Once Around the Track

the Darlington Raceway mounted flat on a small pedestal. Badger hoisted the trophy over his head, while the team crowded around him, trying not to look astonished that they had won.

Most of the time the pit crew figured only as a jubilant crowd in the background of the celebration, but because the 86 team was a novelty-all female-they got more attention than Badger did. No one said anything more profound than his simple thank-you speech, but for almost exactly fifteen minutes, they were famous. And on Tuesday morning, “Littlebit” Baird would receive Badger’s racing helmet, signed by the entire 86 team as thanks for her part in the victory.

ENGINE NOISE

Your Online Source for NASCAR News & Views

Endangered Species? Is it open season on “badgers” in Cup racing? Engine Noise is hearing that, despite the big win at Darlington on Sunday (YOU GO, GIRLS!), the Warrior Princess of the 86 team is getting pretty fed up with her unhousebroken Badger. He blows off sponsor meetings, weasels his way out of appearances, and almost missed the plane to last week’s race. Hearing, too, that nobody likes having to deal with the person on the other end of the Vagenya driver’s leash. He may be a badger, but by all accounts she is a skunk. He’d better fumigate his business office before the stench drives everyone away and costs him his ride. We love you, Badger, but “Unchained Melodie” is our least favorite song!

CHAPTER XXI

Teaser Stud

“You got a lotta sand,” said Badger.

Instinctively, Taran reached down to brush off her jeans, before she realized that this expression was Badger- speak for possessing gumption and courage. “Thank you,” she said meekly.

Badger grinned. “Bouncing around in the car back at Bristol. And you didn’t scream once.” He patted her arm. “Good job.”

Wednesday night in Mooresville: Taran had been the last one left in the garage. She was working late because Tony had asked her to check out the wiring on the fans for his Late Model Stock race car to see if she could figure out why they weren’t working. When Badger stopped by about eight on his way back from dinner, just to see what was going on, or to refute the accusation that he was never around between races, he had found her there alone at the workbench, peering at a tangle of colored wires.

She wasn’t finished, but when Badger snared a blue Gatorade out of the refrigerator (Taran herself made sure they never ran out) and started to leave, Taran had walked outside with him. It was a clear, cool night with a quarter moon and the usual measly complement of stars visible in the haze of greater Charlotte. Taran’s heart was pounding to the beat of “I am alone with Badger Jenkins.” Unfortunately, it is difficult to think up any small talk when you have to keep reminding yourself to breathe.

“Thank you for paying my fine,” she said.

He smiled. “You’ve already thanked me about six times for that, sweetie. Are you gonna thank me one time for every dollar of the fine?”

“It was so kind of you to do it, though,” she said. “I’m so glad you turned out to be a nice guy. Before I joined the team, I was a Badger Jenkins fan.”

He tilted his head back and peered at her, surprised. “Was?”

“Oh, I still am. It’s just that sometimes I forget that you’re him.”

She could see his face in the glow of the shop’s outdoor security light. Badger looked bewildered, and Taran thought, I may never have another chance to tell him. Let me just say it and hope I can make him understand. Nobody should be loved so much and not know it.

Aloud, she said, “Do you know why I went to work on this team, Badger? Because I loved you.” She waved away whatever reply he had been about to make. “Oh, not you, really, Badger. I didn’t even know you. But I once stood in line for an hour in the hot sun at Atlanta to have you scrawl your name across a tee shirt, and you barely looked up when you signed it. It didn’t matter, though. I loved you so much. Do you guys understand that? How much we care about you? That we cry when you wreck? That we know your dog’s name. That every October there are birthday parties in your honor that you don’t even know about, given by people you’ve never even heard of-celebrating your birthday.”

Badger looked embarrassed. “Wa-all, thank you,” he said softly.

She sighed. “No. Don’t thank me. I didn’t do it on purpose-care about you, I mean. One day I was watching NASCAR races without particularly caring who won, and the next moment you were all that mattered.”

He tilted his head back and narrowed his eyes, the way he did when he was paying closer attention. “Which win was that?” he asked.

“You didn’t win that day. You wrecked. Fourteen cars slammed into you broadside at Talladega, and I started crying, and after that I guess I never stopped, because you were having one lousy season that year. I was so scared that you were hurt, and I stayed scared for every single race after that. Sometimes I’d start crying during the National Anthem.

“But don’t thank me, Badger. If I could have fallen in love with Tony Stewart, believe me, I would have. He had a great year, and being his fan would have been a much less painful experience, but fandom doesn’t work that way. It just happens.” She shrugged. “It’s like a cross between falling in love and typhoid fever. We can’t help it. Do you understand?”

Badger shook his head. “It’s just me,” he said. “There’s the firesuit and the dark sunglasses, so I guess I look different, but underneath all that, it’s just me.”

She looked at him appraisingly, marveling as she always did at the difference between Badger Jenkins in person and the Dark Angel who turned up on every autograph card, tee shirt, and coffee mug that featured him. “No,” she said at last. “I don’t think you are just you when you’re out there. Not to your fans, anyhow.” She managed a misty smile. “For one thing, you’re taller.”

“Well, those pictures make me look good, I guess. Better than I really look.”

“It’s more than that, Badger. It’s as if ten thousand strangers loved you so much-loved the idea of you, anyhow-that they built you a soul, and the force of that collective belief made him more real than you are. If reality is a consensus of opinion, then he is more real than you are. How many friends do you have? A dozen, maybe? Well, there are ten thousand women who would sleep with him if he simply nodded in their direction. And a thousand people would die for him.”

He shivered. “That doesn’t have anything to do with me,” he said. “Not really.”

“No, I suppose not, but people like their dreams to be tangible, and so three hundred people wait in line to shake your hand…and they take your picture…and trembling women hug you…because it’s the closest that any of us can come to touching him.”

“I try to be nice to people,” he said simply. “I’m not anything special. I was just lucky.”

She stared at him as if he were a stranger. It was like having a conversation about some absent third person. “I loved you so much,” she said, wonderingly, as if she couldn’t quite remember why. “Do you know why I took this job on your pit crew?”

He shifted uneasily, as if he expected her to lunge at him. Women did, sometimes, and this whole line of discussion was making him sweat. “Uh…To get to know me?”

“No. To protect you. I just couldn’t sit there staring at a TV screen any longer, worrying about whether your tires were bad, or if your safety harness had been fastened right. So I decided to join the team for my own peace of mind, because I figured it was better to do something than to sit home and worry.”