well-spoken he was, I mean. Drank out of a wooden goblet, but served his guests in gold ones. Nobody ever mistook Attila for a saint. Or Earnhardt. Not that I’m comparing them,” he hastened to add.
Bekasu laughed. “He’d probably consider it a compliment. Okay, Dale and Attila weren’t saints by the church’s standards, no. But the clergy may not have the last word anymore. Not culturally, anyhow. I think in the twentieth century, the people started choosing the saints. Elvis. Princess Diana. Speaking of the princess, a few weeks before she was killed, she auctioned off her formal gowns at Sotheby’s and gave the money to charity. Does that sound familiar?”
“Becket’s robes…” murmured Bill. “Shortly before he was killed, he gave away his archbishop’s clothing to the poor.”
“Right.” She waved a hush puppy for emphasis. “They were
Bill stared at her. “I thought you hated stock car racing.”
Bekasu shrugged. “I’m a lawyer. I can argue both ends against the middle. I don’t particularly enjoy watching racing as a sport-not the way Justine does. But it annoys me when cultural snobs belittle it. Fighting for the underdog is in my blood, I suppose. A judge I clerked for once called me a Jacksonian Democrat, and I suppose I am.”
“But do you think Earnhardt-I mean, all those supernatural things?”
She shrugged. “I’m keeping an open mind, I guess. I’ve known Cayle all her life and she isn’t a liar, so I’ll take it as real that she saw
“Fair enough,” said Bill.
“But isn’t he an unlikely saint?” Bekasu nodded toward the Earnhardt-Twin Towers poster. “I grew up in North Carolina. I’m about the same age as Dale. And I keep thinking that I knew him. Oh, not
“Sounds familiar,” said Bill.
“Yes, but not everybody had to follow those rules. My dad was a lawyer, and my friends were the doctors’ kids and the other lawyers’ kids, and the rest of the adolescents in our leafy upper middle class neighborhood. We all went to the nice new junior high school in the suburbs. But across town was the other junior high school-the old one-on the other side of the tracks in the working class part of town.” She sighed. “I used to envy them so much.”
“I know,” said Bill. “They didn’t have to be home by ten or do volunteer work with the church youth on weekends.”
“The girls could wear raccoon-eye makeup and tight skirts, and they could drink beer and go steady in ninth grade.”
“And you wanted to be like them?”
Bekasu took a deep breath. “Well, okay. You’re right. I probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. Justine was the family wild child. I had to be the responsible one. The honor student. But those kids from the other side of town seemed so free. So unencumbered by expectations. I was the rough beast, slouching toward graduate school since before I could even spell it.”
Bill smiled. “Same here. And you’re saying that Dale Earnhardt was from the other side of the tracks?”
“Of course he was! He dropped out of school in junior high! If I’d done that, my parents would have sent me off to a nunnery. And we were Presbyterian. He was a dropout, got married at sixteen or so, and worked in a mill or a garage or something. I knew a slew of guys from that world. They turned up in tenth grade, when both junior high school classes got dumped into the same city high school. But the two groups mostly stayed separate even then. It’s as if we knew even as adolescents that we were headed in different directions.”
“It must have been a big surprise for some of Earnhardt’s classmates to reach the pinnacle of society and find Dale way ahead of them.”
“Yes,” said Bekasu. “Some of those wine-and-cheese conversations were probably quite strained, but I don’t think Earnhardt’s success would have changed their fundamental outlook on life. You don’t cancel your electrical connection just because lightning strikes once.”
Harley Claymore stood up, and tapped his spoon against his iced tea glass. Since the glass was plastic, this did not have much effect, but the conversation subsided anyhow. “It looks like we’re on the last lap of lunch, so I thought I’d get back to talking about The Rock, before we drive on over there.” His note cards were propped against the bottle of hot sauce, but when he was standing up, he was too far away to be able to read them. He didn’t think he’d miss much, though. “Some housekeeping notes first, though. We’ll be spending tonight in the Greater Charlotte area-that’s-how far are we, Ratty?”
Rattly Laine paused with his coffee mug inches from his lips. He had been in the middle of a story about taking Mick Jagger to Graceland, a tale that was no less entertaining for being implausible. “Charlotte?” he said. “Seventy- five miles west of here. An hour and a half, barring rush hour. But, of course, we’re not going to Charlotte proper, are we?”
“Oh, right. We’re staying tonight at Exit 49 off Interstate 85.” In the early days Lowe’s Motor Speedway had been called the Charlotte Motor Speedway, but the track had always been located in Concord, a little town northeast of Charlotte. If they had been traveling in strict geographical order, the tour would have visited Lowe’s before Rockingham, but Bailey Travel’s research indicated (rightly) that there would be more accommodations around Concord than there would be in Rockingham. Besides, the Charlotte Interstate corridor was the route they’d be taking the next afternoon to reach Talladega.
Harley winced. It was past two o’clock now. There was no way they could miss Charlotte’s rush hour, unless they dithered in Rockingham until after five o’clock, and that didn’t seem likely. On a weekday with no Cup race scheduled there for months, the Speedway would be deserted. A walk around, a few minutes to lay the wreath-he thought they’d be out of there by four. Anyhow traffic was Ratty’s problem, not his. He half expected one of the wealthier passengers to ask why they weren’t staying in Pinehurst instead of closer to Charlotte. Rockingham bordered North Carolina’s golf resort country, and he hadn’t wanted to have to tell them that the Bailey Travel budget would not stretch to such luxuries. He’d already had to tell Sarah Nash that time did not permit them to visit the famous Seagrove potteries while they were in Randolph County visiting the Petty Museum. No one had mentioned the golfing opportunities, though. Perhaps they could only concentrate on one sport at a time.
He cleared his throat and began again. “Rockingham. Technically, it is the North Carolina Motor Speedway, but you’ll hear Sting called ‘Gordon’ oftener than you’ll hear the Rock called by that long-winded title. It dates back to the 1960’s, and is located in Rockingham-hence the nickname. They host the second race of the NASCAR season. This is the place for drivers to find out if they’ve corrected whatever problems they had in the race at Daytona. The second Cup race is held in October. The track is ninety feet over a mile long, and it’s hell on tires. The banking is slightly higher in turns three and four than it is in the first two. Well, you’ll see. Shall we head on over there?”
“I wish my father could have made this trip,” said Terence, settling back into his seat on the bus. “I’m having a good time, but he would have really loved it, wouldn’t he?”
“Well, he had visited most of these places before,” said Sarah Nash. “Rockingham and Charlotte were day trips for him. He only signed up on this tour as a lark, and maybe to relive some good memories of the old days. I think he’d be glad to see you enjoying yourself. If he’d have any regrets, it would be not getting to share this experience with you, so that you could hear his stories as well as the official NASCAR tales.”
Terence hesitated. “I know he was planning on making this trip with you, and so I’ve been wondering were you and he-?”
“An item?” She gave him a wry smile. “No. I told you. We were neighbors. And old friends. Besides, I have a husband, technically speaking.”
