Because there would have to be a Now What. Maybe in Karen’s grandmother’s time, a woman could get married and that was it-a permanent job with long hours and no pay, maybe, but still an identity and a profession entirely unto itself. But those days were past praying for, and even if you did marry somebody who could afford to support you (which she hadn’t), there was no guarantee that you’d stay married to him forever, so you’d better not risk your future on his account. Karen had derailed that topic of conversation every time her mother or one of the Friends of the Goddess had tried to bring it up, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t heard them.
Shane had his headphones on, listening to his new Linkin Park CD-she made a mental note to get more batteries out of her suitcase when they stopped for the night. First wifely duty: Keeper of the Batteries. Karen wasn’t sleepy, and she’d finished the magazine Cayle had passed on to her. Across the aisle, Terence Palmer was also awake and restless. Karen watched him for a few minutes. She’d never seen anybody as young as he was who actually looked comfortable in a necktie. He looked like he forgot he had it on, while Shane, who could seldom be persuaded to wear one, even for church, would pull constantly at his collar, wriggling like a chained-up dog. “He looks like you had to throw him on his back to get his shoes on,” one of the Friends of the Goddess had remarked once, but she hadn’t said it to be mean. The Friends were all in favor of flouting conventional social customs.
There was no use trying to get Shane to look like a preppy, though, because even if you got him in a necktie and a tailored suit, Shane would still lack that carved-in-marble look that Terence Palmer was born with: a small, straight nose and light brown hair like a cap of loose curls that made you think that’s what Michelangelo had been trying to depict when he carved the head of David. Karen thought he put her in mind of that poem she’d read in senior English, the one about Richard Cory: “He glittered when he walked.”
She felt shy around him, and she realized that she had been carefully avoiding him, sitting at a different table at each meal stop, and keeping her distance when they had walked around the track at Martinsville. She told herself that she was being overly sensitive. It was a NASCAR tour, for heaven’s sake-if Terence Palmer was such a prince, what was he doing here?
She was still looking at him, thinking all this, when he turned back from the monotonous sweep of pines, and met her gaze. Flustered, she said the first thing that came to mind.
“I bet Dale Earnhardt himself would be surprised to see you on this bus.”
He looked puzzled for a moment, maybe trying to decide if she’d meant to be insulting, but then he said, “I don’t believe he would have been surprised. Not by the end of his career, anyhow.”
Karen nodded. He was probably right about that. Maybe in the beginning, when he was still a raw high school dropout from a mill town, maybe then Earnhardt would have been surprised to have fans among the wine-and-cheese people. But not later. President Reagan was in the stands when he won the Daytona 500. And the year Earnhardt died, he was on a list of the country’s richest people. Compared to that level of success, Terence Palmer, for all his airs and graces, was a shoe-shine boy.
“So, how come you’re here then?” she said.
He was silent for a few moments. Karen thought that maybe they didn’t ask personal questions in his crowd. At last though, he said, “My dad died.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I am, too, but only because I missed the chance to know him. My folks split up when I was a baby.”
Karen nodded. There was a lot of that going around. Then she smiled. “For a second there, I thought maybe you were Kerry Earnhardt.”
Terence considered it. “No,” he said. “He looks a lot like his dad-at least in the photos. I think I’m probably taller. My dad bought tickets for this tour, and I came in his place.”
“I guess you want to know why I’m here,” said Karen.
He studied her for a moment, and Karen squirmed, wishing she had worn something dressier than jeans. “Not really,” he said. “You got married at the Speedway. I figure this is your thing.”
Something in the way he said it made Karen want to deny all interest in motor sports, but she thought that doing so might be disloyal to Shane, who hadn’t a trace of irony in his soul, and who had been so proud and happy to make this pilgrimage. “Yes,” she said. “Our thing. I guess it is. I’m just trying to figure out what comes next.”
Again, the silence. Terence was looking over at Shane, who was sleeping with his mouth open and his head thrown back against the seat. Fifty years of tuna casserole, he seemed to be thinking.
Karen squirmed in her seat. “Don’t sell us short,” she said. “We may be young, and we didn’t get a fancy education, either one of us, but neither did Dale, and he did all right.” But Dale knew where he was going, she thought. And she didn’t.
Dale Earnhardt, Incorporated was on the schedule for the early afternoon, but the first stop of the day would be a location farther north than Mooresville: the museum of North Carolina’s other seven-time champion, Richard Petty.
Highway 220 south of Greensboro was a four-lane corridor cut through forests of longleaf pines. Once they crossed into Randolph County, official state highway signs directed motorists to Exit 113, which led to the small town of Randleman, home of the Richard Petty Museum, a newly constructed one-story brick building fronted by a white arched portico. The place looked as if it had been designed by a firm of architects who specialized in branch banks. It sat back from Academy Street behind a bank-sized visitor parking lot with only a decorous sign to identify the building as a museum.
Terence Palmer peered out the window, studying the scene with a puzzled frown. “Odd,” he said to Sarah Nash. “It looks so dignified. I was expecting an outside display of cars, checkered flags, neon displays, sort of a circus atmosphere.”
She sighed. “That’s Manhattan talking,” she said. “I don’t know a single driver in NASCAR who wouldn’t crawl under his car and not come out if you tried to show him off in the outlandish way you imagined. They’re not showy people. Mostly not, anyhow.”
Justine, camera in hand, was the first one off the bus. “Anybody who wants to pose outside the Richard Petty Museum, put your caps on, and bunch up over by the door,” she said, waving the other passengers into place, while Ratty parked the bus, and Harley headed inside to arrange admittance for the bus tour.
Cayle obligingly joined the posing group under the white covered porch at the glass-fronted doors of the building. It was an unassuming place, she thought, considering that the museum was dedicated to a man whose nickname was “The King.” It looked like a museum that had come into being by popular demand; not to make money-admission was a nominal five bucks-but to accommodate the kindness of strangers. Cayle imagined a steady stream of Richard Petty fans over the years, arriving in the little North Carolina village in search of their idol, because after years of watching him race, they felt like family. They would be wanting to see something in commemoration of the legendary driver, and hoping to leave with a picture of the 43 car, a tee shirt, a postcard, or Richard Petty’s name scrawled on a napkin. Anything. They would have wanted to pose for pictures of themselves with the most famous face in racing: Richard Petty, whippet-thin, with his big cowboy hat and boots, his palm-sized belt buckle, and the sunglasses obscuring that hawk-billed face. And always a smile like winter sunshine. Cayle pictured an endless procession of shy, but determined race fans. Just one more picture, Mr. Petty! It’s for Grandad who couldn’t come with us. Can you sign this napkin?