Justine touched his arm. “Terence, aren’t you going to say anything? You’ve just been standing there staring at that wreath for ages.”
He hadn’t said any of it. Terence looked around at the circle of politely puzzled faces. At last he mumbled, “I leave this wreath in memory of Dale Earnhardt, Sr., a great man.”
“Well put,” said Harley Claymore. Then he glanced at his watch and clapped for the attention of the group. “Take an hour or so to examine the track and raid the gift shop for Speedway pins, folks. And don’t forget to go to the bathroom. In fact, flush twice. It’s a long way to Florida.”
Chapter XVIII
Daytona International Speedway
Matthew lay back in the seat and closed his eyes. He was tired of the Game Boy, and the south Georgia scenery was monotonous. There were no palm trees, just plain old pines, and long flat fields full of some kind of crop, tobacco or peanuts, or something. It was a couple of hundred miles from the Atlanta Motor Speedway to Daytona, and as far as he could tell, there was nothing much worth paying attention to in between. He was tired, anyhow. He didn’t feel like reading or talking, either. The motion of the bus started him thinking about little Madison Laprade, back at the children’s home, and what a weird experience it was to ride with her. She wasn’t really a friend or anything. She was only four, but she had big space alien eyes and limp blonde hair, and she never, ever smiled. A few months back, he and Madison had been taken for their dental appointments on the same morning. Madison hardly ever spoke to anybody. Nick said that she’d been taken away from her folks, because they did terrible things to her, so it wasn’t surprising that she was a little strange. So Miss Salten started driving them into town, and after a minute or so, Madison, sitting beside him in the backseat, said, “Bump.” Very softly. Just one word. Bump. He turned to ask her what she meant, but before he could pose the question, the car went over the railroad tracks. “Bump.” Sure enough, all the way into town, Madison would whisper an announcement of every turn, every curve, every rough spot in the road. She never missed. Matthew thought about it, and he decided that she’d memorized the road because she didn’t like surprises of any kind. She watched everything all the time, remembered everything, because she’d always had to watch all around her for danger, and try to figure out who was going to hurt her and when. Now the danger had been taken away, but she couldn’t stop watching. Matthew felt sorry for the kid, and he thought about sending her a postcard, but she’d only have to get somebody to read it to her, and then she’d have to memorize it. He didn’t want to put her to the trouble. He wondered if being on his own was going to turn him funny, too. He could already feel himself beginning to watch grown-ups with clinical interest, to see who felt like talking and who didn’t feel uncomfortable around kids. Perhaps it wouldn’t be long before he was sizing people up to see who might buy him a candy bar or a toy in the gift shop. Nick said that sooner or later everybody learned what they had to in order to get by. Bump.
It had been Justine’s idea for everyone to change seats, because as she explained, “If Bekasu has to listen to me for much longer, she’ll probably strangle me. And you two-” She pointed to Shane and Karen. “You have the rest of your lives to be together, so why don’t you take some time off for a couple of hours? And Mr. Reeve-you and Mr. Franklin need to stop sitting together before folks start thinking y’all are a couple.”
With no apparent logic, she proceeded to play musical chairs with the passengers-“It’s just like a dinner party!”-pairing Cayle with Mr. Reeve, Bekasu with Jim Powell, Sarah Nash with Shane, Karen McKee with Terence Palmer, Jesse Franklin with Arlene Powell, Bill Knight with herself, and she sent Matthew up to the front to talk racing with Harley.
If anyone objected to these assignments, they decided that putting up with the change was easier than arguing with Justine.
Shane McKee looked doubtfully at the elegant older woman, thinking that if he had to sit beside her, he was glad it was at a time when which fork to use would not be an issue.
But Sarah Nash’s decades of wine-and-cheese parties had served her well. Somehow, she seemed to ask the questions that Shane knew the answers to, and then she told him about the flock of ducks on her farm-the Fonty Flock, she called them, and each one was named after a NASCAR driver. “Unfortunately Todd Bodine turned out to be a lady duck,” she said. “So now I call her Mary Todd Bodine.”
Shane laughed. “Do you know about the goat with the number three marking on its side? I was hoping to see it, but the tour isn’t going there.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of it. It’s not too far from my husband’s place.” Seeing his wary look, she added, “Long story, which I don’t propose to go into.”
Shane was still thinking about the Fonty Flock. “Aren’t you worried about foxes or coyotes getting your ducks out there at the pond?”
“Well, we pen them up at night. And I’ve got a great big, loud goose, at least twice the size of the ducks, to act as their bodyguard.”
Shane smiled. “What’s his name?”
Sarah Nash glanced around to make sure that Harley wasn’t listening. Then she leaned over and whispered, “Darrell.”
He laughed. “I’d like to see him.”
“Well, you and Karen are welcome to come over sometime. You live over in east Tennessee, don’t you?”
“Near Johnson City,” said Shane. “I work as a mechanic there.”
“Well, that’ll come in handy,” said Sarah. “All I know about car repair is how much everything costs to fix. How about Karen? What does she do?”
“She’s been waitressing while we were going to school, but she didn’t like it much. I don’t know what she wants to do now.”
“And what do you want to do? Your goal in life, I suppose I mean.”
Shane didn’t have to think about it. “The show,” he said. “Get a job with a NASCAR team, but it isn’t easy.”
“No. The old way would be to have kinfolks in the business. The Elliotts, the Earnhardts, and the Pettys all went racing with relatives in their pit crews. The new way is to get an automotive degree.” She smiled. “I guess it’s too late for you to marry a Shelmerdine.”
“Getting an engineering degree wouldn’t be any harder.”
Sarah Nash considered it. “Well, Shane, my husband Richard is on the board of directors at a place that might interest you. Maybe what you need is a pass in the grass.”
Cayle Warrenby gave Ray Reeve a bright smile, and cast about for some topic other than Dale Earnhardt. “I was checking my e-mail last night, and one of the engineers from my company had sent me one of those redneck quizzes. They know I hate those things.”
Ray Reeve grunted. “In Nebraska we get pretty sick of hearing about the heartland, too,” he said. “The Flyover Zone crap.”
“But the quiz did have one interesting question, I thought,” said Cayle. “‘Which of these cars will rust out the quickest when placed on blocks in your front yard? A ’65 Ford Fairlane, a ’69 Chevrolet Chevelle, or a ’64 Pontiac GTO.’ I’m an environmental engineer, so of course I wondered if there’s a way to determine the answer.”
Ray Reeve considered it. “Don’t bet on the Fairlane,” he said. “They’re duller than ditchwater to look at, but they didn’t call them sixties iron for nothing.”
Jim Powell, who had overheard this exchange, said, “What year’s Fairlane? ’65? Okay. Wasn’t that the fourth year they used that same structure?”