunk of his car.

He tossed the butt of the spent cigarette onto the asphalt and ground it in with his heel. Maybe he ought to see about his luggage now. They could be coming out any time. He lifted the metal door to the luggage compartment and began pushing suitcases aside in search of his belongings. He found his firesuit and driving boots. How could he have been stupid enough to bring those? What did he think? That Tony Stewart was going to get sick before the race and they’d ask Harley to take the wheel? With a sigh of disgust at his own folly, he slung the gear into the open trunk of his car, and felt around in the hold for his duffel bag.

Instead his hand closed on the end of a narrow cardboard box. There beside his duffel bag was one last wreath box, the final Earnhardt memorial. He slid part of the way in and emerged holding the wreath box, which he set on the pavement beside the bus. In all the excitement of the afternoon race and then Arlene’s heart attack, no one had remembered the wreath ceremony for Darlington.

He pushed the knob to illuminate his watch face. Nearly ten o’clock. The Number Three Pilgrims were inside the hospital now, keeping Jim company and waiting for word on Arlene. Even without the hospital vigil, it would have been a long day, and they’d be wanting to get back to the hotel soon. Tomorrow Ratty would rout them out early to take them back to the Charlotte airport to pick up their cars or to catch flights for home. He didn’t suppose any of them would want to drive back to the deserted Speedway to leave Dale Earnhardt a wreath, even if he’d earned it.

“They’ve forgotten all about it,” said a voice in the darkness.

Harley had to clutch at the wreath to keep from falling over. He turned to see Bekasu Holifield standing there in her sensible suit and her high heels, but now with the Winged Three cap mashed down over her dark hair.

He nodded toward the hospital entrance. “Are they coming?”

“Not yet. They’re going to turn off Arlene’s life support in a little while, and nobody wanted to leave Jim alone. Even he thinks it’s for the best, but of course it isn’t easy. Then I suddenly remembered that we hadn’t left the wreath so I came to find you.”

“Don’t worry,” said Harley. “I’ll take it myself. I reckon it’s my turn.”

“I think it’s mine, too,” said Bekasu. “May I come with you?”

He looked at her for one bewildered moment, but then, shrugging, he jerked open the passenger door and nodded for her to get in.

“How come you’re wanting to go?” he asked as they eased out into the road.

She sighed. “I can’t explain it, really. I suppose I must feel a little like that Roman GI who, halfway through a routine execution, suddenly got it, and probably spent the rest of his life muttering, ‘Oh, shit.’ Or cloaca maxima, or whatever they’d say in Latin. I guess it’s Matthew’s being all right that really got to me. I just want to thank somebody.” She laughed. “Mind you, by tomorrow, in the clear light of day, I’ll be arguing coincidence louder than anybody, but right now…in the dark of night…I’m willing to give him credit for the win. Hey-an artificial wreath. As trophies go, it isn’t much, is it?”

Harley smiled. “Well, he already has a grandfather clock,” he said.

They drove the rest of the way back to Darlington in a companionable silence. Harley was glad that Bekasu was not one of those nervous women who feel like they have to fill every breath with inconsequential chatter. He was too tired to rout out his inner receptionist, that hail-fellow persona he dredged up for social occasions.

Finally, though, he asked how things had been in the waiting room.

“Subdued,” said Bekasu. “Reverend Bill was working up some kind of a lecture. I don’t think it was a sermon. Anyhow, he’s making notes comparing Dale Earnhardt and Neil Bonnett to Gilgamesh and Enkidu-never mind, Harley, it’s rather obscure-I think he’s planning a whole segment on NASCAR in his shrine collection. And Cayle is now convinced that R.D. is the person who fixed her car for her outside Mooresville. She’s so relieved not to be the Joan of Arc of motor sports. I think they may have to drop him off in the bus when they’re ready to leave.”

Harley felt a chill at the back of his neck. “Didn’t somebody already come by and pick him up?” he asked, willing himself to sound indifferent.

“He was still up there in the waiting room when I left,” said Bekasu.

Harley said nothing, but he fumbled in his pocket for another cigarette, and found there wasn’t one. He decided that he was never going to say anything about that incident in the parking lot. For one thing, people might think he hadn’t got over that concussion from the wreck, and for another, it wasn’t such a big deal. Not compared to the other miracle: the one where the average-looking kid with no formal education and no money conquered the world and made a million people cry when he died.

“And Matthew was asleep on the sofa beside Justine, who was trying to top his score on the Game Boy,” Bekasu was saying. “Everybody else was watching a racing show on television. By the way, Jeff Gordon won today.”

“I know,” said Harley. “Apparently we had reached our bag limit on miracles.”

“Well, you get the betting pool.”

“Yeah. I’d rather have Jeff’s ride.”

Enough time had passed since the end of the race to evaporate the traffic jams, so when they reached the Speedway the Lady in Black was living up to her name-a dark shape in a starless night.

There were still a few cars in the parking lot, but Harley didn’t see anybody around. He pulled up in front of the white building in front of the Speedway, where a black banner bore portraits of Earnhardt (in a panama hat with “Darlington” written on the band) and Richard Petty (in his customary black Stetson) staring out through their respective dark glasses as the world drove by. “How about under his picture?” said Harley, getting out and popping the trunk lid. He was thinking, If I’d remembered it twenty minutes earlier, he could have taken it with him.

At his side Bekasu nodded. “I think so. What does this one say?”

He lifted the wreath out of its cardboard box. It was made of holly. Holly? thought Harley, wondering if the florist had tossed in a leftover Christmas wreath, or if this was a play on Holly & Edelbrock, which Justine would have appreciated. He didn’t feel like explaining carburetors to Bekasu, though. Across the wreath’s white banner red letters spelled out: Rubbin’ is Racin.’ He nodded to himself. It was good.

“Holly,” said Bekasu, touching the wreath. “Bill Knight would have loved the symbolism of this one. Holly doesn’t die in the winter when the rest of the leaves fall and the flowers wither away. So it’s one of the symbols of life everlasting. Or of not taking no for an answer, I guess-not even from Mother Nature.”

Together they propped the wreath up against the wall, beneath the portrait of a smiling Intimidator. “I’m glad nobody else is around,” said Bekasu, edging closer to Harley. “I’d feel silly.” Then she straightened up and touched the painted face on the wall. “I feel like I know you now,” she said. “I’m finally beginning to see what people were going on about all these years. And I’ll bet you’d probably think we were very silly, if not downright impertinent, to be leaving flowers for you at a succession of speedways, but I guess you’ll never know about it.”

Don’t bet on that, thought Harley.

“And maybe the love and grief we feel for someone who has gone isn’t supposed to go out to them anyway. Maybe it’s supposed to evoke something within ourselves. And so if we all came together because of this man, and if good things came out of it-friendships and help for those who needed it, and kindness-then we thank you for being the inspiration for those good deeds. That is miracle enough.” She turned away and ended with a muttered, “No matter what my sister Justine says.”

Harley wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He wondered if there was anybody listening to what they were saying, other than themselves. But he supposed it didn’t matter. He was going to speak respectfully-why risk getting run down in the parking lot by a phantom 1994 hot pink Chevy Lumina? “Well, you changed the sport and you changed the world, man,” he said to the face on the wall. “You’re a lap ahead now, but then you always were. You don’t need us to tell you that. But if you’ve got any luck lying around that you don’t have a use for where you are, I could do with some right now. Thanks for the ride, Dale.” He gave the three-peace salute and turned away.

They were silent for a few moments. The tour was over. The last wreath placed. Now what?

“You did good,” Harley told Bekasu. “You listened, and you took part, and you didn’t make everybody miserable. That’s good.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll make you a promise. Next time I hear one of my friends make some condescending remark about racing, I’ll call them on it. I will.”

Harley nodded. He didn’t much care what smug, dumb yuppies thought, but he knew that the gesture was kindly meant. “Do you want me to take you back now?” he asked her.

“Not especially,” she said. “It’s not very late. That is, if you have nothing better to do.”

Harley shook his head. “Nowhere to go,” he said. “Why?”

She shrugged. “There’s one thing Dale Earnhardt has made me realize. I’ve been on a short leash all my life, Harley. I was the honor student in high school, too uptight to run with the fast crowd, but always wondering what I missed out on while I was home studying. All this has made me face the fact that life doesn’t go on forever.”

“Well, life’s too short for restrictor plates, anyhow,” said Harley.

“I feel like I want more out of this trip than sitting in a bus or watching a couple of races.”

“Uh-huh.” Harley was beginning to detect the family resemblance between Bekasu and Justine. The family madness was simply better camouflaged in the judge. And it took you longer to realize that she was pretty, while Justine practically hit you over the head with pheromones.

Bekasu was taking deep breaths of the moist summer air and shaking her head like a horse getting ready to bolt. “Can we do some laps out there on the track?” she said. “I want to see what it feels like to go that fast.”

“Uh-I can go ask the guard. If he’s an old-timer here, he’ll remember me.”

“Good. Can we do a yard?”

“’Scuse me?”

“That’s what the gang kids say sometimes in traffic cases. It means to go a hundred miles an hour. Doing a yard.”

“I think I can manage that. And then would you like to go get some dinner?”

Bekasu was on a roll. “How about we find a beer joint somewhere? Live music and sawdust on the floor!”

“One lap at a time,” said Harley.

She smiled. “You remind me of this I guy I knew back in high school. I was always scared of him, because he was so remote. Like he was encased in ice, and the rest of us were beneath his notice. I always wondered what he did when he wasn’t slouched in the back row of class, reading Popular Mechanics.”

“What ever happened to him?”

“God knows,” said Bekasu. “But nothing ever happened to me. So let’s fix that.”

Well, it would be a hell of a week, thought Harley, but sooner or later she’d start talking about getting an associates degree in automotive whatever, and then he’d start checking out. Or maybe not. She was right about one thing: if you don’t start, you can’t win.

Bekasu’s eyes were shining. “You go ask if we can use the track. I just have to tell Justine not to wait up.” She walked out toward the road, wondering what on earth she would say to Justine.

Harley started to walk toward the guard’s hut to the right of Gate Six, hoping that whoever was on duty tonight was old enough to remember when “Junior” meant “Johnson.” He had his NASCAR license on him, though, and that ought to count for something.

In the halo of the parking lot streetlight, Bekasu opened her purse and reached for her cell phone. Tucked in its case was the one souvenir she had bought on the Number Three pilgrimage: a 1995 sports card photo of a young Winston Cup driver.

That first day she had found it among the homemade T-shirts and unauthorized fan items in a souvenir tent at the Bristol Motor Speedway. She’d bought it as a joke, really, an ironic gesture: pretend to get into the spirit of the tour, but really have a private laugh at the sham heroics of it all. The card had only cost a dollar. At first it had amused her to see the absurdly dramatic photo radiating sullen macho glamour.

On the front of the card a driver in a blue and white firesuit glared into the camera, eyes shielded by dark glasses, mouth a tight-lipped slit, the planes of his face as smooth and perfect as polished steel. But the expression was not angry. As the days passed, she’d be rummaging through her purse and catch a glimpse of that face on the card, and she’d find herself staring at it in puzzled fascination, thinking that he looked vulnerable…lost…despite all that power.

Behold the man. He was beautiful…dangerous…sexy. Like an archangel whose alien perfection was nonetheless captivating. You felt that you could not speak in that presence, and yet…if only you could stand behind him, you’d be safe from anything. Six feet tall. Wise, commanding, fearless, powerful, inhumanly beautiful.

Except that the man on the sports card wasn’t any of those things, really.

He was Harley Claymore.

It said so in gold foil letters stamped on the edge of the card. Harley Claymore, Winston Cup Driver, 1995. So this was the media image of their tour guide from his NASCAR days-little chicken hawk Harley Claymore, weather-beaten by sun and nicotine, brown hair silvering to gray, and smiling that possum grin of the eternal good old boy, past educating, past sophisticating, occasionally sober. The only power he radiated now was a coruscating unhappiness.

Bekasu held the card up to the light. Had he ever been this? This archangel of power and terrible beauty-before the Fall, before he lost his ride-Had he been this?

Nah.

It was the gloss of camera magic. All a trick of light, conjuring for the subject strength, wisdom, height-an image for the credulous fans who wanted to believe that larger than life heroes drove “stock” cars just like theirs in the Sunday races. None of that was true, but the fantasy was comforting. You wanted to believe it.

She wanted to believe it.

She thought of all the men in the periphery of her life…the Country Club acquaintances who turned up occasionally as dinner dates or bridge partners. All the stuffy old lawyers, the self-important medical types, the reedy accountants and the portly stockbrokers. All of whom she forgot about as soon as a tedious evening in their company had ended.

And here was something else again. Something…she groped for a word…primal. One hundred and eighty miles per hour. Reflexes like a tiger. Courage bordering on idiocy. And the passionate intensity of one who lived entirely in the present because to do otherwise would be to die out there. But what could you possibly talk about with him? Oh, who wanted to talk?

Bekasu took a deep breath. She hadn’t felt this way in a long time. It was an Indian Summer of the heart-an unexpected rush of warmth that might last a day or a month, but it might never come again, and now that she had it, she didn’t want to lose it.

The phone was ringing. What was Justine’s room number again?-Oh, yes, Ward Burton and Terry Labonte: 225-(This had been an educational week.)

“What do you mean you won’t be coming back to the hotel?” Justine cradled the receiver between her shoulder and her ear. Nail polish still wet. “You’re where?”

“Darlington. At the track,” said Bekasu.

“Well, what are you doing back there? Did you lose your purse or what?”

“No.” A long pause. “I came back with Harley.”

There was a moment of silence while Bekasu tried to think of some way to explain something she didn’t entirely understand herself, but Justine was way ahead of her. “You’re taking off with Harley, aren’t you, Bekasu?”

“Well, I guess I am, Justine, but don’t worry-”

“Worry? Hell, yes, I’m worried. Don’t you hurt him, Bekasu!”

“What?”

“You heard me. Harley. Don’t you hurt him. I know exactly what’s gong on-Shut up, Cayle! I’m trying to talk here. Bekasu has finally found herself a wild boy-about twenty years late, as usual-Listen here, Bekasu, don’t bother trying to explain this to me, because I know what’s happening better than you do.

“After all these years of dating socially acceptable turnips, you have finally met a guy who’s not a brain in a jar, who is-to put it in our jargon-in touch with his inner timber wolf, and now about a million years’ worth of DNA is screaming for you to drag him right to the ground and get on with it.”

“Justine!”

“And you’re telling me not to worry! Damn right, I’m worried. About him. All week you’ve been looking at that sports card you bought at Bristol. I know because it fell out of your purse a time or two, and you sure were slow putting it back. You fell in love with a piece of cardboard and now you want Harley to be that guy.”

“But he is that guy.”

“No, he is not! Never was. That picture is a fairy tale on film-the male equivalent of an airbrushed Playboy centerfold, and you bought it!”

“Well, Justine, you’re one to talk. You’ve certainly dated your share of roughnecks over the years.”

“Yeah, I did, and I loved very minute of it. But the difference is those guys were my friends first. I didn’t treat ’em like bags of catnip. Look, Bekasu, all I’m saying is there’s a person inside that firesuit. Don’t you use him. You’re glad he has a body as well as a mind. I’m worried that he has a mind as well as a body.”

Bekasu forced a laugh. “Do you want me to make an honest man of him?”

“He is an honest man. He’s an old-style Cup driver. There’s not a devious bone in his body. He makes million-dollar deals on a handshake, and he says what he means. All that irony and polite fiction crap of your so-called intellectuals is Martian to him. He’s better than that. So you be straight with him, because he’ll trust you if it kills him.”

“Harley?”

“Harley. Look, Bekasu, maybe he’s no prince charming, but he’s a good man, and he’s been hurt about as bad as he can take. NASCAR chewed him up and spit him out. Don’t you make it worse.”

A little gasp and a pause at the other end of the phone. “All right, Justine,” said Bekasu. “I’ll…take care. I like him. I really do. I have to go now. But thanks.”

Justine slammed down the receiver. “Bekasu in a one-night stand.” She sighed. “She has fallen in love with a square of cardboard. The real guy is not going to live up to that fantasy stud in her head, that’s for sure.”

Cayle looked up from her book. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe compared to all those boring desk jockeys she’s had before, Harley will seem sexy and dangerous to her. But that’s beside the point. I think something else is going to happen. I think Bekasu is going to find out that Harley actually needs her. Now Bekasu is one of nature’s protectors. I’ll bet she’ll find out that she loves a guy who needs her more than she would have loved the macho stud she thought he was.”

Justine scowled at one smudged pink fingernail. “Well, she’d just better not hurt him, that’s all.”

“That was a nice thing you did back there.”

Harley spun around wondering who the hell else had decided to turn up tonight. Louis Chevrolet, for God’s sake? Harley Earl? But the man in the straw hat who had fallen into step with him was very much alive, and more powerful than a 1988 Elliott engine. He was somebody Harley had wanted very much to talk to-just not in a deserted parking lot with a runaway judge on his hands.

“Saw you all leaving some flowers back there under Dale’s picture,” the man said. “Some kind of memorial?”

“That’s right,” said Harley. “Wanted to say good-bye. Wish him well.”

The man nodded. “That’s a nice thing you did. I like that.”

“Well,” said Harley, “he’s sorely missed.”

The straw hat bobbed in agreement. “I was in the museum there with some of the guys. They let us look around after the race. Couple of cars in there for sale. I was thinking about getting one to put on display back at the shop, you know? That’s how I happened to notice you outside. Good to see you around again, Harley. You back to speed after that crash you had?”

“Right as rain.”

They walked on a few more paces, with Harley almost afraid to breathe for fear of jinxing himself. Then the man, who was so rich and powerful that his ordinary middle-aged appearance was practically a secret identity, said, “Speaking of the shop…you know, I could use a test driver. If you feel like you’re up to it, why don’t you come see me when you get back?”

Harley nodded. “I’ll do that, sir,” he said. “I’d be honored.” Suddenly he remembered a scrap of newspaper that had been riding around in his wallet since the night in the bar in Concord. He fished it out and handed it to the man in the hat. “Speaking of Dale, sir, this article’s about a young man who started a program called Driving for Dale to help senior citizens get to doctors’ appointments and so on. The fellow is going to take automotive courses at Northeast State in Tennessee, and since he’s a newlywed, I think he might need a little financial aid or an internship at Bristol. Can you see that the right people get to see this write-up?”

“I’ll do that,” said the man, pocketing the clipping. “And I’ll see you at the shop-when?”

Harley hesitated. “Would Wednesday be okay? I have something to finish up.”

Well, she worked in Charlotte. If she didn’t start screaming at a hundred miles an hour, and if she didn’t order anything with fruit in it at the roadhouse, and if she hadn’t said anything about a community college by Wednesday, then…then they’d have to see.

“Hope to see you down the road,” said Harley as the man walked away. But he was talking to the sky.