Harley shrugged. “Sure. Come ahead.” He was beginning to feel like the Pied Piper-lead all the Earnhardt fans out of the Speedway and into the creek…Then it occurred to him that he should have reminded them about sunblock, because the August sun beat down in unclouded intensity, so that they were sweaty and breathless by the time they reached the graffiti wall. They were also a bigger crowd now, since the procession had been picking up strays all the way up the hill. Harley kept turning around to make sure that all of his charges were still in the pack. Ray Reeve, squinting in the blazing sun, was bringing up the rear, but he didn’t seem to be in difficulty-just walking at his own pace. There’s always one, thought Harley.
A small weaselly man had hurried up to accompany his friend, the big guy who had first joined them.
“Say, what is this here march?” the scrawny fellow said, double-timing to keep pace with Harley’s longer strides. “I didn’t see no official announcement about this.”
“It’s part of a special Speedway tour,” said Harley, wishing the man would go away. “Earnhardt Memorial Tour.”
The man brightened. “Yeah? My buddy there was about the biggest Earnhardt fan there ever was.”
In size, certainly, thought Harley, stealing a glance at the weasel’s burly friend. The two of them looked like a Saint Bernard and a Chihuahua who had decided to go into partnership.
“Yessir,” the weasel said, leaning close to Harley to exude his garlic-fumed confidences. “My buddy Cannon just thought the world of Dale. He almost quit the business after the 2001 Daytona.”
“The business?” said Harley, suddenly interested. “What is he, pit crew?”
The little man smirked. “Naw. Even better. You know when they have wrecks out on the track? Well, ol’ Cannon skulks around afterward and picks up the debris. Or else he talks the pit crew into letting him have it. Or slips ’em a few bucks. Old hoods, bell housings, whatever. And he collects discarded lug nuts, racing slicks-any old thing they’re fixing to throw away. Then he sells ’em to race fans. Sometimes he makes them into little plaques or lamp bases or something. Lug nut key chains. It’s like turning scrap metal into gold, the prices folks’ll pay for Speedway trash. My buddy Cannon is a master at it.”
“He must be in hog heaven at Bristol, then,” said Harley. The Bristol short track was a series of wrecks punctuated by laps.
The weasel grinned at the thought of a fresh haul of car parts in the wake of the Sharpie 500. “So where’s this tribute tour going after this, then, huh, mister?”
Harley didn’t want to tell him, though he couldn’t quite pinpoint the cause of his reluctance. The tour itinerary was not only public record, it was common sense. Where would anybody go to pay their respects to Earnhardt? Bristol, Martinsville, DEI in Mooresville, Rockingham. Duh. Finally, because he was beginning to feel petty about snubbing the eager little man, Harley said, “The Southern speedways. Here to Daytona.”
“Yeah?” The guy nodded eagerly. “So from here to Martinsville, right? Then, what? Richmond?”
“Not Richmond. Too far east and out of the way. We’ve only got ten days. Martinsville down to DEI and then to the Rock, Charlotte, so on.”
“Yeah? You gonna leave one of them wreaths everywhere you go?”
Harley, gritting his teeth, managed to nod. Please don’t let this runt be a USA Today reporter, he thought.
“Well, that’s great,” said the weasel. “A little late, maybe, ’cause he’s been dead over a year, but my buddy Cannon will love it. He took it hard when it happened. He had a whole stack of used parts from the black number 3, and it’s all he can do to part with one of them. He gets offered top dollar, too. Just kills him to sell one. Hey, maybe we’ll meet up with you again down the road.”
“Whatever,” said Harley, who couldn’t summon the energy to argue the matter. He mopped the sweat off his brow with a slightly used tissue.
“Say, buddy, who’s leading this tour anyhow?”
Harley sighed. There was nothing for it. “I guess I am,” he muttered.
“Yeah? No kiddin’. How’d you get that job?” The weasel peered up into Harley’s red face. “Did you used to be somebody?”
“I was a NASCAR driver. Yes.”
“Hot damn!” cried the weasel. “Hey, Cannon, guess what? This guy here used to be somebody!”
That’s right, thought Harley. I used to be somebody.
On race day, Bristol Motor Speedway provided a specially papered white wall on which fans were encouraged to write a few words of praise or encouragement to their favorite driver. The number of each car entered in the day’s race was painted in numerical order on the top of the wall, with each number allotted a space about six feet high and three feet wide for messages. Number 6 was Mark Martin; number 9, Bill Elliott; and so on. If you knew your driver’s number (and who didn’t?) you could leave him a message or inscribe your support on his section of wall. Presumably, after the race, the message papers would be given to each driver. Some numbers still had more white space than writing, and Harley felt a pang of sympathetic kinship for the slighted ones. He felt like writing Hang in there, buddy! on Todd or Brett Bodine’s wall, and he didn’t even particularly like the Bodines. Jeff Gordon and Dale Junior, though, might want to set aside a couple of hours to decipher all their fan messages.
When the little procession of mourners reached the graffiti wall, they found that no message space had been allotted for the number 3, since of course no car of that number was racing today. Harley willed himself not to roll his eyes as he met the looks of outrage and tearful disappointment on the faces of the assembled pilgrims.
“Well, he’s not driving today,” he said. “And Richard Childress, who owns the number 3, isn’t about to put anybody else out there in it.” They nodded in agreement that this would be blasphemy.
Jesse Franklin spoke up. “Well, actually, Happy Have-wreck, er-Kevin Harvick that is-” He gave them a twinkling smile to show that the slip had been deliberate. “He took Earnhardt’s spot on the Childress team and, for the rest of the 2001 season, he was driving cars that were made for Dale. Of course, they gave him a different paint job, and his number is 29.”
“I know,” said Harley. “My heart goes out to him. Chance of a lifetime, maybe, but a hard act to follow.” A black Monte Carlo with “Goodwrench” written on the side-he’d seen people cry at the sight of it.
With no number 3 car entered in the Sharpie 500, the numbers jumped from 2 to 4. However, just after number 2 (hello, Rusty Wallace), the wall curved at a pillar where the number 3 ought to have gone, so that there was a section perpendicular to the rest of the wall that was left blank. But since the blank wall was positioned between “2” and “4,” the fans were quick to notice this opportunity (a little miracle, really, a blank space just where a thousand people desperately wanted one), and to appropriate that side wall for an impromptu memorial. Earlier in the day, some still-grieving Earnhardt supporter had drawn a big “3” at the top of the wall with a black Sharpie, and now the side of the pillar unofficially dedicated to the late Dale Earnhardt had more messages than the sections for drivers actually running in the day’s race.