St. Dale

the effigy of Richard Petty than a group of live people. Now he wished he had spent some of the walk over here thinking out what he was going to say. There was some comfort in knowing that he didn’t have to worry about making an impression. He could experience the novel sensation of telling the truth without any agenda at all. Now if he could only work out what the truth was.

He had listened to the speeches of the others, and while he might have shared some of the same emotions as his fellow passengers, it was for different reasons. Some of the others saw Earnhardt as the embodiment of possibility-proof that a poor boy without education or connections could rise to greatness, but since Terence had taken care to cultivate precisely the education and connections that Earnhardt had lacked, he found no inspiration in that. Jesse Franklin seemed to revere the Intimidator for being-well, intimidating-for riding roughshod over his opponents without caring what anyone thought or said about it, but again Terence could not even aspire to such a code of behavior. His world was a spiderweb of obligation and cooperation, and he could not behave otherwise and remain in it. Why antagonize authority figures when you aspired someday to replace them? And yet as far back as he could remember he had rooted for Dale Earnhardt. He had never asked himself why.

He looked up at the smiling bronze face of Richard Petty, larger than life on his pedestal, and seeming to invite the solace of confession. NASCAR’s authority figure: The King himself. Terence could talk to him.

“I never knew my dad. About all I ever heard about him was a passing reference in my mother’s carefully muted tones of disapproval. I knew my dad was a Southerner-from somewhere near Charlotte, North Carolina, more or less…He’d been in the marines, but he was only an enlisted man. Only. She always put it like that. And I tried to imagine what my dad would be like, without having very much to go on. Every now and then I watched movies about the South-Deliverance and The Beverly Hillbillies, that sort of thing-and I didn’t want my dad to be that. I guess I wanted an image that fit the description of him without being demeaning. Not for the sake of my mother-I never intended to discuss it with her, and I never did. But just because I needed an image to carry around in my head, somebody I wasn’t ashamed of, because after all, half my DNA came from my father, I wanted something to represent him, I suppose.

“I’ve been trying to remember when and how I first heard about Dale Earnhardt. I think I was about ten years old-it was the year of one of his early championships anyhow. A guy I knew at church was a racing fan, and I got to go to the Richmond Speedway once with him and his folks. I think we must have told my mother that it was a horse race. She’d never have let me go if she’d known it was stock car racing, but, anyhow, we went, and like most boys that age, I loved cars and danger and speed-anything to freak out the parents. So I was hooked. And Earnhardt was really hot that year-not just winning, but being outrageous. He was the Indiana Jones of sports. So I guess I started out by hoping my real dad was like that, until finally that image just took root in my mind so that I didn’t care if it was true or not. It worked for me. And then last spring when my dad died, and I found out that he had been an Earnhardt fan, too, it just seemed to seal the bond. So I guess I’m here to say thanks.” He stepped back.

Justine touched his arm. “Terence, aren’t you going to say anything? You’ve just been standing there staring at that wreath for ages.”

He hadn’t said any of it. Terence looked around at the circle of politely puzzled faces. At last he mumbled, “I leave this wreath in memory of Dale Earnhardt, Sr., a great man.”

“Well put,” said Harley Claymore. Then he glanced at his watch and clapped for the attention of the group. “Take an hour or so to examine the track and raid the gift shop for Speedway pins, folks. And don’t forget to go to the bathroom. In fact, flush twice. It’s a long way to Florida.”

Chapter XVIII

The Mother Church of American Racing

Daytona International Speedway

Matthew lay back in the seat and closed his eyes. He was tired of the Game Boy, and the south Georgia scenery was monotonous. There were no palm trees, just plain old pines, and long flat fields full of some kind of crop, tobacco or peanuts, or something. It was a couple of hundred miles from the Atlanta Motor Speedway to Daytona, and as far as he could tell, there was nothing much worth paying attention to in between. He was tired, anyhow. He didn’t feel like reading or talking, either. The motion of the bus started him thinking about little Madison Laprade, back at the children’s home, and what a weird experience it was to ride with her. She wasn’t really a friend or anything. She was only four, but she had big space alien eyes and limp blonde hair, and she never, ever smiled. A few months back, he and Madison had been taken for their dental appointments on the same morning. Madison hardly ever spoke to anybody. Nick said that she’d been taken away from her folks, because they did terrible things to her, so it wasn’t surprising that she was a little strange. So Miss Salten started driving them into town, and after a minute or so, Madison, sitting beside him in the backseat, said, “Bump.” Very softly. Just one word. Bump. He turned to ask her what she meant, but before he could pose the question, the car went over the railroad tracks. “Bump.” Sure enough, all the way into town, Madison would whisper an announcement of every turn, every curve, every rough spot in the road. She never missed. Matthew thought about it, and he decided that she’d memorized the road because she didn’t like surprises of any kind. She watched everything all the time, remembered everything, because she’d always had to watch all around her for danger, and try to figure out who was going to hurt her and when. Now the danger had been taken away, but she couldn’t stop watching. Matthew felt sorry for the kid, and he thought about sending her a postcard, but she’d only have to get somebody to read it to her, and then she’d have to memorize it. He didn’t want to put her to the trouble. He wondered if being on his own was going to turn him funny, too. He could already feel himself beginning to watch grown-ups with clinical interest, to see who felt like talking and who didn’t feel uncomfortable around kids. Perhaps it wouldn’t be long before he was sizing people up to see who might buy him a candy bar or a toy in the gift shop. Nick said that sooner or later everybody learned what they had to in order to get by. Bump.

It had been Justine’s idea for everyone to change seats, because as she explained, “If Bekasu has to listen to me for much longer, she’ll probably strangle me. And you two-” She pointed to Shane and Karen. “You have the rest of your lives to be together, so why don’t you take some time off for a couple of hours? And Mr. Reeve-you and Mr. Franklin need to stop sitting together before folks start thinking y’all are a couple.”

With no apparent logic, she proceeded to play musical chairs with the passengers-“It’s just like a dinner party!”-pairing Cayle with Mr. Reeve, Bekasu with Jim Powell, Sarah Nash with Shane, Karen McKee with Terence Palmer, Jesse Franklin with Arlene Powell, Bill Knight with herself, and she sent Matthew up to the front to talk racing with Harley.

If anyone objected to these assignments, they decided that putting up with the change was easier than arguing with Justine.

Shane McKee looked doubtfully at the elegant older woman, thinking that if he had to sit beside her, he was glad it was at a time when which fork to use would not be an issue.

But Sarah Nash’s decades of wine-and-cheese parties had served her well. Somehow, she seemed to ask the questions that Shane knew the answers to, and then she told him about the flock of ducks on her farm-the Fonty Flock, she called them, and each one was named after a NASCAR driver. “Unfortunately Todd Bodine turned out to be a lady duck,” she said. “So now I call her Mary Todd Bodine.”

Shane laughed. “Do you know about the goat with the number three marking on its side? I was hoping to see it, but the tour isn’t going there.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of it. It’s not too far from my husband’s place.” Seeing his wary look, she added, “Long story, which I don’t propose to go into.”

Shane was still thinking about the Fonty Flock. “Aren’t you worried about foxes or coyotes getting your ducks out there at the pond?”

“Well, we pen them up at night. And I’ve got a great big, loud goose, at least twice the size of the ducks, to act as their bodyguard.”

Shane smiled. “What’s his name?”

Sarah Nash glanced around to make sure that Harley wasn’t listening. Then she leaned over and whispered,