“I’m not usually expected to add to the collection plate,” said Bill Knight, smiling as he tossed in a five-dollar bill.
“You’re going to send him cash through the mail?” said Karen. “That’s not safe.”
“We could write him a check,” said Cayle.
“Not anonymous enough,” said Justine. “We don’t want to hurt his feelings. This isn’t charity. It’s restitution.”
“I doubt if a few dollars will be much consolation to him,” murmured Bekasu.
Justine sniffed. “Okay, Miss High-and-Mighty. You call Letterman and Larry King and get Bodine on their shows, but until that great day, I say we make the gesture. Shaking our fists at the fates and all.”
“Maybe you could buy a money order at a gas station,” said Jesse Franklin, adding a pocketful of crumpled, tobacco-flecked dollar bills to the pot.
Harley looked at the hat full of fives and ones nestled alongside Justine’s twenty-dollar bill. He was picturing Geoff Bodine’s dismay if he should ever find out about this. Better try to set them straight before the disaster went any further.
“Okay, maybe he didn’t get all the laurels that he deserved,” said Harley, backpedaling for all he was worth. “But Old Geoff is not down and out. He was rookie of the year in ’82. He’s on the list of the 50 greatest drivers ever.” And he will kill me if he finds out I had anything to do with this, he finished silently. “And-and-let’s see-Okay, did you know that Geoff Bodine invented the bobsled used by the U.S. Olympic team? The Bo-Dyn bobsled. Famous for it. The man’s a genius. And he’s been racing a long time. Heck, just this year, old as he is, he was right up there with Ward Burton at the finish of the Daytona 500.”
“With Ward Burton?” said Shane. “Well, what difference does that make?”
Harley blinked. He was about to point out that since Ward Burton had actually won the Daytona 500, it made quite a bit of difference, but before he could voice this thought, Karen tapped Shane on the arm to ask him a question, and Justine, who had been canvassing other tables, appeared at Harley’s elbow with the hat full of money.
“I know he’s rich,” she said. “Or at least not missing any meals. I just felt like we ought to make the gesture, that’s all. I hate it when people don’t get a fair deal in life.”
“That must keep you awful busy,” said Harley.
She gave him a playful tap on the arm. “Oh, you know what I mean! I just naturally root for the underdog, that’s all. I just never know what to do about it. Most of the time I just write a check and hope it helps.”
Harley remembered a cartoon he’d seen once in one of his dad’s Saturday Evening Posts. It showed a fellow in the water, obviously drowning, and a man in an overcoat on the dock was saying, “I can’t swim. Would twenty dollars help?”
“Now, Harley, do you reckon we can get this hat full of cash turned into a money order or something?”
He groaned. “If you are hell-bent on doing this, I think there’s an all-night gas station down the road. They’ll probably sell money orders. But where are you going to send it?”
“Don’t you know? I thought all you race drivers were buddies.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have my Christmas card list on me.” He’d be damned if he was going to tell her about the pile of business cards on the nightstand back in his room. In fact, if Bodine found out about it, he would definitely be damned.
“Oh, come off it. You know where to find him.”
Harley sighed, thinking that Justine Holifield must go through life the way Dale Earnhardt went around a race track. “He lives in Cornelius,” he said at last. “And Cornelius is about the size of that pool table, so I reckon that if you just wrote ‘Geoffrey Bodine, Cornelius, NC’ on the envelope, it would find him sooner or later.” He hoped she didn’t know where Cornelius was; that is, only about seven miles west of where they were sitting. Harley was gearing up to explain to her that during racing season home is the one place you could be sure that a driver would not be, but Justine didn’t press it further.
With her sweetest smile she said, “Cornelius. Thank you, Harley.”
“Just don’t mention my name anywhere on that letter.” Another thought occurred to him. “You’re not about to go walking up the road in the dark, are you?”
“Harley, it’s Concord, not Beirut. Besides, Dale wouldn’t let anything happen to me in his own backyard, so to speak.”
Harley tilted his chair so far back that he nearly toppled over, which is when he caught sight of the Earnhardt poster tacked to the wall behind him, staring a hole through his back. With a sigh of resignation, he straightened up in the chair. “Naw, I guess Ol’ Dale wouldn’t let anything happen to you around here,” he said. “In fact, he just told me to walk you to the damn gas station.”
The next morning, Harley retrieved the wreath for Lowe’s Motor Speedway before helping Ratty stow the luggage back in the bus. “Short trip this morning,” he remarked to the driver.
“Enjoy it while you can,” said Ratty. “It’s a long way to Talladega.”
Unfortunately the Number Three Pilgrims had overheard this remark, and apparently some of them were old enough to know World War I songs, because on the drive to the Speedway, they improvised a spontaneous version of “It’s a long way to Talladega.” When they got to the last line and, in a burst of exuberance, Bill Knight sang out, “But Earnhardt’s still there!” They all fell silent for a moment, and then everybody began to talk at once.
Harley’s head hurt too much for him to bother with his note cards, but if there was one speedway where he didn’t need them, this was it. Home turf. He’d have to use the microphone, though, and even the sound of his own voice was grating on his nerves, but at least if he talked, they wouldn’t sing anymore.
“Lowe’s Motor Speedway,” he began. “Short trip, folks. We’re getting off the Interstate at exit 49, so don’t try to get in a nap on the way, because we’ll be there before you know it.”
Cayle waved her hand. “Okay, Harley, but how come we’re not going to Atlanta after this? It’s right on the way.”
From the driver’s seat, Ratty spoke up. “We’re staying on the outskirts tonight, but we have to go by there again to get down to Daytona, and the Atlanta Speedway is south of the city in Hampton, so it makes more sense to hit Alabama first.”
“We’ll get there,” Harley said. “But we have one more stop in Carolina before we head south, and we’ll be there real soon. Lowe’s Motor Speedway. The house that Humpy Wheeler built. The place is about forty years old now, but like a lot of beautiful forty-year-olds, it’s had a lot of work done to stay looking good.”
“Don’t look at me when you say that,” said Justine.
Harley refused to be drawn. “This is a one-and-a-half-mile track,” he said. “Used to be called the Charlotte Motor Speedway until 1999. Note that while it is big, it is technically not a super speedway. These days only Daytona and Talladega are considered super speedways-they’re both high-banked, at least two and a half miles long, and requiring restrictor plates. This place looks big after Martinsville, though, doesn’t it?”
A few of them nodded and went back to taking pictures.
“This was the first speedway to feature night racing, and-I’ll take their word for this-they claim to be the first sports facility ever to sell full-time residences.”
“Residences?” said Bekasu. “Residences?”
“They built condominiums above turn one,” said Jim Powell. “I hear they’re real nice.”