Once Around the Track

expression in the blank stare behind those shaded eyes. After a few minutes she almost forgot who he was, or that he was an ordinary and pleasant young man who drove cars for a living. She usually spoke to her subjects as she photographed them, offering up encouraging pleasantries to make them hold the pose or to elicit a more confident expression, but this time she was silent. What could you possibly say to him?

At first she had considered telling him to alter the pose, thinking there was something improper in his spread- eagled stance, and resolving that if he insisted on flaunting his “package,” then at any rate she wouldn’t look. She looked.

Boy, it was hot in that room. Must be the studio lights, she thought, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Badger didn’t seem to be affected, though.

He tilted his head back. “Are we about done? They want me to practice a couple of laps.”

The spell was broken, or almost. Badger pulled off the sunglasses, waiting to see what else she wanted, and once again he was an ordinary guy, impatient to get back to work.

“Uh…I need to talk to you to get some material for the press release.” Sark’s voice sounded hoarse even to her. She took a deep breath and set the camera down on the floor. “Just a couple of questions…” But not the questions that had been uppermost in her mind, she thought.

Badger said, “Really? You want to talk to me for the press release?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Well, nobody ever has before. They just tell me to get lost, and then they write whatever they feel like saying.”

Sark frowned. “Well, how would they know what the facts were?”

“Facts?” said Badger. He shrugged. “One of ’em told me once that I was the blank screen that everybody ran their own movie on. It didn’t matter what I was really like. What does that mean?”

Sark thought it over. It wasn’t Badger people believed in. It was the guy she had seen in the camera lens. The one who didn’t exist. “Well,” she said. “I guess there are a lot of people out there who think you’re the guy they see in the photographs. They think you’re tall and wise and wonderful, and that you’d be the best friend in the world. Like a guardian angel, I suppose. If you ever called them, they’d buy a new answering machine tape and save the one with your voice on it forever. Maybe some of them imagine you telling the boss to get off their case, or showing up at their house for a backyard cookout so that the neighbors will fall dead from envy.”

He got the idea, so she didn’t say the rest of it. Women want you to beat up their abusive boyfriends, or take them away from a humdrum life, or just point to them in a hotel lobby and say, “You.” That’s all it would take. And some people would be happy just to shake your hand, and they’d treasure that memory forever.

Badger sighed. “They shouldn’t put me on a pedestal,” he said.

“You could use the extra height,” muttered Sark.

“I wish I was that guy. I wish I had the kind of power they think I have.”

“Maybe you don’t have to be, Badger. Maybe it’s enough that people have something to believe in. Anyhow, let’s do the best we can on this interview, so that we don’t disappoint them.” She motioned for him to sit down in the plastic chair near the work table.

“I’m not too good at quizzes,” said Badger. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, I suppose I can get all the basic stuff from NASCAR.com or by Googling you. Previous racing stats, for example.”

“I wouldn’t know them off the top of my head,” said Badger. “Fans often do. Amazing what they can reel off at the drop of a hat when I can’t even do it myself.”

Sark consulted her notes. “Height. Weight. I can fake-er-look those up, too. Marital status. Says here you’re married to…um…a Miss Georgia…Desiree…”

Badger shook his head. “Not anymore. Dessy was an ambitious girl. She was headed for the big time, and she decided I wasn’t it. She was right about that. She has her heart set on being a spokesmodel, or maybe a letter- turner on one of those daytime quiz shows. Too rich for my blood. So we sold the big house, and she took most of the money and moved to Florida. I wish her the best.” He brightened. “I’m okay, though. I kept my fishin’ shack on the lake. I like it there.”

Sark made a note: Dumped by Gold Digger. She gave him an encouraging smile. “Hobbies. Fishing?”

“Animal rescue,” said Badger. “I don’t have any formal training or nothing, but I just never could stand to see anything suffer. When I was a kid my daddy hit a doe with his truck, and we found the fawn standing there by the side of the road, so I bundled it up in my coat, took it home, and bottle-fed it ’til it was big enough to be turned loose again. I guess that’s what got me started. And I had an owl that had got a wing shot off by some hunter who was either careless, drunk, or mean as hell. Kept him in the house.” He grinned. “Dessy wasn’t any too happy about that. You ever try to get owl shit out of a Persian rug?”

“No,” said Sark. She drew a line through Dumped by Gold Digger and wrote beside it Ideological Differences. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get to the silly stuff. What’s your favorite song?”

“‘Georgia on My Mind’,” said Badger without a second’s hesitation.

“Oh. The Ray Charles version?”

“Who?”

A glimmer of suspicion flickered in Sark’s brain. “‘Georgia on My Mind’.” How do the words go again?”

Badger sighed. “I’m from Georgia, okay? That’s supposed to be my favorite song.”

“Whereas your actual favorite song is?”

He shrugged. “Can I say the National Anthem, then? When they sing it before the race, I swear I tear up every time.”

“Okay, forget music. Favorite food?”

Badger looked uneasy. “What am I supposed to say?”

Sark shuddered, considering the possibilities. God knows, she thought. You’re from the rural South. Aloud, she said, “Grits?”

“Well, not my favorite. But I do like ’em every now and again. One time in New York I ordered them, and they charged me fifteen dollars for them as a side dish. Called it polenta.”

Sark considered writing down “polenta,” but thought better of it. “Don’t you know what your favorite food is?” she asked.

“Yeah, but that’s not the point, is it? That’s one of those gimmick questions that’s supposed to tell fans what kind of guy you are. For your image. Like maybe if you’re from Wisconsin, you say cheese, or if you’re sponsored by a cereal company, you name the cereal. Or maybe if you want people to think you’re macho, you say buffalo in bourbon sauce.”

Sark tapped her pen on the notepad. “Just tell me, okay? What is your favorite food? Say anything. I don’t care!”

Badger sighed. “Bologna on Wonder bread,” he said. “And tomato soup.”

“Fine!” said Sark. She wrote down buffalo in bourbon sauce.

The rest of the interview went along placidly enough, highlighted by Badger’s heartwarming stories of bottle- feeding orphaned fawns and the rescue of his giant turtle. Sark thought she could make quite an appealing press kit out of an expurgated version of Badger’s life story-minus a few DUIs and youthful escapades, that is.

She checked the notes on her clipboard. There was only one more matter to cover. “They asked me to talk to you about our sponsor,” she said, fighting to keep the irritation out of her voice. Why me? she thought. Surely there’s somebody higher up the totem pole who could handle this.

Badger had assumed his earnest retriever expression again. “Oh, yeah. That drug. They said I might have to talk about it in interviews some time.”

“Well, I expect it will come up,” said Sark. “So they want me to give you some pointers in how to deal with it.”

“How about I say I take it regularly and that it works?”

Sark took a deep breath. “You really have no idea what the sponsor is, do you, Badger?”