Once Around the Track (4 page)

“I like Badger just fine,” said Miss Texas.

“I’m sure that a lot of women will agree with you,” said Christine. “That bodes well for our recruiting of new secondary sponsors. Companies who sell primarily to women will want an image that appeals to them.”

“Oh, honey, he does.”

“And remember that souvenir merchandising is a significant source of income in motorsports. Pretty faces sell tee shirts…hats…coffee mugs. The potential is huge. Even if he loses, we’ll still win. But, of course, we want to win.”

G
race Buell Hoskins Tuggle hoped that the job interview wasn’t going to include lunch, not that she minded a free meal, but from the looks of the ladies on the interview committee, every one of ’em about two ribs short of a shadow, she figured their idea of a noonday meal would be a lettuce leaf and an Ex-Lax pill. They were skinny enough to be drivers’ wives for sure, but they looked a little too steely-eyed and Old Money for that.

Now back in the old days, when Daddy had been racing, the wives were whoever the racers had happened to marry back when they started out working in the factory or wherever, and their lined faces and plump bodies testified to a lifetime of hard work, starchy food, and infinite patience with race-crazed husbands. Grace, who was pleased that her initials also stood for
Grievous Bodily Harm,
but who preferred simply to be known as Tuggle, did not hold with fad diets and plastic surgery. In her opinion, if being a willowy size two got you a race car driver for a husband, then they ought to put warning labels on Slim-Fast.

Wheel men! Lawn jockeys with 800-horsepower egos. Fortunately, she was past the age to confuse
foolhardy
with
sexy,
which was just as well, because no driver worth his salt would listen to a pretty girl giving him orders over the head set anyhow. They’d listen to her, though. If they had any sense they would.

Her daddy had been a force to be reckoned with on the racing circuit, back in the days when North Carolina was the hub of the world—Hickory, Asheville, Wilkesboro, Winston-Salem. She often said that her blood type was
Hi-Test
. And then there were her two husbands—the driving one from her wild younger days, who had put her heart so far into the wall that she thought she’d never get over him. Well, she hadn’t really, that was the truth of it. But at least she had learned from that experience that restrictor plates were not a bad thing for the human heart. Her second husband, Doyle, was a mechanic, and she claimed that she’d married him “for entertainment.” He didn’t take your breath away like the first one did, but he didn’t make you want to put a hose to the exhaust pipe, either, so she reckoned it evened out—less joy, less sorrow. That’s what getting older mostly meant anyhow.

Drivers.
Like tigers. A lot of fun to look at, maybe even okay for a brief, wary encounter, but try to hold on to one and he will rip you to shreds. Well, maybe times had changed with all these West Coast pretty boys coming into the sport, but Tuggle didn’t think so, and she rejoiced in the fact that she was too old to care.

She wondered if she ought to offer the benefit of her wisdom to this charmed circle of designer-clad ladies, but she decided against it. They were too old to care, too, whether they knew it or not. And maybe they were into the sport for philosophical reasons. An all-woman team. Well, whatever kept the sponsors happy.

She assumed an expression of polite interest, which on her bulldog features looked like a double-dog-dare, as she waited for the questioning to commence.

The regal one they called Christine began by saying, “Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about yourself, Grace.”

Tuggle winced at the sound of her given name, sounding like a sermon title in the precise diction of this high-maintenance woman. “It’s Tuggle, if it’s all the same to you,” she corrected her. “As for my qualifications, my daddy ran dirt track and Late Model Stocks around the region—wherever he could afford to go and still keep his day job. Back then family was about the only pit crew you could afford, so he trained me and my brothers early on.” As if in answer to an unspoken question, she added, “They’re dead now.” She kept her voice steady—well, mostly steady—willing herself not to think about little Gary, dead in a rice paddy in Vietnam, and Cole, the daredevil, hitting the wall at Hickory in those days before fuel cells, when the word
fire
stuck in your throat.

“And I believe you raced yourself at one time.”

She nodded. “They used to have Powderpuff Derbies, as they called ’em. Good for attracting a crowd to the track on off nights. Daddy said I was almost as good as Cole, but, of course, I quit that foolishness once I grew up. Keeping a marriage going is a dern sight harder than winning an old stock car race.”

“Times have changed since those days,” said one of the younger women in a not-from-around-here accent. “NASCAR is rocket science now. What makes you think you could manage a team in a sport dominated by engineers?”

“Well, I reckon you will have engineers,” said Tuggle. “Strategy hasn’t changed. Maybe the cars are better now, and NASCAR keeps adding rules as fast as folks can think up ways around ’em, but it’s still the same old sport it used to be.”

“Now, we realize that our aim of having an all-women team is a bit unusual.”

Tuggle shrugged. “Well, it’s not traditional, of course. Back in my day, the old-time drivers had a saying:
No tits in the pits
. But times do change, don’t they?” She flashed a wolfish smile at the circle of frozen faces.

“Times do indeed change,” murmured Christine. “We consulted various experts, you know—fitness instructors, physicians, engineers—and they seem to think that there’s no reason a female pit crew couldn’t do the job, providing that they were carefully chosen and properly trained.”

“Likely as not,” Tuggle agreed. Women came in all shapes and sizes, especially in these exercise-crazed days. She’d known a few gals who could bench-press tractors. Find some of them and there wouldn’t be a problem.

“Of course, we will need someone to oversee the operation. I understand that is a customary to have a team manager and a crew chief, but we see no reason why a competent person couldn’t do both those things as one job. What do you think?”

Tuggle thought she’d have to have had more than one Bloody Mary for breakfast to tell this group of wine and cheese ladies what she thought about anything. She needed the job, and if that meant agreeing to use St. Christopher’s medals for hubcaps, she’d go along with it to keep the team owners happy.

“And we are already in negotiations with a driver. This one.” With a proprietary smirk, Christine Berenson slid an eight-by-ten photo out of a folder and passed it across the desk.

Tuggle contemplated the picture of Badger Jenkins, who was looking smolderingly at the camera, his legs spread far enough apart for a prostate exam. She snorted, unimpressed.

“Yeah, I know Badger,” she said. “He’s all right. Good seat-of-the-pants driver.”

Two of the investors glanced at each other, lips twitching. “We noticed that,” one of them said.

Tuggle scowled. She didn’t hold with people who treated drivers like cat toys. Or with drivers treating fans like that, for that matter. “
Seat of the pants
means a driver who can react quickly and handle things by instinct, whatever happens out there. A natural.” She glanced again at the photo. “I can see how you might misinterpret that phrase, though, with this to go by. That boy keeps sitting like that, he’s gonna get himself arrested.”

“For indecent exposure?”

“For false advertising.”

The investors glanced at one another, and then wisely decided not to pursue this line of questioning. “So, would you be comfortable working with Badger Jenkins?”

She considered it, knowing that the bosses wanted only a yes/no answer from her. What they really wanted was a
yes
answer as quickly as possible, but it wasn’t that simple. Like any Cup driver, Badger had his good points and his bad points. The question was whether he was good enough to make putting up with the rest worthwhile, and more importantly, whether the team could get anybody better who was likely to be less trouble. On the whole, she thought that they couldn’t.

Would she be
comfortable
working with Badger? Well, he was a sweet boy, no meanness in him, as far as she could see. He could be stubborn and he could show temper, but he wouldn’t be a race car driver if that weren’t the case. She did know Badger, and she believed in the adage “Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.” At least she knew where the trouble was. He might be a pussycat at sponsor events, but it practically took a cattle prod to get him to one. Sometimes he was so handsome it would take your breath away, but he might forget to shave for a day or two, and usually he schlepped around in old clothes that Goodwill wouldn’t have taken off your hands. But skinny boys in firesuits looked like warrior angels. Badger
gift-wrapped
would sell some tee shirts, all right.

He could be slipperier than a weasel in getting out of things he didn’t want to do, and he’d roll in to the track around midday on Thursday, unless you twisted his arm to show up earlier. You had to watch him every minute, or else he’d slope off to do his own thing—trout fishing, flying model airplanes, or Lord knows what. He thought that anything that wasn’t spelled out in his contract was a personal favor on his part, necessary or not. And nobody could make him understand that publicity and interviews were important. She understood exactly why his previous team had let him go. She knew she’d have to have a come-to-Jesus talk with him at least once a week to keep him in line.

On the other hand, he wasn’t a bad bargain as drivers went. He’d be sober when he needed to be. He didn’t treat women like party favors. And he was a loyal friend who kept his word once he gave it. You could trust him—if you shouted at him enough.

She saw no reason to share his faults with the team owners. Badger would be her problem.

“Yeah,” she said, “I reckon I can work with old Badger.”

She heard several sighs of relief, and then one of the older women said, “And do you think Badger Jenkins will be able to deal with an all-female pit crew?”

Tuggle had thought about that. “Sort of like
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
? Only in this case, it’ll be
seven
Snow Whites and
one
dwarf.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Tuggle…did you say
dwarf
?”

She waved away the question. “Figure of speech is all. He ain’t that little—for a driver, that is. Mark Martin could have about driven a die-cast. I reckon Badger and I would stand nose to nose. ’Course I outweigh him,” she finished cheerfully, ignoring the shudders of the scrawnier investors. She imagined them later pushing away untouched plates of salad. “But you were asking about temperament, weren’t you?”

Several of the women nodded, perhaps not trusting themselves to speak.

“Well, it will mostly depend on how well they do their jobs, doncha know. A driver would be happy with a tribe of chimpanzees if they could get him out of the pit on four new tires in twelve seconds. You take much over thirteen, though, and a band of angels wouldn’t satisfy him. So get me good people and don’t worry about whether their booties were pink or blue.”

There was another awkward silence while the investors exchanged more significant looks. Must be telepaths, thought Tuggle. Finally, Christine said,
“Find you good people?
But surely that is your task, not ours?”

“Well, you’re the bosses,” said Tuggle amiably. “Like you said before, most teams nowadays have a crew manager and a crew chief. It’s the manager who hires the personnel, and the crew chief who makes sure they function smoothly as a team.” Noting the dismay on the women’s faces, Tuggle added kindly, “Of course, there’s no law that says you have to have a team manager. They never bothered with such things back in the day. Why, Bill Elliott’s crew was mostly his family, and he certainly did all right for himself, so I guess if you want me to handle both jobs, I can do it about as well as anybody. Hire the crew. Hmmm.”

Handling both jobs would be more work, but it also meant more independence—one less person to answer to. Grace Tuggle prized independence above rubies, and she was even willing to work harder to maintain her autonomy.

“You’ll need to pay me some more money to do both jobs,” she said.

No point in being a damn fool about it, she reasoned. “I’ll do both jobs for $950,000.” That way she didn’t have frighten them with the word “million,” but crew chiefs didn’t come cheap. To sweeten the deal, she added, “I can save us some money on the pit crew by hiring people who can do double duty.”

“I thought we had to have seven over-the-wall crewmen.”

Tuggle nodded. “Yes, but that’s for race day. What’s the point of hiring people who only work a day or two a week? If we get enough applicants for the jobs, we can hire the ones who also have another skill we can use. Say, a mechanic or a computer person, or someone who can also drive the hauler. That way we’ll have fewer workers on the payroll and a more efficient team. We also need a tire specialist—well, we can probably train a likely candidate, within reason.”

“What’s a tire specialist?”

Tuggle swallowed a sign of exasperation. “That’s the person who inflates the tires. Well, first we let the air out of the tire and refill it with nitrogen.”

They stared at her in puzzled fascination. “With
nitrogen
? Why on earth—?”

“I don’t know, but everybody does it. It’s not illegal. Trust me, okay? And when you hire an engineer, ask him—
her
—why NASCAR teams prefer to run on nitrogen-inflated tires. And as for tire-soaking—”

“What’s that?” asked Christine.

That
was illegal. Most everybody did that, too, but she probably ought not to discuss it with people new to the sport. Tuggle took a long, fortifying breath; then she said, “Well, you want to wash the tires before the race to make sure they haven’t picked up any bits of debris that could cause a blowout.” It seemed plausible enough, as lies went, and no one questioned her explanation.

“So, you’re saying that we can streamline the team and save money on salaries by hiring people who can do two jobs. But wouldn’t such experts cost more?”