They waited a few moments, but Arlene’s tribute was finished.
As they started to walk back, the weasel caught up with Terence. “Say, my buddy Cannon’s got some pieces of Dale’s wrecked car out there in the van. Made ’em into key chains. Y’all want to buy some?”
Terence stopped walking and stared at the little man. “Nobody has pieces of that car,” he said.
“Yeah, we do,” said the weasel, turning to speak to the others as they walked past. “Pieces of Dale’s car for sale!”
Shane McKee stepped up beside Terence. “You carry a cell phone, don’t you, man? I’ve got a brochure here with DEI’s phone number on it. I think they should hear about this. You call them while I get the license number off their van.”
He began to run after the hastily retreating hucksters. But by the time they reached the parking lot Cannon and the weasel were gone.
“Good move,” said Terence to Shane. “Those guys were scum.”
“Wish I’d a caught ’em,” said Shane.
They exchanged satisfied smiles.
Chapter XVI
“You know what they say about Talladega, don’t you?” asked Harley. He was swaying a little, trying to stand up as the bus roared down I-20 through the green sweep of eastern Alabama. He thought they must be about half an hour out of Talladega, and now, having taken a surreptitious peek at his notes, he quizzed the passengers with the expectant look of a teacher addressing a class. He pointed to Matthew. The boy had slept most of the way out of Atlanta, but a few miles west of the Alabama state line he’d perked up again, and now his hand was waving in the air. “Okay, sport,” said Harley. “Stop with the imaginary checkered flag. Lay it on us.”
“This is where Dale Earnhardt won his last race,” said Matthew solemnly.
Harley nodded, trying to look as if he’d remembered that. Might be in his notes somewhere. “Okay, Matthew. Good call. That was in-”
“October, 2000,” said Cayle. “The fall race at Talladega.”
Harley waited a couple of seconds to see if anybody was going to dispute her, but several heads nodded, so she must be correct. He smiled. “Right again. Anything else?”
“I’d almost call it a miracle, that race,” said Jim Powell. “Remember it? I saw it on television. Dale was running in eighteenth place that day. It didn’t look like he had a cat’s chance of winning. Then all of a sudden toward the end of the race, he moved from eighteenth place all the way up to first in only five laps. Then he went on to win it. Most incredible thing you ever saw.”
Arlene spoke up. It was one of her good days. “You didn’t see it, Jim,” she said. “You went to the bathroom, thinking Earnhardt was out of the running, and when you came back, I was jumping up and down screaming for Dale just as he took the lead.”
Jim looked pleased to be corrected. “Why, that’s right, hon,” he said, patting her hand. “I guess it’s never wise to give up on somebody, is it?”
Bill Knight, who had been looking out his window, admiring the green hills in the distance, said wonderingly, “You never think of Alabama having mountains. It looks like New Hampshire out there.”
Sarah Nash leaned forward and touched his arm. “They’re the same mountains,” she said. “The Appalachian chain begins here in north Alabama and ends up in New Brunswick, Canada. So the Bodines from upstate New York and the Allisons from north Alabama may have more in common than one might think.”
Harley laughed. “Well,” he said, “that’s one thing I sure never heard anybody say in connection with Talladega. Anything else?”
“That track cost $4 million to build back in ’69,” said Jesse Franklin. “Some of the speedways they built in the late nineties cost around 200 million to construct. Being an auditor, I keep up with monetary things like that.”
“Okay, that’s more than I knew, folks,” said Harley, making a silent vow to dig his guidebooks back out of his suitcase tonight. “I was waiting for somebody to say that it’s a super speedway, and one of the restrictor plate tracks. The
Justine heaved a sigh of exasperation. “Harley,
“Justine!” Bekasu turned back from the window and tried to shush her sister.
Justine shrugged. “Well,
“I’ve never heard anything about this,” said Terence, glancing at Sarah Nash. “Haunted?”
She gave a little shrug and then nodded. “So they say.”
Harley knew exactly what Justine was referring to, but it wasn’t the kind of thing drivers talk about, not even when they’re paid to be tour guides. He glanced down at Ratty to see if he had any reaction to Justine’s announcement, but Ratty was keeping his eyes on his lane of I-20, seemingly oblivious to the chatter behind him.
“You might as well tell them now, Justine,” said Cayle. “You’ll end up telling everybody one at a time at the next rest stop anyhow.”
Harley nodded. “You opened this can of worms,” he said. “You might as well spill it.”
“Okay,” said Justine. “Microphone?” She swayed up the aisle to stand next to Harley. “This used to be Cherokee land, you know. These hills. Now, Talladega-which means ‘border town’ in Cherokee-some people say that the place was built on an old Indian burial ground, or something, and that there’s a curse on it because of that.” She was solemn now, and round-eyed with the enormity of the tale.
Bill Knight frowned at this unexpected lurch in subject matter. He glanced down at Matthew, but the boy didn’t even seem surprised, much less disturbed, by this announcement. He supposed that between the zombie video games and the slasher movies, it would take more than a ghost story told in broad daylight to frighten a modern child.
“What kind of curse?” Terence called out. He had glanced around to see if anybody was laughing, but they weren’t.
“Okay, here’s the story,” said Justine, leaning into the microphone and assuming the hushed tone of the campfire storyteller. “Remember Bobby Isaac? He was the Winston Cup champion in-well, when I was a kid-”
Jim Powell spoke up. “Nineteen and seventy,” he said. “Year Arlene and I moved into our house in Shelby.”
“Right,” said Justine. “I knew it was B.D. Before Dale. Anyhow, Bobby Isaac was a successful, dedicated driver, okay? He was well paid and well known. So, in 1973 Bobby Isaac was racing in the Talladega 500-”
“As a matter of fact he was in the lead at the time,” said Ray Reeve, who knew where this story was headed.
“Wow. I’d forgotten that,” said Justine. “Okay, so he’s on the front stretch when all of a sudden he pulled into the pit without any caution flag, and without being told to by his crew chief. Just ups and parks the car. The crew all came running up to him. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘What’s wrong with the car?’ ‘Are you sick?’ And you know what he said?” She looked to Harley for confirmation.
He sighed. “Go on,” he said. “Tell them.”
“Okay, when they asked Bobby Isaac why he pulled out of the race, he said that
