St. Dale

Chapter IV

February 18, 2001

Some time that week, he could not remember exactly when, Bill Knight had seen a shooting star flame out against New England’s winter sky. He recalled thinking, as he always did at such a time, The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. You could hardly call it a premonition. Still, he never quite forgot it.

That Sunday morning several big-screen TV owners in his congregation had invited him to Daytona Parties, the Super Bowl of NASCAR they called it, but he had begged off, saying he had paperwork to do. Instead, he promised them that he would watch the race by himself while he worked. An easy promise to keep, since he usually did turn the television on for noise while he wrote.

He was looking forward to a relaxing evening alone with his slides and lecture notes: pilgrimages in the medieval Church, an erudite and obscure pursuit that had long afforded him a retreat from all things modern and confusing, like church sound systems and word processing software. He hoped to work up a lecture on the pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostela, and so he told himself that the bookish evening might indeed be considered “work” or at least the preparation for work. He would skip the Daytona parties with a clear conscience but, in deference to local customs, he knew that he must not skip the race itself. It was a restrictor plate race-whatever that meant.

The culture of stock car racing took some getting used to for someone who had heretofore believed that any major sport must end in the word “ball.” When Knight had first arrived, so many people asked him to remember 19-year-old Adam Petty in his prayers that he had looked up the name in the church directory to see which of the boy’s relatives belonged to his congregation. Finally, someone explained to him that Adam Petty had been a novice driver, NASCAR royalty-the grandson of Richard Petty himself-who had been killed in a wreck at New Hampshire International Speedway that summer. People grieved for this famous stranger, killed in race practice in their vicinity, much as they would have mourned a local high school quarterback killed on I-93. For Bill Knight, it was a mindset that he was still trying to master.

With barely a glance at the race already well under way, he had settled in behind his desk with an NHIS coffee mug (a legacy from the parsonage cupboard) and a stack of note cards and photographs. He thought about muting the sound of the race so that he could concentrate on his work without distraction, but he decided that this would not be quite in keeping with his promise to watch the event, so he left it on. Later, he came to think of this decision-or indecision-as a sign that some higher authority than his parishioners had meant for him to watch this race, but he never shared this pious thought with anyone. His flock of New Hampshire Protestants might believe in messages from heaven as a general principle, but they frowned upon modern-day citizens-particularly their own clergymen-claiming to receive them. As befitted their Puritan ancestry, his congregation preferred a faith of austere simplicity, one in which visions and prophecies were as suspect as incense.

A native of western Maryland, Bill Knight was still charmed by the Christmas-card prettiness of the countryside, and of Canterbury itself with its colonial homes, its village green, and the Shaker Museum, all a few miles north of Concord, off I-93, and-as if in apposition to all this colonial simplicity-one exit away from the New Hampshire International Speedway. Loudon, as the track was usually called for the sake of brevity, after the town closest to it, was a major regional attraction, bringing in tourist dollars and turning traffic into a nightmare one weekend each July and September. Then 50,000 people converged on the area for the NASCAR Winston Cup races. He soon realized that the sport would affect him whether he followed it or not, just as residents of Wimbledon or St. Andrews cannot be indifferent to tennis or golf.

On the whole, he was pleased with the area and with the cadence of life in New England. Less than a hundred miles from the amenities of Boston, but well out of the city sprawl and traffic-he had the best of both worlds. No one had objected to a divorced pastor, and none of the unattached women in the congregation had made any strenuous efforts to change his marital status. He found the people kindhearted, but a bit shy with newcomers, and he was still finding his footing with the local customs. When people asked if he found New Hampshire to be very different from Maryland, he would smile and say, “Colder, but I’ll get used to that.” He resolved to learn how to ski, for his own pleasure and for winter exercise, and to take an interest in stock car racing as a gesture of goodwill toward his congregation.

For the next hour or so, he sifted through photographs of churches in southern France and Spain. He kept encountering himself in various seasons and outfits, standing, hands in pockets, trying to look earnest as he posed squinting in the sunshine in Ardilliers or holding up a souvenir of St. Martin in Tours. There were well-composed photos of church architecture in which he stood in the foreground for perspective, but he was still tempted to remove those shots from the collection. He kept staring at the image of his old self, knowing that he had been looking at Emely. There were no photographs of her in the pilgrimage program. He had been careful to remove them, so that he would not come across them unprepared and be blindsided by the memory. Emely was gone, and he had gotten over it.

He worked on his notes, scarcely glancing at the television screen as the rainbow of race cars streaked past. He paid little heed to them beyond thinking that the sight of a balmy day in Florida made a pleasant contrast to the New England winter evening fading to black outside his window.

As he wrote, with half an ear tuned in to the rhythmic voices of the announcers, newly-familiar names like “Waltrip,” “Labonte,” and “Bodine” slid past. And Ricky Craven, of course. Craven, who was from Maine, was a favorite son on the New Hampshire track. Occasionally Bill Knight glanced at the screen, but the blur of cars told him nothing about the progress of the race. With the cars racing in an oval, you couldn’t tell who was winning by which car seemed ahead of the rest: it might be on a different lap from the others, and the race consisted of 200 laps. Hours and hours of going round in circles. Much like a church council meeting, he thought to himself.

It was the change in the tenor of the voices that made him look up. The race was nearly over-twenty-six laps to go, according to the posting on the screen-but the proceedings had been halted because of a wreck. Some driver had ventured too close to the next vehicle in the throng of cars, jockeying for position at 180 miles per hour. That contact between bumpers had caused a chain reaction. Cars collided with others, blocking the passage of the approaching vehicles, so that they, too, skidded and spun.

Seconds later, an orange car, emblazoned with the number 20, left the track and sailed upside down above the crush of cars, spiraling over and over like a football until it landed in the grassy oval at the center of the speedway, joining a dozen other cars also taken out in the crash.

Bill Knight found himself staring at the screen, even as he reproved himself for watching the violent spectacle. He felt reproached by St. Augustine, who had been so enthralled by the games in the coliseum that he had been forced to exile himself from Rome to overcome his obsession. Even in his desert refuge, the saint’s sleep had been troubled by dreams of chariot races and gladiatorial combat.

As the television replayed the crash over and over from different angles, the race itself was stopped so that the wrecked cars and injured drivers could be tended to. “Surely that man is dead,” Knight thought, watching for perhaps the fifth time as the orange car went flying above the rest.

Apparently not, though. The announcer kept insisting that the driver was not badly hurt, and that he was only complaining of a pain in his shoulder. I should think he would, thought Knight. The trip to the hospital appeared to be little more than a formality for the driver of the orange car: Tony Stewart, according to the announcer. The other drivers were equally unscathed, but their cars were out of commission. Presently, with the dozen drivers sidelined by mechanical problems and minor injuries, the track was cleared of debris and the race resumed.

Knight supposed that the excitement for the day was over, and that with fewer cars to contend with the final twenty-six laps would play out peacefully, but he did wonder if that Stewart fellow could really have escaped with so little injury.

According to the commentators, the big drama of the race now centered on whether the winner would turn out to be the brother of the television announcer, himself a retired stock car driver. He kept hearing the excitement in the broadcaster’s voice, anticipation mounting with each lap as the younger brother maintained the lead, on his way to winning his first Daytona 500. How pleasant for the television network, thought Knight, a happy occasion to focus on, rather than a tragic death. The after-race interview was sure to be unique, because for once the television personality was really part of the story. The human interest angle of the two brothers would no doubt increase the news value of an otherwise routine sports story, and it would make it easy for him to find something pleasant to say about the event. He still wondered, though, about the spectacular wreck on lap 26 that had shut the race down for so many minutes. That car had sailed through the air, flipping over the other contenders. Could it really be as inconsequential as they said it was?

The lap numbers went down every minute or so, until at last the remaining cars were on the homestretch, or the last lap, or whatever they called it, and sure enough the yellow car, number 15, driven by the announcer’s brother, kept its lead. The announcer was shouting excitedly into his microphone as if his brother, and not 20 million viewers could hear him: “You got him, Mikey! Come on, man! Oh, my! Get him in the fold!”

Bill Knight wondered what that phrase meant. Get him in the fold. To his ministerial ear it sounded like a phrase from a revival. As he was making a mental note to ask about this term, the lead car crossed the finish line, followed by great jubilation over the airwaves. Seconds later, though, Darrell Waltrip in the skybox mentioned that another wreck had taken place a hundred yards or so down the track from the finish line only seconds before the end of the race. A footnote to the race, it seemed: this incident was not as spectacular as the previous pileup.

Knight looked up again as the network showed an instant replay of the latest collision. A black Monte Carlo with a white number 3 painted on its side-that was Dale Earnhardt, he knew-had collided with a yellow Pontiac emblazoned with the number 36 and a logo for M &M’s. The black Chevy had been ahead of a knot of close-packed cars, when it seemed to lose control, veering sideways into the path of the oncoming cars. It was hit broadside by the approaching M &M car, slammed into the wall, bounced back, and then both the Chevrolet and the Pontiac slid across the track and came to rest on the grassy oval infield. As before, there were no flames. Both cars were right side up, parked peacefully on the grass, as the race went on without them to end eleven seconds later. The television cameras kept cutting back to the crash site and the voice-overs said several times that Dale Earnhardt was one of the drivers involved, but the focus now was on the ecstatic young driver who had won his first Daytona victory.

“I just hope Dale’s okay,” the television announcer remarked as he looked out the window of the sky box.

Dale. Oh, well, that was all right, Bill Knight thought. Today’s little mishap would have been all in a day’s work to him. Indeed, after a few more replays, the coverage went back to the winning driver, whose car, it turned out, had been owned by Dale Earnhardt’s company. An ecstatic Mike Waltrip was thanking everybody and marveling at his victory. The race was over. Credits rolled up the screen.

Earnhardt. People either loved him or hated him. The men seemed to root for him; most women thought he was too rough, but like him or not, they all knew him. He was big. His face looked down at you from the walls of half the restaurants in the area. On race weekends, there was a waitress in a local diner who wore an Earnhardt cap, and she would count out your change, “One, two, Dale, four, five…” Probably doubled her tips doing that.

Dale Earnhardt.

Bill Knight kept staring at the television, waiting for news that the drivers were all right or that the Stewart fellow in the previous wreck was out of the hospital, but the broadcast ended without further comment on any of the other drivers. On the back of an old envelope, Bill Knight scribbled the words “Mike Waltrip won Daytona500. Announcer’s brother” as a reminder to himself in case anyone of his acquaintance should try to talk about racing in the week ahead, then he turned off the television and went to the kitchen to make more coffee.

When the doorbell rang, Knight had forgotten the race and was debating whether to have leftover takeout or a microwave meal for his supper. He walked to the door, hoping that just this once some kind soul had brought him a dish of beef stew and homemade biscuits, but as he never expected miracles any more than his congregation did, he was not surprised to see his neighbor Bob Henderson, empty-handed.

“Come in, Bob,” he said, and the man’s stricken expression made him add, “Is anything wrong?”

Henderson stamped his boots on the mat outside, and unwound the red-and-black scarf that had covered his mouth and chin, revealing an expression of barely contained grief. His eyes were red and he looked like someone teetering on the edge of shock.

“Has there been a wreck?” asked Knight, saying the first thing that came into his head. The Interstate was so near.

Tears rolled down the man’s cheeks. “Oh, yes,” he said. “There’s been a wreck.”

“I’ll get my coat, Bob. Are they still on the highway or are we going to the hospital?”

Henderson shook his head. “The hospital is in Florida,” he said. “But I thought I’d ask if you had any prayers for the dead or Bible verses. Something like that.”

Bob Henderson followed him into the study and perched on the edge of the leather sofa wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He nodded toward the dark screen of the television. “Didn’t you see the race?”

“I did,” said Knight. He remembered that he had turned off the set when he went to fix his supper. “The Daytona 500, you mean?” Realization dawned. “I’m sorry to hear it, Bob,” he said. “Truly sorry. Though I can’t say I’m surprised. When I saw that car go sailing into the air, I thought, That poor fellow will be lucky to survive that. I’m so sorry to hear that he didn’t.”

Henderson took a gulp of air and stared at him with a puzzled frown. “Sailing through…through the air?…Are you talking about Tony Stewart on lap 26?” he asked.

“Was that the Home Depot car? Yes. A terrible wreck. Such a pity.”

Henderson shook his head. “Tony Stewart is fine, Bill. It’s Dale that got killed.”

“Dale-Earnhardt?-but-wasn’t he in that little wreck in the last few seconds of the race? Are you sure?”

By now, Henderson had the box of tissues in his lap. He was taking deep breaths and dabbing his eyes. “A crowd of us were over at the sports bar watching the race on the big screen. They just announced it over the TV,” he said. “But I knew in my heart already. Knew it was bad.”

“But that first wreck?” Knight was still trying to follow the thread of the conversation. Surely that first multicar pileup…

Henderson managed a damp smile. “I forgot that you were new to racing,” he said. “Flying through the air looks scary, but the force is being dissipated by the rolls before the car lands or hits anything. So Stewart was fine. But Dale went straight at the wall at 180 miles an hour-more maybe, because there was another car pushing him forward as well. I knew it was bad. He didn’t get out, and then I caught sight of a blue tarp being spread over the car, and I knew.”

“I’m so sorry,” Knight said again. “Er-you weren’t a relative of his?”

“No,” said Henderson. “But he was family, all the same.”

“Well, is there anything I can do?” Knight was surprised to see that a driver who wasn’t from here and hadn’t died here had elicited such a powerful response in the otherwise steady and sensible lawyer. He wondered if many people locally would react so strongly-and what was he to do to help them through their pain?

“That sports bar, where I was watching the race,” said Henderson. “Two guys were in there-I didn’t know them. Truckers, maybe. They’d had a few beers too many and they were arguing about something over by the pool table, getting louder and louder. It looked like they were about ten seconds away from a real brawl and I was about to call the police on my cell phone. Just then, though, the special bulletin came on the television announcing that Dale was dead and those two burly guys just froze in mid fight. They stood there for a minute staring at the screen like a couple of pole-axed steers, neither one moving a muscle. Then they started sniffling and finally they just came over and sat down in front of the screen, side by side. One of them kept patting the other’s shoulder and saying, ‘I know, man. I know.’”

Knight stared at him in silence, turning it over in his mind. “I see,” he said. People in the area would be grieving. All those people with number threes on the back windows of their cars. The waitress in the Earnhardt cap. This was the Speedway’s parish as much as it was his. “I guess we’d better go, then,” he said. “Can you show me the quickest way out there?” God knew what he was going to say when he got there. At least Bill hoped He did.

Nearly eight o’clock on a cold Sunday night, and the residential streets of tiny Canterbury were all but deserted. The Interstate would have its usual tide of southbound weekend traffic, but they weren’t headed that way. “I know a shortcut,” Bob Henderson had told him. They drove through dark streets in silence for a few blocks, following the road that skirted the lake. He shivered, wondering how long it would take the heater turned up full blast to warm the interior of the car.

As he drove, Bill wondered if this intense grief over the passing of strangers was a phenomenon of modern times. Did people mourn the death of, say, a Lincoln or a Mozart with such passionate intensity, or did the immediacy of television coverage magnify people’s emotions these days? It is one thing to hear weeks later of the death of some beloved figure, but to see it happen, to follow the events as they unfolded hour by hour, surely this heightened the feelings for many. He had been at his last church, back in Maryland, when Princess Diana died, and he had been surprised at the number of women who reacted as if they had lost a close relative. Of course, he had also seen people who had lost a close relative and hardly batted an eye over the loss. It was hard to tell these days who was close to whom.

But what was it about some people-no more beautiful or talented than a hundred others-that touched a chord in humanity that elevated one person’s death to the level of tragedy? Some quality of glamor or drama that made strangers weep for them. The death of Princess Diana had set off a spontaneous wave of worldwide grief, while scarcely a week later the death of Mother Teresa in India had elicited little more than a collective shrug. Which proved, he supposed, that goodness had nothing to do with it. Why Elvis and not John Lennon? He would have said that Lennon was the more spiritual, the more universal, figure. But it was Elvis who had received the secular canonization. Why after a quarter of a century did weeping strangers still flock to Graceland to mourn the passing of a man they never knew? And now-Dale Earnhardt? His nickname had been the Intimidator. Could there be a more unlikely angel?

Knight felt that he had been given an opportunity to watch something unfold and he hoped that he would be given the wisdom to make sense of it.

“I didn’t know you were a racing fan, Bob.” As soon as he said it, Knight realized that this was an unworthy thought. Just because Bob Henderson was a lawyer, he had assumed him to be somehow above the thrall of stock car racing, but he ought to know by now that you couldn’t pigeonhole people by your own biases.

“Because I don’t drive a pick-up truck with decals on the back window, you mean?”

“I’m new to all this,” said Knight by way of apology.

“Well, you’re a couple of decades behind the times with that image, but, yeah, I was as big a fan of Earnhardt as anybody. He was one of a kind. I have a signed picture of him in my office. You’d be surprised what an icebreaker that is with clients sometimes. Gives us something in common.”

“But why Earnhardt in particular?”

“Because he didn’t take any crap from anybody. It was his way or no way. I think he would have made a hell of a lawyer. I think he could have gotten the devil himself off with a reprimand.”

In spite of the seriousness of the man’s tone, Bill Knight smiled. “I thought that was Daniel Webster,” he said.

“I see you’ve been reading up on New England’s folklore,” said Henderson. “It’s hard to explain the attraction of Dale Earnhardt. You don’t follow racing, so you wouldn’t get it. When I said he’d have made a hell of a lawyer, I didn’t mean that Earnhardt was a silver-tongued orator. He wasn’t. But without looks or pedigree or education, he managed to make himself a celebrity and a multimillionaire-in a profession that the opinion-makers sneer at. That’s quite an achievement. He just wouldn’t give up. It was that certainty that he was right and that nobody else’s opinion was worth a damn. I’ve always thought saints must be like that.”

Knight thought about it. “I suppose some of them were,” he said. “That’s why I’ve never wanted to meet one.”

On a Sunday evening in winter the Speedway parking lot should have been empty, but as they pulled in, he saw dozens of cars and even a couple of eighteen-wheelers already in the lot.

“Trucks?” he said.

“Interstate,” said Henderson. “They’ll have heard the news on the radio. Makes sense for them to come here, I guess. Dale was here last summer, racing, you know. He was here when Adam died.”

Knight nodded. “Adam Petty. I know about that. I wasn’t here then, though.”

Consecrated ground.

They parked next to a red pick-up, and began to walk toward the main gates, where a crowd was already gathered. Taped-or perhaps tied-to the fence was a square of white poster board bearing only the number 3 outlined in black-and-red marker. On the ground beneath it light flickered from red glass candle holders that might have been taken from the table of a restaurant. Above the wind, he heard the muffled tones of a radio that someone had thought to bring, but the crowd was quiet. No one sang or wept or talked except in low murmurs. They were just waiting. Or coming together, perhaps, to pool their grief. The odd thing was that many people had felt the need to bring something. He understood the custom of bringing food to a bereaved family or flowers to a grave site to honor a departed friend, but what instinct made these strangers bring tokens to a place so far from the death scene, so far from the man’s family or final resting place, to someone they had never met? He supposed that the offerings were grief made visible.

On the ground beside the candles he saw potted plants and bundles of convenience store roses, left over from Valentine’s Day, now offered up to the memory of a man killed two thousand miles away. In this cold, he thought, they would not last the night, but at least the gesture had been made.

As Knight stood taking in the scene and wondering what he ought to do, a big man in a plaid jacket edged past him. He was carrying a plastic pine Christmas wreath, which he set down against the wall. A black toy car dangled from the red satin bow of the wreath. The man knelt down, propping the wreath so that it would not fall, and making sure that the die-cast car faced outward, the white number 3 visible on its tiny door. As he straightened up, he saw Knight looking down at the wreath, and tried to smile, a bit shamefaced at this uncharacteristic display of emotion.

“I felt like I had to bring something,” he said.

Knight nodded. “People do,” he said.

“I didn’t watch the race,” the man said. “I was all set to, but I’m a plumber. Had an emergency call-frozen pipes at a mobile home. Anyhow, I left my wife home watching the race, and as I went out, I said to her, ‘Dale knows I’ll be pulling for him.’ Well, my wife can’t stand Dale Earnhardt. She says he’s a bully on wheels. Likes that California surfer boy, that Jeff Gordon. Anyhow, I’m going out the door, she yells after me, ‘I hope your old Dale gets run into the damn wall!’ And I was coming back home, hoping to catch the end of the race when I heard the news on the radio. I went on into the house, and Judy was sitting there white as a sheet. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ she says to me, but I didn’t even look at her. I just went on up into the attic and got the Christmas wreath. ‘I’m going out to the track,’ I told her, and she asked did I want her to come with me, and I said no. I didn’t want her. She isn’t hurting for Dale. But I am.”

“I’m sorry,” said Knight. That seemed to be all there was to say.

Nearby a woman in a red ski parka was crying. She held a candle that she was trying to light with a cigarette lighter, but the wind kept extinguishing the flame, making her cry all the more. “The flame has gone out,” she said. Finally, she put the unlit candle down against the wall with the wilting flowers and walked away without looking back.

“I’ll bet the Shaker Museum has a run on candles tomorrow,” said Henderson.

Bill Knight nodded.

“You know, when Princess Diana died, my wife got up at some ungodly hour before dawn to watch the funeral and I laughed at her for being so upset about it. But, by God, now I know how she felt, I guess. You feel like you knew them. It hurts.”

“And Dale never won a race here at New Hampshire,” said a heavyset older woman in the crowd. She was wearing a black-and-red Earnhardt jacket, but shivering anyhow. “He never did. Every year I’d go to the race, hoping this time would break the charm, but now it’s never going to happen.” Quietly, she began to cry.

A man in a black leather jacket and work boots stopped to look at the toy car on the Christmas wreath. He did not smile. “I wish I’d thought to bring something,” he said. “All I had in the truck was a can of beer, and that just didn’t seem right.” He pointed to one of the big rigs in the parking lot. “I got a load of Texas onions on their way to Maine,” he said. “Couple of tons of Texas sweets. And, you know what? They ain’t getting there. ’Cause I’m turning around. I can pick up I-95 outside of Boston and take it to Washington-twelve, fourteen hours. Take 66 west out of DC over to I-81 down the spine of the Blue Ridge. At Wytheville, Virginia, go south on I-77, and from there it’s a two-hour straight shot into Charlotte.”

“Charlotte?” the wreath man said.

“Charlotte.” The trucker nodded. “The funeral will be there. Bound to be.”

That made sense. Everybody knew Earnhardt was from a little town just north of there. “Do you suppose they’ll let ordinary people in?”

“Doubt it. But I can be there. Stand outside. I can say good-bye.”

“I don’t know about going to the funeral,” the wreath man said. “Drivers didn’t go to funerals. Too close to home, I guess. Knowing that the next race might be their turn.”

“Well, I’m going. The chance will never come again.”

A white Chevy pick-up truck pulled into the parking lot and the driver emerged carrying a poster portrait mounted on cardboard: Earnhardt in black-and-white coveralls leaning against his number 3 car. A gaggle of mourners helped the newcomer attach the poster to the fence above the pile of freezing flowers but some of them seemed more interested in the man who brought it than in the poster of the fallen hero.

“Vince! I thought I recognized your truck,” said one. “Are you going on to the store tonight?”

Vince shook his head. “No. I think tonight ought to be a time of mourning, that’s all.” His voice was hoarse. “I can’t open tonight.”

“But your shop is closed on Mondays.”

“No, I’ll open in the morning. I already drove over there and put a sign on the door. Nine A.M.-not a minute before.”

“You won’t mark up the Earnhardt stuff, will you, Vince?”

The man sighed and wiped his face with his hand. “No. That wouldn’t be right. Just give me time to get in and get the lights on and open the register, that’s all. Nine o’clock tomorrow. All right?”

Bill Knight, who had been listening to this exchange, said, “NASCAR souvenirs?”

Vince nodded. “It’s going to be a nightmare tomorrow. I’ve never seen people act like this. Not even when Adam died here. While I was putting the sign on the door, a couple of cars pulled into the parking lot and four guys rushed to the door, but I told them to come back tomorrow. Then a police cruiser drove up, so I went over to explain to them that I was the owner, and that it wasn’t a burglary or anything.” He sighed. “Turned out they wanted to buy Earnhardt stuff.”

Bill Knight shivered as a gust of wind bit through his overcoat. It was too cold for people to stay out here very long, he thought. He wondered where they would go, and what would become of their grief.

“I’m a minister,” he said to the shop owner. “I could open the church.”

“Most of these people wouldn’t go, sir. They need to be where Dale has been and, besides, people keep showing up all the time, and if everybody here left, there’d be no one for them to talk to, I guess. It’s better here.”

Bill Knight found himself wondering if people had gone to the cathedral on that winter day in 1170 when news of Thomas Becket’s death had reached them, and if so what had been done to comfort them.

A man in a well-cut black overcoat set a red-and-black Earnhardt hat in the pile with the other tributes. He saw the minister watching him, and gave an embarrassed shrug. “I just wanted to say good-bye,” he said.

A short man in a Rescue Squad ski parka hurried over. “Thought I recognized you, Doc!” he said to the man in the overcoat. “I’m glad you’re here. A couple of the guys have been arguing over this, and you’ll know-do you think a good trauma team could have saved him after the wreck?”

The doctor shook his head. “No. He was dead before they got him out of the car. A hundred and eighty miles an hour. We’re all just bags of water, you know. People. Just bags of water.”

As he turned to walk away, the short man crossed himself. “Well, he’s in heaven, anyhow,” he said. “I know that.”

The doctor watched him go. “In heaven,” he said. “You know, I was thinking about that on the way over here. Here’s a guy with a ninth-grade education and an average face, and by driving a Chevrolet, he gets to be the fortieth-richest person in America and hang out with movie stars-and I wondered: just what kind of a heaven would there have to be to top that?”

Knight knew that some ministers would have taken that remark as an invitation to expound upon the joys of being in the presence of God, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He would have felt like a salesman. Perhaps, after all, it was better to let people speak their minds, without trying to rationalize away their grief. Faith was for later.

For the next hour, until the cold wind numbed his face and forced him to leave, Bill Knight mingled with the Speedway mourners, going from person to person, saying little. Just listening to the grief and the memories.

A year later, when the Children’s Home needed someone to chaperone young Matthew on his Last Wish trip, Bill Knight volunteered, thinking that perhaps he could understand the boy’s feelings as well as anyone. Besides, he might finally learn exactly what a restrictor plate was.