St. Dale

the answers he wouldn’t otherwise remember.

“Agro-business.” Mr. Reeve leaned back in his seat, arms folded, to indicate that the interview was over.

“Jesse Franklin,” said his pink-cheeked seatmate with a nervous smile. “Michigan. I guess you’d say I’m a native, but my folks were from down here, so I’m sure I’ll feel right at home.”

“We can provide an interpreter if you need one,” said Harley with a straight face. “And what do you do when Brooklyn, Michigan turns back into a cow pasture?”

“In non-race weeks, you mean? Ah. I guess you’d say I’m a bureaucrat. I’m the county auditor. Caught the racing bug from my uncles, though, when I was a kid. Nice to meet all you folks.”

“Welcome aboard,” said Harley. “Who’s next here…Mrs. Richard Nash?”

Midway toward the back of the bus a slender tanned arm went up, and a woman said, “Here.”

Harley looked up. That’s all she said. “Here.” She was a fine-featured woman who might have been anywhere in age between fifty and seventy, depending on whether that well-preserved handsomeness owed more to good genes or to an expensive plastic surgeon. She wasn’t wearing much jewelry or makeup, and her clothes and hair were simple enough-but Harley knew the instant he saw her that this woman had more money than God. One thing about being on the NASCAR circuit, even if you didn’t make a ton of money yourself, the social aspect of the job certainly put you in the path of people who did and, without even intending to, Harley had developed a radar for spotting power people, and this was one. How odd to find her on a down-market bus tour. He hoped she wouldn’t be the type to demand imported tea bags and linen sheets.

“Terence Palmer?” That had turned out to be the fellow beside Mrs. Nash. Her son, maybe? He looked expensive, too, but not with that patina of power that radiated from his companion. If you could bottle that air of assurance and entitlement, he thought, it would be worth more than four new tires in a five-second pit stop.

“Where are you folks from?”

The two human greyhounds looked at each other and shrugged. Sarah Nash leaned forward in her seat, but Harley was already walking down the aisle to spare her the inconvenience of shouting. “I’m from Wilkesboro, and Terence lives in Manhattan.”

“Wilkesboro!” said Harley, eyes shining. The name conjured up the good old days when NASCAR races were run in the shabby old Speedway there, the days when stock cars really were stock cars with working headlights and tires with tread. When the daddies of Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty drove their cars to the track as well as on it. Harley wished things could have stayed that way. He’d have a better shot if they had.

“Wilkesboro,” he said again. “So do you know him?”

He didn’t have to say who. There was another famous “Junior” in NASCAR now, but in Wilkesboro, the name meant only one person, the man who invented drafting, the “Last American Hero” himself: Junior Johnson.

Sarah Nash smiled. “Yes, of course. He sends his regards.”

Harley wished they could make a detour to Wilkesboro on the tour, but even he could see that ten days to get from Bristol to Daytona and back to Darlington would be a stretch as it was without trying to improvise extra stops along the way. With a sigh of resignation, he turned back to the clipboard, to the next set of names.

“Jim and Arlene Powell?”

A white-haired older man near the back of the bus waved his hand. The woman with him was the one wearing the Earnhardt patterned vest. She did not look up at the sound of her name. Uh-oh, thought Harley. He should have paid more attention to the notes about the passengers. He hadn’t bargained on sick kids and out-of-it seniors, but at least they were race fans, so he reckoned they’d be easier to deal with than a bus full of New York media types.

“Justine…”

In the second row from the front, the platinum-haired woman with the huge dark eyes and her weight in jewelry (definitely real), waved her hand. “He-ey, Harley! Can I tell a story to get us started?”

Harley nodded for the bus driver to pull out, while he tried to think of some reason not to let her. The takeover was beginning already. She was an Earnhardt fan, all right. If you ever saw a woman at the track who looked like she ought to be following Patton into Belgium in a pastel pink tank with a rhinestone-collared poodle on the gun turret, you could bet the rent she’d be an Earnhardt fan.

“Well, let me start you off with a trivia question first,” he said, playing for time. “In fact, ma’am, you brought it up. The reverend here-”

“Bill,” said Bill Knight hastily.

“Bill wants to know if anybody knows which Bible verse it was that Mrs. Stevie Waltrip taped onto Earnhardt’s steering column on that fateful day.”

In the silence that followed, people looked around to see if anyone was going to volunteer the information. Finally, Sarah Nash, the regal older woman sitting next to the preppy said, “It was from Proverbs. Chapter eighteen, verse ten. The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it-”

“And is safe,” said Bill, nodding. “Ah. That one.”

Justine tossed her head. “Well, what kind of idiot would tape a verse like that onto the steering wheel of somebody who was about to run the Daytona 500?” she demanded. “Talking about running into a wall-”

“A tower.”

“Whatever. That’s exactly what he did, though. Ran into something. Just like it said in the verse.” Her voice dropped to a shocked whisper. “Do y’all think she hexed him?”

“Shut up, Justine,” came two voices in unison.

“No, think about it, y’all. Who put the verse on there? Mrs. Waltrip. Okay. And who won the race that day? Mike Waltrip.”

Harley resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. Why hadn’t he thought to bring a hip flask? Or a stun gun. “The driver who won wasn’t her husband, ma’am,” he said in the firm but soothing tone one uses for people who line their hats with tin foil. “The lady is Mrs. Darrell Waltrip, ma’am. The winner of the race, Mike, is her brother-in-law.”

Justine nodded. “Even so. I ask you.” She looked around for affirmation from her fellow passengers.

“Why don’t you tell your story, now?” said Harley. Before word of this gets out and the Waltrips sue us for slander, Harley was thinking. Or tape Bible verses to our steering wheel. He pictured himself pilloried in a medieval stocks on the lawn outside DEI while NASCAR officials and Waltrip fans pelted him with ripe fruit. Stories like that wouldn’t make him any friends on the circuit, that’s for sure, and he was going to need all the friends he could get if he was going to find a way back in.

“Okay, then.” Justine tottered up to the front of the bus, her good humor restored. She waved a wrist full of bracelets at her fellow passengers. “Hey, folks!” she said. “I’m Justine, and those two over there trying to cover up their heads with their jackets are my sister Bekasu and our cousin Cayle. Now, speaking of Bible verses, I’m going to get this party going with a little story about heaven. Can I use the microphone, Harley? How do you work it?”

Wordless with dread, he adjusted the mike for her.

“Okay, here goes,” she crooned into the bus PA system. “It’s about Richard Petty going to heaven. Oh, don’t roll your eyes, Bekasu. It’s a cute story. Besides, it’s clean. Okay, so the story is…this is a long time in the future, of course-I hope!-but Richard Petty finally dies.” She scanned the audience until she spotted young Matthew. “He may have been a little before your time, hon, but you know who Richard Petty is, right?”

Solemnly, the little boy nodded. “The King,” he said. “Like Elvis, only NASCAR.”

“That’s him. He wears a big black cowboy hat like Mr. Reeve back there. Okay, so Mr. Petty dies, and he goes up to heaven. God meets him at the pearly gates and starts showing him around. Finally, after they’ve toured the streets of gold and seen the heavenly choir and all, God takes Richard Petty out to a country road that looks just like the piedmont, North Carolina-you know, red clay and pine trees-and there at the foot of a hill, God points to a little white frame house with a big front porch, and roses on the picket fence, and chickens in the yard. Richard notices a faded number 43 flag on a pole beside the front steps.

“So God says, ‘Richard, this is your house. You’ve earned it, and I know you’ll be happy here. Welcome to heaven.’

“So Mr. Petty, he starts up the steps to the front door, when suddenly off in the distance on a hill overlooking