St. Dale

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Terence turned the handle of the door, wondering if he were about to be inundated with more face jugs, quilts, and wood carvings, but the exhibits displayed in the paneled den suggested quite a different sort of museum.

  The pine-paneled walls were covered with color photographs of men in coveralls leaning against brightly painted race cars. A bookcase held volumes of coffee-table books on racing and a shelf of small die-cast cars. There were hats and clocks and calendars. Terence noticed that the white number 3 figured prominently in most of these displays, and the same familiar face-a chicken hawk of a man with dark shades and a caterpillar mustache looked back from most of the photos. Terence barely glanced at the leather sofa, the oak desk, or the big-screen television, afterthoughts in a room devoted to an obsession.

  When Terence was nervous, he smiled and smiled, waiting for someone to come to his rescue before he said the wrong thing.

  “Tom wanted to do this himself in his younger days,” said Mrs. Nash from the doorway. “He told me he felt deprived because his family was too well-off to run moonshine, so he used to volunteer to make runs for some of the poor farmers hereabouts.”

  “Last American Hero,” he murmured, glancing at the wall of racing pictures.

  Sarah Nash nodded. “Nearly fifty years ago now. And it wasn’t just Junior Johnson. That’s how most of that first bunch learned to drive. Outrunning the law. Then there were the little races-Wilkesboro, Hickory, Darlington. Your father raced in those a few times-against Ralph Earnhardt, to hear him tell it. Some of them worked in the mills or the furniture factory to support themselves. Raced instead of sleeping, sometimes. He took pride in that.”

  “Did you know him back then?”

  “No,” she said. “My husband owned the factory. But that was a long time ago. By the time Tom tried to make a go of racing for a living, NASCAR had become big business and it took serious money sponsors and a team of mechanics to keep you in a ride. He said he missed his chance. Always regretted it, I think.”

  “But he still followed the sport, obviously.”

  “Yes. Especially Dale.” She nodded toward the man with the number 3 car. “Sometimes I think Tom gave up fighting that cancer after Dale Earnhardt died at Daytona. Anyhow, the rest of the items in this house can wait until you’ve had time to decide what to do. The one thing you have to make up your mind about fairly quickly is this.” She walked to the desk and picked up a travel agent’s brochure. “Tom had already paid for this trip. And you need to decide what to do about that.”

  Terence took the brochure. A Dale Earnhardt Memorial Tour. He scanned the contents. Ten days, beginning in August…visit Winston Cup Speedways…see the races at Bristol and Darlington…“My father planned to do this?”

  She nodded. “Almost enough to stay alive for, in spite of the pain.”

  He looked around the room, at all the familiar faces of NASCAR’s heroes looking out at him from signed photographs. The Allisons. The Pettys. Cale Yarborough. At the artifacts of a pastime he had watched only from a distance. Familiar faces whose images had also been taped to his walls at home-much to the consternation of his mother. Funny thing about DNA, he thought. You spend your whole life assuming that your absent parent is a total stranger with whom you have nothing in common, and then one day you walk into a room and discover another version of yourself.

  “I wish I had known him,” said Terence.

  “I wish you had, too. I think you two would have got along well.”

  He looked again at the travel brochure. “A ticket to Bristol!” he exclaimed. “They’re impossible to come by.”

  Sarah Nash nodded. “That’s exactly what Tom said. There’s two tickets there by the way. Tom gave me one for Christmas.”

  “Oh. You were an Earnhardt fan, too?”

  “Not the way your father was,” she said. “I respected him.” She paused for a moment, as if searching for a diplomatic way of putting it. Then she smiled. “I thought he was a roughneck, if you want the truth. Tom used to enjoy teasing me about that. I’m partial to Bill Elliott myself. But Tom didn’t want to go on the tour alone. Couldn’t, maybe. He was pretty sick by then. So there’s two places booked on the tour, if you’d like to take a friend with you.”

  If Terence had thought about it for even ten more seconds, his practicality would have overruled the impulse. He heard the back door open and then the sound of footsteps: the mourners were filing into the kitchen to pay their respects and the moment would be lost. “I want to go,” he said quickly. He could do it. The tour was months away, and he had vacation time coming. “Will you come with me? It’s the one thing I can find in common with my dad. We could talk about him along the way.”

  “A memorial tour to Tom Palmer as well as to Dale Earnhardt?” Sarah Nash sighed. “Well, I did promise him that I’d go,” she said. “Me. On a Dale Earnhardt memorial bus tour, God help me. Wherever Tom is, he must be laughing right now.”

  Chapter IX

  May the Best Man Win

  The Wedding at Bristol Motor Speedway

  After the obligatory posing for photos of hat waving and three peace salutes against the backdrop of the giant Earnhardt face, the Number Three Pilgrims threaded their way toward the Speedway entrance through a solid mass of race day crowd: spectators, ticket hawkers, photographers, and souvenir vendors. As they walked, Harley pointed out a catwalk bridge shielded with red nylon strips of privacy covering. The elevated walkway snaked its way up from an enclosed area of the parking lot and led down to a private entrance to the building. “Anybody know what that is?” Harley asked, pointing up at it. “You don’t have to raise your hand, Matthew. Lord knows this isn’t school. Okay, then, what?”

  Matthew’s eyes grew round with awe as he contemplated the walkway above them. “That’s where they walk,” he whispered. “It leads to the drivers’ entrance.”

  “That’s right,” said Harley, remembering the feeling of having several hundred people look up to you even if you’re only five feet eight. You get used to that feeling. He had walked up there once. Up there with Elliott and Earnhardt and everybody. He was glad that there was nobody up there now to see him down here. “Well, come on, folks,” he said to the group. “They’re not here yet. Nothing to see here.”

  After a long climb up the stairs, Bekasu led the pack from the interior hallway and out into the sunlight in the Richard Petty section of the grandstand overlooking the center of the oval track. In design and construction, the building resembled a football stadium except that there was no grass on the field of play below. There had been years ago, when football had been played here, but now concrete lined the entire floor of the arena and the brightly painted tractor trailers that transported the race cars to the track were lined up in serried rows within the oval.

  “I still say that it’s a wedding no matter where they hold it, and we’re not properly dressed, and-They’re going to race around that?” Bekasu, pausing for breath, looked straight down for the first time. Haloed in sunshine on the top step of the grandstand, she squinted down into the half-mile oval track, dwarfed on all sides by canyons of concrete bleachers. It was like looking the wrong way through a megaphone.

  Harley Claymore came up beside her and smiled down at the familiar scene. “Yeah, I told you it was confining. You should see what it’s like when you look up from down there.”

  “It looks like the inside of a cement mixer,” murmured Bekasu. “Do they really go 200 miles per hour in that?”

  “Nah! ’Course not!-Ninety miles an hour is about average speed. There’s more than forty cars competing, remember, so things get crowded out there, too. Slows things down.”

  “On that track?” Bekasu pointed a shaking finger at the narrow strip of concrete. “Impossible. You couldn’t get more than three cars abreast on the width of that track.”

  “They don’t race on the flat part of the track,” said Justine. “Don’t you ever listen when I explain things to you? The racing is done up there.” She wave
d her hand, indicating the concrete embankment that encircled the track as a steep sloping wall.

  “But it’s nearly vertical. How could anybody drive on that?”

  “Centrifugal force,” said Terence Palmer softly. “I expect it feels like being in a blender.”

  Bekasu turned to stare at him. He hadn’t said much so far on the tour, and she had wondered if he were a racing fan at all.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, he said, “I learned that in physics class, not on the SPEED Channel.”

  “Well, I can attest to the truth of it,” said Harley. “The race is run there on the embankment, but no matter how crowded it gets, there’s plenty of room for errors.”

  Harley, who had been checking their seat numbers, was pleased to find that they had been situated high up in the grandstands, which was good. Unlike most other sports, the high seats in the grandstands are better than the lower ones for stock car racing, because to really see the race, spectators need an overview of the entire course. So did the drivers themselves. Their vista was limited to the short stretch of road in front of them, which is why each team had a spotter, positioned sniper-like on the very top of the structure, relaying information to the crew and driver about the position of other cars and possible trouble on the track ahead. There were times when a driver’s windshield was so clouded with dust or smoke that his visibility was zero, and the only way for him to keep going, even to get off the track, was to drive blind and rely on the spotter’s directions.

  “It’s remarkably like the Coliseum,” said Bill Knight, peering over Bekasu’s shoulder. “That oval appears to be about the length of the Circus Maximus, which is where the Romans actually held their chariot race, though of course their track was flat. Ninety miles an hour, did you say? The Essedarii couldn’t get up that much speed in chariots. Surely they can’t drive cars up on those steep embankments?”

  “Centrifugal force,” said Harley, trying to look as if he had not just overheard the explanation.

  “Just you wait,” said Justine. “It’s quite a sight.”

  “But surely it would be suicide!”

  “No. Bristol’s pretty safe,” said Harley. “Those are thirty-six-degree angles on the turns, sixteen degrees on the straightaway. Makes it interesting. It’s low speeds, like I said.” He wished the tourists would stay together so that he wouldn’t have to keep answering the same questions over and over.

  “Low speeds?”

  “Well, relatively speaking. They go about 180 at Daytona. And they have crash helmets and safety harnesses and all. It’s exciting to watch, though. The short tracks call for more driving skills than the long flatter speedways. But it does get hot in there. Sometime back in the seventies, twenty-five out of the thirty racers had to let relief drivers take over for them on account of the heat. That’s probably why they schedule the summer race for the evening these days, but of course we’ll be out in the brunt of the heat for this wedding. Everybody got sunblock?”

  Justine smiled. “Already in my moisturizer,” she said. “Anyhow I wouldn’t need it for the race where I’ll be sitting.” She tugged at her sister’s arm. “Right now, we’ve got to get down there and see the wedding.” She beckoned for Bill Knight to follow. “A judge and a preacher-you two can compare notes about the ceremony!”

  “Oh!” said Cayle, waving her digital camera. “Look! The Cale Yarborough section is right below us. My dad will be thrilled. Can somebody get my picture next to the sign as we go down?”

  “What did she mean, she won’t need sunblock where she’s going?” asked Bill Knight nodding toward Justine.

  Harley shrugged. “Maybe she’s driving.”

  Although the race would not begin until evening, the Speedway was already a hive of activity. Spectators trickled into the grandstands or wandered about the infield. Pit crews busied themselves in preparation for the pre-race inspection and then the race itself and television crews set up for the late afternoon event. On the Speedway infield, a plain wooden podium had been placed before a white lattice garden trellis decked with summer flowers: the site of the morning nuptials. Some of the reporters had decided to cover the NASCAR weddings as a sidebar to the Bristol race story. Wearing summer-weight brown suits and smarmy smiles, they roamed among the odd assortment of brides and grooms, microphone in hand, with a photographer or video-cam operator in tow, seeking out the most stereotypical-looking couples to feature.

  As the Number Three Pilgrims reached the bottom of the grandstand, they could make out brides and grooms in every stage of sartorial splendor, milling around or posing for snapshots against the Speedway backdrop.

  “Oh, aren’t they cute?” said Justine as they reached track level. “There must be a dozen cloned Dales out there waiting to get hitched. Look at that one!” She pointed to a slender youth in black jeans, black tee shirt, and cowboy boots. “Or the one over there in the white Goodwrench firesuit and sunglasses.”

  “Striking resemblance,” said Cayle. “I just wish it wasn’t the bride.”

  “Dale Earnhardt got married in that outfit?” asked Bill Knight, peering over her shoulder.

  “I seriously doubt it,” said Justine, “though it’s hard to be sure, ’cause he tied the knot three different times, which gives you a lot of options. But I can think of at least one Mrs. Earnhardt who wouldn’t have let him get away with it. These guys today aren’t worried about what Dale actually got married in, though. They’re just dressing up in what they think of as the typical Dale outfit.”

  “And the brides let them dress like that for the wedding?”

  “Well, I figure that any guy who can get his woman to marry him in the middle of a motor speedway on race day could probably get away with just about anything. Some of them went for a more formal look, though. See that guy over there in the tux?”

  “There’s certainly a range of styles here.”

  “Yeah, from Dale Earnhardt to Dale Evans.”

  “I don’t know when I last saw a pastel tuxedo,” said Cayle.

  Bekasu spotted a television crew ambushing a young couple. “Vultures!” she muttered. “The thing is, those smug reporters down there are going to assume that none of these people know how silly they’re going to look to a TV audience, but most of them do know.”

  “Really?” said Terence Palmer with raised eyebrows. “You detect postmodern irony?”

  “Betcher ass we do,” said Justine. She pointed to the wedding participants. “Now I’ll bet this is a second or third marriage for some of those older couples, and they’ve done the whole white-gown-and-church bit before. So now they’re going to do it their way and they don’t give a damn what anybody thinks.”

  “She knows whereof she speaks,” sighed Bekasu. “I was there for all three of Justine’s nuptials. The first time was white satin in the Grace Episcopal Church, with a groom who had children our age. Then there was the time she married her boss in the medieval ceremony with velvet cloaks and lute players in the Charlotte Renaissance Festival Village, when the groom wore a kilt.”

  “Oh, so that’s when she didn’t care what anybody thought-”

  Justine laughed. “No, that would be the third time, when Sonny Watts and I tied the knot at sea and insisted that the captain marry us.”

  “Ah. Was that a Caribbean cruise?”

  “The Ocracoke ferry,” said Bekasu. “Which was just as well, all things considered, since it wasn’t legally binding.”

  “Oh, just you wait,” said Justine. “Old Sonny will clean up his act one of these days. This Speedway wedding looks like fun, though. I just wish they were having it at Darlington instead of here. Remember Toby Jankin? My escort for cotillion?”

  Bekasu shuddered. “The one who wore Converse hi-tops and white socks with his tux?”

  “I knew you’d remember! Well, Toby’s a doctor in Florence, South Carolina, now, which is only about ten miles from Darlington. I’m hoping to get to see him when we get there. I’ll bet he’d just love to get married at the
track.”

  “I wonder what he’d wear,” muttered Bekasu.

  The brides presented the greatest range of costumes in the crowd. In defiance of the sweltering heat, some determined women wore traditional satin wedding dresses, complete with long sleeves, high lace collars, and trailing net bridal veils. Their bouquets of daisies and Sharpie marker pens (courtesy of the management) were already wilting in the relentless August sun. Others were making Dolly-Parton-is-my-bridesmaid statements in full-skirted square dance outfits and stiletto heels, or sporting the faux-western attire of fringe and turquoise once popularized by Dale Evans and now employed by country singers who want people to think that Alabama borders New Mexico. The smallest group of brides, in complete denial of their surroundings, wore rosebud corsages and pastel business suits appropriate for a ceremony at the registrar’s office. The youngest and most slender brides had joined in the spirit of the raceway festivities, dressing in sync with their intended husbands: NASCAR firesuits; motorcycle chic; or black jeans, black tee shirts, and silver-studded cowboy boots. Sometimes it was hard to tell man from wife.

  “I wonder if you could predict the length of the marriage from the wedding clothes?” mused Bekasu.

  “I never could,” said Bill Knight. He sighed, thinking perhaps of twenty-thousand-dollar church-and-country-club spectacles that came to naught. At least these couples would have a race to remember some day, even if they’d rather forget the ceremony that preceded it.

  Near the wedding trellis, one of the black-garbed grooms was stamping his cowboy boot on the asphalt and refusing to listen to reason.

  “But, Shane,” Karen Soon-to-be-McKee’s eyes welled up. If Shane kept carrying on, she thought, her tears would spill over her mascara and make her cheeks look like a car that had been passed on the last lap by Dale Earnhardt-black streaks all the way down the sides.