Once Around the Track

Repelled more than fascinated, Sark backed away toward the Porta-John, hoping that when she’d finished, the two creatures would be gone. She heard more giggles as the girls took out cameras and whispered in each other’s ear. What were they offering him, anyway: a choice or a twofer?

And it happens to him all the time, she thought. How many times a day? A dozen? A hundred? How could such avid attention not go to his head? How could he not think himself God’s gift to mattresses? How could he sustain a relationship with anybody in the face of such temptation?

She hurried toward the Porta-John, out of earshot of the arch conversation taking place at the signing table, acutely aware of her own embarrassment. Somebody, she thought, ought to be ashamed at what was taking place; odd that she, the innocent bystander, should be the one who felt it. The other thing she felt was a bizarre, almost maternal protectiveness toward Badger. She wanted to yell, “Leave him alone! He’s not a piece of meat.” But surely that was a feminine impulse. Surely it was the essence of the male gender not to mind such an arrangement, even to revel in it. A free roll in the hay offered by a reasonably pretty girl who wanted nothing more? Why else would you want to be famous if not for perks like this? Did he feel like that, she wondered, or did the endless propositions make him feel slimed by the fetid desires of so many strangers? She wished she could think of a polite way to ask him.

Sark lingered in the toilet until the smell inside it was fractionally more distasteful to her than the sight of two attacking pit lizards in heat; then she stumbled out again into the sunshine, thinking that perhaps Badger would be expecting her to run interference for him, to get him out of an awkward situation with no hard feelings on the part of the lizards, assuming, of course, that they were capable of such niceties. Oh please let him not be succumbing to their attentions, she thought, and that notion almost sent her reeling back to the toilet.

Well, at least Badger wasn’t married anymore, she told herself. Not that it would have mattered to his stalkers if he had been.

As she approached the table again, she noticed that Badger had his head tilted back and appeared to be listening attentively to one of the girls. Now he was nodding, with a mournful look in his dark eyes.

Uh-oh, thought Sark, hurrying back to her post.

“And she won’t get her prescription filled,” said the blonde. “She says it costs too much, and that taking it doesn’t change the way she feels one bit. She says blood pressure is just a number. But she has to work standing up for hours at a time on her shift at the mill. I tell her that can’t be good for her, but she won’t listen.”

Badger was nodding sympathetically. “My granddad was stubborn like that,” he said. “We lost him a year ago last spring.”

“Really? Because he wouldn’t take his medicine?” Tears were streaming down the young woman’s face in little black rivulets of dissolved mascara. She dug in her tiny denim purse and fished out a creased snapshot. “This is my nana with her race cap on. See, it’s one of yours, from your old team. I gave it to her for her birthday the year you won Darlington, and she just loved it.”

Solemnly, Badger examined the grainy snapshot of a grinning old lady in a racing hat. “She needs to take her medicine, though,” he said. “What’s her name?”

The girl sniffled. “Dreama. D-R-E-A-M-A.”

Badger took one of the autograph cards and wrote across the top: Dreama, Please Take Your Pills. Badger Jenkins. “There,” he said, handing it back to the tearful pit lizard. “Maybe that will help. You tell her I can’t afford to lose any fans.” He shook hands with the girl and her friend, who now seemed much younger and less worldly than they had seemed before. “I have to go now,” he said, nodding toward Sark. “They need me to do a radio interview or something.”

The two women thanked him with moist smiles and as soon as they turned away, Badger got up from the table and hurried toward the motor home before anyone else could waylay him.

“That was pretty amazing,” said Sark. “You were great.”

Badger shrugged. “You get used to it,” he said.

“No, you were great with everybody. You were kind and sweet. But what impressed me the most was that you made those two pit lizards forget all about hitting on you. How did you do that?”

He shrugged. “I treated them like people,” he said. He ambled off, muttering something about Gatorade in the fridge.

Sark stared after him, wondering for the hundredth time whether Badger Jenkins was an old soul possessing great wisdom or a simpleton who was too dumb to be let out alone.

CHAPTER XVII

The Race Is On

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” said Sigur Nelson, the rear tire carrier. She was watching the thunderous crowd reactions to the driver introductions before the start of the race. “The driver gets all the fame and the glamour, and yet he’s just one member of the team. He gets the private jet and the motor home and his picture on the tee shirts, and what do we get? A cattle car charter flight to the city where the race is being held, and half a cut-rate motel room apiece. And the pay! Don’t even talk about that!”

“But Badger is famous,” said Taran. “He doesn’t even have his own jet and he rents that motor home, but he certainly deserves all that stuff.”

“You think so?” said Reve. “Take an extra second on the pit stop a few times and see how well he does. Leave the cap off the brake line and see what happens to his points standings after the race. Nobody appreciates us, but we’re important, too.”

“I think Badger appreciates us,” said Taran.

“I don’t,” said Reve, and Sigur nodded in agreement. “I think that to him we’re the spear carriers in the opera of his life. I’d be surprised if he even remembered my name.”

Taran, who had been nervous already, was now on the verge of tears. “Badger is always nice to me. He always smiles when he sees me, and he says, ‘Hey, Sweetie.’”

“That’s because he can’t remember your name,” said Sigur. “You want to think he’s kind. He is a handsome man, and because he is a rural Southerner, he is basically polite, just like Swedes. I think you cut him all kinds of slack on account of that. Pretty people always get extra credit just for winning the genetic lottery. I’ve never seen any evidence that he gives a damn about any of us.”

“I don’t see how he could stay humble with all the money, and the media, and the adulation of the fans. Of course he thinks he’s hot stuff. But we work just as hard as he does to make this team a success.”

Taran shook her head. “Badger deserves all of it.”

Reve sneered. “Why? Because you think he’s handsome?”

“No. Because he’s the one who has to go out there and risk his life.”

They had made it into the Daytona 500, qualifying for the Great American Race despite the predictions of half the motorsports pundits in the business, especially the self-appointed ones on the Internet.

Late Thursday night on the laptop in her motel room, Sark reported on the week’s events to Ed Blair.

Hey, Ed! According to Julie Carmichael, our chief engineer, “By the grace of God and the genius of Jay Bird Thomas,” Badger Jenkins is now one of the forty-three entries in the Daytona 500. There is a great sense of relief and accomplishment here at 86 headquarters. But I think the real feeling is that, although Badger is an incredible driver, we were also very lucky.

Yo, Sark! Glad to hear your team made the big race. Maybe I’ll watch it while I read the New York Times Sunday afternoon. Did your boy win the qualifying race?

Nope. Let me see if I can explain without making you sorry you asked. You can get in to the Daytona 500 by being one of the thirty-five top finishing teams from last year-but since the 86 team did not even exist last year, that was not an option for us. You can also get in by scoring one of the best times in the qualifying round. Or you can finish first or second in one of the races that determines who gets in.

I almost understood that, but then my eyes glazed over. So via which of these many choices did Badger & Company get in?