Most of the men looked like normal sports fans in a spectrum of ages, except for the preppy and the minister, who were both dutifully wearing their Winged Three caps, but with the air of generals in camouflage. And he hadn’t expected the little boy. The kid was the color of chalk, and he didn’t seem to have any eyelashes, but he seemed chipper enough. The man with him wore a priest’s collar-so probably not the boy’s father. He wondered what the story was. Harley held out his hand to the boy. “Hello, Sport,” he said. “I’m your guide. You a big Dale fan?”
The boy glanced up at his companion and received an encouraging nod. “Yep.”
Well, there was a precedent for that, thought Harley. He wondered if the sick kid was hoping for a miracle from Dale. As he recalled it had been the other way around. “How old are you, Sport?”
The kid gave him an owlish look. “Name’s Matthew. I was born the year Sterling Marlin won the Daytona 500,” he said.
Harley let out a sigh of mock exasperation. “Well, that’s no help. Sterling won in both ’94 and ’95, so I still don’t know your age.”
The kid grinned. “Okay. The first time. So, who won Daytona the year you were born?”
“Ben Hur,” said Harley. He wondered how long it would take him to match names and faces. He glanced again at his tour notes, raising a hand to indicate that a speech was forthcoming.
The tour members clustered around him and the chattering subsided.
“Tri-Cities,” he said, savoring the word. “Now you know we didn’t choose this airport just because it has a three in its name.” He’d had four months to work on his NASCAR patter for the tour and to bone up on Earnhardt connections to any place they might visit. Now he thought he could recite Earnhardt trivia without clenching his teeth. If he didn’t run out of nicotine patches, he might even survive the tour.
“Of course, this is the closest airport to the Bristol Speedway, our first stop. It was at the Bristol Motor Speedway that the young Dale Earnhardt won his first ever Winston Cup race. April 1, 1979, to be exact. Bobby Allison came in second in that race. This evening we’ll be attending the Sharpie 500 there.” To identify the race’s sponsor, Harley waved the Sharpie fine point permanent marker with which he had been taking roll. “Dale Earnhardt himself used to fly into this very airport for the race.”
For a moment everyone paused, picturing an Earnhardt wraith walking past the baggage carousel, but Harley, who had been warned not to let the tour turn into a death march, changed the subject. “Did everybody’s luggage make it? Okay, good. Then let’s get started. This is the very first Dale Earnhardt Memorial tour, and my first tour of any kind, so there ought to be a yellow stripe painted on the bumper of the bus. Just go easy on us, folks. Over there hauling your suitcases onto the baggage cart is our bus driver, Mr. Ratty Laine. I’m your guide-Harley Claymore, NASCAR driver…”
A hand waved in the air. “Do you do those hair growth commercials on television?”
“Hair growth?” Harley caught the reference. “Ah, no. That would be Derrike Cope. The way you can tell us apart is: Derrike sort of accidentally won the Daytona 500 in 1990, and I didn’t lose my hair. Hard to say which of us got the better deal.” He looked down at his notes. “Okay, speaking of Derrike, let me do a head count. We’ll get acquainted later. Right now the bus is waiting for us in the parking lot, and we have a wedding to get to.”
Justine waved her sunglasses. “I thought we were going to the Bristol Speedway.”
“Yes, ma’am, we are. The race is this evening. The Sharpie 500. After the weddings. Didn’t they put that in the brochure?”
“Heck, no. If they’d told us about a wedding, I would have brought somebody besides my sister.”
“I don’t think they’re taking volunteers, ma’am. We’re just going to watch. Oh, but two members of our party are getting married there by pre-arrangement. You’ll meet them shortly.”
“Well, if you need somebody to marry them, my sister’s a judge. Hey, Bekasu, can you marry people in Tennessee?”
While Justine scanned the crowd for her, Bekasu edged her way toward the silver-haired minister. She wanted to make allies before people figured out that she was with Justine. “Hello,” she said with an after-church smile. “I’m Rebekah Sue Holifield, and I am a hostage on this tour. How are you…Father…?”
“Just Bill,” he said quickly. “Bill Knight. I’m Episcopalian, but not that High Church.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “And this young fellow is Matthew Hinshaw, who is the real racing fan. He’s promised to help me along, because I’m new to all this.”
“Well, how do you do, Matthew,” said Bekasu, shaking his small hand. “You may have to help me along, too. I came with my sister, who is the real fan, and our cousin Cayle, who had a most extraordinary experience. She-well, never mind. Anyhow, I’m the novice in our party. To me, stock car racing looks like rush hour in Charlotte.”
“Except they’re going 180 miles an hour,” said Matthew solemnly. “And sometimes they hit each other on purpose.”
“Matthew, why did our guide say there ought to be a yellow stripe painted on the bumper of the bus?”
The boy grinned. “That’s easy! In NASCAR rookie drivers have a yellow stripe so that people will know to cut them some slack. Hey, Bill, do you mind if I get a drink before we leave the airport? It’s time for the white pill.”
Bill Knight fished a dollar out of his pocket. “Need any help, Matthew?”
The boy shook his head and ambled away.
“Your…nephew?” asked Bekasu.
“No. Matthew lives in the children’s home affiliated with the parish. This is what he wanted to do more than anything else in the world. He’s…ill.”
Bekasu watched the little boy saunter away clutching his dollar. “Yes, I thought he must be,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Is this one of those wish tours for him?”
“Yes. He’s such a great little guy. He’s had a rough year. He lost his parents in a wreck, and a few months after that he was diagnosed with his illness. I suppose a tour is hardly enough compensation for all that tragedy, but it’s all we could do. I’m accompanying him, because the tour coincided with my vacation-not because I share his passion for NASCAR. He’s a bright little fellow, though. His doctors assure me that he’ll be all right for the duration. I worry, of course.”
“It’s an interesting choice,” said Bekasu. “He did choose this tour himself, I suppose?”
Bill Knight sighed. “Oh, yes. I think everybody was a little surprised about that, but he was adamant.”
“I’d have thought that most children would have picked Disney World,” said Bekasu.
“Matthew is an unusual boy. Very-focused. It occurred to me that perhaps an intense interest in one subject keeps him from thinking about all the things in his life that he can’t control, which is nearly everything. And I suspect that his parents were race fans, but he’s never really said. I can’t say I’d have preferred Disney World over this, but I wish I could have got him interested in my hobbyhorse, which is the medieval pilgrimages of the Church. Santiago de Compostela…Canterbury…But, I suppose a trip abroad would have been too risky for his condition. And perhaps too expensive. Anyhow, young Matthew preferred this pilgrimage. Insisted on it, in fact.”
“I didn’t know what to expect on this tour. Most tour passengers are middle-aged married couples, but I was afraid that a NASCAR tour might be a busload of drunken good old boys. This one seems to be neither.”
“Did your husband not want to come along?”
Bekasu hesitated. It was still hard to say it casually. “He died a few years ago. A few months after that Cayle got divorced, and that’s when we decided that the three of us would make a tradition of vacationing together.”