St. Dale

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “And you know about the goat, right?” said Shane. “Born in Florida. White number 3 on its side.”

  “Well, you can’t have reincarnation and transfiguration,” Bill pointed out. “They cancel each other out, you know. You’re either here or you’re there.”

  Shane groaned. “It’s just a sign. A sign that he hasn’t left us. Like-like the rainbow.”

  “Well…I don’t think Christian doctrine subscribes to the idea of people hanging around after they’ve died. I think they’re supposed to have gone on to heaven. Isn’t that what you were told in church?”

  Shane waved away a millennium of theology. “But I’ve seen him,” he said. “At Bristol before the race. I saw him!” Shane walked away before Sarah Nash and Harley could catch up with them.

  Bill Knight stared after the boy. He considered going after him, but he saw that Karen had taken the young man’s arm, and they seemed to be heading for the gift shop. Before he could make up his mind to follow them, someone touched his arm, and he looked up into the worried face of a stranger: a dark-eyed young man with a thick crew cut, who was dressed in the uniform of an army enlisted man. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop on your friend there, but I couldn’t help overhearing what he said about Dale and the miracles and all.”

  “He’s-he’s given it a lot of thought,” said Bill, searching for a remark that was both courteous and truthful.

  “Yes sir, I could see that he had,” said the soldier. “Interesting stuff. Just one problem with it, though.”

  Just one? thought Bill.

  “Yes, sir. Ward Burton.”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Ward.”

  The soldier heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes. Civilians. “No, sir. I’m not Ward Burton. Name’s Alvarez.” He tapped the label sewn on his shirt. “What I meant was that Little E. didn’t win the Daytona 500 this spring. Ward Burton did.”

  Bill blinked. He thought that name had sounded familiar. Ward Burton had won the last race at Loudoun, and his parishioners had talked about it for days. “I know nothing about racing,” he said, “but are you sure? Shane seems quite knowledgeable.”

  Private Alvarez shrugged. “Ask anybody, sir. Heck, ask Junior. He sure knows he hasn’t won the big one yet. Your friend was right about Mike Waltrip winning in ’01, and everything else sounded right, too, but not this year’s Daytona. 2002: Ward Burton.”

  “But it’s such an important thing. Why would he get it wrong?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I wondered that myself. You take care now.” With a wave that was just short of being a salute, the soldier walked away.

  “Isn’t this place amazing?” said Sarah Nash. “Look what I bought in the gift shop!” She handed Bill a large, expensive-looking bottle tinted sapphire blue. He examined the label, expecting to see the word Chardonnay or Chablis, but instead the elegant script proclaimed the bottle’s contents to be Dale Earnhardt Spring Water.

  He saw the twinkle in her eye, and he smiled back. “You know, Sarah,” he said softly, “if Dale had lived, he would have turned that into wine for you.” Then he thought again of Shane McKee and the legend he’d fashioned out of his grief. Lord of the Rings-and Pistons? “I shouldn’t joke about it,” he said. “People are genuinely mourning this man-even after more than a year. I had no idea that the feelings ran this deep.”

  “Well, if it’ll make you feel better,” said Sarah Nash, “I think Dale himself would have thought that remark about the water was a hoot.”

  Chapter XIV

  The Rock

  North Carolina Motor Speedway

  “The Rock deserves more than the tail end of an afternoon,” said Harley, “but from here on out the distance between the speedways becomes so great that we have to make sacrifices in order to fit them all in.” He was sitting at the head of two pushed-together tables at a North Carolina barbecue. The other passengers, between trips to the salad bar, listened while they ate with varying degrees of attentiveness.

  Either by luck or because the decor was inevitable in a restaurant in that area, the place was a shrine to Dale Earnhardt. There were the usual barbecue restaurant ornaments: cartoon pig statues on shelves, and signed publicity stills of celebrity patrons, mostly of Nashville singers passing through on the way to gigs in Charlotte, but besides this standard fare, the pine-paneled walls were dedicated to the Intimidator.

  From official Earnhardt posters in narrow chrome frames, the Intimidator stared down at the restaurant’s patrons, stern-faced in his black-and-white Goodwrench firesuit, his eyes obscured by the usual dark sunglasses. A glass-fronted curio cabinet from the Hickory Furniture Market displayed die-cast replicas of the number 3 Monte Carlo and its predecessors, along with a collection of Earnhardt caps, coffee mugs, statuettes, framed 8x10 photos, and black-framed posters of the car and its driver at different race tracks or in posed publicity stills. The two most interesting posters were a departure from the standard fare. One from the Dukes of Hazzard era showed a young, shaggy-haired Earnhardt in jeans and boots, holding a cowboy hat, and perched atop the rail fence of a shady pasture. A western saddle was balanced on top of the rail beside him; just past it, a bay horse poked its head over the fence as if to inspect the blue-and-yellow race car parked on the grass verge of the country road.

  “That was in the old days,” Ray Reeve remarked to no one in particular. “Back when he was sponsored by Wrangler, when he won his first championship in 1980. Boy, he looks young. I’d forgotten.” He pointed at the framed poster beside it. “That there’s his last championship, I do believe.”

  His friend Jesse nodded happily. “I’d say it was, Ray. I surely would.”

  Bill Knight, who had been staring in dismay at the latter image, said, “What an odd poster. What can they mean by it?” Repressing a shudder, he looked to Harley for an explanation.

  Harley shrugged. “Coincidence.” He picked up a menu and began to study it as if there’d be a quiz.

  No firesuit or sunglasses in this last championship poster. Instead, an older, debonair Dale Earnhardt, tuxedo-clad and confident, stood in a full-length photo scaled larger-than-life and superimposed at the far left of a nightscape of the New York skyline. Looming just past the Intimidator’s shoulder stood the glittering shapes of the Twin Towers, bright peaks against a blue twilight. In the composite photo, Earnhardt stood taller than the towers. At the other end of the poster, the traditional image of Earnhardt in racing mode was superimposed on an enormous moon image set in a slate blue sky above the cityscape. This black-and-white image wore sunglasses, and sported the Goodwrench logo on his white helmet: the man in the moon, waiting for the green flag. At bottom right, where the Hudson River ought to be, sat the black number 3, scaled to dwarf the skyscrapers in the background.

  “What do you think they’re trying to say in that poster?” Bill Knight asked Harley, tapping the menu. “That Earnhardt’s death was more significant than 9/11?”

  “They’re not trying to say anything,” said Jesse Franklin, looking distressed at the misunderstanding. “Ray told you: that poster dates from 1994-the year of his seventh championship. The NASCAR awards banquet is held in New York City. That’s all it means.”

  Justine, who had come over to examine the poster as well, said, “Yes, but isn’t it odd that they would pose Earnhardt beside the Twin Towers, and that we lost them in the same year?”

  Bill smiled, partly in relief that his hasty conclusion had been wrong. “It’s easy to spot omens after the fact,” he told her. “Anybody can be Nostradamus on those terms. But Monday-morning prophets are as useless as Monday-morning quarterbacks. If you had looked at that poster back in 1994 and foreseen the disaster, then you’d have my attention.”

  “But, look,” said Shane. “That year was his seventh championship. His seventh. In 1994. And it was seven years later that the Towers fell.” He did a quick calculation on his fingers. “He died in February, 2001. February to September. Seven months after he died
.”

  Ray Reeve shook his head. “You’ve lost me there, son,” he said. “Maybe if those towers had been in Charlotte, I could see Earnhardt being a thread in a doomsday prophecy, but Manhattan was not his turf. I just can’t see it as any more than a coincidence.”

  “And you can stop humming that Twilight Zone music, Bekasu,” said Justine, turning around to glare at her sister. “We’re trying to make sense of two tragedies here.”

  “It’s a poster, Justine.”

  Justine sniffed. “You wouldn’t recognize a miracle if it stepped on your foot. I know they say that seeing is believing, but maybe it works the other way, too. Maybe believing is seeing.”

  “Well, I think you all ought to stop talking about it,” hissed Cayle, glancing around nervously. “Terence lives in Manhattan, you know. We might upset him with all this talk about 9/11.”

  Terence and Sarah Nash were already seated at the table with Matthew, helping him decipher the menu, seemingly oblivious to the discussion taking place at the Seventh Championship poster. Sarah Nash had discovered that neither of her table partners knew what hush puppies were or why they were called that, so she had embarked upon the tale.

  The others took a last look at the poster, and walked back to their seats. Harley and Ratty had pushed two large tables together so that those who were not hard-of-hearing could converse with anyone else in the group, but there still wasn’t room enough for everyone, so Bill Knight and Bekasu Holifield volunteered to sit at a smaller table nearby. They had tried to make this offer seem like a sacrifice, but their feigned reluctance to leave the group convinced no one.

  Bill Knight studied the menu (what was red slaw?), still thinking about the concept of hindsight prophecy, and wondering how he should phrase his thoughts on the matter when he recorded it in his little notebook. He had set the notebook beside his fork in hopes that something would occur to him before the end of lunch. The motion of the bus tended to make his handwriting illegible. Hindsight prophecy: He supposed that it was human nature to look for omens in connection with significant events. Portents would be a sign that there is order in the universe: that things are predestined and foreseeable. The idea of a chaotic, random universe in which events have no meaning was more than some people could bear. He didn’t much like the thought of it himself. Perhaps that was what drew him to the ministry: God was a promise of order in a world of chaos.

  Bekasu, who had sat down next to him, noticed his look of preoccupation. “I love my sister,” she said, “but sometimes I need a break from Planet Justine.”

  “She’s an original,” said Bill, smiling politely.

  “About that Manhattan poster,” said Bekasu, talking behind her upraised menu so the others wouldn’t overhear. “They really don’t mean to be blasphemous.”

  “No, no,” said Bill. “I wasn’t offended, and I don’t think Terence Palmer even noticed. They’re so obviously sincere. Misguided, perhaps, but sincere. Perhaps they are postmodernists.”

  Beksau smiled. “If you accused Cayle or Justine of being one, they’d say they were Presbyterian, but I take your point. The theory that people try to make a connection between random events in order to give the universe a semblance of meaning. Justine, searching for the mystical significance of all the threes, or a connection between two tragedies that some of them probably do see as equal.”

  “Yes. If it’s only a set of coincidences that they are trying to impose order on, we needn’t consider it, but some of the things I’ve heard are a bit puzzling, I admit.”

  Bekasu looked uneasy. “Well, Cayle for one may have good reason to think there’s a supernatural connection with Earnhardt.”

  “Yes, she told me about her encounter on the road to Mooresville.”

  Bekasu twiddled her spoon. “She swears it really happened. I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve known her forever, and she’s not a flake. Now if it were Justine, I’d know exactly what to think. Justine is capable of finding the Holy Grail in a Coke machine. But Cayle…I guess as a minister you must be used to it.”

  He shook his head. Marriage counseling and fund-raising for charity were more in his line. Beans-and-rice suppers for Latin American political causes, yes; divine revelations, no. “You don’t expect to hear things like that these days,” he said. “Not outside of a supermarket tabloid, anyway. I suppose that if Cayle had told me that she’d met Mother Teresa, I might have been skeptical, but at least I’d have been more-”

  “Respectful?” said Bekasu, smiling. “Well, I don’t know if I believe it, either, but I’m enough of a contrarian not to want anybody’s elitists electing our saints. I don’t think we should doubt her because of who she saw. Besides, I think there’s more than one kind of saint.”

  Bill Knight stared for a moment at a forkful of barbecue. “Okay,” he said. “Angels-like St. Michael. Prophets and mystics-St. John the Baptist, Joan of Arc. Humanitarians-Mother Cabrini.”

  “Don’t forget the political saints,” said Bekasu. “People who become saints because canonizing them was one in the eye to the enemies of the church.”

  “Thomas More,” said Bill. “Well, I’m an Episcopalian, so obviously we don’t claim him, but Rome does.”

  “Exactly. And have you considered the people’s saints? I mean the ones who got in by popular demand. Thomas Becket was one of those.”

  “Surely he was also a political choice? Archbishop of Canterbury-defending the church against secular law?”

  “Yes-canonizing him was a papal rap on the knuckles for Henry II, but don’t you think he was also a grassroots favorite?”

  “Becket? Well, he became powerful despite the fact that he was a Saxon in Norman England, so by definition a member of the lower orders.”

  “In other words, a redneck,” said Bekasu.

  Bill stared at her. “Yes, but of course he transcended his humble beginnings.”

  “Well, then I’d say that’s something he and Earnhardt had in common.” She nodded toward the image of the man in the tuxedo against the backdrop of Manhattan. “And I’ll tell you another resemblance. Neither one of them got above their raising, as we say down here. Remember Becket giving away the archbishop’s fine clothing to the poor and wearing a hair shirt? And here’s Earnhardt-fortieth richest person in America-and where does he live? Iredell County, where he started. Not Palm Beach. Not Palm Springs. Not New York or L.A. Mooresville. Ordinary people loved him for it.”

  “Well, I grant you the similarity, but of course it doesn’t make him a saint.” Bill had begun to shred his paper napkin. “A Roman historian named Priscus said pretty much the same thing about Attila the Hun. How modest and well-spoken he was, I mean. Drank out of a wooden goblet, but served his guests in gold ones. Nobody ever mistook Attila for a saint. Or Earnhardt. Not that I’m comparing them,” he hastened to add.

  Bekasu laughed. “He’d probably consider it a compliment. Okay, Dale and Attila weren’t saints by the church’s standards, no. But the clergy may not have the last word anymore. Not culturally, anyhow. I think in the twentieth century, the people started choosing the saints. Elvis. Princess Diana. Speaking of the princess, a few weeks before she was killed, she auctioned off her formal gowns at Sotheby’s and gave the money to charity. Does that sound familiar?”

  “Becket’s robes…” murmured Bill. “Shortly before he was killed, he gave away his archbishop’s clothing to the poor.”

  “Right.” She waved a hush puppy for emphasis. “They were of the people, and for the people. Scorned by the aristocracy. Becket was an uppity Saxon redneck. Elvis wasn’t ‘serious’ music. Diana wouldn’t toe the line with the royal family; and Dale was just a race car driver, which elitists don’t even consider a sport. All of them died in their prime, and all of them elicited the same public reaction: people felt rage as much as grief-that someone they loved had been taken from them.”

  Bill stared at her. “I thought you hated stock car racing.”

  Bekasu shrugged. “I’m a lawyer.
I can argue both ends against the middle. I don’t particularly enjoy watching racing as a sport-not the way Justine does. But it annoys me when cultural snobs belittle it. Fighting for the underdog is in my blood, I suppose. A judge I clerked for once called me a Jacksonian Democrat, and I suppose I am.”

  “But do you think Earnhardt-I mean, all those supernatural things?”

  She shrugged. “I’m keeping an open mind, I guess. I’ve known Cayle all her life and she isn’t a liar, so I’ll take it as real that she saw something. But I’m reserving judgment on the rest. Mystical symbols in the posters. He touched a lot of lives much more deeply than anybody ever thought he would. I don’t know what it means.”

  “Fair enough,” said Bill.

  “But isn’t he an unlikely saint?” Bekasu nodded toward the Earnhardt-Twin Towers poster. “I grew up in North Carolina. I’m about the same age as Dale. And I keep thinking that I knew him. Oh, not him. But I went to school with a lot of Dales way back when…Sullen little chicken hawk guys with shaggy hair and long sideburns. They lived in the same small town that we did, but in another world. I grew up fettered with rules and expectations. Thou shalt not wear white shoes after Labor Day. Go to church. Make the honor roll. Don’t make waves in thought, word or deed. Respect your elders. Don’t get serious about a boyfriend in high school, because you’ve got to get through college and grad school unencumbered.”

  “Sounds familiar,” said Bill.

  “Yes, but not everybody had to follow those rules. My dad was a lawyer, and my friends were the doctors’ kids and the other lawyers’ kids, and the rest of the adolescents in our leafy upper middle class neighborhood. We all went to the nice new junior high school in the suburbs. But across town was the other junior high school-the old one-on the other side of the tracks in the working class part of town.” She sighed. “I used to envy them so much.”