Despite their efforts, Badger didn’t get the pole, but he did qualify sixth, much to the delight of the team. When the race began, the 86 team’s tires were all nitrogen-filled regulation tires. The only nonstandard modification was a bit of magic dirt that Taran rubbed on the hood of the car. Now it was all up to Badger’s driving skills.
When the number 86 appeared in lights on the pole that served as a vertical “scoreboard,” the pit crew alternately hugged each other and screamed for Badger.
“It’s the sacred dust from Chimayo!” screamed Taran. “I knew it would work eventually.”
Less than a minute later, Badger’s voice came over the headset. “This damn car is shaking like a sparrow in a snake pit.”
“I hear you, Badger.” Tuggle’s voice was calm, as always. “Could it be a valve spring?”
A few more seconds passed in a tense cacophony of noise that registered as silence with everyone on the 86 team, because all that mattered right then was Badger’s voice. Finally, he came back on, “Still shuddering, Tuggle. Hesitating.”
“Try the ignition box.”
After another interminable pause, Badger said, “That’s it. Damn thing’s gone bad. I’m flipping to the second one. Still shaking. The second box is bad, too, or else the switch is shorted out. It’s totally dead.”
There was a short silence while everyone thought things they couldn’t say out loud with spectators’ scanners tuned in. An ignition problem would trigger a misfire, causing the engine to begin losing cylinders. A car running on seven cylinders instead of eight would soon fall behind the rest of the pack. Even worse, the longer the motor was allowed to run on fewer than eight cylinders, the greater the chance that it would grenade the engine. If they couldn’t fix it, they could be looking at a last-place finish.
Badger again: “It’s skipping and popping. Sounds like hell. Missing.”
Tuggle swore under her breath, then in an icy calm, she said, “Turn off the brake blowers.”
“I’m dicing for the lead, dammit!”
“Well, you won’t get it,” muttered Tuggle. “You wanna bring it in now?”
He didn’t have time to answer. In a matter of seconds the 86 began to lose its momentum. The loss of power caused his speed to decrease, and now instead of leaping ahead of the cars following him, Badger was fast becoming an obstacle in their path. Somebody didn’t figure that out in time to swerve completely out of his way, and the resulting contact meant that they caught a caution. The collision was a minor one. Since Bristol was a short, high-banked track, where the average speed was ninety miles per hour, wrecks were not the terrifying prospect they had been at Daytona. This was the NASCAR equivalent of a fender bender, and given the 86’s mechanical problems, the resulting caution was a blessing.
“Bring it in, boy,” said Tuggle, but Badger hadn’t needed to be told. He was on his way.
Taran was mentally composing a demand-for-refund letter to a Navajo shaman when Tuggle’s voice crackled over her headset. “Stiles! You’re the one with the electronics background, aren’t you?’
Taran turned to face Tuggle and nodded slowly, wondering why that had come up.
“Good. When Badger comes in for the pit stop, I need you to get into the car and fix that ignition problem.”
“Can’t he switch to the other ignition box? Oh, he already tried that, didn’t he?”
“He did.”
“Could be a short under the dash,” said Taran, picturing circuitry in her head. “No. Unlikely. I’ll bet the switches are bad. I could try changing the boxes manually. Be faster.”
“Right. Good thing you know your stuff. And that you’re little. So get in there and fix the problem when he pits.”
Taran blinked. “In thirteen seconds?”
Tuggle grunted. “Unless you can do it quicker.”
Taran said nothing more, but her mind was still going faster than the cars. In milliseconds she thought: But how do I get into the car? Oh. Same way Badger gets in. Only through the passenger’s side window. Around her the cars still roared. The crowd still screamed. The voices in her headset chattered on. But to Taran the world had just switched over to slow motion and mute. For another couple of seconds she stared open-mouthed at the swirl of cars streaming past, lost in thought.
Tuggle’s voice roused her from reverie again. “Stiles, remember that a caution lap here at Bristol takes less than a minute, and a green lap is about fifteen seconds. Don’t cost us this race.”
Oh, good. No pressure.
The 86 engine sputtered as it came down pit road. Tuggle radioed Badger, “Turn the switches off when you come in, Badger. Taran can’t change those boxes with the current on or it’ll shock the crap out of her.”
“Right,” said Badger. “Hurry it up, though, y’all.”
“We can’t give you gas this time because Taran is the catch can.” Everybody knew that they couldn’t send a shop dog out to take her place, because that would mean more than seven people over the wall.
Badger cut the engine as soon as he halted in the pit stall. One of the team mechanics leaned over the wall and handed Taran a new red ignition box, which was about the size and shape of a brick. Dodging the jackman, fresh tires, and the tire changers themselves, she sprinted for the passenger-side window and dived in, landing with a thump straight on the floor-no passenger seat in a stock car, of course, just the driver’s custom-fitted seat within the roll cage, and an empty space to his right. Badger’s helmeted head turned to look at her as she fell, and she saw his eyes widen in surprise. Taran held up the new ignition box, and he nodded and looked away, as if he had forgotten she was there, so she set to work.
In her headset she heard the voice of the team spotter, “Pace car in one.” It was Tony Lafon. The sound of his voice calmed her down.
Since the engine wasn’t running during this pit stop, Taran was more conscious of the sounds of the rest of the team at work. Thirteen seconds to fix the ignition problem, and she had to do it accompanied by the high-pitched scream of the air guns zipping off the lug nuts, and the thump thump thump of the jack raising the car, pitching her at such a steep angle that she almost lost her balance. Badger reached out and put his hand on her shoulder to keep her from falling. She willed herself not to process that sensation. Wham! The jack was lowered, and the tire changers headed for the other side of the car to repeat the procedure.
“Pace car in two,” said Tony’s voice in her headset.
There wasn’t anything particularly hard about fixing the ignition box problem, except, that is, if you were expected to do it in an idling car whose interior temperature was upward of 100 degrees. In a thirteen-second pit stop. Taran tried to ignore the roar of the other cars’ engines and the shuddering as they sped past. She had to focus all her attention on the job. Because ignition boxes are bolted in with zeus fasteners, it would take too long to replace one by securing a new box to the dash, but fortunately, she didn’t have to. All she had to do was take the plug out of the old one, put it in the one she brought in with her, and see if the engine fired this time.
It did.
Problem fixed. The roaring and shaking of the idling engine flustered her for a moment, but she took a deep breath, steadied herself against the dash, and tried to shut out everything except the task at hand.
“Pace car in three.”
Running out of time.
Now all she had to do was secure the new box inside the car somewhere, by no means an elegant solution, but given the time factor, it was their best shot. She had thought about trying to tape the replacement box onto the two malfunctioning units mounted on the dash, but in the end it seemed simpler-and faster-just to zip-tie the new box onto the roll cage and get out of the car.
“Middle of three…” Tony’s voice was taut with urgency.
Her hands were shaking, but she nearly had it. She was running out of time, though. Badger tapped on the dash and pointed forward. Taran barely glanced up, but she nodded vigorously, hopin
g that he understood her to mean, “I’m working as fast as I can.”
Tony was shouting now. “Pace car in four! Come on! Gotta go! Gotta go!”
Another voice in her head. “Let him go, dammit!” That was Tuggle, and with that tone of voice she could have parted the Red Sea.
“But, Tuggle…”
“Everybody back! Badger, go!”
Badger hit the throttle and scratched off as the shouting in their heads continued. Tuggle. “Gotta beat the pace car. Speed down pit road. Do it!”
The penalty for speeding on pit road is to go to the tail end of the longest line, but Tuggle must have figured that the penalty was better than going a lap down.
When the car took off, Taran was flung backward against the roll cage, scrabbling for balance, and resisting the urge to grab at Badger to keep herself from falling. At the pit speed of around thirty miles per hour, and then seconds later at nearly three times that, they burst onto the track.
From her vantage point on the floor, now facing backward, all Taran could see was the interior of the car and Badger himself, but for once he was not a comforting presence. Barricaded in his roll cage, wearing the full face helmet and the thick gloves, Badger looked like an alien in a science fiction movie. The banking of the Bristol track was nearly thirty-six degrees-horrendously steep-which meant that if she hadn’t hung on to the bars of the roll cage, she would have been bouncing all over the car-or falling on Badger-which was somehow not as appealing at ninety miles per hour as she had once envisioned.
This is not how she pictured a ride-along with Badger Jenkins at all. In fact, in most of her fantasies, the firesuit morphed into shining armor, and the 86 had a mane and tail. But she had less than a minute to contemplate the unsatisfactory nature of Take Your Stalker to Work Day, because thirty seconds or so is all it takes to loop the half-mile track at Bristol Motor Speedway during a caution lap.
Afterward, she remembered those moments in slow motion, and there shouldn’t have been time for all of it to have occurred, she thought. First, she heard Tony Lafon shouting, “Was that Taran that just went in the window? What the hell are you doing, Badger? Pit! Pit! No-oow!”
Taran felt a little spark of pleasure at hearing the concern in Tony’s voice, which she hoped was on her account. The voices in her headset told her that her unscheduled ride along had not gone unnoticed for a second. Each pit stall has two NASCAR officials to monitor the team’s activity: one stationed at the right front tire and one at the right rear. They weren’t going to miss much. Especially not something as major as this. Badger had barely left pit road before the two frantic NASCAR watchdogs were radioing the tower to report the infraction.
“Crew member inside the 86 car!”
“Post the 86 car! Black flagged!”
Then the lord of the tower-NASCAR director David Hoots-delivered a much calmer response to the reporting officials: “Inspector, get with the crew chief on the 86 and explain to the lady the reason why NASCAR stock cars have only one seat. Then invite her and the Driver to the truck after the race.”
A few seconds later, one of the watchdogs told him, “Message delivered to the crew chief of the 86.”
Then it was Tuggle’s voice again over the radio, “You heard them, Badger,” she said. “Our NASCAR babysitters in the pit here are having a French fit.” There was an infinitesimal pause, and then she said, “Did Taran get the box fixed?”
“Yes!” Taran and Badger both said it at once.
“Bring her in,” said Tuggle. “She can get out and catch-can on this pit stop. Oh, and Badger, we’re going to the red truck after the race.”
“I hear you,” said Badger.
Taran lived through the rest of the Bristol race on automatic pilot. Since the fixing of the ignition problem, Badger was “bad fast” as he would have phrased it, fueled probably by his frustration at having mechanical problems cost him time, and also by rage at having to report to the red truck over a miscue that was not his fault.
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Kathy Erwin, patting Taran on the arm. “The crew chief’s word is law. You had no choice. Neither did Badger.”
Tears shimmered in Taran’s eyes. “What will they do? Yell at us?”
“No, they prefer sarcasm. And, of course, money.”
“Money?”
“Oh, sure. That stunt will cost you a couple of thou, easy. Most expensive taxi ride you’ll ever take.”
Slug a fellow driver in a fit of temper after the race.
Wreck another car on purpose.
Flaunt the rules of the sport.
Red truck.
It used to be a red truck, so everyone still called it that, although now the vehicle in question was, in fact, yellow. NASCAR track headquarters. The dragon’s lair. The principal’s office. If you broke the rules during or shortly after the race, NASCAR officials would summon you to the truck for disciplinary action. They could fine you, suspend you, put you on probation. They could do anything they wanted. NASCAR is the only privately owned sport in the world. It’s their way or no way.
They all went in together: Tuggle, Taran, and Badger. Somewhere the winner was celebrating his victory. Probably by now he had been escorted up to the glass-walled skybox high above the Bristol Motor Speedway, where two dozen journalists waited to interview the winning driver. But in the formerly red truck, nobody was smiling.
Taran felt like an eighth grader sent to the office to be punished. The big bear of a man in the rimless glasses looked at her sternly, and she felt the tears well up again. She pictured him calling her parents. Badger stood beside her, looking solemn and brave, but maybe also annoyed at being scolded when he could be out signing autographs for people who thought he walked on water. Only Tuggle remained unperturbed. She had greeted the man by his first name and made herself comfortable in the one available chair.
“What were you thinking?” the director asked her.
Tuggle smiled. “I suppose there’s not much point in pleading not guilty.”
“Not with two inspectors standing beside the car, no. Plus, I bet a few rows of spectators got some great pictures of the 86 car’s extra passenger.”
“We had to beat the pace car,” said Tuggle.
“Why didn’t you just shoot out its tires?”
Nobody laughed. In the red truck, sarcasm was not to be mistaken for friendliness-or for forgiveness. The director was not smiling, either. “This is a serious safety issue, people,” he said. “An unprotected crew member in a race car is one monkey away from getting killed. I hope you all understand that.”
Solemnly, they nodded.
“And a female crew person at that. If she had got hurt, we would be in for a public relations nightmare of Biblical proportions. And, you, Driver, would look like the biggest heel in the world of sports. Putting your ego over her well-being. For shame!”
“Sir! It wasn’t his fault, sir.” Taran’s voice was barely a squeak.
“This isn’t the army, crewman. And it was certainly partly his fault. I’m sure he noticed you were on board. He could have refused to exit pit road. A little something we refer to as a judgment call.”
“He doesn’t disobey my orders,” said Tuggle.
“Well, then try to give him more sensible ones in future, Tuggle. If he didn’t show more sense than he did today, I wouldn’t let him drive a UPS truck, much less a Cup car.” He sighed wearily. It had been a long weekend. At least Badger hadn’t shoved anybody. Short tracks meant short-tempered drivers. There were a few other drivers waiting for their turn on the hot seat. “All right, you daredevils,” he said. “There’s enough blame to go around here, but I’m not of a mind to suspend any of you over this. Driver, you will be on probation, though, for the rest of the year.”
Badger nodded mournfully, the golden retriever swatted with a newspaper. Tuggle’s expression grew more stern, but she said nothing. Taran held her breath so that she would not sob.
They were ushered out of the truck so that t
he director could move on to the next matter demanding his attention.
“I’m sorry,” said Taran, when they were once again outside.
“Nothing to do with you,” said Badger quietly. “We took a gamble, that’s all. I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
“It’s part of the deal,” said Tuggle. “Just let it go. It all starts up again next week, you know.”
“Well, at least they didn’t fine us,” said Taran.
“They will,” said Badger. “They’ll think about it some first, though.”
“Fines are announced on the Tuesday following the race,” Tuggle told her. “And they have to be paid before we can race again.”
Then she and Badger walked away, talking shop, putting the incident out of their minds, while Taran stood there wondering how many minutes there were between then and Tuesday, because she knew she would agonize through every one of them.
On Tuesday, Taran was waiting at the shop when Tuggle arrived, carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee and a bag of Krispy Kreme donuts. She offered the bag to Taran, who shook her head. “Go on,” said Tuggle. “What will that be for you? Last night’s dinner?”
Taran shrugged. Discussing dinners might lead to disclosures about throwing up. She wondered if Maalox counted as a meal.
“Have you heard anything yet about NASCAR’s decision?”
“Yep, just now. Ten-thousand-dollar fines for me and Badger. Each. For you, twenty-five hundred.”
Taran took a deep, moist breath, and nodded, digging in her purse for her checkbook. Twenty-five hundred dollars. That wasn’t so bad. In her 3 A.M. nightmare, the penalty had been a firing squad. Besides, anything was better than not knowing.
Once Around the Track Page 24