Once Around the Track

“The one who won Daytona a few years back?”

Kathy shook her head. “No. Not Ward. I’m pretty sure that’s Brian Burton over there. He’s the middle one. Instead of going to NASCAR like his brothers, he finished college and runs the family construction company.”

“Oh. The smart one.”

“Yeah, but he’s also the one who won a slew of go-cart championships when the Burtons were kids. People say he’s the best driver of the three of them.”

“The best driver in the family did not turn pro?”

“It happens,” said Kathy. “Dale’s daughter Kelley was the most talented of the Earnhardt kids. Even better than Little E., they say.”

Sigur digested this information. “They’re not replacing Badger out there today, are they?”

“No. I think they’re replacing his spotter. I haven’t seen Tony around this morning, and yesterday at dinner he said he felt like he was coming down with something.”

“He’s allergic to shrimp,” said Taran. “I warned him not to eat fried seafood at the restaurant last night. They use the same oil to cook everything. He says he’ll be okay in a couple of hours, but Tuggle thought we ought not to take any chances.”

“Brian Burton would be the perfect spotter for Badger,” said Kathy. “He’s smart, and he knows how to drive. I’ll bet they’ve known each other for years. Badger used to go duck hunting with Ward. They all had similar driving experiences early on. And most important-”

“Are the Burtons from Georgia?” asked Taran.

“Virginia. But they sound a lot like Badger.” Kathy grinned. “Boy, when those two get going, it’s gonna sound like Navajo code talkers on our scanners. Oh, look! I was right. Tuggle is offering him one of our purple team jackets with the Vagenya logo on the back.”

“Yeah, and he’s backing away,” said Sigur, stifling a giggle. “He must have heard of Vagenya, and he wants to keep on his Cingular jacket instead. Can he do that?”

“He’s doing us a big favor,” said Kathy. “As long as he keeps Badger out of the wrecks out there, I think he can do anything he wants.”

In their purple Team Vagenya uniforms they stood on the pit stall, waiting for the madness to begin.

“Taran had better snap out of it,” muttered Sigur. “Look at her standing there in a trance. You’d think we hadn’t practiced this a zillion times. She’s like a racehorse that can’t focus because of all the distractions at the track. We ought to put blinders on her.”

“She’ll get used to it,” said Reve. “It is rather overwhelming at first.”

“But she’s a race fan. She’s a trained member of this pit crew. She ought to have known what to expect. More than I did.”

“It’s different in person,” said Kathy Erwin, who had grown up on speedways. “Bigger. Louder. It’s always daunting to people their first time. This track is huge. Give her a couple of minutes. She’ll settle.”

The countdown until the start of the race was certainly different from the practice days at the shop, and even later on the speedway itself when all you had to think about was doing your job as quickly and efficiently as you could. That had been difficult enough, but now the challenge was to perform with that same calm proficiency in the eye of a festive hurricane of color and noise.

The pageantry of race day was impressive enough viewed in miniature on a television screen, but when the full blast of it rolled over you in waves of team colors, engine roars, and the smell of leaded gas, the effect was numbing. More than one hundred thousand people were staring down at you, watching you work, while engines thundered. Air Force jets swooped low over the speedway in the flyover at the beginning of the race, and then all the pit crews lined up on the track, like spokes in a giant wheel, in a rainbow of team colors, to stand at attention while a famous singer-someone whose CDs you actually owned-sang the National Anthem.

“Who’s that walking Badger to the 86?” asked Cindy, as she watched the procession of drivers heading for their cars. “I thought the wives escorted them. That doesn’t look like a Miss Georgia to me.”

“No, he divorced that one,” said Jeanne. “Is it a dumpy scarecrow-looking woman? I think that’s his manager. I hear they don’t like her much around the front office.”

“Did she kiss him?” asked Taran in a stricken voice.

“Nope. He barely looked at her,” said Jeanne.

“Badger focuses,” Kathy informed them. “A lot of drivers do that. Before the race even starts, he’ll begin to block out everything but the driving. In his mind he is already on the track. He wouldn’t know it if he had been walked to the car by the Bride of Frankenstein.”

“He just was,” said Tuggle, who had caught the tail end of the conversation.

All the fanfare of race day would have been distracting enough for the first few minutes, no matter which team you were with, but for Taran there was one extra element that she hadn’t considered, and for a moment of fleeting panic, she found herself wishing that she had been hired on the pit crew of, say, Greg Biffle or Joe Nemechek, where this particular problem would not arise. But, oh no, she had to be the catch can for Badger Jenkins. Her driver. And to stand right there while he walked to the car…

Except it wasn’t Badger.

Taran had got used to seeing Badger around by now-the little chicken hawk guy with the aw-shucks grin and the wave-on-a-slop-bucket walk, strolling around the shop in his baggy jeans and faded tee shirt. She had even had a couple of casual (nice-day-isn’t-it? How-you-doin’?) conversations with him, and while it was true that when he tossed away his empty bottle of blue Gatorade, she had fished it out of the trash and kept it, she told herself that she could throw it away any time she wanted to. It was just that the plastic bottle looked rather nice with ribbons tied around the neck, holding a fistful of flowers or feathers collected on her morning walks. She had brought it with her to Daytona. For luck, she told herself. In the hotel room she had set it in front of her signed and framed eight-by-ten photo of…Photo of whom?

A stern-looking man in dark glasses and a purple and white fire suit standing in front of the race car.

It was one of the formal shots Sark had taken for team press releases, and in the photo a tall and handsome man stared at the camera. Embroidered on the chest of his firesuit, right beneath “NASCAR Nextel Cup,” were the words Badger Jenkins, but the man in the photo certainly wasn’t the affable little guy who wandered around the shop, eating beef jerky while he passed the time of day with the mechanics.

The man in the photo wasn’t Badger: It was him. The guy she had watched in televised races and cried over when he wrecked and fantasized about for more nights than she cared to count. The Dark Angel.

And just as the race was about to begin that’s who had walked past her and swung himself with practiced ease through the driver’s side window of the race car. Taran froze, staring at this apparition, while the few remaining brain cells still on duty tried to assure her that the guy in the firesuit really was just little old Badger-only gift-wrapped. It didn’t help, though.

“Will you snap out of it?” hissed Reve, nudging her in the side. “It’s just Badger, for God’s sake. He gets into his car through the driver’s side window-just like everybody else from Georgia. Now we have work to do. Get over him!”

Taran nodded, still frozen, staring fixedly at the car, which was now proceeding around the track in those preliminary laps before the green flag signaled the start of the race.

“I’d advise you to get a grip on yourself,” said Sigur. “Because, you know, if you do a lousy job on the pit stops, you could cost him the race. Would you want to have to explain that to him?”

Taran shivered, picturing herself cowering before the menacing presence of the Dark Angel in the purple firesuit. He wouldn’t even have to scold her if she cost him the race. She would probably throw herself off the top tier of the grandstand in sheer mortification at the thought of failing Him. Somehow, the thought of laid-back little Badger telling her that her mistake was forgiven did not make her feel any better. She was pretty sure that when it came to winning races, the Dark Angel was always the being you would be dealing with.

Of course, his wrath wasn’t really the point, was it? What really had Taran frozen in her tracks was abject terror. Suppose he got hurt out there? She was the one who had worried about him when he was just a face on a coffee mug, a stranger whose fate was completely beyond her control. She was the fan who sometimes cried during the National Anthem in sheer apprehension over what would happen to her driver once the race began.

This was worse.