St. Dale

Ratty Laine rubbed his chin while he considered this. “I can be,” he said at last. “Cousin of the Pettys, maybe, or a former member of somebody’s whatchacallit-pit crew, maybe?”

Harley blinked. “What do you mean ‘I can be’? Don’t you know?”

“Well, it’s up to you, really. If you think this tour group will have a more rewarding experience thinking that I’m an old racing guy, then that’s what we’ll tell them.”

“But are you really?”

“Oh, really. I never talk about really. That’s why they call it private life, you know. ’Cos it’s private. Like I said, I’ll drive the bus and get you where you want to go, but the way I see it back story is your job. Just tell me who you want me to be.” He stretched and yawned. “Sorry. Long drive in this morning.”

“Where from?” asked Harley.

“Home,” said the driver.

“Where’s that?”

“Where do you want it to be?”

“Can’t you just be yourself?” asked Harley.

The driver shrugged. “No percentage in that. Well, you think it over. You’ve got an hour or so before the plane lands. My schedule says they all met up in Charlotte and took the same connecting flight up here.”

“But what am I supposed to tell them about you?”

“Look,” said Ratty Laine, “I’ve been driving for Bailey Travel for umpteen years now. When we go to Opryland, I’m the ex-mandolin player for the Del McCoury Band; on Civil War tours, my great-great-grandaddy fought at Gettysburg-which side he was on depends on the home states of the people on the tour; at Disney World, I was the voice of Goofy or a talking teapot in the latest movie, or something; then at-”

“Okay. I get it.” Harley shook his head. “Look, I really was a race car driver, so why don’t we forget the fake identity for you this time, and tell the folks you’re the bus driver, all right?”

Ratty shrugged. “Whatever. But I could say that I was the guy who changed Richard Petty’s mufflers.”

Harley sank down in the front seat next to the driver. It was going to be a long trip. “Stock cars don’t have mufflers, Ratty,” he said. “Now, where can I put this?” Harley held up a bulky canvas bag. “Won’t fit in the overhead. I won’t be needing it very often.”

“What is it?”

“My firesuit. Driving boots. Helmet.”

The driver raised his eyebrows and looked from the canvas sack to Harley’s face, now tinged pink with embarrassment. “What and where will you be driving?” he asked.

“Well,” said Harley. “I just thought I’d come prepared. You know, in case somebody gets food poisoning or something and they need a replacement driver toot sweet. Drivers carry their own gear. It’s like jockeys with saddles, I guess.”

“You mean you brought gear to drive a stock car? On the off chance?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, just in case. You never know.”

Ratty gave him a look that mixed pity with scorn, but he made no comment except to haul himself out of the driver’s seat and amble down the steps to the pavement. “Help me open the hold,” he said, tugging at the door to the outside luggage compartment. “It ought to fit in there. Way toward the back.” ’Cause you won’t be needing it. The unspoken words hung in the air.

“Thanks,” said Harley, shoving the bag into the hold. He never went anywhere without it.

Ratty slammed the door to the luggage compartment, and wiped his hands on his khaki trousers. “You sure you don’t want me to have a racing connection?”

Harley shook his head. All they needed was to get caught in a lie and lose the trust of the tour group. Mr. Bailey would probably dock their pay back to lunch money. “Look, Ratty,” he said. “I’ll handle all the NASCAR patter. You just worry about getting these folks from one place to the next, and feeding them, and scheduling pit stops.”

“What?”

“You know-trips to the toilet.”

“Oh, sure. No problem. And, you know, that reminds me, if race car drivers go for three straight hours without ever getting out of the car, how do they-?”

Harley sighed. Sooner or later everybody asked that question. “It’s hot in a stock car,” he said. “If you sweat enough, you don’t have to pee.”

The airborne contingent of the tour, eleven people as diverse as any other group of airline passengers, wore expressions that ranged from barely contained excitement to a polite wariness that might have been shyness. The exception was one well-dressed woman who looked as if she had been brought there at gunpoint.

Justine elbowed her sister in the ribs. “Stop looking like a duchess at a cockfight!” she whispered. “There’s some perfectly nice people here. I told you there would be. Check out that hot young guy in the yellow Brooks Brothers sport shirt with the little dead sheep emblem-bet you ten bucks he’s Ivy League. And look at that distinguished fellow in the clerical collar. Oh, isn’t that sweet? He has a little boy with him. Oh, Lord, I hope they’re not on their honeymoon!”

“Shut up, Justine,” Bekasu hissed back, edging away.

Spotting their fellow tour members had been easy. Along with the tour itineraries the Bailey Tour Company had sent Winged Three caps to match the one worn by the guide and the driver. Several of the travelers had dutifully worn the headgear on the flight, in addition to various other items of Dale-bilia currently displayed about their persons: Intimidator tee shirts, sew-on patches featuring a replica of Earnhardt’s signature, and, in the case of one enterprising matron, a hip-length cotton vest featuring a montage of black Monte Carlos, made of the special Dale Earnhardt fabric sold at Wal-Mart.

There were more women than one might expect to find on a NASCAR-themed tour. At least on a tour that wasn’t dedicated to Jeff Gordon. Funny that so many women liked Earnhardt, Harley Claymore was thinking. You’d think he’d remind them of their ex-husbands. You’d think women would see Earnhardt as the weasely redneck version of the Type-A executive: the man who puts his career first, his hobbies and his buddies second, and his family a distant third. Except for all that money and fame, Earnhardt seemed to Harley an unlikely sex symbol. Wonder if he’d even managed to snag a date for the high school prom. Ah, no. Scratch that. Dale had dropped out in junior high, before the social pressures of adolescence became much of an issue. The glad-handing imperatives of his future success must have come as an unpleasant surprise for him, but he had made the transition as gracefully as he took the turns on the track. If he hadn’t, he’d have been left in the dust years ago.

Harley would like to have mused on the whole charisma aspect of the Earnhardt mystique in a group discussion on the bus, but he half suspected that the driver was under orders to report any heresies to Bailey Travel, so if he wanted his paycheck, he had better not get caught letting in daylight on the magic.

Most of the men looked like normal sports fans in a spectrum of ages, except for the preppy and the minister, who were both dutifully wearing their Winged Three caps, but with the air of generals in camouflage. And he hadn’t expected the little boy. The kid was the color of chalk, and he didn’t seem to have any eyelashes, but he seemed chipper enough. The man with him wore a priest’s collar-so probably not the boy’s father. He wondered what the story was. Harley held out his hand to the boy. “Hello, Sport,” he said. “I’m your guide. You a big Dale fan?”

The boy glanced up at his companion and received an encouraging nod. “Yep.”

Well, there was a precedent for that, thought Harley. He wondered if the sick kid was hoping for a miracle from Dale. As he recalled it had been the other way around. “How old are you, Sport?”

The kid gave him an owlish look. “Name’s Matthew. I was born the year Sterling Marlin won the Daytona 500,” he said.

Harley let out a sigh of mock exasperation. “Well, that’s no help. Sterling won in both ’94 and ’95, so I still don’t know your age.”

The kid grinned. “Okay. The first time. So, who won Daytona the year you were born?”

“Ben Hur,” said Harley. He wondered how long it would take him to match names and faces. He glanced again at his tour notes, raising a hand to indicate that a speech was forthcoming.

The tour members clustered around him and the chattering subsided.

“Tri-Cities,” he said, savoring the word. “Now you know we didn’t choose this airport just because it has a three in its name.” He’d had four months to work on his NASCAR patter for the tour and