Once Around the Track

powerful stranger whom nobody would argue with. She wasn’t going to, anyhow. He might as well have been shouting, “Get the hell away from me.” She remembered that first time she had done a photo session with him. He had looked formidable then when he posed, but this was leagues beyond that; now, he radiated an icy grandeur that would stop you in your tracks. How the hell did he do that?

“Oh,” she said, and it came out hardly more than a squeak.

Badger nodded. “And I’m not even wearing the firesuit. You add that to the sunglasses, and people generally don’t mess with me.”

“Well, that was certainly educational,” said Sark briskly. “Take them off again, please.”

They walked up the steps of the deck toward the front door of his cabin. “I had a guy renting this,” he told her, fishing in his pocket for the key. “But he got his place fixed up, so it’s all mine again. I don’t get to come back as much as I’d like to, though.”

He pushed open the door and waved her inside.

Having seen the outside of the fabled “fishing shack,” Sark was not surprised to find that the pine-paneled interior was equally well-kept and nicely furnished with Shaker-style furniture in oak and cherry wood and overstuffed sofas flanking a large stone fireplace. The walls held an assortment of trophies-but not the sort that Sark had been expecting. Instead of racing memorabilia, there were fishing rods, mounted game fish and deer heads, and framed art prints of ducks and deer in woodland settings.

“Where’s all your NASCAR stuff?” asked Sark.

“My daddy’s got most of it,” said Badger. “He’s got boxes full of stuff in the basement. My Darlington trophy was in the middle of his dining room table last time I looked.”

“That must make for interesting dinner conversations,” said Sark.

“I guess,” said Badger. “We don’t talk much. And I gave a lot of my old posters and a couple of old trophies to Laraine for the diner.” It suddenly seemed to occur to him that she might be asking for a reason. “Do you want anything? I think I have some die-cast cars in a drawer here.”

Sark smiled. “All I want is your time, Badger.” She felt a small pang of guilt, because she knew that wasn’t true. This interview would be grist for two articles: the feature story for the team and the expose she planned to write at the end of the season. Well, she told herself, he probably is a jerk. I just haven’t found out how yet.

When Sark got back to Charlotte that night, she found an e-mail from her journalist pal Ed Blair, asking her to report on her progress with Team Vagenya.

How is Project Badger coming along? Didn’t you have an interview with him this week? Learn anything interesting?

I went down to visit him in his natural habitat today. Whatever it is that Alexander the Great and Moses and, for all I know, the Lone Ranger…whatever they had, he’s got it. And I’m not talking about sex appeal (for a change.) Spent five hours alone in the woods with him and felt absolutely no vibrations on that frequency, either way. But what is magical is the focus-that quality that makes him an incredible race car driver, I guess… He’s there. Absolutely, perfectly, 110% THERE. The world is a desert island, you and him. He’ll talk about anything. He’ll listen. No games, no bragging, no ego. I think all of us were like that when we were about twelve, before we started caring about social status, and appearance, and all the facades of the adult world.

If it is possible to be twelve at heart but fully adult in intelligence and understanding, he’s it. What Peter Pan might have really been like, or maybe Siddharta en route to becoming the Buddha.

He’s not dumb, either. He just lives in his body, and I live in my head, so there’s a different frequency. But he’s really nice. Wish I knew how he managed to grow up and not be a jerk.

So you spent the day with the Buddha in the wilds of Georgia, did you? What exactly does that entail? How does his engine feel? Surely you’ve found out by now!

Got a tour of the lake and his lake house, and met the turtle. I don’t know how his “engine feels.” Nothing happened. Probably because I do not own a tiara and a sash proclaiming me Miss Something-or-Other. Beauty queens are more his speed. He’s not a jerk about it. He was just raised to think that women should be high- maintenance trophies, and that as long as other guys envy you, compatibility doesn’t matter. Poor guy. He’s really very sweet, though. I was surprised. Of course, the problem with not being a teenager anymore is that one has no second gear anymore, so I’m quite afraid that some day he will hold that sexless hug of his for a heartbeat too long, and I’ll instinctively reach for the stick shift and find out “how his engine feels,” as you so colorfully put it.

You seem to be using a lot of automotive metaphors lately. Is the job getting to you?

Possibly, Ed. I am very susceptible to atmosphere. The lake was rather picturesque, and he certainly cares about the place. His fishing shack is not exactly a hovel, either. It’s a nice A-frame, furnished with clean, modern pieces in natural wood.

Decorator?

Ex-wife, perhaps. But it is possible that he has taste, you know. I enjoyed having an uninterrupted afternoon to talk to him. By the way, I got him to talk for ten minutes about “Do they know how much we love them?”

About what?

You know…the adoring fans that NASCAR drivers have. He steadfastly ignored (and I did not bring up) the pit lizard sign in the equation. He talked about how no matter how rushed or mad he was, he would never ignore a child. How he came to the sport from humbler beginnings than most guys, and that he had vowed never to lose his head over the money or the fame. Says he never thought he was better than anybody else.

Someday I’ll get a couple of Heinekens down his pretty little throat, and then I’ll ask him about the dark side of the Force. Wonder if he has ever succumbed. The way he looks, I’d put money on a bet that he has given it up to somebody, somewhere, but I don’t think it’s a regular sport with him. He has to know that there are people who salivate at seeing the number 86… He chooses not to notice. I suppose it saves awkwardness…

If I were him, I’d notice if pretty ladies were hot for my bod! I’d have a basket at the track to collect hotel room keys.

I’ll bet you would, thought Sark, logging off. Maybe most guys would. But she was pretty sure that whatever Badger’s vices were, lust was not among them.

CHAPTER XV

Shop Talk

The team was having another pit stop practice at the shop, but Badger was not on hand to help. He wasn’t required to be, of course, but sometimes he had dropped by just to encourage them and to see how things were going. Today, though, his personal manager had commandeered him to make a public appearance at the grand opening of an auto parts store. The team knew about this because Deanna, who had been dispatched by Ms. Albigre to get more of Badger’s autograph cards as a rush job from the printer, was still grumbling about it to anyone within earshot.

“She misspelled the name of the sponsor on the sports card,” Deanna told Sark, who had wandered in to use the fax machine. “I told her, and she said she didn’t care. She said they were in a hurry.”

Sark sighed. “This is all new to me, but her idea of publicity certainly differs from mine. A few days ago I got a call from a turtle rescue program, asking if Badger would film a public service commercial for them, so I relayed the request to Melodie, and she said, ‘What’s in it for Badger?’”

“I think a turtle rescue ad would be great publicity for him,” said Deanna. “Is he going to do it?”

“I don’t think she even bothered to tell him about it. No percentage in it.”

Deanna made a face. “I just hate the way that woman talks to him, Sark. I mean, she may be a genius, for all I know. Although with her spelling…but anyhow, she shouldn’t talk to Badger the ways she does, as if he were a mangy old dog. I wish there was somebody we could report her to.”

Sark nodded. “How about Amnesty International?”

Badger was led away to dazzle the auto parts store customers with his boyish charm (“How ya