St. Dale

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Bill Knight sighed. He must not voice that ridiculous thought to anyone on this tour. Surely there were many other drivers who had driven the Polish victory lap over the years without fatal consequences. He was being fanciful.

  There were no tokens of faith in this memorial park-no ribbons on shrubs or beads draped over statues. There were the inscribed bricks, of course. He had noticed that the center walkway was studded with personalized bricks inscribed with messages from people who still mourned Davey Allison or from those who wanted to express love or luck to someone else. Tangible prayers.

  Bill smiled. In some ways people changed very little over the centuries. In Roman times in Britain, they had thrown small objects into pools as offerings to the gods, small incentives that prayers should be granted, and the impulse to reach out to the hereafter had not gone away. It had only taken a new form. What prayer would he write on a sacred brick, he asked himself. Asking for material goods-a new car, perhaps-seemed at best childish to him, and those beauty pageant wishes, like “world peace,” seemed to reduce complexity to a platitude and he would have felt foolish expressing such a wish. Perhaps the greatest gift one could hope for was the ability to believe that there was someone out there who cared that you wished for anything at all.

  The ginger tom interrupted his reverie with a butt of its head against his arm. Obligingly he stroked the cat’s head, as it arched its back in contentment. It seemed well fed, so it wasn’t a stray, but why would it hang around a public park dedicated to motor sports. “So, Cat, who are you the reincarnation of?” he mused, glancing up to see whose plaque was stationed opposite the bench.

  Cayle, who had been walking by at that moment, smiled at the pair of them on the bench, and she stooped to scratch the ginger tom’s ears. “I didn’t think Episcopalians believed in reincarnation,” she said.

  “No. No, they don’t. I was just being whimsical. He seems so proprietary of this place, as if he belongs here. Probably lives across the street.”

  She nodded. “I suppose he does. Somehow I can’t imagine any of the people on these plaques being reincarnated as a house cat. A cheetah, maybe-for speed.”

  Bill detached the cat gently from his lap, and stood up to walk with Cayle. He gave it a final stroking along its arched back. “Well, he isn’t the Exxon tiger. That checkered wall over there was donated by Texaco.”

  “It’s peaceful here,” said Cayle.

  “Yes. Something beautiful that came about because of a tragedy. There may be a sermon in that, but I’ve resolved to be off duty for this trip. I would like a photo of the brick walkway, though, for my pilgrimage lecture.”

  “Consider it done,” said Cayle.

  He scanned the park again for Matthew, who had scampered off the bus ahead of him. The boy was standing beside Justine near the flagpole on the brick walkway, and the two of them seemed to be studying a piece of paper, perhaps a map.

  “The children are all right,” said Cayle, following his gaze. “At least if they get into mischief, they’re together.”

  “She’s very good with him,” said Bill. “Does she have any children of her own?”

  Cayle nodded. “One son from her first marriage. He’s grown and gone, though, so we don’t hear much about him. He’s a professor somewhere, and I gather he doesn’t approve of her.”

  “Why not?”

  Cayle shrugged. “Well, she’s impulsive and funny, but she’s not anybody’s idea of a sedate parental authority. I think Scott took after his father. Or maybe he would have preferred to be the flamboyant one, and for that he’d need a calm center, but Justine would never be that. I think she’s meant to be a comet, not a sun.”

  “There are some children who’d find fault with their parents no matter who they were,” said Bill.

  “That’s Scott. If he had Mr. Rogers and Mother Teresa, he’d complain that they weren’t Clint Eastwood and Madonna-and vice-versa. It’s mostly that, I think. Or else he’s still mad about a divorce that happened twenty-something years ago. She doesn’t talk about him much.”

  “She’s a law unto herself obviously, but she seems like a very easy person to get along with.”

  “Yes,” said Cayle. “But maybe not an easy person to compete with.”

  They reached the midpoint along the outer path and started up the brick walkway that led through the center of the park and joined the encircling path on the other side. Matthew was kneeling on the bricks, tracing the inscriptions with his finger.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to the path. “Some of these bricks have messages written on them.”

  “Yes, Matthew, I see that. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  The boy wandered up the path to examine more of the bricks. Bill knelt down to read some of the tributes that fans and well-wishers had left. Many of the messages were in honor of Davey Allison himself-“True #28 Fans, Bernie and Denise”-but some of the bricks bore inscriptions addressed to Earnhardt as well. “In Memory of Dale Earnhardt,” one said. A couple named Pat and Mike wished good luck to Dale Junior on their brick. Others commemorated fans’ wedding dates or honored the memory of a friend or family member.

  “I’m glad to see some bricks in honor of Earnhardt as well as Davey,” said Cayle. “It’s good for people to have a place to say good-bye.”

  “It’s odd that so many people seem to see Earnhardt as a saint,” mused Bill.

  Cayle stared. “As a saint? The Intimidator? Surely not.”

  “Well, the outward trappings of beatification, anyhow.” Bill smiled. “I’m being technical here. The winged threes on cars. Threes in Christmas lights on the roofs of houses. Tee shirts with slogans like ‘God Needed a Driver.’ Bekasu and I were saying that it reminded us of the way people reacted when Thomas Becket was martyred. A sudden recognition of the loss of an extraordinary presence.”

  “That connection would never occur to his fans,” said Cayle.

  “No. I think it’s instinctive. The object changes over the years, but human responses stay the same. Perhaps we have a fundamental need for reverence.”

  “How strange.”

  “It is strange. For instance, Shane-”

  Before he could finish telling her, Matthew came running up waving a brochure. “Did you know you can buy a brick for the walkway here? And they’ll write whatever you want on it, and put it right here on the path.”

  Bill Knight glanced down at the litany of tributes. “I gathered as much,” he said.

  “The brochure says it costs sixty bucks for three lines of a message, and Justine said she’d buy me a brick and send in the form for me-is that okay?”

  “It’s very kind of her,” said Bill.

  “I just told him he has to promise to come back some day and visit his brick,” said Justine.

  “So we’re gonna sit down over there and work on what we want it to say,” said Matthew. “You have to count every letter.”

  Bill Knight had thought of asking Cayle to elaborate on her experience of seeing the late Dale Earnhardt, but she had walked away. He didn’t believe her, of course. He wondered if he would have believed someone who had claimed to see Thomas Becket in Canterbury in, say, 1171.

  It had been a long time since he’d had the kind of faith that kindles saints. He had to think all the way back to childhood to find that reserve of belief. Of sitting beside his mother in church-so small that his feet didn’t even touch the floor yet-and while all the congregation had their heads bowed in prayer, Bill would try to peek out of the slits of his eyelids, hoping-but also dreading-to catch a glimpse of an angel on the sill under the big stained glass window of Jesus in Gethsemane. He had really believed that the angel hovered there during services, but he knew that the sight would be a terrible one. No sappy Valentine cherubs for him. Bill’s dad had been a minister, too, so he knew his theology, even as a kid. Angels were soldiers. They had kicked the devil’s butt out of heaven, so they were not to be trifled with. As a kid, you didn’t know what might be true and what wasn’t.
There were rules for everything. Would stepping on a crack break your mother’s back? What if you sneezed and nobody said bless you? What if you died without saying your prayers? There was a belief that was more terror than faith, and he was glad to have outgrown it. How much of the belief in the hereafter was just the fear of letting go or the fear of nothingness?

  Before he could consider the implications of selective faith, he saw that Harley was coming toward him, carrying the wreath box. “I thought this would be the best place to leave the Talladega wreath,” he said. “And maybe since this is a memorial park, you ought to be the one to say a few words over it.”

  “Of course.” Bill Knight had been dreading this moment, wondering what he could say that would satisfy his traveling companions without trespassing on their beliefs. He took a deep breath and tried to compose his thoughts while the others gathered on the outer path around the bronze plaque dedicated to Dale Earnhardt. What did I say to that congregation of weeping women when Princess Diana died? he wondered.

  The wreath this time was a hubcap-sized circle of white silk lilies and eucalyptus. By this time, thought Bill, the florist must have been getting giddy from doing a succession of tribute wreaths to Dale Earnhardt. A black ribbon stretched diagonally across the lilies said in white letters, “#3: Forever In Our Hearts.”

  Bill looked out at the peaceful expanse of green lawn with its red brick walkway bright in the afternoon sun. “We’d like to think heaven is like this,” he began, letting the place speak to him. “A familiar place filled with the colors and shapes with which we feel most comfortable. Blue sky. Grass. Trees. A companionable cat.” He smiled a little as he nodded toward the ginger tom, still sprawled on the bench in hopes of more attention from the visitors. “Every now and then somebody will even write a hymn about a heaven for country singers or movie stars. There may be a song like that about NASCAR, for all I know.”

  “Tracks of Gold,” murmured several voices in unison.

  Bill sighed. It figured. “I don’t know what heaven will be like,” he went on. “The Bible offers a number of images, which, since we are human, may be beyond our comprehension. I do know that the idea of having an eternal place for heroes is a very old tradition throughout human civilization. The Greeks thought that ordinary people crossed the river Lethe and forgot about their earthly existence, but that heroes went on to the Elysian fields with their earthly personalities intact. The Norsemen envisioned the Valkyries swooping down to the battlefield to take fallen heroes back to Valhalla for an eternity of mead and feasting with their comrades. I’m not sure what kind of afterlife I can envision for race car drivers. To me it seems a contradictory proposition at best: trying to accommodate many different people’s dreams of heaven when some of those ideas conflict with others. I think of all the fans who yearn to shake Dale Earnhardt’s hand when they get to heaven, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be much of a heaven to Earnhardt himself if he had to stand around all the time glad-handing strangers. I suppose that if God has set aside a part of His kingdom for heroes, it will be a wonderful place. What that place would be like-well, I’ll leave that to God, because He’s wiser than we are, and I’m sure He’ll manage to sort out all the contradictions. The one thing I am sure of is that if there is a place up there reserved for heroes, Dale Earnhardt is bound to be in it. Let us thank God for the gift of him, and rejoice in his translation to…” What was the phrase they’d used? “…to Tracks of Gold.”

  After the visit to the memorial garden in Talladega, Ratty backtracked the ten miles or so to the Interstate, and deposited the pilgrims in a hotel at the Oxford exit on I-20 just east of the Speedway turnoff. In the waning hours of daylight about half the group had gathered at the hotel’s tiny outdoor pool, although only Shane and Matthew were swimming.

  Terence Palmer sat at a white metal table some distance from the rest of the group, talking into his cell phone. “No, Mother, I’m fine, really. Lovely weather. A bit warm, but that’s only to be expected this far south. You sent me a package? No, it didn’t reach me before I left New York. What was it? Oh, a book about an Irish princess. Ah, your book group loved it. Well, I don’t have much time for reading this week anyhow. No, Mother, no one in the group chews tobacco or wears overalls. By the way, have you ever heard of Nash Furniture? Really? On a waiting list for a china cabinet? Really? Oh, no reason. Well, I have to go, Mother. Love to Merrill. Bye.”

  He closed the cell phone with a sigh.

  Chapter XVII

  The Changing of the Guard

  Atlanta Motor Speedway

  The journey from Talladega to the Atlanta Motor Speedway would take only a couple of hours, mostly backtracking I-20 to Atlanta and then south on I-75 to Henry County. Since they had passed this way the day before, there was a monotony to the landscape now, and Karen McKee took the paperback out of her purse, because she felt like reading another chapter in the novel about the princess in ancient Ireland. I am reading a book on my honeymoon, she thought. How weird is that. If anybody had told her six months ago that a few days after the wedding she would want to read a book or write a postcard to her mother instead of hanging on Shane’s every word, or holding his hand hour after hour, she would have laughed in disbelief. But it was true. It wasn’t that she loved Shane any less. She couldn’t imagine life without him. It was just that having got the wedding out of the way, there were new things to worry about, and reading was a good way to keep from worrying about them for a while, as long as she ignored the fact that her bookmark was an acceptance letter from East Tennessee State University.

  Well, at least they’d be in Florida tomorrow. People actually did go to Florida on honeymoons. Maybe there’d be time to spend a couple of hours on the beach. She wished she could talk Shane out of visiting Daytona-skip the Speedway and come to the beach instead. That wasn’t going to happen, though. Shane had come to pay his respects to Dale, and in his view the holy of holies was the track where he’d died. There was no getting away from it. Maybe it would be all right. So far Harley and the other passengers had been telling stories about races that happened ages ago. They’d hardly said a word about NASCAR-A.D. After Dale. Maybe it wouldn’t come up. She knew she should sit Shane down and talk to him about it. Time he knew. What kind of a world was it when you had to choose between lying to somebody you loved or breaking their heart? Dale had been dead eighteen months now. Time to move on. Start watching racing again, instead of watching old videos of Dale’s old races when the new season was on television. Why couldn’t he just pick a new driver to root for-Matt Kenseth maybe, or Jamie McMurray, who looked like Hollywood’s idea of a really nice guy. She had a feeling that they would never get to the future until Shane let go of the past.

  So far, so good, Harley Claymore was thinking. He had managed to get through this much of the tour without losing any passengers to heatstroke, making any egregious mistakes in his racing trivia, or pissing anybody off by voicing his opinions on the new face of NASCAR. He had been trying to decide what to say about the Atlanta Motor Speedway-beyond remarking on the obvious-that it wasn’t actually in Atlanta, but about thirty miles south of the city in Hampton, Georgia. Of course, at the rate Atlanta was spreading-like architectural kudzu-it wouldn’t be long before the city sprawl engulfed the rural areas between city and Speedway, so that it would indeed be in the suburbs. He noticed that a new development-something called “Liberty Square Park” was going up across the road from the Speedway.

  The track was located on Tara Road. Harley had thought up half a dozen sardonic remarks to make about that, but discarded them all not only for the sake of harmony but also because he realized that the old NASCAR with its strictly Southern tracks and its mostly Southern drivers had been a low-rent sport, forcing its competitors to work day jobs just to stay in the game. He had to admit: if he ever got a ride again, he’d be grateful enough for the new NASCAR glory days and the chance to make a million dollars in one season.

  “Okay, folks,” he said, seeing the
S &S Food Mart across from the Speedway-his cue to begin his spiel. “We’re here. Sorry, Bill, but I have this note card that says I have to spout a few stats at you.”

  Justine rolled her eyes. “This is like when the stewardess goes through the safety rigmarole. Let us do it. Size of track, somebody!”

  “Mile and a half!” said Jim Powell and Ray Reeve in unison.

  “Banking? Anybody?”

  “Ummm…Almost flat on the straightaways, maybe 25 degrees in the turns,” said Shane McKee. “They can go really fast on this track. They repaved it about five years ago, and the new surface really helped speeds.”

  “Anybody want to guess who holds the track qualifying record?” asked Harley.

  “Petty!” said Cayle and Sarah Nash.

  “Earnhardt!” said a chorus of male voices.

  “Geoff Bodine!” said Bekasu.

  Harley stared at her. “I thought you didn’t know anything about racing.”

  “No, I’ve been observing you,” she said. “And you’re partial to Geoff Bodine.”

  Harley sighed. “He is my brother in adversity,” he said. “All work and no damn breaks.”

  They turned in at the house-shaped Atlanta Motor Speedway sign, which bore an enormous Coca-Cola sign on its right side-a fitting display, as Justine noted, because Coca-Cola was headquartered in Atlanta.

  “This is another speedway with condos,” said Harley, pointing to a soaring modern building that put him in mind of Star Wars. “Tara Place Condos. So if you have a couple of hundred thousand dollars to spare, you can watch the Georgia 500 in style, come October. Some serious money here, I don’t have to tell you.”

  The bus came to a stop in the parking lot, and Harley raised a hand to stop his stampeding troops. “Okay, we’re going to be a little rushed on this stop, just because it’s so damn far to Daytona from here. Wreath first. Then tour. Then gift shop. Got it?”