Once Around the Track (22 page)

Dealer types were generally male, brisk, and unimpressed by the experience. Badger’s signature on a photo might mean ten bucks to them, if they were lucky and if a true fan from faraway participated in the online auction. The dealers would attend the race and stand in every possible driver’s autograph line, hoping to get enough signatures to make their speedway visit profitable. Getting an autographed photo from the likes of Badger was all well and good, but the dealers’ greatest wish was to have the good fortune to run into Little E. or Jeff Gordon, the rock stars of Cup racing. A signature from either of them would cover the entire cost of the weekend. But you couldn’t count on the availability of the superstars, so to pass the time the dealers staked out the small fry. They treated Badger with the curt efficiency of a remora preparing to clean the teeth of a very small shark: a necessary process for both parties, but only barely worth the effort.

If the dealers were blasé about the experience of meeting him, the true fans more than made up for it with their unbridled—occasionally semihysterical—enthusiasm.
Fandemonium.
Sark handed out tissues to more than one woman who burst into tears simply because Badger had touched her hand when he returned the autograph card. She began to wish she’d brought a supply of paper bags along so that she could hand them out to the overwrought and say, “Breathe into this!” (And occasionally when a fan became too saccharine and sloppy in her adoration of Badger, Sark felt like using a paper bag herself, for quite another purpose.)

There ought to be a happy medium, she thought, between the businesslike dealers and the gushing maenads. She thought Badger deserved more respect from the former and a good deal less adulation from the latter.

Who the heck was Badger Jenkins, anyhow?
Rock star? Hero? Dream lover? Meal ticket? Favorite son? Star athlete? Big brother? There seemed to be as many answers to that question as there were people in line.

Occasionally, a giggling woman would thrust a cell phone under his nose and order him to say hello to her friend back home.
“Donna’s your biggest fan. Just say hello to her. She’ll die, Badger. I swear she will.”

Badger always managed to say a cordial sentence or two into the phone, and the response was a sometimes audible shriek. He usually concluded the conversation with, “Yes, ma’am, I’m really him. Thanks for being a loyal fan.” He called them all
ma’am,
which Sark thought might be more an estimate of age than a term of respect. There were more requests for a hug, but he managed to evade them.

Sark began to feel sorry for the driver. Being loved can be more of a burden than a blessing. People have built you a soul, and if you run afoul of their expectations, they will turn on you with the ferocity of wild dogs. Dealing with one’s public was harder than it looked, she concluded. Being handsome helped, because it meant you didn’t have to say much to win them over, but a calm temperament and a seeming openness with strangers would prove invaluable also. She began to regard Badger with increasing admiration. There was more to being a race car driver than skill behind the wheel. Badger was damned good. He sent everyone away happy.

The line wound on, one gushing fan after another.

Often besotted maidens wanted to give him things—a photo of their cat whose name was Badger, or perhaps an amateur portrait of him they’d done themselves, which generally looked more like Bela Lugosi than like Badger himself. Other admirers embroidered pillows with his number and team colors; they brought him hand-tied fishing flies “for the lake” and homemade soap. They presented him with pots of raspberry jam, which they’d personally prepared in little jars affixed with handwritten labels, often including the telephone number of the giver.
Some hope,
thought Sark. Others wrote worshipful, badly rhymed poems about him, which they bestowed on him on parchment with carefully lettered calligraphy and a Dollar Store frame.

Badger accepted all these earnest offerings with solemn thanks, and with a few words of admiration for anyone so talented as to be able to produce such a thing, because
he sure as heck couldn’t do anything as original as that…thank you so much…
and the givers went away happy. After a while Sark began to detect a particular tone of voice in his expressions of gratitude. When he said “Thank ya so-ooo mu-ucch” in a particular drawling way, she decided that it meant he was being given something he didn’t want. That was useful to know. She filed the information away to see when she would hear it next. Mostly, though, he was kind and polite to people who meant well, and they felt that they had made a real connection with their hero with their gifts of soap and poems and homemade jam. Sark wondered what became of those things afterward, and she resolved never to try to find out.

And then there were the kids. Badger loved kids. He’d peer down at a bright-eyed eight-year-old clutching anything from a napkin to a lug nut, and he’d strike up an animated conversation with the child while he scribbled his name on the proffered item.

“How you doin’, buddy? You a big race fan?” Man to man, as if they were both the same age, which in some ways, thought Sark, they were.

Sometimes the child was too shy even to mumble a response, but Badger never seemed to mind. He went on being friendly and charming until the child stopped looking terrified.

Then near the end of the line a little tow-headed kid in a Dupont tee shirt set down a Jeff Gordon hat in front of Badger and waited for him to sign it.

Sark held her breath. As far as she could tell, Cup drivers wholeheartedly agreed with the Supreme Being that the number one commandment was
Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods before Me
. She’d heard discouraging tales of drivers refusing to sign even their own team-themed merchandise if it was an unlicensed product—because drivers received no royalties from homemade fan items. And here was a kid expecting Badger to sign a product honoring
another
driver? She pictured an ensuing tantrum, and wondered if she ought to snatch the Gordon hat off the table and hustle the kid away before he precipitated a public relations nightmare.

Before she could decide what to do, Badger picked up the Gordon hat and scribbled across the brim with his black Sharpie. “There you go, buddy,” he said with a smile, handing the item back to its delighted owner.

When the child had walked away, Sark leaned in close again to Badger’s ear. “Wow,” she said softly. “You signed a Jeff Gordon hat. I cannot believe it.”

“Well, he’s a kid. I couldn’t disappoint him,” said Badger. “I can’t sign any Earnhardt stuff, though.”

“Why? You don’t like the Earnhardts?” asked Sark.

“Naw, that’s not it,” said Badger sadly. “I just can’t spell it.”

The little boy had put on his signed cap and was waving good-bye from a few feet away. Sark peered closely at the hat, and sure enough, scribbled on the brim were the words “Jeff Gordon” in Badger’s unmistakable rounded scrawl.

Sark could never decide if Badger was a complete innocent or the shrewdest person she knew.

She glanced at her watch. Time was nearly up, and the last two fans in line looked like trouble. They were young enough and skinny enough not to look completely ridiculous in their skimpy halter tops and barely-there shorts, but dyed-blond hair and ferret faces heavy with mascara and glitter blush weren’t Sark’s idea of sexy. She doubted if it was Badger’s, either, but since he had done all right on his own today, she decided to wait and see how he handled the confrontation—Sark was sure there was going to be one.

Sure enough, the one wearing the most eyeliner sashayed up to the desk and leaned over it, giving him the full effect of her cleavage.

Sark wrinkled her nose in distaste.
Pit lizards
. The term, which she herself had only learned this week, had probably been coined before these two little newts had even been born, but they were quite representative of the species: slithery and predatory. Like the rest of their kind, they lurked around drivers’ habitats in hopes of ensnaring one. Wives loathed them, and the crew either pitied or ridiculed them, according to the nature of the crew member and perhaps to the attractiveness of the individual lizard. It was universally acknowledged, though, that their appreciation of motorsports was similar to lions’ fondness for the watering holes of zebras: voyeurism disguising darker motives. Today this pair of lizards had apparently decided to prey on Badger.

Repelled more than fascinated, Sark backed away toward the Porta-John, hoping that when she’d finished, the two creatures would be gone. She heard more giggles as the girls took out cameras and whispered in each other’s ear. What were they offering him, anyway: a choice or a twofer?

And it happens to him all the time,
she thought. How many times a day? A dozen? A hundred? How could such avid attention not go to his head? How could he not think himself God’s gift to mattresses? How could he sustain a relationship with anybody in the face of such temptation?

She hurried toward the Porta-John, out of earshot of the arch conversation taking place at the signing table, acutely aware of her own embarrassment. Somebody, she thought, ought to be ashamed at what was taking place; odd that she, the innocent bystander, should be the one who felt it. The other thing she felt was a bizarre, almost maternal protectiveness toward Badger. She wanted to yell, “Leave him alone! He’s not a piece of meat.” But surely that was a feminine impulse. Surely it was the essence of the male gender not to mind such an arrangement, even to revel in it. A free roll in the hay offered by a reasonably pretty girl who wanted nothing more? Why else would you want to be famous if not for perks like this? Did he feel like that, she wondered, or did the endless propositions make him feel slimed by the fetid desires of so many strangers? She wished she could think of a polite way to ask him.

Sark lingered in the toilet until the smell inside it was fractionally more distasteful to her than the sight of two attacking pit lizards in heat; then she stumbled out again into the sunshine, thinking that perhaps Badger would be expecting her to run interference for him, to get him out of an awkward situation with no hard feelings on the part of the lizards, assuming, of course, that they were capable of such niceties
. Oh please let him not be succumbing to their attentions
, she thought, and that notion almost sent her reeling back to the toilet.

Well, at least Badger wasn’t married anymore, she told herself. Not that it would have mattered to his stalkers if he had been.

As she approached the table again, she noticed that Badger had his head tilted back and appeared to be listening attentively to one of the girls. Now he was nodding, with a mournful look in his dark eyes.

Uh-oh,
thought Sark, hurrying back to her post.

“And she won’t get her prescription filled,” said the blonde. “She says it costs too much, and that taking it doesn’t change the way she feels one bit. She says blood pressure is just a number. But she has to work standing up for hours at a time on her shift at the mill. I tell her that can’t be good for her, but she won’t listen.”

Badger was nodding sympathetically. “My granddad was stubborn like that,” he said. “We lost him a year ago last spring.”

“Really? Because he wouldn’t take his medicine?” Tears were streaming down the young woman’s face in little black rivulets of dissolved mascara. She dug in her tiny denim purse and fished out a creased snapshot. “This is my nana with her race cap on. See, it’s one of yours, from your old team. I gave it to her for her birthday the year you won Darlington, and she just loved it.”

Solemnly, Badger examined the grainy snapshot of a grinning old lady in a racing hat. “She needs to take her medicine, though,” he said. “What’s her name?”

The girl sniffled. “Dreama. D-R-E-A-M-A.”

Badger took one of the autograph cards and wrote across the top:
Dreama, Please Take Your Pills. Badger Jenkins.
“There,” he said, handing it back to the tearful pit lizard. “Maybe that will help. You tell her I can’t afford to lose any fans.” He shook hands with the girl and her friend, who now seemed much younger and less worldly than they had seemed before. “I have to go now,” he said, nodding toward Sark. “They need me to do a radio interview or something.”

The two women thanked him with moist smiles and as soon as they turned away, Badger got up from the table and hurried toward the motor home before anyone else could waylay him.

“That was pretty amazing,” said Sark. “You were great.”

Badger shrugged. “You get used to it,” he said.

“No, you were great with everybody. You were kind and sweet. But what impressed me the most was that you made those two pit lizards forget all about hitting on you. How did you
do
that?”

He shrugged. “I treated them like people,” he said. He ambled off, muttering something about Gatorade in the fridge.

Sark stared after him, wondering for the hundredth time whether Badger Jenkins was an old soul possessing great wisdom or a simpleton who was too dumb to be let out alone.

“I
t’s strange, isn’t it?” said Sigur Nelson, the rear tire carrier. She was watching the thunderous crowd reactions to the driver introductions before the start of the race. “The driver gets all the fame and the glamour, and yet he’s just one member of the team. He gets the private jet and the motor home and his picture on the tee shirts, and what do
we
get? A cattle car charter flight to the city where the race is being held, and half a cut-rate motel room apiece. And the pay! Don’t even talk about that!”

“But Badger is famous,” said Taran. “He doesn’t even have his own jet and he rents that motor home, but he certainly deserves all that stuff.”

“You think so?” said Reve. “Take an extra second on the pit stop a few times and see how well he does. Leave the cap off the brake line and see what happens to his points standings after the race. Nobody appreciates us, but we’re important, too.”

“I think Badger appreciates us,” said Taran.

“I don’t,” said Reve, and Sigur nodded in agreement. “I think that to him we’re the spear carriers in the opera of his life. I’d be surprised if he even remembered my name.”

Taran, who had been nervous already, was now on the verge of tears. “Badger is always nice to me. He always smiles when he sees me, and he says, ‘Hey, Sweetie.’”

“That’s because he can’t remember your name,” said Sigur. “You want to think he’s kind. He is a handsome man, and because he is a rural Southerner, he is basically polite, just like Swedes. I think you cut him all kinds of slack on account of that. Pretty people always get extra credit just for winning the genetic lottery. I’ve never seen any evidence that he gives a damn about any of us.”

“I don’t see how he could stay humble with all the money, and the media, and the adulation of the fans. Of course he thinks he’s hot stuff. But we work just as hard as he does to make this team a success.”

Taran shook her head. “Badger deserves all of it.”

Reve sneered. “Why? Because you think he’s handsome?”

“No. Because he’s the one who has to go out there and risk his life.”

They had made it into the Daytona 500, qualifying for the Great American Race despite the predictions of half the motorsports pundits in the business, especially the self-appointed ones on the Internet.

Late Thursday night on the laptop in her motel room, Sark reported on the week’s events to Ed Blair.

Hey, Ed! According to Julie Carmichael, our chief engineer, “By the grace of God and the genius of Jay Bird Thomas,” Badger Jenkins is now one of the forty-three entries in the Daytona 500. There is a great sense of relief and accomplishment here at 86 headquarters. But I think the real feeling is that, although Badger is an incredible driver, we were also very lucky.

Yo, Sark! Glad to hear your team made the big race. Maybe I’ll watch it while I read the
New York Times
Sunday afternoon. Did your boy win the qualifying race?

Nope. Let me see if I can explain without making you sorry you asked. You can get in to the Daytona 500 by being one of the thirty-five top finishing teams from last year—but since the 86 team did not even exist last year, that was not an option for us. You can also get in by scoring one of the best times in the qualifying round. Or you can finish first or second in one of the races that determines who gets in.

I almost understood that, but then my eyes glazed over. So via which of these many choices did Badger & Company get in?

Well, that’s where it gets even more complicated, Ed. One of the guys who got in on time trials also finished really well in the qualifying race, and since you don’t need both of those ways to gain entry into the Daytona 500, that created an opportunity for next guy on the list to make it in, and so on. Anyhow, Badger did really well in the Bud 150, even though he didn’t place in the top five. But there were a lot of wrecks caused by aggressive drivers, and he managed to avoid them, and then by some miracle, he did not have any engine problems or tire malfunctions, so partly by being a good driver and partly by being fortunate, he squeaked by, and after his competitors qualified in other ways, he was the last guy to make it in to the Daytona 500 on the basis of his qualifying speed. The team seems to be alternately thrilled and terrified at the prospect of being in the big race.

Well, thanks for that erudite explanation of the intricacies of stock car racing rituals, but hey, Sark, the next time I ask you a casual question like that, could you just say, “They decide that by examining chicken entrails.” It would make just as much sense to me and it would save you a lot of typing.

See? I told you this sport wasn’t for dummies! Oops—I sound like a convert, don’t I? Well, at least it’s all beginning to make more sense to me. I’ll keep you posted on our adventures.

I’ll look for you in Victory Lane Sunday afternoon.

Yeah. That’ll happen. I just hope he finishes before the start of next year’s race.

Badger got more requests for interviews after they had lucked their way into the starting lineup for the race. The press had a command center of cubicles and TV monitors in a large building in the infield of the speedway, and Sark had to usher Badger in for a press conference on Friday, where he stood beside Tuggle squinting in the bright television camera lights on the little stage at the front of the room. The fact that he had made the race was not the big story. The fact that the All-Woman Team had made the race—now,
that
was news.

“So what’s it like to work with a handsome race car driver?” someone called out.

Tuggle shrugged. “Let me check with one of Kasey Kahne’s people and I’ll let you know.”

Amid the laughter, she and Badger exchanged a high-five look. They had been expecting that question, and Badger himself had suggested that answer. They fielded the rest of the puff questions with equal ease, reserving the serious attention to the real questions about race strategy and team preparations.

The final question, directed to Badger by a smirking male sport writer, was also inevitable. “Hey, Badger! Tell us about your sponsor—
Vagenya
!”

Badger smiled. “I know your wife wanted you to ask us that, Bob.”

“Tuggle, do you use Vagenya, or does Badger do the trick?”

Tuggle’s scowl could have lowered room temperature, and Badger, eying her, shook his head sadly. “You boys are going to get me in trouble here. You know what a temper she’s got.”

When the delighted laughter died down, Badger assumed his earnest were-retriever expression, and said, “Vagenya is serious medicine, folks. If our advertising can bring it to the attention of people who need it, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

The respectful silence almost lasted long enough for them to make a graceful exit, but then a quick-thinking wag from
Sports Illustrated
said, “Well, if you crash into Mark Martin’s Viagra car, they’ll probably have to turn the hose on you to get them apart.”

In an unspoken accord, Tuggle and Badger smiled weakly, nodded their good-byes to the assembled journalists, and left the room before the laughter subsided.

All in all, the questions had been entirely predictable, and they handled themselves well for a first team press conference. They had declined to hug for the cameras, and they had not allowed themselves to be baited into making incautious remarks.

“We did okay,” said Badger.

“Unless they make up quotes for us,” grunted Tuggle as they left the building.

The rest of the crew didn’t see much of Badger before race day, prompting Reve to mutter about the
Upstairs Downstairs
nature of racing hierarchy. Drivers were treated like royalty, and the number of volunteers for the harem boggled the mind.

“They must think they’re gods,” muttered Jeanne, who had just seen a stunningly beautiful girl hit on a pit crew guy who looked like a garden gnome. And he wasn’t even a Cup driver. She could not imagine the offers
they
got.

“When we can’t find him, he must be somewhere screwing like a mink,” said Sigur.

“Well, you’ll never know,” Kathy Erwin told them. “In the old days, this place could have topped Sodom and Gomorrah, but nowadays they tend to be more discreet.”

“Most of the drivers are married,” said Taran.

Kathy took a deep breath, struggled to keep a straight face, and mostly succeeded. “Yes, that’s quite true, Taran,” she said.

“Badger isn’t married, though,” said Jeanne. “He’s probably buying his condoms by the case.”

“You’ll never catch him,” said Kathy. “And since we have to work with him, believe me, you don’t want to. It’s none of our business. Just be glad he doesn’t hit on
us
.”

They were never able to find out what Badger was doing in his limited free time in Daytona, but they pictured him frequenting expensive restaurants in the company of movie stars far into the night, and possibly sleeping off a hangover beside said starlet on the race morning before the drivers’ meeting.

All except Taran, that is. Although she would never have admitted it to anyone for fear of being laughed to scorn, Taran kept thinking of an illustration she’d seen once in a book on King Arthur, depicting the medieval squire on the night before his ordination, kneeling in prayer before an altar, his head resting against the hilt of his broadsword. She pictured Badger in his purple firesuit, helmet under his arm, kneeling in prayer in his motor home. She found this image so comforting that she resolved never to find out what he really did on the morning of a race.

But they were busy enough, anyhow, getting ready for the race, occasionally signing an autograph or posing for photos with passing fans, or shooing away journalists who were curious about the all-female pit crew. They spent long hours at the track, ate Granola bars and peanut butter sandwiches in the hauler, and trudged back to the hotel long after dark, too tired to do much besides shower and fall into bed, getting ready to do it all again the next day.

“I can’t believe I’m really here,” said Jeanne Mowbray, the tire carrier, on one of the rides back to the hotel. “When I was a kid back in Ohio, I lived next to the highway that the haulers took heading for the speedway up in Michigan. We’d get lawn chairs and put them up in a pasture alongside the road, and just sit there and watch those brightly painted haulers roll by. Nobody we knew even went to the race, but we’d listen to it on the radio. And we had seen the trucks go by.” She sighed. “And now—I’m here!”

“There’s an ocean out there somewhere,” said Cindy Corlett. “I never thought I’d get this close to an ocean and not see it.”

“I’ve been coming here since I was eight years old,” said Kathy Erwin, “And I’ll tell you what my daddy used to tell me when I’d ask to go to the beach:
Just pretend you’re in Vegas, honey.”

“Well, if Badger wins, I’m going to the beach,” said Cindy.

Kathy snickered. “If Badger wins, Cindy, the beach will come to
you.
”

Finally, Sunday arrived, a gray day of leaden clouds and cool temperatures, and an ocean of people all converging on the speedway, those that weren’t there already, that is. Some of the spectators arrived in campers days before the race itself and spent Speed Week in a Mardi Gras of revelry. But for the pit crew Sunday was a dizzying combination of work day, final exam, and D-day all rolled into one. More than one of them had sent her breakfast swirling down the toilet before they set out for the track in the predawn darkness.

A few more hours of preparation, a pep talk from Tuggle, and they would be as ready as they’d ever be. From behind the stack of tires that she’d be changing in the race that afternoon, Sigur Nelson peered at a sturdy blond man wearing an orange Cingular NASCAR jacket. He was nodding solemnly at their crew chief, who was gesturing and talking to him in urgent tones that the pit crew couldn’t overhear. Sigur blinked and looked again.

“Hey, Kathy!” she hissed. “What is Jeff Burton doing in our garage? Isn’t he driving the 31 for Childress today?”

Kathy Erwin, the only crew member from a NASCAR family, took a long look at the visitor. “That’s not Jeff Burton,” she whispered back. “It’s his older brother.”

“The one who won Daytona a few years back?”

Kathy shook her head. “No. Not Ward. I’m pretty sure that’s Brian Burton over there. He’s the middle one. Instead of going to NASCAR like his brothers, he finished college and runs the family construction company.”

“Oh. The smart one.”

“Yeah, but he’s also the one who won a slew of go-cart championships when the Burtons were kids. People say he’s the best driver of the three of them.”

“The best driver in the family did not turn pro?”

“It happens,” said Kathy. “Dale’s daughter Kelley was the most talented of the Earnhardt kids. Even better than Little E., they say.”

Sigur digested this information. “They’re not replacing Badger out there today, are they?”

“No. I think they’re replacing his spotter. I haven’t seen Tony around this morning, and yesterday at dinner he said he felt like he was coming down with something.”

“He’s allergic to shrimp,” said Taran. “I warned him not to eat fried seafood at the restaurant last night. They use the same oil to cook everything. He says he’ll be okay in a couple of hours, but Tuggle thought we ought not to take any chances.”

“Brian Burton would be the perfect spotter for Badger,” said Kathy. “He’s smart, and he knows how to drive. I’ll bet they’ve known each other for years. Badger used to go duck hunting with Ward. They all had similar driving experiences early on. And most important—”

“Are the Burtons from Georgia?” asked Taran.

“Virginia. But they sound a lot like Badger.” Kathy grinned. “Boy, when those two get going, it’s gonna sound like Navajo code talkers on our scanners. Oh, look! I was right. Tuggle is offering him one of our purple team jackets with the Vagenya logo on the back.”