As a preliminary to the race, there was a drivers’ parade: a patriotic convoy of pick-up trucks, solid red, solid white, and solid blue, each one carrying a fire-suited driver standing in the flatbed, waving to the roaring crowd for one turn around the track. Matthew stood up on the seat and waved his number 3 cap at the procession, and Bill Knight muttered something in Latin.
“You rooting for anybody?” Terence asked Ray Reeve, who was seated next to him.
“Not anymore,” growled the old man, not taking his eyes off the track.
“Who do you want to win, Matthew?” asked Cayle.
Matthew shrugged. “I don’t really care,” he said. “I just wish I could have been here when Earnhardt was racing.”
Bill Knight wondered why it would have mattered. The race would consist of a cluster of cars speeding past. Except for the numbers, how could anyone tell them apart, he thought. Still, he made an effort to get into the spirit of things. “At least they have an electronic scoreboard,” he said. “So that we can tell what lap they’re on.”
“I wonder how the Romans kept track of laps during chariot races?” asked Bekasu, already in need of distraction.
“Ah,” said Knight. “I know that one. Eggs and dolphins.”
“Yes. Poseidon was considered one of the patron deities of the game. Because of the horses, I believe.”
“Not
He laughed. “No. Stone ones. You see, inside the oval of the Circus Maximus was a wall called the Spina, and at the end of it were two columns, each topped by a crosspiece. One crosspiece held a row of marble eggs, and the other, a row of dolphin statues. Each time the chariots circled the course, the
“Did those guys ever get run over by chariots?” asked Matthew.
“Well…possibly,” Bill Knight conceded. “I expect electronic scoreboards are an improvement.” He wasn’t so sure about the cars, though.
Sitting at the end of the row, Harley stuck in his earplugs because he didn’t want to hear the voices of the Number Three Pilgrims asking him any more silly questions. He wanted to remember the other voices-the ones from the times he raced here. Stock car drivers wear headsets, so that even though they drive alone for five hundred laps in a monotonous circle, they have as much company in their heads as they do on the track: a Babel of voices, issuing instructions, assessing the car, cheering them on. High above the track, the team’s spotter was positioned, relaying information about conditions on the track ahead-who had wrecked, where a bottleneck had developed, whether to go high or low as you passed. The mechanics chimed in from time to time, concerned about the condition of the car. Was it time to pit for new tires? More fuel? Or should they wait and hope for a yellow flag? The crew chief offered strategy, encouragement, and a sounding board for whatever ideas the driver might have. You might be alone in the car, but you didn’t feel that way, with all those voices shouting in your head. And a goodly number of spectators owned receivers that tuned to the frequency of the radio communications between the drivers and crews. They would tune the set to the frequency of their favorite driver, and listen to his own private race-his comments, his voices. There was nothing like having a couple of thousand people eavesdropping on your conversation to make you watch your language.
Harley missed it, though. Not just the racing, but the voices. It had been like being in a big, close family-not that he was an expert on that feeling, really. But the idea of having a dozen people rooting for you, ready to do whatever they could to help you-that was a rush. Okay, their salaries were inextricably linked to your performance, which gave them a good reason to wish for your success, but still the support was good. Sure it was conditional, but, hey, what wasn’t? He wished just once he could have felt as sustained in life as he had on the track. In life or in his marriage. And most of all he wished he didn’t have to be sitting here in the cheap seats wearing earplugs, with no voices in his head to guide him around the oval.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Bill Knight, looking politely inquisitive. “I’m new to all this,” he said. “What exactly should I look for?”
Harley thought about it, and decided that he wasn’t annoyed at the question. At least the man knew that the sport did have its complexities, which made a nice change from all the idiots who thought NASCAR stood for Non Athletic Sport Centered Around Rednecks. Why did women always say things like that? Well, yeah, he had told a local news anchor chick once at one of those wine and cheese do’s. And modern art is just slapping paint on canvas. So what does that make simple-the art or you? It had felt good to say that-almost worth the drink in the face and going home alone.
“Okay,” he said. “The human element here is that you’ve got two experienced drivers trying to put an end to very long losing streaks. One of them is Rusty Wallace, who has lost forty-nine races in a row. He always used to complain about Earnhardt getting away with murder, spinning him out to get past and all.”
“Ah. So now he has a chance to see if he can succeed without Earnhardt to contend with.”
“Well, technically, there
“Ah. Yes, of course.”
“Rusty complains a lot. He got mad about a black flag call at the Hanes 500 in Martinsville a few years back, so during the post-race interviews, he cut loose with some swear words. NASCAR takes a dim view of such behavior, and they fined his ass five thousand bucks. Know what he did?”
“What?”
“He paid it.” Harley grinned. “Sent half a million pennies over to Bill France in an armored car.”
“Ah. Well, sometimes rage can work wonders. I knew a fellow once who could only write sermons about things he was mad about. You mentioned another driver with a losing streak?”
“The other fellow trying to outrun his bad luck is Wonderboy. That’s what Earnhardt called him anyhow. Jeff Gordon.”
“Now I
“People do,” said Harley. “He’s in the 24 car. He’s got the movie star face, all right. He started young, and he looks even younger, which is why he got tagged with that nickname, but he’s a natural. Gordon’s marriage to a beauty queen is falling apart, though, and people think it might be affecting his concentration or something.” Harley shrugged. “I don’t know. I never could think about women when I was driving, but I suppose it’s possible.”
“Have you picked the winner?”
“Hard to say,” said Harley. “Too many variables. This race will take a couple of hours, and that’s a lot of time to screw up in. Who’s going to wreck? Who’s going to have mechanical problems? People don’t realize how much strategy is involved in motor sports. It isn’t just who has the fastest car, because every time a team gets a faster car than the competition, NASCAR thinks up more rules to even things up again.”
“So, if all the cars are about the same, what determines who wins?”
“I said. Strategy. Races have been won or lost on the decision to take two tires instead of four at a pit stop. Do you stop for gas and lose your lead or keep going and hope for a caution flag? Earnhardt lost at Daytona once because he ran out of gas.”
Bill Knight digested this information. “Okay,” he said. “But other things being equal, who would you expect to win today?”
Harley considered it. “If wanting was getting, then I’d put my money on Jeff Gordon, I think. He has gone thirty-one races without a win. That’s got to be killing him.”
“But I thought you said that Wallace had a longer losing streak than that?”
“Well, but Rusty’s used to it,” said Harley. “He’s been around a while. But Gordon, now, he’s the Tiger Woods of motor sports. A child prodigy. He was younger than Matthew there when he started winning championships in go-carts. He just kept moving up to bigger and faster rides. This losing streak must be hard to take after all that early success.”
“So you want Jeff Gordon to win?”
Harley sighed. The new bland, non-Southern face of NASCAR, all vanilla all the time. “Let’s just say that with my luck, Gordon is the one who will end up in Victory Lane.”
Sitting next to Bill Knight had given Harley a new perspective on watching races. He looked out across the
