St. Dale

That first day she had found it among the homemade T-shirts and unauthorized fan items in a souvenir tent at the Bristol Motor Speedway. She’d bought it as a joke, really, an ironic gesture: pretend to get into the spirit of the tour, but really have a private laugh at the sham heroics of it all. The card had only cost a dollar. At first it had amused her to see the absurdly dramatic photo radiating sullen macho glamour.

On the front of the card a driver in a blue and white firesuit glared into the camera, eyes shielded by dark glasses, mouth a tight-lipped slit, the planes of his face as smooth and perfect as polished steel. But the expression was not angry. As the days passed, she’d be rummaging through her purse and catch a glimpse of that face on the card, and she’d find herself staring at it in puzzled fascination, thinking that he looked vulnerable…lost…despite all that power.

Behold the man. He was beautiful…dangerous…sexy. Like an archangel whose alien perfection was nonetheless captivating. You felt that you could not speak in that presence, and yet…if only you could stand behind him, you’d be safe from anything. Six feet tall. Wise, commanding, fearless, powerful, inhumanly beautiful.

Except that the man on the sports card wasn’t any of those things, really.

He was Harley Claymore.

It said so in gold foil letters stamped on the edge of the card. Harley Claymore, Winston Cup Driver, 1995. So this was the media image of their tour guide from his NASCAR days-little chicken hawk Harley Claymore, weather-beaten by sun and nicotine, brown hair silvering to gray, and smiling that possum grin of the eternal good old boy, past educating, past sophisticating, occasionally sober. The only power he radiated now was a coruscating unhappiness.

Bekasu held the card up to the light. Had he ever been this? This archangel of power and terrible beauty-before the Fall, before he lost his ride-Had he been this?

Nah.

It was the gloss of camera magic. All a trick of light, conjuring for the subject strength, wisdom, height-an image for the credulous fans who wanted to believe that larger than life heroes drove “stock” cars just like theirs in the Sunday races. None of that was true, but the fantasy was comforting. You wanted to believe it.

She wanted to believe it.

She thought of all the men in the periphery of her life…the Country Club acquaintances who turned up occasionally as dinner dates or bridge partners. All the stuffy old lawyers, the self-important medical types, the reedy accountants and the portly stockbrokers. All of whom she forgot about as soon as a tedious evening in their company had ended.

And here was something else again. Something…she groped for a word…primal. One hundred and eighty miles per hour. Reflexes like a tiger. Courage bordering on idiocy. And the passionate intensity of one who lived entirely in the present because to do otherwise would be to die out there. But what could you possibly talk about with him? Oh, who wanted to talk?

Bekasu took a deep breath. She hadn’t felt this way in a long time. It was an Indian Summer of the heart-an unexpected rush of warmth that might last a day or a month, but it might never come again, and now that she had it, she didn’t want to lose it.

The phone was ringing. What was Justine’s room number again?-Oh, yes, Ward Burton and Terry Labonte: 225-(This had been an educational week.)

“What do you mean you won’t be coming back to the hotel?” Justine cradled the receiver between her shoulder and her ear. Nail polish still wet. “You’re where?”

“Darlington. At the track,” said Bekasu.

“Well, what are you doing back there? Did you lose your purse or what?”

“No.” A long pause. “I came back with Harley.”

There was a moment of silence while Bekasu tried to think of some way to explain something she didn’t entirely understand herself, but Justine was way ahead of her. “You’re taking off with Harley, aren’t you, Bekasu?”

“Well, I guess I am, Justine, but don’t worry-”

“Worry? Hell, yes, I’m worried. Don’t you hurt him, Bekasu!”

“What?”

“You heard me. Harley. Don’t you hurt him. I know exactly what’s gong on-Shut up, Cayle! I’m trying to talk here. Bekasu has finally found herself a wild boy-about twenty years late, as usual-Listen here, Bekasu, don’t bother trying to explain this to me, because I know what’s happening better than you do.

“After all these years of dating socially acceptable turnips, you have finally met a guy who’s not a brain in a jar, who is-to put it in our jargon-in touch with his inner timber wolf, and now about a million years’ worth of DNA is screaming for you to drag him right to the ground and get on with it.”

“Justine!”

“And you’re telling me not to worry! Damn right, I’m worried. About him. All week you’ve been looking at that sports card you bought at Bristol. I know because it fell out of your purse a time or two, and you sure were slow putting it back. You fell in love with a piece of cardboard and now you want Harley to be that guy.”

“But he is that guy.”

“No, he is not! Never was. That picture is a fairy tale on film-the male equivalent of an airbrushed Playboy centerfold, and you bought it!”

“Well, Justine, you’re one to talk. You’ve certainly dated your share of roughnecks over the years.”

“Yeah, I did, and I loved very minute of it. But the difference is those guys were my friends first. I didn’t treat ’em like bags of catnip. Look, Bekasu, all I’m saying is there’s a person inside that firesuit. Don’t you use him. You’re glad he has a body as well as a mind. I’m worried that he has a mind as well as a body.”

Bekasu forced a laugh. “Do you want me to make an honest man of him?”

“He is an honest man. He’s an old-style Cup driver. There’s not a devious bone in his body. He makes million-dollar deals on a handshake, and he says what he means. All that irony and polite fiction crap of your so-called intellectuals is Martian to him. He’s better than that. So you be straight with him, because he’ll trust you if it kills him.”

“Harley?”

“Harley. Look, Bekasu, maybe he’s no prince charming, but he’s a good man, and he’s been hurt about as bad as he can take. NASCAR chewed him up and spit him out. Don’t you make it worse.”

A little gasp and a pause at the other end of the phone. “All right, Justine,” said Bekasu. “I’ll…take care. I like him. I really do. I have to go now. But thanks.”

Justine slammed down the receiver. “Bekasu in a one-night stand.” She sighed. “She has fallen in love with a square of cardboard. The real guy is not going to live up to that fantasy stud in her head, that’s for sure.”

Cayle looked up from her book. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe compared to all those boring desk jockeys she’s had before, Harley will seem sexy and dangerous to her. But that’s beside the point. I think something else is going to happen. I think Bekasu is going to find out that Harley actually needs her. Now Bekasu is one of nature’s protectors. I’ll bet she’ll find out that she loves a guy who needs her more than she would have loved the macho stud she thought he was.”

Justine scowled at one smudged pink fingernail. “Well, she’d just better not hurt him, that’s all.”

“That was a nice thing you did back there.”

Harley spun around wondering who the hell else had decided to turn up tonight. Louis Chevrolet, for God’s sake? Harley Earl? But the man in the straw hat who had fallen into step with him was very much alive, and more powerful than a 1988 Elliott engine. He was somebody Harley had wanted very much to talk to-just not in a deserted parking lot with a runaway judge on his hands.

“Saw you all leaving some flowers back there under Dale’s picture,” the man said. “Some kind of memorial?”

“That’s right,” said Harley. “Wanted to say good-bye. Wish him well.”