Half an hour before race time, he settled the tour members into their assigned seats, did a head count, and handed out the earplugs that would enable them to watch the race without suffering through the deafening roar of forty-three engines without mufflers reverberating in a giant concrete bowl.
“Oh, thanks, but I won’t need those,” said Justine, handing back the purple plastic capsule that contained the earplugs. “I’m going up there.” She pointed to a glassed-in enclosure at the top of the grandstand.
“To a skybox?”
“Uh-huh,” she said, rummaging in her purse for her pass. “A friend of mine owns a company that has one here at Bristol, and when I told her I was going to be here, she invited me to come up there and watch the race.”
“Lucky you,” said Harley, squinting up at the glass windows far above the Richard Petty seating section.
“Well, it’ll be comfortable, and there’s a bathroom and all, but for Bonnie the race is as much a business occasion as a sports event, so she’s always letting VIPs into the suite to mix networking with pleasure. I’ll probably have to make small talk with the governor or somebody, when I’d really rather be watching the track.” She gave him a bright smile. “It’ll be fun, though. I’ll see you back here after the race. Don’t y’all leave me!”
Harley promised to wait and, with a wave and a wink, she hurried up the steps to the skyboxes. Skyboxes were for the patrician spectators of the sport. Usually leased by corporations for their executives and business clients, the apartment-size rooms were furnished with kitchenettes and bathrooms, and offered a buffet spread to fortify the well-heeled guests. The media had its own skybox where the Sports Illustrated guy, the stringers for various newspaper syndicates, and other journalists from all over the world watched the race in air-conditioned comfort. Afterward, the winning driver was escorted up to that skybox so that he could be interviewed by the press corps without their even having to get up. Harley had been the driver of the moment in the press skybox one autumn Sunday in Martinsville, but he couldn’t remember a single question that any reporter had asked him. That fifteen minutes of fame had been a blur of sore muscles, thirst, and an attempt to downshift his brain from 100 miles per hour.
He could remember only two things from the experience. The first was looking out the press box window at the panoramic view of the Martinsville Speedway and seeing a grandstand that wasn’t there. There it was on the right side of the press box, an enormous upper tier, filled with cheering crowds, against a backdrop of dark hills similar to the ones that encircled the speedway at Bristol. But in Martinsville those distant mountains were cloud banks and the right upper tier of seats was equally ephemeral. By moving his head a little to alter the angle of reflection, Harley had satisfied himself that what he had actually seen was a mirror image of the grandstand on the left of the press box projected onto the skybox glass to create the mirage of a grandstand on the right where there was just sky and clouds. He never forgot that phantom grandstand at Martinsville and he sometimes wondered who might be sitting there to watch the race. Tim? Neil? Davey? Dale himself, now? The other thing he never forgot was the remark he had overheard as he walked to the podium in front of the press box picture window for his winner’s interview: “Aw, I was hoping Earnhardt would win. Who wants to talk to this guy?”
Bill Knight had settled young Matthew on the seat beside him, making sure that he was fortified with his medication, a Diet Coke, and was wearing his earplugs. The boy seemed to tire easily, but his excitement had borne him up through the heat and noise of race day, and now he was bouncing up and down on his seat, trying to follow everything at once.
As a preliminary to the race, there was a drivers’ parade: a patriotic convoy of pick-up trucks, solid red, solid white, and solid blue, each one carrying a fire-suited driver standing in the flatbed, waving to the roaring crowd for one turn around the track. Matthew stood up on the seat and waved his number 3 cap at the procession, and Bill Knight muttered something in Latin.
“You rooting for anybody?” Terence asked Ray Reeve, who was seated next to him.
“Not anymore,” growled the old man, not taking his eyes off the track.
“Who do you want to win, Matthew?” asked Cayle.
Matthew shrugged. “I don’t really care,” he said. “I just wish I could have been here when Earnhardt was racing.”
Bill Knight wondered why it would have mattered. The race would consist of a cluster of cars speeding past. Except for the numbers, how could anyone tell them apart, he thought. Still, he made an effort to get into the spirit of things. “At least they have an electronic scoreboard,” he said. “So that we can tell what lap they’re on.”
“I wonder how the Romans kept track of laps during chariot races?” asked Bekasu, already in need of distraction.
“Ah,” said Knight. “I know that one. Eggs and dolphins.”
“Dolphins?”
“Yes. Poseidon was considered one of the patron deities of the game. Because of the horses, I believe.”
“Not actual dolphins?” said Cayle, who had been listening.
He laughed. “No. Stone ones. You see, inside the oval of the Circus Maximus was a wall called the Spina, and at the end of it were two columns, each topped by a crosspiece. One crosspiece held a row of marble eggs, and the other, a row of dolphin statues. Each time the chariots circled the course, the erectores ran out and removed an egg and a dolphin, so the crowd could keep track of how many laps were left.”
“Did those guys ever get run over by chariots?” asked Matthew.
“Well…possibly,” Bill Knight conceded. “I expect electronic scoreboards are an improvement.” He wasn’t so sure about the cars, though.
Sitting at the end of the row, Harley stuck in his earplugs because he didn’t want to hear the voices of the Number Three Pilgrims asking him any more silly questions. He wanted to remember the other voices-the ones from the times he raced here. Stock car drivers wear headsets, so that even though they drive alone for five hundred laps in a monotonous circle, they have as much company in their heads as they do on the track: a Babel of voices, issuing instructions, assessing the car, cheering them on. High above the track, the team’s spotter was positioned, relaying information about conditions on the track ahead-who had wrecked, where a bottleneck had developed, whether to go high or low as you passed. The mechanics chimed in from time to time, concerned about the condition of the car. Was it time to pit for new tires? More fuel? Or should they wait and hope for a yellow flag? The crew chief offered strategy, encouragement, and a sounding board for whatever ideas the driver might have. You might be alone in the car, but you didn’t feel that way, with all those voices shouting in your head. And a goodly number of spectators owned receivers that tuned to the frequency of the radio communications between the drivers and crews. They would tune the set to the frequency of their favorite driver, and listen to his own private race-his comments, his voices. There was nothing like having a couple of thousand people eavesdropping on your conversation to make you watch your language.
Harley missed it, though. Not just the racing, but the voices. It had been like being in a big, close family-not that he was an expert on that feeling, really. But the idea of having a dozen people rooting for you, ready to do whatever they could to help you-that was a rush. Okay, their salaries were inextricably linked to your performance, which gave them a good reason to wish for your success, but still the support was good. Sure it was conditional, but, hey, what wasn’t? He wished just once he could have felt as sustained in life as he had on the track. In life or in his marriage. And most of all he wished he didn’t have to be sitting here in the cheap seats wearing earplugs, with no voices in his head to guide him around the oval.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Bill Knight, looking politely inquisitive. “I’m new to all this,” he said. “What exactly should I look for?”
Harley thought about it, and decided that he wasn’t annoyed at the question
. At least the man knew that the sport did have its complexities, which made a nice change from all the idiots who thought NASCAR stood for Non Athletic Sport Centered Around Rednecks. Why did women always say things like that? Well, yeah, he had told a local news anchor chick once at one of those wine and cheese do’s. And modern art is just slapping paint on canvas. So what does that make simple-the art or you? It had felt good to say that-almost worth the drink in the face and going home alone.
“Okay,” he said. “The human element here is that you’ve got two experienced drivers trying to put an end to very long losing streaks. One of them is Rusty Wallace, who has lost forty-nine races in a row. He always used to complain about Earnhardt getting away with murder, spinning him out to get past and all.”
“Ah. So now he has a chance to see if he can succeed without Earnhardt to contend with.”
“Well, technically, there is a Dale Earnhardt in the race. Little E. Dale Junior, that is. He’ll be out there, going strong in the 8 car.”
“Ah. Yes, of course.”
“Rusty complains a lot. He got mad about a black flag call at the Hanes 500 in Martinsville a few years back, so during the post-race interviews, he cut loose with some swear words. NASCAR takes a dim view of such behavior, and they fined his ass five thousand bucks. Know what he did?”
“What?”
“He paid it.” Harley grinned. “Sent half a million pennies over to Bill France in an armored car.”
“Ah. Well, sometimes rage can work wonders. I knew a fellow once who could only write sermons about things he was mad about. You mentioned another driver with a losing streak?”
“The other fellow trying to outrun his bad luck is Wonderboy. That’s what Earnhardt called him anyhow. Jeff Gordon.”
“Now I have heard of him. I think he’s the one Justine called the California Ken doll.”
“People do,” said Harley. “He’s in the 24 car. He’s got the movie star face, all right. He started young, and he looks even younger, which is why he got tagged with that nickname, but he’s a natural. Gordon’s marriage to a beauty queen is falling apart, though, and people think it might be affecting his concentration or something.” Harley shrugged. “I don’t know. I never could think about women when I was driving, but I suppose it’s possible.”
“Have you picked the winner?”
“Hard to say,” said Harley. “Too many variables. This race will take a couple of hours, and that’s a lot of time to screw up in. Who’s going to wreck? Who’s going to have mechanical problems? People don’t realize how much strategy is involved in motor sports. It isn’t just who has the fastest car, because every time a team gets a faster car than the competition, NASCAR thinks up more rules to even things up again.”
“So, if all the cars are about the same, what determines who wins?”
“I said. Strategy. Races have been won or lost on the decision to take two tires instead of four at a pit stop. Do you stop for gas and lose your lead or keep going and hope for a caution flag? Earnhardt lost at Daytona once because he ran out of gas.”
Bill Knight digested this information. “Okay,” he said. “But other things being equal, who would you expect to win today?”
Harley considered it. “If wanting was getting, then I’d put my money on Jeff Gordon, I think. He has gone thirty-one races without a win. That’s got to be killing him.”
“But I thought you said that Wallace had a longer losing streak than that?”
“Well, but Rusty’s used to it,” said Harley. “He’s been around a while. But Gordon, now, he’s the Tiger Woods of motor sports. A child prodigy. He was younger than Matthew there when he started winning championships in go-carts. He just kept moving up to bigger and faster rides. This losing streak must be hard to take after all that early success.” Whereas I’d give my eyeteeth to be Rusty Wallace, he finished silently.
“So you want Jeff Gordon to win?”
Harley sighed. The new bland, non-Southern face of NASCAR, all vanilla all the time. “Let’s just say that with my luck, Gordon is the one who will end up in Victory Lane.”
Sitting next to Bill Knight had given Harley a new perspective on watching races. He looked out across the grandstands at the blur of spectators. One hundred and sixty thousand people, each one seeing a different race. He glanced at the old couple, Jim and Arlene, sitting there holding hands in their matching Dale Earnhardt tee shirts and vests, and he thought, Some people are even seeing cars that aren’t running here tonight.
The pregame show at Bristol was always a thrill to watch. First came the parachutist floating down out of the sky, hauling a gigantic American flag in his wake. Harley always waited for the skydiver to get blown off course and come down outside in the creek, but he never did. Smack on the track in front of the grandstand, same as always. And then, while all the pit crews in their bright matching jumpsuits stood on the track, a spectrum of respectful attention, the event began with a Bristol tradition: the National Anthem, sung by the children of the drivers: winsome blondes in pinafores and sturdy little boys waiting for their turn at the wheel.
At the end of the row Ray Reeve was the first one to his feet when the chords of the anthem were struck. He was the old soldier salutes the colors, straight out of Norman Rockwell, even to the trickle of a tear across his cheek.
Cayle Warrenby touched Harley’s arm. “I don’t see Dale Junior up there,” she said, peering at the crowded grandstand.
Harley actually stood up to point out the position of the Number 8 car at the pit before he realized what she was getting at. Drivers’ kids. “No,” he said with a weak grin. “I reckon Junior won’t be singing the National Anthem tonight. And neither will CooCoo Marlin’s boy Sterling nor Kyle Petty.”
“Voices changed,” said Bekasu.
“Well, that, and the fact that they’re driving in the race themselves tonight,” said Cayle, who was never sure how much Bekasu knew and pretended not to.
The cars sped past, wobbling to warm up their tires, the green flag went down, and with a roar that shook the bleachers the race began: a blur of brightly colored cars spinning around a steep, tight circle like marbles in a blender. You’d have to be traveling at a high rate of speed just to stay up on that high-banked track-centrifugal force trumped gravity.
The third lap came within a minute after the start of the race, and when the scoreboard indicated that the cars were indeed on lap 3, many of the spectators stood up, one arm upraised, with three fingers held up in tribute to their fallen hero. Harley, remembering his current assignment and his promise to Mr. Bailey, got to his feet and made the sign of the three, though he could not escape the image of a transparent man in sunglasses and a white Goodwrench firesuit pointing at him and laughing.
“It’s the three-peace salute,” he shouted to Bill Knight, before the question could be asked. He noticed, however, that young Matthew was already on his feet, making the sign on his own, so he knew.
“In memory of Dale Earnhardt?”
Before he could answer, the third lap was over. Harley was the first to sit down. “Yeah,” he said. “All last year, everybody did it on the third lap. Even the sportscasters up in the box, they tell me.”
“It seems such a solitary sport,” said Bill, putting his lips close to Harley’s ear to make himself heard over the noise of the race.
“We’ll talk after the race!” Harley yelled back, replacing his ear plug.
It wasn’t a solitary sport, though. It might look that way to Bill Knight’s untutored eye, but Harley knew better. It wasn’t just the teamwork between crew and driver, it was the feeling of the fans as well. Talk to any dedicated race fan, ask him to describe his favorite driver’s progress in the race, and chances are good that he’ll use the pronoun “we.” As in: “We had a little trouble with the left front tire after turn four…” or “We thought the car was a little loose on that last lap, so we decided to pit early…” We. As if the spectator were sitting in the passenger seat of the race
car. If you knew enough about the sport, it felt that way. You tuned your scanner to your driver’s frequency, and you heard his voice, every lap of the race, guiding you through the experience, as if you were riding along beside him. Maybe pro football was a spectator sport, but motor sports was a virtual ride-along. No other sports fans could get so close to the participants while the event was taking place.
For the rest of this race, though, Harley was the most solitary person in the Bristol Motor Speedway. Without a scanner he was cut off from the voices of the participants, and without a ride, he was shut out of the sport altogether. One part of his mind followed the intricacies of the race, but beneath that was the undercurrent of worry: replaying this afternoon’s conversations with the owners and crew chiefs, wondering what he was going to do when the tour ended, if he didn’t have a job lined up by then. And in his head, the musical accompaniment for the Sharpie 500 was an old James Taylor song, called “Carolina in My Mind.” He wasn’t sure why his mental soundtrack kept looping that song, until he focused on the words to the chorus, the line after the sunshine and the moonshine. The part about the friend who hits you from behind. Oh, yeah. That was Carolina, all right. If they ever did a music video of that tune, they ought to run footage of Earnhardt racing. Ain’t it just like that old Carolina boy to hit you from behind?
The race went on, punctuated occasionally by caution flags, and sometimes by Speedway-sponsored diversions, like an air cannon shooting tee shirts into the stands to the scrambling spectators. Harley wondered if there had been an equivalent to that in ancient Rome, but it was too noisy in the stands to ask the reverend about it.
The laps mounted up while the song cycled around in his head. Yeah, ain’t it just like a lot of those Tarheel boys to hit you from behind? In the course of the race Dale Junior smacked Ward Burton out of the way, parking him for the rest of the night. Of course, Carolina didn’t have the monopoly on roughhousing. Jeremy Mayfield, a newcomer from the Waltrips’ hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky, took Hut Stricklin out of the race, and Robby Gordon drew a penalty for wrecking Jimmie Johnson, whose car then bumped Mark Martin’s, so they were all about equally furious, he figured. Nothing out of the ordinary for a Bristol race, though. A series of wrecks punctuated by fast laps.
St. Dale Page 14
