Once Around the Track

She eased her way through the crowd to the little wooden table where Badger sat ready to meet his public. He was wearing a purple Team Vagenya cap and tee shirt and a pair of faded Levis. She had expected to see him in his firesuit, but considering what a hot day it was, she supposed that his present outfit was a sensible choice, and the advertising logos meant that he was still promoting the brand.

A legion of race fans, predominantly female, stood in a disorderly line, cameras at the ready, waiting for the signal to surge forward. The signing had been an open invitation. Some drivers-possibly even Badger himself, for all she knew-were so popular that you had to get a ticket hours in advance just to be able to stand in their autograph line, but the team representative who had set up the event had not realized that Badger’s star shone quite so brightly, so all comers were welcome. It promised to be a free-for-all, because he could only stay for half an hour, and there seemed to be no way to accommodate the crowd in that length of time.

“Hello,” said Sark, bending down close to his ear. “I’m here to cover the event for the team Web site, and to provide moral support for you.”

“Thank ya so much,” drawled Badger, wiping his forehead with the back of a sweaty hand. He sounded both heartfelt and shy-and he had the sunglasses on, which at first glance transformed him into that fierce and sexy creature she had seen through the camera lens. Even Sark, who knew better, felt her pulse quicken for an instant, before she remembered that it was only Badger.

No wonder his line is mostly female, thought Sark. Aloud, she said, “I see you’ve got your water bottle and a bunch of Sharpies. Anything else you need?”

He shook his head, but his smile seemed to waver, and he glanced warily at the throng of giggling women. Sark remembered a Discovery Channel program about ancient Greece that featured the maenads: crazed packs of women who ran through the Hellenic forests tearing to pieces anyone they encountered. She wondered if this event might be a modern version of that ritual.

“Maybe you ought to stay close,” Badger said softly. “It can get a little rocky sometimes. You never know.”

She stared at him, wondering what sort of moral support he might require of her. Bodyguard? Bouncer? Significant Other Impersonator? “What do you expect me to do?” she whispered.

“I dunno,” said Badger. “People get carried away sometimes. Whatever needs doing, I guess. You’ll know.” He waved a Sharpie at her and winked. “I reckon I’m ready.”

Sark watched the signing ritual with all the fascination of an anthropologist observing an arcane tribal worship ceremony. Badger seemed to be both deity and sacrificial lamb. She found it interesting that the age and body type of the driver did not often correlate with that of his followers. She wondered if anybody had ever done a study on it.

One slab-faced older woman near the front of the line was wearing tight red shorts over ham-sized thighs and what must have been an extra-extra large Badger Jenkins tee shirt. She was so enormous that she could have carried Badger as a purse, thought Sark.

There ought to be a rule, Sark decided, that if you outweigh your driver by a factor of two, then you ought not to be allowed to wear his apparel. (This rule, she reflected, would cost the delicate and diminutive Kasey Kahne whole legions of his fans.)

She watched with interest to see what Badger’s reaction would be-the ex-husband of a former Miss Georgia, contemplating (ha!) his biggest fan.

The massive woman set an autograph card on the table in front of him. Her earnest expression was almost menacing. Without cracking a smile, she said, “You’re doing good work, Badger. In Pennsylvania we think the world of you.”

“I appreciate it,” said Badger solemnly, signing the card with his customary scrawl. “I reckon I need all the help I can get.”

He handed back the card with a reassuring smile of thanks, and the woman took it, visibly relaxing at the reassurance of his smile. She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Badger, I know you’re busy, but can I get my picture taken with you?”

He nodded. “Come around,” he said, motioning her forward, and almost before the words were out, the woman had handed the camera to her friend and stumped around behind the table. Badger did not get up, which was just as well, Sark thought, considering the size differential. He’d look like the Dalmatian standing beside one of the Budweiser Clydesdales. Oblivious to the effect of their posing in tandem, the woman leaned forward and grinned, while Badger smiled “professionally” at the camera. Then-just as the friend snapped the shutter-Badger’s biggest fan swooped down and enveloped him in a predatory hug that made Sark think of a praying mantis eating her partner after mating. Click!

The woman giggled. “Now I can go home and tell my friends that I hugged Badger Jenkins!” she said.

Before Sark could say or do anything, the woman and her friend hurried away, chattering happily about this escapade, hoping aloud that the picture would turn out. Better hope Badger will be visible at all, thought Sark, wondering if there was anything she could or should have done. Obviously she needed to be more vigilant than she had realized. Badger didn’t seem perturbed, though, which rather surprised her. She didn’t for a moment suppose he enjoyed it.

After that incident, she watched Badger with interest, waiting to see some trace of a grimace cloud that handsome little face, some smirk of derision perhaps that such a rough beast would have the audacity to embrace him-but his expression did not change. He simply smiled at the next person in line as if nothing had happened, and Sark felt herself sigh with relief. She hadn’t wanted Badger to be the kind of man who would ridicule a woman for not being pretty. With a rueful sigh she remembered her own initial reaction to the bearlike woman, and she wondered if in his place she would have been as gracious as Badger was. She told herself that his poise came from years of practice, but she didn’t altogether believe it. She considered the unlikely possibility that the handsome jock really was a nice guy. Nah. There had to be some other explanation. Media training, maybe.

Still, sincerely or not, he had done a kind thing. That poor woman probably would go home and boast for years about her triumph: She had hugged Badger Jenkins. And, look, she had a picture to prove it, and he was just as nice as could be about it. Not stuck-up at all. Perhaps in the months to come she would come back to the track and stand again in his autograph line, this time with that treasured photo for him to sign: further proof that she had hugged him. She had really hugged him.

Sark marveled at the magic of a meaningless gesture. She had lost count of the times Badger had hugged her, or Tuggle, or Julie Carmichael, and no one paid any attention to it. Badger was a hugger; he did it with all the abandon of a child, if he knew you. He was much more reserved around strangers, of course, and around fans, who were simply strangers who didn’t know that they were, but he seemed to think of the team as his family, and if you were in his path when he was happy or sad or coming or going, or whatever, then he hugged you. No big deal.

But it was a big deal to these people, waiting in line with their photos and their official Badger Jenkins souvenirs. Sark thought that it seemed discourteous somehow to be unimpressed by gestures that other people would consider a rare privilege. How disconcerting to meet people who thought that Badger Jenkins was a great and wonderful man, and who would have saved forever a Styrofoam cup he had drunk from. And yet she had his cell phone number on speed dial. People have been killed for less, she supposed.

She wondered how Badger could stay afloat in this tide of adulation. Did celebrities begin to believe that their garbage was valuable, that their lightest word should be embroidered on samplers, that they were better than anybody else? To his credit, Badger didn’t seem to think so. Well, Tuggle would never have let him get away with it for one thing. Perhaps the best favor that one can do for a celebrity friend is to periodically tell them to get over themselves. That, and to resolve to still be just as much of a friend when the luster of celebrity fades and the spotlight shines somewhere else. She saw now why that would be such a hard thing to bear-to go back to being nobody, after this. And Badger was just…well, Badger. In the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t all that famous, and still he had worshippers. What if he were really, most sincerely famous? The thought of being a member of the posse of Dale, Jr. or Jeff Gordon made her shudder.

The signing went on relatively calmly after the large woman went away. As the minutes passed, Sark found herself classifying the different types of admirers who stood in Badger’s autograph line. Most of the people were just nice (if misguidedly starstruck) folks who were thrilled to be in the actual presence of a NASCAR driver. They wanted to shake his hand, to wish him well, to get his name affixed to a piece of paper-so that they could go home and brag to their neighbors that they had met the Badger Jenkins, and that he was just