“But Badger…I love him so much,” whispered Taran.
“I’ll bet you like him better when he’s not around,” said Rosalind. “Tell me something. What songs make you think of him?”
Like most people who spend a lot of time in their heads, Taran knew her own soundtrack pretty well. “‘My Sweet Lord’ by George Harrison,” she said. “And-well, it’s a pretty mixed bag. ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’ from Jesus Christ Superstar. Ummm…Some old ones my grandma used to sing to me…‘Abide with Me’…‘In the Garden’…‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand’…Let’s see, what else?”
“Never mind,” said Rosalind grimly. “Those will do. Taran, think about it. Those songs are all hymns.”
“What?”
“Hymns. They’re not sexy love songs; they are expressions of religious devotion. Think about that.” She laughed. “Oh, boy, the ultimate teaser stud. Badger Jenkins is not a guy to you. He’s the Impossible Dream.”
“That’s another one of my songs,” said Taran.
“Of course it is. If anyone ever loved purely and chastely from afar, it is definitely you.”
“How did you know?”
Rosalind sighed. “Oh, it takes one to know one, Taran. I’m not very good with people, either. I’m not beautiful, which makes me shy, and I have an engineer’s brain, which makes me stand back and examine everything critically, even my own emotions.”
“No happy ending, huh?” said Taran, wiping her eyes.
“No, this is the happy ending,” said Rosalind. “You walk away and the dream never dies. If you ever got him, even for just one night, that would be the tragedy, because you might get Badger, but you’d lose the Dark Angel forever-and that’s who you really wanted, kiddo. The Dream. The Dark Angel.”
CHAPTER XXII
What the Hell Happened?
Ed! We won the race at Darlington! That means we made the All-Stars!
Oh, good, Sark. I always liked baseball better, anyway.
Smart ass. The All-Star is next weekend’s nonpoints race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Home turf. The only people eligible to compete in this race are (I just had to look this up to write my press release) drivers who won races either in the current year or last year, or new drivers for car owners who won. Also eligible are drivers who are past Cup champions and/or are past winners of the All-Star race. Or whoever wins the All-Star Open. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that.
Surely you don’t think I’m going to Google the NASCAR All-Star rules? You’ve already told me more than I wanted to know. But I get the gist of it, Racer Girl. Your team just became eligible for a winners-only competition, and you are unaccountably excited at the prospect. I suppose this is good for the greater glory of Badger, though.
You know, Ed, I’ve been thinking about that. When I first got into NASCAR, I thought that racing was all about one guy-the driver. But it isn’t. To use your baseball analogy, on our team Badger is like the pitcher. He may be the highest paid person on the team and the one who gets the most attention, but he wouldn’t get anywhere in competition by himself. Unless everybody does a good job at their own positions, he’s going to lose.
Of course, he’s going to lose! Oh, wait, he did win last week, didn’t he? I actually found myself boasting of my tenuous connection to Team Badger to a sports writer from the Charlotte Observer. Get me a hat or something, will you?
Sure, if you buy me dinner. You don’t want it signed by Badger, do you? Everybody has been complaining lately that he never does the autographing of items people send to the team. We’re thinking of getting a cattle prod. Plus some of the Vagenya Pharmaceuticals people showed up at the race last week, and Badger was supposed to go do a meet and greet with them, but he never showed up. I got some of the blame for that one, because I was supposed to get him there, but I couldn’t find him. They ought to hire him a nanny!
I thought he had one. That Albigre woman. By the way, I have some information about her that I’ll bet you will find interesting.
You did? Is she an ax murderess?
No, but I believe she is dangerous nonetheless, and for dinner and a Vagenya hat signed by the elusive Badger, I shall reveal all.
The All-Star Race is held in May at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, just off I-85, about twelve miles north of Charlotte, within easy commuting distance of nearly every racing operation in the sport. This race pitted the best against the best, competing for money, rather than for points toward the Cup championship. The mile-and-a-half tri-oval track had recently been resurfaced, but it had been a fast track even before that. With only five degrees of banking in the straightaways, drivers found it easy to maintain high speeds, and easy to pass other cars. Lowe’s was a popular track: a fun place to race and an easy commute from home base.
Team Vagenya had no real hopes of winning a second race in a row, especially not at a fast, flattish track that was usually dominated by the big team superstars, but at least the win at Darlington had put them into the race, and that alone was something to be proud of.
Up in the spotters’ position on the top of the speedway, Tony Lafon watched the progress of the All-Star race with growing apprehension. Drivers who couldn’t spell “invincible” were driving as if they were. His current concern was with one of the more reckless contenders, a fairly new driver who had managed to win one race the previous season, despite the fact that he was considered both reckless and inexperienced. Generally, competitors are referred to in spotters’ conversations by car number, but this particular driver was universally known as the “Weapon.” You didn’t want him anywhere near your car, because he would take you out, sometimes on purpose, and sometimes simply because he seemed to lack the skill to bump and run without leaving catastrophe in his wake. “Driving over his head,” the veterans called it.
As the race went on, the Weapon seemed to become progressively more obnoxious, spinning out a former champion and narrowly missing a collision with a couple of other drivers. Surely one of the old-timers would swat this puppy into the wall before the end of the race, Tony thought, but lap after lap went by, and the Weapon plowed on without retribution.
For Tony, the events on lap 76 seemed to unfold in slow motion below him. He realized that the lapped and damaged car directly in the path of Badger and the Weapon was moving much more slowly than they were, and that as they approached that point on the track, the Weapon was trying to overtake the 86.
Badger and the Weapon were running side by side going into Turn Two, approaching the lapped car on the inside. Badger held his line on the high side, but-true to form-the other driver, positioned in the middle, didn’t back down, and he ran out of room.
Tony was shouting, “Watch the lap car…Weapon on the inside…still there…still there…Holy shit…Bad-geerrrr!”
With nowhere to go, the Weapon clipped the lapped car and got shot up the track into Badger and then the wall. Badger’s car climbed the wall before slamming again into the other driver’s car. Twisted together, two crumpled cars slid onto the apron.
Both cars were clearly out of the race. The concern now was whether the drivers were all right.
Badger dropped the window net, and as he climbed out, he looked over at the window of the other car, waiting for its window net to drop-but it didn’t.
Badger didn’t wait for the Weapon to show his face. He climbed out of the window and headed for the other car, which was sitting on the pavement a few yards away from the 86. Badger’s clenched fists and his body language suggested that if the Weapon wasn’t hurt, he soon would be.
Badger was one step away from his opponent’s car, peering through the window net, which was still in place, when he seemed to realize that the driver inside was slumped forward in his seat, not moving. His fists unclenched, and he looked around, making sure that the safety crew knew he needed help. The helmet turned slowly toward the infield where the safety crews were just starting to roll. He waved one gloved hand and nodded.
An instant later, w
hen he turned his attention back to the wreck, flames were engulfing the car inside and out.
In the pit stall, Taran started to scream.
Badger, still wearing all his gear, reached into the flames and lowered the window net, thrusting his body waist-deep into the burning car, searching in the darkness for the fire system plunger. He hit the trigger.
While the fire was held at bay by the spraying fire bottle, Badger backed out of the car, throwing off his helmet once he was clear.
“Why is he taking his helmet off?” asked Taran, who had covered her face with her hands and now was watching the scene through splayed fingers.
Kathy mouthed the words at her and pointed. “He’s going back in.”
Then Taran understood. Those cumbersome helmets hardly fit through the window by themselves, and they were hard to see and maneuver in. It could also be filled with smoke from the first time he went in. Besides, the Weapon was still wearing his own helmet, and two helmets trying to come out that car window at the same time would not work at all.
The smoke was thicker now, making it hard to see what was actually happening at the Weapon’s car, but Tuggle didn’t have to see to know.
Badger was getting him out. The safety crews were heading toward the wreck, but Badger wouldn’t wait for them to get there. Firesuits protect against fire only for a matter of seconds. Taking a breath in the open air, Badger reached back into the burning car and removed the steering wheel. If he undid the driver’s belts, the radio harness and the air hose could be ripped away, and the Hans device would come out with the injured driver.
Badger would tuck his chin over the Weapon’s shoulder from behind and fall backward with his arms under the Weapon’s arm pits and around his chest, pulling him partway out of the window. With the belts undone, the Weapon fell forward into Badger, who leveraged against the car and snaked the unconscious driver out the window and away from the flames.
From her place in the 86 pit stall, Reve Galloway was peering across the track through curtains of smoke to watch the rescue, when an odd thing happened. She should have seen a scrawny country boy in a tacky purple firesuit yanking a reckless jerk out of a bashed-in car…but somehow…
For just those few foggy seconds that it took for Badger to rescue the unconscious driver, everybody on Team Vagenya saw what Taran saw all the time. Him. The Dark Angel.
Someone taller than Badger Jenkins, and infinitely more graceful, had swung effortlessly out of his own car, which had crashed at nearly 200 miles per hour. Then without a moment’s hesitation he had walked over to the other wreck and, it seemed to her, straight into a wall of flames. Now, instead of worrying about his own safety, he was risking his life to rescue someone he didn’t even like. His movements were as deliberate and assured as those of a dancer. It was as if the danger did not exist. As if the wreck were simply a staged exercise in precision and movement. How beautiful he was, Reve thought. Why did we never see this before? Without any sense of irony, she found herself framing the scene in Hamlet’s words: In form and moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a god.
He was, indeed, a paragon of animals, but only for the span of perhaps a minute. Just as he pulled the unconscious Weapon out of the burning car, the rescue workers arrived and sprayed both drivers with fire extinguishers. Badger tottered for a moment in the smoke and mist, letting the Weapon slide gently to the ground. He staggered away for a few feet, as if he were heading back for the 86, but before he reached it, he came to a swaying stop, and then his knees buckled and he fell forward onto the track.
For Reve, the scene seemed to unfold in slow motion with the sound on mute, but as soon as Badger’s body hit the pavement, the world went back to fast forward and the soundtrack in her head was scream after scream after scream. It was only the sore throat she had later that told her whose screams they had been.
Taran didn’t know if the race was over or not. She was shaking with cold, although no one else had seemed affected. Badger fell…She couldn’t remember what had happened next… Had she fainted?…Someone had led her to the hauler and wrapped her in a blanket. She had sat there-she didn’t know how long-holding a Styrofoam cup of thermos coffee in both hands. Tuggle, recognizing the signs of shock, had wanted to send her to the infield care center, but she had refused to go, afraid that they would keep her, and then she would not know what had happened to Badger. They had taken him away in an ambulance. Concussion, Kathy Erwin had said. She had seen enough of them to know.
“Is he going to be all right?” someone had asked.
Kathy shrugged. “Probably,” she said. “Head injuries are tricky, though. Sometimes they mess up your sense of balance or something. If it’s bad enough, he’ll never race again.”
More time passed, and the voices faded in and out. The coffee grew cold.
She thought that Sigur had come in for a little while, or perhaps Cindy. And she thought she must have slept for a bit. But then Tony Lafon had appeared, looking worried. He cupped her chin in his hand and peered at her intently. “Are you okay? Reve said you fainted.”
Taran shivered. “Where is everybody?”
“All over the place. Seeing to the car-what’s left of it. Packing up to get out of here. Checking on Badger. He’s going to be okay. Head injury. Smoke inhalation. They took him to the hospital. I think everybody forgot about you in all the chaos, so I figured I’d better come and find you.”
Taran tried to smile. “Thanks. I’m okay. It’s just that I’ve never seen him wreck before. Well, I mean, I have-back when he was just my driver, but now-” Her eyes welled up with tears, and she covered her mouth to hold back the sobs.
Tony looked away. “You’re really torn up over him, aren’t you?” he said at last.
Taran nodded. “That is exactly the right phrase to use,” she said. If she had to put it into words-how she felt about him-the simile that came to her mind would be, appropriately enough, an image of torture from medieval times. She had found a description of it in Henry V. Fluellen had said of the robber Bardolph: His nose is executed and his fire’s out.
The phrase was a reference to the one final indignity inflicted upon the prisoner before a medieval execution: the nose was slit with a sharp knife, opened, severing the cartilage between the nostrils and removing the anchorage that affixed the nose to the victim’s face. The incision was not fatal, but it was cruel-both painful and disfiguring, resulting in fountains of blood gushing uselessly from the wound.
Over the years the term for that punishment “his nose is open” began to be used metaphorically to describe hopeless infatuation, when feelings spill out, causing a scene that is agony to the sufferer, distasteful to witness, and completely without purpose. And so it was with her feelings for him. She felt an overpowering wave of emotion, so strong as to cancel out everything else, and yet, painful, useless, and unpleasant to watch. It hardly felt like love, because it was so one-sided, so hopeless, and hardly voluntary.
“Do you want me to take you to the hospital to see him?”
The words were out of her mouth almost before she thought them. “Oh, no!” she said. “I don’t really know him.”
Several hours later Tuggle pushed open the door to the hospital room, knowing that Badger wouldn’t care-and might not even know-that she had come empty-handed, but a strict sense of propriety inherited from an iron-willed grandmother made her feel guilty about it anyhow. But she’d be damned if she’d bring him flowers. Some sports reporters were sure to be loitering around in the hall somewhere, and a story about the “lady crew chief” bringing flowers to the handsome race car driver would be too good for them to pass up. No way in hell. Knowing Badger Jenkins, she thought he might have been grateful for a six-pack of Corona and a pack of Marlboro Lights, but she was pretty sure that his doctors wouldn’t thank her for showing up with them, and she knew better than to give him a novel, so she ended up bringing him nothing-except some bad news she was in no hurry to
give him.
Badger was looking even smaller and paler than usual, tucked under the white sheets of the hospital bed and surrounded by vases of flowers covering almost every flat surface, sent in by fans and by well-wishers who lacked Tuggle’s horror of sentimental gestures. God knows where they had obtained them at that hour on such short notice. Wal-Mart, maybe.
He looked gaunt and weak, but at least he wasn’t bandaged up. The one good thing you could say about smoke inhalation and a head injury was that they weren’t messy conditions.
An article on one of the motorsports Web sites had likened the brain in a high-speed car crash to “putting a tomato in a cocktail shaker.” The brain bounced around hitting the inside of the skull, and it got badly bruised and swollen, but with luck and care, it would revert to normal in a few days or a week. Now all they could do was wait to see how badly he was hurt-and how permanently.
Laraine was sitting in a straight chair at his bedside. Tuggle remembered her from the Atlanta race, but now she was looking exhausted and disheveled, as if she had been there for days without leaving, instead of only a few hours. Her clothes were rumpled, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but she had managed to smile when Tuggle came in. Then she touched Badger gently on the shoulder and nodded toward the door.
Badger’s eyes lit up when he saw his crew chief standing there. That was good, Tuggle thought. At least he knew who she was.
“Hey, Tuggle!” he called out. “What the hell happened?”
Tuggle sighed. “Well, you were running second behind the 38 car-”
He brightened. “I was running second?”
“Yeah, it was looking good, but then you came up on a lapped car right after Turn Two, and the Weapon was running with you on the inside, and he got into you…”
Badger scowled. “The Weapon, huh?”
Tuggle nodded. “And you both went into the wall. Hard. How are you feeling?”
Once Around the Track Page 30