Once Around the Track

Then one day he’d turn up for lunch, looking like a lost Boy Scout in ratty old jeans and a tee shirt two sizes too large, and in two heartbeats she’d forget all the impure thoughts she’d had about him that wouldn’t bear repeating even on Confession Sunday, and she’d feed him a double helping of everything, and then forget to charge him for the meal.

He put her in mind of a stray puppy sometimes-lost and helpless, and so intent on his own concerns that he barely noticed all the times loving hands rescued him from one mishap or another. It wasn’t that he was ungrateful, exactly. Just oblivious. Whenever life seemed ready to flush Badger Jenkins down the toilet, something or someone always did turn up to save him, and he never seemed to wonder about his charmed life. Maybe you couldn’t if you were a race car driver. Maybe you had to believe in a luck that was stronger than steel and more reliable than gravity. How could you go out there and risk your life on a race track if you didn’t believe that?

She folded another tee shirt (This one said, “No Fear!” Laraine thought they ought to make one that said, “No Common Sense!”) and stole another glance at him, but he was still taking no interest in the preparations for his own departure. Like a child being sent off to camp. He’d thank her when she was done and hug her good-bye with all the sexless abandon of a little kid, but she wasn’t sure if that constituted gratitude as the rest of the world understood it or not. If she hadn’t done his laundry and the packing, somebody else would have. That’s the way the world worked for Badger, fair or not. Somebody would always look out for him; a dozen self- appointed crew chiefs steered him through life, just as the real ones had kept him on-track in the race car.

Another thought occurred to her. “Have you got somebody looking out for the cabin while you’re gone, hon?”

He nodded absently. “Yeah, Paul down at the Bait and Beer said he needs a place to stay while they’re rebuilding his house. Wood stove caught fire, you remember.”

Laraine nodded. She did remember. Someone else’s disaster turned into Badger Jenkins’s luck, just like on the track, when Johnny Benson or somebody had cut a tire, and the resulting caution had allowed Badger to pit just before he would have run out of fuel. His whole life was like that, it seemed to Laraine.

“I’m only charging him four hundred dollars a month,” said Badger, brightening at the thought.

For house-sitting? thought Laraine. But she didn’t say anything. That was another thing about Badger. Just when you thought he had no more sense of self-preservation than a baby bird, he’d come out with something so shrewd and calculating that you found yourself wondering if the whole innocent thing was just an act. She never could figure it out. Maybe Badger wasn’t that macho robot from the racing posters, but that didn’t mean the real guy was any easier to understand.

And why do we love him so much? she wondered. He is handsome enough, but no more than a hundred other guys anywhere you look. He’s kind when he remembers to be, but he can break your heart, too, by forgetting a promise or letting you down at the last minute. What is there about him that makes everybody stick to him like bugs on a windshield? There was a saying around Marengo, generations old: “Nobody ever got anywhere by loving a Jenkins.” Lord, that was true. But it didn’t stop people from trying, anyhow.

And in Badger’s case, it wasn’t the money or the fame. Oh, maybe it was for some people. There were plenty of folks who liked to brag about knowing a guy whose cardboard likeness stood in the grocery store aisle, as if that was anything to crow about, if you asked her. And there were always women who-in the words of that song-would wonder how his engine feels. But for the people who really mattered, it wasn’t starfucking, it was genuine devotion. And you never knew how he felt in return or even if he noticed the charmed circle that protected him-all the old friends who answered his fan mail, fixed him hot dinners, and guarded his privacy from reporters and clueless fans. Laraine’s own self-appointed task was to present Badger to outsiders as the macho stud people expected NASCAR drivers to be.

You just went on doing things for him and not expecting anything in return but a soft-drawled thank you, when he remembered, and for some reason that was enough.

Whatever it was, you never got over it, she thought, as she went on sorting socks.

CHAPTER VI

Badger Meets the Owners

The occasion was part business meeting and part happy hour. The Walter Raleigh Conference Room at a newly remodeled hotel near the new team headquarters had not been festooned with balloons and streamers, because, after all, motorsports was a male-oriented business, but there was a fifteen-foot copy center banner that read WELCOME BADGER JENKINS in large red letters.

The team hierarchy and its sponsors had gathered to meet their driver.

Just inside the door, a small table draped with a purple tablecloth held an arrangement of flowers and an assortment of name tags, including one decorated with purple ribbons that simply said BADGER. Along one wall stood a long buffet table, which held an assortment of wines and several party trays of finger sandwiches and vegetables and dip, all strategically positioned around an enormous sheet cake featuring a photo of Badger rendered in icing, and checkered flag-patterned paper napkins. On a smaller table nearby, the staff had stacked 100 eight-by-ten color photos of Badger, and a plastic cup full of felt-tipped pens in case anyone missed the point that he would be expected to autograph them.

Deanna, the secretary in charge of securing likenesses of Badger for the occasion, had been in a quandary about what image of him to select, because all the firesuit photos of him linked him to his previous racing teams. Team Vagenya had not yet had a chance to get new photos made of him in their own distinctive purple regalia. Deanna had considered getting portraits of him in what she thought of as “civilian clothes,” but in those shots she felt that he lacked the sexy ferocity of his NASCAR incarnation. The one taken at a charity golf tournament, for instance-sad, really. In that one, Badger was wearing jeans and a red polo shirt, putter in hand, and grinning at the camera like a tourist who has just found the allyou-can-eat buffet. Not his finest hour, image-wise, she thought.

Deanna personally liked photos depicting Badger scowling, or at least looking focused and determined, and these were mostly candid shots of him walking beside the race car or being interviewed at the track. In the end, she plumped for cropping one such photo into a close-up shot of his face in profile, so that only a bit of the blue and white firesuit showed, and you couldn’t read much of the sponsor lettering on it anyhow. In the picture, some reporter had stuck a microphone in Badger’s face, and he had tilted back his head, seeming to consider the question with the earnest sincerity of a general making a tough decision about some approaching battle. She loved that photo, because in it he appeared reassuringly strong and yet so gentle. His dark eyes caught the light, and his feathery hair was brushed forward until it nearly touched his eyebrows. The firesuit even looked like the tunic of a knight. Sir Galahad might have looked like that, she thought, so brave and reverent that it made your heart turn over to look at him.

Just having a photograph of Badger pinned to the filing cabinet beside her desk made Deanna feel safer, as if no one would dare to steal paperclips from a workspace watched over by such a powerful, yet compassionate being. Because of that image, she began to feel that she knew and loved Badger even before she saw him in the flesh.

In the end, after much consideration, she decided to please herself with the photo selection, and the “Galahad” picture was the one she chose. With any luck she could get him to sign a copy for her, too; then she could tape that one up on the filing cabinet next to her desk to look at when she was feeling besieged. She might even frame it. A signed picture would be an even more potent charm of protection. Badger Jenkins, her very own knight in shining armor-and to think that she almost knew him!

Suzie Terrell, the attorney who had first approached Badger about driving for the all-female team, was his minder for the afternoon’s event, not exactly his advocate, but certainly, at least in her own mind, charged with seeing that he behaved, and even more that he was treated professionally and not imposed upon. Perhaps it was ridiculous to suppose that a prosperous group of grown women would behave at all improperly toward a male business associate, but Suzie knew that the proximity of celebrities affected people in peculiar ways. Otherwise normal, sensible individuals could become quite pixilated in the presence of someone famous. Suzie didn’t know why this was, but she had seen it often enough in connection with the stars of Atlanta society: the occasional movie