“I don’t suppose the team owners pay the fines for us?” she said.
“Nope,” said Tuggle, dumping another sugar packet into her coffee and stirring it with a screwdriver. “They don’t.”
“Well, who should I make out my check to? The team, or NASCAR, or what?”
“The fines are paid,” said Tuggle.
“But I thought you said-”
“Badger is paying your fine as well as his. Guess he figured he could afford it more than you could. Oh, jeez, you’re not gonna cry again, are you?”
Taran took a deep breath and shook her head. “How can I ever thank him?” she whispered.
The next week’s race was in Martinsville, Virginia, NASCAR’s shortest track-without the steep banking of Bristol, but still a difficult track for passing. Heavy March rains canceled qualifying, which meant that Badger started in the back. He was lucky to start at all, since without a qualifying competition, slots in the race are assigned on the basis of owners’ points from the previous year, and then past champions’ provisionals, and finally the current year’s drivers’ ranking for the seven or so remaining places in the race. Badger started forty-second out of forty-three slots, and though he struggled all day to work his way forward, the half-mile track with its sharp turns kept him bottled up, as more and more cars fell off the lead lap. Finally, one of the young punks from out West, eager to get past him on the narrow track, tapped the bumper of the 86, and Badger fishtailed into the wall, ending the day with sore muscles and a car too damaged to make it back into the race.
“Is there a race in which you think you might do well?” asked Melodie Albigre. She had opened a small leather notebook and she sat with pen poised, watching Badger on the treadmill with clinical disinterest.
Badger wiped his face with a towel. He looked at her sharply to see if that remark had been intended as sarcasm, but Melodie’s face bore its usual expression of businesslike boredom, as if he were an underperforming stock that she regretted having invested in.
Badger turned the exercise machine to a quieter speed. “There’s a lot of factors in racin’,” he said. “It’s not just me, you know. I always try to win, but sometimes we don’t have the car, and sometimes we run out of luck. It’s seven o’clock in the morning, Melodie. Why do you want to talk about this here and now?”
He was already awake, of course, when she rang the doorbell at seven A.M., because he began his workout every morning at six, but he didn’t much care to have visitors at that hour, especially not charmless ones determined to hold a business meeting before he’d even had his coffee, which, she’d informed him, she had no intention of making for him.
“I understand about the vagaries of the racing gods,” she said. “I’m not asking you to do any fortune-telling. I’m simply asking you on which track in the next couple of months do you think you could reasonably expect to place higher than twentieth?”
Badger shrugged. “Darlington is a drivers’ track. You can’t buy Darlington with fancy engineering.”
“Yes, and you’ve already won that one, haven’t you? So I suppose that would be a safe bet. But it’s in May. You can do well sooner than that, surely?”
He thought about it. “Phoenix, maybe. That one takes some driving know-how. It’s got real tight turns on One and Two, and a dogleg going into Turn Three. I’d take my chances at Phoenix against anybody else out there.”
“Fine.” She consulted a printed NASCAR schedule the size of a credit card. “Phoenix, it is. That’s in late April. I suppose it will have to do.”
“What do you mean, ‘Do’?” said Badger. “You’re not betting on the races, are you? I think that might be illegal.”
Melodie rolled her eyes. “I do not wager on sporting events. And if I did, I think Jimmie Johnson might be a safer bet than you are. Oh, stop looking daggers at me. I told you I wasn’t your fan. I’m only here to get your business affairs in order. Now, before I go and do more important things, I need you to sign some papers.”
“What papers?”
“Oh, just the usual dull merchandising agreements and things. Of course, if you’d like to sit down and read them-”
Badger looked at his watch. “I have an interview in an hour with the guy from the Greensboro Record.”
She took a stack of papers out of her briefcase and set them up on the shelf of the treadmill, flipping off the machine as she did so.
“Hey! I wasn’t finished!”
“Sign your name a dozen times and then you can run ’til you drop, for all I care.” She handed him the pen and watched while he scribbled his name at the bottom of every page. “Thanks. I’ll get out of your way now.” She eyed his sweaty tee shirt and wrinkled her nose. “I could use some fresh air.”
Badger’s lips tightened, but all he said was, “Why did you want to know what race I was likely to do well in?”
She shrugged. “Just a deal I’m putting together. It’s easier to impress people when you’re not representing a guy who finished last. I’ll be off now. Get back to your treadmill like a good little hamster.”
Before he could reply she swept out of the room, closing the door behind her, just seconds before an empty water bottle hit it and bounced back onto the floor.
CHAPTER XIX
Relief Driver
“Congratulations,” said Melodie Albigre to the half-naked man. “Only two laps down at the end. At least you managed to finish. Nice race. Wish I could say the same about your underwear.”
Badger Jenkins, who had just stripped off his firesuit in the supposed privacy of the lounge of the hauler, wiped the sweat off his face with his forearm and glanced down at his faded blue boxer shorts. His eyes glittered with malice. “Well, I didn’t figure on anybody seeing my underwear,” he said.
She shrugged. She came the rest of the way up the steps into the lounge and sat down in the folding chair by the door. Badger had turned his back to her to finish dressing, but she was now peering at the screen of her PDA, which she contrived to find a good deal more interesting than an undressed race car driver. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just here on business. But, my, you are skinny, aren’t you?”
He held up the water bottle against his forehead and closed his eyes. “I lose about ten pounds in a race,” he said. “Maybe you should try it.”
She ignored this salvo. “Well, as I said, although I’m sure there are women who would kill to take my place at the moment, or so they tell me, I’m simply here to talk about your schedule. I would not have to be here if you bothered to return my phone calls.” She glared at him accusingly.
Badger scowled. “I was busy. I do have a job, you know.”
“Yes, I just watched you doing it.” She paused, letting her contempt go without saying. “You came in twenty-seventh. Nevertheless, we need to talk about what you’re going to do tomorrow.”
Badger finished pulling a purple Team Vagenya tee shirt over his head before he muttered, “I’m busy tomorrow.”
Melodie gave him her “humoring the delusional” smile. “Indeed, you are busy,” she said. “I have arranged for you to visit a local textile mill to sign autographs for the workers, who are apparently big NASCAR fans.” Her tone implied that there was no accounting for taste.
Badger finished chugging his water, tossed the bottle into the trash barrel, and reached for another. “Tomorrow is Monday,” he said, unscrewing the cap off the second bottle. “I’m off on Mondays.”
“Right. The team does not require your services on Monday. However, I do. Now this appearance I have scheduled for you tomorrow-”
“I go back home on Mondays,” said Badger. “Back to Georgia.” He wasn’t arguing. He was simply stating a fact with the calm certainty of one describing the action of the tides.
His personal manager was unmoved by this pronouncement. “Tomorrow you will be going to a North Carolina textile mill.” She peered the screen of her PDA. “At noon.”
Badger shook his head. “I didn’t agree to
that.”
“I agreed on your behalf,” said Melodie calmly. “I will accompany you to the event. Meet me at the team office at ten. Shall I drive? Yes, perhaps I should. I have the directions, and there are no left turns involved.” She smirked at her little joke.
“Well, I don’t want to go,” said Badger. He was fully dressed now, and judging from the mutinous look on his face, he was seconds away from walking out of the hauler.
“But you will go. Your fee will be the standard one. Five thousand dollars an hour. Less our management percentage, of course.”
“I told you, I-what?”
“Five thousand dollars an hour.” She sighed. “It was the best I could do. After all, you’re not Jeff Gordon. You’re not even Jeff Burton.”
Badger was still holding the cold water bottle against his forehead. He brushed a trickle of water away from his cheek. “How long do I have to stay?”
“Oh, an hour or so. I’ll pick you up at ten. Try to wear something presentable.”
“Like what?”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, God knows, Sunshine,” she said. “Maybe I’ll run you by the mall after we finish. Someone should see that you have some decent clothes. Too bad your beauty queen didn’t stick around.” With a faint sneer, she looked him up and down again. “Skinny and shabby. People will think you’re sponsored by a charity for the homeless. Tomorrow then.” She swept out down the steps and out of the hauler, just as her cell phone began to ring.
Badger sat down and contemplated the label of his water bottle, too tired to think what to do next. It had been a long, nerve-wracking race. They had never got the car dialed in, and he’d spent the entire evening fighting to keep the thing out of the wall on every turn. His arms and shoulders ached, and he had blisters down the sides of both hands from the rubbing of the wet leather of his driving gloves against his skin.
Tuggle came quietly into the room and sat down in the other chair. She closed the lounge door with her foot. She hadn’t changed clothes yet. The lines in her face were deeper, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. No matter how many times she told sports journalists-and the team owners-that it took most of a season to pull together a competent team, it was still a frustrating experience to lose and lose and lose. It was always for a different reason: mechanical problems, wrecks, bad setups. There were a thousand ways to get it wrong, and Tuggle was afraid that they’d hit every one of them before they ever came close to winning.
At Texas and Phoenix they had finished in the mid-twenties. At Talladega, the other restrictor plate track besides Daytona, Badger had managed to come in twelfth, with the help of a multicar wreck that had managed to take out most of the big-money competitors. “Doing well by default,” one sports writer had called it.
Now tonight at Richmond it had hurt to watch him out there struggling with a car whose setup was a disaster. On every turn he had fought to keep the car from going into the wall. Given the enormous g-forces working against the left-hand turn anyhow, she knew he must be sore and exhausted. And tired of losing. He hadn’t needed that scarecrow manager of his berating him after that ordeal of a race he’d just endured.
“I’m sorry about the car,” Tuggle said, patting his shoulder. It was as close as she ever came to hugging anybody. “They did their damnedest, you know. Just couldn’t make it work.”
Badger nodded without looking up. “I hope they get the hang of this real soon.”
“We all hope so. They feel like they let you down. I’m sure every one of them would rather have the blisters on your hands than the feeling of guilt they’re carrying right now.”
“Tell them not to take it so hard,” he mumbled. “It’s all part of the game.”
“I did tell them.” She looked bemused. “Never saw a Catch Can cry before.”
He tried to smile at that, but she decided there was more wrong with him than a lousy race. Technically, the rest of it was none of her business, either, and Tuggle was fanatical about minding her own business. She was fond of saying that if she saw someone drowning, she’d ask permission before trying to save him. But Badger was her responsibility for the duration of his contract, anyhow, and she figured that made him her business. An unhappy driver wouldn’t be working at peak performance.
She wished she could just wish him good night and walk out, because she wasn’t looking forward to the discussion, but instead, she said, “Listen, Badger…I heard the conservation that just went on in here. Do you want me to call a team meeting tomorrow?”
“What?”
She spoke slowly and carefully. “I’m saying that if you want me to, I can say I need you at the shop at noon tomorrow. For a team meeting.”
“But tomorrow is Monday.”
“Yes, Badger. I know that.” She sighed. Subtlety was wasted on race car drivers. “You don’t have to show up at the shop. I am offering an excuse to get you out of this gig at the factory if you are in need of a reason not to go.”
He gulped down the last of the water and tossed the bottle at the waste can. Bull’s-eye. Too bad basketball goals weren’t a foot off the ground; Badger could have had a safer athletic career. Without a word, Tuggle dug another water bottle out of the ice in the cooler and passed it over to him.
The silence lengthened as Badger made a ceremony of unscrewing the bottle cap, tossing it into the trash for another bull’s-eye, and taking a long swig of water. He kept sighing and looking away, and she thought for a moment that his eyes glistened. At last he said, “That appearance thing. I have to do it.”
“Have to?”
“Yeah, she said I have to do exactly what she tells me to, or she’ll quit managing me.”
With great effort, Tuggle willed herself not to make the reply that was clawing at the inside of her throat. She contrived to look sympathetic, or at least noncommittal.
“Five thousand dollars,” said Badger, staring at the wall. “My dad was a farmer. When I was a kid, that could have kept us going for a year. Even when I first started racing, that would have been a fortune back when I was racing Late Model Stocks.”
Tuggle was no stranger to hard times, either, but she didn’t think people ought to let the specter of famine intimidate them. “Yeah, I understand about poor,” she said. “But these days five grand wouldn’t buy you enough tires to get through qualifying, much less a race. It wouldn’t get the jet off the ground. Some of your colleagues spend that much on dinner.”
He groaned. “I know. I know that in my head. It just feels wrong to turn down money when I don’t really have anything else to do, I guess. And I don’t have a lot of endorsement deals like some of the younger guys.”
Tuggle agreed with him on principle, except for the fact that if he did this gig at the textile mill, it would constitute a victory for Melodie Albigre, whom the entire team now referred to as his “restrictor plate,” among other less civil epithets. NASCAR had a policy of fining drivers for using foul language in interviews, which prompted Tuggle to remark that expressing her opinion of Melodie Albigre would cost her ten thousand dollars.
“Okay,” she said, “But the offer still stands. If she ever tries to make you do something you don’t want to do, just tell her I’ve called a meeting. I’ll back you up. Anytime. Day or night.”
Badger nodded. “I hear you,” he said.
“Look, Badger. You’re famous. You’re rich by most people’s standards. Why are you letting her push you around?”
“She says this is my last chance. She’s right. These days they’re hiring nineteen-year-olds straight into Cup.”
“Well…Kyle Busch, sure,” said Tuggle. “But one shrub doesn’t make a forest.”
“It’s the way of the world, Tuggle. Times have changed since I started out. And you never know how long a career is going to last if you’re an athlete. I could go into the wall in the next race and never work again.”
Tuggle said nothing. You couldn’t argue with that. She couldn’t even bring herself to say the names of t
he guys whose careers had ended that way. The thought of them brought a lump to her throat. And he had taken some hard hits in the past, no question about it. That was part of the reason that she wanted to protect him. He had become a celebrity by risking his life, and he had done so with grace and courage. She respected that. As far as she could tell, Melodie Albigre did not.
“Okay, point taken,” she said at last.
“Yeah, so I need to think about my future. You know, you never save enough in your heyday, because you think it’s going to last forever.”
Tuggle grunted. “Tell me about it.” She was a lot closer to retirement age than he was, with a lot less to show for it. That’s why she’d needed this job. “Okay, I understand about the money, but why her? There are plenty of personal managers for athletes.” Ones that don’t treat you like pond scum, she finished silently.
Badger sighed. “I don’t live up here,” he said. “Well, I mean, I have a place up here, but I go home as much as I can. Between that and my driving schedule, I don’t have a lot of time to be finding people to work for me. She showed up, and she’s been really good. She says it would cost me fifty thousand dollars in salary to get someone to do her job, and she just works on commission.”
But what has she done? thought Tuggle. Oh, there was the press release she sent to the local shoppers’ weekly, with enough misspelled words to make even Tuggle wince. (Deanna had seen the original, which she had been asked to mail along with a team photo of Badger.) And she had got him a few minutes on a local TV sports show that aired at midnight Saturday night. And a few local appearances that paid a few thousand dollars, but, after all, Badger was a Cup driver-and there were only forty-three of them around-so such fees were hardly evidence of great ability on the part of his manager. If she had landed him a write-up in Newsweek, or a segment on 60 Minutes, or a long-term corporate partnership worth millions, that might have made her worth putting up with-but for a shoppers’ weekly and a textile mill gig?
Once Around the Track Page 25
