St. Dale

“For the wreath? I’m not keeping track,” said Harley. “Ever who wants to, far as I’m concerned.” He remembered that the newlyweds had not yet had a turn, and he smiled at Shane, inviting him to volunteer.

Shane McKee shook his head. “Daytona,” he said.

“Okay. Ratty. Where is he?”

“Opening the baggage compartment,” said Cayle.

They turned and watched the little man scramble headfirst into the storage area beneath the bus. A moment later, he wriggled out again, like a terrier with a rat, and handed off the cardboard wreath box to Bill Knight, who happened to be standing closest to the bus.

The group gathered around while Bill Knight lifted the lid. White silk lilies, red rosebuds, and a black ribbon which bore the message, “Gone to Race in a Better Place” in white lettering.

“I’ll do it,” said Terence.

“I know just the place,” said Justine. “There’s a wonderful statue of Richard Petty on a pedestal erected over near the condo. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if we put a wreath to Dale at the base of that.”

Betcha he would, thought Harley, but since Mr. Petty was unlikely to find out about this bit of memorial favoritism-or at least not to catch him in the middle of it-he voiced no objection to Justine’s plan.

The little procession marched toward the track, with Terence carrying the wreath as if there were a fuse attached.

Harley, shepherding his troops along the road, got back into gear as a tour guide. “Fancy place, isn’t it?” he said, waving a hand toward the sumptuous condominium and the state-of-the-art grandstand and skybox complex. “But never mind the trappings here. When you’re talking about the Atlanta Speedway, there’s one race that stands out above all the rest,” he said.

“Oh, God,” said Bekasu. “Who got killed at this one?”

“No. That’s not what I’m getting at.”

Jim Powell turned to Ray Reeve. “Which race did Dale win here?”

“Well, he didn’t win the one I’m talking about,” said Harley. “But he was in it. And it was a landmark race. The Hooters 400 in 1992.”

“You drove in it, right?” said Justine quickly, before Bekasu could make any scathing remarks on the subject of Hooters Restaurants’ dress code for waitresses.

“I didn’t win it, either,” said Harley, as if that didn’t go without saying.

“Atlanta 1992.” Sarah Nash turned the idea over in her mind. “That would be about the time Richard Petty retired.”

“You nailed it. The Hooters 400 was his last race. Maybe that’s why the statue is here. And it was the very first Cup race for somebody else.”

Ray Reeve’s expression suggested that he had stepped in something. “Not Wonderboy?”

“It sure was,” said Harley. “Very symbolic, don’t you think? The end of the old era of Southern good old boys in a regional sport, and the beginning of the new world of NASCAR as a national pastime with media-savvy golden boys at the wheel.”

“Should’a called that race the Armageddon 500,” said Ray Reeve.

“Well, I agree with Harley about the Hooters 500 being a landmark,” said Jim Powell. He was leading Arlene along by the hand, slowing his steps so that she could keep up. “But not just because of Petty and Gordon. That race decided the championship that year, too, didn’t it?”

“It was a three-way tie going into the race,” said Harley. “Davey Allison was the front-runner, thirty points ahead of Alan Kulwicki and forty points ahead of Awesome Bill.”

“My God,” murmured Bekasu. “I know who all of them are.”

Justine beamed and patted her sister’s arm. “See? I told you this tour would be educational!”

“Well, at least it will give me something to talk about when I get my car serviced,” she muttered.

Justine sneered. “It’ll give you something to talk about to the governor.”

“Did Davey crash in that race?” asked Jesse Franklin, trying to remember a competition that had ended a decade before.

Harley nodded. “With Ernie Irvan. Wasn’t serious. Just took him out of the running.”

“So Kulwicki must have won,” said Matthew, “because I know he was the defending champ in ’93 when his plane crashed at Bristol.”

“He won the championship, but he lost that race,” said Harley. “Elliott finished first, with Kulwicki right behind him. This is where it gets complicated.” He turned to Bill Knight and Bekasu. “You two might want to tune out here. Kulwicki’s second-place finish left him five ahead in overall points. So the championship came down to who led for the most laps, not to who won the race. Elliott led for 102 laps during the race, and Kulwicki led for 103. If it had been the other way around, they would have been tied for points for the championship, because the person who leads the most laps in the race gets five bonus points.”

“Then what? Toss a coin?”

“Nope. Then Elliott would have been declared the champion. Rule says in case of a tie, you look to number of races won during the season. Bill had five victories, while Alan Kulwicki had only two. So although Bill won the race, he lost the 1992 championship by one lap.”

“Oh, poor Bill!” said Justine. “To be so close and still lose. I’ll bet he took it hard.”

Harley clenched his teeth. “I am not going to the S &S Food Mart to buy a money order for Bill Elliott,” he said.

“No,” said Justine. “I’m sure he’s okay with it, and I think even he’d say now that it was for the best. Alan won the championship, and three months later he died in that plane crash at Bristol. But at least he had the championship. Bill is too much of a gentleman to begrudge him that.”

So here I am, thought Terence Palmer, walking along the path to a speedway holding a memorial wreath for someone that most of my friends have never heard of. He had joked that most of the people at the office thought that Dale Earnhardt was the chancellor of Germany. Of course, he didn’t have to tell anybody about this when he got back to Manhattan. He had actually been enjoying himself, as one can if one knows that the experience is simply a vacation from real life. Barbecue. Speedways. People who shopped at Wal-Mart. What an adventure. Maybe it would even give him some insight into how certain companies would do in the future, if he knew what middle America ate and wore. Pork rinds or beef jerky futures? He had actually enjoyed talking racing with Shane McKee, and Jesse Franklin had proved quite knowledgable about the stock market.

It occurred to Terence that this might have been his life for real if his father had ever wanted to fight for custody of him and if by some miracle Tom Palmer had won. He wondered who he would have turned out to be. He wouldn’t have a diploma from Yale. His clothes would be less elegant, his tastes less refined. He wondered if there could be an upside to that different self. If he could have been someone who did not watch himself making every move, who never spoke without gauging what the other person needed to hear. Someone who could make friends instead of contacts, socialize instead of network, accept a friendship without wondering what it would ultimately cost him. Someone who did not hear an endless loop of ironic commentary running inside his head in the voice of his mother. Would he rather be Shane McKee? No. But he doubted if Shane would be so foolish as to envy him, either.

They stopped in the paved area beside the Tara Condos where a bronze Richard Petty stood on his pedestal, in his customary garb of cowboy hat and boots, smiling in perpetual benevolence at a young fan, as he signed an autograph for her.

“Doesn’t he look like himself?” said Justine admiringly, raising the camera to capture the scene.

“It’s funny to see pictures of Richard Petty from the old days, though,” said Cayle. “Remember how he used to look back in the fifties before he got so thin? Kind of like Harrison Ford in American Graffiti.”

“Well, if he ever writes a diet book, put me down for the first copy,” said Bekasu, gazing up at the human heron immortalized in bronze.

“Is this where you want the wreath?” asked Terence, setting the circle of flowers at the base of the pedestal. He turned around to see the circle of his fellow passengers closing in around him and decided that he’d rather face