been able to make it to graduation, because she had been on an antiques-buying tour in southern France that month, but she had sent Rosalind flowers, a card, and a graduation present: a gift certificate for a spa and diet ranch in Arizona. Rosalind sent a careful thank-you note to her mother, a somewhat more sincere letter to the administrator of her trust fund, and she resolved never to go home again.
She had moved to Mooresville shortly after graduation on the advice of some of her fellow students, North Carolinians who assured her that if she wanted a job with race cars, Mooresville was the place to go. She liked the town well enough, once she got over the urge to reach for an English/Mooresville dictionary every time she had to talk to somebody. It was easy enough to find people to talk to about things mechanical, which was about all Rosalind could talk about without self-consciousness, but she found that the employment prospects were another matter altogether. Despite her stellar qualifications-a stratospheric GPA from MIT-she found that race teams were not eager to employ an overeducated young woman as a member of the crew. In many ways stock car racing was still an old boys’ network and a family business, where second-and third-generation family members worked in a sport they had been raised in. Rosalind found it difficult even to get people to talk to her, much less consider hiring her. A rich girl from Michigan with a fancy college degree was nobody’s idea of a chief engineer.
Aside from her gender, her lack of experience was the most telling deficit she had. Book learning did not impress the powers-that-be in racing, many of whom had learned on the job without any higher education at all. In recent years that had changed dramatically, and now there was even a community college in Mooresville that taught people some of the jobs associated with a racing team, but experience still trumped diplomas in this world.
On the advice of one of the shop dogs she’d met in her job searches, Rosalind began volunteering with a Late Model Stock team at a small local speedway. The pay was nonexistent and the hours were long, but at least she got a chance to work with a race car. It was light-years from working on a Cup team, but, she reasoned, you had to start somewhere.
After months of interviews and applications, Rosalind had finally become discouraged, and she had begun to toy with the idea of packing up and going-well, not home, but elsewhere, anyhow-when Team Vagenya announced its intention of fielding an all-female team. The exceptions were noted in fine print. The driver would be male, as would most of the behind-the-scenes personnel, but Rosalind figured that at least the team had stated an intention of hiring women, which meant that they were her best chance at a job in Cup racing.
She had printed out yet another copy of her resume, with its brand-new section of racing experience, and a few nonprofessorial references-the guys she had met at the little local speedway. Sure enough, a week after she’d submitted it, someone from Team Vagenya called to set up an interview, and Rosalind had calmly replied that she was available at their earliest convenience. She’d had to keep taking deep breaths to keep from squealing into the phone, which would have been a first for her, and perhaps the most feminine thing Rosalind Manning had ever done, except that she didn’t do it. As always, Rosalind was grave and deliberate. Grace under pressure was a prerequisite in this intense and dangerous sport.
She had been surprised and not overjoyed to find that the crew chief and team manager were the same person, and that the person was also female: Grace Tuggle, a bulldog of a woman who had both the bloodline and the experience to work for a NASCAR team.
In Rosalind’s experience, when it came to giving another woman a break, women were not as likely to do so as people might think. Perhaps they felt that being the exception made them special, or that favoring another woman would be taken as a sign of weakness. Whatever it was, Rosalind was cordial but wary of her interviewer. At first they had exchanged pleasantries, talking in general terms about Rosalind’s background and interests. Rosalind felt that she acquitted herself well enough during that initial phase. She was no good at small talk, but then neither was Grace Tuggle.
“MIT?” Tuggle had said, looking dubiously at the resume as if she wanted to check the references of the references.
Rosalind decided not to apologize for attending MIT. She responded with a slight nod and tried to look as if she didn’t particularly care if Tuggle hired her or not. Well-bred indifference was a Manning family tradition, and generally it served them well.
Tuggle frowned at the neatly word-processed resume. “You don’t think you’re a tad overqualified to jazz up cars?”
“I think practical experience is always valuable,” said Rosalind carefully. “You’ll see that I put in some time at the local speedway as well. I enjoyed it.” This was not entirely true. Physical dexterity did not come naturally to Rosalind, and like most people, she did not enjoy things she did not do well, but it had been educational, and she appreciated that aspect of the experience.
Tuggle’s answering grunt could have meant anything from wholehearted agreement to open skepticism. Then she said, “We already have a chief engineer. Two of them, really. Julie Carmichael got that job. She’s an engineer, too, but she has more racing chops than you do. And on an unofficial basis, she’ll be working with Jay Bird. Do you know that name?”
Rosalind nodded. A year ago she might not have known who Jay Bird was, but after months of hearing NASCAR junkies talk about the sport, past and present, the name registered with her like an electric shock. The man was the patron saint of jackleg mechanics-not a formally trained engineer, but someone who had grown up in the Carolinas with stock car racing and who knew motors as instinctively as a migrating bird knows south. He had been a force to be reckoned with in NASCAR garages for three decades, and more than one Cup champion owed a debt of gratitude to the mechanical genius of Jay Bird Thomas.
“But he’d have to be nearly eighty!” said Rosalind, blurting out her last thought instead of all the reverent ones that preceded it.
Tuggle nodded. “He is, but he still knows more about race car engines than all the diploma jockeys in the world. And I didn’t say he was the chief engineer. He’s strictly around to advise us in an informal capacity-and we’re damned lucky to get him.”
“Yes, of course you are. How
“He’s Julie Carmichael’s godfather. Courtesy title, you understand. Neither one of them is the type to go to christenings, but he was her dad’s best friend, so he’s been like family to her all her life. Hell, on the strength of that I’d have hired her if she didn’t know a socket wrench from a nail file.”
There was no arguing with the logic of that. Rosalind thought she would have done the same, but she still wanted a job with Team Vagenya. “Okay,” she said, “Carmichael is going to be your chief engineer. I don’t blame you for that, but I still want to come on board. Just because I’m overqualified doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hire me in some other capacity.”
“Like what?”
“Engine builder? Engine specialist? I know my way around motors. I know how to read spark plugs. I know the gear ratios for most of the tracks. You’ll need a different setup every week, and your chief engineer might appreciate some expert assistance in other areas as well.”
Tuggle balanced a pencil lengthwise on the end of her forefinger. Rosalind wondered if the job hung in that balance. She willed herself not to breathe as the silence lengthened and the pencil wobbled. Finally, Tuggle said, “We can’t pay the fancy salaries that engineers would get in industry. I suppose you know that?”
Rosalind said, “Money is not the deciding factor.”
“Figured it wasn’t.” Tuggle wouldn’t have known a designer handbag if it bit her on the arm, but without even intending to, Rosalind exuded an unmistakable aura of
Rosalind did not quite trust herself to speak. She nodded her thanks. Fortunately, she was not into personal power or ego trips about titles. She would be content to let Julie Carmichael oversee the shop dogs and do the interviews with sports journalists. Crew chiefs were celebrities in their own right in today’s NASCAR. Chad Knaus and Tony Eury, Jr. probably had more fans than some of the drivers. Rosalind didn’t want that kind of notoriety. She liked machines better than people anyhow. It was better this way.
On her way out, she remembered to thank Tuggle and to shake her hand. She was proud of that.
A couple of days later, Rosalind went to meet with Team Vagenya’s chief engineer and with the legendary Jay
