“Well, okay,” he sighed. “Off the record. If I think that a woman has”-he grinned to show he was being facetious-“designs on my honor, I have this one-armed hug that I use. It keeps them from…um…”
“I get it,” said Sark, repressing a shudder. “How strange that you should have to worry about things like that instead of being able to concentrate on driving the car.”
Badger nodded. “Don’t forget, though, that there are a lot of people who can drive a race car. The Busch guys are good, and most of the truck guys would do just fine in Cup. There are even some fellas on local tracks who just never got the right breaks, and they could do my job, too, some of ’em. So the forty-three of us in Cup are pretty damn lucky to be where we are. Some of that success is due to popularity with the fans. Best not to forget that.”
He’s not as dumb as he’d have us believe, thought Sark. Maybe innocent is just part of the act. He’s shrewd about business and probably about charming people, too. She decided that she’d think over all that later for the article she’d be writing about the real Badger Jenkins in her exposé of Cup racing.
Still, she had to concede that he was right in his assessment, and she was grudgingly pleased that he wasn’t being an arrogant jerk about the public adulation he received. He did realize that to some people anybody in a Cup ride was a hero. Some of his success came as much from luck as from talent. But his humility did not change the fact that people routinely invaded his personal space without a qualm, and no matter how kind he appeared to be, she still couldn’t believe that the intrusiveness of it didn’t bother him.
“But fans putting moves on me, or being pushy, it doesn’t happen as much as you’d think,” he said quickly, as if reading her thoughts.
“No?”
“No. You learn how to deal with it. At the track, you know, when I’m in my firesuit and sunglasses, I can project an attitude of leave me alone. I don’t smile at people, and I walk quickly, without slowing down for people waiting for autographs. Then people just know to keep their distance. I learned that trick from Dale Earnhardt himself.”
Sark blinked. “You didn’t try to hug him, did you?”
“‘No, I did not try to hug Dale Earnhardt,” said Badger, scowling. “I mean that I watched how the Intimidator carried himself, that’s all. I noticed that nobody ever approached him unless he allowed them to. He had an attitude that was bulletproof. I watched how he did that, and I started trying to do it myself.”
Sark gave him an appraising stare. There was nothing remotely intimidating about Badger. He had a perfect profile and cameras practically melted when you took his picture, but in real life he was small and cute, and above all harmless-looking. “I can’t see how that tactic would work for you, Badger,” she told him. “You look like a lost puppy dog. Now, Dale Earnhardt, from the pictures I’ve seen of him, could come across as truly fierce, but-no offense-you could not possibly pull that off.”
With a sigh of resignation, Badger pulled his sunglasses out of his pocket, slid them on, and stood up. In an instant, his perfect features hardened into a blank-eyed, tight-lipped mask of cold rejection. He folded his arms, raised his chin a little, and stared at her, waiting.
Sark’s objections stuck in a dry throat. The affable country boy had vanished and in his place stood a stern and powerful stranger whom nobody would argue with. She wasn’t going to, anyhow. He might as well have been shouting, “Get the hell away from me.” She remembered that first time she had done a photo session with him. He had looked formidable then when he posed, but this was leagues beyond that; now, he radiated an icy grandeur that would stop you in your tracks. How the hell did he do that?
“Oh,” she said, and it came out hardly more than a squeak.
Badger nodded. “And I’m not even wearing the firesuit. You add that to the sunglasses, and people generally don’t mess with me.”
“Well, that was certainly educational,” said Sark briskly. “Take them off again, please.”
They walked up the steps of the deck toward the front door of his cabin. “I had a guy renting this,” he told her, fishing in his pocket for the key. “But he got his place fixed up, so it’s all mine again. I don’t get to come back as much as I’d like to, though.”
He pushed open the door and waved her inside.
Having seen the outside of the fabled “fishing shack,” Sark was not surprised to find that the pine-paneled interior was equally well-kept and nicely furnished with Shaker-style furniture in oak and cherry wood and overstuffed sofas flanking a large stone fireplace. The walls held an assortment of trophies-but not the sort that Sark had been expecting. Instead of racing memorabilia, there were fishing rods, mounted game fish and deer heads, and framed art prints of ducks and deer in woodland settings.
“Where’s all your NASCAR stuff?” asked Sark.
“My daddy’s got most of it,” said Badger. “He’s got boxes full of stuff in the basement. My Darlington trophy was in the middle of his dining room table last time I looked.”
“That must make for interesting dinner conversations,” said Sark.
“I guess,” said Badger. “We don’t talk much. And I gave a lot of my old posters and a couple of old trophies to Laraine for the diner.” It suddenly seemed to occur to him that she might be asking for a reason. “Do you want anything? I think I have some die-cast cars in a drawer here.”
Sark smiled. “All I want is your time, Badger.” She felt a small pang of guilt, because she knew that wasn’t true. This interview would be grist for two articles: the feature story for the team and the exposé she planned to write at the end of the season. Well, she told herself, he probably is a jerk. I just haven’t found out how yet.
When Sark got back to Charlotte that night, she found an e-mail from her journalist pal Ed Blair, asking her to report on her progress with Team Vagenya.
How is Project Badger coming along? Didn’t you have an interview with him this week? Learn anything interesting?
I went down to visit him in his natural habitat today. Whatever it is that Alexander the Great and Moses and, for all I know, the Lone Ranger…whatever they had, he’s got it. And I’m not talking about sex appeal (for a change.) Spent five hours alone in the woods with him and felt absolutely no vibrations on that frequency, either way. But what is magical is the focus-that quality that makes him an incredible race car driver, I guess… He’s there. Absolutely, perfectly, 110% THERE. The world is a desert island, you and him. He’ll talk about anything. He’ll listen. No games, no bragging, no ego. I think all of us were like that when we were about twelve, before we started caring about social status, and appearance, and all the facades of the adult world.
If it is possible to be twelve at heart but fully adult in intelligence and understanding, he’s it. What Peter Pan might have really been like, or maybe Siddharta en route to becoming the Buddha.
He’s not dumb, either. He just lives in his body, and I live in my head, so there’s a different frequency. But he’s really nice. Wish I knew how he managed to grow up and not be a jerk.
So you spent the day with the Buddha in the wilds of Georgia, did you? What exactly does that entail? How does his engine feel? Surely you’ve found out by now!
Got a tour of the lake and his lake house, and met the turtle. I don’t know how his “engine feels.” Nothing happened. Probably because I do not own a tiara and a sash proclaiming me Miss Something-or-Other. Beauty queens are more his speed. He’s not a jerk about it. He was just raised to think that women should be high-maintenance trophies, and that as long as other guys envy you, compatibility doesn’t matter. Poor guy. He’s really very sweet, though. I was surprised. Of course, the problem with not being a teenager anymore is that one has no second gear anymore, so I’m quite afraid that some day he will hold that sexless hug of his for a heartbeat too long, and I’ll instinctively reach for the stick shift and find out “how his engine feels,” as you so colorfully put it.