“Oh!” said Cayle, waving her digital camera. “Look! The Cale Yarborough section is right below us. My dad will be thrilled. Can somebody get my picture next to the sign as we go down?”
“What did she mean, she won’t need sunblock where she’s going?” asked Bill Knight nodding toward Justine.
Harley shrugged. “Maybe she’s driving.”
Although the race would not begin until evening, the Speedway was already a hive of activity. Spectators trickled into the grandstands or wandered about the infield. Pit crews busied themselves in preparation for the pre-race inspection and then the race itself and television crews set up for the late afternoon event. On the Speedway infield, a plain wooden podium had been placed before a white lattice garden trellis decked with summer flowers: the site of the morning nuptials. Some of the reporters had decided to cover the NASCAR weddings as a sidebar to the Bristol race story. Wearing summer-weight brown suits and smarmy smiles, they roamed among the odd assortment of brides and grooms, microphone in hand, with a photographer or video-cam operator in tow, seeking out the most stereotypical-looking couples to feature.
As the Number Three Pilgrims reached the bottom of the grandstand, they could make out brides and grooms in every stage of sartorial splendor, milling around or posing for snapshots against the Speedway backdrop.
“Oh, aren’t they cute?” said Justine as they reached track level. “There must be a dozen cloned Dales out there waiting to get hitched. Look at that one!” She pointed to a slender youth in black jeans, black tee shirt, and cowboy boots. “Or the one over there in the white Goodwrench firesuit and sunglasses.”
“Striking resemblance,” said Cayle. “I just wish it wasn’t the bride.”
“Dale Earnhardt got married in that outfit?” asked Bill Knight, peering over her shoulder.
“I seriously doubt it,” said Justine, “though it’s hard to be sure, ’cause he tied the knot three different times, which gives you a lot of options. But I can think of at least one Mrs. Earnhardt who wouldn’t have let him get away with it. These guys today aren’t worried about what Dale actually got married in, though. They’re just dressing up in what they think of as the typical Dale outfit.”
“And the brides let them dress like that for the wedding?”
“Well, I figure that any guy who can get his woman to marry him in the middle of a motor speedway on race day could probably get away with just about anything. Some of them went for a more formal look, though. See that guy over there in the tux?”
“There’s certainly a range of styles here.”
“Yeah, from Dale Earnhardt to Dale Evans.”
“I don’t know when I last saw a pastel tuxedo,” said Cayle.
Bekasu spotted a television crew ambushing a young couple. “Vultures!” she muttered. “The thing is, those smug reporters down there are going to assume that none of these people know how silly they’re going to look to a TV audience, but most of them do know.”
“Really?” said Terence Palmer with raised eyebrows. “You detect postmodern irony?”
“Betcher ass we do,” said Justine. She pointed to the wedding participants. “Now I’ll bet this is a second or third marriage for some of those older couples, and they’ve done the whole white-gown-and-church bit before. So now they’re going to do it their way and they don’t give a damn what anybody thinks.”
“She knows whereof she speaks,” sighed Bekasu. “I was there for all three of Justine’s nuptials. The first time was white satin in the Grace Episcopal Church, with a groom who had children our age. Then there was the time she married her boss in the medieval ceremony with velvet cloaks and lute players in the Charlotte Renaissance Festival Village, when the groom wore a kilt.”
“Oh, so that’s when she didn’t care what anybody thought-”
Justine laughed. “No, that would be the third time, when Sonny Watts and I tied the knot at sea and insisted that the captain marry us.”
“Ah. Was that a Caribbean cruise?”
“The Ocracoke ferry,” said Bekasu. “Which was just as well, all things considered, since it wasn’t legally binding.”
“Oh, just you wait,” said Justine. “Old Sonny will clean up his act one of these days. This Speedway wedding looks like fun, though. I just wish they were having it at Darlington instead of here. Remember Toby Jankin? My escort for cotillion?”
Bekasu shuddered. “The one who wore Converse hi-tops and white socks with his tux?”
“I knew you’d remember! Well, Toby’s a doctor in Florence, South Carolina, now, which is only about ten miles from Darlington. I’m hoping to get to see him when we get there. I’ll bet he’d just love to get married at the track.”
“I wonder what he’d wear,” muttered Bekasu.
The brides presented the greatest range of costumes in the crowd. In defiance of the sweltering heat, some determined women wore traditional satin wedding dresses, complete with long sleeves, high lace collars, and trailing net bridal veils. Their bouquets of daisies and Sharpie marker pens (courtesy of the management) were already wilting in the relentless August sun. Others were making Dolly-Parton-is-my-bridesmaid statements in full-skirted square dance outfits and stiletto heels, or sporting the faux-western attire of fringe and turquoise once popularized by Dale Evans and now employed by country singers who want people to think that Alabama borders New Mexico. The smallest group of brides, in complete denial of their surroundings, wore rosebud corsages and pastel business suits appropriate for a ceremony at the registrar’s office. The youngest and most slender brides had joined in the spirit of the raceway festivities, dressing in sync with their intended husbands: NASCAR firesuits; motorcycle chic; or black jeans, black tee shirts, and silver-studded cowboy boots. Sometimes it was hard to tell man from wife.
“I wonder if you could predict the length of the marriage from the wedding clothes?” mused Bekasu.
“I never could,” said Bill Knight. He sighed, thinking perhaps of twenty-thousand-dollar church-and-country-club spectacles that came to naught. At least these couples would have a race to remember some day, even if they’d rather forget the ceremony that preceded it.
Near the wedding trellis, one of the black-garbed grooms was stamping his cowboy boot on the asphalt and refusing to listen to reason.
“But, Shane,” Karen Soon-to-be-McKee’s eyes welled up. If Shane kept carrying on, she thought, her tears would spill over her mascara and make her cheeks look like a car that had been passed on the last lap by Dale Earnhardt-black streaks all the way down the sides.
“He was supposed to be here. Everybody said so. I was counting on it.”
“I know, but this will be just as nice, won’t it? I mean, it’s not like it would be really him.”
“In the pictures it would be. In the pictures.” Shane looked dangerously close to tears himself. “Who remembers their wedding? It’s the pictures that are real.”
For the twentieth time, Karen scanned the crowd, hoping to catch sight of a man in sunglasses, white Goodwrench coveralls, and a black-and-red cap. Or even for somebody who had the right height and body type who could be persuaded to don a hat and dark glasses for the occasion. She was hoping for a miracle, and wondering what would constitute one. Kerry Earnhardt, maybe. Everybody said he was the spitting image of his dad, but he wasn’t driving in the Winston Cup series this year.
She put her hand on her bridegroom’s arm and tried for a compromise. “Shane, wouldn’t it be better to have a real, live NASCAR driver act as best man, instead of some guy in a costume? Look, there’s Jerry Nadeau right over there. He seems really nice and all. Said he’d be best man or whatever if anybody wanted him to. And then you could have a real NASCAR driver in the wedding pictures.”