St. Dale

“What was he driving?” asked Matthew.

Sarah Nash spoke up. “A red-and-white Ford Thunderbird, sponsored by Coors.”

“Next came your buddy, Justine, the one-and-only Geoff Bodine, who was yellow number 5, the Levi Garrett car,” said Harley. “And then Kyle Petty. Before you ask-Earnhardt was in fourth position. He wasn’t the Man in Black yet. He was still the blue boy, sponsored by Wrangler in those days, so-” The look of exasperation on Justine’s face silenced him.

“Are you done?” she demanded.

“Go on, then. You remember the whole race, do you? Who was where? Who drove what? Blow by blow?”

“Blow by blow is right,” she said. “They were driving like it was bumper cars in the amusement park. On the very first turn-bam! Elliott hits Bodine. Or maybe the other way around. Anyhow, the two of them collided and spun out, and Earnhardt, who was right on their tails, went low to get around them. He had the lead.”

“Earnhardt caused that wreck,” said Sarah Nash. “He was behind them at the start of the race. I always thought he tapped them with his bumper.”

“Oh, he did not!” said Justine. “But Bill Elliott must have thought so, too, because instead of being furious with Bodine, he went gunning for Dale.”

“How did he do that?” asked Matthew, whose expression suggested that he had taken the term too literally; 1987 was, after all, the Olden Days, as far as he was concerned.

Justine smiled. “Elliot wanted to get even for the bump, so he caught up with Earnhardt on the backstretch and bumped him right back.”

“Right back!” echoed Sarah Nash.

“Well, he thought it was payback,” Justine corrected herself. “Anyhow, when they were coming off the fourth turn on the track, Elliott ran Earnhardt off the track altogether. Dale’s car ended up in the stretch of grass that separates the track from pit road.”

“He did this on purpose?” Bill Knight was aghast.

Justine shrugged. “Rubbing is racing,” she said. “I never heard that Earnhardt complained about it. Anyhow, it didn’t have the intended effect, because Dale just kept on driving.”

“At 150 miles an hour,” muttered Harley. It sounded easy enough to say, but Harley knew different. Two miles a minute. Reaction time: a blink. And grass was the worst surface to drive on, especially on racing tires which had no tread at all. They didn’t call them “racing slicks” for nothing. Not one person in a million would have done what Earnhardt did that day. You’ve left the track, going at a blinding speed, and your impulse would be to brake, at least to let up on the accelerator, or to put the car into a slide, maybe end up against the wall, just to have some control over where you ended up. But he did none of that.

“It was the most amazing thing you have ever seen!” said Justine. “I was jumping up and down in my seat and screaming for Dale like a banshee. There he was on the grass, where he ought to be slip-sliding all over the place and crashing into Lord-knows-what, and instead he just kept right on going full throttle in a straight line like it was nothing out of the ordinary, and a few seconds later-zoom! He comes out back on the asphalt-and he’s still ahead of Awesome Bill. ’Course, now Earnhardt is pissed, because he was run off the track by Bill Elliott. There’s no getting around that.” She paused to see if Sarah Nash had any rebuttal, but not even an Elliott fan could deny the facts.

“So never mind the rest of the field,” Justine went on. “Earnhardt has got a score to settle with Elliott. They’re racing side by side on the backstretch, and Earnhardt just starts easing over to the right and forcing Elliott close to the wall. Bumped him, too. I know he did it that time. He was getting even. Anyhow, Elliott ended up with a cut tire and finished fourteenth, and Earnhardt won the race. And that was the Pass in the Grass, the greatest move in the history of motor sports bar none-and I saw it happen!”

“Your father has the poster they made of the drivers who competed in that race,” Sarah Nash told Terence. “They look like such kids to me now. Earnhardt was kneeling in the center of the photo in his royal blue Wrangler suit, almost smiling, and right beside him is a baby-faced Terry Labonte, looking like Potsy on Happy Days, and then next to him Neil Bonnett with his Siamese cat blue eyes. On the other side of Dale is Bill Elliott, in his red Coors firesuit, kneeling alongside Richard Petty, who could still cast a shadow in those days, though he was still pretty thin.”

“I love that picture,” said Jim Powell. “Bill Elliott looked like the country boy he was. You’d think he’d take half an hour to ask you to pass the salt-and then you think of him going 212 miles an hour without batting an eye. Imagine!”

“Speaking of Mr. Elliott,” said Harley. “Anybody remember what happened after the race?”

Justine nodded. “You’d better tell that, though,” she said with a glance at Sarah Nash. “I don’t want to make anybody mad.”

The Elliott fan dismissed this concern with a wave. “Go right ahead and tell it,” she said. “I said Bill was an extraordinary driver. Didn’t claim he was a plaster saint.”

“Well,” said Harley, by way of apology for the man who once gave him a ride in his helicopter, “remember that it takes a special killer instinct to make a fearless driver. If these guys took losing philosophically, they wouldn’t be champions. Okay, that said, Earnhardt’s worthy opponents were more than a little perturbed about how the race had played out, and the fact that the checkered flag had ended the race did not mean that they had turned off their tempers. The drivers were taking the post-race cool-down lap, and Bill Elliott went after Earnhardt. Coming out of the first turn, he rammed the number 3 car in the rear. They kept on going and then, in the backstretch, Awesome Bill cut toward Earnhardt, so that he’d have to slam on his brakes. I saw smoke coming off those tires, he braked so hard. Bodine went after him, too. It looked to me like they were going to use the Intimidator’s car as a punching bag with him in it. Elliott was playing cat and mouse with Earnhardt: he cut him off when he tried to enter pit road, and then at the entrance to the garage area, he cut him off again. That was about it, though. Nobody got hurt. The season went on after that, and Earnhardt ended up winning his third championship.”

“That three again!” Justine called out.

Harley rolled his eyes. “I wish we could get Bill Elliott out here to go after you,” he said. “Try telling him that Earnhardt’s a saint now.”

“Well, he’s getting a wreath, anyhow,” said Justine. “I don’t think Bill would begrudge him that. Whose turn is it?”

Jim Powell spoke up. “Do you folks mind if Arlene does it? She set a store by Ol’ Dale, and this was our home track, so to speak. Before we moved to Ohio.”

Jim Powell and Jesse Franklin had trotted back to the bus to retrieve the wreath, leaving Arlene standing next to Harley, smiling her tremulous smile. He hoped it was one of her good days. Harley smiled back at her. “Well, Arlene,” he said, “do you know where you want to put this wreath?”

She shook her head. “You choose.”

“We’ll find a place for it,” he said.

“And I’ll take your picture with it and send you a copy,” said Justine.

When Jim Powell and Jesse Franklin came back with the wreath, they were escorted by the two Earnhardt mourners from Bristol-Cannon, the racing-scrap dealer and his friend the weasel.

“Told you we might catch up with you again!” said the smaller man. “Old Cannon was mighty touched by this whole idea. Wanted to see it again.”

Jesse Franklin edged up close enough to Harley to whisper. “They were waiting by the bus,” he said. “And when they asked us if they could come along, I just didn’t know how to turn them away.”

“It’s all right,” said Harley. “They won’t hurt anything. That wouldn’t be respectful to Dale.”

Cannon and his associate had come dressed for a solemn occasion, having traded their customary black leather and denim for shiny dark suits, royal blue shirts, and skinny ties. They stood next to the Number Three Pilgrims in respectful silence while Jim Powell stepped forward with the wreath.

“In memory of Dale Earnhardt, the Intimidator,” he said. “Arlene?”

Arlene nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I remember Dale. People thought he was mean, but he wasn’t. He was always nice to people off the track. I think he was doing what he wanted to do, and he’d have done it whether anybody else cared or not. Maybe he was surprised that people did care so much. But he was an ordinary feller from Carolina, like my Jim.” She smiled up at her husband. “But there wasn’t nothing he couldn’t do. And he never got above his raising about it, either.” She began to smile, as if she’d forgotten they were there.