Once Around the Track

the shop. I am offering an excuse to get you out of this gig at the factory if you are in need of a reason not to go.”

He gulped down the last of the water and tossed the bottle at the waste can. Bull’s-eye. Too bad basketball goals weren’t a foot off the ground; Badger could have had a safer athletic career. Without a word, Tuggle dug another water bottle out of the ice in the cooler and passed it over to him.

The silence lengthened as Badger made a ceremony of unscrewing the bottle cap, tossing it into the trash for another bull’s-eye, and taking a long swig of water. He kept sighing and looking away, and she thought for a moment that his eyes glistened. At last he said, “That appearance thing. I have to do it.”

“Have to?”

“Yeah, she said I have to do exactly what she tells me to, or she’ll quit managing me.”

With great effort, Tuggle willed herself not to make the reply that was clawing at the inside of her throat. She contrived to look sympathetic, or at least noncommittal.

“Five thousand dollars,” said Badger, staring at the wall. “My dad was a farmer. When I was a kid, that could have kept us going for a year. Even when I first started racing, that would have been a fortune back when I was racing Late Model Stocks.”

Tuggle was no stranger to hard times, either, but she didn’t think people ought to let the specter of famine intimidate them. “Yeah, I understand about poor,” she said. “But these days five grand wouldn’t buy you enough tires to get through qualifying, much less a race. It wouldn’t get the jet off the ground. Some of your colleagues spend that much on dinner.”

He groaned. “I know. I know that in my head. It just feels wrong to turn down money when I don’t really have anything else to do, I guess. And I don’t have a lot of endorsement deals like some of the younger guys.”

Tuggle agreed with him on principle, except for the fact that if he did this gig at the textile mill, it would constitute a victory for Melodie Albigre, whom the entire team now referred to as his “restrictor plate,” among other less civil epithets. NASCAR had a policy of fining drivers for using foul language in interviews, which prompted Tuggle to remark that expressing her opinion of Melodie Albigre would cost her ten thousand dollars.

“Okay,” she said, “But the offer still stands. If she ever tries to make you do something you don’t want to do, just tell her I’ve called a meeting. I’ll back you up. Anytime. Day or night.”

Badger nodded. “I hear you,” he said.

“Look, Badger. You’re famous. You’re rich by most people’s standards. Why are you letting her push you around?”

“She says this is my last chance. She’s right. These days they’re hiring nineteen-year-olds straight into Cup.”

“Well…Kyle Busch, sure,” said Tuggle. “But one shrub doesn’t make a forest.”

“It’s the way of the world, Tuggle. Times have changed since I started out. And you never know how long a career is going to last if you’re an athlete. I could go into the wall in the next race and never work again.”

Tuggle said nothing. You couldn’t argue with that. She couldn’t even bring herself to say the names of the guys whose careers had ended that way. The thought of them brought a lump to her throat. And he had taken some hard hits in the past, no question about it. That was part of the reason that she wanted to protect him. He had become a celebrity by risking his life, and he had done so with grace and courage. She respected that. As far as she could tell, Melodie Albigre did not.

“Okay, point taken,” she said at last.

“Yeah, so I need to think about my future. You know, you never save enough in your heyday, because you think it’s going to last forever.”

Tuggle grunted. “Tell me about it.” She was a lot closer to retirement age than he was, with a lot less to show for it. That’s why she’d needed this job. “Okay, I understand about the money, but why her? There are plenty of personal managers for athletes.” Ones that don’t treat you like pond scum, she finished silently.

Badger sighed. “I don’t live up here,” he said. “Well, I mean, I have a place up here, but I go home as much as I can. Between that and my driving schedule, I don’t have a lot of time to be finding people to work for me. She showed up, and she’s been really good. She says it would cost me fifty thousand dollars in salary to get someone to do her job, and she just works on commission.”

But what has she done? thought Tuggle. Oh, there was the press release she sent to the local shoppers’ weekly, with enough misspelled words to make even Tuggle wince. (Deanna had seen the original, which she had been asked to mail along with a team photo of Badger.) And she had got him a few minutes on a local TV sports show that aired at midnight Saturday night. And a few local appearances that paid a few thousand dollars, but, after all, Badger was a Cup driver-and there were only forty-three of them around-so such fees were hardly evidence of great ability on the part of his manager. If she had landed him a write-up in Newsweek, or a segment on 60 Minutes, or a long-term corporate partnership worth millions, that might have made her worth putting up with-but for a shoppers’ weekly and a textile mill gig?

Tuggle decided to let it go. Badger was worried about his future, and he was probably wise to do so. Scaring him wouldn’t help. Privately, she resolved to monitor the situation. Perhaps Melodie was simply a semicompetent boor who liked to latch on to celebrities; if she was something more dangerous than that, Tuggle would have to decide what to do about it. A tire iron would be favorite, she thought.

“Look, Badger,” she said. “I’m on your side. You know that, right? We may have our share of disagreements, but I won’t stand by and see anybody take advantage of you, boy.”

He nodded with that sad-eyed hound look of his. With a weary sigh, he hauled himself to his feet. “I’m going home,” he said.

“Thanks for worrying about me. I know you’re on my side. But I’m fine, really. I’m lucky to have her.”

As she heard him exit the hauler, Tuggle muttered to herself, “Boy, you’d be better off swallowing a tapeworm.”

The next morning at ten minutes to ten, a haggard-looking Badger turned up in the office and perched on the edge of Deanna’s desk. He bore very little resemblance to the handsome daredevil in the posters surrounding him with mocking images of his idealized self. Without a word, Deanna went to the office refrigerator and took out a blue Gatorade, which she handed him in silent commiseration.

He accepted it with a feeble smile and took a few fortifying sips. “I’m meeting Melodie here,” he told the secretary.

Deanna’s sympathetic expression hardened into the one she usually reserved for cockroach sightings. “I know,” she said, biting off every word. “She called and said she was on her way. She asked me to have coffee ready for her.”

Badger nodded. He never interfered in interoffice dynamics. Opinion varied on whether or not he even noticed them.

Deanna said, “There’s something else I need to tell you before she gets here. I guess you can’t do it, but…Well, the Roush people called and asked if you could possibly do them a favor. One of their drivers was supposed to make a visit to the children’s ward of a local hospital today, but their guy is not feeling well himself, and obviously nobody wants a driver who might be contagious going to visit sick children. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Badger, who had closed his eyes, nodded.

Deanna took a deep breath. Sitting two feet from Badger always made her nervous. She’d tell her envious friends, He’s so macho I’m afraid he’ll short out my birth control patch. But she knew that such feelings were all in her head. Badger treated everybody just the same. “Well, anyhow, Badger, all the other Roush drivers are otherwise committed today, and so they phoned here asking for you. They wondered if you would go to the children’s ward. The children are really looking forward to a visit from a NASCAR driver, as you can imagine.”

Badger opened his eyes and sighed. “The Roush people called us?” he asked.

The secretary nodded. She thought she knew why he’d asked which team had called. If the team had been Hendrick or DEI, then the driver the children were expecting to meet might have been Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Nobody would want to be the substitute who walked into a room full of kids expecting either of them. The howls of disappointment would be deafening. But Badger probably figured that he was as kind and personable and famous as the Roush guys-well, anyhow, he wouldn’t be too much of a disappointment as a substitute.