Also present were their fellow travelers from the Earnhardt bus tour, who mostly looked too presentable to be mixed up in all this, and the dozen other wedding couples who somehow made Karen feel more alone than she would have walking down a church aisle by herself. And finally there was Shane, with that firing squad look of a man facing the unknown, stepping up to the podium all alone-except in his own mind, that is-and saying his “I do” in a clear steady voice in response to her own faltering vows. Then he looked up, past her to the nearly empty Junior Johnson grandstand, and broke into a beaming smile.
Suddenly Jerry Nadeau was shaking her hand and wishing her well. “Um, you, too,” she said. “You know-for the race. May the best man win.” She was proud of that little play on words. She’d been saving it up to say to him when she shook his hand, but before Jerry Nadeau could even kiss the bride, Shane had taken her by the arm and pulled her aside. “Karen, I saw him!” he hissed in her ear.
She turned back to look at the rows of still vacant seats. “Who?”
“Dale! He was right there! In his firesuit and his sunglasses, with his arms folded the way he always stood, and when I looked up at him, he nodded at me. I think he might’a smiled.”
“Well, that’s great, Shane…” Jerry Nadeau was gone now, swallowed up by the crowd of laughing newlyweds, hugging and shaking hands and posing for snapshots. “I’m real glad you saw the Impersonator after all.”
Shane shook his head impatiently. “Look up at those stands, Karen. Do you see anybody there? No. ’Cause he’s gone. And nobody could disappear that fast from the middle of the bleachers. That wasn’t the Impersonator, Karen. That was the Intimidator.”
The rest of the bus tour turned up for the combination tour lunch and wedding reception, and when the introductions, hugs, and picture-taking subsided, the newlyweds, the Number Three Pilgrims, and the Friends of the Goddess trooped off together to find some shade in which to eat the picnic lunch courtesy of Bailey Travel augmented with a selection of salads and vegetarian dishes brought along by the Friends. The two-tiered wedding cake, a little dented from its trip to the Speedway, featured red-and-black rosettes and garlands on white icing, a replica of Earnhardt’s signature in black icing on the side, and a little die-cast number 3 Monte Carlo next to the traditional plastic bride and groom on the top of the cake.
“Well, I think the whole ceremony was sweet,” Justine insisted.
Bill Knight sighed. “I just wish some of them had kissed each other before they kissed the start/finish line.”
Shane’s mother, a colorless waif of a woman who looked like she hadn’t had enough sleep in fifteen years, hovered uncertainly on the fringes of the crowd beside Shane’s grandmother, until Justine discovered them and managed to get them involved in a discussion of wedding fashions and unusual ceremonies (beginning with her own), so that Mrs. McKee finally forgot her nervousness. By the time Shane’s grandmother had begun to swap herbal remedies with the Wiccans, Justine had fetched Mrs. McKee a second glass of champagne, and introduced her to Jim and Arlene. The three of them started on a comparison of NASCAR craft items and Shane’s mother had begun to feel that she was being amusing and clever after all. She even summoned up a grin for the family wedding picture.
The reception hummed along despite the heat of midday, while Shane, Harley, and Terence stood off to one side and talked about the strategy of the pit stop in racing, with particular emphasis on the genius of the Wood Brothers. Karen chewed her roast beef sandwich in thoughtful silence, summoning up a smile every time somebody congratulated her, which was about every third bite. Finally, after she and Shane had cut the cake and everyone else was lined up to receive a slice, and while Justine and the Friends of the Goddess were leading a lively discussion on the feng shui of the Speedway, Karen walked up to Mrs. Tickle and asked, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Tickle. “Certainly not.”
It was typical of the Friends of the Goddess that Mrs. Tickle did not ask why Karen would ask such a question. This was exactly the sort of thing they thought everybody wondered about all the time, but Karen had expected a less conventional answer. “Oh, okay,” she said.
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Tickle waving her fork. “I believe in the lingering spiritual presence of departed souls.”
“Well, do you think the departed soul of…um…Dale Earnhardt could come back to the NASCAR circuit?”
“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Tickle.
“Oh. Good. Well-”
“Because he never left,” said Mrs. Tickle.
Chapter X
The Sharpie 500
Harley had hoped that the long afternoon at the Speedway would have given him a couple of hours to ditch the tour and hunt up some of his old friends on the pit crews before the race. The stock car circuit was like a small town: everybody knew one another and many of the participants had grown up together. Bill Elliott’s brothers had been his pit crew in the early days, and even now Dale Earnhardt Junior had one of his Eury cousins as crew chief. With the influx of new talent from California and the Midwest, this was not as true as it had been in the old days, but in many ways stock car racing was still a closed world where you felt that you could dial a wrong number and still talk.
To get back in, he needed to pick up the current gossip on the circuit: Who might need a relief driver sometime during the season? Who was looking to field another car? Which of his old friends was in a position to do him a favor? Unfortunately, his Number Three Pilgrims required more personal attention than he had anticipated. Between them they had a hundred questions about the Bristol track, about the drivers he’d raced against, the rules and strategies of stock car racing, and about the details of the bus tour. And, no, Terry Labonte was indeed a kindly fellow, and he probably would recognize Harley on sight-well, he might, anyhow-but he would be far too busy to give anybody a ride around the track today. And, no, Harley could not arrange for the group to meet Dale Junior. What with one thing and another, Harley didn’t even have time to drink his lunch.
Finally, hoping to distract them, he led them out of the Speedway for a walking tour of the souvenir stalls in the outer parking lot and then in the camping area across Beaver Creek. The rows of vendor trailers, each dedicated to a different driver, distracted them for a good forty minutes, as they wandered from stall to stall examining caps and die-cast cars, tote bags and posters. The Earnhardt souvenir trailer was at the track, still doing a brisk business in coffee mugs and decals; there were some people who still wanted to be Dale fans, even a year after his death. Heck, there were some people who had quit the sport cold turkey on the day he died-for them it was Dale or nothing. Harley thought Ray Reeve might be one of those.
The current custom of mourning was to write messages of remembrance on the side of the black trailer itself. You’ll always be my driver, Dale! one fan had written in black marker across some white space. Another inscription read: Number Three: The fastest angel in heaven. One of the messages on the trailer had been written by Bobby Labonte himself. Everybody wanted to say goodbye. The messages were simple, but heartfelt, bearing an undertone of bewilderment that the universe would allow someone so rich and famous and beloved to be taken away.
The unofficial vendors across the highway from Speedway property were the group’s favorites, because the homemade goods offered by the mom-and-pop sellers were more irreverent and whimsical than the officially licensed merchandise. Technically, some of it was illegal, too, since drivers’ likenesses and car designs were trademarked by the companies they drove for. He wondered if corporate killjoys ever raided the little flea market in search of such violations. Many of the current offerings, tee shirts and bumper stickers with current in-jokes and catchphrases geared to true racing aficionados, elicited more questions from Harley’s charges.