He laughed. “I’d like to see him.”
“Well, you and Karen are welcome to come over sometime. You live over in east Tennessee, don’t you?”
“Near Johnson City,” said Shane. “I work as a mechanic there.”
“Well, that’ll come in handy,” said Sarah. “All I know about car repair is how much everything costs to fix. How about Karen? What does she do?”
“She’s been waitressing while we were going to school, but she didn’t like it much. I don’t know what she wants to do now.”
“And what do you want to do? Your goal in life, I suppose I mean.”
Shane didn’t have to think about it. “The show,” he said. “Get a job with a NASCAR team, but it isn’t easy.”
“No. The old way would be to have kinfolks in the business. The Elliotts, the Earnhardts, and the Pettys all went racing with relatives in their pit crews. The new way is to get an automotive degree.” She smiled. “I guess it’s too late for you to marry a Shelmerdine.”
“Getting an engineering degree wouldn’t be any harder.”
Sarah Nash considered it. “Well, Shane, my husband Richard is on the board of directors at a place that might interest you. Maybe what you need is a pass in the grass.”
Cayle Warrenby gave Ray Reeve a bright smile, and cast about for some topic other than Dale Earnhardt. “I was checking my e-mail last night, and one of the engineers from my company had sent me one of those redneck quizzes. They know I hate those things.”
Ray Reeve grunted. “In Nebraska we get pretty sick of hearing about the heartland, too,” he said. “The Flyover Zone crap.”
“But the quiz did have one interesting question, I thought,” said Cayle. “‘Which of these cars will rust out the quickest when placed on blocks in your front yard? A ’65 Ford Fairlane, a ’69 Chevrolet Chevelle, or a ’64 Pontiac GTO.’ I’m an environmental engineer, so of course I wondered if there’s a way to determine the answer.”
Ray Reeve considered it. “Don’t bet on the Fairlane,” he said. “They’re duller than ditchwater to look at, but they didn’t call them sixties iron for nothing.”
Jim Powell, who had overheard this exchange, said, “What year’s Fairlane? ’65? Okay. Wasn’t that the fourth year they used that same structure?”
“Different sheet metal from the roof down, though,” said Ray Reeve. “But I take your point. The Ford folks must have got the hang of making ’em by then.”
“I never did see many of them rusting in junkyards,” said Jim Powell. “And it’s not like anybody would bother to rescue one.”
“So not the Fairlane,” said Cayle. “Okay, y’all agree on that?”
They nodded.
“Me, too. So that leaves the ’64 GTO and the ’69 Chevelle.” She considered it. “Both GM A-bodies.”
“Yeah, but not the same,” said Ray Reeve. “Remember they designed a new from-the-ground-up A-body in 1968 for all GM intermediates, which included the Chevelle.”
“And the Skylark, the Olds Cutlass, and the Pontiac Tempest,” said Cayle, nodding. “We had a burgundy Cutlass when I was a kid. Well, my dad had it, but the rest of us got to ride to church in it.”
“That’s an awful lot of makes and models,” said Jim Powell. “And then the government started throwing all those safety regulations and pollution controls at the manufacturers, so maybe things began to slip a little at the factory.”
“So which rusts first? The Chevelle?”
Jim Powell and Ray Reeve looked at each other and nodded. “In a junkyard? Chevy first,” said Ray Reeve. “I can see it. There’d be some rust at the base of the back window. It’s a steeper angle, so the water would collect there, and after the water took hold in there, more water coming in would rust the rocker panels and the lower rear fenders.”
Jim Powell gave him a thumbs-up. “The GTO would be the next to rust out. In a junkyard.” He smiled. “Unless-”
“Unless a car buff chances upon them and decides to rescue one,” said Cayle, grinning. “And he sure wouldn’t pick the Fairlane. He’d save the GTO, I think.”
“Would, if he had any sense,” said Ray Reeve.
After a moment’s silence Jim Powell said, “Didn’t know you knew so much about cars.”
Cayle laughed. “Doesn’t my name tell you?” she said. “I was daddy’s ‘boy.’ I used to toddle around the garage after him and my uncles, learning car talk. Can’t fix ’em, though.”
Jim Powell sighed. “I couldn’t even teach our Jean how to drive a stick shift.”
“Cayle,” said Ray Reeve thoughtfully. “Cale Yarborough. He was all right. If he was still around I might root for him. But he’s not Dale.”
“I know how you feel,” said Jim. “Nobody was hit any harder than we were when Dale was taken, and Arlene spent last season crying through damn near every race, but you know, like I told her, I don’t think he’d want you to give up the sport for him. He wasn’t into giving up, was he?”
“I wonder which one of those cars Ralph Earnhardt would have salvaged?” said Cayle.
The three of them spent another hundred miles rehashing memories of sixties’ iron, and when Cayle drifted off to sleep Jesse Franklin was telling Ray Reeve a war story about a soldier’s wife named Dora Jean who was afraid her husband’s ship would sink in the harbor when it came home to port, so she had an affair with the captain of the minesweeper.
“How are you liking the tour?” said Terence politely to his new seatmate.
Karen sighed. “I wanted to go to the beach,” she said. But she was too worried to make small talk. With a tentative smile she said in her smallest voice, “I need to ask you a question. I mean, since you’re a guy. I need some advice. Before we get to Daytona.”
Terence Palmer closed his magazine with no apparent enthusiasm. “I hope it’s about your stock portfolio,” he murmured.
“No.” She glanced around to make sure that no one was listening. “But it is kind of an ethical question.”
Terence blinked with alarm. “Why ask me then? There’s a minister on board.”
Karen wrinkled her nose. “He’s nice, but he has to be older than Mark Martin. You’re the only guy on this bus who’s anywhere near Shane’s age.”
Terence turned away, rattling his magazine. “I can’t help you.”
“Well, you could listen,” said Karen. “You don’t have anything better to do. Maybe it would help me just to talk about it.”
Terence closed his eyes and sighed deeply, which was what his family did instead of shouting and throwing plates, but meant the same thing. “All right,” he said. “Talk about it.”
“Okay, suppose you tell somebody a lie because you love them and you don’t want them to feel bad, but now you think they might find out the truth and be mad at you for keeping it from them.”
“Okay,” said Terence.
“Oh, good, so you think it’s all right?”
“No. I thought you just wanted to think out loud. Now you’re asking me to say what I think?” His eyes drifted back to the open magazine.
Karen snatched his copy of
Terence reached for the magazine, but he succeeded only in pulling out the letter that had been the bookmark in Karen’s book about the Irish princess. He opened it before she could snatch it back.
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention that to anybody,” she said. “Especially Shane.”
“Why would I?”
“Well, you might not realize it was a secret. He doesn’t know. Listen, I need some help here. I’ve only been married six days, and I’m afraid I’ve ruined things already. Or I will have, when Shane finds out.”
“About the letter?”
She shook her head. “Something else.”
“Something
