St. Dale

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “He was supposed to be here. Everybody said so. I was counting on it.”

  “I know, but this will be just as nice, won’t it? I mean, it’s not like it would be really him.”

  “In the pictures it would be. In the pictures.” Shane looked dangerously close to tears himself. “Who remembers their wedding? It’s the pictures that are real.”

  For the twentieth time, Karen scanned the crowd, hoping to catch sight of a man in sunglasses, white Goodwrench coveralls, and a black-and-red cap. Or even for somebody who had the right height and body type who could be persuaded to don a hat and dark glasses for the occasion. She was hoping for a miracle, and wondering what would constitute one. Kerry Earnhardt, maybe. Everybody said he was the spitting image of his dad, but he wasn’t driving in the Winston Cup series this year.

  She put her hand on her bridegroom’s arm and tried for a compromise. “Shane, wouldn’t it be better to have a real, live NASCAR driver act as best man, instead of some guy in a costume? Look, there’s Jerry Nadeau right over there. He seems really nice and all. Said he’d be best man or whatever if anybody wanted him to. And then you could have a real NASCAR driver in the wedding pictures.”

  Shane sneered. “Dude’s from Connecticut.”

  “Yeah, but he lives in Mooresville now. Just like Dale did.”

  “He ain’t Dale.”

  “Well, no. But he’s really himself. And he doesn’t he look nice in his racing gear? Are you sure you don’t want him?”

  “Huh. As often as Nadeau wrecks, it’d probably be bad luck to have him stand up for people getting married.”

  Karen sighed. “You’re just making excuses, Shane. He seems like a great guy. I can go ask him. That is, if you promise to be nice to him.”

  “Whaddaya mean, be nice to him?”

  “Well, you know. In the ’99 race here at Bristol, when they gave Jerry Nadeau that two-lap penalty for spinning out Dale Jarrett when he didn’t even mean to, and then on the last lap of the same race Dale spun out poor Terry Labonte and won the race, and NASCAR acted like nothing had happened. And you said that Earnhardt ought to be able to do anything he wanted just because he was Earnhardt. You just better not throw that up in poor Mr. Nadeau’s face and make him feel bad, that’s all, Shane.”

  Shane weakened for a moment, glancing over at Jerry Nadeau who was smiling and chatting with an assortment of bridal couples, then his mulish frown returned, and he said, “No. I don’t want anybody, then. Just an empty space. Dale can be beside me in spirit.”

  Karen nodded. “Yeah, hon. I’m sure he will be.”

  She scanned the crowd again, this time hoping for a glimpse of people she actually knew, but no one had turned up yet. She had left her mother and the Wiccan Friends of the Goddess contingent sleeping late in their tents back at the campground. They hadn’t been able to find other accommodations, because on race weekend every motel for fifty miles around is booked solid months in advance, so they had spent an uncomfortable night in close quarters with sleeping bags, Mrs. Tickle’s homemade wine, and multi-generational girl talk, to which Karen had contributed very little. Somehow, there didn’t seem to be much you could say to a bunch of women who averaged 2.2 husbands apiece when you hadn’t even managed to bag one yet officially, and she certainly didn’t want to hear any advice from them on the subject of marriage. There was something deeply depressing about being lectured on grounds for divorce and alimony strategies the night before you were going to stand up and vow “ ’til death do you part.”

  She wondered what they were going to wear to the wedding. Quite ordinary clothes, probably. Most of the Friends had nice jobs as librarians or professors or realtors, and they tended to clean up pretty well when they wanted to, so she doubted whether the rayon robes with sequin-and-glitter constellations would figure into their wardrobes for the ceremony. Of course, if they did wear them, she didn’t suppose it would matter, what with all the square-dance outfits and racing gear in evidence. As long as they didn’t come sky-clad. Please, Lord…Please, Dale…don’t let them come sky-clad, she thought.

  Karen thought she herself looked within hailing distance of normal, anyhow. She had steadfastly refused Shane’s urging to wear the feminine version of the Dale man-in-black outfit, and instead had opted for a more traditional look, although not the white satin gown she’d yearned for. Even she had to admit that the Barbie bridal dress would be ludicrous in the center of a racetrack when the other half of the wedding party was dressed in boots and jeans. In the spirit of compromise that she felt should accompany any venture into marriage, she’d accepted the help of the Friends of the Goddess seamstresses, who had found a bolt of white washable silk at JoAnn Fabrics and fashioned her a Greek tunic with handkerchief hems and a silver cord belt. Lace-up Roman sandals completed the outfit that she felt was cool in both senses of the word. She resolved to purge from her memory Mrs. Tickle’s laughing assessment of the couple: “Xena the Warrior Princess Marries Tim McGraw.”

  “Are you nervous?” One of the cowgirl brides asked her. “I sure am.” Sweat poured down the woman’s cheeks from damp red hair squashed under an aqua cowboy hat.

  Karen nodded. “I just hope it goes okay. After all, you only do this once.”

  A passing square-dance bride overheard this remark and giggled. “Don’t count on that, sugar!”

  Karen tightened her grip on the Sharpie bouquet with the handkerchief and the little tube of sunblock tucked into its depths. “My intended is over there sulking because he wanted Dale Earnhardt to be his best man.”

  The cowgirl raised her carefully tweezed eyebrows. “Dale Senior? He’s a little late for that, isn’t he?”

  “Well, not the real Dale Earnhardt. And not even Junior. But Shane was such a huge fan of the Intimidator that he wanted some reference to him in the wedding.”

  “I hear you,” said the cowgirl. “My intended cries every time he watches a race these days, he’s still so tore up about Dale.”

  “Shane hasn’t even watched a race since Dale died at Daytona. This will be the first one he’s seen since then. He says it hurts too much. In fact, this year I-well, never mind. But Shane heard there’s an impersonator on the circuit who’s the spitting image of Earnhardt, and he was hoping the fellow would show up today and stand in for Dale.”

  The woman laughed. “Well, that impersonator probably has to be careful about when and where he shows up, because if the folks at DEI catch him at it, I reckon they might arrange for him to actually meet Dale.”

  “Here’s our girl!”

  Karen stiffened at the sound of a bugling drawl from ten yards away. Moments later she was engulfed by a horde of Friends of the Goddess, redolent with perfume and sunblock and all talking at once while Miss Welchett circled the group snapping off shots with her digital camera. To Karen’s immense relief none of the Friends had come sky-clad. They didn’t even look like a unified group. Mrs. Tickle and Karen’s mother wore straw hats and chintz-patterned summer dresses, while several of the other ladies had chosen pantsuits topped by gauzy chiffon big shirts or the sort of outfits they wore to class, and the rest were in muumuus that made them look like a succession of upturned ice cream cones.

  “Have you got the four things, Karen?” asked her mother.

  “Umm…four-” Karen’s startled mind refused to come up with any list other than the Wiccan standby: earth, water, wind, and fire.

  “You know!” prompted Miss Welchett, still clicking the shutter. “Something old, something new…”

  “Oh.” Karen shrugged. At least they were staying mainstream with their pagan superstitions. “Well, the dress is new, the underwear’s old, and I borrowed Mom’s earrings. I can’t think of anything blue, though.”

  “Your aura,” said her mother. “Your aura is blue today. So you’ll be fine, dear. At least, I hope so.”

  “ ’Course I will.” Karen gave her mother a quick hug, and hurried away before she was made to listen to the usual speech about the uncertain
ty of human relationships and the unreliability of men and the Never Give Up Your Day Job maxim.

  The rest of the morning went by for Karen like a slide show on fast forward, forever to be remembered as a series of still images following in rapid succession accompanied by the aroma of gasoline, drooping flowers, and by canned wedding music and hugs from well-wishers and strangers. Shane’s dad hadn’t bothered to show up, but he moved around a lot so they weren’t even sure he’d received his invitation, but Shane’s mother was there in a pink linen dress that would have made her look young enough to be a bride herself if she didn’t look so tired and nervous. Shane’s grandmother had come wearing her best navy blue church dress and a Dale Earnhardt hat to get into the spirit of the occasion.

  Also present were their fellow travelers from the Earnhardt bus tour, who mostly looked too presentable to be mixed up in all this, and the dozen other wedding couples who somehow made Karen feel more alone than she would have walking down a church aisle by herself. And finally there was Shane, with that firing squad look of a man facing the unknown, stepping up to the podium all alone-except in his own mind, that is-and saying his “I do” in a clear steady voice in response to her own faltering vows. Then he looked up, past her to the nearly empty Junior Johnson grandstand, and broke into a beaming smile.

  Suddenly Jerry Nadeau was shaking her hand and wishing her well. “Um, you, too,” she said. “You know-for the race. May the best man win.” She was proud of that little play on words. She’d been saving it up to say to him when she shook his hand, but before Jerry Nadeau could even kiss the bride, Shane had taken her by the arm and pulled her aside. “Karen, I saw him!” he hissed in her ear.

  She turned back to look at the rows of still vacant seats. “Who?”

  “Dale! He was right there! In his firesuit and his sunglasses, with his arms folded the way he always stood, and when I looked up at him, he nodded at me. I think he might’a smiled.”

  “Well, that’s great, Shane…” Jerry Nadeau was gone now, swallowed up by the crowd of laughing newlyweds, hugging and shaking hands and posing for snapshots. “I’m real glad you saw the Impersonator after all.”

  Shane shook his head impatiently. “Look up at those stands, Karen. Do you see anybody there? No. ’Cause he’s gone. And nobody could disappear that fast from the middle of the bleachers. That wasn’t the Impersonator, Karen. That was the Intimidator.”

  The rest of the bus tour turned up for the combination tour lunch and wedding reception, and when the introductions, hugs, and picture-taking subsided, the newlyweds, the Number Three Pilgrims, and the Friends of the Goddess trooped off together to find some shade in which to eat the picnic lunch courtesy of Bailey Travel augmented with a selection of salads and vegetarian dishes brought along by the Friends. The two-tiered wedding cake, a little dented from its trip to the Speedway, featured red-and-black rosettes and garlands on white icing, a replica of Earnhardt’s signature in black icing on the side, and a little die-cast number 3 Monte Carlo next to the traditional plastic bride and groom on the top of the cake.

  “Well, I think the whole ceremony was sweet,” Justine insisted.

  Bill Knight sighed. “I just wish some of them had kissed each other before they kissed the start/finish line.”

  Shane’s mother, a colorless waif of a woman who looked like she hadn’t had enough sleep in fifteen years, hovered uncertainly on the fringes of the crowd beside Shane’s grandmother, until Justine discovered them and managed to get them involved in a discussion of wedding fashions and unusual ceremonies (beginning with her own), so that Mrs. McKee finally forgot her nervousness. By the time Shane’s grandmother had begun to swap herbal remedies with the Wiccans, Justine had fetched Mrs. McKee a second glass of champagne, and introduced her to Jim and Arlene. The three of them started on a comparison of NASCAR craft items and Shane’s mother had begun to feel that she was being amusing and clever after all. She even summoned up a grin for the family wedding picture.

  The reception hummed along despite the heat of midday, while Shane, Harley, and Terence stood off to one side and talked about the strategy of the pit stop in racing, with particular emphasis on the genius of the Wood Brothers. Karen chewed her roast beef sandwich in thoughtful silence, summoning up a smile every time somebody congratulated her, which was about every third bite. Finally, after she and Shane had cut the cake and everyone else was lined up to receive a slice, and while Justine and the Friends of the Goddess were leading a lively discussion on the feng shui of the Speedway, Karen walked up to Mrs. Tickle and asked, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Oh, no!” said Mrs. Tickle. “Certainly not.”

  It was typical of the Friends of the Goddess that Mrs. Tickle did not ask why Karen would ask such a question. This was exactly the sort of thing they thought everybody wondered about all the time, but Karen had expected a less conventional answer. “Oh, okay,” she said.

  “No, indeed,” said Mrs. Tickle waving her fork. “I believe in the lingering spiritual presence of departed souls.”

  “Well, do you think the departed soul of…um…Dale Earnhardt could come back to the NASCAR circuit?”

  “Certainly not,” said Mrs. Tickle.

  “Oh. Good. Well-”

  “Because he never left,” said Mrs. Tickle.

  Chapter X

  Circus Maximus

  The Sharpie 500

  Harley had hoped that the long afternoon at the Speedway would have given him a couple of hours to ditch the tour and hunt up some of his old friends on the pit crews before the race. The stock car circuit was like a small town: everybody knew one another and many of the participants had grown up together. Bill Elliott’s brothers had been his pit crew in the early days, and even now Dale Earnhardt Junior had one of his Eury cousins as crew chief. With the influx of new talent from California and the Midwest, this was not as true as it had been in the old days, but in many ways stock car racing was still a closed world where you felt that you could dial a wrong number and still talk.

  To get back in, he needed to pick up the current gossip on the circuit: Who might need a relief driver sometime during the season? Who was looking to field another car? Which of his old friends was in a position to do him a favor? Unfortunately, his Number Three Pilgrims required more personal attention than he had anticipated. Between them they had a hundred questions about the Bristol track, about the drivers he’d raced against, the rules and strategies of stock car racing, and about the details of the bus tour. And, no, Terry Labonte was indeed a kindly fellow, and he probably would recognize Harley on sight-well, he might, anyhow-but he would be far too busy to give anybody a ride around the track today. And, no, Harley could not arrange for the group to meet Dale Junior. What with one thing and another, Harley didn’t even have time to drink his lunch.

  Finally, hoping to distract them, he led them out of the Speedway for a walking tour of the souvenir stalls in the outer parking lot and then in the camping area across Beaver Creek. The rows of vendor trailers, each dedicated to a different driver, distracted them for a good forty minutes, as they wandered from stall to stall examining caps and die-cast cars, tote bags and posters. The Earnhardt souvenir trailer was at the track, still doing a brisk business in coffee mugs and decals; there were some people who still wanted to be Dale fans, even a year after his death. Heck, there were some people who had quit the sport cold turkey on the day he died-for them it was Dale or nothing. Harley thought Ray Reeve might be one of those.

  The current custom of mourning was to write messages of remembrance on the side of the black trailer itself. You’ll always be my driver, Dale! one fan had written in black marker across some white space. Another inscription read: Number Three: The fastest angel in heaven. One of the messages on the trailer had been written by Bobby Labonte himself. Everybody wanted to say goodbye. The messages were simple, but heartfelt, bearing an undertone of bewilderment that the universe would allow someone so rich and famous and beloved to be taken away.r />
  The unofficial vendors across the highway from Speedway property were the group’s favorites, because the homemade goods offered by the mom-and-pop sellers were more irreverent and whimsical than the officially licensed merchandise. Technically, some of it was illegal, too, since drivers’ likenesses and car designs were trademarked by the companies they drove for. He wondered if corporate killjoys ever raided the little flea market in search of such violations. Many of the current offerings, tee shirts and bumper stickers with current in-jokes and catchphrases geared to true racing aficionados, elicited more questions from Harley’s charges.

  “Look at this!” said Jesse Franklin, laughing as he held up a white tee shirt with the hand-lettered slogan: Don’t Hit Me, Tony! “I need one of these. I could wear it to the office.”

  “Stay in the car Sterling?” said Bekasu, reading aloud the slogan of another one. “What on earth does that mean?”

  Harley was saved from having to devise a diplomatic explanation by a grinning Jim Powell, who was eager to share the joke. “That happened last February at the Daytona 500,” he told her. “It was just half a dozen laps or so from the finish, and Marlin and Jeff Gordon tangled and spun out into the grass of the infield. Okay-long story short-the officials red-flagged the whole bunch of them there on the backstretch. So they’re supposed to sit there and wait for the go-ahead, but Sterling Marlin got out of his Coors Dodge and started messing with the fender. It had been bent in one of the melees, and he must have thought it would cut his tire if he didn’t see to it.”

  “Okay,” said Bekasu, with an expression suggesting that Her Honor was trying to follow expert testimony. “Is that frowned upon?”

  “They were under a red flag,” said Jim. “NASCAR says nobody does anything under a red flag. A couple of other drivers reported him, but I reckon the officials had spotted it anyhow.”