Once Around the Track

as nice as could be, no airs about him atall.

The line wasn’t just a procession of the faithful, though; it was liberally sprinkled with “dealers.” People who made a living getting minor celebrities to sign photos and other memorabilia that they would then resell in shops or online for a tidy profit. The more unscrupulous ones simply faked the signature-a necessary ruse, perhaps, if the customer wanted, say, Johnny Depp, but hardly necessary in the world of NASCAR. Drivers were nice guys. Most of them would oblige anyone who asked politely for a signature, provided that time was not a factor. In order to get their money’s worth, sponsors saw to it that their drivers made many public appearances, which meant that obtaining their autographs was mostly a matter of perseverance and scheduling.

Dealer types were generally male, brisk, and unimpressed by the experience. Badger’s signature on a photo might mean ten bucks to them, if they were lucky and if a true fan from faraway participated in the online auction. The dealers would attend the race and stand in every possible driver’s autograph line, hoping to get enough signatures to make their speedway visit profitable. Getting an autographed photo from the likes of Badger was all well and good, but the dealers’ greatest wish was to have the good fortune to run into Little E. or Jeff Gordon, the rock stars of Cup racing. A signature from either of them would cover the entire cost of the weekend. But you couldn’t count on the availability of the superstars, so to pass the time the dealers staked out the small fry. They treated Badger with the curt efficiency of a remora preparing to clean the teeth of a very small shark: a necessary process for both parties, but only barely worth the effort.

If the dealers were blase about the experience of meeting him, the true fans more than made up for it with their unbridled-occasionally semihysterical-enthusiasm. Fandemonium. Sark handed out tissues to more than one woman who burst into tears simply because Badger had touched her hand when he returned the autograph card. She began to wish she’d brought a supply of paper bags along so that she could hand them out to the overwrought and say, “Breathe into this!” (And occasionally when a fan became too saccharine and sloppy in her adoration of Badger, Sark felt like using a paper bag herself, for quite another purpose.)

There ought to be a happy medium, she thought, between the businesslike dealers and the gushing maenads. She thought Badger deserved more respect from the former and a good deal less adulation from the latter.

Who the heck was Badger Jenkins, anyhow? Rock star? Hero? Dream lover? Meal ticket? Favorite son? Star athlete? Big brother? There seemed to be as many answers to that question as there were people in line.

Occasionally, a giggling woman would thrust a cell phone under his nose and order him to say hello to her friend back home. “Donna’s your biggest fan. Just say hello to her. She’ll die, Badger. I swear she will.”

Badger always managed to say a cordial sentence or two into the phone, and the response was a sometimes audible shriek. He usually concluded the conversation with, “Yes, ma’am, I’m really him. Thanks for being a loyal fan.” He called them all ma’am, which Sark thought might be more an estimate of age than a term of respect. There were more requests for a hug, but he managed to evade them.

Sark began to feel sorry for the driver. Being loved can be more of a burden than a blessing. People have built you a soul, and if you run afoul of their expectations, they will turn on you with the ferocity of wild dogs. Dealing with one’s public was harder than it looked, she concluded. Being handsome helped, because it meant you didn’t have to say much to win them over, but a calm temperament and a seeming openness with strangers would prove invaluable also. She began to regard Badger with increasing admiration. There was more to being a race car driver than skill behind the wheel. Badger was damned good. He sent everyone away happy.

The line wound on, one gushing fan after another.

Often besotted maidens wanted to give him things-a photo of their cat whose name was Badger, or perhaps an amateur portrait of him they’d done themselves, which generally looked more like Bela Lugosi than like Badger himself. Other admirers embroidered pillows with his number and team colors; they brought him hand-tied fishing flies “for the lake” and homemade soap. They presented him with pots of raspberry jam, which they’d personally prepared in little jars affixed with handwritten labels, often including the telephone number of the giver. Some hope, thought Sark. Others wrote worshipful, badly rhymed poems about him, which they bestowed on him on parchment with carefully lettered calligraphy and a Dollar Store frame.

Badger accepted all these earnest offerings with solemn thanks, and with a few words of admiration for anyone so talented as to be able to produce such a thing, because he sure as heck couldn’t do anything as original as that…thank you so much… and the givers went away happy. After a while Sark began to detect a particular tone of voice in his expressions of gratitude. When he said “Thank ya so-ooo mu-ucch” in a particular drawling way, she decided that it meant he was being given something he didn’t want. That was useful to know. She filed the information away to see when she would hear it next. Mostly, though, he was kind and polite to people who meant well, and they felt that they had made a real connection with their hero with their gifts of soap and poems and homemade jam. Sark wondered what became of those things afterward, and she resolved never to try to find out.

And then there were the kids. Badger loved kids. He’d peer down at a bright-eyed eight-year-old clutching anything from a napkin to a lug nut, and he’d strike up an animated conversation with the child while he scribbled his name on the proffered item.

“How you doin’, buddy? You a big race fan?” Man to man, as if they were both the same age, which in some ways, thought Sark, they were.

Sometimes the child was too shy even to mumble a response, but Badger never seemed to mind. He went on being friendly and charming until the child stopped looking terrified.

Then near the end of the line a little tow-headed kid in a Dupont tee shirt set down a Jeff Gordon hat in front of Badger and waited for him to sign it.

Sark held her breath. As far as she could tell, Cup drivers wholeheartedly agreed with the Supreme Being that the number one commandment was Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods before Me. She’d heard discouraging tales of drivers refusing to sign even their own team-themed merchandise if it was an unlicensed product-because drivers received no royalties from homemade fan items. And here was a kid expecting Badger to sign a product honoring another driver? She pictured an ensuing tantrum, and wondered if she ought to snatch the Gordon hat off the table and hustle the kid away before he precipitated a public relations nightmare.

Before she could decide what to do, Badger picked up the Gordon hat and scribbled across the brim with his black Sharpie. “There you go, buddy,” he said with a smile, handing the item back to its delighted owner.

When the child had walked away, Sark leaned in close again to Badger’s ear. “Wow,” she said softly. “You signed a Jeff Gordon hat. I cannot believe it.”

“Well, he’s a kid. I couldn’t disappoint him,” said Badger. “I can’t sign any Earnhardt stuff, though.”

“Why? You don’t like the Earnhardts?” asked Sark.

“Naw, that’s not it,” said Badger sadly. “I just can’t spell it.”

The little boy had put on his signed cap and was waving good-bye from a few feet away. Sark peered closely at the hat, and sure enough, scribbled on the brim were the words “Jeff Gordon” in Badger’s unmistakable rounded scrawl.

Sark could never decide if Badger was a complete innocent or the shrewdest person she knew.

She glanced at her watch. Time was nearly up, and the last two fans in line looked like trouble. They were young enough and skinny enough not to look completely ridiculous in their skimpy halter tops and barely-there shorts, but dyed-blond hair and ferret faces heavy with mascara and glitter blush weren’t Sark’s idea of sexy. She doubted if it was Badger’s, either, but since he had done all right on his own today, she decided to wait and see how he handled the confrontation-Sark was sure there was going to be one.

Sure enough, the one wearing the most eyeliner sashayed up to the desk and leaned over it, giving him the full effect of her cleavage.

Sark wrinkled her nose in distaste. Pit lizards. The term, which she herself had only learned this week, had probably been coined before these two little newts had even been born, but they were quite representative of the species: slithery and predatory. Like the rest of their kind, they lurked around drivers’ habitats in hopes of ensnaring one. Wives loathed them, and the crew either pitied or ridiculed them, according to the nature of the crew member and perhaps to the attractiveness of the individual lizard. It was universally acknowledged, though, that their appreciation of motorsports was similar to lions’ fondness for the watering holes of zebras: voyeurism disguising darker motives. Today this pair of lizards had apparently decided to prey on Badger.